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WWEEK.COM
VOL 37/49 10.12.2011
WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
THE
OTHER
PORTLAND IT’S POOR, IT’S DANGEROUS, IT’S GROWING LIKE CRAZY —AND IT’S MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER.
P. 47
M A R YA N N A H O G G AT T. C O M
BACK COVER
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2
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
CONTENT
$67 Fall New Patient Special! *Now through October 31, 2011
Call today to reserve your time!
MONEY TALKS: Conflicts of interest at BlueOregon.
NEWS
4
HEADOUT
23
LEAD STORY
13
MUSIC
27
CULTURE
21
MOVIES
45
FOOD & DRINK
24
CLASSIFIEDS
51
STAFF Editor-in-Chief Mark Zusman EDITORIAL Managing Editor for News Brent Walth Interim Arts & Culture Editor Ruth Brown Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Corey Pein Copy Chief Sarah Smith Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Rob Fernas Assistant Arts & Culture Editor Ben Waterhouse Movies Editor Aaron Mesh Music Editor Casey Jarman Editorial Interns Emilee Booher, Emily Green, Maggie Summers, Annie Zak. CONTRIBUTORS Classical Brett Campbell Dance Heather Wisner Food Kelly Clarke Visual Arts Richard Speer Erik Bader, Judge Bean, Nathan Carson, Devan Cook, Shane Danaher, Jonathan Frochtzwajg, Robert Ham, Shae Healey, Jay Horton, Matthew Korfhage, AP Kryza,
503 285 3620
Hannah Levin, Jessica Lutjemeyer, Jeff Rosenberg, Matt Singer, Chris Stamm, Mark Stock PRODUCTION Production Manager Kendra Clune Art Director Ben Mollica Graphic Designers Melissa Casillas, Soma Honkanen, Adam Krueger, Brittany Moody, Carolyn Richardson Production Interns Lana MacNaughton, Steel Brooks ADVERTISING Director of Advertising Jane Smith Display Account Executives Sara Backus, Maria Boyer, Michael Donhowe, Drew Harrison, Janet Norman, Kyle Owens Classifieds Account Executives Ashlee Horton, Corin Kuppler Advertising Assistant Ashley Grether Marketing and Events Manager Jess Sword Marketing Coordinator Jose Tancuan Give!Guide Director Brittany Cornett Production Assistant Brittany McKeever
Circulation Director Robert Lehrkind WWEEK.COM Web Production Brian Panganiban Web Editor Ruth Brown MUSICFESTNW Executive Director Trevor Solomon Staff podiatrist Dan Winters OPERATIONS Accounting Manager Andrea Manning Credit & Collections Shawn Wolf Office Manager & Receptionist Nick Johnson Office Corgi Emeritus Bruce Manager of Information Systems Brian Panganiban Publisher Richard H. Meeker
DISTRIBUTION
Our mission: Provide our audiences with an independent and irreverent understanding of how their worlds work so they can make a difference. Circulation: 80,000-90,000 (depending on time of year, holidays and vacations.) Though Willamette Week is free, please take just one copy. Anyone removing papers in bulk from our distribution points will be prosecuted, as they say, to the full extent of the law. Willamette Week is published weekly by City of Roses Newspaper Company 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Main line phone: (503) 243-2122 fax: (503) 243-1115 Classifieds phone: (503) 223-1500 fax: (503) 223-0388
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Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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INBOX THE STATE OF JEFFERSON The correct response Jefferson [“Hotseat: Jefferson Smith,” Oct. 5, 2011] could have made for the question about his ADHD meds: Question: “Is it working?” Answer: “Better than your filter for asking patently offensive and frankly inappropriate questions about an intellectual disability millions of Americans...struggle with.”.... For a periodical that prides itself on being so damn forward, this line of questioning is a significant step back. ... If he had used his wheelchair as an explanation for why he didn’t attend an event on time—that wouldn’t make it appropriate for WW to probe deeply about his disability, whether the wheelchair is functioning. The tacit statement in this line of questioning is people with intellectual disabilities might not be trusted to lead, might not be as good, maybe Jefferson isn’t capable. WW, you’ve completely missed the boat.—“B” Claiming that intellectual disabilities are irrelevant in regards to holding public office is like saying vision disabilities are irrelevant for airline pilots.... WW’s question was neither “patently offensive” OR inappropriate, and Mr. Smith himself has made it an issue; almost, it seems, a matter of pride or swagger.—“Sally” WW really put the kid gloves on. I especially liked the leading questions...so all he had to do was say “yeah” and he looked like some kind of hero. As for one commenter’s comparison of ADHD with being in a wheelchair...let me point this out. He managed to make it out of Harvard yet he couldn’t send a letter to the bar with his check on time? ADHD has become an excuse for everything. Don’t compare a person who has no use of their legs being late...to someone who could graduate from Harvard yet forgot to send a payment in. He has a history of this. Is the
To recoup the increased cost of curbside composting, could I use my green barrel as a toilet? All my human waste is 100 percent organic. I can even mount a toilet seat on top of the green can for ease of use. —Craig D. It’s always nice to encounter a visionary. You see, most of us crap, sheeplike, into our workaday toilet bowls with nary a thought that, if only we’d open our minds, this humdrum obligation could be a never-ending cavalcade of novelty. That’s why it’s so inspiring to see Craig here; his mind restlessly questing, probing and pushing the envelope of acceptable places to take a dump. That said, Craig, the short answer to your question is “no.” (The long answer is “no, you filthy, disgusting pervert.”) While you’re certainly within the bounds of reason to think that: A) We compost organic matter and B) there are few things more organic than a steaming loaf 4
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
standard of leadership so poor around here that you people would gush over the example he sets? Please.—“Chris” Smith clearly has some gifts... The question is whether they are the right gifts for the job of mayor of a large-ish city with a payroll of thousands. Smith seems to do best when he can use his considerable wit and charisma to charm and motivate people. While...inspirational leadership is needed in a mayor, a large portion of the job also involves the mundane, un-sexy work of running an organization that rivals many medium-sized corporations. It’s not clear Smith’s leadership of the Bus Project has prepared him, particularly given the thousands of dollars in fines it racked up under his tenure. While Smith’s ADHD should certainly be off-limits, it is fair to question if, in light of his erratic and questionable personal behavior (missing court dates, driving with a suspended license, not voting), he has the maturity, patience, and persistence needed to be mayor.—“Davey_Blun” CORRECTION A recent cover story (“The Crucifixion of Geoff Thompson,” WW, Sept. 28, 2011) misstated the name of the View Point Inn. The story also inaccurately characterized a legal settlement between Friends of the Columbia Gorge and the inn’s owners. That settlement restricted outdoor functions at the inn and off-site parking but did not address restoration or fire insurance. Friends of the Columbia Gorge did not sue over the land use permit for the Inn; the settlement agreement was reached during the appeal period for the permit. WW regrets the errors. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210.
from the butthole bakery; in fact it’s not quite that simple. For starters, your colon (especially yours, Craig) has a pretty radically different mix of microorganisms than those found in more traditional compost. Not only are these bacteria suboptimal for the composting process, some of them are disease agents that could still be active when the compost is otherwise ready to be used as fertilizer. Incidentally, this is why your cat’s ass-grumpies are just as forbidden in the compost bin as yours are. You can compost cat litter, but it takes longer to become free of parasites (such as the notorious, if somewhat overhyped, toxoplasmosis) than commercial composters want to wait. Given all this, I’m afraid that we’ll be putting our animals’ turds into the trash and dropping our own deuces into the crapper for the foreseeable future. As dull as that apparently sounds to certain people. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
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Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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Portland's Alternative Outdoor Store New • Recycled • Closeouts
POLITICS: Conflicts of interest at BlueOregon. BUSINESS: Union strife at a high-end salon. ROGUE OF THE WEEK: T-Mobile. COVER STORY: The Other Portland.
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Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
NEWS SHARPER THAN RICK PERRY’S PUNCHLINES. Powell’s Books and its union employees have a new 18-month contract, the shortest term the beloved bookseller has ever signed with the decade-old International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 5. The previous one ran four years—and the brevity suggests Powell’s and the union are feeling unsteady about the economy and the bookselling business. Eight nonunion managers were laid off last month, following 31 other layoffs this year. Union President Ryan Takas says Powell’s employees agreed to a 2 percent pay increase, down from the 2.5 percent hike four years ago. Takas says union members grabbed the deal even though the contract is relatively short. “When you get status quo on health care and even a few improvements on dental, you sign it,” Takas says. “You sign it very quickly.” Gov. John Kitzhaber has a crucial appointment to make: the chairmanship of the powerful Oregon Transportation Commission, following the August health-related resignation of Gail Achterman, who joined the commission in 2000. The commission exerts influence on highway projects such as the controversial $3.5 billion Columbia River Crossing Project. Kitzhaber wants to appoint Pat Egan, a former aide who’s now a vice president at PacifiCorp. But the Oregon Trucking Association wants former transportation director and Portland Development Commission chief Bruce Warner. Kitzhaber spokesman Tim Raphael says the job should be filled by next month. Medical costs in the Portland metro area have risen dramatically faster than the U.S. average in recent years, and Portland ranked No. 1 out of the 26 cities the Census studied in a recent analysis. Medical costs rose 32 percent here in 2004-10, compared to 20 percent nationwide. The analysis also ranked Portland third when it came to growing transportation costs (the top cities: Denver and Detroit). Portland-area transportation costs rose 41 percent, 11 percentage points higher than the U.S. average. In other key areas of consumer spending, however—including food and housing—Portland’s prices grew more slowly. That meant, overall, the cost of living in Portland last year was roughly equal to the U.S. average. In January, WW reported that Lori Ann Meadows, 53, was a suspect in an embezzlement from the environmental group 1000 Friends of Oregon, where MEADOWS she was development director. (The amount allegedly stolen hasn’t been made public.) Last week, a Multnomah County grand jury indicted Meadows, who has two previous theft convictions, on charges of aggravated theft and identity theft in connection with the 1000 Friends case. Read more Murmurs and daily scuttlebutt.
GOT A GOOD TIP? CALL 503.445.1542, OR EMAIL NEWSHOUND@WWEEK.COM
BT LIVERMORE
NEWS
SINS OF OMISSION BLUEOREGON SAYS IT TREATS ALL DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES FAIRLY. BUT HAVING ITS EDITOR ON THE CAMPAIGN PAYROLL DOESN’T HURT. BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS
njaquiss@wweek.com
BlueOregon is a political blog where many Democrats get their daily fix. The website’s original posts and links to reporting from numerous media outlets make it, as BlueOregon itself says, “the water cooler around which Oregon progressives will gather.” “Lots of politicians and their staffs and lobbyists and advocates read BlueOregon daily,” says Kari Chisholm, the site’s co-editor and owner. “It’s a regular stop for them.” He should know. Chisholm’s company, Mandate Media, creates websites for all the Democratic members of Oregon’s congressional delegation; for Gov. John Kitzhaber and Oregon Treasurer Ted Wheeler; and for state lawmakers and local elected officials too numerous to list. Chisholm has been paid nearly $400,000 by Democratic candidates in state and local races since 2006. His business has grown steadily, and Chisholm says he brings in nearly as much from federal candidates and nonprofits as from state and local candidates. His dual role as BlueOregon editor and paid consultant creates a conflict of interest. Chisholm says the conflict— running a news website while being paid by candidates he writes about—is not a problem. “I’m not a journalist and don’t pretend to be,” he says. “But I work hard to get all voices out there.” WW’s analysis of BlueOregon’s recent coverage, how-
ing news about Avakian. The site’s news scroller, “Water Cooler: Oregon News Headlines,” links to political news reported by Oregon media outlets. But in August, Oregonian columnist Steve Duin wrote two columns alleging dirty tricks against Bonamici on the part of the Avakian campaign. On BlueOregon? No mention of, or link to Duin’s colever, suggests favoritism toward at least one Chisholm client—Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, who’s running umn. Chisholm says Duin’s columns were about campaign for the Democratic nomination in the special 1st Congres- staffers. “We don’t usually cover those,” he says. But there’s more. On Sept. 8, The Oregonian’s Jeff sional District election to replace U.S. Rep. David Wu. Avakian’s chief rival in the race is state Sen. Suzanne Mapes reported unflattering behind-the-scenes machinaBonamici (D-Beaverton), who’s found herself on the sharp tions aimed at gaining Avakian a coveted labor endorsement. No BlueOregon link. end of BlueOregon posts. On Sept. 14, WW reported that creditors have sued On Sept. 28, Chisholm attacked Bonamici for refusing to tell the AFL-CIO where she stands on proposed U.S. Avakian four times, that the Internal Revenue Service trade pacts with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. Ava- filed a $13,120 lien against him in 2005, and that while a kian said he opposed them, as did the third major Demo- state legislator, he hit up lobbyists for a job (“Not Paying cratic candidate, state Rep. Brad Witt (D-Clatskanie). His Dues, WW, Sept. 14, 2011). No BlueOregon link to that story, or Chisholm’s post: “While Bonamici dithto a Sept. 19 National Journal report that ers on trade, Witt and Avakian stake out FACT: Sitemeter.com says Avakian still hadn’t paid off his student strong, progressive stands.” bojack.org gets more traffic “[I]f you believe that these trade deals than BlueOregon, but Chisholm loans 21 years after finishing law school. Nor did BlueOregon link to a Sept. 20 are unequivocally bad deals for Oregon says his site takes the lead during campaign season. Oregonian Politifact story by Janie Har workers, then it seems to me that your that labeled as “false” Avakian’s claims candidate is one of the two guys named Brad,” Chisholm wrote. “Meanwhile, I guess we’ll just wait about how many housing discrimination cases his agency investigates each year. for Suzanne Bonamici to figure out what her position is.” Chisholm denies censoring anti-Avakian reporting Chisholm usually includes a comment to relevant posts disclosing a politician is one of his clients. He says his writ- on BlueOregon. He faced similar criticism during the ings are not part of a quid pro quo. “It shouldn’t be a sur- bruising 2008 U.S. Senate primary between Jeff Merkley (a Mandate Media client and the eventual winner) and prise that I write about the things I care about,” he says. “[BlueOregon] presents itself as a forum and a tool for rabble-rouser Steve Novick. Novick, a BlueOregon contributor who is now runadvocating Democratic interests generally,” says state Rep. Chris Garrett (D-Lake Oswego), a Chisholm client who ning for Portland City Council, says Chisholm’s website supports Bonamici. “When it is then used to attack certain pounded him when he faced Merkley. “BlueOregon looks like it’s supposed to be indepenDemocrats on behalf of others who are paying clients, that dent,” Novick says. “I think Kari should acknowledge that creates a real tension.” BlueOregon has recently ignored a raft of unflatter- he does use BlueOregon to the benefit of his clients.” Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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SUBSECTION MORGAN GREEN-HOPKINS
NEWS
Acupuncture, Massage and Herbal Medicine
Now Open
in our new location!
2029 NE Cesar E Chavez Blvd
Corner of NE Tillamook and 39th n Off-street parking n Hours: Monday – Friday, 8:00 AM – 7:00 PM
$25 Acupuncture
Call 503-281-1917 to schedule an appointment or e-mail hollywoodclinic @ ocom.edu
Join us for our Open House
Wednesday, October 12
4:30 – 6:30 PM n Free treatments, massage and snacks
Visit OCOM’s on-campus Acupuncture & Herbal Clinic 10541 SE Cherry Blossom Drive, 97216 n 503-253-3443 x550
ocom.edu WW_4unit_K_100611.indd 1
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Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
DYE JOB
DOSHA, A POPULAR SALON AND SPA, IS DIVIDED OVER A UNION VOTE AND HOW PRO-LABOR WORKERS ARE TREATED BY SHA E HEA LEY
10/6/2011 5:01:14 PM
ROYAL TREATMENT: Former Dosha massage therapist Mary Christ (with her son Kwam) and union organizer Joe Crane.
shealey@wweek.com
Before she went to work at Dosha Salon Spa on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard in August, Mary Christ had heard about controversy involving employees voting to join a union. Someone in the local salon business told her that she’d be smart not to mix it up in the company’s labor issues. But she couldn’t resist. Christ, 27, soon voiced support for the employees’ association with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which narrowly won a March ratification vote. Within five weeks, Christ was fired after complaining about working conditions. “They singled out and attacked me because of my union support,” she says. The company disputes that, but Christ’s firing shows that all is not lovely behind the scenes at what Dosha calls “Portland’s premier salon spa.” Dosha has become successful and popular with five metro area locations. Workers launched a union campaign in 2009 after complaining about health care, low wages, favoritism and lack of sick leave, among other grievances. CWA organizer Joe Crane says three employees left after becoming unofficial campaign leaders. “The first two quit because they were treated so inhumanly by the management,” Crane says. “Dosha was intentionally making their work lives hell. It was terrible.” Bob Tiernen, former chair of the Oregon Republican Party, was hired by Dosha as a business consultant two weeks after the union election. Tiernen says Dosha has long paid and treated employees very well. He calls the union’s allegations “hilarious” and “simply not true.” The union won the March vote 79 to 66. CWA alleged in unfair labor practice charges to the National Labor Relations Board that Dosha “granted wage increases to employees in an attempt to coerce them into voting against the union.”
Kelanie York, a former Dosha nail technician, say she was asked to remove a temporary tattoo supporting the union and was sent home after reapplying it. She says she was well liked by managers before that. “Then they started moving me to the bottom of the scheduling book,” she says. Linda Davidson, officer-in-charge at the NLRB’s Portland office, tells WW the allegations are under investigation. “The union barely won,” Tiernen says. “A union makes charges that cost the company money and create negative press as an incentive to force the company into making agreements. That’s all that’s happening here—I’ve seen it before.” Dosha employees remain divided about the union. Employees run warring Facebook pages: “Dosha Workers Unite” and “Dosha As Is.” “There shouldn’t even be a union in our industry,” says Kim Botner, an eight-year Dosha employee. “We’re all about making people feel beautiful and good about themselves. The Dosha family isn’t here to stand in the way of that by providing negative energy. But that’s what the union is doing.” Christ, a massage therapist, joined Dosha in August and wore a red feather in her hair to show her union support. “A few days later [managers] reprimanded me for complaining about my schedule,” Christ says, “and threatened my job if I ever so much as talked to my employers about it again.” She was later told a manager on Sept. 12 claimed to have searched her purse after smelling something suspicious and found marijuana. “That was a complete lie,” Christ says. “I took my own drug test and passed it—there wasn’t marijuana in my bag.” Christ says Dosha never produced the pot the manager claims to have found. Tiernan says a manager did find marijuana and that no search was needed because the alleged pot was in plain view. Christ’s termination letter, which she shared with WW, says nothing about illegal drugs. “Mary had voiced some negative comments to other employees about scheduling and working at Dosha,” the letter says. “Management has determined it is not a good fit to continue with employment.” Crane believes Christ will get her job back. If that happens, Christ plans to return. “Dosha is just trying to force the pro-union workers to quit so they can overturn the vote,” she says “The union has work to do, and I want to keep helping.”
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Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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NEIGHBORHOODS
ROGUE OF THE WEEK
T-MOBILE
THE CELL-PHONE GIANT BLAMES OTHERS FOR ITS OWN PROBLEMS WITH A PROPOSED ANTENNA SITE IN NORTHEAST PORTLAND. It’s nice that the giant corporations that provide our cellphone service say they’re dedicated to giving us the best possible coverage. T-Mobile, for example. It says it wants to provide the very best coverage. That’s why the Bellevue, Wash.-based communications company says it’s been fighting to build a cell site at the corner of Northeast 31st Avenue and Prescott Street. If it weren’t for a few naysayers pressuring city officials to block the site, the good people of the Alameda and Concordia neighborhoods might have better coverage than ever. If only it were that simple. It seems that all most neighbors have asked is that T-Mobile play by the same rules as everyone else, and that the City of Portland hold the company accountable. Some want the project stopped. T-Mobile finds itself in this spot not because of the neighbors but because of its own error. And blaming the locals is Roguish behavior on T-Mobile’s part. It all started in 2008, when T-Mobile set its plans to put antennas on an existing utility pole at Prescott and 31st, and then install radio equipment on the private property of an adjacent homeowner.
T-Mobile got all the necessary permits but, the city says, didn’t start the work. The permit for the cell site was good for only six months. When it got around to starting work this summer, T-Mobile didn’t apply for a new one. The old permit wasn’t just expired, says David Olson, director of the city’s Office for Community Technology. “It was epically expired.” This wasn’t some bureaucratic glitch. The city’s rules for putting up cell sites had changed dramatically in the meantime, and by trying to install without a new permit, T-Mobile was ignoring a new requirement that it meet with neighbors about the site. (Not to mention it didn’t pay $5,000 for a new permit.) The city, once alerted, issued a stop-work order. T-Mobile now says it’s following the rules (without acknowledging it wasn’t before). The company, however, has chosen to blame neighbors for the holdup. “A handful of Portland-area residents are pressuring city officials to block approval of this site,” T-Mobile said in a direct-mail notice sent to nearby customers. The mailer also said, “You pay for good cell service in Portland and shouldn’t tolerate poor coverage, especially in your home and neighborhood.” (Does this mean T-Mobile’s coverage is poor at the moment? Hmm.) Well, when you are required to ask members of the public for their opinions, sometimes you don’t get the responses you’re looking for. Some Alameda residents object to putting a tower in a “historic” neighborhood. Others say the location is among the lowest priority areas for putting in a new cell site and wonder why T-Mobile can’t put it somewhere else—like, say, on a nearby water tower that already has other antennas. “T-Mobile has designed the best site for our customers’ needs taking into account the local ordinance and permitting requirements, landlord interest and design team con-
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WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS: Guy Dale uses the bike lane to make his way up Southeast 162nd Avenue in East Portland, where it’s not uncommon to see people in wheelchairs using roadways because the sidewalks are inadequate or missing.
IT’S POOR, IT’S DANGEROUS, IT’S GROWING LIKE CRAZY—AND IT’S MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER. BY CO REY P EI N
cpein@wweek.com
P H OTOS BY DARRYL JA MES
I
n case you didn’t get the invite, Portland is an endless party in a shining urban utopia where everyone has a $1,000 bicycle, eats locally sourced gourmet dishes from food carts and is blindingly, self-consciously white. It’s Paris in the 1920s, but with iPhones. Portland is not just a noun, it’s an adjective for good government and livability, smart planning and the next hip thing. Well, wake up. There’s another Portland you should know about, one unknown even to many longtime locals. It’s an expanse of the city without a single Zipcar spot or independent microbrewery, where you’ll see more
pajama bottoms than skinny jeans. It’s a landscape of chain link and surface parking that, by contrast, makes 82nd Avenue look positively gentrified. It’s a cookie-cutter residential sprawl so devoid of landmarks, public spaces and commercial centers that some residents simply call it “The Numbers.” It’s where you can walk a quarter-mile without finding a crosswalk (assuming you can find a paved sidewalk). You’d have to go even farther to find a bus stop or MAX station. Forget about a city-maintained bike rack—in 50 square miles, there are only three. It is, however, the most diverse place in Oregon. You may find yourself struggling to read the signs on local CONT. on page 14 Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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club offers $3 breakfast all day and a once-over with the metal-detector wand at the door. Roll Your Own Mart offers…well, whatever you need. The van turns east, toward a ghost mall at the city’s edge. The mall’s former anchor tenant, Safeway, closed in March. The liquor store remains open. Drink is different here. East Portland has more offpremises liquor licensees than on-premises establishments, while the rest of the city has more bars than grab-and-gos. Food is different, too, with visible consequences. In an effort to measure the effect of the built environment on public health, Multnomah County culled height and weight data from 74,000 driver’s licenses. It found East Portlanders have higher obesity rates than other city residents—53 percent, compared to 42 percent in the rest of the city. Yet for an area with one-quarter of the city’s population, there are only seven full-service grocery stores in East Portland; fast-food chains and convenience stores predominate. The $1 value menu at 7-Eleven is cheaper than bus fare to the farmers market. Policy wonks call it a “food desert.” That phrase does evoke a landscape that fits East Portland, once strawberry fields and horse pastures. The area sprawled after World War II, with little planning. Most of it was not part of the city until 1983, when Portland began annexing it. The lawyers and surveyors did their jobs in pushing Portland’s boundaries east, but the politicians never succeeded in convincing residents they were wanted by the city that swallowed them. As other parts of Portland flourished thanks to decades of targeted spending and boosterism from City Hall and corporate leaders, cheaper land in East Portland attracted developers who threw up block after block of apartment complexes. A 1996 East Portland planning document presented to the City Council by then-Commissioner (and now mayoral candidate) Charlie Hales accurately predicted the newly annexed areas would grow quickly, but the document’s vision of streetcars, tree canopy and walkable neighborhoods failed to materialize. Today, nearly half of the city’s multifamily housing complexes are east of I-205, as are more than half of the
EASTERN PROMISES: Centennial Community Association President Tom Lewis says city projects like new parks and bike lanes aren’t always welcomed by longtime East Portlanders who mistrust City Hall.
That’s why you’ll soon be hearing about East Portland as never before—and why it’s important to understand what is true, and what is myth, about the least “Portlandy” part of Portland.
L
ewis steers his work van through the vanished landscape of his childhood. The 60-year-old carpenter, who lives 23 blocks from where he grew up on 171st Avenue, pulls onto Southeast Mill Street, not far from his old family home. The van rolls past a wooden fence bearing a freshly spray-painted welcome: “Fuck U Hoes.” He is nostalgic. A dance hall where the Kingsmen of “Louie Louie” fame once played is now an unfinished housing development. Lewis circles the cul-de-sac, providing a panorama of brown grass dotted with piles of wire and rubble, and after about a mile, stops at Southeast 136th Avenue and Powell Boulevard. “Our business district,” Lewis says. A pawnshop advertises “Cash 4 Guns.” The Pallas strip N
Co lu m
M
ari
ne
Dr
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Wi llam
ett eB lvd
NL om bar dS t NE C olum bia B lvd
mba rd St
yB NE Cu ll vd y Bl Sand NE
NE 82nd Av
NE 21st Av
NE 33rd Av
NE Fremont St
5
NE Halsey St
84
nell Rd
NE Glisan St
Bro
SE Division St
205
SE Powell Blvd
SE Fo ste r
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d
SE Holgate Blvd
SW
rr Fe lls ho Sc
SE M
Rd
cL ou g
in hl
d Blv SE Woodstock Blvd
Red: Below 10 percent SW 45th Av
SE 39th Av
SE Flavel St
SE Milwaukie Av
Yellow: 21-55 percent Green: 56-66 percent
er llig wi Ter
Rd
SE
Mi lw au k
ie E
xp y
l SE McLough
Boon
es F err y
d Blv
Blue: 66-77 percent
Demographers say educational attainment is one of the most revealing indicators of class and social mobility. East Portland has the city’s lowest rates of educational attainment. SE Linwood Av
Orange: 10-20 percent
in Blvd SE Thiessen Rd
Source: U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey
SE 82nd Av
SE 60th Av
SW N aito
SW
Pkwy
adw ay
NW 23rd Av
or NW C
lvd
NE Prescott St
NE Martin L. King Jr Blvd
N Vancouver Av
NE Killingsworth St
SW
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
NE L o
Rosa Parks Way
SW Riverside Dr
14
CONT. on page 16
POPULATION WITH BACHELOR’S DEGREE OR HIGHER
N
businesses, unless you’re fluent in Spanish or Vietnamese. If you see white people, two things might be true: The trucker hat isn’t meant to be ironic, or they speak Russian. This place is poor, and relatively dangerous. Median household income is at least 23 percent lower than in the city as a whole, and the official poverty rates are worse than almost anywhere else in the metro area. Violent crime is up. The mortality rate is the highest in the county. It’s East Portland, the city’s frontier. More than a quarter of the city’s residents live here, separated from the rest by Interstate 205, a physical and psychological barrier more divisive than the Willamette River. If East Portland were its own city—and in many ways, it is—it’d be the third-largest in Oregon, with 150,000 people, roughly equal in population to Eugene and Salem. And now, as the city heads into an election season that will be more competitive than most, and with new attention paid to social disparities across the country, East Portland is emerging as a political force. All three major candidates for mayor are portraying themselves as the new champions of the neighborhoods east of I-205. New Seasons Market co-founder Eileen Brady promises greater investment in East Portland. Charlie Hales, a former city commissioner, talks about the lack of sidewalks and delivering East Portland its “birthright.” And state Rep. Jefferson Smith (D-East Portland) has beaten the drum for the area since moving there in 2007 to run for the Legislature. The political attention comes, in part, because East Portland’s problems can no longer be ignored. “Crime has gone up. The school system does not know how to handle the influx of children of color,” says the Rev. W.G. Hardy Jr., whose church draws hundreds of black families from East Portland. “[Politicians are] talking about livable cities, with modes of transportation—bus, bike, pedestrian, car. But we don’t have that. They’re talking about healthy grocery stores within walking distance. We don’t have that.” Altruism alone doesn’t explain the mayoral candidates’ new eastward focus. There’s also a stark political cartography. “Even a naive politician has got to admit that 25 percent of Portland’s population is going to have a voice someday,” says Tom Lewis, a carpenter who heads the Centennial Community Association. “They’ve got to go there.” When he ran for mayor in 2008, Sam Adams won virtually every precinct in the city except for those east of I-205. And he didn’t simply lose in East Portland precincts. In many, he got thumped. Hales and Brady launched their campaigns against Adams with appeals to those East Portland voters. Now that Adams won’t seek re-election, they’ve held on to their eastside strategy.
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mobile-home parks. The challenges facing far East Portland go way beyond the lack of streetcars. The most obvious problem is transportation, especially when traveling north or south. TriMet runs only one frequent-service bus line in East Portland, the No. 4 along Southeast Division Street, despite growing demand. In 2009, the agency reduced service on one north-south line that serviced the area’s largest employer, Adventist Medical Center. Here the bike lanes glisten with broken glass. Only 1 percent of East Portland residents commute by bike, compared to 7 percent of Portlanders citywide, a city survey shows. As often as they convey cyclists, the bike lanes are filled with wheelchairs, driven by the disabled and elderly residents of East Portland’s 261 adult-care homes. (There are only 89 adult-care homes inside the city west of I-205.) Their perilous commutes play out in slow motion alongside five lanes of speeding traffic—de-facto highways designated by the Portland Bureau of Transportation as “high-crash corridors.” Last year, a 62-year-old woman in an electric wheelchair, Melinda Barnett, was hit by a car while traveling from a coffee shop on 162nd Avenue to her home 11 blocks away, following the bike lane on Division Street. Police never found the hit-and-run driver. The rate of vehicle crashes involving pedestrians on 122nd Avenue is 50 percent higher than the citywide average. Jaywalking is common because the average distance between pedestrian crossings is over a quarter-mile, roughly the distance between Powell’s Books and Big Pink, a stretch of West Burnside Street with eight crosswalks. “The circumstances we have [in East Portland] are a result of lack of planning. But is there anyone to blame?” asks Shea Marshman, director of planning and research for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. “I don’t think so…. It just kind of crashed together like so many other places in the country.”
W
hat emerged in East Portland is what social workers describe as a suburban grid with urban problems. The area’s growing crime problem is well-known to police, less so to the city at large. Since 2002, the Portland Police Bureau’s East Precinct has responded to more calls for help than any other precinct in the city. In the year ending this August, five of the 10 neighborhoods with the most reported aggravated assaults were east of I-205. Eight of the 29 reported homicides in that period occurred here. The intersection of Southeast 162nd Avenue and Burnside is consistently among the top three locations for police service calls in the Portland metro area, Marshman says. It’s also where many Portlanders on probation and parole happen to live. “When people here call the police, they’re often calling about someone they know and love,” says Marshman, a former parole officer. “It’s a much worse problem [than the statistics indicate]. It’s a call of last resort.” An increasing awareness of these problems among elected officials and bureaucrats has created a sense of urgency and a desperation for answers. Marshman, for example, helped found the Rosewood Cafe, the newest tenant in a small strip development on Southeast 162nd Avenue between Alder and Stark streets. The Rosewood is supposed to be a new community center in a neighborhood that has no center. The cafe has no menu. The water cooler is empty. The furniture consists of flimsy card tables and metal folding chairs, arranged in a semicircle facing a half-painted wall. Handcuffs dangle from the handle of an interior door. The county spent $14,000 to help create the center, which began as a community-policing initiative, and is intended to help give the area a sense of identity, not to mention a place for neighbors to meet. Public money covers a fraction of the anticipated costs. Earlier this year, volunteers raised $1,000 with a scrap-metal drive. On a recent Wednesday at lunchtime, about three dozen people have shown up. They include cops, land-
INTERSTATE 205: THE DIVIDING LINE MORTALITY RACE East Portland has the highest mortality rate in Multnomah County—higher than Wood Village or Gresham, and markedly higher than the rest of the city.
EAST PORTLAND REST OF PORTLAND Deaths per 100,000 people 16
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East Portland has the most diverse population in Oregon, and is home to large shares of the city’s black, Hispanic, Asian and mixed-race residents.
STREETS TO SUITS: Valerie Salazar hopes to turn her volunteer work at the Rosewood Cafe into a job helping victims of human trafficking.
owners, church pastors, bureaucrats and community organizers, all bearing statistics, speeches and, sometimes, competing agendas. Valerie Salazar, 34, is one of the few people who isn’t paid to be here. Salazar, a boisterous, unemployed, tattooed and churchgoing single mother from Mesa, Ariz., lives on Southeast 162nd Avenue. For the past week, she has volunteered at the Rosewood Cafe because she wants to help clean up the neighborhood. She also hopes her work will lead to a job. Salazar surveys the room. She sees a police captain holding a folder stuffed with dossiers on her neighbors. She hears a city crime-prevention officer tell landlords that evicting “problem children” pays “big dividends.” She listens as Marshman asks everyone in the room for money—as little as 15 cents—to keep the cafe open. Salazar says that many on 162nd Avenue are suspicious of the city’s sudden show of interest. “You’re like, ‘I’m here to help,’” she says. “If you don’t keep your word for these people, they will write you off.” Growing racial tension compounds the mistrust. According to census tracts, only the white population in East Portland decreased over the past decade. The Hispanic population grew 106 percent, more than three times as fast as the rest of the city. The black population grew 166 percent, while decreasing 13 percent in the rest of the city. This is why, five years ago, Rev. Hardy moved his Highland Christian Center from Northeast 18th Avenue to Northeast 76th. He estimates 30 percent of the predominantly black families who attend his church now live in “The Numbers,” having been priced out of the inner city and moved east of I-205, where the welcome has not always been neighborly, and services are lacking. “Most of them have to commute back into the city to get hair-care products, and connect to people who still remain in inner Northeast Portland,” Hardy says. “Those who cannot afford 24-Hour Fitness, they’re still coming in to CONT. on page 18
EAST PORTLAND
39%
REST OF PORTLAND
24%
Percent of nonwhite or Hispanic population
SOURCE: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, 2010 CENSUS
MORE THAN A PLAYGROUND: The Rosewood Cafe opened next to a Laundromat on Southeast 162nd Avenue this year as a volunteer project to create a community space in a high-crime neighborhood.
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go to the Salvation Army on Killingsworth. They still con- draw. Between 70 and 150 kids use the center every day, parities sidesteps a much tougher discussion. “Talking sider PCC Cascade their community college, even though depending on the time of year; many stay from the time about institutional racism is alienating. Talking about Mount Hood [Community College] is down the street.” that it opens at 2 pm until closing at 7 pm, and take an eve- geography is a lot less alienating,” Bates says. “If you’re Hardy, a former TriMet employee, moved to The Num- ning meal there—their third publicly funded meal of the running for elected office, speaking to a large group of bers in the 1990s, to be closer to his workplace. “When I day, counting the lunch and breakfast served at school. people”—say, people who consider themselves East Portfirst moved out there, it was strawberry fields. There were “I have kids I send home with food on a regular basis,” landers—“can be very useful.” nurseries out there. It was rural Oregon,” Hardy says. His says Britt Fredrickson, the center’s director. “I try not New Seasons Market co-founder Eileen Brady has demfamily were the only blacks around, except for his neigh- to pry too much about where [their parents] get their onstrated some attention to the politics of language. “I’ve bor’s maid. Not so today. committed to never saying ‘out there,’” Brady says. As for incomes.” All this change matters most to the fastest-growing why New Seasons has no East Portland locations, Brady minority in East Portland: says bank financing has proven children. difficult. “I don’t speak for New “Massive amounts of kids Seasons Market anymore,” she are moving there, primarsays. “We’ve definitely looked ily because of rents,” says Scott for sites in East Portland, but Stewart, who tracked regional there is none that has worked demographic trends for the out yet.” Portland-Multnomah Progress In a campaign video, Hales Board, a study group dissolved promises to deliver East Portby the City Council in 2008. land its “birthright” with an “Think about what that does to increased budget for services. the infrastructure of the place,” “Let me tell you about 117th Stewart says. “There are more Avenue,” he says. “There’s a kids, and they’re poorer. That’s section of that street that goes quite a burden.” from Division to Burnside, The trend was clear years goes past two schools, a great ago, but little was done. Between neighborhood park, a big com2002 and 2006, enrollment munity church, and connects in Portland Public Schools to light rail. But there are no declined 18 percent. In the same sidewalks. That’s not OK.” period, the school districts east Jefferson Smith may have the of I-205—David Douglas, Reynstrongest recent record of East olds, Parkrose and Centennial— Portland advocacy. Although grew by a combined average of Smith grew up in the Irvington 15 percent. neighborhood of inner NorthThe eastern districts’ probeast Portland and only moved lem is Portland’s as a whole, to his home in the Hazelwood Stewart says, to the extent that neighborhood in 2007, a year schools are a tool for upward before he ran unopposed for mobility. Failing schools an open legislative seat, he has produce an ill-equipped workspent significant time building force, and the economy suffers. an image as East Portland’s Perhaps nowhere have most prominent political these trends been more clear voice. than at Alder Elementary, a “There are people with larger cred and a deeper understandReynolds district school that sits one block south of Southing than I’ve got, but I’ve been east Stark Street at 172nd studying the issues very closeSCHOOL’S OUT: The Police Activities League Youth Center on Northeast 172nd Avenue offers teens and younger children one of the only places to hang out after school in the East Portland ly,” Smith says. “Almost every Avenue. area. Center director Britt Fredrickson sometimes sends kids home with food for the weekend. major city works with increasThis is not just one of the ingly diverse communities. poorest schools in Portland, any things that East Portlanders gripe about are only Portland is one of the few major cities that haven’t faced but according to annual socioeconomic analyses by the partially true. Take sidewalks. A Portland Bureau of that much. We’ve got to be the city that gets that right.” Oregon Department of Education, it has long ranked as Back at the Rosewood Cafe, Michelle Phillips and one of the poorest schools in the state. In recent years, up Transportation analysis shows that the part of the city to 98 percent of the 600 students enrolled at Alder were with the fewest sidewalks along major arterials is not East Milton Lopez, who have lived in East Portland for about 15 years, help clean up after the meeting. They share an eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Seventy percent Portland but Southwest. Take parks. A recent analysis by Commissioner Nick apartment in the Alder Village complex at 160th and are learning English as a second language. While the district as a whole has gotten poorer, Alder’s Fish’s office of historic Portland Parks Bureau spending Alder. “It’s getting really, really rough,” Phillips says. Shots poverty figures have moderated somewhat. Now Glenfair shows that between 1990 and 2010, more money was spent were fired from some nearby Elementary, a school on apartments three times in Northeast Glisan Street at “I’VE COMMITTED TO NEVER SAYING ‘OUT THERE.’”—EILEEN BRADY one weekend, she says. Then 153rd Avenue that draws someone threw a rock out a students primarily from Portland, is Reynolds’ poorest, with 94 percent of students acquiring parkland and improving park buildings in East window and hit a friend of hers in the head. Portland than in any other part of town. (Granted, two“It’s disheartening,” she says. “I feel like everybody eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. “This whole area out here is looking more and more thirds of city-owned parkland in East Portland remains skipped over East Portland.” unimproved.) Lopez, a carpenter who recently attained U.S. citizenlike Alder,” Reynolds spokeswoman Andrea Watson says. And as for those infamous food deserts: East Portland ship, stares at the street outside. “The city dumped this In a city famous for its public parks, kids who grow up in East Portland have almost no place to play. Schools lock has them, but a Multnomah County analysis shows North on us,” he says. “They put all their money in Northeast, up their swing sets after hours, and remove the nets from Portland is still worse off when it comes to finding fresh or and we don’t get anything. Gresham is doing right by its natural foods. people. Look at the trees and sidewalks they put in over the basketball hoops. For decades, “North” and “Northeast” have been Port- there. We’d like to see some of that. The Police Activities League Youth Center on 172nd “We still love this place,” he goes on. “If we move, it Avenue offers some of the only after-school activities in land code for African-American. In political rhetoric, it’s feels like we’re giving up on something. the area that would not meet a strict definition of juvenile not yet clear what “East Portland” means. Lisa Bates, a Portland State University urban planning “Whatever candidate sells us the best story, we’re willdelinquency. The center, located in an abandoned school building, professor who helped plan the city’s new Office of Equity ing to go out and campaign for them. That’s how desperate has several study and game rooms, but the gym is the main and Human Rights, says all the talk over geographic dis- we are out here.”
M
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Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
www.wagportland.com
VOTED
BEST
WW presents
DOGGIE DAYCARE
BY WW READERS
I M A D E T HIS WW’s free marketplace for locally produced art. this Week: beth kerschen’s portland postcards. page 54. Daycare • Boarding • Behavioral Counseling 2410 SE 50th Avenue 503.238.0737
7am-7pm weekdays 8am-5pm weekends
Self-alignment with the positive energies of the universe Simple changes can bring more meaning to your life Create happiness and wellbeing
ALWAYS FREE Sant Baljit Singh, the spiritual Master teaches meditation on inner Light & Sound to anyone who is searching for a deeper meaning in life.
7pm - Oct 17th & Oct 27th Center for Natural Medicine 1330 SE César E. Chávez Blvd (SE 39th Ave.) Portland *Talk given by an authorized speaker info@knowthyselfassoul.org 1-877-633-4828 www.santmat.net
Celebrate with us!
We’re excited to be a part of your community. This month, we’re highlighting associates who go above and beyond. Learn what makes these associates shine.
Petco Associate Spotlight
“
Thomas Sprecher
Dan Miller
Store: Clackamas Petco Position: General Manager Time in the community: Lifetime
Store: Beaverton Petco Position: Store Manager Time in the community: Lifetime
Our store supports Foster Pets of Portland, but I’m most proud of our support of a local K9 unit. – Thomas
”
“
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. We want to make sure your pet gets the best care and we know it can be overwhelming. So, let us help. Because, in the end, that’s why we are here. – Dan
”
Visit petco.com/portland today for hundreds of incredible deals and special events at your store. Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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UPCOMING IN-STORE PERFORMANCES WHISPERING PINES - FRIDAY 10/21 @ 6PM Whispering Pines is a five piece rock n roll outfit from Los Angeles that sounds as though it was lifted straight out of the Laurel Canyon music scene that overtook the City of Angels in the late 1960’s… with a little Allman-style southern soul tossed in for good measure. On their debut album, ‘Family Tree,’ Whispering Pines plow through nine groove-filled tunes. If the whole thing sounds well-aged and worn, that’s because it was recorded with vintage equipment in Elliott Smith’s Van Nuys, CA studio. THE BOXER REBELLION - MONDAY 10/24 @ 6:30PM
London-based The Boxer Rebellion created their third studio album ‘The Cold Still’ with legendary producer Ethan Johns (Kings of Leon, Ryan Adams, Ray LaMontagne), The album is an exercise in master class performances and dark, sophisticated songwriting from a band that embodies the very definition of ‘independent.’ ‘The Cold Still’ is the follow-up to the band’s widely acclaimed album ‘Union,’ which caught the world’s attention as the first selfreleased LP in history to break into the Billboard 100 Album Charts on digital sales alone.
COMING SOON: JOHN WESLEY HARDING WEDNESDAY 11/9 @ 6PM
LAURA VEIRS SATURDAY 11/12 @ 3PM
Art & Artifacts
be our guest Be Our Guest.
Be our guest October 14th for a Community Warehouse celebration! Special Sale featuring a mix of curiosities, unusual artifacts, unique art pieces, a wall of wine and more. Friday, October 14, 2011 5-8pm At Community Warehouse 3969 NE MLK Jr. Blvd., Portland 97212 For more information and a sneak preview of sale items, visit our website event page. communitywarehouse.org
u sed goods to good u se 20
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
WHAT ARE YOU WEARING?
STREET
TIGHTS EXCITE LEGGING IT THROUGH DOWNTOWN. P H OTOS BY MOR GA N GRE EN- HO PKIN S A N D LANA M ACN AU GHTON WI TH SAMI GASTO N
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK: Drinking white fungus and bird spit. MUSIC: Stephen Malkmus jicks us around. THEATER: William Hurt gets drunk. MOVIES: Jack Blackbird.
24 27 41 45
12th Annual
SCOOP RIP JOBS, WELSH, SHUTTLESWORTH, DAVIS, QWIKSTER.
BRIAN A. RIDDER
THE NEXT LITTLE BIG BURGER? Old Spaghetti Factory President Chris Dussin has finally given up hope of reviving Lucier, the glitzy South Waterfront restaurant he opened in April 2008 and closed eight months later. The 7,657-squarefoot, 138-seat building, which was designed by the same firm as New York’s Le Cirque and Per Se, is listed for lease with Urban Works Real Estate. No word what rent they’re looking for, but the property is valued by the city at $3.6 million. HORSE SHED SOLD: Two years after it was moved twice and extensively renovated, downtown’s Ladd Carriage House has been purchased for $1 million— less than half its original asking price—by Kathy and Mike Mygrant, owners of a California wholesale auto glass firm. According to The Oregonian, they intend to make it a restaurant. WILL THERE BE MERMAIDS? West Burnside strip club Cabaret, raided by the IRS in April for alleged tax fraud, is no more. In its place rises Poseidon Seafood Bar and Grill, owned by Cabaret proprietor David Kiraz’s brother, Daniel. Kiraz told WW he intends to open the restaurant to the public on Thursday, Oct. 13. FUTURE DRINKING: The Globe, a bar and pizzeria on Southeast Belmont Street, closed this week. It will be replaced by The Conquistador Lounge, a “Spanish/Latin/Mexican” restaurant and bar from Matador co-owner Casey Maxwell. >> A new bar and cafe, The Hazel Room, is set to open in the Dollar Scholar’s old home on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. >> Former Original Dinerant chef BJ Smith will soon open a barbecue joint, Smokehouse 21, in the Northwest 21st Avenue space that last housed Tanuki. NO BRISKET FOR TIMBER JOEY: The Timbers craze is no match for a stagnant retail climate, judging by last week’s closure of Towler’s Market and Barbecue, a high-end convenience store opened in 2009 across the street from Jeld-Wen Field in the Civic condo tower. Towler’s advertised in heavy rotation on local sports-talk radio, promoting itself as a shopping destination for Army supplies—Budweiser sixpacks and brisket sandwiches. But it closed a week before the final match of the Timbers’ inaugural MLS season. The Civic’s leasing office, PREM Group, refused to comment. COMPUTER MUSIC: Portland ex-Spinane Rebecca Gates is hard at work on a new album (read about it at wweek.com), but she’s found time to do important work with the Future of Music Coalition, an organization that’s attempting to figure out how musicians are making money these days. What’s that? You’re a musician and you want to stand up and be counted? Go to futureofmusic. org/ars to take the survey. >> On a related note, Portland MC Cloudy October has made the increasingly popular decision to sidestep revenue streams and release his highly anticipated “research-based hip-hop” fulllength, The Metal Jerk, for free via his website, cloudyoctober. com. It drops Tuesday, Oct. 18. GATES 22
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
HEADOUT MORGAN GREEN-HOPKINS
WILLAMETTE WEEK
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
THURSDAY OCT. 13 [THEATER] THE PAIN AND THE ITCH Third Rail Rep’s first production of the season is a brutal comedy by Bruce Norris about a very unpleasant Thanksgiving dinner with a family of self-righteous NPRlistener types. Winningstad Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 235-1011. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 30. $29.50$38.50, $14.50 students and rush tickets. [MUSIC] MISS MARTHA REEVES WITH THE MEL BROWN B3 GROUP If you missed Motown legend Martha Reeves last time through town, you don’t know what you’re missing. Make up for it this time around. Jimmy Mak’s, 221 NW 10th Ave., 295-6542. 7:30 pm (all ages) and 10 pm (21+). $20-$25.
FRIDAY OCT. 14 [ART] PORTLAND ART MUSEUM: SHINE A LIGHT The Portland Art Museum’s annual “make art fun” event this year includes: the opportunity to get a haircut or tattoo inspired by museum artwork, along with artinspired recipes by Portland chefs, dance (and square dancing), pentanque and more. Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave. 2262811, portlandartmuseum.org. 10 ammidnight. $15, free for members. [MUSIC] ST. VINCENT Annie Clark’s latest record, Strange Mercy, achieves the perfect balance of porcelain elegance and distorted ugliness she’s spent three albums working to achieve. It’s one of the best records of the year. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W. Burnside St., 225-0047. 9 pm. $16 advance, $19 day of show. All ages.
SATURDAY OCT. 15
MIKE WIENICK, PRESIDENT OF QUALITYSMITH.COM
LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE “BIG DOG.” Sunday, Oct. 16, is National Boss Day. Why does such a thing exist? Could it be that there are bosses out there who, unlike our own cruel and capricious overseer, are so beloved by their underlings that an entire day is set aside in their honor? Intrigued, we seized the opportunity of a rare respite between brow-beatings and Maoist self-criticism sessions to ask readers to find Portland’s best boss. We received a surprisingly enthusiastic response, and none more so than for Mike Wienick—referred to as “Big Dog” by many of his employees—the president of QualitySmith.com, a website that “connects homeowners with contractors.” Nine of Wienick’s 14-person marketing team in Northeast Portland wrote in to rave about their boss. Here are a few endorsements: “A year and a half ago, the future of the company was unsure, and losing money daily. Mike was hired as the sole member of the marketing team and turned it around—we now have 14 employees and count-
ing, and Mike has been promoted to the president of the company.” “We get to bring dogs in the office.... We get to play Halo, ride razor scooters, watch TV and have pizza parties. He also has a good heart and he makes work very enjoyable.” “One of the initial questions he had for me in my interview was “What is your stance on video games?”…. He also helped me pay to take some night classes, because he knew how much my learning would help the company. That’s pretty damn sweet.” Well, we’re sold. Mike “Big Dog” Wienick, we salute you. Here are some other beloved bosses who were nominated: Woody Adams from Underdog Sports Leagues, Amy Schlager from AXA Advisors, Teri Lorenzen from Raphael House, Daniel Boggs from InFocus, Sherri Griffin from Pastini Pastaria, Dee Walsh from REACH Community Development, Robert Parsons from the University Club of Portland, Steve Pishko from ADP, Jessica Stevens from SEIU Oregon State Council, Jill Nelson from Ruby Receptionists, and Don Spear from OpenSesame.com. RUTH BROWN.
[MOVIES] EN ROUTE WITH TODD HAYNES The Portland director introduces two of his favorite films: Performance and Vertigo. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 281-4215. 7 pm. $10 for both movies. [PUPPETS] SEVEN DEADLY SINS PUPPET SLAM Short puppet-theater pieces about wrath, gluttony, etc. It’ll be funny. Someday Lounge, 125 NW 5th Ave., 248-1030. 7 pm. $8. 21+.
SUNDAY OCT. 16 [THEATER] NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE: THE KITCHEN A screening of the National’s new revival of Arnold Wesker’s play about life in the kitchen of a busy West End restaurant. Presented locally by Third Rail Rep. World Trade Center Theater, 121 SW Salmon St., 235-1101. 1 and 5 pm. $20, $15 students.
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FOOD & DRINK PROFILE
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 12 Acadia Bistro 10-Year Anniversary
Northeast Fremont’s Cajun bistro celebrates a decade in the biz with $10 deals on Southern classics like crawfish pie, smoked duck étouffée and chicken maque choux all through October. Plus, red velvet birthday cake. Acadia, 1303 NE Fremont St., 249-5001. Through Oct. 31. Info at creolapdx.com.
Drink for Haiti
Remember when everybody and their mother was throwing fundraisers to help earthquake victims in Haiti? Well, they still need help, people. Jinx Lounge and Vault Martini partner with nonprofit Atma Foundation this Wednesday to raise funds to send 500 boxes of supplies—from clothing to hygiene goods—to Haitians in need. All you need to do is go booze it up at the neighboring Pearl boites. Both bars are pledging 10 percent of the night’s sales to Atma. Jinx, 232 NW 12th Ave., 2240173. 4 pm-1 am. Info at atma-foundation.org/programs_others.html.
THURSDAY, OCT. 13 Iron Bartender 2011
Portland’s mixologists, from Kask’s Ariana Vitale to Clyde Common’s Jordan Felix, vie for shaker supremacy (and raise moolah for Children’s Relief Nursery) at the fourth annual Iron Bartenders competition. This year the specialty cocktail styles they’ll do battle over are “Tiki, Portlandia, Prohibition and Sake.” Tickets include booze and nibbles. Leftbank Building, 240 N Broadway. 5:30 pm. $75. Info and tickets https://crnnw.ejoinme. org/MyEvents/IronBartender2011/ TicketsandRegistration/tabid/317602/ Default.aspx.
The Blind Cafe
The fascinating dining-in-the-dark experiment returns to Portland this week with gluten-free vegan eats from chef Ivy Entrekin served in a pitchblack room by blind staffers. The awareness-building experience includes a concert from Rosh and One Eye Glass Broken, as well as an after-dinner Q&A. TaborSpace, 5441 SE Belmont St. 6:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 13-15. $45, $35 students/seniors, sliding scale available. Info at theblindcafe.com/ portland-blind-cafe.htm. Call 1-800838-3006 or visit brownpapertickets. com/event/181249 for tickets.
FRIDAY, OCT. 14 Wine, Chocolate & Co-op Love
Southeast Portland grocery co-op People’s opened its doors 41 years ago,
AMAREN COLOSI
PRICES: $: Most entrees under $10. $$: $10-$20. $$$: $20-$30. $$$$: Above $30. Editor: KELLY CLARKE. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
a fact that’s celebrated in a new blastfrom-the-past treatise on the grocer in Oregon Historical Quarterly, by co-op former board secretary Marc David Brown. The co-op’s owners and lovers of all things organic and local gather to share memories (and nab free chocolate and wine) this Friday. People’s Co-op, 3029 SE 21st Ave, 674-2642. 6:30 pm. Free. Call to register.
Salted Caramels with Xocolatl de David Class
David Briggs makes damn good caramels: salty-sweet, sticky, decadent little nubbins that you could bankrupt yourself buying if you weren’t careful. Luckily, Briggs is willing to share his secrets on how to make a fine caramel at a special class at the Meadow. Meadow man Mark Bitterman will also be there to explain how salt makes everything better (especially desserts). Attendees get knowledge, wine and candy during the class and take home a pot of fresh caramel sauce. The Meadow, 3731 N Mississippi Ave., 388-4633. 7:30 pm. $25. Call to reserve a seat.
SUNDAY, OCT. 16 The Love of Beer Brewery Screenings
Alison Grayson’s new documentary, The Love of Beer, gets up close and personal with women in the Pacific Northwest beer industry, from Tonya Cornett of Bend Brewing to Portland bottle shop Saraveza’s owner, Sarah Pederson. The local doc gets a series of screenings at local breweries this month, complete with a Q&A with Grayson and some of the film’s shebrewers. This week it graces the screen at Lucky Lab’s Northwest brew house; on Oct. 20 it’s at the Guild with Ninkasi Brewing. Lucky Labrador Beer Hall, 1945 NW Quimby St., 360-449-7883. 6 pm. $5 advance, $6 at the door. Tickets and info at theloveofbeermovie.com.
Dishing Up Oregon Release Party
Local author Ashley Gartland itemizes the taste of the Beaver state’s farm-to-table ethos in her new cookbook, Dishing Up Oregon, which features eats from restaurants, farms and vineyards across the state. The tome gets a gala kickoff at Nostrana this Sunday with a book signing and “farmers-market-style” bash featuring bites and bottles from Two Tarts, Din Din, Park Kitchen, Little T, Full Sail, Oregon Olive Mill and many more. Nostrana, 1401 SE Morrison St., 234-2427. Noon-3 pm. Free.
TUESDAY, OCT. 18 Dishcrawl Belmont
It’s a foodie bender: Tasty national
POP ART
MR. BUBBLES: Richard Anders with a Soda Pagoda on Foster Road.
THE BAROQUE COKE OF SODA PAGODA. BY EMILEE B OOHER
ebooher@wweek.com
Richard Anders places a yellow, 8-ounce soda can labeled “Bird’s Nest” on the table in front of me. “It’s made with white fungus and bird spit,” he says. The beverage is cloudy and has the viscosity of mucous. But it’s oddly tasty. This is just one of 90 exotic drinks Anders has in his Southwest Portland home. The 28-year-old’s mind is a bottomless well of quirky concepts—ideas for robot websites and karaoke laundromats punctuated our conversation. Unlike many dreamers, he actually follows through with the ideas. Soda Pagoda is his recent brainchild. He buys and renovates old vending machines for about $500 each, finds local artists to paint or decorate them, fills them with unusual drinks (sold for $2) from around the world, and places them around the city. The first Pagoda sits in a corner of D -Street Noshery, a food-cart pod on Southeast Division Street. Through Craigslist, Anders found artist Neil Perry to paint the machine with a large, glowing, blue bear surrounded by a mountainous landscape. The second Pagoda, which sports a giant, flying, emoticon-looking face with fangs, was painted by local toymaker Charlie Alan Kraft and was recently deposited among a pod of carts on Southeast Foster Road. A few more are slated to find homes soon,
including a machine that artist Sam Klein is transforming into a TARDIS from Doctor Who. Anders, who works for a green pest-control company by day and as security for the Crystal Ballroom by night, says the idea for Soda Pagoda has been brewing in his head since he took a post-high school trip to Asia, where he discovered a plethora of beverages and flavors that he wanted to share. Most of the drinks he gathers aren’t quite as eccentric as Bird’s Nest. One of the more popular is a sweet carbonated coconut soda called Coco Rico, the national beverage of Puerto Rico. Many are made from exotic fruits such as lychee, dragon fruit and mangosteen. Some, like the dragon-fruit soda, have strange consistencies. “They’re not easy to accept…the chunky ones,” Anders says. Others, like the black garlic soda, are just plain strange. Anders is shooting for one new permanent Pagoda per month and is so far keeping in line with his goal. As he finds more dwelling places for the machines—a tricky task among the Coca-Cola and Pepsi monopolies—he hopes to incorporate a voting function on his website, allowing the communities around the Pagodas to choose which sodas will be available each month. “I’m trying to offer alternatives to the conventional beverages that we’re all served,” says Anders. “I want people to be able to drink differently.” DRINK: Soda Pagodas are currently located at D-Street Noshery, 3221 SE Division St., and Food Carts on Foster, 5205 SE Foster Road. Info and future homes at soda-pagoda.com.
Shandong cuisine of northern china
Sign up for our e-blast newsletter, SWAG RAG, to receive drink recipes from our favorite watering holes! fresh ingredients • prepared daily • a new look at classic dishes 3724 ne broadway portland or 97232 503.287.0331 shandongportland.com 24
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FOOD & DRINK
ROUNDUP: SOUPS TO CURE WHAT AILS YOU Beijing Hot Pot
Beijing Hot Pot is a communal affair: A bowl of broth is placed in the center of the table over a gas burner, and diners order various bits of raw meat, fish and vegetables to cook in it. It’s a slow, luxurious way to eat, and the broth grows richer with each addition. Order the spicy broth and the combination for two (it comes with beef, pork, a pile of veggies, chicken meatballs and noodles). If you’re feeling flush, add on the shrimp balls, which are made to order and taste astonishingly fresh, with a nice chewy-then-crunchy texture. Cook the noodles last, and slurp them down with the remaining broth. Then fall asleep. BEN WATERHOUSE. 2768 SE 82nd Ave., 774-2525, thebeijinghotpot.com.
it’s just that there are so many other soups to try. I suggest the hu tieu my tho, a pork-based broth with shrimp and slices of pork, liver and fish ball floating over a mass of clear noodles so rubbery they can’t really be chewed. That sounds unappealing, but the sensation of slurping several feet of noodles right down to one’s belly is surprisingly gratifying; also, the soup contains enough protein to meet the RDI for a grown man for a week. BEN WATERHOUSE. 2518 NE 82nd Ave., 262-8816.
Savor Soup House
Button-cute and straight to the point, Nancy Ettinger’s greenand-white cart serves soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. That’s it. And really, when your mix-andmatch sandwich bar extras range from housemade pesto and apple butter to caramelized onions and Black Forest ham grilled between two huge slabs of heavily buttered Grand Central bread, what else would you ever want to eat? Dunk your creation in the flavor maven’s excellent soups, which rotate daily—Hungarian mushroom, vegan tomato-orange, posole,
Mulligatawny…. KELLY CLARKE. Southwest 10th Avenue and Alder Street, 750-5634, savorsouphouse. com.
Yuzu has long been a hidden gem, a tiny izakaya known mostly to Japanese Portlanders and savvy restaurant industry workers looking for cheap late-night eats and sake. The menu is solid from top to bottom, and the ramens are no exception. The tonkotsu broth has a stronger following with its creamy texture and unnaturally white color, as if it has been enriched with milk powder. But it has some pork flavor, made tastier by the addition of garlic and sesame seeds offered on the side. The soup is served with traditional thin, straight noodles, which are also somewhat brittle and soft, and topped with seaweed, onion, pickled ginger and menma. The shoyu broth is less lauded online, but for the style, a better rendition. It’s light, a little woody, with a funky fish flavor underlying the salty-sweet broth. NICK ZUKIN. 4130 SW 117th Ave., Beaverton, 350-1801.
The Country Cat
Among rib-sticking, Southern-style goodies like chicken-fried steak and whiskey custard French toast on this Montavilla neighborhood favorite’s brunch menu, it’s hard to imagine anyone actually ordering the humble-sounding grilled cheese and smoked tomato soup, but anyone who does is in for a happy, hearty surprise. The generous ramekin of soup is super savory, with a real, rustic smoky flavor. Bonus points for a nice plop of sour cream floating in the middle. RUTH BROWN. 7937 SE Stark St., 408-1414, thecountrycat.net.
Ha & VL
Tucked away behind the Wing Ming herb market, this little joint churns out soups to die for. Regulars keep track of which soups appear on which days—these change, but it’s worth following the crabflake noodle soup (banh canh cua) wherever it appears on the calendar. The broth is insanely rich and vividly orange, to the point that the quail egg floating in it is tinted pink. (This is a good thing.) Another favorite is the peppery pork ball noodle soup (bun moc). Be sure to get to the restaurant before noon if your heart is set on a particular soup, as they do occasionally run out. BECKY OHLSEN. 2738 SE 82nd Ave., 772-0103.
Pho Oregon
It feels like the pinnacle of deviance to say so, but I’m going to anyway: When you go to Pho Oregon, don’t order the pho. There’s nothing wrong with the beef noodle soup, which comes with all the usual bits of heifer in an invigorating broth;
Restaurant
8115 SE Stark
IS HIRING!
REVIEW
Bun Bo Hue
Bun Bo Hue is Portland’s signature spot for the restaurant’s eponymous meat-noodle soup. (Bun, by the way, refers to the vermicellistyle noodles; bo to the meat; Hue to the city in Vietnam; Vietnamese dish names billow out like nouns in German.) So the name of the restaurant should also be what you order here. The broth is unfilmy with oil, the meat trimmed of fat, the sprouts and cilantro fresh and generous. The decor is both seedily unfinished and teeming with kitschy-domestic interest; knickknacks swarm the shelves and walls, including eight colorful calendars, a beaten-on boom box and a small fountain in which a frog eternally chases a bobbling fly. Tea comes free, but the tart, house-squeezed lemonade is highly recommended. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. 7002 SE 82nd Ave., 771-1141.
JOBS
Yuzu
AMAREN COLOSI
startup Dishcrawl invites locals to bounce between four restaurants in one night, slurping and gorging as they go. On Tuesday they descend on Southeast Belmont—they won’t divulge where they’re headed unless you sign up, but you can find Twitter hints at @DishcrawlPDX. 7 pm. $29. Sign up at dishcrawl.com/ SEPDX.
Business in the Front...
FOR MORE INFO, CHECK OUT EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Party in the Back!
PAGE 51 Bar
410 SE 81st Ave. Directly behind the Observatory
RICE RICE BABY: Special rice plate at @Pho.com.
@PHO.COM You’d never know it from the ridiculous, tech-bubble name, but this tidy little 82nd Avenue Vietnamese spot makes great real world grub, from intense, cinnamony pho ($7.25-$7.95) to addictive little deep-fried tofu pockets stuffed with spicy pork pâté ($5.25). It actually used to be a different Vietnamese restaurant, but last year new owner Jasmine Nguyen invested in a ceilingful of pretty orange lanterns and shellacked a few walls with shimmering, lavatoned tiles to create a peaceful cafe and bar shoehorned between a day-glo Gen X Clothing outOrder this: Hearty, winter-weather bahn let and a “Hard Rock Bar” mi bo kho beef stew ($8.50), rice bowls, named after a Pink Floyd anything involving fried tofu. song. The restaurant’s I’ll pass: The “spicy” tumeric noodles just aren’t. Although the sesame rice crackers website boasts that it’s “like sprinkled on top are a crunchy treat. visiting Vietnam without leaving your hometown” and, oddly enough, it kind of is—complete with a Muzak version of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” wafting through the speakers and the broken English legend “with a lovely smile and healthy food” printed on the windows. You can eat your way through a goodly portion of the solid menu by ordering a special (vermicelli rice) noodle bowl ($8.95) or broken rice platter ($10.75). The grilled pork is charred and juicy, the crunchy little spring rolls greasy good, and the kitchen’s sautéed lemongrass tofu ($8.25) is a springy, savory treat. Dot com also serves crispy bahn xeo rice-flour crepes ($10.25); essentially a giant yellow pancake filled with ground pork, shrimp and crunchy bean sprouts that tastes a bit like an Indian dosa on holiday. The soy and fish sauce are made in-house and the servers will lovingly identify each and every item on your plate if you ask. If this is Vietnam, then you never need to leave Portland again. KELLY CLARKE. EAT: @Pho.com, 7901 SE Powell Blvd., Suite K, 788-8877, atpho. com. Lunch and dinner 10 am-9 pm Sunday-Tuesday and Thursday, 10 am-10 pm Friday-Saturday. $. Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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MUSIC
MUSIC
OCT. 12 - 18 Q&A
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
LEAH NASH
Prices listed are sometimes for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and socalled convenience charges may apply. Event lineups are subject to change after WW’s press deadlines. Editor: CASEY JARMAN. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, go to wweek.com/ submitevents and follow submission directions. All shows should be submitted two weeks or more in advance of event. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: cjarman@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 12 Nick Lowe, JD McPherson
[SINGER-SONGWRITER] Though he’s experienced a career resurgence with his heartbroken, low-key material in the past 10 years, Nick Lowe is that rare musician who never bothered to put out a bad album. His debut, the recently reissued Jesus of Cool, is full of clever turns of phrase and smart, self-conscious rock riffage; his oftoverlooked early ‘80s discs are great pub rock songwriting and barn-burning musicianship; 1988’s Pinker and Prouder Than Previous—the shamefully out-of-print disc in desperate need of critical reappraisal—sidestepped the era’s bad production and hammy synths for heartfelt balladry and country-inspired rock. I could go on. Lowe hasn’t been particularly good at chart-topping, but he’s yet to make a creative misstep in his 30-plus-year career, and he is warm and masterful in concert. This summer’s The Old Magic is another stellar disc that finds Lowe writing a handful of Bacharachian modern standards—and covering his old pal Elvis Costello, who kind of owed him one for “(What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”—and revisiting the ska rhythms he often played around with as a younger man. CASEY JARMAN. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm. $25 (Minors must be accompanied by a parent). All ages.
Van Hunt, Empress Hotel
OPETH.COM
[POST-FUNK] Like fellow mid-aughts R&B eccentrics Cody Chesnutt and Bilal, Van Hunt is an artist too weird for his own career. After turning heads with his first two albums of well-studied throwback soul and funk rock, the
PRIMER
Ohio-born singer and multi-instrumentalist decided in 2008 to get bizarre with his third record. It never saw the light of day. Allegedly sounding like the kind of album fans wish Prince still made, it freaked out Blue Note enough for the label to shelve the thing permanently and send Hunt’s career into limbo. After spending the preceding three years off the grid, the newly independent Hunt has regrouped with What Were You Hoping For?, and well, if this is anything like his unreleased album, it’s easy to see why it would scare conservative record execs. In spots, it does resemble the Purple One in its adventurousness (and horny undercurrent); in others, it’s like Lenny Kravitz if he were raised on hardcore punk (which, as it turns out, is a pretty awesome concept). It’s a bold affirmation that the industry bastards can’t grind a true creative talent down. MATTHEW SINGER. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $11 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
Gardens and Villa, Young Man, Yours
[YOUNG GUNS] Launched into the popular fore via praise from Bradford Cox and the ever-present YouTubesphere, multi-instrumentalist Colin Caulfield (aka Young Man) is still reeling. But as Ideas of Distance—the first record of a trilogy slated to be released over the next 18 months— demonstrates, this young wizard is just as home in front of the studio soundboard as he is with a stripped-down guitar. Caulfield crafts silky layers of classically minded guitar with sweltering ambient tendencies and downtempo pop tricks. Southern California feel-good minimalist groovers Gardens
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by NATH AN CARSON
OPETH Formed: In 1990 in Stockholm. Sounds like: Swedish death metal from the ’90s having a fireside chat with progressive rock from the ’70s. For fans of: Morbid Angel, King Crimson, Camel, Metallica, Tool, Pink Floyd. Why you care: Short of Tool and Metallica, Sweden’s Opeth represents the most successful marriage of extreme metal and progressive rock to date. The band cut its fangs as a studio group, making five critically acclaimed albums and rarely setting foot on stage until 2001 album Blackwater Park was released and the band began a series of world tours. Frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt led his group through a stiff and awkward phase, keeping audiences charmed with his witty stage banter and nerdy acumen. Now, after hundreds of shows (and a few lineup changes) he fronts a premier live act. Opeth keeps pace with Rush and Led Zeppelin as a concert experience. And while loving Opeth has traditionally meant coming to terms with the dichotomy of vocal styles that Åkerfeldt employs—alternately using extreme deathmetal growls and winsome folk balladry—latest album Heritage finds the band dropping its metal trappings to create a purely progressive rock experience. Metal fans need not fear, though. Opeth has tried this before and always comes roaring back with a vengeance. There’s something for everyone at this show, but there’s a special something for the stoned, young hand-holding couples from Gresham who know every word to every song. SEE IT: Opeth plays the Roseland Theater on Sunday, Oct. 16, with Katatonia. 8 pm. $23.50. All ages.
Q&A: STEPHEN MALKMUS THE HEAD JICK TALKS ABOUT MOVING TO BERLIN, THE STOCK MARKET AND NIRVANA. BY CASEY JA R MA N
cjarman@wweek.com
Stephen Malkmus has done a lot of interviews in his 20-odd years fronting Pavement and the Jicks. So when we talked on the phone in advance of the latter group’s Portland stop—it will be the first time the latest incarnation of the band, which features Jake Morris of the Joggers on drums in addition to longtime Jicks Joanna Bolme and Mike Clark, has played Portland—I wasn’t surprised to hear him answer my questions in playful fashion. But on the Jicks’ new record, the Beck-produced Mirror Traffic, Malkmus balances his wry, playful writing with self-aware and emotionally direct lines about illusion-shattering that feel as sincere as anything in the songwriter’s back catalog. Much like talking to a half-awake Malkmus—who moved from Portland to Berlin this summer—as the band drives through Virginia, it snaps between sincere and outrageous at a moment’s notice. WW: I heard you guys just recorded an L.A. Guns song. Why do you love L.A. Guns? Malkmus: You have to watch a lot of their videos and look at their cover art and just stare at it. Just turn the sound down. And Guns N’ Roses, obviously, is a much more important band than Nirvana...who is just like a pale imitation of Guns N’ Roses, really. Do you really believe that? Yes, absolutely. I do believe it. I know that Guns N’ Roses are much better than Nirvana, there’s no doubt about it. But I can name like 700 bands that were better than Nirvana that were from that year. You are not a Nirvana fan? No, I love ’em. I just think that L.A. Guns were there at ground zero at this very important time that we used to celebrate. And now people sort of make fun of David Lee Roth and the party times and the good times. I was there in the ’80s—I was there to experience it. But it doesn’t seem like you strive for the overkill and the grandeur of that era. I know, but it was different times, you know? All we
wanted was drugs and girls and money. And in the ’90s, it was a different game. There was the rise of the indie girl. To get her, you could not play Guns N’ Roses music. There was also the rise of boob jobs, which I am not a fan of. [And] my hair doesn’t look long or teased, it just goes out in this ugly neoRamones look. So I was kind of forced out. Do you have stock advice that you give young musicians? Yeah. I would say, pretty much, sell all your bonds, because this bear market is gonna end. I’m sure you’re already out of these tech stocks like Cisco Systems and Microsoft, but I would check the fundamentals behind a lot of these companies. A lot of these companies are actually profitable and— [Laughing] I guess stock was the wrong word. Oh. Not stock advice? Oh, just generic advice. Sorry. There are a lot of young musicians that need advice on that. Especially in Portland. Forget I asked. Are you scared about the move to Berlin? Not really, we’ve been there for a month. It already happened, the scary part. There are a bunch of college kids walking around and like, Canadian backpackers. I’m not afraid. If a Canadian backpacker can handle it there, I can handle it there. It’s very livable, you’d be surprised. It’s hard to get mugged. You can walk around saying, like “mug me!” They won’t even do it. They’re not into mugging. Are you going to miss U.S. sports? Yeah, that’s one. America’s spectacle sports are great, and we don’t really have them in Europe. But we do have this thing called ESPN America. If I have time to watch, I’ll do it. It’s probably good for me to not do that, and get some culture or something. Like, read a book or get into architecture. That’s something you can always do in your 40s. What will you miss most about Portland? Clubbing. I’m not going to be able to go clubbing anymore, around Portland. I’ll tell you what I’m not going to miss: Basketball. SEE IT: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks play the Crystal Ballroom on Thursday, Oct. 13, with Ty Segall. 9 pm. $17 advance, $20 day of show. All ages. More with Stephen Malkmus on wweek.com. Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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TALES
alberta rose theatre
FROM THE
SAHEL
october 12 7:30pm
an evening with
Baaba maal
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for tickets visit albertarosetheatre.com or call (503)764-4131 sponsored by Simultaneously traditional and contemporary, this is a towering work of art.� -- MUSIC WEEK
WEDNESDAY - THURSDAY PROFILE
JASON FRANK ROTHENBERG
& Villa cap the night. MARK STOCK. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 2397639. 8:30 pm. $10. 21+.
MUSIC
Black Prairie
[AMERICANA] Portland’s musical community held its collective breath earlier this year when, through an announcement on the Decemberists’ website, it learned that the band’s beloved and gifted keyboardist, Jenny Conlee, would miss the summer tour due to a cancer diagnosis. Of course, it was not just fans in Portland who were concerned for her—Conlee even received well wishes (and a hug!) from U2’s Adam Clayton. (These things happen when you’re in a chart-topping band.) Thankfully, she’s made it through chemo and her stage 3 breast cancer is on the run, so she can take the stage with the Decemberists, and this offshoot band playing moody instrumental Americana in its LaurelThirst residency. JEFF ROSENBERG. LaurelThirst, 2958 NE Glisan St., 232-1504. 6 pm. Free. 21+.
Foster the People, Cults, Reptar
[INDIE POP] Foster the People has been blowing up lately. After the May release of its first album, Torches (and its mega-single “Pumped-Up Kicks”), the Los Angeles trio has ascended on a scale akin to MGMT’s momentous rise in 2008. That’s not the only similarity between the two groups: FTP’s catchy jams fuse an MGMT-like synthetic sound with a ’90s popstylized voice. The band’s sanguine dance pop is nostalgic in an unassuming way, perhaps attempting to harken back to a more optimistic era of pop music. Known for its high-energy shows accompanied by impressive lights, FTP encourages today’s stilted youth to forget about their being billed as a lost generation and dance. MAGGIE SUMMERS. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038. 8 pm. Sold Out. All ages.
THURSDAY, OCT. 13 The Shade, Duck Little Brother Duck
[ATMOSPHERIC AMERICANA] San Diego-based fivesome the Shade formed in 2005 at Wesleyan University (also MGMT’s alma mater, incidentally—must be something in the dining-hall water). On its most recent record, last year’s Science Will EP, the band creatively (and fruitfully) enriches Americana’s rootsy acoustic guitar instrumentation with the looser, atmospheric textures of psych and post-rock. The Shade is in town as the artistsin-residence at Northeast Portland house venue and recording studio Badlands, where it’s making its first full-length album. JONATHAN FROCHTZWAJG. Badlands, 5909 NE 34th Ave. 9 pm. Free/Donation. All ages.
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Ty Segall
See Q & A, page 27. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 9 pm. $17 advance, $20 day of show. All ages.
Gang Gang Dance, Prince Rama, Bruxa, Centers, Miracles Club (DJ set)
[THE WHOLE WEIRD WORLD] Calling an album that begins with an 11-minute kaleidoscope of fluttering synths, faux steel drums and a vaguely Caribbean rhythm a band’s “pop breakthrough” is a weird thing to say, but then again, New York’s Gang Gang Dance is a weird fucking band. Eye Contact, the globe-trotting collagists’ fifth record, is indeed its most accessible offering yet, but it’s by no means a compromise of the group’s experimental nature. In fact, the sheer amount of different sounds the band is experimenting with—everything from Middle Eastern melodic passages to posh
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BATTLES THURSDAY, OCT. 13 [CUT CHEMISTS] The last time Battles played in Portland, the band had a lot to prove. That May show was part of the first tour the post-rock group had attempted following the departure of founding member Tyondai Braxton, whose squirrely voice drove breakthrough track “Atlas.” That sweat-drenched show and tour, as well as the eventual release of a second full-length, Gloss Drop, helped put to bed any concerns from fans of Battles. And, says guitarist-bassist Dave Konopka, it alleviated the band members’ own worries about finding their footing as a trio. Now, they can really have fun. When Battles first started playing the new material live, the band worked to make it sound as close to the record as possible. But as members got more comfortable with their parts, “then it’s about trying to mess with them and reinterpreting things,” says Konopka, speaking from the New York band’s home base in Brooklyn. Battles’ revisionist tendencies were evident at the band’s set at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival. The trio braved the Chicago heat and soared through an hourlong performance that turned even the most familiar of its tunes inside out. Gloss Drop highlight “Futura” lapsed into something approaching acid funk; “Atlas” was daringly screwed up with what sounded like a sampled children’s choir taking the place of Braxton’s sing-songy vocal hook. The playfulness Battles exhibits is a testament to the band members’ abilities. Both Konopka and guitarist-keyboardist Ian Williams have logged time in jazz-influenced rock bands like Don Caballero and Lynx, earning the chops to mess around with the core of a song while borrowing the cut-and-paste freedom of electronica and hip-hop’s waxy swing. It helps, too, to have drummer John Stanier—he of the brooding intensity, the metronomic timekeeping, and the crash cymbal that sits on a 7-foot stand. Not that everything here is loose as can be. Gloss Drop features guest vocalists, including ’80s synth-pop icon Gary Numan, Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino, and Boredoms frontman Yamantaka Eye. “We knew we didn’t want to be exclusively an instrumental band,” says Konopka. “It was just a matter of making the songs synthesize with the vocals and still make them Battles songs.” Live, the band takes that idea a few steps further. It plays along to videos of the guest singers, but then Williams uses his laptop to stretch notes out to oblivion or chop them into rough rhythms that eventually mesh with the beat of the next track in the set. “We always approach a live set like a good DJ set,” says Konopka. “We have to keep the momentum going.” Indeed, Battles tears through its sets so relentlessly there’s hardly time to breathe—for the band or its audience. ROBERT HAM. After a personnel shake-up, Battles reimagines its sound.
SEE IT: Battles plays Thursday, Oct. 13, at the Wonder Ballroom, with Walls. 9 pm. $18 advance, $20 day of show. All ages. Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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THURSDAY - FRIDAY BIGHASSLE.COM
MUSIC
TIME OUT: Van Hunt plays Doug Fir on Wednesday. ’80s electro-funk—cuts its widest swath yet, only it’s underpinned by grooves more solid than it’s ever conjured before. It’s a Technicolor travelogue for art students who don’t want to leave Brooklyn. MATTHEW SINGER. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 8:30 pm. $15. 21+.
Miss Martha Reeves with the Mel Brown B3 Group
[MOTOWN GODDESS] Thank goodness for second chances. I thought I might’ve blown a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity last year when I missed seeing living Motown legend Martha Reeves sing with her old friend Mel Brown and company at Jimmy Mak’s, so this repeat visit is a godsend. Reeves started out as Motown’s secretary before being tapped to front Hitsville favorites the Vandellas, racking up iconic hits like “Heat Wave,” “Dancing in the Street” and “Destination: Anywhere.” In contrast to the feather-light tones of Diana Ross, Motown’s other leading female act had a bit more grit and a bit more gutsy power. This time, for me, you can bet it’s Destination: Nowhere but Jimmy Mak’s. JEFF ROSENBERG. Jimmy Mak’s, 221 NW 10th Ave., 295-6542. 7:30 pm (all ages), 10 pm (21+). $20 GA, $25 guaranteed seating.
The Renderers, Sore Eros, The Whines [BRUISED PSYCH ROCK] Hailing from New Zealand, whence a seemingly unending stream of forwardthinking pop and rock comes from, the Renderers are the musical child of husband and wife Bryan and Maryrose Crook. The two formed the project 20 years ago, picking from the abundant crop of incredible players around them—Dead C drummer Robbie Yeats and Sean O’Reilly of King Loser—to help bring their hangdog, hungover, feedback-soaked sound to fruition. This rare spin through the U.S. comes in support of a newly recorded LP that is, as far as I can tell, still looking for a home. ROBERT HAM. Kenton Club, 2025 N Kilpatrick St., 2853718. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
FRIDAY, OCT. 14 Adrian Belew Power Trio, Stick Men
[GUITAR GOD & FRIENDS] The name Adrian Belew should be a familiar one to any music fan over the age of 35. The guitarist has been a longtime presence in the rock world, adding a sinuous, fusion jazz-style drive to work by Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads and King Crimson. Ever seeking new boundaries to break and new
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players to explore sound with, Belew has created a Power Trio featuring a young brother-sister rhythm section. The three released an instrumental jazz-rock LP last year known simply as e., but are equally adept at diving into Belew’s more warped pop-rock visions. ROBERT HAM. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm. $30 or $50 VIP ticket. (Minors must be accompanied by an adult). All ages.
Greg Goebel Trio
[PDX JAZZ] Saxophonist Tim Willcox has commenced a new series of showcases that includes some of the city’s finest—if not necessarily most publicized—jazz musicians. In his gigs with bassist David Friesen, pianist Goebel has demonstrated an inventive and responsive adaptability to varied musical contexts, and he’s fully capable of holding the solo spotlight when Willcox isn’t sitting in. Young bassist Damian Erskine (who really roared at last week’s Joe Zawinul tribute) and drummer Reinhardt Melz complete the lineup. The Southeast Portland spot hasn’t hitherto been known as a jazz outlet; maybe Willcox’s new series can change that. BRETT CAMPBELL. Community Music Center, 3350 SE Francis St., 823-3177. 7:30 pm. $10. All ages.
St. Vincent, Cate Le Bon
[SWEET AND VICIOUS] Annie Clark is a woman of almost painterly beauty who would, in all likelihood, cut a bitch if she needed to. At least, that’s the impression one gets from listening to the music she makes under the name St. Vincent. Beneath her gracefully composed chamber pop lies a scratchy, violent underbelly. (The contradiction makes sense, considering the 28-year-old has done time in both the blissed-out Polyphonic Spree and Glenn Branca’s clangorous 100 Guitar Orchestra.) Strange Mercy, Clark’s latest, achieves the perfect balance of porcelain elegance and distorted ugliness she’s spent three albums working to hit. Serrated guitar and some seriously agitated synthesizers—the coda of “Surgeon” sounds like something off a particularly wigged-out Bernie Worrell record—rip straight through strings, woodwinds and Clark’s own crystalline voice, leaving fractures in the delicate arrangements that take on a skewed sort of loveliness themselves. Clark’s control of that uneasy push and pull between polish and chaos defines St. Vincent, and makes Mercy one of the best records of the year. MATTHEW SINGER. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 9 pm. $16 advance, $19 day of show. All ages.
Sassparilla
[AMERICANA...WITH JUGS] Pull on your boots and get ready to do some stompin’. The four-man, one-woman Portland jug band Sassparilla puts on a lively show complete with a cigar-box guitar, washboard bass, accordion and howling harmonica. The quintet is celebrating the release of its latest album, The Darndest Thing, a relatively mellow (but still danceable) compilation of dusty and hard-hitting tunes. The songs combine an eerie vibe with a taste of the Old West (and plentiful vocal harmonies) to create a sound that would have worked as well in 1911 as it does in 2011. . EMILEE BOOHER. Kennedy School, 5736 NE 33rd Ave., 249-3983. 7 pm. Free. All ages.
Anika, Stay Calm
[SOUND OF THE TIMES] As Vietnam War protests came to a head in the late ‘60s, pop music reflected the revolutionary spirit of the day. If the nascent protests popping up across America stick around and need a soundtrack— well, they shouldn’t turn to Anika, really. She’s not quite “pop” and her Nico-esque vocals—layered over soundscapes crafted by producer and Beak> member Geoff Barrow— probably aren’t boisterous enough to inspire occupiers on the march, but Anika would be a perfect choice for those wind-down hours after the TV vans have rolled back to their garages. On her self-titled debut, the German/British ex-journalist covers Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” to haunting effect (she also tackles Yoko Ono and the Kinks), though the disc’s best moments are on her own politically tinged “No One’s There” and the rambling “Officer, Officer.” This is moody music that rests somewhat uncomfortably between the dance floor and the opinion page, but it’s exciting to hear somebody without dreadlocks playing 21st-century protest music. CASEY JARMAN. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. $12. 21+.
Only Zuul, Doomsower, American Roulette
[DEATH METAL] With song titles like “Machete Bitch Slap,” “.357 Rapture” and “Fist-First,” Only Zuul doesn’t carry the Ghostbusters reference from its name very far into its lyrics. However, the bludgeoning, false-harmony-laden sound constitutes a vision of the underworld that the evil Zuul would probably be cool with. From ultra-low death-metal growls to System of a Down-style operatic singing, Only Zuul conveys everything both fierce and cheesy about hell, Satan and violence in its
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JIMMY MAK’S Locally Brewed pyramidbrew.com
FRIDAY - SATURDAY
sound. Go see Only Zuul if technical wizardry played through 15 distortion pedals, good mosh pits and, yeah, monsters taking over Manhattan are your thing. JOHN ISAACSON. Red Room, 2530 NE 82nd Ave., 256-3399. 9 pm. Cover. 21+.
L Pro, Farnell Newton, Manimal House
Locally Brewed macsbeer.com
THIS MONTH’S PYRAMID & MACTARNAHAN’S SHOWCASE Friday, Oct. 14, shows at 7:30 & 10 pm
PORTLAND SOUL ALL-STARS present
A Tribute to
James Brown FEATURED OCTOBER SHOWS THUR., OCT. 13
Martha Reeves SAT., OCT 15
Michael Allen Harrison CD Release TUES. & WED., OCT. 25 & 26
We Four, A John Coltrane Tribute with Jimmy Cobb, Mulgrew Miller, Javon Jackson & Nat Reeves FRI., OCT 28
Bernard “Pretty” Purdie 221 NW 10th • 503-295-6542 • jimmymaks.com
See profile, this page. Ted’s (at Berbati’s), 231 SW Ankeny St., 248-4579. 9 pm. $7. 21+.
Carla Bozulich, Himalayan Bear, Like a Villain
[ANIMAL NITRATE] Ever since the dissolution of her band the Geraldine Fibbers, Carla Bozulich has stripped herself of any country leanings she carried into that project and focused on the noisier, experimental side of her personality. Her work is not without melody and drama—her gorgeous singing voice wouldn’t allow that. But the beauty is intercut with terrifying lyrical visions and scratching, unholy sounds emanating from the id. Bozulich comes to Portland to wrap up a duo tour with soundsmith, engineer and musician John Eichenseer in support of her latest effort, In Animal Tongue. ROBERT HAM. The Woods, 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 890-0408. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
Death of Summer Fest: Hammered Grunts, Spellcaster, Ritual Healing, Nuclear Wasteland
[METAL FEST] Death of Summer Fest kicks off tonight with a bevy of thrash and blackened metal acts. Throughout the weekend, hardcore, sludge and grind will also be represented at this event, which is characterized less by genre than by uncompromising intensity. Highlights include a set from Portland’s fastestrising young thrash stars, Spellcaster, plus a rare Saturday main support performance from Ritual Healing. The latter just inked a deal with Dark Descent Records and will be touring to Texas in December to perform at the incredible Rites of Darkness fest. Siiick. NATHAN CARSON. Tonic Lounge, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 2380543. 9:30 pm. Cover. 21+.
SATURDAY, OCT. 15 Music in the Schools Benefit: Groves, Violet Isle, Running
[NEW YORK HIP-HOP] [FOSTER THE NEXT GREAT MUSICIAN] In this shitty time of economic doom, the arts have become the new rain forest: Slashed and burned from many of our public landscapes. Music in the Schools (MITS) is trying valiantly to counter the trend, raising much-needed dough for music-education programs in local high schools. The MITS October showcase features a bucket-full of Portland talent, including grungey rock quartet Groves and uber-personable experimentalists Violent Isle. Education is the name of the game. Students get half-priced tickets and listeners are more than likely to learn about a bright, young band they never knew existed. MARK STOCK. Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900. 8 pm. $6 adults, $3 students. All ages.
Mother Hips, Quiet Life
[WEST COASTING] Much as the Mother Hips have always cloaked themselves in Aquarian trappings— purposely, one would think; the Bay Area is uniquely receptive to the long strange trips of wayward prophets, and this Chico troupe has managed just seven albums proper through two decades—its music embodies a rather different California dreaming. Surf guitar riffs and glistening harmonies informing power-pop structures, a masterful, casually gorgeous Golden State ebullience belying impeccable craftsmanship, the Mother Hips couldn’t have possibly taken the hal-
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PROFILE LPROMUSIC.COM
MUSIC
L PRO FRIDAY, OCT. 14 The trials, tribulations and face-stabbing of an old-school Portland MC.
[HIP-HOP HISTORY] A lot of significant events occurred in the life of LeMont Boyd, aka L Pro, in the decade-plus separating the release of the Portland rapper’s debut album and his last full-length record, 2008’s Chronicles. He got divorced, lost his grandmother, and saw the breakup of his group, Grassrootz. Let’s be honest, though: What you’re most interested in hearing about is his story about how he got the scar at the corner of his mouth. Boyd says that in 2003, during a domestic dispute, he was stabbed in the face with a serrated kitchen knife by his ex-wife. [All we have to go on for this story is Boyd’s word—WW has tried unsuccessfully to reach his ex-wife for this story.] “It sticks into my mouth right here,” Boyd says, recalling the details of the incident. (His last words before the stabbing, he claims, were “I dare you.”) Thanks to a good stitching job, the scar looks like little more than a nick now. But the effects lingered long after the wound healed. After the stabbing, Boyd fell into limbo. It’d been eight years since Uncharted Regions, the album he recorded with producer D-Wyze in 1995, received raves from respected hip-hop magazines XXL and The Source, and he hadn’t picked up a mic since his partner moved to California in 2000. Having converted to Christianity (he was raised Buddhist), Boyd felt conflicted about rapping, even though he still loved the music of Nas, Rakim and Mos Def. At the mall one afternoon, he ran into fellow Rose City rapper Soul P, who convinced him that religion and hip-hop aren’t necessarily at odds with each other. Once he got back in the studio, “the fire sparked again,” Boyd says. He channeled 13 years of angst into Chronicles, particularly on the track “Closure,” which he began by discussing the heroin overdose of his biological father. “When I finished writing that song, I had tears in my eyes,” he says. Because it was so personal, Boyd suspects fans couldn’t connect with the song, but it was something he felt compelled to put on the record for his own catharsis. “I didn’t write it for other people, I wrote it for myself.” Freeing himself of his turbulent past, Boyd is now working backward. Vertigo is his upcoming third album, but it plays like an introduction. Over vintage, DJ Premier-inspired production from 5th Sequence, L Pro spits with relaxed confidence about America’s socio-economic issues (“The Thin Red Line”), love and romance (“Confessions”), and the inspiration he continues to find in hip-hop, and Portland itself (“Imagine”). “Emcees here come in all shapes and sizes,” he raps against a wavy, shimmering beat. “Crews that been together and tight for years/ Freelance emcees with business degrees.” He hopes the album will lead people to rediscover the more directly biographical Chronicles, and get the full view of the life he’s put on record. “Lord willing,” he says, “people will get to know me and my music, become fans, and that record will become a record where people are like, ‘That’s a dope record, because now we know who this guy is.’” MATTHEW SINGER.
SEE IT. L Pro plays Ted’s at Berbati’s Pan on Friday, Oct. 14, with Manimal House, Destro, Hives Inquiry Squad and Veteran Kings. 9 pm. $7. 21+.
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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SATURDAY - SUNDAY TINA TYRELL
MUSIC
The Oldest Newest Bar in Beaverton
Cuban Jazz with Xavier Janera This Friday 7:30 - 10:00 p.m.
Kristi King
Classic Soft Rock This Saturday 7:30 - 10:00 p.m.
free will ASTROLOGY
Weekly Lunch & Dinner Specials • Happy Hour 4-6 • All Food Fresh 13095 SW Canyon Rd (503) 539-7124
Open at 11 a.m. every day
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN: St. Vincent plays the Crystal Ballroom on Friday.
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lucinogenic regimen implied by their lyrical flights of fancy. Still, nobody ever went broke exploiting the monied hippie market, and fading pop acts that never quite managed a hit single rarely tour behind a comprehensive box set and coffeetable photo album: $100 for the package, with T-shirt. JAY HORTON. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $16. 21+.
Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, Andrew Jackson Jihad, Into It. Over It.
[BRAGG AND BONE MAN] Something about a love of Albion lures the hardcoriest of proud Brits toward fields of strummable folk. Not that England Keep My Bones— the fourth solo effort from former post-punker (frontman for turnof-the-millennium emo concern Million Dead) Frank Turner—hasn’t its share of godless anthems bound to shake a pub to the rafters, but after the riots quaked that scepter’d isle, even the most achingly sincere knees-up seems small beer. JAY HORTON. Hawthorne Theatre, 3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 233-7100. 8 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. All ages.
Wordsworth & Punchline, Theory Hazit, Philly’s Phunkestra
[NEW YORK HIP-HOP] Like fellow eMC group member Masta Ace, New York MCs Wordsworth and Punchline are some of your favorite rapper’s favorite rappers. Debuting together as Punch-N-Words in 1998, the duo had a number of high-profile guest appearances, popping up on A Tribe Called Quest’s The Love Movement and Mos Def and Talib Kweli’s Black Star album. These guys look beyond the showmanship aspect of hip-hop and concentrate solely on the technical: breath control, wordplay, rhyme schemes— you know, stuff most mainstream rappers don’t do these days. Neither has released a project in a while— both were last heard on eMC’s debut in 2008—but it’s a guarantee their skills are still sharp, as both seem to love the art too much to ever disappoint. REED JACKSON. The Crown Room, 205 NW 4th Ave., 503-222-6655. 9:30 pm. $5 . 21+.
Tezeta Band, Toque Libre, DJ Lord Smithingham
[ETHIOPIAN FUNK-JAZZ] Tired of
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Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
traveling all the way to Africa for authentic-sounding Ethiopian music, then being too jet-lagged to enjoy it? The Tezeta Band, Portland’s own funky, horn-fueled collective, has you covered. These suited-up gents may look pale compared to the legends like Mahmoud Ahmed and Aster Aweke (both of whom they have shared stages with), but they do not pale in comparison. These masterful players—mostly ex-members of seminal Portland funk/hip-hop outfit Five Fingers of Funk—rarely bring their sweaty and relentless funk to Portland’s clubs (they’re more at home in Ethiopian restaurants), so these shows are quite a treat. We expect The Woods to remove all its tables and chairs for the night. CASEY JARMAN. The Woods, 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 890-0408. 9 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.
Death of Summer Fest: Resist, Lunar Grave, Antikythera, Noctis, Koth, Banishing
See Friday listing. Tonic Lounge, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 238-0543. 9:30 pm. Cover. 21+.
Mason Jennings, The Pines
[FOLKY SINGALONGS] Mason Jennings dropped out of school when he was in 11th grade. Instead, he spent time in the library shuffling through the classics section, reading philosophy books. Later, he’d self-record his first album in his apartment on an old four-track. The singer-songwriter lives by his own agenda and has the songbook to prove it. A talented lyricist, Jennings asks big questions and tells stories poetically and earnestly through his distinct voice and simple, sometimes sparse instrumentation. In September, he released his new album, Minnesota (where he lives), a collection that explores themes of marriage, fatherhood and community-building—all while utilizing an expansive, piano-based musical palette. EMILEE BOOHER. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 2848686. 9 pm. $16 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
SUNDAY, OCT. 16 Moonface
[MY SOLO PROJECT] Don’t shed a tear for Wolf Parade, which may or may not have broken up in
May. Co-frontmen Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug are doing just fine, the former with synth-pop act Handsome Furs and Krug with his experimental pop solo project Moonface. In truth, Moonface’s fivesong debut, the confusingly but accurately titled Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped, may be the most consistent set of music Krug has been involved with to date. Though its minimal, slow-building electronic compositions remind of Brian Eno and Philip Glass, Krug’s robotic vocals feel warmer against the bleeps and bloops, while his lyricism remains vaguely inspirational (“One, we got the spirit/ two, we got the music/ Three, we got the past/ and four, we got the future/ And five, we got some kind of lust”). Moonface’s live shows—it played its first one in June—feature Krug behind stacks of analog synths, in front of video projections and right next to live drummer Mike Bigelow. CASEY JARMAN. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $11 advance, $13 day of show. 21+.
Wavesauce
[RED-TIDE SURF] Even the dark lord Cthulhu needs a relaxing day at the beach—one spent kicking back, ripping some curls and swallowing bikini-clad souls. The interdimensional overlord’s vacay playlist sounds a lot like that of Portland quartet Wavesauce. The group offers typical instrumental surf rock of the Dick Dale/Centurions variety—except for Wavesauce’s omnipresent theremin, which lends an eerie, otherworldly sense of unease to the beach-blanket rockers’ riffs. Appropriately, Wavesauce is headlining the Goodfoot’s pre-Halloween costume party, which promotes the Lone Fir Cemetery’s “Tour of Unlikely Departures” and is sure to be packed with zombified Gidgets and Hasselhoffs. The Cthude abides. AP KRYZA. Goodfoot Lounge, 2845 SE Stark St., 503-239-9292. 8 pm. Sliding scale.
Support Force, Nevele Nevele
[HARD BUT SMOOTH] After the summer release of its debut selftitled EP, Support Force managed to gain the following: After its May show with the Parenthetical Girls, the outfit was able to recruit a fourth member from the audience. Today, the troupe consists of three guys on guitar (including lead singer Jonathan Magdaleno) and one on
SUNDAY - TUESDAY PROFILE
TYLER KEENE
drums. The hard-edged sound that comes from this instrumental equation could be considered chaotic if it wasn’t for Magdaleno’s slowburning vocals, which smooth over the raw, jagged garage-rock tracks. His graceful voice gives Support Force the ability to appeal to anyone from the most pretentious writer on the Pitchfork payroll to my mom, whose favorite band is Aerosmith. NIKKI VOLPICELLI. Rontoms, 600 E Burnside St., 236-4536. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
MUSIC
13 topless bartenders and 70 dancers each week!
MONDAY, OCT. 17 Theophilus London, Breakfast Mountain
[SKINNY JEANS RAP] Brooklynborn MC Theophilus London doesn’t really care what you think of him. You thought the members of N.W.A. didn’t give a shit? London likes to cover Whitney Houston ballads while rocking the same brightly colored spandex and jewelry your grandma wears—that’s not giving a shit. Amid the fashion faux pas and goofy cover songs, however, is a talented rapper with an eclectic ear for beats that helped him stand out among the indie-hop crowd. He was signed to Warner Bros. earlier this year, where he released his majorlabel debut, Timez Are Weird These Days—a glossy slab of electro-pop that sometimes bit off a little more than it could chew. To hear London at his best, go back to his mixtapes and check out songs like “Flying Overseas,” which show the skinny, 6-foot-3 MC at his most comfortable, rapping over more simplistic, velvety backdrops. REED JACKSON. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
TUESDAY, OCT. 18 Houndstooth, Nucular Aminals, Log Across the Washer
See profile, this page. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
Helms Alee, Narrows, Rabbits, Mongoloid Village
[HARDCORE BROTHERHOOD] Brothers Dave and Ben Verellen, post-hardcore’s very own William and Henry James, carry pretty heavy legacies into 2011. Dave fronted the revered Botch through the ’90s; Ben pulled the vaunted Verellen name into the aughts with Harkonen. In my fantasy league, the bros have pooled their talents and formed a duo named Hydra Head: The Band. In the real world, Dave’s newest concern, Narrows, sounds like a post-grad version of Botch, while little brother Ben is tripping balls in Helms Alee, whose recently released Weatherhead melds shoegaze and stoner sludge into a pleasingly misshapen sound that smells like very good weed. CHRIS STAMM. Rotture, 315 SE 3rd Ave., 234-5683. 9 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.
Warcry, Ripper
[DISCHARGED] Sorry, this isn’t the American Gladiators reunion show you’re looking for. You’ll find that Warcry and Ripper in the conference room next door—yeah, the one that smells like despair. Although, I don’t know, stick around for a bit and you might receive the gentle head-pummeling you’ve clearly been dreaming of. Warcry, Portland’s dedicated stokers of the D-beat flame, faithfully and enthusiastically reproduces the steamrolling sound that spawned a million crust bands; it is, for all of its ferocity, soothing in its familiarity, the perfect unobtrusive soundtrack for patiently sewing patches onto black denim or training for the Gauntlet. CHRIS STAMM. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., 473-8729. 8 pm. Cover. 21+.
Open Every Day 11am to 2:30am www.CasaDiablo.com (503) 222-6600 • 2839 NW St. Helens Rd
LOG ACROSS THE WASHER TUESDAY, OCT. 18 [ONE-MAN BAND] Tyler Keene is searching. Speaking via telephone from outside a wedding reception in his hometown of Saginaw, Mich., he is searching for the words to explain why he recently left his role as co-frontman of And And And to start a solo project, Log Across the Washer. “It’s tough to put into words,” he finally says, about exiting the group that WW named Portland’s Best New Band of 2011. “I guess there’s not a real solid reason.” It had nothing to do with And And And’s members, Keene insists; he remains friends with them, and some have even performed live with Log Across the Washer. When he finally nails down a reason, it’s an unexpected one: Twin Peaks. Keene says Angelo Badalamenti’s “cheesy” yet “heartfelt” score for the television series, in part, inspired him to strike out on his own. “It sounds like it’s not influenced by a lot of stuff around it, and that was a really cool thing to hear,” he says of the TV score. “That was sort of the main draw of trying to start something different, a new thing that’s more based on your own personal experience than on a full-band collaboration.” Despite the show’s influence, the music 30-year-old Keene makes under the Log Across the Washer moniker (the name is also partially derived from Twin Peaks, in roundabout fashion) does not sound like Twin Peaks. But like Badalamenti’s score, the songs Keene has self-released through Log Across the Washer’s website are the products of a talented and original musical mind. In the general oddness and squawking, woozy guitar of “Keene’s Dreams (The Angels Glowing),” one hears echoes of Pavement, and indeed several of the tunes recall golden-era indie rock. But on tracks like “Definitely Not the Ones”—where strange vocal samples cut abruptly through a steady rhythm of ramshackle acoustic guitar and jangling percussion—it’s clear the soundscape of these songs is largely Keene’s own. Though Log Across the Washer’s catalog lurches from rock to folk and even jazz, it coheres in Keene’s singular aesthetic and his considerable gift for combining solid songwriting with thoughtful experimentation. If the music itself isn’t evidence enough that Keene’s got a creative fire under him, his productivity should be: Since starting Log Across the Washer in July, he has already recorded two self-titled full-lengths; it’s not uncommon for him to spend from 3 am to 5 pm in his Beaverton rehearsal space. Right now, Keene is on a break from recording—but not from perceiving, in others’ music, the elusive, eternal qualities he’s trying to instill in his own. Lately, he’s been hearing them in the work of jazz greats Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane. “The guys are the masters of their instruments—obviously you can’t compare yourself to them—but I try to draw influence from them in terms of their passion and creativity,” he says. “I can hear the force going through the sound, and I’m like, ‘That’s what I want to be doing.’” JONATHAN FROCHTWAJG.
Ex-And And And co-frontman Tyler Keene is looking for A Love Supreme.
SEE IT: Log Across the Washer plays Mississippi Studios on Tuesday, Oct. 18, with Houndstooth and Nucular Aminals. 9 pm. Free. 21+. Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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Since 1974
Never a cover!
LIVE MUSIC FULL BAR FOOD FUN
Friday October 14th
HOW (helping orphans worldwide) benefit 8pm Hosted by the sisters of perpetual indulgence. Featuring live music by: Acoustic Minds Jeremy Wilson The Planet Jackers Saturday October 15th
Matthew Lindley Commission Macy Bensley Band Sunday October 16th
Blake Lyman
every mon: Renato Caranto Project 8pm every tues: Pagen Jug Band 6:30pm The Jazzistics 8pm (basement) every weds: Arabesque & Belly Dance 8pm every thurs: Alan Jones JAM 8pm Now serving home made NY pizza!
MUSIC 7 NIGHTS A WEEK
Portland’s best happy hour 5pm—7pm Daily and All Day Sunday
Buffalo gap Wednesday, october 12th • 9pm
Buffalo Bandstand (3 live Bands)
presented By: live artist Network Thursday, october 13th • 9pm
Rocktown Revue Hosted By: Chris Margolin friday, october 14th • 9pm
leaves Russell w/ Nick peets (alt americana)
Saturday, october 15th • 9pm
Sweet Relief fundraiser w/ live Music Tuesday, october 18th
opEN MIC NIgHT
Hosted By: Scott gallegos
WIN $50!!
6835 SW Macadam Ave | John’s Landing
3341 SE Belmont thebluemonk.com 503-595-0575
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Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
MUSIC CALENDAR
[OCT. 12 - 18] Holocene
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Editor: Jonathan Frochtzwajg. TO HAVE YOUR EVENT LISTED, send show information at least two weeks in advance on the web at wweek.com/submitevents or (if you book a specific venue) enter your events at dbmonkey.com/wweek. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: music@wweek.com. For more listings, check out wweek.com.
1001 SE Morrison St. Gardens and Villa, Young Man, Yours
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Quartet with Chuck Redd
Kells
WED. OCT. 12 Afrique Bistro
102 NE Russell St. The Javier Nero Quintet
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Michael Dean Damron, Little Sue
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Nick Lowe, JD McPherson
Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. Baaba Maal (live interview and performance)
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Toshi Onizuka
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St. Syndika:zero, Public Drunken Sex, Ditch Digger, Pill Brigade
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Robin Greene
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Half-Step Shy
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave.
Decapitated, Decrepit Birth, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Rings of Saturn, Omnihility, Heathen Shrine
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Nat Hulskamp & Danny Romero
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St. The Asteroids Galaxy Tour
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Beringia, The Rawlies, Frogburd
Doug Fir Lounge
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Suburban Slim’s Blues Jam (9:30 pm); High Flyer Trio (6 pm)
Ella Street Social Club
714 SW 20th Place I Feel Awesome, Leviticus Appleton
Fez Ballroom
316 SW 11th Ave. Millipede, Anklebiter, Damaged Decayed
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Enslaved, Alcest, Junius, Christian Mistress
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Mangled Bohemians, The Sex Bots, Michael Beach, Die Geister Beschworen
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Black Prairie
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Billy D
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. The Northstar Session
ADAM KRUEGER
830 E Burnside St.
Van Hunt, Empress Hotel
112 SW 2nd Ave. Patrick Buckley
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Chamberlin, Olin & The Moon, AB & The Sea
Muddy Rudder Public House
3130A SE Hawthorne Blvd. Songwriters Roundup
Ash Street Saloon
O’Connors
225 SW Ash St. White Orange, Bryan Minus & The Disconnect, Sucker For Lights
Plan B
5909 NE 34th Ave. The Shade, Duck Little Brother Duck
8105 SE 7th Ave. Stumbleweed
7850 SW Capitol Highway Kit Garoutte 1305 SE 8th Ave. Sunny Travels, Black Black Things, Stolen Rose
Press Club
2621 SE Clinton St. Swing Papillon
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave. Foster the People, Cults, Reptar
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. Eprom, Salva
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Uketoberfest: Toucan Sam and the Fruit Loops, Me Uke and Everyone We Know, Honky Tonk Prison
The Globe
2045 SE Belmont St. Renaissance Cocktail
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Bre Gregg
The Lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. Nothing Lasts Forever
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Eric John Kaiser
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Emily Sahler-Beleele, Carrie Baldwin-Sayer, Janet Lindsley, Jim Crino, Lisamarie Harrison, Andrew Bray, Patty Price-Yates, Boy ‘n Bean, Chrisse Roccaro (Circle Theater Project benefit)
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St. Nancy King
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. The Finches, Jung Guns
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Left Coast Country
Wilfs Restaurant & Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Ron Steen Trio
Yukon Tavern
5819 SE Milwaukie Ave. Open Mic
THURS. OCT. 13 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Michael Dean Damron, James Low
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Oregon
Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. A Simple Colony, Sarah King, Miss Michael Jodell
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Onward, etc, The Nutmeggers
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Greg Wolfe Trio
Andrea’s Cha Cha Club 832 SE Grand Ave. Dina & Bamba Y Su Pilon D’Azucar with La Descarga Cubana
HE READS A LOT: Nick Lowe plays the Aladdin Theater on Wednesday.
Artichoke Community Music
Badlands
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Fist
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. John “JB” Butler & Al Craido
Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave. Andrew Goodwin
Chapel Pub
430 N Killingsworth St. Steve Kerin
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Ty Segall
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Metronomy, NewVillager, Copy
Mock Crest Tavern 3435 N Lombard St. Claes
Mount Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Russell Batiste
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St. Terry Robb
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
2314 SE Division St. Andrew Orr, Jen Howard
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Fuzz Huzzi, Wizard Boots, Stepper, Tentacle Burn
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave. The Naked and Famous, The Chain Gang of 1974, White Arrows
TaborSpace
5441 SE Belmont St. The Blind Cafe: Rosh and One Eye Glass Broken
Dante’s
The Blue Monk
Duff’s Garage
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar
350 W Burnside St. Rocky Votolato, Matt Pond PA 1635 SE 7th Ave. Red Hot Blues Sisters (9 pm); Lovepyle (6 pm)
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Nasalrod, Fist Fite, Youthbitch
Ella Street Social Club
714 SW 20th Place Lesser Known Characters, Bronco, Buttonjaw
Fez Ballroom
316 SW 11th Ave. Shadowplay: Unwoman, DJ Jeremy Inkel
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Mars Retrieval Unit, High Ceiling
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The Black Pacific, Rendered Useless, The Royal Tees
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Gang Gang Dance, Prince Rama, Bruxa, Centers, Miracles Club (DJ set)
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Miss Martha Reeves with the Mel Brown B-3 Organ Group
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Patrick Buckley
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Estocar, The Ex-Girlfriends Club
Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave. Dirty Mittens, Hanz Araki & Cary Novotny, Kathryn Claire, Kinderqueen
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St. The Renderers, Sore Eros, The Whines
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Bingo, Jim Boyer, Dave Reisch (9:30 pm); Lewi Longmire Band (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Fast Rattler & Friends
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro The Northstar Session
3341 SE Belmont St. Alan Jones Jam
1001 SW Broadway Johnny Martin
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Held Up Hands, Kiss Kiss Bang
The Lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. Vises, Grrrlfriend, Metal DJs
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. The Jackalope Saints, Jeff Martin, Andrew Grony
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Hair Assault
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. JR Worship, X’s For I’s, Victory & Associates, System and Station
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Erin Charles, Mary Knea, Pam Mahon, Angela Nierderloh-Hayward
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St. Farnell Newton’s Soul3
Trail’s End Saloon
1320 Main St., Oregon City Rae Gordon
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. Bitterroot
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Gabby Holt (8:30 pm); Tanner Cundy (5:30 pm)
Wilfs Restaurant & Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Sean Holmes & Fred Stickley
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. Battles, Walls
FRI. OCT. 14 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Michael Dean Damron, Mark Elmer
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Adrian Belew Power Trio, Stick Men
CONT. on page 38
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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MUSIC
CALENDAR
BAR SPOTLIGHT
Plew’s Brews
CAMERONBROWNE.COM
8409 N Lombard St. Sam Wegman
Press Club
2621 SE Clinton St. Rachel Taylor Brown, Leigh Marble
Record Room
8 NE Killingsworth St. Peter Vidito
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Only Zuul, Doomsower, American Roulette
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Wax Fingers, Brothers Young, Worrier, Shadows On Stars
Star E Rose
MY NEW PEP-PEP: Club 21 (2035 NE Glisan St., 235-5690) still looks like a little fish tank castle on the outside and feels like a ski lodge on the inside. But the former dive bar, which took only a slight hit in patronage while closed for upgrades this summer, has stepped up its style game considerably. Its former duct-taped booths have been replaced by new upholstery; dingy old beer mirrors replaced by...well, even older Pabst paraphernalia; two pinball machines have turned into four; the patio now seats dozens of young blue-collar regulars without discomfort. The obscenely cheap food specials are out, but replaced by still-cheap and altogether more satisfying options, including an epic build-a-burger menu with endless variations (how about a housemade veggie patty on Texas toast with smoked Gouda, Kingston jerk rub and Asian BBQ sauce?). Maybe the renovated Club 21 doesn’t feel like a place your grandpa would drink—but let’s face it, your grandpa needs a makeover, too. CASEY JARMAN. Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Curtis Eller, Strangled Darlings (9:30 pm); Mikey’s Irish Jam (6:30 pm)
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Sambafeat Quartet
Artichoke Community Music
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Zepparella (Led Zeppelin tribute)
Disjecta
8371 N Interstate Ave. Electrogals Festival: Bonnie Miksch, Sylvia Hackathorn, Cheetah Finesse, Marisa Anderson, Briana Marela, Heather Perkins, Tender Forever
3130A SE Hawthorne Blvd. Friday Night Coffeehouse
Doug Fir Lounge
Ash Street Saloon
Duff’s Garage
225 SW Ash St. Hairspray Blues, The Interlopers, Hellokopter, Kiss Kiss Bang
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Blue Sky Black Death, U.S.F. (Universal Studios Florida), Big Spider’s Back
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Ten Spiders
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Rob Stroup and the Blame, Jeremy Serwer (9:30 pm); Billy Kennedy and Jim Boyer (6 pm)
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave. Move the Earth, The Diggers, A Darker Grey, At Wits End, Guillotine
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Al Craido & Tablao
Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave. Negara
Clyde’s Prime Rib
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Ocean 503
Community Music Center
830 E Burnside St. Melissa Ferrick
1635 SE 7th Ave. Petunia and the Vipers, Hi Flyer Trio (9 pm); Honey and the Hamdogs (6 pm)
Eagles Lodge, Southeast
4904 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The New Iberians Zydeco Blues Band
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Billy Kennedy/Dan Haley Band (9:30 pm); Woodbrain (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Emma Hill
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Bingo Dream Band
Mississippi Pizza
Mississippi Studios
714 SW 20th Place PDX Punk Rock Collective
Grapevine Restaurant and Lounge 11525 SW Barnes Road Sons of Richard
Greeley Avenue Bar & Grill 5421 N Greeley Ave. Bad Assets
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge 1503 SE 39th Ave. Hi Fi Mojo
Hawthorne Theatre
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Anika, Stay Calm, DJ Spencer D
Mock Crest Tavern
3435 N Lombard St. Donna Jose and the Side Effects
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Reverb Brothers
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St. Kevin Selfe & the Tornadoes
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Sweat (Tool tribute); WhyWhyZed (Rush Tribute)
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
Jimmy Mak’s
Peter’s Room
Kells
38
2025 N Kilpatrick St. The Silent Numbers, Advisory, Swamp Buck
Ella Street Social Club
Crush
1332 W Burnside St. St. Vincent, Cate Le Bon
Kenton Club
203 SE Grand Ave. Imposters, The Anxieties
East End
3350 SE Francis St. Greg Goebel Trio
Crystal Ballroom
5736 NE 33rd Ave. Sassparilla
3552 N Mississippi Ave. The People’s Meat, Like a Circus Fire (9 pm); Brad Creel & the Reel Deel (6 pm)
221 NW 10th Ave. The Portland Soul AllStars (James Brown tribute)
1400 SE Morrison St Loud Sex Party, Bombshell Bailey, The Drop Move, Merry Poser
Kennedy School
112 SW 2nd Ave. St. James Gate
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. The Wilkinson Blades, The Carnabetian Army, The Quags
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
2314 SE Division St. Lynn Conover 8 NW 6th Ave. Ty Curtis Band, DK Stewart, Peter Dammann
Pints Brewing Company
412 NW 5th Ave. Audrey Ebbs (9 pm); Jeff Cochell (7 pm)
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Hot Rod Carl, Kramer, Thorn Town Tall Boys, Raw Dob & the Close Calls
2403 NE Alberta St. Pete Schreiner, Timmy the Terror
TaborSpace
5441 SE Belmont St. The Blind Cafe: Rosh and One Eye Glass Broken
Ted’s (at Berbati’s)
231 SW Ankeny St. L Pro, Farnell Newton, Manimalhouse
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Acoustic Minds, Jeremy Wilson, The Planet Jackers
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Key of Dreams
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. AWOTT, Big Black Cloud, Ellipse Elkshow
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave. Faun Fables with Good Night Billygoat
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. Carla Bozulich, Himalayan Bear, Like a Villain
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Erotic City (Prince tribute)
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway In Repose, Cement Season, A Moment of Substance
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Death of Summer Fest: Hammered Grunts, Spellcaster, Ritual Healing, Nuclear Wasteland
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. The Tony Starlight Show
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St. Meester & Meester, Three Leg Torso
Trail’s End Saloon
1320 Main St., Oregon City Kenny Lavitz
Vie de Boheme 1530 SE 7th Ave. Zenda
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. Lisa Mann Duo
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Riviera, The Old States, The Beautiful Train Wrecks (9:30 pm); Reverb Brothers (5:30 pm)
Wilfs Restaurant & Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Tasha Miller
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. She’s Not Dead, All Falls Through, One Hour Newport, In Bloom (Stevie Rae Urwin benefit)
SAT. OCT. 15 15th Avenue Hophouse 1517 NE Brazee St.
Aladdin Theater
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
Alberta Rose Theatre
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Rogue Bluegrass Band 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Jake Oken-Berg, Naomi Hooley, Brian Copeland Band 3000 NE Alberta St. Priscilla Ahn
Alberta Street Public House
1036 NE Alberta St. Hillfolk Noir, Whiskey Puppy (9:30 pm); Jonathan Nicholson, Anton Emery (6:30 pm)
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Dan Haley
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Garcia Birthday Band
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Billy D & the Hoodoos, Ben Dewey (9 pm); Weekend Assembly (6 pm); Toy Train (4 pm)
Andina
Mississippi Studios
Artichoke Community Music
Mock Crest Tavern
1314 NW Glisan St. Toshi Onizuka Trio
3130A SE Hawthorne Blvd. Angelo M
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Honey Wars, Animals in Cars
Atkinson Memorial Church
710 6th St., Oregon City Kevin Burke and Cal Scott
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Music in the Schools Benefit: Groves, Violet Isle, Running Team, Electric Carnival
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. D.C. Malone and The Jones
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Get Rhythm
Brasserie Montmartre
626 SW Park Ave. Pete Krebs Trio (9 pm); Al Craido & Tablao (5:30 pm)
Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave. Disappointments
Clyde’s Prime Rib
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Andy Stokes
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Western Aerial, American Bastard
Disjecta
8371 N Interstate Ave. Electrogals Festival: Christi Denton, Silk & Olive, Portable Morla, Momilani Ramstrum, La Pump, Lovers, Pamela Z
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Mother Hips, Quiet Life
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. The Buckles
Freedom Foursquare Church 660 SE 160th Ave. Northern Departure, Steve Blanchard, The Howdy Boys
Goodfoot Lounge 2845 SE Stark St. Marv Ellis and the Platform
Hawthorne Hophouse 4111 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Spo-Dee-O’s
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, Andrew Jackson Jihad, Into It. Over It.
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Michael Allen Harrison
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. St. James Gate
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Pigeons, Scrimshander, The Quiet Ones
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Crazy Angels, Meridian (9:30 pm); Tree Frogs (6 pm)
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Soul Vaccination 3435 N Lombard St. Joe McMurrian
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Johnnie Ward Duo
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St. Norman Sylvester
Peter’s Room
8 NW 6th Ave. Keaton Simons, Michael Tolcher, Christian Burghardt
Pints Brewing Company
412 NW 5th Ave. Galen Fous
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Rattlehead, Kaustic, Motorthrone, Spellcaster
Plew’s Brews
8409 N Lombard St. Third Phase
Po’Shines Cafe De La Soul 8139 N Denver Ave. E.D. Mondainé & Belief, Rob and Company
Proper Eats Market and Cafe
8638 N Lombard St. The Sloppy Guitarist, The Middle Ages, Jane
Record Room
8 NE Killingsworth St. Record Room One-Year Anniversary: Wow & Flutter, The I’s, Hey Lover, Hornet Leg, Nucular Animals, Secret Codes, DJs Jez Press Play, Bruce LaBruiser, Dog Daze, Kevin Lee, Bummertown USA
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Ex Nihilo, Tripno, Zombie Messiah, Fall from Zero
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. The Business, Dirty Filthy Mugs, Rum Rebellion, Shock Troops
Secret Society Lounge 116 NE Russell St. Pete Krebs and his Portland Playboys
Slabtown
1033 NW 16th Ave. Heaven Generation, Alabama Black Snake, Sexhawk
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave. Afroman
Ted’s (at Berbati’s)
231 SW Ankeny St. The Rundown, Mike Pinto Band, Cas Haley, Raise the Bridges
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Matthew Lindley Commission
The Crown Room
205 NW 4th Ave. Wordsworth & Punchline, Theory Hazit, Philly’s Phunkestra
The Foggy Notion
3416 N Lombard St. Drunk Dad, Mongoloid Village, Lickity
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway
Karla Harris
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Tenspeed Warlock, Royal Talons, Avi Dei
The Lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. The Xploding Boys
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. Tezeta Band, Toque Libre, DJ Lord Smithingham
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Break As We Fall
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway This Fair City, A Race of Strangers
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Death of Summer Fest: Resist, Lunar Grave, Antikythera, Noctis, Koth, Banishing
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Tony’s AM Gold Show
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St. Kelley Shannon Trio
Trail’s End Saloon
1320 Main St., Oregon City Robbie Laws
Twilight Café and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd. Chase the Shakes, The Monster Addict, No Red Flags
Vie de Boheme
1530 SE 7th Ave. Mark Simon Benefit
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. Ill Lucid Onset
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. The Student Loan
Wilfs Restaurant & Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Linda Michelet
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. Mason Jennings, The Pines
SUN. OCT. 16 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Otis Heat
Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. Kye Kye, The Ember Days, Painted Grey, Brandon Bee
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Danny Romero
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Alabama Black Snake, Reason to Rebel, Ape Machine
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Michael Monroe, Witchburn, Earth to Ashes
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Moonface, THEMES
Ella Street Social Club
Lynn Conover & John Mitchell
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Elizabeth Nicholson & Bob Soper
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Smiley, Get Dressed (9 pm); Wicky Pickers (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Tom Tom Magazine Issue Release: Sad Horse, Hungry Ghost, Reynosa
Mount Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Ron Paul’s Rock the Revolution Tour
Rontoms
600 E Burnside St. Support Force, Nevele Nevele
Roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave. Opeth, Katatonia
Someday Lounge 125 NW 5th Ave. Sass Patrol
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Blake Lyman
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Archagathus, Skeleton, Deadissue, Worthless Eaters
The Lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. Unwoman
Tillicum Club
8585 SW BeavertonHillsdale Highway Johnny Martin
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Emmett Wheatfall
Trail’s End Saloon
1320 Main St., Oregon City Gordon Hermanson
Tupai at Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Matices
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. Marisa Anderson, Neal Morgan
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. Raq the Casbah
MON. OCT. 17 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Otis Heat
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Rock Falls, Fall Fox
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Pete Krebs
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Battery-Powered Music
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Mike D.
Doug Fir Lounge
714 SW 20th Place Il Gato
830 E Burnside St. Theophilus London, Breakfast Mountain
Goodfoot Lounge
Duff’s Garage
2845 SE Stark St. Wavesauce
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Billy Kennedy & Tim Acott (9:30 pm); Freak Mountain Ramblers (6 pm)
Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom 1332 W Burnside St. Dirty Mittens
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale
1635 SE 7th Ave. Nathan James (9 pm); Suzie and the Sidecars (6 pm)
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Dan Balmer
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Cronin Teirney
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. David Gerow, Ryan and the Robot
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St.
CALENDAR Kung Pao Chickens (9 pm); Portland Country Underground (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Skip vonKuske with Chance Hayden
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Bob Shoemaker
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Mr. Ben
Mount Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Violin vs. Vinyl, Jay Tablet (9 pm); Mike Keneally Band, Bryan Beller (8 pm)
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Lloyd Jones
Poison Apple Records Night: Brittle Bones, Barnaby Woods, DJ Circe, DJ Agent 99
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. Hooded Hags, Still Caves, K-Tel ‘79
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Norman, Harlowe, Duover
TUES. OCT. 18 15th Avenue Hophouse
1517 NE Brazee St. Ben Larsen & Austin Moore
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
303 SW 12th Ave. Otis Heat
Alberta Street Public House
Ella Street Social Club
714 SW 20th Place Write On, Echo Pearl Varsity, Indigo Gnonsis
Fez Ballroom
316 SW 11th Ave. Cause And Effect, Dead When I Found Her, Lakeshore Driving
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Scott PembertonTrio
Hawthorne Hophouse 4111 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Steve Cheseborough
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Veil of Maya, After the Burial, Misery Signals, Within the Ruins, Regiment 26, I Am the Monster
Jimmy Mak’s
7850 SW Capitol Highway Kit Garoutte
Andina
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Septet (8:30 pm); Partners in Jazz artist (6:30 pm)
Red Room
Beaterville Cafe
112 SW 2nd Ave. Cronin Teirney
O’Connors
2530 NE 82nd Ave. AUX 78, Rainy River Blues Experience
Secret Society Lounge
116 NE Russell St. Carlton Jackson/Dave Mills Big Band
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Fanno Creek, Rogue Valley, Hollywood Tans
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Renato Caranto Project
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St.
1036 NE Alberta St. David Whelan Benefit 1314 NW Glisan St. Neftali Rivera
2201 N Killingsworth St. Spoken Word Open Mic
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Open Mic
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave. The Shivas, Lubec
Camellia Lounge
510 NW 11th Ave. Tom Wakeling, Steve Christofferson, David Evans, Todd Straight
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Dover Weinberg Quartet (9:30 pm); Trio Bravo (6 pm)
Kells
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Sleepwalk Kid, Glassbones
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Bingo, Lewi Longmire Duo (9:30 pm); Jackstraw (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Josh Cole Band
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Open Bluegrass Jam
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Professor Banjo
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Houndstooth, Nucular Aminals, Log Across the Washer
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. Helms Alee, Narrows, Rabbits, Mongoloid Village
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. The Jazzistics, Pagan Jug Band
The Globe
2045 SE Belmont St. Robert Stragnell, Sam Emmitt
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Warcry, Ripper
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. PDX Singer-Songwriter Showcase
Twilight Café and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd. Open Mic with The Roaming
Valentine’s
WED. OCT. 12 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
303 SW 12th Ave. DJs Gregarious, Disorder
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. DJ Sandy Stilletto
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Future Beats: Ryan Organ, Brazil, Carrier
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. TRONix with DJ-808
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. Tony Remple and Cody Brant
Yes and No
20 NW 3rd Ave. Death Club with DJ Entropy
THURS. OCT. 13
232 SW Ankeny St. Root Beer & French Fry, Ketchup
Beaterville Cafe
Vie de Boheme
Palace of Industry
1530 SE 7th Ave. Lynn Winkle & Mark Stauffer
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar
2929 SE Powell Blvd. Arthur “Fresh Air” Moore Harmonica Party
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Brad Creel and the Reel Deel
2201 N Killingsworth St. DJ Hookerface
F*ck The Disco: DJs Evil One, Doc Adam, Tyler Tastemaker, Zac Eno
The Whiskey Bar 31 NW 1st Ave. Damage
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Maxamillion
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Expressway to Your Skull with DJ Mistina La Fave, Bang A Rang (late set); DJ Sethro Tull (early set)
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Genevieve D
FRI. OCT. 14 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
303 SW 12th Ave. DJ E3
Beauty Bar
111 SW Ash St. Off Brand: Doc Adam, Nick Dean
Fez Ballroom
5426 N Gay Ave. DJ Manky Spice
316 SW 11th Ave. Decadent ‘80s: DJ Jason Wann, DJ Non
Someday Lounge
Groove Suite
125 NW 5th Ave. Mixer: DJs Perfect Cyn, Tom Mitchell, Mercedes, Keane, Mr. Romo, Darling Instigatah, Grimes Against Humanity
The Crown Room 205 NW 4th Ave.
440 NW Glisan St. Cock Block: DJs Mena, Amanda Sundvor, Zita, Marlyce
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. DJs MT, RAW3
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St.
MUSIC
Discos Discos: DJ Zac Eno, Michael Bruce (9 pm); Aperitivo Happy Hour with DJ Cooky Parker (5 pm)
After Dark: Jason Hodges, Mercedes, Midwest Express, Derty D
Palace of Industry
511 NW Couch St. DJ I <3 U
5426 N Gay Ave. DJ Holiday
Star Bar
Ground Kontrol
Holocene
639 SE Morrison St. Blank Fridays
1001 SE Morrison St. Gaycation: DJ Snowtiger, Mr. Charming
The Crown Room
Palace of Industry
205 NW 4th Ave. City Lock: Ryan Organ, Joe Nasty, Ben Tactic
The Foggy Notion
5426 N Gay Ave. DJ Pippa Possible
Someday Lounge
3416 N Lombard St. BENT
125 NW 5th Ave. Ante Up: Doctor Adam, DJ Nature, Ronin Roc
The Lovecraft
The Whiskey Bar
421 SE Grand Ave. Darkness Descends: DJs Miz Margo, Maxamillion
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. Cowboys From Sweden
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. No Hands with YoHuckleberry (late set); DJ Neil Blender (early set)
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Dirty Hands
SAT. OCT. 15 Aalto Lounge
3356 SE Belmont St Fuzzprobe/Von Tussle
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
303 SW 12th Ave. DJ Rescue
Beauty Bar
111 SW Ash St. Body Language
Groove Suite
440 NW Glisan St.
31 NW 1st Ave. Deacon X Fetish Night
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. Hostile Tapeover
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. Bill Portland
MON. OCT. 17 Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Old Frontier
TUES. OCT. 18 East End
203 SE Grand Ave. DJ Tessa Coil
Record Room
8 NE Killingsworth St. DJ Fuzzprobe
The Lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. DJ Itunes
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
39
N W DANCE
FILL YOUR DANCE CARD AND WIN! www.pdxdancecard.org
PROJECT
NEW NOW WOW!
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
SA R A H S L IPP E R
OCTOBER
14 + 15 8PM
THIS SHOW CONTAINS PARTIAL NUDITY BOLD NEW WORKS FROM 3 WORLD–RENOWNED CHOREOGRAPHERS World Premiere / Didy Veldman / The Netherlands World Premiere / Noam Gagnon / Canada World Premiere / Pedro Dias / Portugal Lincoln Performance Hall 1620 SW Park Avenue BEST TICKETS at nwdanceproject.org Info / 503.828.8285 Also available at PSU Box Office + Ticketmaster Media Sponsor:
REAL ESTATE
george harrison • the blue devils • cab calloway the swell season • noise pop • the sound of mumbai stravinsky • frank zappa • benda bilili
903 SW Lucille St
mott and hopple • the doors preservation hall jazz band portland music videos • foo fighters david byrne & brian eno • vinyl richard thompson • tea opera mozart’s sister • the writers of fiction
4535 SE Sherman St.
music from haiti • marian mcpartland jim mesi & steve bradley the golden years of portland jazz
29
jim pepper • ornette coleman sonny rollins • elliott smith • bob forrest vinicius • zanzibar music club • harry belafonte fugazi • cuban-american jazz
O C T O B E R 7–2 3 , 2 0 1 1
n w f il m .o r g / f e s t i va ls / r e el m u sic | 5 0 3 -2 2 1-115 6 40
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
page 54
OCT. 12-18
The Real Americans
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Most prices listed are for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply, so it’s best to call ahead. Editor: BEN WATERHOUSE. Stage: BEN WATERHOUSE (bwaterhouse@wweek. com). Classical: BRETT CAMPBELL (bcampbell@wweek.com). Dance: HEATHER WISNER (dance@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: bwaterhouse@wweek.com.
THEATER Animals and Plants
CoHo Productions opens its season with Adam Rapp’s very dark comedy about a pair of drug runners slowly going crazy in a snowed-in motel room in Boone, N.C. The CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 205-0715. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Nov. 5. $20-$25.
Annie Get Your Gun
Lakewood Theatre tackles the classic musical about unrefined sharpshooter Annie Oakley’s transformative adventures with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, 6353901. 7:30 Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Oct. 13-16. $32, $29 seniors.
Blue Man Group
The Blue Men are on tour. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 241-1802. 7:30 pm Tuesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, 1 and 6:30 pm Sunday, Oct. 18-23. $31.70-$86.60.
Bourbon at the Border
PassinArt presents Pearl Cleage’s play about an African-American couple dealing with the psychological fallout of the murders of civil rights workers. Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, 5340 N Interstate Ave., passinart.org. 7:30 pm Thursdays, 8 pm FridaysSaturdays, 3 pm Sundays. Closes Nov. 5. $20, $17 students and seniors.
Cloud 9
Theatre Vertigo begins its season with Caryl Churchill’s gender-bending, timetraveling comedy about one British family’s transition from Victorian mores to the swinging ’70s. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., 3060870. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays. Closes Nov. 12. $15.
Glengarry Glen Ross
It seems strange that avant-garde Defunkt should tackle Mamet’s classic real-estate drama. There must be a twist, you think, and of course there is: Defunkt has cast women in the lead men’s roles. The Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 481-2960. 8 pm Thursdays-Sundays. No show Oct. 16. Closes Nov. 19. $10-$20.
God of Carnage
“Children consume our lives, and then they destroy us,” says Alan (Michael Mendelson). As far as French playwright Yasmina Reza is concerned, this is a half-truth. The psychological (and occasionally physical) cage match that rocks the stage in her Tony-winning comedy has its roots in matrimony and the innate violence of humanity, but children provide the accelerant. BEN WATERHOUSE. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Saturday, 2 and 7:30 pm Sunday, Oct. 12-16. $20-$42.
Gravediggers of 1933
An “evening of undead vaudeville” in the style of Busby Berkeley, featuring Miss Astrid, Dracula, Ochestre L’Pow, contortionist Brittany Walsh, Russell Bruner and The Charleens. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 8 pm Sunday, Oct. 16. $18-$20.
I Love You Because
Joshua Salzman and Ryan Cunningham’s musical romance draws the names of its characters and the general shape of its plot from Pride and Prejudice, but has much more in common with the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother BEN WATERHOUSE. Broadway Rose New Stage Theatre, 12850 SW Grant Ave., Tigard, 6205262. 7:30 pm Thursday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Oct. 13-16. $20-$35.
The Importance of Being Earnest
North End Players do Wilde’s masterpiece. St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 7600 N Hereford St., 705-2088. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 23. $25.
Junie B. in Jingle Bells, Batman Smells!
Northwest Children’s Theater presents a play about a precocious first-grader. NW Neighborhood Cultural Center, 1819 NW Everett St., 222-4480. Noon and 4 pm Saturdays-Sundays through Oct. 30. $13-$22.
King John
Northwest Classical Theatre stages one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known histories. Shoe Box Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 971-244-3740. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Nov. 13. $18-$20.
Lips Together, Teeth Apart
Profile Theatre kicks off its 15th anniversary with a fantastic bang, returning to the work of Terrence McNally for a play about two straight couples spending a weekend in the Fire Island beach house of the gay brother of one of the women, who has just died of AIDS. The play may begin by tickling your funny bone, but it swerves into a brutally honest exploration of the human condition. Directed by Jane Unger, Lips Together takes the archetypal woe-is-me genre of struggle sans adversity and swaps annoying calls for pity with an irresistible case for empathy, creating an intricately woven tale of intimacy in the process. NATALIE BAKER. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., 242-0080. 7:30 pm Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 23. $16-$30.
National Theatre Live: The Kitchen
A screening of the National’s new revival of Arnold Wesker’s play about life in the kitchen of a busy West End restaurant. Presented locally by Third Rail Rep. World Trade Center Theater, 121 SW Salmon St., 235-1101. 1 and 5 pm Sunday, Oct. 16; 2 and 7 pm Saturday, Oct. 29. $20, $15 students.
Oklahoma!
For a regular fixture of high-school stages, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first collaboration is a pretty bleak show. Its nominal hero, Curly, is a bully, and its female lead, Laurey, is a snob. Its moral is that looking at dirty pictures leads to murder. Chris Coleman, in his production of the show at Portland Center Stage, very ably balances its dual personalities of darkness and delight. Rodney Hicks is restless and brash as Curly, Joy Lynn Matthews-Jacobs makes a cheerfully frightening Aunt Eller and Jonathan Raviv is a delightfully skeezy Ali Hakim. Justin Lee Miller’s Jud had me tearing up during “Lonely Room.” The brightest light on stage, though, is Marisha Wallace, who brings contagious joy to the role of Ado Annie. BEN WATERHOUSE. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays, alternating 7:30 pm Sunday and 2 pm Saturday performances. Closes Oct. 30. $39-$69, $25 students.
The Pain and the Itch
Third Rail Rep’s first production of the season is a brutal comedy by Bruce Norris about a very unpleasant Thanksgiving dinner with a family of self-righteous NPR-listener types: a young couple, their non-speaking daughter, his condescending mother and drunken-doctor brother and the brother’s Russian girlfriend. And a taxi driver, Mr. Hadid, whose life they turn upside down. Winningstad Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 235-1011. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 30. $29.50$38.50, $14.50 students.
Fed up with life in the liberal bubble, Dan Hoyle bought a van and spent 100 days traveling rural highways through the Deep South, Appalachia and the Midwest in search of homegrown country wisdom. Hoyle, a journalist, playwright and performer, turned his experiences from the trip into an acclaimed, new one-man show, The Real Americans, in which he tells the stories of the people he met in their own words, voices and mannerisms, and creates composite characters to represent them. PENELOPE BASS. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm TuesdaysSaturdays, 2 pm Sundays, alternating Saturday matinee and Sunday evening performances. Closes Nov. 6. $26-$46.
Richard III
Portland Actors Ensemble stages the one with the hunchbacked usurper who murders children. Concordia University, 2800 NE Liberty St., 4676573. 7 pm Fridays-Saturdays, 3 pm Sundays. Closes Nov. 6. $5.
Seven Deadly Sins Puppet Slam
Short puppet-theater pieces about wrath, gluttony, etc. Someday Lounge, 125 NW 5th Ave., 248-1030. 7 pm Saturday, Oct. 15. $8. 21+.
The Weekly Recurring Humor Night
Phil Schallberger hosts A Little Extra Help, Dax Jordan, Virginia Jones, Anthony Lopez, Kevin-Michael Moore and Stacey Hallal. Tonic Lounge, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 238-0543. 9:30 pm Wednesdays. $3-$5. 21+.
CLASSICAL
Electrogals, Pamela Z
The weeklong festival of female electronic-music composers culminates in Friday’s concert of music by Bonnie Miksch, Heather Perkins and Cheetah Finesse; and Saturday’s show with Christi Denton, Silk and Olive and Pamela Z. Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., 971-225-3532. 8 pm FridaySaturday, Oct. 14-15. $15-$20.
Filmusik
Bradamante Cello Duo
Shirley Hunt and Elinor Frey play music by Gabrieli, Bononcini, Barriere and other Baroque composers. The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave., 222-2031. 7:30 pm Thursday, Oct. 13. $10-$15.
Denver Greek Orthodox Choir
Cappella Romana fans take note: This 40-year-old choir specializes in liturgical music. It will feature music by Greek-American composer Theodore Bogdanos. Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 3131 NE Glisan St., 2340468. 7 pm Friday, Oct. 14. Donation.
The drum-and-keyboard duo Sallo supplies sounds to accompany Vladislav Starevich’s 1911 stop-motion film, “The Cameraman’s Revenge.” Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 281-4215. 9:30 pm Friday, Oct. 14. $12.
Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna
The Carnatic poet and composer sings music from Southern India. Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 1620 SW Park Ave., 725-3307. 4 pm Sunday, Oct. 16. $23-$48.
CONT. on page 42
REVIEW OWEN CAREY
PERFORMANCE
Shirley Valentine
Helena de Crespo performs Willy Russell’s play about a bored English housewife who goes on a life-changing vacation. Sanctuary at Sandy Plaza, 1785 NE Sandy Blvd., 800-494-8497. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Nov. 6. $20-$25.
The Snake With Seven Heads
Play After Play presents a South African folk tale about a woman who must dance to save her husband from being permanently transformed into a seven-headed snake. Brooklyn Bay, 1825 SE Franklin St., 772-4005. 10 am Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays through Oct. 23. $7, free for kids under 2.
AS IT IS: From left, Hurt, Hurt, Nause and True.
That’s What She Said
[FUNDRAISER] A cabaret benefit for the new Circle Theatre Project, which will open its debut production of Steel Magnolias in March. Tony Starlight’s, 3728 NE Sandy Blvd., 517-8584. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Oct. 12. $10-$15.
Zugzwang
Imago co-director Jerry Mouawad’s latest in the series of narrative movement pieces he calls “theater without words” takes as its inspiration the classic heist flick. It begins with a gambler (performed with Gene Hackman-ish flair by dancer Gregg Bielemeier) losing piles of cash in a tragic poker match. To make up for his losses, he and his black-clad crew set out to steal some unspecified treasure, sneaking along corridors, skulking in elevators, dodging mysterious pools of radioactivity, blowing a safe and negotiating an Entrapment-style laser field. BEN WATERHOUSE. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 231-3959. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays through Oct. 22. $10-$16.
COMEDY Instant Comedy
Curious Comedy pits comics headto-head in audience-inspired sets. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 477-9477. 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays through Oct. 22. $12.
Mental State Department
A sketch comedy showcase that “brings people together to laugh and think.” Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 477-9477. 8 pm Thursday, Oct. 13. $5-$7.
Mice-tro
16 improv actors are at the whim of a voice-of-God maestro. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 8 pm Fridays through Oct. 21. $8-$12.
Two for the Show
Improv duets. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 8 and 9:30 pm Saturdays through Oct. 22. $8-$12.
NO MAN’S LAND (ARTISTS REPERTORY THEATRE) Harold Pinter and the perversity of poets.
William Hurt is back in town, performing alongside his old friend Allen Nause in what’s become a regular gig for the Oscarwinning actor. This time—his fourth on Artists Rep’s stage—he’s doing Pinter, and that means drinking, menace and mystery. No Man’s Land is, like most of Pinter’s mid-career plays, about memory. Specifically, it’s about what can happen when you poison yourself with so much liquor that you no longer have any. Hurt plays Spooner, a washed-up old poet who finds himself in the stately sitting room of Hirst, a far more successful writer and former classmate, having run into the latter at a pub. The play begins with the offer of a drink, and the consumption of whiskey is the primary occupation of its characters throughout its two hours. Hirst, we soon learn, has drunk himself into a state of pitiable dementia, and the audience is made to share in his confusion. Is Spooner an innocent visitor or a con man? Are Hirst’s companions, the “vagabond cock” Foster (Hurt’s son Alex) and crisp-munching butler, Briggs (Tim True), servants, bodyguards, lovers or jailers? Director John Dillon’s sure-handed blocking indicates he has some idea, but he declines to share it with us. Speculating over the nature of these four men’s relationships was most of what held my attention through the final, slow fade. For his Spooner, a bold but cowardly sad sack, Hurt employs his usual technique of head-wagging and grumbling as though his cheeks were filled with ball bearings. It suits the character well enough, but I’m beginning to wonder if he’s capable of clear enunciation. Nause is more moving as the brilliant mind tragically spoilt by drink, his faculties fading in and out, but the character, a sort of villainous Kenneth Tynan, is so repugnant that we feel no pity for him. I marvel at Pinter’s facility with language, but I find his plays heartless. Maybe it’s my age. Whether on the page or the stage, they make me feel only suffocation. Dillon’s production holds up well against the BBC’s recording of the original—although Hurt isn’t nearly so slick as John Gielgud—but I can’t say I enjoyed it. BEN WATERHOUSE.
SEE IT. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278, artistsrep. org. Closes Nov. 6. $35-$65, $25 students. Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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UPCOMING IN-STORE PERFORMANCES WHISPERING PINES - FRIDAY 10/21 @ 6PM Whispering Pines is a five piece rock n roll outfit from Los Angeles that sounds as though it was lifted straight out of the Laurel Canyon music scene that overtook the City of Angels in the late 1960’s… with a little Allman-style southern soul tossed in for good measure. On their debut album, ‘Family Tree,’ Whispering Pines plow through nine groove-filled tunes. If the whole thing sounds well-aged and worn, that’s because it was recorded with vintage equipment in Elliott Smith’s Van Nuys, CA studio. THE BOXER REBELLION - MONDAY 10/24 @ 6:30PM
London-based The Boxer Rebellion created their third studio album ‘The Cold Still’ with legendary producer Ethan Johns (Kings of Leon, Ryan Adams, Ray LaMontagne), The album is an exercise in master class performances and dark, sophisticated songwriting from a band that embodies the very definition of ‘independent.’ ‘The Cold Still’ is the follow-up to the band’s widely acclaimed album ‘Union,’ which caught the world’s attention as the first selfreleased LP in history to break into the Billboard 100 Album Charts on digital sales alone.
LED
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COMING SOON: JOHN WESLEY HARDING WEDNESDAY 11/9 @ 6PM
LAURA VEIRS SATURDAY 11/12 @ 3PM
PERFORMANCE
OCT. 12-18
Oregon Repertory Singers
The singers welcome new music director Ethan Sperry with a splendidly varied program of music by Brahms, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Josquin and Andrea Gabrieli. Plus music from Native-American rituals; an Indian raga arranged for chorus; a spiritual, new work by a Norwegian composer and Samuel Barber’s beautiful Reincarnations. 7:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 15, at Lincoln Hall, 1620 SW Park Ave; 4 pm Sunday, Oct. 16, at First United Methodist Church, 1838 SW Jefferson St., 230-0652, orsingers.org. $20-$60.
Oregon Symphony
On Saturday, the orchestra and Portland Symphonic Choir join forces to perform Igor Stravinsky’s powerful Symphony of Psalms and Beethoven’s odd but intriguing Choral Fantasy—a sort of dry run for his mighty Symphony No. 9. On Sunday night, Pacific Youth Choir and Dance West join the orchestra for a kids concert of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, Ravel’s beautiful “Mother Goose,” Copland’s stirring Old American Songs and music by Britten and Wagner. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 228-1353. 7:30 pm Friday, 2 pm Sunday, Oct. 15-16. $10-$90.
Oregon Ballet Theatre
Two classic ballets—both, in their own ways, about love—are reclassified on the double bill that opens Oregon Ballet Theatre’s season. Visiting choreographer Nicolo Fonte presents his vision of Petrouchka that, against the colorful backdrop of a Russian carnival, tells the sad tale of one puppet’s unrequited affections. OBT artistic director Christopher Stowell, meanwhile, offers his take on the gypsy romance Carmen. OBT’s orchestra plays Stravinsky and Bizet scores live at these two world premieres. A Fill Your Dance Card event. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 2225538. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 13-15. $29.15-$156.40, fees included.
Vertigo Dance Company
White Bird hosts the West Coast debut of Israel’s Vertigo Dance Company—not to be confused with the Canadian dance company O Vertigo—as it dances the North American premiere of the physically demanding ensemble piece Mana, Vessel of Light. Choreographed by company co-founder Noa Wertheim, Mana juxtaposes moments of quiet, swooping lyricism with waves of swiftly moving jumps and turns, set against a shifting light scheme and the silhouette of a large house. A Fill Your Dance Card event. Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 2484335. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 13-15. $26-$64.
For more Performance listings, visit
REVIEW
Oregon
The pioneering world-music/jazzfusion quartet is worthy of the name of the state it was born in four decades ago, as it proved at its last Aladdin appearance. Catch them now. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm Thursday, Oct. 13. $30.
PSU Symphony Orchestra
Only Mozart would have given a bassoon the top billing in a concerto featuring one of classical music’s prettiest melodies. The concert features another of his lovely concertos for flute and harp, and Rameau’s lively suite from his exotic Baroque opera-ballet, “The Gallant Indians.” Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 1620 SW Park Ave., 7253307. 8 pm Sunday, Oct. 16. $10.
Portland Baroque Orchestra
Susan Hamilton, of Scotland’s Dunedin Consort, makes her West Coast debut with the Orchestra, singing motets by Vivaldi, while PBO director Monica Huggett stars in a violin concerto by Giuseppe Tartini. First Baptist Church, 909 SW 11th Ave., 205-0715. 7:30 pm FridaySaturday, Oct. 14-15. $18-$53.
Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra
The Oregon Symphony cellist Nancy Ives guest stars in Edward Elgar’s famous autumnal Cello Concerto, and the orchestra plays Mahler’s “Blumine” and Sibelius’ relatively sunny Symphony No. 3. First United Methodist Church, 1838 SW Jefferson St., 234-4077. 7:30 pm Friday, Oct. 14. $10-$30.
DANCE Bobbevy’s Palace of Crystal
Performed by skilled local movers Richard Decker, Jessica Hightower and Keely McIntyre, this piece pits idealism and the desire for happiness against an uncaring reality. The physicality of Dernovsek’s choreography is set against an installation by Stein, video by artist John Bacone and original music by Ash Black Bufflo. The Mouth, Inside Zoomtopia, 810 SE Belmont St., brownpapertickets.com/event/193674. 8 pm FridaySunday, Oct. 14-16. $12-$15.
Northwest Dance Project
Northwest Dance Project offers its New Now Wow program, composed entirely of contemporary ballet world premieres from international choreographers Didy Veldman, Noam Gagnon and Pedro Dias. Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 1620 SW Park Ave. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, Oct. 14-15. $25-$39.
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Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
KEVIN JONES AND VICTOR MACK
GEM OF THE OCEAN (PORTLAND PLAYHOUSE) Having been evicted from its Northeast Portland home by the city—a neighbor complained that the crowds attending performances at the converted church were taking up all the street parking in the area—Portland Playhouse was forced to begin its fourth season in the unfamiliar territory of downtown’s World Trade Center. The move is unfortunate, given that August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, like most of his plays, takes place in a single room and would benefit from the warm intimacy of the church. Although director Brian Weaver’s production delivers several outstanding performances, it suffers from the scale of the venue. Gem of the Ocean, the first play in Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle and the only to feature an onstage appearance by Aunt Ester, the 285-year-old spiritual matriarch of Wilson’s world, takes place in 1906 in Ester’s home at 1839 Wylie Ave. The house, where Ester (Brenda E. Phillips) lives with her caretakers, Black Mary (Andrea White) and Eli (Victor Mack), is a sanctuary for the troubled, a beacon of stability in a time when slavery was still a living memory. Designer Daniel Meeker has represented it as a sprawling abstraction, a silhouette and an improbably tall staircase that make for long entrances and exits. The house is disturbed when Citizen Barlow (Vin Shambry), a young arrival from the South, arrives seeking redemption for stealing a bucket of nails. Another man was accused, and then drowned himself, setting off unrest among the city’s black millworkers, and Citizen needs his soul washed—events that provide a framework for Wilson’s usual long, idiomatically poetic interrogations of what it means to be black in America. The playwright is at the peak of his powers here, and Weaver’s cast does his incredible language justice: Phillips practically sings Ester’s evangelical orations; Kevyn Morrow’s initially jovial tone as the former slave and underground railroad conductor Solly Two Kings conceals a smoldering rage behind his tired eyes; and Kevin Jones, as the viciously entrepreneurial, patronizing policeman Caesar Wilks, who once shot a man for stealing a loaf of bread and declares the penal code of Pennsylvania his bible, is bright, cruel, resentful and possibly insane. It may take these performers a while to reach center stage, but it’s worth the wait. BEN WATERHOUSE.
This season’s August Wilson is the best yet.
SEE IT: 7:30 pm Wednesday and Friday, Oct. 12 and 14, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, at the World Trade Center Theatre, 121 SW Salmon St., 205-0715, portlandplayhouse.org. Closes Oct. 30. $15-$32.
VISUAL ARTS
OCT. 12-18
Raymond Meeks
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By RICHARD SPEER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit show information—including opening and closing dates, gallery address and phone number—at least two weeks in advance to: Visual Arts, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: rspeer@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115. Emailed press releases must be backed up by a faxed or printed copy.
SPECIAL EVENTS Shine a Light 2011
How do we think of a museum—as a stodgy repository for dusty relics or as a vital, integral element of the community that caters to hipsters as well as codgers? “Shine A Light 2011” posits the latter, and to that end offers an integrated, all-day-long series of multimedia exhibitions, set pieces and interactive happenings, complete with visual art, poetry, and less obvious activities such as square dancing and tattoo-ogling. The event is a partnership between the museum and PSU’s Art and Social Practice MFA program. The aim this year, as in years past, is to challenge outmoded ideas of what a museum is and is not. Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 226-2811, portlandartmuseum.org. 10 am-midnight Friday, Oct. 14. $15, or free with museum admission.
NOW SHOWING Backspace
The highlights of this three-person show are Emily Katz’s delicate yet assertive wall pieces in embroidered tulle. Katz has a fashion background, which she successfully exploits in this body of work. In Dreamscape, Children and Freedom, she depicts a falling figure as rapturous filigrees of thread on fabric, evoking the veins of marble and the intricacy of a spiderweb. 115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900, backspace.bz. Closes Oct. 30.
Horia Boboia
Boboia’s “I Am Sorry” is a series of painted diptychs placed around the perimeter of Nine Gallery’s boxy project space. The series is more literal but no less engaging than the artist’s previous forays into conceptual and video art. The leitmotif is counterposition: seemingly unrelated pictures situated side by side, challenging the viewer to make connections between the two. What do a foot covered with open sores and an upside-down writing desk have to do with one another? Why is the waxy, embalmed corpse of Vladimir Lenin dreaming of Bambi in a thought bubble? Other pieces are less inscrutable, such as Boboia’s grin-inducing depiction of a couple dancing aboard the Titanic, counterposed with an iceberg bearing the marquee from which the exhibition takes its name: “I AM SORRY.” Nine Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 227-7114, blueskygallery.org. Closes Oct. 30.
Bobbie Bronson
For pure gestural abandon coupled with judicious color-weighting and an invigorating sense of motion, it’s hard to beat the late Bonnie Bronson (1940-1990). This focused exhibition, The Early Years, features oil-on-canvas paintings and collages on paper from the era that followed on the heels of Abstract Expressionism. In the 1963vintage Untitled (White), Bronson uses impressive scale (the piece is nearly 6 feet high and 7 1/2 feet across) to express an explosion of impetuous energy, tempered by impeccable compositional instincts. Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417 NW 9th Ave., 224-0521, elizabethleach.com. Closes Nov. 19.
Chambers @ 916
The highlight of this group show, Connecting, is Eva Speer’s virtuosic Untitled (Black Sea). It depicts dark ocean waves in a near-photorealist style, the surface selectively eroded, betraying abstract swirls of bold-colored paint underneath. It is a jarringly beautiful effect: an abstract world lying underneath the “real” world. Speer is treading on metaphysical ground, making us question whether what we see and construe as fact might actually be only a thin membrane covering a much more complicated universe. 916 NW Flanders St., 227-9398, chambersgallery.com. Closes Oct. 22.
Sally Finch
Finch’s Weather Studies meticulously plot global climate data onto grids, assigning a different color to each time period of climatological measurement. In the midst of creating these compositions, the artist saw similarities to electrocardiogram printouts, suggesting a link between human respiration and nature’s own breathing in and breathing out over the eons. Finch’s work is both conceptually challenging and visually rapturous, a one-two punch all too rarely seen. Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis St., 222-1142. Closes Oct. 29.
Gregory Grenon
One of the Northwest’s iconic painters, Gregory Grenon uses a reverseglass technique to create distinctive figurative work in a deliberately naive style. This style is not for everyone. Grenon’s work tends to polarize viewers into “Love it!” or “Hate it!” camps. Stylistically, it has not evolved much over the years but has stayed reliably quirky. His new body of work, entitled Behavior, is the latest exhibition in his long association with the Laura Russo Gallery. Laura Russo Gallery, 805 Northwest 21st Ave., 226-2754, laurarusso.com. Closes Oct. 29.
F
The Seafoodishwife Restaurant Our famous Fish & Chips lunch! $6
Raymond Meeks turns lemons into lemonade in his bittersweet reverie on the collapse of the real-estate market. Meeks photographed his empty house in Hamilton, Mont., as it awaited theoretical buyers who did not materialize. The home foreclosed, but not before Meeks snapped this sad, inspired inventory of subtly deteriorating lath-and-plaster walls, chintzy electric-socket plates and busy floral wallpaper. Bathed in gorgeous light,
these prints are not so much architectural studies as they are portraits of dead dreams. Charles A. Hartman Fine Art, 134 NW 8th Ave., hartmanfineart. net. Closes Oct. 29.
Tadashi Ura
Nagasaki-born artist Tadashi Ura, also known as “Gleamix,” is a designer by trade but also works as a fine artist, primarily in watercolors. In this show, entitled Japanism, he presents contemporary reimaginings of traditional Asian forms: monkeys, elephants,
birds, zebras, leopards, lions, turtles and bulls. While Ura commands a sure, free-wristed technique, his paintings cling too closely to the time-honored forms from whence they sprang. This artist would do well to dispatch his considerable technique in the service of more contemporarily relevant subject matter. Compound Gallery, 107 NW 5th Ave., 796-2733, compoundgallery.com. Closes Oct. 31.
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REVIEW
DAMIEN GILLEY INFINITY GAMES No matter how the wavelike vicissitudes of the fairly radical concept, yet for all the miniaturization art world swell and trough as decades pass, artists of his trademark architectural vision, Gilley loses no keep reaching back to geometry. For Damien Gilley, finesse or inventiveness in these zesty curios. Using geometry beckons in 1980s-flavored architectonic a laser to etch fluorescent-colored acrylic mirrors, forms and forced perspective he has deployed in the he overlays shapes upon reflections of shapes, past in disciplined, highly creative installations in capturing, enrapturing and ultimately boggling the venues as disparate viewer’s eye. With as Worksound Galtheir inspiration lery, Pacific Northdrawn from the video west College of Art’s games and musicManuel Izquierdo video culture of the project space and the 1980s, the pieces Wieden + Kennedy seem to be stuck in Building. a DayGlo time warp Often, his where Tron is always works are site-speplaying on the VCR cific, spanning entire and “Mr. Roboto” walls or jutting out is on permanent i n t o t h e v i e w e r ’s loop on the cassette personal space via player. rhomboid pl a ne s. Gilley ’s use of Gilley ’s works are mirrors lends a sense many things—chalof infinite regression lenging, invigorating, as forms recede into downright trippy— space, while twisting but one thing they shapes that could are not is collectable. never exist in threeDAMIEN GILLEY: Apartment 5D Only a museum or dimensional reality well-funded nonplay games with the profit could endow or viewer’s brain. Works permanently acquire such as Apartment most of these gorgeous but unwieldy works. For 5D and Platformer look like Donald Judd’s Stack installation-centric artists who find themselves in trays crossed with M.C. Escher’s impossibly interthis bind, producing large-scale projects of this ilk locking shapes. The intricacy in these pieces and puts great lines on a CV but doesn’t put much cash in the mint-green fantasia, No Zone, 1983, points in the bank account. to ever-greater levels of obsessiveness and perfecLately, though, Gilley has been scaling his work tionism in this dynamic artist’s ongoing evolution. down. In Infinity Games, his show at the Indepen- Rock on, Mr. Roboto. RICHARD SPEER. dent, he offers a series of small, wall-based works that are purchasable and portable. They have frames SEE IT: The Independent, 530 NW 12th Ave., lovelake.org/the_independent.htm. Closes Oct. 29. and are meant to hang on walls. For Gilley, this is a
NEWS
Includes Old German Lager or soda! Tues – Fri , 11a – 3pm thru October dine in only
got a good tip? 5328 N. Lombard • 503-285-7150 Lunch & Dinner Tues – Fri • Sat 4 to 10 pm
call 503.445.1542 or email newshound wweek.com
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BOOKS
OCT. 12-18
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By WW STAFF. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit lecture or reading information at least two weeks in advance to: WORDS, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: words@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
THURSDAY, OCT. 13 Glen Chamberlain
Pushcart Prize-winning writer Chamberlain’s debut short-story collection Conjugations of the Verb To Be features 11 stories from her home of Montana. Annie Bloom’s Books, 7834 SW Capitol Highway, 2460053. 7 pm. Free.
Northwest Indian Storytelling Festival
Nov. 2, 2011
Native-American storytellers from the Pacific Northwest will gather to share stories around this year’s theme of “indigenous harvest and food gathering.” “Master tellers” will talk each evening, with emerging tribal tellers speaking at the Sunday matinee. Portland State University Native American Student and Community Center, 710 SW Jackson St., wisdomoftheelders.org. 7 pm Thursday-Saturday and 1 pm Sunday, Oct. 13-16. Sliding scale, suggested donation of $5-$20.
FRIDAY, OCT. 14 The Man Who Couldn’t Eat
Jon Reiner is a food writer who was told he could no longer eat. After Crohn’s disease left him with an internal wound, Reiner lost his taste buds and ability to feel hunger or satiation, and had to be fed intrave-
nously for three months. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.
SUNDAY, OCT. 16 Judith Barrington
The Mountain Writers Series is hosting a workshop with Portland poet and memoirist Judith Barrington on how to “make a memoir truly memorable.” Register at mountainwriters.org. 23 Sandy Gallery, 623 NE 23rd Ave., 927-4409. Workshop 1-5 pm. $150.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex, The Virgin Suicides) finally released a new novel. The Marriage Plot is about an Austen-loving college student in the 1980s who falls in love with a boy from Portland. Oh dear, that never ends well. Tickets are available at the Bagdad Theater, the Crystal Ballroom, CascadeTickets. com, or by phone at 855-227-8499. Bagdad Theater & Pub, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 236-9234. 7 pm. $28 includes admission and a copy of The Marriage Plot.
A Historic Afternoon With Gov. Barbara Roberts
Oregon’s first female governor, Barbara Roberts, reads from and signs copies of her new autobi-
ography, Up the Capitol Steps. Juicy political gossip? Yes, please. Portland State University, Hoffman Hall, 1825 SW Broadway, 725-3000. 2 pm. Free.
Floyd Skloot
Portland-based poet, novelist and memoirist Floyd Skloot publishes his first short-story collection, Cream of Kohlrabi. Skloot has won three Pushcart Prizes, a Pen USA Literary Award, two Pacific Northwest Book Awards, an Independent Publishers Book Award and two Oregon Book Awards. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.
TUESDAY, OCT. 18 Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club author and Portlander Chuck Palahniuk’s latest novel, Damned, is narrated by a 13-yearold girl in hell. Like, literal Hell, not the standard teenage hell we all lived through. Tickets available at the Bagdad Theater, the Crystal Ballroom, CascadeTickets.com, or by phone at 855-227-8499. Bagdad Theater & Pub, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 7 pm. $24.95 includes admission and a copy of Damned.
Duff McKagan
Former Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan pens the requisite, sobered-up rock-star memoir: drugs, booze, business school and Benny Urquidez. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.
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REVIEW
VERNOR VINGE THE CHILDREN OF THE SKY Almost two decades have elapsed since Vernor Qeng Ho caste, had died invoking something Vinge won the Hugo Award for his epic 1992 called the Countermeasure to save Tines World space opera, A Fire Upon the Deep. Now he from the Blight, an interstellar computer intelreturns to Tines World with a sequel, The Chil- ligence ravaging civilizations across the galaxy. dren of the Sky (Tor, 444 pages, $25.99), to pick Since the Milky Way is divided into zones where up the story of Ravna, the orphans Jefri and faster-than-light space travel and communicaJohanna, and the 150 or so tion are impossible closer to children left in coldsleep after the galactic core, the Countertheir colony ship crash-landed measure vastly expanded the on the planet in the earlier galaxy’s “Slow Zone” to include book. Tines World and trap the The “Children of the Sky,” oncoming Blighter fleet some sad to say, are growing up 30 light years away. into the Adults Stuck on the Now Ravna, the only adult Ground. human left on Tines World, Much of the appeal of the has maybe a few centuries to first novel lay in its sheer raise the planet out of mediscope. A Fire Upon the Deep evalism before the Blighter ranged across half the Milky fleet recovers and attacks at Way galaxy. The Children of the near-light speeds. Meanwhile, Sky spans barely half a planet. the traitor pack Vendacious And despite some captivating escapes and joins forces with fauna, including the doglike Tycoon; someone steals the Tines who exhibit human“radio cloaks” that dangerously level intelligence and can empower packs to communiA Hugo Award-winning communicate telepathically cate telepathically over long novelist goes to the dogs. when formed into packs, Tines distances; and a “Denier” cult, World is not sufficiently differwhich casts doubt on the threat ent from Earth. the Blight poses to humanity, is The planet has arctic and tropical regions gaining strength among the Children. as well as the four usual seasons, meaning it The political intrigue, personal betrayal revolves like Earth on a tilted axis as it orbits its and twisting plot show promise, but Vinge sun. The Tines’ Domain, ruled by a queen pack handles them with about as much sophisticanamed Woodcarver, is located in the western tion as a Heinlein young adult novel. Compared portion of a North America-like continent with to most of his other work, this is Tine food. an East Coast run by a crazy wheeler-dealer pack MATTHEW BUCKINGHAM. of Tines named Tycoon, a sort of canine Sam READ: Vernor Vinge visits Powell’s Books Walton with obsessive-compulsive disorder. at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills When last we left our heroes, Ravna’s lover, Blvd., Beaverton, 226-4681. 7 pm Saturday, Pham Nuwen, a reconstructed warrior of the Oct. 15. Free. 44
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Editor: AARON MESH. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, send screening information at least two weeks in advance to Screen, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: amesh@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
3
NEW
77 Once upon a time—my junior year in college, the fall of 2001, about 15 minutes into The Princess and the Warrior—I believed Tom Tykwer was a young European master to rival Almodovar and Jeunet. But since Princess’ unforgettable tracheotomy-with-a-drinking-straw scene, the Run Lola Run director has seemed increasingly short of breath, straining for capricious conceits while losing basic meter. (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer was a sui generis fiasco, while The International was generically panned.) His Hollywood prospects temporarily derailed, Tykwer has done what any self-respecting German artist would, making a small movie about a threesome. The new work still packs plenty of baroque flourishes, both lovely (an opening visual metaphor using telephone lines) and needlessly icky (split-screen play-by-play of the surgical removal of a testicle). But the plot of 3—which hinges on the remote coincidence of a longtime couple (Sophie Rois and Sebastian Schipper) having simultaneous, independent affairs with the same bisexual charmer (Devid Striesow) who’s a dead ringer for Neil Patrick Harris—manages room for both unaffected relationships and emotional gymnastics that put the lie to the pat convolutions of Crazy, Stupid, Love. Midway through 3, a teenager explains a video game to his clueless dad: “Just start hurling color.” That’s still Tykwer’s default mode (this is a movie that concludes at the Body Worlds exhibit), but he’s learned how to slow down and make some things stick. Happy endings for everybody! AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
50/50
57 So far as I know, there’s been one genuinely funny movie about cancer, and it is Mike Nichols’ HBO adaptation of Margaret Edson’s Wit—a play where the humor, as withering as a chemo round, annihilates all defenses, leaving only emotions pure enough to repeatedly reduce this viewer to racking sobs. Wit is art confronting death. 50/50 is entertainment about sickness. Despite its title referring to the hero’s odds of survival, the movie feels hesitant to explore the implications that one character might soon vanish from the company of all others. It’s skittish, even—as uncomfortable as Bryce Dallas Howard as oncology patient Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s girlfriend, who would rather wait in the parking lot for four hours than venture into a hospital. 50/50 goes in the building, obviously, but it never really faces what happens there. It has jokes about scamming to get your dick sucked and jokes about hitting the bong—the same jokes as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, basically, but delivered in a hush, like throwing a 4/20 party next to a funeral home. Gordon-Levitt is an electric actor (he single-handedly elevated Hesher out of mediocrity into something gloriously bizarre), so it is strange to see him subdued into a kind of inertia: a blankness that has something to do with denial, but more to do with the lack of a script. The entire project— scripted by Will Reiser and directed by Jonathan Levine—feels compulsory and not fully thought through. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub.
Abduction
Taylor Lautner discovers intrigue about his real parents, who are probably not wolves, but maybe. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Oak Grove, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Evergreen, Wilsonville, Sandy. NEW
Bang Bang
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A drama about Asian-American teens trapped in
gangs. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Thursday, Oct. 13.
Contagion
64 Examining what would happen if the grim prophecies of a global swine flu-like epidemic had come true, Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion takes great pains to show the excruciatingly complicated and frustrating lengths the global scientific community would go to in an effort to vaccinate a crumbling world. It’s a fascinating concept, and in the hands of such a meticulous director as Soderbergh, whose gift for juggling dozens of characters and plotlines can explode off the screen, Contagion could have been among the best medical freakouts in ages. That diagnosis, sadly, is far from accurate. Soderbergh trains his lens on a global group of scientists/A-listers (among them Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law and Elliott Gould) who work endlessly in labs as the disease escalates, leaving a pile of dead Oscar winners and lab monkeys in its path (because you can’t make an outbreak flick without at least a few monkeys, apparently). Trouble is, Soderbergh is so concerned with offering a slick portrait of jargony scientific methodology and bureaucratic squabbling that he all but forgets the human element, even as citizens the world over succumb to scavenging and paranoia. Matt Damon adds some muchneeded human heft as the widower of Gwyneth Paltrow’s patient zero, and Winslet is reliably good as a committed Centers for Disease Control worker. But scratch Soderbergh’s name off the credits and sub in actors like Powers Boothe, Corbin Bernsen, Anne Heche and Bronson Pinchot, and Contagion would simply be a standard-issue TV movie of the week. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Forest, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Fox Tower, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Tigard, Wilsonville, 99 West Drive-In.
Courageous
A drama about cops finding God. Not screened for Portland critics, who do not have a good track record with cops or God. PG-13. Bridgeport.
Crazy, Stupid, Love
70 Where Friends With Benefits
employed Justin Timberlake as an art director at GQ, this picture features Ryan Gosling as a walking issue of Esquire—the one with the “Am I a Man?” quiz on page 170. You can practically smell his cologne ads. His performance is the Situation with a better wardrobe and a bigger vocabulary, and his situation is that he’s being a show pony: the real actor who returns to light entertainment again in an unlikely role. Still, he’s fun (my single favorite shot in Crazy, Stupid, Love is Jacob doing the crossword on the back of a cereal box during the requisite “everybody’s thinking” montage), and he has great chemistry with eventual bravadomelting love interest Emma Stone, just as Steve Carell develops an easy rhythm with Julianne Moore. PG-13. AARON MESH. CineMagic, Hollywood Theatre, Bridgeport, Fox Tower. NEW
Crime After Crime
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A documentary about the legal struggle to free a woman imprisoned for decades for the murder of her abusive husband. Cinema 21. 7 pm Wednesday, Oct. 12.
The Debt
John Madden’s The Debt feels like a talented but glib college student trying to pass a modern European history exam with an essay on the repercussions of the Holocaust and the founding of Israel—it volunteers answers, but has no feeling for the questions it raises. The film’s confusion is not merely thematic; it also bungles at the most basic levels. Remaking an Israeli film, Ha-Hov, Madden positions Helen
Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciarán Hinds as aging former Mossad agents, then rewinds to their fateful 1966 mission in East Berlin—but he casts two young men (Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas) who could each be young versions of either Wilkinson or Hinds. PG-13. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters. NEW Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
Andy Lau investigates spontaneous combustion in imperial China. Look for a review on wweek.com. PG-13. Fox Tower.
Dolphin Tale 3D
58 Dolphin Tale is like Free Willy set in
the age of the Internet. The cetacean sensation here is Winter, an injured dolphin who loses her tail in an accident and is lucky enough to garner a ragtag team of marine somethingor-others (Morgan Freeman, Harry Connick Jr.) who make it their mission to fix her by attaching a prosthetic fin. But unlike the mostly unfettered Free Willy, many major themes of our complicated age are involved in Dolphin Tale: war, hurricanes, debt, disability, corporate buyouts, major loss. The kids are younger than our hero in Free Willy (and they look like siblings, making the mild flirtation I sensed between them throughout kind of creepy) but they act like teenagers. Perhaps this is an unintentional nod to how the Internet is changing what it’s like to be a kid (Wikipedia makes a cameo) or maybe I’m just being nostalgic for a time when 11-year-olds didn’t carry cell phones, organize massive charity events, say oddly witty things to their parents or have extremely adult-sized conversations with their pint-sized friends. Despite its cheesiness (and there’s no shortage of that, musical montages and all) Dolphin Tale has a great message at its core, and really, isn’t that what all those overactive, overstimulated kids need?. PG. MAGGIE SUMMERS. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
Dream House
Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz move into a house that once sipped a little red rum, if you know what we mean. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Living Room Theaters, Oak Grove, Cinema 99, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Sandy.
Drive
95 Drive, the luxurious new L.A. noir
from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, is the most brutally antisocial movie of the year. It is also the most romantic—but it is primarily spellbound by the romance of isolation. It is also exhilarating filmmaking, from soup to swollen nuts. It contains half a dozen white-knuckle action sequences— starting with a Ryan Gosling robbery getaway timed to the final buzzer of an L.A. Clippers game—yet its closest relative is the lightheaded, restrained eroticism of Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love. In this context, the relentless carnage of Drive’s second half makes a sick kind of sense: It is a movie about men who only know how to show loyalty and care by staving in the skulls of other men. Winding Refn’s last film, Valhalla Rising, featured vikings disemboweling each other by hand, and the characters here are not much more civilized, though they do have more cosmopolitan surroundings, smearing each other across some handsomely paneled elevator interiors. It is some kind of advancement, I suppose, that while the characters speak after very long pauses, they have moved past grunts. It is macho, self-pitying poppycock, and it engrossed and moved me like no other picture I’ve seen this year. And I have a sliver of justification: The entire history of noir, stretching back to The Maltese Falcon through Drive’s obvious influences like Walter Hill’s The Driver and Michael Mann’s Thief, is a lot of macho, self-pitying poppycock. That does not diminish the power of those movies. If Drive, a deliberate throwback, belongs in their company, it is because it is unreservedly com-
mitted to the decadent masochism of its fantasy. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, CineMagic, Bridgeport, City Center, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Tigard. NEW
The Economics of Happiness
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A documentary promotes localization. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Friday, Oct. 14.
El Bulli: Cooking in Progress
A documentary about Ferran Adrià and his extraordinary restaurant in Spain. Living Room Theaters. NEW
En Route Featuring Todd Haynes
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] The
Portland director introduces two of his favorite films: Performance and Vertigo. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Saturday, Oct. 15. NEW
Familia
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] The Voices in Action: Human Rights on Film series continues with a documentary on a Peruvian mother working in Spain. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Wednesday, Oct. 12. NEW
Footloose
Everybody cut. Everybody cut. Everybody cut. Everybody cut. The
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REVIEW M U R R AY C L O S E
MOVIES
IT’S A BIRD! IT’S A PLANE!: It’s Owen Wilson, Steve Martin and Jack Black.
THE BIG YEAR The existence of The Big Year is a sign of something diseased and possibly irreparable in our society. Watching it I felt, for the first time this month, a distinct urge to occupy something. This is a movie that feels like it was made as a gesture of scornful confidence in the bovine acquiescence of the American audience: “These people are so stupid and docile that we can literally show them pictures of movie stars watching birds for nearly two hours and they will not mind.” Halfway through the comedy, I began to laugh for the first time—a kind of hysterical, disgusted cackling, as I realized we had been observing two minutes of people riding bicycles over tundra in search of a bird, then turning their bicycles around and riding in the other direction because the bird had moved, and this was supposed to be a galvanizing adventure. You could tell because there was a Coldplay song blaring. This is why Robespierre started the public executions. By now, it should not come as a news bulletin that Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Steve Martin are talented comedians who are also shameless paycheck whores. Black is debased the most by The Big Year: Denuded of all mischief and masculinity, he seems like a Hummel figurine crafted from Play-Doh. His heartburning arc—he makes a friend (Martin), he talks to a girl (Rashida Jones), he connects with his father (Brian Dennehy, channeling a fraction of my disgust)—is molded around a calendar-spanning contest to see who can identify the most avian species by traveling across the planet. His rival, incarnated with a bare minimum of attendance by Wilson, is a record-holder named Kenny Bostick. He is referenced with envy by his competitors simply as “Bostick”—and it is a measure of how emotionally indifferent this movie is that, in the crucial moment when he abandons his wife (Rosamund Pike) at a fertility clinic to seek an owl, she puts her head in her hands and moans, “Bostick.” Like many Hollywood movies about jobs and hobbies—and especially movies helmed by director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada, Marley & Me)—The Big Year upholds the strange platitude that there are far more important things in the world than the thing the movie is ostensibly about. Birding does not really matter. What matters is family. Well then, why not make a movie about these people’s fucking families? The Big Year gives the impression of having been assembled by wealthy, isolated robots trying to imagine human contact. This may not be so far from the truth. PG. AARON MESH.
Who watches the birdwatchers?
9 SEE IT. The Big Year opens Friday at Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Sherwood, Tigard and Wilsonville.
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The Guard
42 Brendan Gleeson has impossible features. He appears to have been born in the wrong aspect ratio, with a visage formatted to fit old televisions, a noggin incompatible with our wide screens. His face, or so it seems, must be stretched and pummeled like pink taffy to conform to the 16:9 standard, and it’s almost sadistically compelling to watch Gleeson work with his own strange packaging. Writerdirector John Michael McDonagh (whose brother Martin used Gleeson in In Bruges, a film John should have studied more carefully) is lucky to have him in The Guard, for absent the big man’s wadded physicality, there would be little worth looking at here. Gleeson stars as an adorably racist police officer who reluctantly teams with a strait-laced FBI agent (Don Cheadle, very nearly comatose) to foil a trio of drug traffickers who discuss Nietzsche when they’re not killing people, because like much of the rest of The Guard, these bad guys seem to have escaped through a hole in the bottom of Tarantino’s barrel. R. CHRIS STAMM. Hollywood Theatre, Fox Tower, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub.
The Help
86 Give a white male director a
script about Southern racism and nine times out of 10 he’ll hand you back the story of an enlightened sports team wrapped in a flashy soundtrack. Director Tate Taylor manages to break this mold in his adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel, The Help. Set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Miss., the film focuses on young, wealthy white mothers and their maltreatment of the black maids who serve them. Emma Stone plays Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, an aspiring writer whose childhood friends have grown up to resemble rabidly racist hybrids of the Plastics and the Stepford Wives. The Help doesn’t reward its viewers with a championship trophy. Instead, the film presents the reality of Southern life in the 1960s as something that takes much more than a high-school squad to overcome. PG-13. SHAE HEALEY. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Lake Twin, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Fox Tower, Lloyd Mall, Sherwood, 99 West Drive-In.
The Ides of March
83 Probably a bit hysterical in its
bleakness—maybe that’s a predictable outcome of a proudly liberal filmmaker like George Clooney dealing with the concessions of a Democratic POTUS. But the disillusionment in Ides has an evangelical fervor: This movie is going to find your Shepard Fairey poster and set it on fire. It’s like an anti-Bus Project. That it corrodes so effectively is thanks to Clooney communicating the romance of the campaign trail, which is basically summer camp for drizzle-loving workaholic wonks. Ryan Gosling, continuing his prolific year of playing hyper-aggressive grinners, is the media-strategy guru for Democratic presidential front-runner Mike Morris (Clooney). The early stretches of the movie have the wish-fulfillment and intellectual energy of Aaron Sorkin: The banter between Gosling and intern Evan Rachel Wood has the particular energy of two people aroused by their own smarts. This makes it all the more flooring when players reveal their primary colors. The point of The Ides of March—a very “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” kind of moral— is that every social advancement is built on the back of an unknown, innocent victim. It’s an observation difficult for an Oregon progressive to deny, and Clooney’s direction moves the chamber piece at such a ruthless pace that objection is impossible. But the pessimism makes this more of a horror movie than a social analysis. It is a very good horror movie, and its savage iconoclasm is bracing. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas,
Eastport, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Sherwood, Tigard.
In a Lonely Place
NEW
88 [THREE NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL]
“The Bogart suspense picture with the surprise finish,” promises the mendacious poster for this dark gem by Nicholas Ray. At least they got the actor right. As for suspense, it’s virtually nonexistent. And the ending is only surprising if you are expecting a surprise. In a Lonely Place begins in the standard noir mode, with the midnight strangling of a bright-eyed Hollywood naif who spent her few final minutes on earth with cantankerous screenwriter Dixon Steele (Bogart). Luckily for Dix, his svelte neighbor Laurel Gray (a glowing Gloria Grahame) saw the doomed dame leave Dix’s apartment alone, so there’s little doubt Dix is innocent. There’s also little doubt Dix is a world-class dick. He’s a brawler with a hot head and a cold heart—Laurel, of course, falls head over heels—and Bogart digs into the bastard with that famous brow furrowed so intensely it looks like the accordioned hood of a wrecked Packard. This is the Bogie show, dammit, and Ray knows it. So the mystery falls away, and Laurel falls into Dix, and Ray zeroes in on the darkness at the center of Dix, in the heart of Bogart, at the edges of our more morbid moments, and it is, in fact, very lonely there. CHRIS STAMM. 5th Avenue Cinema. 7 and 9:30 pm FridaySaturday, Oct. 14-15. 3 pm Sunday, Oct. 16.
Killer Elite
33 A flat tire of an action movie, flopping and scraping across the wide screen, Killer Elite is, contrary to its title, astonishingly mediocre. It is supposedly based on the real-life covert operations of mercenaries against the far-right British paramilitary, but its slew of tough-guy proverbs feels like the publishers of Soldier of Fortune printing an issue of Poor Richard’s Almanack. Poor Jason Statham mumbles a lot of these, poor Clive Owen looks nearly aghast at his own contribution, and poor Robert De Niro finds a more efficient way to accomplish his usual AWOL routine, getting held hostage by a sheik and disappearing from most of the picture. I sincerely contemplated leaving as well, but figured I might as well stick around to see how the supporting characters got bumped off—the gruesome ends of these creepy chaps are the movie’s only real point of interest. Well, Statham does win a fight while strapped to a chair, Rodney Afif gives a performance as the sheik that recalls the tacky Middle Eastern stereotypes of 1950s cinema, and there are a multitude of mustaches that suggest the Village People would have loved the British Secret Intelligence Service—if they could withstand the clichés. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Forest, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Fox Tower, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Sherwood, Tigard.
lation, Paris isn’t about Paris in the way Allen’s classic New York films were about the experience of actually being in New York. It’s more about the idea of Paris, and really the idea of any time and place that aren’t our own. Owen Wilson, convincingly stepping into the “Woody Allen role,” stars as Gil Pender, a screenwriter and selfdescribed “Hollywood hack” who thinks of himself as a novelist born in the wrong era. On vacation in Paris, he wanders into the streets one night and tipsily stumbles upon a rip in the space-time continuum that transports him to the 1920s to party with his literary idols: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. It’s a fairy tale for lit majors, and Allen’s best work in years. That said, calling Paris a true return to form for Allen after the past decade’s mixed bag is an exaggeration. It’s more of a charming trifle. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Fox Tower.
Moneyball
90 If the dehydrated poetry of
sports-page chatter fails to tickle you even a little bit, I can almost guarantee Moneyball will leave you cold. For although director Bennett Miller (Capote) and his elite writing team (Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian) pad Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) with paternal longings and past defeats, there’s not a whole lot of squishy human interest to dig into here. This is a movie about baseball and the obsessed men who devote their lives to it. Make no mistake: There is heart in Moneyball, but it’s the part of the heart that swells at the sight of numbers on the back of a Topps card and breaks beneath tacky banners commemorating past championships. Mercifully short on baroque re-enactments of pivotal match-ups and pandering locker-room banter, Miller’s uptown update of Major League is almost wholly devoted to the front offices and underground clubhouses in which the game behind the game is played. The swift, captivating first half of Moneyball finds Beane, the sort of jocular ex-jock who fears stillness, failing at his thankless mission before teaming up with math geek Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), whose righteous faith in certain overlooked statistics convinces Beane to field a team of ostensibly mediocre has-beens and never-weres. The subsequent ups and downs of the 162-game season register as last-minute trades, squabbles with scouts, klatches with coaches and various other verbal maneuvers conducted in windowless rooms filled with cheap furniture. Pitt, perhaps the most orally fixated actor not employed by Vivid Video, chews his way through these assignations. Maybe we need the reminder: Sometimes it’s the stuff we don’t see that counts. And so: Let’s go, Oakland! PG-13. CHRIS STAMM. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Lake Twin, Moreland, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy. NEW
Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie
The Lion King 3D
It means “no worries,” except for that thing about to POKE YOU IN THE EYE. G. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, BIGFOOT EXPERTS ATTENDING] A documentary about Ohio men who care very much about Bigfoot. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Monday, Oct. 17. Cryptozoologists will answer questions after the screening.
Love Crime
The Oregonian
Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier fight for corporate power. Living Room Theaters. NEW
Lovestorming (No Controles)
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY] A comedy about a man trying to woo his ex-girlfriend while waiting for a flight. Part of the Festival of New Spanish Cinema. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 4:30 pm Saturday and 7 pm Sunday, Oct. 15-16.
Midnight in Paris
77 Sorry to break it to you, New
York, but Woody Allen is cheating on you. He’s had trysts in the past, but in Midnight in Paris his flirtation with the City of Light blossoms into a full-blown affair. If it’s any conso-
REVIEW VA R I A N C E F I L M S
remake wasn’t screened for critics by WW press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. PG-13. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
MOVIES
55 [ONE WEEK ONLY] Using a ’70s horror aesthetic, this flick takes us back to a time when handheld cameras and uneven audio were not only the norm but necessary in order to follow a haunted farm-dweller who escapes a violent relationship and goes on a dark odyssey through her soul—which looks uncannily like the forests of Oregon. Enigmatic clues about her mysterious “accident” are provided by roadside crones and campers who speak in riddles, and graphic intimations of mortality punctuate every odd encounter the Oregonian has with other (ostensibly living) souls as she flashes back to images of her own downfall. But tired tropes like symbolic rooms and
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ROLE MODEL: Clarence Reid makes a friend.
THE WEIRD WORLD OF BLOWFLY In contemplating Clarence Reid’s career touring the world as septuagenarian soul singer/ rap inventor/pussy lover Blowfly, it’s hard not to think of a tired old circus lion. Occasionally he roars, but more often he sleeps and eats. Reid’s fate seems well beyond his control, but as long as there are stages, someone will keep trotting him out onto them—in full glittery superhero get-up—for puzzled audiences who have a vague curiosity about the living legend growling obscenities before them. Also, much like a lion, he really needs someone to trim his claws—you can hear Reid’s comically long, yellow fingernails tap against piano keys when he plays. It’s pretty gross. Reid—an underground soul/rap legend who has been releasing raunchy, satirical songs for over 40 years—would probably enjoy that last critique. In the film, when his young collaborator Otto von Schirach tells him, “You were disgusting” after a performance of the duo’s Egyptian-themed song, “Mummy Fucker,” Reid just smiles warmly and thanks him for the compliment. It’s one of many tender-via-twisted moments that make The Weird World of Blowfly an unexpectedly feel-good affair (others include a genuinely haunting rendition of his R. Kelly send-up, “I Believe My Dick Can Fly,” and a shot of Reid playfully serenading a nurse with a song about syphilis). It can’t all be warm and fuzzy. The Weird World of Blowfly’s tour documentary elements are filled with predictable misfortune: Reid’s management is disorganized, his shows are under-attended (especially in Eugene) and the band only makes money on its occasional trips to Europe, where it must endure taunting and middle fingers from hundreds of disappointed teenage metal fans. While director Jonathan Furmanski steers us primarily along the bumpy road of Blowfly’s present tense, it’s his historical reflections that make the film worth watching. The man himself is a fascinating enigma. Interviews with Reid’s ex-wives, ex-girlfriends and children—especially his well-spoken and forgiving daughter, former WNBA player Tracy Reid—are as close as we can get to understanding the man’s thought process. Many questions, including the central one—why did Reid leave a relatively successful singing and songwriting career to sing tunes like “Shitting On the Dock of the Bay” and “Spermy Night in Georgia” as his full-time gig?—remain unanswered. But then Reid seems to get a kick out of his contradictions. Early in the movie, we are shocked to see the godfather of filth flipping through the tattered pages of a well-worn travel Bible (the dirtiest book of all, he insists) while declaring his faith in God. But when he’s asked later if he’ll be headed to heaven or hell, Reid—or, rather, Blowfly—decides to roar. “Ah, I wouldn’t give a fuck,” he laughs. “If they send me to hell, they’ll be making a huge mistake.” CASEY JARMAN. The dirty old man in winter.
81 SEE IT: The Weird World of Blowfly screens at the Hollywood Theatre at 9:15 pm Sunday-Thursday, Oct. 16-20.
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MOVIES
OCT. 12 - 18 N E W YO R K E R F I L M S
cackling choirs of women derail any mystery the film succeeds in creating. Despite the quaint retro feel, it all comes off as clunky and poorly thought out; not so much an homage to the ’70s horror genre, but a contender for a film best left forgotten in that era. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Clinton Street Theater. 9 pm Friday-Wednesday, Oct. 14-19. NEW Organ Grinders: The Cameraman’s Revenge
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, LIVE ORGAN SOUNDTRACK] Filmusik expands its range to silent-era organ tunes, this time with a 1911 Russian stopmotion film animating dead insect bodies. We repeat: a live organ soundtrack to a 100-year-old movie with dead beetles walking around. Even without seeing this, we recommend it. Hollywood Theatre. 9:30 pm Friday, Oct. 14.
Real Steel
WWEEK.COM “A MASTERPIECE!” -RICHARD CORLISS, TIME
“Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon meets Sherlock Holmes,
only a lot more fun.” -NEW YORK MAGAZINE A TSUI HARK FILM
Exclusive Engagement Starts Friday, October 14
REGAL CINEMAS FOX
TOWER STADIUM 10 Portland (800) FANDANGO #327
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Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
WILLAMETTE WEEK
63 Real Steel is fundamentally a bad movie—obnoxious, incoherent and sloppy—resembling nothing so much as some ’90s summer family-film commodity fabricated to sell toys: Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, specifically. Somehow this also makes it seem like a more innocent movie, or at least reminds me of a time when I was more innocent about movies. Most kiddie blockbusters have become cripplingly wised up and knowing. Real Steel knows nothing. We open in the backwaters of the unsanctioned robot-boxing circuit, where Hugh Jackman’s joystick cornerman, Charlie, has been reduced to pitting his last tin palooka against a rodeo steer. I cherished a fleeting hope that Real Steel would continue in this Hemingwayesque bullfighting vein and become a Robot Death in the Afternoon, but nah. Since Real Steel is directed by the Other Shawn Levy (the one who isn’t an Oregonian critic), it is bound to have severe bugs. The malfunction this time is the arrival of Charlie’s son Max, a mouthy moppet played by Dakota Goyo, who bears several regrettable similarities to Jake Lloyd in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The kid’s mother has died in circumstances the movie takes pains never to explain (though Real Steel is 20 times funnier if you imagine she was killed by robots), and thus begins a tedious fatherson bonding plot. This aspect is only bearable because of Jackman, who finds a groove where violence becomes a joyful two-step. PG-13. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
Restless
56 Gus Van Sant’s new movie is not nearly the debacle promised by the cruel buzz out of Cannes; instead, it is a graceful, scrupulously crafted film. But it is also a film that did not need to be made. It is about a boy who likes to attend funerals falling in love with a girl with a brain tumor, and how they are aided in their acceptance of her fate by the ghost of a kamikaze pilot. This synopsis should have been enough to end the pitch meeting. The script, by Jason Lew, does not deviate from this premise, or advance it, really: It is a thicket of adolescent bathos about dying young, seasoned with its own distinctive, ghoulish morbidity. Yet the movie is not exactly a bad movie—and I’m not just saying that in some fit of memorial-service etiquette. Van Sant and cinematographer Harris Savides shot in Portland during the brief autumn window—we’re entering it now— when the remaining direct sunlight nearly stings. This is not incidental to Restless’ effect: To the degree that it works, it is because first love almost always has a fleeting life, and feels more precious for its brevity. The restrained performances also help: Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper (a chip off dad Dennis’ block) are both touching because they are so matter of fact, while Ryo
WE WERE HERE Kase turns the ghost-pilot conceit into a tangible character. Still, there is not much about Restless that’s surprising—other than it being the first teenage romance to feature a Nagasaki atom-bomb montage. PG13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
17 In quick cuts of bright green and earthy brown and pure white flashing teeth, the opening scene makes a false promise: These motherfucking apes are going to get their revenge and it’s going to be awesome. OK, so the apes—or the Children of the Apes, anyway—do get a bit of revenge. But 105 minutes later, very little awesomeness has come to pass: just a lot of stiff, hammy lines from central beefcake James Franco and 90 million dollars’ worth of underwhelming action scenes you’ve already seen (assuming you’ve been to one of these overblown summer blockbusters before). I’ve seen episodes of Lassie that made me ponder the humananimal relationship more than Rise did, and in fact this whole shit show reminded me more of Homeward Bound than it did of the 1968 Apes film that started it all. PG-13. CASEY JARMAN. 99 Indoor Twin, Lloyd Mall.
Senna
65 Like the Formula One racecar driver it profiles, this documentary tests the limits: Ayrton Senna pushed how fast his car could go, and Senna lives on the edge of alienating those unfamiliar with his sport. Anybody more fascinated than I with F1 car racing—anybody who has watched an entire race, say—is likely to take a good deal more pleasure from the movie than I did, though by the end of the thing I was no longer actively annoyed by the engines whining like mechanical mosquitoes. Director Asif Kapadia’s work is on par with other ESPN Films releases (which is to say it’s very good), and there’s a lot of tense footage from inside drivers’ meetings before controversial Japanese Grand Prix races. The footage from cockpit cameras is alarming, especially as you begin to sense it will inevitably precede a fatality, and Senna suggests that racing is as the poet described life: first boredom, then fear. PG13. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
NEW
Shredtober Film Festival
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Two snowboarding movies for $3. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Thursday, Oct. 13. NEW
The Thing
The second remake of The Thing From Another World, once again set in Antarctica. Not screened for critics by WW press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. R. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
Tucker & Dale vs. Evil
65 Even the best horror comedies
are essentially one-joke ponies. What separates the Shaun of the Deads from the Stan Helsings is how they use those jokes as a springboard into the unconventional. While the latest slapstick-and-squibs offering, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, is no Shaun, it manages to amuse with a clever, though redundant, revision of hicksploitation/slasher fare. The joke is that a group of dopey college archetypes encounters rednecks Tucker (Serenity’s Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Jack Black clone Tyler Labine) while camping and immediately suspects them of being backwoods cannibals. They’re actually beer-swilling pacifists renovating Dale’s cabin. But when the ’billies rescue a coed (Katrina Bowden) from drowning and take her back to the cabin, the kids launch an increasingly violent rescue mission and systematically kill themselves in gruesome accidents (like falling into wood chippers). It’s a funny idea— particularly when the heroes begin to hypothesize about the property’s mortality rate—but the movie, as these things often do, begins to take itself too seriously in the final act. Still, Tudyk and Labine are great company, and long after the premise has become stale, the easy likability of the titular characters, paired with ample gore, lends Tucker & Dale instant cult-movie cred. R. AP KRYZA. Hollywood Theatre. NEW
Vigilante Vigilante
73 [ONE WEEK ONLY] Vigilante
Vigilante: The Battle for Expression plays out like a bizarro-world inversion of Exit Through the Gift Shop, with the Banksy role filled by an anti-graffiti advocate filmed by people who hate his guts. A companion piece to Matt McCormick’s tongue-in-cheek The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal, Vigilante is a kinetic, hysterical and captivating film contrasting those who create elaborate street art and the “buffers” who seek to eliminate the blight. Director Max Good’s movie focuses on three very different “vigilantes”: an L.A. yahoo who sees cleaning as a game, a borderline psychotic veteran in New Orleans, and an elderly Berkeley man who wanders the streets covering tags and picking up litter while resembling Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. Their stories are counterbalanced by artists and academics who see the buffers as mufflers of grass-roots expression, and who themselves become prolific taggers in haphazardly covering the art with blotchy silver paint. Sadly, the film’s evenkeeled approach is abandoned in the final reel, as Good forgoes discourse to essentially stalk and publicly crucify the Berkeley vigilante known as “The Silver Buff.” The rush to vilify belies a much smarter picture that initially seems to understand, and even pity, the men’s trouble differentiating between art and vandalism. Still, until it succumbs to hip-vs.-square bullying, Vigilante is dynamite. AP KRYZA. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm FridayWednesday, Oct. 14-19.
OCT. 12 - 18
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, TV] Local radio boys present AMC’s zombie series on a big screen. Hollywood Theatre. 9 pm Sunday, Oct. 16.
The Way
43 The phrase “written and directed by Emilio Estevez” should rightfully strike fear into the ardent cinephile’s heart, as you’re sure to witness a filmmaker overreaching his abilities to an embarrassing degree. This latest effort by the former Brat Packer is no exception. The Way refers to the Camino de Santiago, a popular backpacking trail through northwestern Spain that leads to a cathedral where the apostle James is supposedly buried. It is on this path that Estevez’s character, Daniel Avery, is accidentally killed, and where his estranged father (Martin Sheen, in a role written for him) lands to collect his remains. Compelled to learn something more about his on-screen son, Sheen decides to walk the path and scatter the ashes along the way. From there, we ride the road-movie cliché train: Sheen at first rejects and then bonds with a ragtag group of fellow hikers (played to the hammy hilt by Deborah Kara Unger, James Nesbitt and Yorick van Wageningen), has a moment of darkness, warms up to the world around him, and walks away from it all a new man. Enlivened only by cinematography that ably captures the beauty of the Spanish countryside, this Way leads to disappointment. PG-13. ROBERT HAM. Bridgeport, Fox Tower.
NEW
What’s Your Number?
21 Near the end of What’s Your Number?, in what’s supposed to be the standard rom-com moment of self-realization for her character, Anna Faris proudly declares herself a whore. After fretting the entire movie about the number of men she’s slept with—twice the national average, according to a study in a magazine—she finally learns to embrace who she really is, which is Marie Claire’s definition of a raging slut. Apparently, there is no
such thing as a healthy sex life for a single, 30-ish female. A woman is allowed to feel comfortable with her sexuality only if she accepts one of two roles: wife or harlot. Somehow, the audience is expected to cheer this lesson. It’s the most odious aspect of a film that offers plenty of other things to complain about, from the way it wastes comedic talent—Joel McHale, Andy Samberg, Aziz Ansari, not to mention Faris—to how it attempts to disguise a rote, by-the-numbers script with empty raunch. And lest anyone think this review is just an attempt at armchair feminist criticism, let me say this: My score would’ve been much lower if Faris weren’t in her underwear so often. R. MATTHEW SINGER. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Forest, Living Room Theaters, Oak Grove, Bridgeport, Evergreen, Lloyd Mall, Sandy.
We Were Here
81 This documentary opens where
Milk ends, and there is something wantonly sadistic about how Harvey Milk’s killing, which so galvanized the Castro community, was the opening shot of a massacre. The speed and ruthlessness of the onset of AIDS was staggering—by the time a test was available, 50 percent of the gay men in San Francisco were infected—and QDoc co-founder David Weissman’s intimate recounting of the human toll can’t help feeling like an unremitting dirge. The movie is filled with agonizing memories—doomed men warning each other of some “gay cancer,” young
INVITES YOU TO AN ADVANCE SCREENING OF
REVIEW
VISIT WWW.GOFOBO.COM/RSVP AND ENTER THE CODE WWEEK59LR FOR A COMPLIMENTARY PASS THIS FILM IS RATED PG. PARENTAL GUIDANCE SUGGESTED. Some Material May Not Be Suitable For Children.
Weekend
90 [ONE WEEK ONLY] Weekend details one of the most authentic and intimate beginnings of a relationship I’ve ever seen. Two men meet at a gay club in Nottingham, England, at the beginning of the weekend and find themselves completely engrossed in each other’s company, laughing back and forth at what the other one has to say. Over the weekend, they drink, smoke, snort, talk, make love, and try to make the most of their sole weekend together (one is relocating to our very own Portland at the end of the weekend). Tom Cullen and Chris New are exceptional as the main characters. Their chemistry is astounding. It seems as if there is a true intimacy between them, fueled by the innocence and excitement of meeting someone for the first time. Their coke-fueled, late-night discussions range from one man’s art (he records candid, morning-after stories with men he sleeps with) to the other’s coming out to his close friends and family (he doesn’t speak about his homosexuality to them whatsoever) and moving from foster home to foster home. The film’s most powerful moments come in its silences: the sun rising over his concrete apartment building in Nottingham; him at his window smoking; him watching his lover leave, not knowing if they’ll see each other again. The film is beautifully shot by director Andrew Haigh, leaving the audience aghast at life’s inexplicable bad timing but enthralled at the chance of connecting with someone who shakes your very core in just a couple of days. MAGGIE SUMMERS. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, Oct. 14-20.
NEW
lovers saying goodbye (if lucky), an entire room of doctors breaking down sobbing—and it is softened only by the kindness San Francisco’s gays and lesbians showed each other in the hours of their deaths. It is heartrending how much this movie feels like the story of soldiers conscripted into a war after making love. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
YOU KNOW THE CAT, BUT DO YOU KNOW HIS CAT-TASTIC TALE?
COURTESY OF NW FILM CENTER
The Walking Dead Hosted by Cort and Fatboy NEW
MOVIES
BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY: Vanja Kovacevic in A Star is Born.
REEL MUSIC 26, WEEK 2 A Star Is Born 35 A Star is Born is like a Serbian episode of MTV’s Made. Vanja Kovacevic, who wrote, directed, edited and produced this documentary, wants to become a drummer. The Decemberists are her idol, and as an homage to the Portland band (which makes a cameo at a show in Berlin, and has the best scene in the film), she calls her own haphazard band Writers of Fiction. She recruits talented Serbian musicians to join her group, and gives herself nine months to learn how to play the drums. She’s not good, and she doesn’t really get good over the nine months. Mostly, she just bitches and whines as if she’s having some kind of existential crisis, while her bandmates get pissed and frustrated and continually preach epic, philosophical advice that induces serious eye-rolling. The band doesn’t end up sounding too awful at its concert, but Kovacevic’s percussion skills leave much to be desired, which is indicative of the film as a whole. MAGGIE SUMMERS. 9:15 pm Saturday, Oct. 15.
Please note: Passes received through this promotion do not guarantee you a seat at the theatre. Seating is on a first come, first served basis, except for members of the reviewing press. Theatre is overbooked to ensure a full house. No admittance once screening has begun. All federal, state and local regulations apply. A recipient of tickets assumes any and all risks related to use of ticket, and accepts any restrictions required by ticket provider. Paramount Pictures, Willamette Week and their affiliates accept no responsibility or liability in connection with any loss or accident incurred in connection with use of a prize. Tickets cannot be exchanged, transferred or redeemed for cash, in whole or in part. We are not responsible if, for any reason, winner is unable to use his/her ticket in whole or in part. Not responsible for lost, delayed or misdirected entries. All federal and local taxes are the responsibility of the winner. Void where prohibited by law. No purchase necessary. Participating sponsors, their employees & family members and their agencies are not eligible. NO PHONE CALLS!
POUNCING INTO THEATERS OCTOBER 28 www.PussInBootsTheMovie.com
Have you heard of this “Decemberists” band?
WILLAMETTE WEEK WED 10/19/11 3.772" X 6.052" ALL.PIB-P.1019.WW
JL
Pepper’s Pow-Wow 76 This hour-long 1996 documentary has the look and production value of a classroom educational movie. And it should, really, be shown in classrooms across the state of Oregon. Jim Pepper, a Native American sax player who came up in the Portland public school system, wound up changing the face of jazz with his groundbreaking fusion group, the Free Spirits, and developing his own unique collage of jazz, pop and traditional Native music (some of which found mainstream success). The film explores the roots of those creative endeavors, talking with friends and colleagues about Pepper’s distinct saxophone sound and his even more singular songwriting. Pepper died from cancer in 1992 at just 40 years old—an age at which many jazz musicians start to hit their creative stride—and this documentary is largely comprised of footage from the last few years of his life. The film is a great launching point to discovering Pepper’s music (though much of it is out of print). You can hear great ear behind his composition-building and the heart and fight in Pepper’s playing. He is still missed. CASEY JARMAN. 7 pm Monday, Oct. 17. Part of a three-movie jazz block. SEE IT: Reel Music continues at the NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium through Sunday, Oct. 23. Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
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MOVIES
OCT. 14-20
BREWVIEWS
Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:15, 02:30, 04:45, 07:45, 09:50 KILLER ELITE Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 02:40, 10:00 THE IDES OF MARCH FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:55, 12:35, 02:10, 02:50, 04:30, 05:15, 07:00, 07:40, 09:25, 09:55 RESTLESS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 05:05, 10:05 THE WAY Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:50, 04:15, 07:20, 09:55 DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:45, 04:10, 07:10, 09:45
NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium
MOCKERY AND SON: Shaun of the Dead has infected so many imitators in seven years that the mention of Edgar Wright’s genre-bender almost summons a reflexive twinge of dislike. I’m actually pretty bored by the zombie comedy, in the same way I’m bored by sandwiches stuffed with french fries, even though I didn’t know either could exist until very recently. And yet: Who could tire of Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton as Shaun’s exasperating parents, who cling so tightly to decency in the face of a silly abyss? This is a new kind of movie, distinguished by old-fashioned values. AARON MESH. Academy. Best paired with: Boneyard Chocolate Espresso Stout. Also showing: The Blob (Laurelhurst), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (Academy, Laurelhurst, Valley).
Regal Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema
1510 NE Multnomah Blvd., 800-326-3264 CONTAGION Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:55, 03:45, 07:25, 10:30 DRIVE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:25, 02:50, 05:15, 07:45, 10:20 THE LION KING 3D Fri-Sat-Sun 12:10, 02:25, 04:50, 07:15, 09:40 MONEYBALL Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:30, 03:40, 06:50, 09:55 50/50 FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:40, 03:30, 06:55, 09:45 REAL STEEL Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:50, 03:55, 07:05, 10:10 THE IDES OF MARCH Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 02:35, 05:05, 07:35, 10:05 THE BIG YEAR Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:15, 02:45, 05:20, 07:50, 10:25 FOOTLOOSE Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 01:00, 03:50, 07:10, 10:15 THE THING Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 02:30, 05:00, 07:30, 10:00 PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed THE METROPOLITAN OPERA: ANNA BOLENA LIVE Sat 09:55 THE ROLLING STONES LIVE IN TEXAS 1978 Tue 07:30
Regal Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema
2320 Lloyd Center Mall, 800-326-3264 DREAM HOUSE Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:35, 03:20, 06:20, 09:10 WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER? Fri-Sat-Sun 12:20, 03:35, 06:05, 09:00 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:15, 03:15 RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:25, 03:30, 06:30, 09:30 THE HELP Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 03:25, 07:00 DOLPHIN TALE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 06:25 DOLPHIN TALE 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 03:10, 09:20 KILLER ELITE Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 06:15, 09:15
50
Willamette Week OCTOBER 12, 2011 wweek.com
REAL STEEL Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:10, 03:00, 06:10, 09:05 FOOTLOOSE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:30, 03:05, 06:00, 09:25 THE LION KING 3D Mon-Tue-Wed 12:20, 03:35, 06:05, 09:00
Cinema 21
616 NW 21st Ave., 503-2234515 WEEKEND Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 04:45, 07:00, 09:00
Clinton Street Theater
2522 S.E. Clinton St., 503238-8899 VIGILANTE VIGILANTE: THE BATTLE FOR EXPRESSION Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 07:00 THE OREGONIAN Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 09:00 THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW Sat 12:00 FIREWALKER Wed 09:00
CineMagic Theatre
2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-231-7919 DRIVE Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 05:30, 09:55 CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE. Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:35
Century Eastport 16
4040 SE 82nd Ave., 800326-3264 50/50 Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 02:30, 05:05, 07:35, 10:00 ABDUCTION FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:00, 04:40, 07:25, 10:15 CONTAGION FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:10, 02:45, 05:20, 07:55, 10:30 DOLPHIN TALE FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:55 DOLPHIN TALE 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 04:35, 07:20, 10:05 DREAM HOUSE Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:05, 07:40 DRIVE Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 02:25, 05:10, 07:50, 10:20 FOOTLOOSE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:25, 01:55, 03:15, 04:40, 06:05, 07:30, 08:55, 10:20 KILLER ELITE Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 01:15, 04:15, 07:10, 10:10 MONEYBALL
Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:30, 03:45, 07:00, 10:10 REAL STEEL Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 01:30, 03:00, 04:30, 06:00, 07:30, 09:00, 10:25 THE BIG YEAR Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 02:15, 04:45, 07:15, 09:45 THE IDES OF MARCH Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:15, 02:45, 05:15, 07:45, 10:15 THE LION KING 3D Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 02:20, 04:50, 07:05, 09:30 THE THING Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 02:10, 05:00, 07:45, 10:30 WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER? Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:55, 10:25
Fifth Avenue Cinemas
510 SW Hall St., 503-7253551 IN A LONELY PLACE FriSat-Sun 03:00
Hollywood Theatre
4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503281-4215 CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE. Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:15, 09:30 TUCKER & DALE VS EVIL Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:45 THE GUARD Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 07:30 THE ECONOMICS OF HAPPINESS Fri 07:00 THE CAMERAMAN’S REVENGE Fri 09:30 VERTIGO Sat 07:00 PERFORMANCE Sat 09:45 THE WEIRD WORLD OF BLOWFLY Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:15 THE WALKING DEAD Sun 09:00 THE KILL HOLE Sun 06:00 NOT YOUR TYPICAL BIGFOOT MOVIE Mon 07:30
Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10
846 SW Park Ave., 800326-3264 CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE. Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:35, 07:35 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:10, 05:10, 07:30 THE HELP Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:40, 07:05 THE GUARD Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:05, 10:10 WE WERE HERE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:20, 02:55, 05:00, 07:15, 09:35 CONTAGION FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 02:20, 04:50, 07:25, 09:40 DRIVE Fri-Sat-
1219 SW Park Ave., 503221-1156 GEORGE HARRISON: LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD Fri 07:00 LOVESTORMING Sat-Sun 07:00 MOZART’S SISTER Sat 06:45 A STAR IS BORN Sat 09:15 WHEN THE DRUM IS BEATING Sun 02:30 LOST ANGELS Wed 07:00
Pioneer Place Stadium 6
340 SW Morrison St., 800326-3264 MONEYBALL Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:00, 04:00, 07:00, 10:00 50/50 Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:20, 04:20, 07:20, 09:50 REAL STEEL Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 01:10, 04:10, 07:10, 10:10 THE BIG YEAR Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:50, 04:50, 07:50, 10:20 FOOTLOOSE Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 01:30, 04:30, 07:30, 10:05 THE THING Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:40, 04:40, 07:40, 10:15
Academy Theater
7818 SE Stark St., 503-2520500 SHAUN OF THE DEAD Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:40 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:20, 07:00 THE SMURFS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:30 CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 06:45 HORRIBLE BOSSES Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:20 CARS 2 Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:50 COWBOYS & ALIENS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:15, 09:50
Living Room Theaters
341 SW 10th Ave., 971-2222010 3 Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 01:30, 04:00, 06:30, 09:05 THE DEBT Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:30, 02:40, 07:15 LOVE CRIME Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 11:50, 03:00, 05:20, 07:40, 09:50 DREAM HOUSE Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 05:00, 09:25 WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER? Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:20, 04:40, 07:00, 09:15 EL BULLI: COOKING IN PROGRESS Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:20, 02:50, 05:10, 07:30 SENNA FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 02:10, 09:45 CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:10, 04:30, 06:45, 09:00 SUBJECT TO CHANGE. CALL THEATERS OR VISIT WWEEK.COM/MOVIETIMES FOR THE MOST UP-TODATE INFORMATION FRIDAY-THURSDAY, OCT. 14-20, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED
BACK COVER
Improvisation Classes Now enrolling. Beginners Welcome! Brody Theater 503-224-2227 www.brodytheater.com
JELLY HELM STUDIO
Free House Calls • Low Rates $25 diagnostic fee, $75 per hour. Call 503-998-9662 or Schedule an appointment at www.portlandmactech.com
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HOT DOGS • FRIES • FULL BAR
Open Noon until 3am EVERYDAY www.zachsshack.com
OCTOBER CLASSES
Portland EXPO Center 2060 N Marine Dr November 5th 8am to 5pm www.portlandgsale.com
THE JOYS OF TOYS! WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19TH • 7:30PM • $10
AA HYDROPONICS
COMING THIS NOVEMBER...
9966 SW Arctic Drive, Beaverton 9220 SE Stark Street, Portland American Agriculture • americanag.com PDX 503-256-2400 BVT 503-641-3500
4611 SE HAWTHORNE BLVD • PORTLAND, OR
PLEASE RESERVE YOUR SPOT ONLINE AT SHEBOPTHESHOP.COM — SPACE IS LIMITED
EXPLORING BURLESQUE, BDSM PART 1, & G-SPOT WITH TRISTAN TAORMINO! Check website for details.
ADHD/ANXIETY
Brain training with neurofeedback can help. John McManus, Ph.D. 503-636-0111 www.abilitytofocus.com
20% Off Purchase With This Ad!
ALL MUSIC PAWN SHOP!
BUY LOCAL, BUY AMERICAN, BUY MARY JANES
Briz Loan & Guitar. Downtown Vancouver, WA 360-699-5626 www.briz.us
Glass Pipes, Vaporizers, Incense & Candles
Annie’s Re-Threads
7219 NE Hwy. 99, Suite 109 Vancouver, WA 98665
Quality used women’s clothing. Inside It’s My Pleasure 503-280-8080.
CDPDX
The Best For CD + DVD Duplication. 503-228-2222 • www.cdpdx.com
Eating Disorders
Free Family and Sufferers Support Groups. 12 Week Treatment Groups. Individual Counseling. Call for free “Steps To Recover” brochure. A Better Way Counseling Center 503-226-9061 www.abwcounseling.com
Evening outpatient treatment program with suboxone. CRCHealth/Dr. Jim Thayer, Addiction Medicine www.transitionsop.com 503-715-1737
Qigong Classes
(360) 735-5913 212 N.E. 164th #19 Vancouver, WA 98684
(360) 514-8494
1425 NW 23rd Portland, OR 97210 (503) 841-5751
6913 E. Fourth Plain Vancouver, WA 98661
10 TRX Sessions $10 • 503-915-4520 Details at: www.BrennsBlend.com
Having Computer Problems? We can fix any computer. Steve’s PC Repair 503-380-2027
Home Repair & Remodel Older homes are my specialty. 40/years experience in Metro Area. Call Rob 503-318-0937
MEDICAL MARIJUANA Card Services Clinic
Vancouver, WA 98664
Longview Wa 98632
Getting registered for medical marijuana needn’t be a counter-culture experience. MAMA: 503-233-4202. MAMAS.org
$5.00 OFF YOUR FIRST BOX OF 200 SMOKES WITH THIS AD
www.mmcsclinic.com
4911 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland 97213
(360) 844-5779
MAMA’S MEDICAL Marijuana Clinic
rollandsaveclub.com
open 7 days • 30 minute appts • low-income discounts Serving OR & WA • Habla Espanol
Washougal, WA 98671
Interested in BDSM, leather, kink, etc. 971-222-8714.
es! Cheap Smok only
1825 E Street
Male Seeking Adult Female
IT’S EASY AND YOUR SMOKES ARE READY IN MINUTES
503.384.WEED (9333)
(360) 213-1011
(360) 695-7773 (360) 577-4204 Not valid with any other offer
GRAND OPENING!
WWEEKDOTCOM
8312 E. Mill Plain Blvd
1156 Commerce Ave
$24.95
2922 SE 82nd Avenue #101 (in Kim Plaza between Division and Powell)
503.719.6321 One coupon per purchase. Offer expires 11/30/11.
Cultivate health and energy www.nwfighting.com or 503-740-2666
Fast | Easy | Affordable $Quick Cash for Junk Vehicles$ Free removal. Ask for Steve. 503-936-5923 OCTOBER SPECIAL Stop SMOKING, Already! Bring a friend & get Hypnotherapy works. Jen Procter, CHt., $100 off the 2nd exam M.NLP 503-804-1973 hello@jenprocter.com Fee includes doctor exam, training, counseling & documentation. SuperDigital
20 YEARS EXPERIENCE. DEBT RELIEF AGENCY. www.nwbankruptcy.com FREE CONSULTATIONS, 503-242-1162
FREE Consultation. Payment Plans. Experienced. Debt-Relief Agency Scott Hutchinson. 503-808-9032 www.Hutchinson-Law.com
Opiate Treatment Program
Medical Exams
Anita Manishan Bankruptcy Attorney
ATTORNEY- BANKRUPTCY
MEDICAL MARIJUANA CARD
The Recording Store. Pro Audio. CD/DVD Duplication. www.superdigital.com 503-228-2222
The Aurora Clinic 503.232.3003 1847 E. Burnside, Portland www.theauroraclinic.com info@theauroraclinic.com
TaiChi
Enhance awareness via moving meditation www.nwfighting.com or 503-740-2666
PHYSICIAN OPPORTUNITIES
MEDICAL MARIJUANA
Our nonprofit clinic’s doctors will help. The Hemp & Cannabis Foundation. www.thc-foundation.org 503-281-5100
Therapy & Counseling Adam Zwig, Ph.D. NW Location • 503-227-1439 www.Adamzwigtherapy.com
Trick or Treat
MEET GAY & BI SINGLES
Smell My Feet www.footnight.com/portland.html
Listen to Ads & Reply FREE! 503-299-9911 Use FREE Code 5906, 18+
WE BUY GOLD!
The Jewelry Buyer 2034 NE Sandy Blvd. Portland. 503-239-6900
Models Wanted
18+ Paid casting call. Make up to $1,000/day in commissions. Call for info: 503-431-0150.
North West Hydroponic R&R
FOR SALE! $999 Down!
$899 mo + T & I, 30 Yr CONTRACT NO BALLOON or Closing costs! We Buy, Sell, & Trade New & Used Hydro- 4 bdrm, 1 bath - North Portland 6.99% - 503-519-4216 ponic Equipment. 503-747-3624
Portland’s
SNOWBOARD Shop
CLOSEOUT SALE !
2011 snowboards, boots, bindings & outerwear up to 60% off
503-246-6646
7400 SW Macadam, Portland
www.gorgeperformance.com
Pre-Season Special: 10% off 2012 Gear thru Oct 15