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FINDINGS
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WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 41, ISSUE 26.
One candidate for Portland School Board literally showed her opponent to his grave. 11 Two months after City Commissioner Nick Fish’s bike got stolen, police announced a new bike-theft task force. 19 Enemies of the local bike community include an alleged homeless bike-theft kingpin and Commissioner Amanda Fritz. 23
ON THE COVER:
MotioSens, iovation, Cloudability and Puppet Labs are all things. 31 Chuhai is the Sparks of Japan. 35 Carrie Brownstein’s dogs don’t much care for Sleater-Kinney. 37
The Commons just made a kumquat beer. 47 A disastrous string of on-set maulings held up the movie Roar for 34 years, but you’re going to hear it now. 58
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
Future man bikes through East Portland, by Lovatto.
uber is now!
STAFF Editor-in-Chief Mark Zusman EditoriAL Managing Editor for News Brent Walth Arts & Culture Editor Martin Cizmar Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Aaron Mesh, Beth Slovic Copy Chief Rob Fernas Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, James Yu Stage & Screen Editor Enid Spitz Web & Projects Editor Matthew Korfhage Music Editor Matthew Singer Books Penelope Bass Dance Enid Spitz
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INBOX
Dentistry In The Pearl That’s Something To Smile About!
WHEELER SHOULD CHALLENGE HALES
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believe Ted Wheeler would find the citizens of Portland eager for a viable candidate to take on Mayor Charlie Hales [“Tough Times for Ted,” WW, April 22, 2015]. This has become a city where planning for infrastructure like roads, bikeways, sewers and mass transit takes place on different planets. Just drive around and see how the city of Portland has
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The Port of Portland, along with the longshoremen, have killed the state economy. The damage will be felt. The port is a joke, but hey, look at the rest of the city. Pretty soon Portland will be higher than Mike Rhodes’ airplane. —“67falcon”
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I’m sorry it hurts your bottom line, Bren, but the industry we’ve spent 30 years of blood, sweat and tears building is not just here as a gift for you. “Bootleggers and criminals” have been supporting the Oregon economy for decades and organizing to bring us to this moment of marijuana legalization. It’s going to be Oregonians that benefit and not your smug, corporate a$$. Please let the door hit you good on the way out. —“Will FreeMan”
STATE POLICE WANT MORE MONEY
We already have weed cops…they’re called police officers. No need for more [Murmurs: “The State Police Seeing Green,” WW, April 22, 2015]. This reminds me of Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton warning that the sky is falling every time he had to cut a deputy. The sky didn’t fall. It never does. —“Clevis Pinn”
OUT-OF-STATE POT INVESTORS
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. Fax: (503) 243-1115. Email: mzusman@wweek.com.
The right-wingers carried on about Obama supposedly being ineligible for the presidency, so how can they be supporting Sen. Ted Cruz (RTexas) for president? Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban father, but I’ve heard nary a word on this in any news media. —Huh?
Here in Oregon, our executive requirements are more modest: Our governor need only be a U.S. citizen over age 30 who’s lived in the state for three years, does not concurrently hold another paid public office, and who has never fought, or agreed to fight, a duel. I’m not kidding: Article II, Section 9 of the Oregon Constitution specifically disqualifies duelers. (Luckily, that time Gov. Kate Brown shot a man in Reno just to watch him die* doesn’t count.) In any case, ticky-tack legal tricks are not, and should not be, the way we determine who holds office; that’s what elections are for. Cruz’s primary disqualification from the presidency isn’t his lack of U.S. citizenship, it’s the fact that he’s a psychotic Hitlerian demagogue. Crush him at the polls, not in the courtroom. *Legal notice: Gov. Brown did not shoot a man in Reno “just to watch him die”—he done her wrong. OK, fine, Gov. Brown didn’t shoot anybody. Killjoys.
I’ve had enough of this corporate bullshit [Hotseat: Brendan Kennedy, WW, April 22, 2015].
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The Port of Portland is not an advocate of general aviation [“Hot Air,” WW, April 22, 2015]. Look at PDX. Over the years, many aircraft have moved to other airports because of the policies of the port. High fuel prices due to only one service provider at the airport is one of many issues. No hangar space is another. If you disagree with the port, they will run you out of town. Safety? Just another government agency looking for more money. —“Crow7”
aided and abetted residential, commercial and transportation developers at the expense of livability, affordability and quality of life. If Wheeler can promise a different approach to growth, people will listen and vote. —“LKSPDX”
I would hope that no one—I’m looking at you, Huh—is going to embarrass the left by going birther on Ted Cruz. The claim isn’t quite as weak as in Obama’s case, but both arguments are pretty lame. Cruz’s mother was a U.S. citizen, and Cruz himself has claimed only U.S. citizenship since birth. Most sources think that’s enough to satisfy the “natural born citizen” clause. That said, the issue comes up more often than you’d think. President Chester A. Arthur’s father was an Irish citizen. John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Bob Dole was born before the United States was a country—the list goes on and on.
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PUBLIC SAFETY: How much cop-body cam video should we see? 7 SCHOOLS: PPS is churning through principals. 8 ELECTIONS 2015: Our picks for school board races. 11 ON THE COVER: Bike to the Future: Our annual bike issue. 15
THE DOPE FOR OUR STORIES COMES FROM ALL OVER.
Two former Legacy Health employees who tried to blow the whistle on the company’s body-donation program say they were driven out of their jobs after exposing what they saw as illegal practices. As first reported by WW last year, Legacy has been under FBI investigation for allegations it improperly obtained cadavers and attempted to shred documents in the case (“Body Double Standard,” WW, Sept. 3, 2014). The Oregonian first reported on the whistle-blower lawsuit filed April 28 by former Legacy employees Jirina Truneckova and Danielle Martin. Legacy spokesman Brian Terrett says the FBI reviewed the cadaver program last year, offered some recommendations but brought no charges. “Legacy Health,” Terrett said in a statement, “is uncertain why any former employee would continue to make unsubstantiated allegations, and is confident that it will prevail in court.”
MOBILE
African-American students at César Chávez K-8 School in North Portland were twice as likely as Latino students and nearly three times as likely as white students to be forced to carry out janitorial duties as punishment, according to new Portland Public Schools data released to WW. César Chávez suspended its “community service” program after WW first reported students as young as 7 were told to pick up trash, scrub floors and clean doorknobs (“Little Janitors,” WW, March 11, 2015). The numbers show 29 percent of “community service” incidents involved African-American students, who make up only 16 percent of the César Chávez student body. PPS spokesman Jon Isaacs says the district has long acknowledged racial disparities in discipline and has been working to end it.
Beyond the Print
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Few industries have consumed Portland City Hall’s attention in the past year like the sharing economy, from wrangling with ride-hailing apps Lyft and Uber and legalizing short-term rentals offered through Airbnb. On Thursday, April 30, Mayor Charlie Hales will APRIL 30 • OMSI •and PORTLAND, join a TechfestNW panel on the opportunities risksORposed by the sharing economy. He’ll be joined by representatives of six companies, including former Obama campaign manager and Uber vice president David Plouffe and Spinlister CEO Marcelo Loureiro (see page 17). A Shared Future starts at 4 pm at OMSI’s Empirical Theater. Tickets at eventbrite.com. There’s more news at wweek.com.
W W S TA F F
Oregonians who are paranoid about large, out-of-state marijuana companies dominating the state’s legal weed market now have more reason to worry. State lawmakers are considering a way to keep “Big Marijuana” out by creating residency requirements, such as those in Washington and Colorado. But the top lawyer advising state lawmakers, legislative counsel Dexter A. Johnson, wrote in an April 20 legal opinion that concludes prohibiting out-of-state companies and investors from joining Oregon’s recreational pot industry would probably violate the U.S. Constitution. But Sen. Floyd Prozanski (D-Eugene) says marijuana is a special case because the U.S. Department of Justice has warned states to avoid pot sales across state lines. He wants a four-year residency requirement to help prevent interstate dealing. “We have an obligation,” Prozanzki says.
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FACEOFF THE CITY OF PORTLAND WANTS TO PUT BODY CAMERAS ON ITS COPS. GOOD LUCK GETTING TO SEE THE VIDEO. BY AARON MESH
amesh@wweek.com
Mayor Charlie Hales wants Portland police to have body cameras. He’s also fi ne if it’s really difficult for you to see the video the cops record. The city of Portland has been the driving force at the Oregon Legislature to make police body cameras legal. But while promoting what he says is his dedication to police transparency, Hales has joined a legislative deal that restricts public access to the video. Hales isn’t alone. Portland city commissioners, the state’s police unions and district attorneys, and even the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon are lobbying state lawmakers to limit when police are required to release body-camera video to the public. “I am surprised that local governments appear to not want more transparency from these police camera recordings,” says Greg Peden, lobbyist for the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association. “That’s the whole point of having these cameras.”
The mayor’s office says Hales is trying to strike a balance. “He wants a bill that won’t die in committee,” says Hales spokesman Dana Haynes. “That’s going to mean a compromise between privacy and transparency.” In the wake of police shootings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and South Carolina, body cameras are increasingly seen as a necessary tool of police accountability. Portland has its own history of controversial police shootings—and a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice for a “pattern and practice” of excessive force against the mentally ill. But the use of body cameras has also triggered a national debate about the privacy rights of people being filmed by police—and whether their faces should appear on the 5 o’clock news or the Web. Rep. Jennifer Williamson (D-Portland), the bill’s sponsor, says lawmakers tried to find a compromise that balanced privacy concerns against public disclosure. “We couldn’t figure out a one-size-fits-all,” she says. In general, the cameras would be turned on whenever officers have an encounter that may involve a crime. But right now in Oregon, it’s illegal for a police officer to carry a recording device that could capture the voice and imagine of someone without his or her knowledge. Lawmakers want to add an exemption that would allow police to record interactions with people using their body cameras. A bill to do that is headed for a House vote before it goes to the Senate. The Oregonian first reported last month on an earlier version of the bill. But the bill has changed, adding limits on releasing body-camera video. It’s been a long-standing legal principle that people in public have no expectation of a right to privacy. Yet the bill says that before releasing video to the public or media, police must blur out all faces beyond recognition.
The ACLU of Oregon backed the amendment. “We’ve been very concerned about the privacy issues surrounding these videos,” says ACLU legislative director Kimberly McCullough. “We suggested that the faces get blurred. But if it’s not possible to identify the officers involved, that could be problematic. We want this bill to be a tool for accountability.” The blurring of faces could delay the release of the video and allow police agencies to charge large fees for the work—all creating barriers to full disclosure. “That’s ridiculous,” says Dan Handelman, who has monitored police reforms for two decades with Portland Copwatch. “If we’re going to get [video], the person involved should give permission, and it should be released without the faces blurred out.” The bill also contains a city of Portland-backed amendment that requires citizens to cite the date and time when that footage was taken. That means no one—not a citizen watchdog, a newspaper or a person accusing an officer of wrongdoing—can check video records generally to see whether that officer has a history of troubling encounters with citizens. Portland Police Bureau officials say the city has good reasons for wanting to limit what video gets released. Police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson says the costs of retrieving footage could skyrocket if people begin requesting the full recordings from officers’ body cameras. And he says releasing the faces of people recorded by cops raises privacy concerns. “The fear for some people is they don’t want to generate a new genre of reality TV: BodycamTV.com,” Simpson says. “I don’t know if that’s in anybody’s best interest.” There’s no questioning Hales’ enthusiasm for police video—under selective circumstances. In Hales’ second month in office, a cellphone video exonerated officers in the shooting of a federal fugitive outside Adventist Medical Center in East Portland. Hales urged police to release the video, which showed Merle M. Hatch cursing officers before charging them (“Saved by the Cell,” WW, Feb. 27, 2013). Hales wanted videos of shootings released quickly, he told WW then. “Let’s get it out,” he said, snapping his fingers. “If you’re doing the right thing, transparency is your friend.” Last month, Hales and Portland police officials brought the cellphone video of the Hatch shooting to an Oregon House hearing, using it as an example of the benefits of police body cameras. Hales also asked lawmakers to put tight limits on what footage the cops would be required to give citizens. Hales said he was only trying to protect the privacy of people filmed by police. “These requests can amount to hundreds of hours of footage and present significant privacy concerns,” Hales testified, “as police interactions often take place inside homes and involve traumatic and sensitive interactions with citizens.” Haynes, the mayor’s spokesman, now says Hales isn’t trying to hide police behavior from the community. “There’s one way to make sure people don’t see the video,” Haynes says, “and that video is perfectly protected from records requests: Don’t shoot any video. Don’t buy the cameras.” The Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association (of which WW isn’t a member) and the Oregon Association of Broadcasters are now asking state lawmakers to change the bill or squash it entirely, rather than create a database of police video the public can’t see. “The public across the country is demanding more transparency from police agencies,” says Peden, the ONPA lobbyist. “My assumption is, 99.9 percent of the time the cops get it right, and these recordings will help show that.” Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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SCHOOLS
LOSS OF PRINCIPALS
gANdARIllA
THE PORTLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT IS SEEING LARGE TURNOVER—AND INCREASING DRAMA— AMONG THE HEADS OF ITS SCHOOLS. BY BE TH S LOV I C
bslovic@wweek.com
On paper, Sara Gandarilla seemed the perfect fit for Rigler Elementary School. Gandarilla—who took over as Rigler principal last fall— came armed with four years of bilingual teaching experience in Woodburn. That’s important, because Rigler is a dual-language immersion school in Spanish and English. Most recently, Gandarilla, 45, had worked at the North Clackamas School District, where she was director of equity and community outreach—also helpful because Rigler serves the Cully neighborhood, where three out of four students are minorities. On April 24, Gandarilla went on medical leave and announced she would seek a transfer to another school next year. One week earlier, several teachers at Rigler had filed a formal complaint with Portland Public Schools against Gandarilla, alleging she’d created a “hostile, threatening and intimidating working environment.” Gandarilla referred WW’s questions about her leave to PPS. Now parents and teachers are left wondering who will take Gandarilla’s place and whether the new principal will make lasting contributions to the school. “It’s deeply personal to those of us who go to our neighborhood school,” says Rigler mom Laura Moulton, “which is already lacking in resources and doesn’t have everything it needs to be successful.” Rigler parents are not alone in their feelings of uncertainty. Eight schools in the Portland district have lost principals midway through the school year, upending school communities to a degree parents and teachers can’t recall happening previously. The reasons some principal leave are common, such as medical problems. But others are far more dramatic—an arrest, poor performance, or formal complaints by parents or teachers. Parents and teachers say the tumult is a symptom of something bigger in Portland Public Schools: The district does a poor job of involving parents and teachers in the principal selection process, sometimes resulting in bad pairings
EMPTY CHAIRS: Rigler Elementary and seven other schools in Portland Public Schools have lost principals midyear, upending school communities. “It’s important for the district to know they’re going to be very closely watched,” says Rigler dad Nathan Means. “We can’t afford to have another bad fit.”
of principals and schools that later explode midyear. “People are not happy about having so little say,” says Kathleen Jahn, a parent of a Glencoe Elementary School kindergartner and a math teacher at Beach K-8 School. PPS spokesman Jon Isaacs acknowledges it’s unusual to see so much churn—there were no midyear ousters of principals in the past two school years. He says district officials know the turnover is not best for kids. He also says the district listens to community members. “We strive to take parent input and make it a serious part of the process,” he says. Nathan Means, parent of a fourth-grader at Rigler, doesn’t buy it. He says PPS announced Gandarilla’s hiring in August, just eight days after seeking parent input. “It seems like there barely is a process,” he says. Some parents at Buckman Arts Elementary School say they were also the victims of poor matchmaking. Parents say Principal Robin Morrison, who moved to Buckman from Woodlawn Elementary School last summer, wasn’t responsive to their concerns. Morrison went on temporary medical leave March 30. Parents learned April 23, the day after Morrison was supposed to return to Buckman, that she would remain on leave indefinitely. Morrison couldn’t be reached for comment. Kelly Elementary School in the Lents neighborhood experienced the most public blowup. PPS put Principal Marti Diaz on paid leave in October after Portland police arrested her on suspicion of domestic violence. Diaz was accused of hitting her spouse during a camping weekend with other PPS principals (“Supermess,” WW, Jan. 28, 2015). Prosecutors never charged Diaz with a crime, but the district has kept her on leave. It’s not clear whether it will
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try to fire her or move her to another school. James John and Glencoe elementary schools swapped principals earlier in the year. Scott K-8 School’s principal, Verenice Gutierrez, left PPS in December after accepting a job with the Pacific Educational Group, the private contractor that runs Courageous Conversations, a program to promote racial equity. Hosford Middle School also lost its principal. So did Richmond Elementary for several months. The turnover might not have been so noteworthy if it had happened during summer break, when Superintendent Carole Smith typically moves principals to fill holes created by retirements or promotions. In fall 2014, for example, about a quarter of the district’s 80-plus principals were new to their assignments because of shuffling. That’s in line with annual turnover rates at other large districts, according to the Center for Public Education, which says the rate typically ranges from 15 to 30 percent. Tom Koehler, a PPS board member, says the district needs to do more to ensure there are dynamic principals at every school. There’s already movement to address one shortcoming: The board recently launched a conversation about increasing principals’ pay. “The whole system needs improvement,” Koehler says. “There’s no doubt.” Gwen Sullivan, president of the Portland Association of Teachers union, says PPS needs to improve the principal selection process because principals set the tone for the whole school community. “It makes the biggest difference,” she says. “When you have a good principal, it creates a much more positive place for kids to learn.”
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NEWS KENNETH HUEY
ELECTIONS 2015
NEW CLASS OUR PICKS FOR 2015 SCHOOL BOARD CANDIDATES WHO CAN BRING ABOUT MEANINGFUL CHANGE. BY WW STA F F
243-2122
Far more students are graduating from Portland Public Schools than 10 years ago. Several major school renovations are about to start construction, thanks to a $482 million bond issue approved by voters. And a majority of the current PPS board thinks Superintendent Carole Smith is just dandy. All’s good with Portland schools, right? Not so fast. Behind all the district’s happy talk are serious problems—overcrowded classrooms, muddled budget priorities, sour relationships with teachers—and most of them lead straight back to the School Board. The current board has for too long let Smith, now in her eighth year, do her thing with no questions asked. A majority of the members were so pleased with her that they handed Smith a 28 percent pay raise last summer—a tone-deaf move. Portland Public Schools is in need of reinvention. You have the power to make that happen. All you have to do is vote. Four of the board’s seven seats are up for grabs in the May 19 election. This year’s candidates hold distinctly different views on how PPS is doing—and
PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS some are clearly advocating major change. Three of the races are contested, but only one has an incumbent fighting to hang on. (For the fourth seat, schools activist Mike Rosen—an outspoken critic of Smith’s tenure—is running unopposed.) We sat down with the candidates to hear their ideas and press them on what they think the district needs. What follows are our endorsements in those races. These School Board gigs are tough. Board members are volunteers, and their hours and hours of work more often earn them hate mail than Facebook fans. But the job also requires more skepticism and courage than many of the current members have been willing to show in recent years. We didn’t make the candidates’ views on Smith a litmus test. But we did arch our eyebrows at a few candidates who see no problem with the superintendent and the board that has embraced her. We also want to see a racially diverse PPS board. We also talked to candidates seeking contested seats on the boards overseeing Portland Community College, the Multnomah Education Service District and the Parkrose School District. (Check wweek.com for more information on uncontested races, including all three in the David Douglas School District.) Here are our picks.
ZONE 1, SOUTHWEST AND PART OF SOUTHEAST PORTLAND
JULIE ESPARZA BROWN This race pits a Portland State University professor against a PSU student. We’re going with the prof. Julie Esparza Brown, 57, would bring deep experience as an educator to the board. An assistant professor of special education, Brown also once led PSU’s program to train bilingual teachers. Before that, she was a classroom teacher and bilingual school psychologist. “I’ve devoted my life to education,” she says. Andrew Davidson, 19, is smart, charming and focused. The Grant High grad sat on the School Board as its student representative for the 2013-14 school year. We admire his gumption and think his analysis of the district under Smith is right on—he says the School Board needs to do a better job managing Smith to get results. He simply lacks enough real-life experience to serve on the board as a voting member. Brown has that experience—and more. We’re skeptical of her statements that the PPS board and Smith are doing more things right than wrong. But Brown strikes us as levelheaded, warm and sincere in her desire to do right by all kids. CONT. on page 12 Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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NEWS
ELECTIONS 2015
ZONE 2, INNER NORTH AND NORTHEAST PORTLAND
PAUL ANTHONY Voters have four candidates to choose from in this race, but only two are credible: Paul Anthony and José González. González, founder and executive director of Miracle Theatre Group, offers a compelling personal history. Raised by a single mother in Texas before moving to Oregon in 1967, González says he sought refuge in school, including Benson High, where he graduated in 1970. His theater, also known as Milagro, is a Portland gem. His praise of Smith and the current board strikes us as naive. Much of that probably comes from the fact that González, 63, has had little direct engagement with Portland Public Schools recently. (As of our interview, he’d only attended one board meeting.) The way he tells it, González was practically dragged into the race by people who side with the current regime. González is simply unprepared to grapple with the complicated issues PPS faces. We asked him about the advantages of middle schools versus K-8 schools, for example. “I really don’t have an opinion on that,” he says. Our pick is Anthony, a chief financial officer for a business valuation company and a longtime parent activist with a burning desire to improve career and technical education. That’s not just talk. Anthony, 47, has volunteered to help create a proposed after-hours dental clinic at Benson, where his oldest child is a sophomore. Anthony, who has regularly attended board meetings, is the candidate with the best grasp of the district’s challenges. “I know what the issues are,” he says, “for the children who are in schools now.” Alone among the candidates in this race, Anthony stands out for his willingness to critique Smith’s leadership and her poor track record of pulling off major undertakings, such as the upcoming redrawing of attendance boundaries for neighborhood schools to balance enrollment and promote equity. “I don’t think Carole Smith has had a good board to work with, and that has inhibited progress,” Anthony says. We agree. Also in the race are John Sweeney, a perennial candidate, and Emma Russac Williams, a new mom who helps run Metro’s cemeteries. Williams provided one of the best moments in our whole endorsement process, letting us know she’d actually sold a burial plot at Lone Fir to González a few years ago. She strikes us as motivated and caring—but she just doesn’t know enough about the issues to make her a serious candidate.
“I KNOW WHAT THE ISSUES ARE FOR THE CHILDREN WHO ARE IN SCHOOLS NOW.” — PAUL ANTHONY
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ZONE 3, NORTHWEST PORTLAND
BOBBIE REGAN
This is the big-money race. Between them, incumbent Bobbie Regan and challenger Amy Carlsen Kohnstamm have raised $160,000—an almost unheard of amount for a Portland School Board race. This was a difficult choice. Kohnstamm, 49, has served on the boards of Mercy Corps NW, Open Meadow Alternative Schools and All Hands Raised (formerly the Portland Schools Foundation). Kohnstamm—who married into the family that runs Timberline Lodge—offers sharp critiques of the board and of Regan, who has made service to PPS her full-time job since first winning a seat in 2003. Kohnstamm’s harshest words concern the district’s decision in 2011 to save $4 million by moving high schools from seven periods to eight periods. Theoretically, the decision allowed the same number of teachers to teach more classes, preserving smaller class sizes.
“WE NEED TO HAVE A MUCH MORE CRITICALLY THINKING BOARD.” — BOBBIE REGAN
But the switch was a disaster for high-school students who wanted to take eight classes per term. The district instead pushed them into 90-minute study halls, late starts and early releases, leading critics to rightly call the results “part-time high school.” Kohnstamm was among a group of parents who complained to PPS at the outset and got nowhere. The district addressed the problem only after Kohnstamm and other parents took it to the Oregon Department of Education. The state ordered PPS to restore class time. “It is unnecessarily difficult to get common-sense resolutions to problems,” Kohnstamm says of the district. She makes a strong case that Regan should have done more to address the problem sooner. “What she did was nothing,” Kohnstamm argues. We’d normally go with the outsider calling for reform. But Regan brings an incumbent’s experience (plus the baggage) along with the promise of true change. We see the problem with the four-member bloc on the School Board—Pam Knowles, Ruth Adkins, Greg Belisle and Matt Morton—that lets Smith dither. Regan, 57, has often been part of that soft-touch majority, but she says she’s learned tough lessons about trusting PPS too much. On the high-schools question, for example, Regan says Smith assured her the eight-period schedule would work great. Now she’s appropriately skeptical of Smith’s claims. “We need to have a much more critically thinking board,” she says. And Regan is the one candidate in these contested races who is willing to go as far as to suggest it may be time for Smith to go. “It may be that’s where we land,” she says. There are plenty of other reasons to go with Regan, whose experience will help tether a board that will see at
least three new members. (Adkins, Belisle and Morton all declined to run again.) Regan of late has asked clear, concise and critical questions about Smith’s spending decisions, including the recent move to give top administrators big raises. She’s a great foil to Steve Buel, a board member who often shoots from the hip. Also running is Gretchen Hollands, a PPS employee who shows great courage by entering the race. If she wins, she’ll have to quit her job in the facilities department. Hollands is smart, energetic and down to earth. She’s an advocate of greater transparency (she’d like to see the district publish departmental budgets) and more cost savings. She says she’d like to look into reducing employee health care benefits—surprising given that she’s married to a Grant High teacher. “I’m wondering if they could get by on a Prius instead of a Cadillac,” she says. Wes Soderback, a perennial candidate, also appears on the ballot.
PORTLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE ZONE 3, SOUTHEAST AND NORTHEAST PORTLAND
COURTNEY WILTON Portland Community College is the largest postsecondary school in Oregon. It educates almost 90,000 full- and part-time students at four campuses with more than 3,000 employees. It may also be at a crossroads. President Jeremy Brown, who took over PCC less than two years ago, appears to be on his way out, having recently applied for a community-college gig in Arkansas. The new board may have a presidential search on its hands. Here’s what this particular race comes down to: Do you want a numbers guy? A poli-sci professor? Or someone who can’t seem to answer a question? We’re going with the numbers guy. That’s Wilton, chief financial officer for the Energy Trust of Oregon, who was appointed to the PCC board in 2014 after a six-year stint as CFO at Clackamas Community College. Wilton, 57, brings additional educational experience to the board, having served as director of administrative services at David Douglas School District from 1998 to 2007. In his short time on the PCC board, Wilton has shown himself responsive to students, delaying then modifying a proposed fee increase for international students, who were justifiably angry. He’s an affable introvert who clearly believes in the mission of community colleges to “change lives and save lives,” he says. Michael Sonnleitner, 65, the political-science professor, offers an attractive alternative. Sonnleitner has served at PCC for 27 years as a full-time faculty member, and he’s troubled by the college’s overreliance on adjunct professors. But he also rails against tuition hikes, which would increase under any scenario involving additional full-time positions. Anita Yap, a manager of water quality programs at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, may be the most unimpressive candidate we’ve seen this election. That’s remarkable given she has more endorsements from elected officials than anyone in this race. We’re not impressed. CONT. on page 13
ELECTIONS 2015
MULTNOMAH EDUCATION SERVICE DISTRICT POSITION 6, AT LARGE
STEPHEN MARC BEAUDOIN
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amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. He moved to Multnomah County only three months ago. Smart and articulate, Clipston needs more experience to be a serious candidate.
POSITION 7, ZONE 3, SOUTHWEST PORTLAND AND INNER SOUTHEAST PORTLAND
SIOBHAN BURKE The Multnomah ESD is a strange beast. It exists to provide services such as special education programs, school nurses and Outdoor School to the county’s eight school districts. But the $72 million-a-year agency—which operates largely below the public radar—desperately needs to build public trust. In March, the MESD board ousted its superintendent of three years after the leaders of dissatisfied school districts threatened to pull their contracts. MESD has also been battered by the recent drip, drip, drip of revelations about an employee, 2014 Oregon Teacher of the Year Brett Bigham. Bigham says he was fired after claiming discrimination based on sexual orientation. The district says he was fired for too many absences. (It has since rehired him, pending a final decision.) It’s been an embarrassing mess for MESD, a sign the place needs people who can provide real leadership. Incumbent Doug Montgomery is seeking a second term. A retired Bonneville Power Administration management analyst, he also once served on the Northwest Regional Education Service District. We supported Montgomery when he ran four years ago. Since then, he has earned a reputation as a bit of a crank, which he displayed during our endorsement interview, insisting, for example, that his opponents address him as “Dr. Montgomery.” (Montgomery holds a Ph.D. in economics and political science.) Montgomery also complained that one of his opponents, 35-year-old Stephen Marc Beaudoin, wasn’t a true Portlander. His proof? Beaudoin, who’s lived in Oregon for nine years, maintains a cellphone number with a Boston area code. Silly stuff. We’re going with Beaudoin, executive director of PHAME Academy, an arts nonprofit for people with developmental disabilities. (Full disclosure: Beaudoin wrote about the arts as a freelancer for WW in 2006 and 2007.) Beaudoin says he would have responded sooner to complaints from local districts about MESD’s former superintendent. Now he wants to repair the district’s frayed relationships, promote equity and find innovative ways to better serve MESD’s students, many of whom receive special education services. Well-spoken and warm, Beaudoin makes a persuasive case that he’s the guy who can do all three. “MESD has to evolve,” he says. Montgomery, in contrast, says one of his top priorities is to strengthen the district’s relationship with the Oregon Department of Education. That’s not the kind of change MESD needs. Also in the race is Colby Clipston, the unpaid director of a group promoting a constitutional
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Burke is the clear choice here. A special education aide, she works for the Pioneer Special School Program, part of Portland Public Schools. That gives her important insight into the work of MESD. “I’d like to bring the classroom perspective to the board,” she says. Her opponent is 78-year-old Kay Bridges, a repeat candidate who describes herself as a Facebook consultant. She videoed herself during our interview, mugging for her cellphone while speaking unconvincingly about her qualifications for office. We’re unfriending her.
PARKROSE SCHOOL DISTRICT POSITION 3
DAVE CARTER
The Parkrose School District in Northeast Portland—with 3,300 students, 189 teachers and a $30 million general-fund budget—doesn’t get a lot of attention. But it’s got a lot going on, including a brandnew middle school built with a 2011 bond issue that passed by just six votes—yes, six!—and a technology initiative that put iPad minis in the hands of all students last year. Carter, a produce journeyman at WinCo Foods, and Joshua Singleton, a Boeing manager, are Parkrose dads who share many views about the district’s direction. They both think it’s time for Superintendent Karen Fischer Gray to move on. They doubt the benefit of giving students iPads. They want to restore lost school days, and they also say the district should increase the number of foreign languages and electives it offers. “I have a kindergartner,” says Carter, 46, “and I’d like to see more attention to enrichments.” They differ mostly in their experience. After losing a 2013 bid for the board against Mary Lu Baetkey, Carter committed himself to other volunteer work, including with the district’s bond oversight committee and its budget advisory committee. Singleton, 44, though competent and likable, has no such experience working with the board. In this race, experience wins. Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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BIKE TO THE FUTURE NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR BIKES AND CARS GIVES PORTLAND CYCLING A BRIGHT FUTURE. BIKES WERE HERE FIRST. In 1895, bicycling was “the craze of the country” according to The Oregonian. Portland’s leading cycling activists at that time were Henry Pittock and William M. Ladd, who founded a bike club for “agitation in favor of separate bicycle paths through the country.” This was four years before Portland businessman E. Henry Wemme bought Oregon’s first car, a one-seat Locomobile Stanley Steamer. So let’s call it a comeback. Drivers take heed: The second golden age of Portland cycling is on your left, about to pass. Automobiles as we know them are headed the way of the passenger pigeon. The coming of autonomous cars is, at most, a decade away. In just a few years, the recent squabbles about Uber will seem quaint—driving will be robot’s work. It’s hard to fathom the tidal changes we are about to experience. But the bicycle will still be there. The cleanest, healthiest way of getting around our streets today and the most efficient method of human-powered locomotion yet devised will hold even more appeal once distracted, rage-prone drivers take their grubby paws off the wheel. This year’s bike issue is dedicated to contemplating this exciting near future. The scourge of bike theft, which Portland has been grap-
pling with for 120 years, might finally be slowed thanks to new smart locks that alert bikers when someone so much as jostles their ride (page 19). And if the thief does manage to swipe the bike and head out to an encampment along the Springwater Corridor, they’d better hope to find the GPS transmitters before someone finds them. Those GPS transmitters will also tell the robot-driven cars speeding down Southeast Clinton Street to slow down. Imagine a world in which robot-driven passengers wait patiently for an opportunity to safely pass. But that’s assuming you can afford to buy a home anywhere near Clinton. For the rest of us, we crunched the numbers to find the few Portland neighborhoods that are both bikeable and affordable (page 16). And if you want to take an autonomous taxi to work and get your exercise riding home? Well, there’s an exciting new bike-share operation set to hit our streets in a matter of months (page 17). Of course, some of these positive developments could still be subverted by politicians, which is why we’re highlighting Oregon’s greatest bike heroes and villains (page 22). It’s a good time to ride a bike in Portland. But next year will be even better. And once we get the damned driveroperated cars off the road again, we won’t even need separate bicycle paths.
I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y L O VAT T O
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Piedmont
$321,000
WHERE CAN PORTLAND CYCLISTS WITH AN AVERAGE INCOME STILL AFFORD TO LIVE?
Overlook-Humboldt
$321,000
4.6 mi. 29 min.
BUY AND BIKE BY TYLER HU R ST
Portland has long been thought of as a cycling mecca for one big reason: Affordable homes were close enough to work to commute by bike. Housing prices rose by another 6.6 percent last year, and a February project by Governing magazine found the city is gentrifying faster than anywhere else in the nation. Does the promise of an affordable, bikeable Portland still hold up? Consider that the median income for a family in Portland is around $50,000, which financial advisers Find your will tell you means they should not spend more than neighborhood $315,000 on a house. Also consider that the national at wweek.com/ average commuting time is 25 minutes each way. buyandbike. So can you find an affordable house in a place that’s about a one-hour round-trip commute to downtown Portland by bike? It’s increasingly difficult. mi. We used a city-provided map of every Portland 33 min. neighborhood and contacted D. Patrick Lewis of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate for a list of the median prices of homes sold in each neighborhood. Then we used Google Maps’ cycling directions to determine how far each neighborhood was from downtown—specifically Big Pink—in miles and minutes of cycling. (Traffic and the specific location within a neighborhood can cause these times to vary considerably, but this is our best try.) What we found won’t surprise most Portland house-hunters: It’s no longer cheap to live close to downtown, even in long-shunned North Portland. Here’s what else we found. mi. After you remove outliers such as Chinatown and Goose Hollow—if you can actually find a livable, single-family house there for under $300,000, we would 28 min. be happy to buy it from you—the best bet for bikers is probably Foster-Powell. There, houses are selling for about $262,000, and the round-trip commute is 66 minutes. And the mi. neighborhood looks to get even better with an upcoming “road diet” plan for Southeast Foster 33 min. Road. Starting next year, the city will spend $5.5 South Tabor million to build bike lanes and remove two of the mi. busy thoroughfare’s five car lanes. min. Two other mid-Southeast neighborhoods are close behind: Woodstock and South Tabor. However, South Tabor is the better value for bikers as living there shaves 12 minutes and Foster-Powell Creston-Kenilworth nearly three miles from your daily commute. It has a better bike score to match: 84 compared to Woodstock’s 77. Creston-Kenilworth—roughly the area south of Powell Boulevard between 28th and 50th avenues—also stood out. Homes there are selling for a median price of $330,000, and the cycling commute is 50 minutes. North Portland, long known as cheap and Woodstock close to downtown, isn’t so much like that anymore. Vernon boasts housing prices of $370,000. Neighbors in Piedmont, Overlook and Humboldt come in at $50,000 less—putting them on the bubble of affordability, while being only a few minutes closer to downtown than far-cheaper Southeast neighborhoods. Your best bet for a true bargain? BrentwoodDarlington is an outside contender, with home Miles and minutes prices sitting at around $213,000. Right now, it’s 81 mi. are one-way minutes to downtown along the Springwater Corriaverages. dor, but the new Orange MAX Line could be a gamechanger if you don’t feel like making a long ride. Median home price Or you can just wait—and pray—for the Portland housing bubble to pop.
5.1
4.8
4.1 25
5.8
$267,000
$330,000
5.6 mi. 34 min.
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243-2122
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$267,000
$262,000
BIKE ERINMAALA.COM
CONT.
A FAIR SHARE MAYBE PORTLAND CYCLISTS SHOULD BE HAPPY THE CITY DAWDLED ON BAD BIKESHARE SCHEMES. BY M A RT I N C I Z M A R
mcizmar@wweek.com
SAN FRANCISCO—A 30-something man in an American-made hoodie emerges from the Montgomery Street BART station. As his bleary eyes adjust to the bright sunlight, he looks across the street to see a rack of bicycles. Oh, cool, bike share! He eagerly unfolds his wallet to get out his credit card and pulls out the backpack straps on his American-made Tom Bihn bag… If you like bikes, you want to like bike share. Even if you’ve usually got your own ride handy, there’s something charming about knowing you can hop on a loaner if you need to run a quick errand downtown, or show the visitors the city by cycle. And yet, as much as we might like bikes, we can’t really ignore two decades of failure. In 1994, Portland bought the country’s first bike-share fleet—all 90 bright yellow bikes disappeared within months. Portland hasn’t had bike share since, making it one of the few cities that doesn’t. But the city did birth Alta, the company (now under a different name) that runs New York’s much-mocked Citi Bike program as well as bike shares in Chicago, Toronto—and San Francisco. The man pays $10 and gets a code to unlock his bike. At 40 pounds, it’s a beast—it’s more like pedaling a moped than riding a normal bike. On the first really steep hill, the man has to get off and walk up. He’s then able to cruise two miles down to his hotel. There, he pulls out his phone to find the nearest place to return the bike and check into his hotel on the Embarcadero... New York’s Citi Bike managed to piss off pretty much everyone—valuable real estate went to huge docking stations for clunky rides that put tourists on busy and unfamiliar roads. The
New York Post called the bike-share program “dastardly,” and The Wall Street Journal said it “begrimed” the streets. If you’re a cyclist, the natural inclination is to dismiss such criticisms as irrational resentment by meat-headed auto addicts. And then you try the bike share for yourself. The man is staying in the middle of a tourist area, not far from Fisherman’s Wharf. And yet, the nearest Bay Area Bike Share station is a mile away. He has just ridden two miles in order to ride one more and then walk a mile back to his planned destination. After a brief disagreement with a motorist, caused in part by unfamiliarity with the area streets, the man frees himself of the beast. He has determined that this form of bike share is pretty fucking stupid. Surely there’s a better way.
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Waterproof: Spinlister thinks it has a better way. The site Backpacks currently operates a rental-matching service not Messenger bags unlike Airbnb, but for bikes. But, come fall, PortPanniers and land will be the first city in the country to get the Accessories company’s new bike-share program. “Portland is going to be a leader again,” says Spinlister marketing boss Andrew Batey. “It’s been called the most revolutionary idea to hit bike share in the last two decades.” It makes a lot of sense. Spinlister’s bike share is more like Car2Go than city-funded programs— you use an app to find a bike locked to a blue city rack nearby and use Bluetooth to unlock it. Each bike in the fleet will have an 8-speed internal gear hub and an onboard computer that tracks location. “Part of the problem with other bike shares is the bike—it’s not a very good bike,” Batey says. “We built our bikes for bike enthusiasts. It’s Choose from our large 2033 SE Hawthorne something even a bike lover will love to ride.” selection of Portland OR 97214 It’s also free for the city. Portland Mayor Charpre-made bags lie Hales has been asked—reasonably, I think—how or customize you own. blackstarbags.com Choose from our large the city can allocate $2 million in local funds for 750 bikes at 75 stations in 2016. Well, Spinlister’s selection of system will depend on a network of micro-entrepre-made bags preneurs who own the bikes privately and pay for the cost through rentals. Spinlister figures the or customize you own. owner-renters could make $3,000 to $6,000 a year from each bike they own. Best of all? Like Car2Go, you’ll be able to return the bike anywhere within the appointed zone. from I sure hope it works. Choose I want to like bike our large share, but it’s hard when the current systems selection of are just so dumb. pre-made bags That man in San Francisco—the one who tried to use Bay Area Bike Share instead of Uber or customize you own. because he wanted desperately to believe? Dear reader, that man was me.
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Beyond the Print
#WWEEK NEVER MISS A BEAT. @WillametteWeek @wweek @WillametteWeek
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CONT.
BIKE
TO CATCH A BIKE THIEF WILL BIKE LOCKS OF THE FUTURE FINALLY END 120 YEARS OF THIEVING BASTARDS? BY MATTHEW KORFHAGE mkorfhage@week.com
The first recorded bike thief in Portland was shot with a rifle. Deterrent? Nay. A scant four years later, in 1899, The Oregonian—a turn-of-the-century daily newspaper—wagged its inky finger that the “bike thief has taken the place of the old-fashioned horse thief, and he plies his vocation unattended by the dangers of lynching or the penitentiary.” Little has changed. Reporting an epidemic of bike theft in this town is like declaring an epidemic of puberty among area tweens. Your U-lock won’t save you. KOIN is abuzz with pictures of bike hitching posts sawed through with power cutters, and KGW excitedly interviewed an alleged bikethief kingpin under the Hawthorne and Morrison bridges (see page 23). More than 2,100 bikes were reported stolen in Portland in 2014, with probably an equal number never mentioned to police. Those stats are slightly down from 2013, but two months after City Commissioner Nick Fish’s bike got swiped off its cable lock in December 2014, Portland police announced a new biketheft task force. Things are getting serious— never mind that only 2 percent of bike thefts are resolved by police, a statistic that anecdotally seems way higher than expected. The real hope against our fair city’s love of constant petty theft comes from a new world of bike tech. Reed College, for example, was plagued with bike theft this year, so it set out a “bait bike” with a GPS tracker. Within 12 hours, the bike was stolen—and police followed the signal to the thieves, holed up in a van filled with stolen bikes. Spokesman Kevin Myers says campus bike theft is now down by half just because people know GPS trackers might exist. Still, GPS tech for bikes is apparently difficult to perfect. Many announced their Kickstarters years ago, only to be stalled in development. “The problem,” says Kris Akins of Portland’s BikeTrak, which has been working on a product since 2012, “is power.” The damn things like to run out of batteries. So the future seems bright, but the present is merely full of shining possibilities. Here are the ways people are trying to save your bike from evil: HELIOS Space Age handlebars! With, like, headlights! And GPS navigation! And GPS tracking! Downside: They’re $279, and shipping keeps getting delayed, and delayed, and delayed. Maybe this month? Or next? Also, installing front brakes on them seems like a nightmare. PROJECT 529 It’s basically a little registration sticker connected to a phone app. You take a picture of your bike and register it with an app, and if your bike gets stolen, HELIOS
SPYBIKE TOP CAP TRACKER
you send an alert to a presumed team of vigilantes and police. If your bike is found in a weird spot, people can immediately crosscheck and notify you where it is. Downside: Relies on human goodwill. Meaning somebody is going to have to be on the lookout for your bike when you send the alert. BIKESPIKE Like a LoJack for your bike! Downside: They’ve been taking $130 pre-orders since early 2013. MOBILOC This crazy-looking lock is meant to mount directly onto your bike, and is equipped with GPS. Downside: The GPS is on the lock, not your bike. So if they bust the lock… LOCK8 Like lots of German things, this is crazily engineered: It’s perma-attached to your bike and purportedly has six different sensors—including temperature!—to detect if it’s being screwed with, at which point it alarms your phone and starts tracking itself. Downside: It’s still a prototype (although the prototypes apparently busted up a bike ring in Germany). Also, if they bust the lock…
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TRACKING DOTS Various companies proclaiming military credentials have little devices you can nestle under your bike seat. Just Google “GPS Dot” and revel in the possibilities. Downside: Oh my God, they look shady. And they all run out of batteries. BIKECOP Portland company Biketrak is on its fifth prototype of Bikecop, but says it’s shooting to have a reliable bike GPS tracker on the market by next year that will sense vibration when a bike is getting stolen and alert the owner. The company also plans to hook in with police and tracker networks like 529. Downside: It doesn’t quite exist yet. But it looks promising—there are working prototypes. SPYBIKE Whether in the form of a bike lamp, bike cap or intra-seatpost tracker, this thing alerts you when your bike moves about 10 feet without your permission, and starts tracking your bike. So you can presumably chase your bike and duke it out for it, Double Dragon style. Or just call the cops. This is the only working bike tracker on the market, to our knowledge, and testimonials have been solid. Downside: The company’s in the U.K., and some U.S. users have reported compatibility issues with the $150 devices.
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CONT.
BIKE
BIKE WAYS Thanks to a vast network of 100 bike sensors, we may soon know more than ever about how and where we get around. BY AN N A WA LT E R S
awalters@wweek.com
William Henderson would like to tell you about yourself. And on any given street corner, he’ll do it for the price of a used cellphone. This summer, Portland has commissioned Henderson’s four-person startup, Ride, to develop and install about 100 surprisingly cheap traffic sensors—each one $50, at least for now—intended to tell us when, where and maybe even why Portlanders bike. Right now, we know shockingly little, aside from the self-reported statistic that 6 percent of Portlanders use their bikes to commute. Our knowledge is captured only in tiny snapshots like the small wires set over bridge routes that count cyclists. Or Portland’s “bike count,” a citywide effort to hand-tally riders at select intersections for two hours on a single summer day. That glimpse costs 560 hours of city staff time and hundreds of volunteer hours. “I have a staff person that spends all summer coordinating volunteers with pens and papers,” says Margi Bradway, active transportation division manager for the Portland Bureau of Transportation. “We have a lot of people standing on street corners doing little marks every time somebody rides by.” If his idea works, Henderson’s Ride technology will run cheap enough that sensors could conceivably be placed all over town. Each sensor, designed to look like a traffic reflector in the pavement, detects when a truck, car, bike or pedestrian passes by, and stores that information on a tiny hard drive. The sensors would be fast and reliable, precisely because they don’t require an active Internet connection to record data. However, to upload that information from the sensors’ tiny hard drives, the system relies on people periodically passing by with a “Ride” app running on their iPhones. The sensor piggybacks on the phone’s Internet connection to beam ride information to the cloud. The Ride app also tracks the individual routes cyclists take as they commute or run errands in the city, and asks how they feel about it. When their wheels stop turning, Ride prompts them to rate the journey as good or bad by clicking a “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” icon, then
The Ride app.
“What we want is a tool that is as easy to use as Google Maps, but has the ability to answer fairly sophisticated questions,” Henderson says. As of January, Henderson and his team locked in a deal with PBOT to pilot a network of up to 100 bike counters across the city starting this summer. The comparably low cost is one reason the city bet on Henderson. The bike-counting pilot is funded by $35,000 from Mayor Charlie Hales’ “innovation fund”—which fronts money for Portland agencies to test risky ideas that may save money in the long term—and $5,000 from PBOT’s budget. This will cover the cost of the sensors, their installation and staff to run the program. By comparison, the Hawthorne Bridge electronic bike counter, which Cycle Oregon donated in 2013, cost $20,000. ADD IT UP: New sensors could count bikes at a fraction of the “This is why the mayor’s innovation grant is cost of the $20,000 Hawthorne Bridge electronic bike counter. so important,” Bradway says, “because it allows us to try something we may actually fail at. And that’s OK.” aggregates that data in the form of a city heat map. Red, Henderson, lanky and clad in an oxford shirt the color yellow and green lines show which routes and city streets of eggplant, looks like he could have been James Van Der were rated favorably. Unsurprisingly, the downtown area Beek’s hair double on Dawson’s Creek. He dropped out was a glaring red grid. of Reed College twice before eventually earning a math “The [sensors are] more traditional, but they’re not tell- degree there, then wound up in Silicon Valley working as ing you anything about the person,” Henderson says. “What employee No. 13 at Square—the company behind those kind of rider are they? Why do they ride? How do they feel white flat screens that take your credit card at coffee about the ride they’re taking? The app is about giving you a shops. After moving back to Portland, he quickly made sense of depth.” half a million dollars in revenue inventing Knock, a little A thumbs-down may not seem particularly telling, but app that lets you unlock your Mac by knocking twice on Henderson can extrapolate from there. If a rider consis- your iPhone. tently reports “bad” rides on busy streets, it may be safe “We had this success, and it allowed us to finance the to assume that person is less comfortable with car traffic business for another six months before we have to worry than other riders. And if riders create profiles, the data about revenue again,” Henderson says. “I just had a kid, so becomes richer. I was thinking somewhat existentially, and thinking about Everything collected by the bike counters and Ride is what do I really want to do?” placed into a database. The aim is to make this information For Henderson—a daily bike commuter with rain pants publicly available on the Web and digestible, so anyone in his pannier to prove it—that was using Knock’s Bluetooth from activist to bureaucrat can understand and use it. So technology to help the city gather complete bike data. when East Burnside Street narrows to one lane westbound, “You have this engineering mentality,” Henderson says, or Southeast Division Street car traffic spills into the Clin- “and after you’ve been doing it for a little while, you realize ton bikeway during construction, the city could conceivably you can solve problems, but just because you’re solving a see the effects on cyclists and pedestrians in real time—and problem doesn’t mean you’re actually doing the world a possibly respond. favor. You have to seek out the problems that matter.”
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PORTLAND BIKE
HEROES AND
Cindy Lewellen
Jake Reiss
DEED: REMARKABLE PERSEVERANCE A Ford F-250 from California T-boned Lewellen, who was cycling at 26 mph on the “Dirty 30” to Sauvie Island one morning last November. When a doctor in a nearby car got to her, Lewellen had no pulse. “I guess I technically died,” she says. After seven days in the hospital, 12 screws in her pelvis, and recovering from her concussion and punctured lung, Lewellen waited just six weeks to start training again, and in January completed a 65-mile solo ride.
DEED: CONQUERED PORTLAND’S TOUGHEST BIKE RIDE At age 7 last April, Jake Reiss conquered the notorious Ronde ride, a 50-mile calf-buster with up to 30 percent inclines through Portland’s Southwest hills that has felled many more experienced bikers. Reiss reached the Council Crest finish line in under nine hours (sandwich break included).
“Rev.” Phil Sano DEED: CONSTANT PROVOCATION Bike Smut Film Festival founder “Rev.” Phil Sano, a veritable bike vigilante, found a dented patrol-car door and made it into a bike frame. Authorities confiscated Sano’s double-decker cycle as “evidence,” but the Reverend prevailed, winning back his wheels from the cops. He later filed suit against the city of Portland after a cop yanked him off his bike and tasered him for riding without a headlight in 2008. Sano didn’t stop when the officer said, “Hey! Buddy!” Sano claimed he didn’t know it was a police officer, and was found innocent of resisting arrest.
Matt Martin
Emily Finch DEED: RIDES A BICYCLE BUILT FOR SEVEN This 35-year-old mother of six carts her children, aged toddler to teen, around the city on a Frankenbike. In front, the traditional Dutch freight tricycle known as a “bakfiets” holds her four youngest, another child has a seat over the rear wheel, and tacked on a tandem frame behind, the last child is the lucky one with a set of pedals to help push.
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DEED: EAST PORTLAND BIKE EVANGELISM It used to be if you got a flat while biking east of 107th Avenue in Southeast Portland, you were doomed. Matt Martin is a saint to such lost souls, offering free repair and help each Thursday from 4 to 6 pm at his Rosewood Bikes oasis— the only shop in a four-mile radius, according to Martin. ENID SPITZ.
CONT.
BIKE
VILLAINS I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y L O VAT T O
Mia Birk CRIME: NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE Oversaw the disastrous rollout of Alta Bicycle Share’s Citi Bike rental system in New York City, leading to the Portland company being purchased by an investment firm, moving to New York and changing its name—and, despite the reassurances of transportation officials, possibly setting back Portland’s own, already long-delayed bike-share program (see page 17).
Sen. Brian Boquist (R-Dallas)
Rep. John Davis (R-Wilsonville)
CRIME: ATTEMPTED BIKESLAUGHTER Introduced a bill that would require anyone over age 18 in Oregon to get a license to ride a bike and pay to register their vehicle, and would also prohibit the use of state highway funds on bicycle-related projects.
CRIME: BLAMING THE VICTIM Tried (and ultimately failed) to introduce a bill that would fine cyclists $250 for not wearing reflective clothing at night. Claimed to be advocating equal responsibility for road safety, despite the fact he voted against increased fines for texting while driving in 2013.
Portland Commissioner Amanda Fritz CRIMES: FUN-POLICING AND VIBE-HARSHING Fritz is leading a jihad against local bikers, first voting against bike-share funding in 2011 because she said “dangerous” cyclists harassed pedestrians on sidewalks. She halted progress on a bike trail in Forest Park and co-signed a memo banning mountain biking at River View Natural Area, saying bikes damaged salmon habitat and “scared” the wildlife.
Leroy Parsons CRIME: STEALING BIKES, PROBABLY As the homeless, alleged “kingpin” of bike thieves, lords over what seems to be a makeshift chop shop under the Hawthorne and Morrison bridges. Told KGW he doesn’t steal bikes; was arrested hours later in possession of a stolen bike. MATTHEW SINGER.
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BIKE EVENTS THROUGH THE YEAR PETER WOODSMAN
MAY 8, JUNE 12, ETC. Midnight Mystery Ride Second Friday of every month. midnightmysteryride.wordpress.com. The Midnight Mystery Ride enjoys its mystique— but here’s the bare minimum of what you need to know. Check the website on the day of the event for the ride’s starting location (usually a bar). Get there, hang out, then succumb to wherever the night’s ride may take you, no questions asked.
AUG. 15 Beaverton Banks and Beyond Tour Papa’s Pizza Parlor, 15700 NW Blueridge Drive, Beaverton. 6:30 am-4 pm. $35. This Beaverton charity ride offers family-friendly route options from 32 to 100 miles, all starting from Beaverton’s Papa’s Pizza and touring through North Plains countryside to Banks. If you finish by 4:30 pm, there might still be a slice of Papa’s pizza at the finish line. Proceeds fund the Northwest Bicycle Safety Council’s community helmet program. Helmets required.
JUNE 4-27 SEPTEMBER
Pedalpalooza Various locations. Check shift2bikes.org for a full calendar. Three weeks of “bikey fun,” Pedalpalooza is essentially Portland’s citywide, bike-themed summer camp. With dozens and dozens of biking events crammed into the span of less than a month, there’s something for everyone. Lawyers? Jump in the lawyer ride. Pregnant? Try Pregopalooza. Fans of David Bowie and definitely not Prince—perhaps vice versa? The Bowie vs. Prince ride is for you. Nearly all events are free, so you have nothing to lose. Dignity is not a thing here.
Bike Commute Challenge Citywide during September. Free. Register online at bikecommutechallenge.com. The month of September pits workplaces against one another in a citywide battle of bike commuters, according to an algorithm we don’t really understand. “Team” is a loose term here, as individuals can register and often take top spots with 100 percent biking achievements.
MIDNIGHT MYSTERY RIDE. NO QUESTIONS ASKED.
N ATA L I E B E H R I N G
OCT. 3-4 JUNE 27 Portland World Naked Bike Ride Check pdxwnbr.org for details. The Portland World Naked Bike Ride is a naked bike ride in Portland. It is not the only naked bike ride, but it is the only one with that name.
AUG. 1 FRIDAYS ARE ALL ABOUT SPEED AT THE ALPENROSE VELODROME.
AUG. 9
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Worst Day of the Year Ride worstdayride.com. $29 advance, $45 day of event. Despite the ride’s name, it was a beautiful day for the recent one. Anyway, how bad could it be with Santa cyclists, bumblebee cyclists, and bikers with flowers on their helmets and tiny dogs stuffed in their jackets? You also get coffee and doughnuts in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, and the pride that comes with saying you rode through the worst day of the year. They break the event into two rides: a 15-mile flat route in downtown Portland and a 46-mile course through the westside.
MID-APRIL
Providence Bridge Pedal Southwest Naito Parkway at Salmon Street, blog.bridgepedal.com. 6:45 am. $15-$60. Rivaling the lawyer ride as one of Portland’s longest-standing, Bridge Pedal sends spandexclad hordes back and forth on seven-, nine- or 11-bridge routes (14, 25 and 35 miles, respectively). With the new Tilikum Crossing, it’s 11 bridges for the first time. Registration grants you entrance to the Bite of Oregon, but don’t have too much fun; you can’t stop to take photos and you can’t bring your dog.
Hopworks Urban Brewery, 2944 SE Powell Blvd., hopworksbeer.com. A merger of Biketobeerfest and the Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show, it’s exactly what you’d expect: lots of beers and lots of terribly expensive and beautiful custom bikes from local makers. Oh, and also bike breakdancing, a bike-throwing competition and an adult tricycle obstacle course.
FEB. 14
Portland Century University of Portland, 5000 N Willamette Blvd., portlandcentury.com. 6 am. $79-$165. One hundred miles is a Saturday ride for some Portlanders and a daunting feat for the less veloversed, but Portland Century tries to bridge the gap with a flat, if long, course that’s just as focused on sightseeing local landmarks as riding. The starting point recently switched from downtown’s Portland State University to the University of Portland up on the bluff, where breakfast starts bright and early at 5:30 and the finish line is a Hopworks beer garden. After a lot of whining that the route was mainly in Washington, planners set a decidedly southern course for this summer.
Handmade Bike & Beer Festival
Ronde PDX
THE DE RONDE VAN WEST PORTLANDIA CHALLENGES RIDERS OF ALL AGES.
The Nieuw Ronde PDX ride starts in the Northwest Industrial District (Saturday); the La Doyenne of the East ride starts at the Springwater Corridor and I-205 bike path (Sunday). rondepdx.com. Free. Inspired by a Belgian ride that’s infamous for its near-impossible inclines, the De Ronde Van West Portlandia challenges riders of all ages to tackle 50 miles of the West Hills’ steepest serpentine roadways. Still, 1,000 riders showed up for this year’s race. It’s unsanctioned and announced via social media and word of mouth (routes at ridewithgps. com). It got so popular that the founders added La Doyenne, a Southeast ride, the following day.
CONT.
BIKE
A WEEK OF BICYCLES WEDNESDAY
Portland Bike Polo
Portland by Cycle Summer Rides
Alberta Park, Northeast Killingsworth Street and 22nd Avenue, portlandbikepolo. com. 3 pm-dusk Sundays. Show up with your bike and a helmet and get ready to play urban Portland’s closest bike cousin to the extravagantly great and ridiculous horseymallet sport that felled the great Carlos Gracida last year, except that in mood it’s more Sunday softball.
6 pm Tuesdays and Wednesdays, July-August. See portlandoregon.gov/ transportation/44099 for details. On alternating Tuesdays and Wednesday evenings in the summer, the Portland Bureau of Transportation offers free family-friendly bike tours of the city—sometimes to sweet shops, sometimes down greenways. Because the kids! But seriously, there’s an amazing amount of free bike programs and classes.
JEREK HOLLENDER
SUNDAY
PORTLAND BIKE POLO
Zoobomb Southwest 13th Avenue and West Burnside Street, zoobomb.net. 8:30 pm Sundays. The smaller the wheels, the greater the glory. For 13 years, riders of all bikes and sizes have met at the Pyle, a piece of public art that anchors a stack of small mountain bikes in the West End, for an adrenalinepumping nighttime ride down the West Hills.
MONDAY PIR Monday and Tuesday Night Races Portland International Raceway, 1940 N Victory Blvd., 823-7223, racemondaynight.com, tuesdaynightpir. com. 5-6:45 pm MondaysTuesdays through Aug. 31. $15 to race, free to watch. On summer nights, the twomile raceway turns into a flatcircuit road race as official as they come in Portland, riding until the sunlight fails in search of the coveted monthly Castelli leader’s jersey. An Oregon Bicycle Racing Association license is required.
TUESDAY Women and Trans Wrench Night Bike Farm, 1810 NE 1st Ave., 971-533-7428, bikefarm.org. 4:30-7:30 pm every first and third Tuesday. Free. Twice a month, the all-volunteer Bike Farm shop closes to cisgender men and hosts a special night for women and transgender riders to use its free expertise and tools.
THURSDAY Portland Lawyer Ride Pioneer Courthouse Square, Southwest Broadway and Yamhill Street, 228-5222. Noon-1:30 pm Mondays and Thursdays. Free. This group rides with widely varied participants, from Portland State undergraduates to retired lawyers. They do laps around the Southwest Fairmont Boulevard loop on Mondays, and venture into the West Hills up to Skyline Boulevard on Thursdays, in any weather. There’s a norider-left-behind policy, but the air of friendly competition keeps rides at a brisk clip.
FRIDAY Fast Twitch Fridays Alpenrose Velodrome, 6149 SW Shattuck Road, 227-4439. 6:30 pm Fridays, May-August. $10. Fridays are all about speed at the Velodrome, a historic course opened as a dirt track in the early ’60s. Race options include sprints, omniums (multiday races) and keirins (where the racers follow a pacer until the final breakaway lap). With track banks at almost twice the grade of regular circuits, the Velodrome isn’t the place to break in your training wheels. An Oregon Bicycle Racing Association license is required.
SATURDAY Portland Velo Saturday Rides portlandvelo.net. 9 am Saturdays. It costs $30 for an annual membership, but for that you ride in a hell of a pack—the Portland Velo Cycling Club claims it’s the largest regular ride in the area. Ride distances vary from 35 to 50 miles, planned by benevolent bicycle godparents who swear they won’t leave you behind going uphill. Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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GET THIS
BIKE-GEAR RECOMMENDATIONS BY PORTLAND BIKE SHOPS.
LIGHT & MOTION URBAN 650 LIGHTS, $135.
PHOTOS BY RONITPHOTO.COM
PARKER DUSSEAU BUTTON-DOWN DRESS SHIRT FOR BIKING, $145.
REVELATE DESIGNS SALSA BAG, $165.
Connor Bonazzola, Western Bikeworks Project 529 sticker, $10. “Project 529 [See page 19] has been really popular here. It’s basically a bike registration sticker, and there’s an app that correlates with it so you can report your bike stolen, and they’re looked for by police. It sort of incorporates a stolenbike registry with social-media aspect. You activate your sticker [by inputting the registration code] when you set the app up, and you take pictures of your bike. If your bike is stolen, you would activate it, and it sends an alert to all the other 529 members in the area. And it stays as an open stolen bike. If you see it, you can check, and police can check it as well.” Colin Falk, the Bike Commuter Revolights, $199/set. “These are wheel attachment lights—they flash when you stop, and the second you start and stop, they illuminate the wheel in front of you, and along the wheel of the bike. They illuminate your path in a halo shape. It’s really more to make you visible than to signal braking, but you are super visible. They shine on the ground—forward, back, side and front—and flash when you’re braking, kind of like a brake light.”
REVOLIGHTS, $199/SET.
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Leah Benson, Gladys Bikes Levi’s women’s Commuter jeans, $88. “If I’m being entirely honest, [I like them because] they fit me really well. They won’t solve everyone’s jeans-related issues, but they have enough coverage in the back, they’re also stretchy in all the right ways, and they help me move around. And they look good. There are a lot of cycling jeans that are denim, but they don’t look good as jeans should. They’re not conspicuously high-waisted, like the kind that’s going above your belly button. They have reflective material up the leg, and a protective coat so they’re slightly more water- and dirt-repellent. They just released the first style earlier this spring, a full line with a bunch of different cuts of shirts to go with this.” Eva Frazier, Clever Cycles Giro Frisco women’s jacket, $400. “There’s this really attractive jacket from Giro, made in the old Levi’s jacket style. It’s called the Frisco Coat. It’s army green, and waterproof, and it doesn’t look like it’s a bike jacket, which is really kind of the point of it. Swrve also makes really nice riding pants that are a little stretchy, regular-looking trousers. With a lot of bike pants, you don’t want to be too far from your bike while you’re wearing them.” Alex Criss, River City Bikes Light & Motion Urban 650 lights, $135. “The things we’re most excited about right now are these new LED lights that are really bright and really small, pretty high-powered. We like the Light & Motion Urban 650s. They’re fully waterproof, they’re really bright, they’re useful on and off the bike, and they’ve got an easy-mounting bracket. I’ve taken them camping. If you drop them in water, they’re still good, so I bring them fly-fishing.”
Nick Wood, 21st Avenue Bicycles Revelate Designs bag, $165. “I don’t know if you’ve been privy to the whole bikepacking, light-touring thing. The tipping point was the Oregon Outback ride. It’s cool because it’s the road less traveled. It’s nontraditional touring gear. People think about somebody riding across the country, they think of a bunch of heavy bags. But I would say Revelate Designs’ bags have been the leader for us, and for the entire category of riding. They’re one of the few. You put all the weight close into the frame, carry less stuff and examine your load. You can ride 100 miles into more remote areas.” Mark Ontiveros, West End Bikes Parker Dusseau button-down dress shirt for biking, $145. “Parker Dusseau has such attention to detail—it’s one of the more special things we have. They’re handmade U.S. dress shirts with reflective stripes under the collar; you just flip the collar up. There’s reflective piping under the cuffs. That’s the beauty, it doesn’t scream ‘bike.’ It has a swing mesh under the shoulder—there’s ventilation that’s hidden. They come in white, blue, gray, pen dot, chambray.” WW office pick Durban Bay Pro folding bike, $429. We’ve had folding bikes in our office basement for a few years—the result of some dark deal in our past— and they’re great when you road-trip or you’ve drunk too much and want to toss the thing in a cab, all folded up. But they’ve always been too expensive for what they are: an auxiliary bike or toy, not a daily commuter. Well, now they’re cheaper, and they’ve got gears. Seven of them, even.
CONT. PROJECT 529 STICKER, $10.
BIKE
GIRO FRISCO WOMEN’S JACKET, $400.
DURBAN BAY PRO FOLDING BIKE, $429.
LEVI’S WOMEN’S COMMUTER JEANS, $88.
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FOOD: New late-night ramen in Southeast. MUSIC: Sleater-Kinney’s second homecoming. BAR REVIEW: The Commons’ new taproom. WEED: A 24-hour dispensary downtown.
Happy Hour Monday–Saturday 4–6pm & 8pm–close
Brunch Saturday & Sunday
La Calaca Comelona
SCOOP
WE SELL DRINKS
IT’S DOCK O’CLOCK, PORTLAND.
OPEN TILL 2:30AM DAILY libertyglassbar.com
S A M A R I TA N S P U R S E . O R G
2304 SE Belmont | 503-239-9675 4-10pm Mon–Sat
35 37 47 60
CAKE SHAKE: Sweet Cakes by Melissa, the Gresham bakery forced from business after it refused to make a cake for a lesbian couple in 2013, is trying to raise money to pay its fines using the Christian Kickstarter. Owners Aaron and Melissa Klein are facing a $135,000 fine for their actions, which violated Oregon’s discrimination laws. The Kleins originally used GoFundMe, but that site says it won’t approve campaigns for crimes connected to hateful acts. “Satan’s really at work but I know our God has a plan and wins in the end!” the Kleins wrote before switching to Samaritan’s Purse, where donors had to scroll past a campaign to help victims of the Nepal earthquake before giving money to the Kleins. PAY TO PLAY: Several midsize Portland theaters may change their pay structure for actors, creating a ripple effect on staffing and on the plays they’re able to produce. The change was suggested by employment lawyer Dan Grinfas, who earlier this month co-hosted a panel with the Portland Area Theater Alliance on whether actors should be considered volunteers, independent contractors or employees. If they become employees, theaters must pay minimum wage, possibly making shows with large casts or extra staff too expensive. Then again, avoiding an IRS audit may be worth the trouble. Triangle Productions says it will lay off its marketing director and box-office staff when it starts paying actors as employees Aug. 1. Post5 Theatre is considering the change, and CoHo Productions said in a statement it will continue to treat actors, management and administrators as employees, and directors, designers and costumers as independent contractors. No changes are needed at big theater companies such as Portland Center Stage, where actors are unionized and have their pay regulated.
NOT BITTER: The Bitter End soccer bar on West Burnside Street is calling it quits… again. The preferred Timbers pregame pub reopened in 2013 under new owners but announced its closure April 23, promising to reincarnate soon as the St. Helens, with “a new team and a new focus.” 30
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WILL CORWIN
HOTEL TRANSIENTS: Magpie vintage clothing, Johnny Sole shoe store, and arts nonprofit Oregon Humanities will move this year to make room for a new West End boutique hotel from Provenance Hotels, the company that operates Hotel Lucia and the Sentinel. Johnny Sole and Oregon Humanities expect to move a block away; Oregon Humanties will move into the Pittock Block building, upstairs from Literary Arts and the City Club of Portland, in mid-May. But Magpie, which has sold clothes on Southwest 9th Avenue for 20 years, is having a tough time finding a new location. “They won’t give me a timeline,” says owner Todd Wooley. “We’d love to stay downtown. We’ve always been downtown. I looked at a place on 4th and Washington. It’s so seedy down there; I had no idea.”
HEADOUT
GO
The 2015 Oregon Technology Awards are at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., on Thursday, April 30. 5 pm. $275 for members, $325 for nonmembers. Tickets at eventbrite.com. WILLAMETTE WEEK
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
the first annual
Willamette Week Awards about the
Oregon Technology Awards THE ONLY AWARDS CEREMONY THAT GIVES AWARDS TO AN AWARDS CEREMONY.
O
ver the past decade, a glut of tech-startup seedlings has sprouted up in the Portland area’s Silicon Forest. Thetus, Tripwire, the Clymb, Nvoicepay, Brandlive—the gang’s all here. Yes, they have concrete floors and exposed brick. Yes, whiteboarding is a verb and there are floorto-ceiling walls of the stuff to scribble on. Yes, they come bearing beanbags, Nerf guns and in-house kittens. They high-five, they drink beer, they hit gongs, etc. It’s a good life. And this is America, so it is also a contest. We know this because there are prizes. Ever heard of the Technology Association of Oregon? Or the Oregon Technology Awards? Neither had we. But it sure looks like they have a lot going on. The Oregon Tech Awards are Thursday, April 30, at the Portland Art Museum, and tickets are just $275—a bargain to rub elbows with the people behind the state’s “most disruptive technology,” including nominees such as a vacation-rental website that is totally disrupting other, more-established vacation-rental websites. Sirs—and who are we fooling, you’re all sirs—we salute you. And we think you deserve awards before you show up to collect plaques and eat a Farm Stand Salad™ and pear-and-frangipane tartlets. And, obviously, you deserve them well before you have, like, revenue. Here, then, are the first annual WW Awards about the Oregon Technology Awards. TED JAMISON.
Best use of portmanteau in a company name... Clinicient iovation MotioSens Brandlive
WINNER: Brandlive. It makes your brand live, via prerecorded video.
Finalist that deserves to win whatever it is nominated for based solely on what we think it might do based on its name…
Best use of clichéd motivational pump-up line in company mission…
“Fail fast, succeed faster.” —Clinicient “NAVIS is in the FUN market, and business is booming.” —Navis “The Power of Open.” —Lumen Learning “2001 was an interesting year for technology.” —Peak Hosting WINNER: Navis. Who doesn’t like fun?
Best use of unnecessary “q” in an Oregon Tech Awards finalist’s company name… WINNER: Tie between Qorvo and HealthSparq.
LIGHTNING BOLT, LITURGY [EAR BLEEDERS] The latter plays “transcendental black metal,” the former spasmodic noise rock that’ll make you think your stereo is having a seizure. It’s a match made in the part of heaven where everyone has tinnitus. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9 pm. $14. 21+.
THURSDAY APRIL 30 NICK OFFERMAN & MEGAN MULLALY [ROM-COM] Did you know Ron Swanson and Tammy 2 are an IRL couple? It’s not totally clear what they’ll be doing here, but let’s hope it’s something like that Parks & Recreation episode where they rekindle their bad romance and Ron ends up with cornrows and his mustache shaved in half. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 8 and 10:30 pm. $48.50. All ages.
best use of portmanteau in a company name BRANDLIVE CEO FRITZ BRUMDER
FRIDAY MAY 1
best application (assumed)
PUPPET LABS CEO AND FOUNDER LUKE KANIES
CROWDCOMPASS: You’re drunk. You could have sworn your friends were over to the left, by the bass guitarist. Now you’re not so sure… CrowdCompass. CEDEXIS: Because you’ve asked your doctor, and Cialis “isn’t right for you.” CLOUDABILITY: Providing judgment-free answers to all the middle-aged questions you’ve been too self-conscious to ask: “OK, what is the cloud? How does it know? Can it, like…see me?” PUPPET LABS: Just…better puppets.
WINNER: Puppet Labs—for its life-changing white paper about the need to disrupt the entrenched puppet industry.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 29
WAXAHATCHEE [INDIE POP] Since 2013’s Cerulean Salt, Katie Crutchfield jumped from a tiny indie label to Merge Records, and her confidence has adjusted appropriately. Ivy Tripp updates her lo-fi folk confessionals with a more upbeat pop tint that seems poised for a much larger audience. Kurt Cobain would have loved this. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 2319663. 9 pm. $15. 21+.
SATURDAY MAY 2 KENTUCKY DERBY PARTY [HORSES] If you like all the fanfare of horse racing, but not the horses, this is your day to be at Portland Meadows. White suits, big hats, stupid-huge Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, ribbon bows, enough juleps to freshen a field of manure, and only four minutes of actual horse racing. Yeehaw. Portland Meadows, 1001 N Schmeer Road, 285-9144, portlandmeadows.com. Doors open 7 am, race at 3:24 pm.
SUNDAY MAY 3 best use of clichéd motivational pump-up line in company mission NAVIS CEO BILL WALSH
STATIC [THEATER] If a deaf man makes a mixed tape, what’s his track list? Third Rail’s new play about a deaf man’s widow is as much a study of sound as a show. Actors made their own mixtapes, which will play at listening stations in the lobby. But deaf audiences (or anyone seeking a buzz) can also “listen” by vibration. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 2351101. 2 pm. $24-$47. URBAN WINE EXPERIENCE [WINE] Portland now has enough urban wineries for you to drink a different bottle from one every day of the month. Oregon Wine Month kicks off in Portland with small plates, ask-the-winemaker chats and pours from all 12 wineries in the PDX Urban Wineries association. Union/ Pine, 525 SE Pine St., pdxurbanwineries.com. 3-6 pm. $32-$40. Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK = WW Pick. Highly recommended. By MATTHeW KORFHAge. editor: MARTIN CIZMAR. email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
SATURDAY, MAY 2 Kentucky Derby at the Woodsman
Sure, you could go to the Rialto during the Derby and toast the end of humanity, but the Woodsman—an oaken ode to Southern and American comforts—offers a slightly more civilized alternative, with copper-cupped juleps, Kentucky Hot Browns and its house-concocted Kentucky Special cocktail with 12-year bourbon and, like, lapsang souchong. They promise to televise the race for its entire three-minute duration, and to not bother you about wearing your ridiculous hats at the table. The Woodsman Tavern, 4537 SE Division St., 971-373-8264.
SUNDAY, MAY 3 PDX Urban Wine Experience
Oregon Wine Month kicks off May 1, which means a million junkets to the valley and gorge. But the urban wineries are having their own party, with 12 Portland wineries from Division to Seven Bridges to Fausse Piste pouring two to three wines apiece, with small plates and discounts for case or halfcase mix-’n’-match purchases. Union/ Pine, 525 SE Pine St., pdxurbanwineries.com. 3-6 pm. $32-$40.
TUESDAY, MAY 5 Top Chef Cinco de Mayo
1. Smokehouse Tavern
1401 SE Morrison St., Suite 117, 971-279-4850, smokehouse21.com. The new Smokehouse Tavern, a finely wrought affair in taxidermy and metallic wallpaper, has becomes a barbecue contender with Podnah’s Pit, with impressive smoky brisket, great drinks and sides, and the best ribs in town. $$.
2. Bing Mi
Southwest 9th Avenue and Alder Street, bingmiportland.com. Jian bing is the quintessential Chinese street food, but until now could not be found in Portland. They’re crepes folded around a cracker, not to mention a riot of ferment and sweet heat. $.
3. Batter
4425 NE Fremont St., 971-2718784, batterpdx.com. In the Old World, pancakes are dinner. That’s what they are at Batter, too, with a baffling array of pancake and waffle concoctions, from Jamaican jerk pancakes to matzo waffles. $.
4. Bang Bang PDX
4727 NE Fremont St., 287-3846, bangbangpdx.com. genoa alum Adam Kaplan serves up quirky Thai drinking food, from pungent curries to tendon puffs that are like pork rinds but better. $$.
5. The People’s Pig
3217 N Williams Ave., 282-2800, facebook.com/PeoplesPig. The sides aren’t much to speak of, but who goes to a barbecue shack for sides? The pork shoulder is like pig brisket, with a beautiful crust of charred fat to lock in the juices. $$.
THOMAS TeAL
Portland Penny Diner is sort of a hilarious place for a party, as the post-DaNet Russian discos have proven, but nonetheless! Following a $125 five-course Mexican-inspired menu cooked by Dougie Adams and fellow Top Chef contestant Katsuji Tanabe—the Japanese-Mexican chef who heads up Mexikosher in Los Angeles—the pair will wander over to Portland Penny Diner to cook up tacos, churros and ceviche for the rest of us, who only have $10 in our pockets and really like to get drunk on margaritas. Portland Penny Diner, 410 SW Broadway, 228-7224. 9 pm.
Where to eat this week.
smokeHouse tavern
DRANK
CHOCOLATE CINNAMON STOUT (TERMINAL GRAVITY) There was a time when Terminal Gravity Brewing made Portland’s go-to IPA. Or so they tell me—that was long before my time, and I’ve only ever had the stuff in dingy corner sports bars, the sort of places that have kept the same weekly keg order since I was in high school. But things are changing out in the Wallowas. Terminal Gravity, which was founded in 1997, got new owners in April 2014 and immediately started trying to revitalize the moribund brand. They’ve been making new one-off brews every month, and a few of those kegs are finally making it to Portland. The best I’ve had is a Chocolate Cinnamon Stout only available at Horse Brass and the Growler Guys. They loaded the batch with oatmeal, cocoa and enough cinnamon to give it a heated herbal bite. Consider it a semi-savory dessert beer—a little spicy, a lot chocolaty and super smooth. It could very well become Portland’s go-to cinnamon beer. Recommended. MARTIN CIZMAR. 34
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Sha
www.sha
Shandong www.shandongportland.com
Traditional Exotic Fare All you-Can-Eat Buffets & Menu Orders Vegetarian, Vegan & Gluten-Free Options Locally Owned & Operated by the Chand Family from India
STIRRING THE POT: Noraneko’s miso ramen (above) and ume gimlet (left).
DRUNKEN NOODLES
Biwa’s, however, veering into chicken-broth takes on shio (salt), shoyu (soy) and miso (fermented soy). All three are decent renditions—the miso is the most flavorful—but the shio is oddly thin compared to food-cart Umai’s heartily aggressive version, the shoyu not as rich or rounded as Shigezo’s or Yuzu’s. But damn, that mushroom. The fourth BY M ATT H E W KO R F H AG E mkorfhage@wweek.com broth is an invented vegetarian soy-shiitake Some go for the burger, but I don’t care for such broth that’s a heartbreaker of epic proportions: people. For years, the late-night happy-hour You find and lose love with each sip, riding the ramen at basement izakaya Biwa has been a umami dragon down to the bottom of the bowl pilgrimage for me, a $5 antidote for skipped post- and then looking around nervously with a wet work dinners and half-drunk munchies when chin, ashamed of yourself. Break a vegan’s heart, normal happy hours end. too, and still add that chasyu, The noodles are the much- Order this: Mushroom ramen with as the fried tofu came on a little rubbery. revered Sun Noodle, and the two-way chasyu and egg ($12 total), gimlet ($8), black pepper chuhai broth is deeply comforting if ume But really, it’s possible the ($8), yuzu whiskey highball ($8). drinks are better liquid refreshnot overly deep: pork-chicken soup for the soul. ment than the soup. Along with But the thing that makes Biwa’s ramen great vibrant housemade sodas, Noraneko serves a has always been those toppings—the molten wealth of brightly refreshing chuhais that are core of its soy-poached egg, and that tender a revelation—they’re essentially grain-liquor pork-belly chasyu leaching its meaty flavors into spritzers, shochu mixed with yuzu, kombucha the swirl. That chasyu is still the best food item or maybe black-pepper soda. Served in cans in at Noraneko, Biwa’s new ramen-ya spinoff on an Japan, here they’re a highballed lesson in sweetindustrial Southeast Water Avenue corner by tart booziness, as is an ume gimlet ($8) made the train tracks, a spartan, honey-wooded nook with ginger syrup, lime and pureed plum. with 30 seats, including four at the tiny bar. Just Tack on the French 75, Sazerac and margarita, four blocks from Bunk Bar and Boke Bowl, you plus a skillfully balanced yuzu whiskey highball, might as well call it Pork Belly Row. and it becomes a crying shame that Noraneko Noraneko doesn’t include the fixins with its feels more like a lunch counter than a bar, despite four $8 ramens, but you’re a sucker not to add its late-night hours and $1 bar snacks from 4 to 6 them when you order at the counter before sit- pm. Because if I treat the place like I want to, I’ll ting: Tack on $3 for pork two ways, plus $1 for that look like a Japanese take on Edward Hopper—a perfect egg, and it’s the same $12 as Biwa’s regular- nighthawk at the ramen shop, silly on yuzu. menu ramen, although in a slightly smaller form. EAT: Noraneko, 1430 SE Water Ave., 238-6356, (The $5 ramen happy hour is midnight to 2 am.) noranekoramen.com. 11 am-2 am daily. The broths are an entirely different beast from
BIWA RAMEN SPINOFF NORANEKO SERVES UP KILLER PORK AND BOOZE.
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NamasteIndianCuisine.com
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MUSIC
THE RETURN OF SLEATER-KINNEY. BY M AT T H E W SI N G E R
“D
msinger@wweek.com
id you see what I put on Instagram?” Carrie Brownstein asks the table at the Observatory, a homey bistro in Portland’s Montavilla neighborhood, where she and her once-again bandmates, drummer Janet Weiss and singer-guitarist Corin Tucker, are grabbing lunch. It’s three days after Christmas, and the women of Sleater-Kinney haven’t seen each other since splitting for the holidays. In six weeks, they will embark on their first tour together in nine years, which they’ve been rehearsing for at Brownstein’s house, the same place they wrote No Cities to Love, their first album in 10 years. The Instagram post in question is a video shot in her living room during a recent practice session. Through the walls, the band can be heard barreling through “Entertain,” an eruptive track from 2005 swan song The Woods. As guitars, drums and Tucker’s distinctive wail tangle into a muffled roar, Brownstein’s two dogs, Toby and Cricket, sprawl out on a couch, looking thoroughly unentertained. “The enthusiasm in this video is overwhelming,” reads the caption, dripping with the drollness that, in the time since she last stood onstage with Weiss and Tucker, has transformed Brownstein into an unlikely TV star. Canine disaffection aside, for plenty of humans, the return of Sleater-Kinney is a major cause for excitement. In its initial 12-year run, the band cultivated one of the most worshipful followings in all of indie rock. It personalized the politics of riot grrrl, writing about relationships, abuses of authority, cultural patriarchy and the band itself through a fiercely feminist lens, downplaying polemics and slogans in favor of real-life tales of heartbreak and resolve. Over the course of seven acclaimed albums, their music—a brand of guitarand-drum rock (no bass needed) that always sounded bigger than the sum of its three parts—grew increasingly ambitious, daring and singularly their own. When the group went on “indefinite hiatus” in 2006, Rolling Stone mourned the loss of “America’s best punk band,” an echo of a less-qualified superlative bestowed on them a few years earlier by legendary critic Greil Marcus, who called Sleater-Kinney the best band in the world, period. At their final shows, many in the crowd wept. “There was this notion that this whole era was ending,” says journalist Julianne Escobedo Shepherd. “It wasn’t just them. It was signaling the real, real end of riot grrrl.” And so, to have Sleater-Kinney back means something more than just being able to hear some great songs played live again—it represents a resurrection of
brigitte sire
EXHUME YR IDOLS the principles that defined a generation of underground music. But nine years is a long time. Is it possible for any band to meet expectations when shouldering not just its own significant legacy but the weight of an entire movement? A month and a half before their first shows, Brownstein, Tucker and Weiss hardly seem troubled by that question. That’s probably because they’ve already recorded the answer. Released in January, No Cities to Love isn’t “a solid effort,” “a pleasant surprise” or any of the other soft platitudes typically ascribed to reunion albums. Its 10 songs are as tightly constructed and ferociously performed as anything in their catalog, exuding neither the desperation for relevance nor a complacency to lean on the past. It is an affirmation of everything the band ever stood for, while also proclaiming where the band stands now, as women in their early 40s. It is an album whose relevance is earned just by being really damn good. All that’s left now is to go out and prove it onstage. And there’s little question about their ability to do that—hard-to-please pets be damned. “We’re ready,” Weiss says. “We hope other people are, too.”
I
f No Cities to Love sounds like the work of a band that never broke up, that’s partially because, during their hiatus, the members of Sleater-Kinney didn’t drift far from each other’s lives. Tucker and Brownstein remained close friends. Brownstein and Weiss, along with Mary Timony of Helium and Ex Hex, formed Wild Flag in 2010, releasing one great album of kinetic garage rock. In Portland, it wasn’t uncommon to see some combination of the three out at a show, or destroying the competition in a pingpong tournament. It was never that they needed time away from each other. What they needed was a break from Sleater-Kinney. “The band had become really stressful [for] each of us, for different reasons,” Weiss says. “It became a real handful to manage the band the way we wanted it and our lives the way we wanted to do that.” By 2005, Sleater-Kinney hadn’t exactly become a big business, but it was certainly a big deal. For The Woods, the band left its longtime label, Kill Rock Stars, for Sub Pop, hired super-producer Dave Fridmann, decamped to upstate New York and pumped up the volume. Sleater-Kinney always enjoyed subverting classic-rock machismo—see Brownstein’s onstage Pete Townshend windmills and David Lee Roth high-kicks—but now, they were throwing down the Hammer of the Gods with in-the-red abandon; Tucker’s Ann Wilson-gone-punk power-wail had never been better employed. It was their biggest, loudest album to date, and by all accounts, it took a lot out of them. It was
modern grrrls: (From left) sleater-Kinney’s Janet Weiss, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein.
a grueling recording process, which carried over into an especially grueling tour. Tucker was struggling being away from her son, Marshall, then 5 years old. Brownstein was suffering frequent panic attacks. Going into the final dates, the band issued a statement, thanking fans and declaring that “[a] s of now, there are no plans for future tours or recording.” At their two-night farewell, at Crystal Ballroom, Eddie Vedder opened for them. “It’s sad to say goodbye to something that’s been so fulfilling and nourished us in a lot ways, but it seemed like the right thing to do,” Weiss says. “I don’t think there was any choice, really.”
B
ut for all the ramifications attached to bringing back Sleater-Kinney, it didn’t take much to get the reunion ball rolling. “It was really an organic conversation,” Tucker says, recalling the night in early 2012 when the subject was first broached. “Carrie and I were at my house, watching a Portlandia episode my son was in. We were just hanging out and catching up and talking about music, and I was like, ‘I wonder if we’ll ever do a Sleater-Kinney show again.’ So that started the whole conversation. But
it took a year to figure out what we were going to do.” One thing was immediately clear, though: If a reunion was going to happen, an album had to come first. So Tucker and Brownstein went down to Brownstein’s refurbished basement in Northeast Portland, and spent the next year throwing riffs, lyrics and melodies at each other. “We pored over the arrangements,” Brownstein says. “There would be choruses we’d have for a month that I’d listen to and go, ‘This isn’t good enough. I don’t like my melody here. We have to completely change this chorus.’” A lot has been made of how SleaterKinney carried out its reformation “in secret,” but it wasn’t like the bandmates were sneaking around, disguised in costumes from Portlandia’s wardrobe department. They were, in truth, pretty laissez faire about the whole thing, blabbing about it to friends and even journalists who, for whatever reason, kept it to themselves. When Pearl Jam came through Portland in November 2013, all three women got onstage at the Moda Center, joining in on cont. on page 38 Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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MUSIC an encore of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” which, to their alleged surprise, sent the online rumor mill into hyperdrive. Still, when the band finally emerged from the basement, ready to go into the studio, it happened so swiftly even collaborators were caught off guard. “They had gotten in touch with me about mixing some demos they had done, which gave me a raised eyebrow that everyone was together and writing,” says producer John Goodmanson. “But really, I got the call on a Monday or Tuesday, and I was in San Francisco by Friday. So when it was go time, it was go time.” For as long as it took to write, No Cities to Love was recorded in just about two weeks. Seven months later, Sub Pop issued a remastered vinyl box set of the Sleater-Kinney discography. Included with it was a surprise 7-inch containing an “unreleased song” called “Bury Our Friends,” a midtempo stomper based around an utterly Valhallan Brownstein riff, with lyrics suspiciously centered on the exhumation of idols and pushing forward in the face of adversity. A few days of fervent Internet speculation later, it was confirmed as No Cities’ first single. It was the ideal reintroduction for a band that’s never been content to stay in one place too long: a song about detaching from one’s past, stashed inside a celebration of their own.
A
nd yet, among even Sleater-Kinney’s most dedicated acolytes, there remained a sense of trepidation. “Oftentimes, when bands break up and get back together, it seems they’re trying to recapture this old magic they had,” says Escobedo Shepherd, a self-proclaimed Sleater-Kinney “super-fan,” “and it seems kind of sad at times, like they’re trying to re-create something that’s been lost.” That fear was not lost on the band. It’s precisely why they worked so hard on this album, and why they did so while cloistered away, shielded from any outside influences that might nudge them backward. A major theme of No Cities is facing down institutions of power, and the institution of Sleater-Kinney is not exempt. There are several songs that seem to speak directly to fans, explaining why the band went away and, to a certain
extent, why it’s back. There’s a lot of “pushing forward,” “rising above,” and never giving in going on throughout No Cities. People struggle against abstract forces bigger than themselves, from a working mother caught on the post-recession hamster wheel (“Price Tag”) to a once-powerful man whose self-worth has been reduced to a “clenched fist on a dangling arm” (“Fangless”) to, well, someone who sounds a lot like Tucker, retreating from her own success because “sometimes the heat of the crowd feels a little too close” (“Hey Darling”). But each of those battles is underlined by bold, eruptive defiance, which usually kicks in at the chorus. “We win/ We lose/ Only together do we break the rules,” Tucker and Brownstein sing on “Surface Envy,” as Weiss’ gale-force drums tumble down around them. If there was any concern that Brownstein’s fame would overshadow the trio as a whole, it should be assuaged by how often her voice locks in with Tucker’s. In the past, their relationship on record was often combative, with Tucker’s banshee caterwauling pushing against Brownstein’s angular phrasing. On No Cities, they seem to be making a point of taking on the album’s myriad challenges together, in literal harmony. It sounds like the work of a band that’s come back to stay. But the future of Sleater-Kinney, at this point, remains unclear. Come summer, the band will go back on temporary hold, as Brownstein films the next season of Portlandia. Tucker still has two young kids at home. The external priorities that ended the band 10 years ago have not gone away. “Fade,” No Cities’ lurching, lighters-up finale, seems to imply that you should enjoy this reunion while this lasts: “If there’s no tomorrow,” Tucker sings, “you better live.” “When you’re in a band, you don’t really plan that far in advance,” Weiss says. “Most people can play their lives, they have a map. When you’re in a band, you give that up. But I think the idea of doing the same thing over and over again is not that enticing to any of us.” The full version of this article originally ran in the March-April 2015 edition of American Songwriter. SEE IT: Sleater-Kinney plays Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., with THEESatisfaction, on Tuesday, May 5. 8 pm. Sold out. All ages.
RESTART TOGETHER: Sleater-Kinney playing its first show in nine years, in Spokane, Wash., on Feb. 8. 38
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MUSIC
APRIL 29–MAY 5
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Prices listed are sometimes for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply. Event lineups are subject to change after WW’s press deadlines. Editor: MATTHEW SINGER. 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: msinger@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29 Curren$y, Corner Boy P, Young Roddy, Le$, Ty
[KING OF THE JETS] New Orleans’ Curren$y has leant his cool, rambling drawl to 41 releases over the past 10 years, a feat that must have required a small warehouse of raw rolling papers and enough herb to put even King Snoop into a coma. The South’s stoner-rap king, who distinguishes himself with genretopping rhyme substance and surrounds himself with members of his own Jet Life label empire, comes to town in support of his latest studio album, Pilot Talk III. As always, he fires on all cylinders, with the mellow excellence one expects from a man who always has a joint in hand. PARKER HALL. Alhambra Theatre, 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 610-0640. 8 pm. $22 general admission, $44 VIP. 21+.
Lightning Bolt, Liturgy, Consumer
[PULVERIZING PRETENSE] There’s no sense in debating whether the bass-and-drums, math-noise ruckus created by Lightning Bolt (who would much rather be playing in a junkyard, FYI) or the derisive black-metal bombast of the Levi’sand-Vans-donning Liturgy is more “authentic” or “brutal” than the other. That pissing contest is best kept to Reddit or the back room of the Utrecht where you begrudgingly took a job postgraduation. Appointing the former’s mostrecent release Fantasy Empire as the more listenable of the two is
a fool’s errand, but you’ve got to credit Lightning Bolt for knowing its way around a hook or two before mangling it to death in under three minutes—a feat Liturgy is firmly opposed to on the endlessly crescendoing slog of this year’s The Ark Work. PETE COTTELL. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9 pm. $14. 21+.
Nikki Lane, the Lonesome Billies, the Western Shore
[DEFIANT COUNTRY] There are people who won’t approach a celebrity they see in public because they’re too shy. There are other people who’ll walk right up and ask for a picture or an autograph or, in the case of Nikki Lane’s fleamarket encounter with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, to produce their next album. The resulting record is fittingly titled All or Nothin’, and—built from pedal-steel guitars, Lane’s drawling, languid voice, and lyrics referencing bad boyfriends with whiskey breath— it’s just as resolute as you’d expect. SHANNON GORMLEY. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 2319663. 9 pm. $11. 21+.
THURSDAY, APRIL 30 The Handsome Family, Wildewood, Lewi Longmire
[ANIMAL COUNTRY] Recognition can take time, but the Handsome Family should have received it well before its alt-country swagger graced the opening credits to HBO’s True Detective. The husband-andwife duo out of Albuquerque has
TOP FIVE FIVE LOCAL SLEATER-KINNEY LANDMARKS 1. Southwest Broadway The photo on the cover of 1999’s The Hot Rock depicts the band hailing a cab downtown, the Schnitz’s iconic “Portland” sign visible in the background a few blocks away. 2. La Luna Southeast 9th Avenue and Pine Street. Sleater-Kinney played the defunct Portland club (now the building that houses Biwa) frequently in the ’90s, including release shows for Call the Doctor and Dig Me Out. It’s also where Janet Weiss first saw the band prior to joining in 1996. 3. Claudia’s 3006 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The sports pub appears briefly in Sleater-Kinney’s first video, for the song “Get Up,” which was directed by Miranda July. (The majority of it was shot in a field in Olympia, Wash.) 4. Jackpot! Recording Studio Southeast Morrison Street and 20th Avenue. All Hands on the Bad One and One Beat were recorded at the studio’s original location, which Elliott Smith helped build—literally and figuratively. 5. Portland International Airport MAX stop In 2002, a coyote boarded the MAX Red Line at the airport, inspiring One Beat’s “Light Rail Coyote,” the song that solidified Sleater-Kinney as a true Portland band. MATTHEW SINGER.
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released nine studio albums in a 20-year tenure as a band, most of them built on Brett Sparks’ deadpan drawl and tight narratives that are second only to the Decemberists’ in terms of literacy. Their latest concept LP, Wilderness, is a beautiful concoction of dark humor and Americana, one that weaves haunting tales of spiders and glow worms out of languid, midtempo balladry and found sounds of various critters. Naturally, the gentle picking of “Frogs” is more appealing than that of “Flies.” BRANDON WIDDER. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 2319663. 9 pm. $14. 21+.
Karl Kling, Phone Call, Harriet, DJ Lamar Leroy
[POSI SYNTH POP] Between his involvement with Remix Artist Collective and Mani/Pedi Records (his own label for putting out “creative left-field dance music”), Portland producer, songwriter and DJ Karl Kling takes a next-levelniche approach to his ultrapositive synth pop on his recently released self-titled debut album. Imagine slightly more accessible Dan Deacon production beneath the pure, earnest diction of Postal Service vocals. After years of attending shows at Holocene, this will be Kling’s first time playing there, which means he will be just as excited as the audience. That’s a beautiful thing. TED JAMISON. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 8:30 pm. $7. 21+.
WALTERS CULTURAL ARTS CENTER
2015 CONCERT SERIES OREGON MANDOLIN ORCHESTRA 5/1 Spring concert with special guest cellist Gideon Freudmann
ALASDAIR FRASER & NATALIE HAAS “One of the finest fiddle players Scotland has ever produced.” — Scots Magazine
5/15
Purchase tickets at brownpapertickets.com or at the Walters box office All concerts begin at 7:30 pm 527 E Main St. Hillsboro, OR 503-615-3485 For a full concert listing visit us online at www.Hillsboro-oregon.gov/Walters
Chatham County Line, the Earnest Lovers
[BLUEGRASS] One of the best live bluegrass acts of our day, Chatham County Line sounds like it came out of its native Raleigh, N.C., some 60 or 70 years ago. In truth, the quartet has been at it since 1999, known for its séancelike live huddle in which these four outstanding musicians share a single microphone while sharing their whopping respect for mid-19th-century Appalachian folk. Last year’s Tightrope has the long dead dancing in their graves. It’s a lovely braiding of blistering banjo, percussive strings and galeforce four-part harmonies. MARK STOCK. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
FRIDAY, MAY 1 The Parson Red Heads
[FOLK ROCK] Exemplary Portlandvia-L.A. folk rockers the Parson Red Heads play two relatively intimate nights in celebration of its new retrospective collection, Hazy Dream. Indie-pop storm-chasers Gender open the first show, country-rock wanderers Houndstooth the second. Albert Street Pub, 1036 NE Alberta St., 284-7665. 8 pm. $8. 21+. Through May 2.
Waxahatchee, Girlpool
[INDIE POP] First things first: Katie Crutchfield sounds a helluva lot like old Mirah. I’m not complaining—more people ought to sound like her. Since last year’s Cerulean Salt, Waxahatchee jumped from micro-indie Don Giovanni Records to Merge, and her confidence has adjusted appropriately. Ivy Tripp updates her lo-fi folk confessionals with a more upbeat pop tint that seems poised for a much larger audience. Maybe it’s that viewing of Montage of Heck last week, but something tells me Kurt Cobain would have loved this. CRIS LANKENAU. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 4 pm. $15. All ages.
Bubblin Finale: Todd Edwards, Kahn
[NEW AND CLASSIC] I’ve long soapboxed that at the center of Portland’s varied dance scenes lies Ben Tactic and Lincolnup, cofounders of multifaceted club night Bubblin’. After five years at the
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MISTERWIVES MILO GREENE LOST LANDER
BELLE AND SEBASTIAN TWIN SHADOW BATTLES TITLE FIGHT CAYUCAS TALK IN TONGUES SALES ALIALUJAH CHOIR
THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH DANNY BROWN THE HELIO SEQUENCE LADY LAMB STRAND OF OAKS PURE BATHING CULTURE DIVERS BEAT CONNECTION
friday–saturday helm, the duo is moving on with one last show, and it’s safe to say that it actually lies at the center of the dance-music world. For what other reason would Bristol’s newfound dubstep king Kahn and full-on U.K. garage legend—and Daft Punk’s “Face to Face” co-producer and vocalist—todd Edwards of L.A. have to come together? Bravo, boys: they’ve brought Portland’s dance-music scene into a new era. MItcH LILLIE. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 9 pm. $12 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
SATURDAY, MAY 2 Cavalera Conspiracy, Death Angel, Corrosion of Conformity Blind
[HEAVY MEtAL] After Sepultura fragmented in the late ’90s, the cavalera brothers bitterly parted ways for a decade. By 2008, the bridge had been mended, and the first album featuring Igor and Max since Roots was unleashed. But that’s for the bros. What I want to talk about is coc Blind—a variant of crossover superstar corrosion of conformity that features Reed Mullins on drums and vocalist Karl Agell. Agell sang with coc on only one album, but to discerning ears, it was a perfect moment in time when the band had outgrown its hardcore roots, caught some MtV exposure and hadn’t yet settled into a Southern-rock vibe. Blind is a dark-metal masterpiece,
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and tonight it will be performed in its entirety. nAtHAn cARSon. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE Cesar E. Chavez Blvd., 233-7100. 6:30 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show. All ages.
Matt Pond PA, Young Buffalo, Chandler Strutz
[InDIE RocK] the long career of Matt Pond PA has all the greatness of better-known acts that play the same echoey, ethereal rock music (Great Lake Swimmers, early Death cab, half the Sub Pop roster), but breakthrough success with the everyman has thus far eluded the band. It’s currently touring and performing the decade-old fan favorite Several Arrows Later while funding the forthcoming The State of Gold. cRIS LAnKEnAU. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 8 pm. $15. 21+.
Dead Cult, N.213, Spirit Host
[PoSt-PUnK] nic Hughes, who has proven himself to be an adept conjurer of chaos as frontman for prolific noise-punk outfit Shearing Pinx, keeps things relatively lean and mean as the mastermind behind n.213. the band’s most recent tape is all kinds of fierce and loud, but Hughes and company channel their destructive urges into bright blasts of straightforward post-punk that hark back to Jay Reatard’s stint in Lost
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coURtESY oF oLD tIME RELIJUn
FLASHBACK
Experimental K Records punk band Old Time Relijun is reuniting to celebrate its 20th anniversary. The above photo is from a performance at Satyricon during MusicfestNW 2008, but the band—which was from Olympia, Wash.—says the most memorable show it played in its “second home” of Portland was about a year earlier, and it had nothing to do with what happened onstage: “We played at Ground Kontrol in downtown—kind of a weird place to play, but totally fun. Our drummer, Germaine [Baca], took off after our set to hang out with some guys from work. When she didn’t come back to load out, we were kind of bummed that we had to figure out how to disassemble a drum set, but we weren’t concerned. “We found out the next day that she had been arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Downtown had turned into that messy stew of drunk yahoos in the street with pints of beer they’d snuck out of the Chinatown bars, and the cops basically shut the area down. One guy was told to pour his beer out, and while it was draining, Germaine ran over and pretended to drink from the stream. The cops were not amused, and the next thing she knew, she was being cuffed. “Her sentencing was on the first day of a six-week tour, so she flew down to Oakland to catch up with us. Her sentence: community service by way of volunteering for Rock [’n’ Roll] Camp for Girls. That’s about as Portland as it gets.” —Aaron Hartman, Old Time Relijun bassist. SEE IT: old time Relijun plays Mississippi Studios, 3939 n Mississippi Ave., with Secret Drum Band and Like a Villain, on Friday, May 1. 9 pm. $12. 21+. Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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Upcoming In-Stores CEDAR TEETH
Saturday, May 2nd at 5PM Cedar Teeth is a five-piece band hailing from the Cascade foothills of Colton, Oregon. Crafting a sound that blends rough and rusty folk rock with lyrical American roots, the music of Cedar Teeth is drawn from their experiences and sentiments of living on the frontier dividing the wilderness and the city.
SONGWRITER’S CIRCLE
Featuring Andy Anderson, Carl Solomon & Jack McMahon Monday, May 4th at 7PM Andy Anderson, like anzy good Southerner (or any Southerner worth their salt), loves a good story. And he has plenty to tell. Carl Solomon’s songwriting philosophy is based on telling stories about the coming and going of people’s lives. The crossroads, the detours and accidents of our life. Jack McMahon has been a performing singer-songwriter for all of his adult life. From his teenage days with New Jersey band “The Nightwatch,” and his early stints as a solo artist in and around NYC’s Greenwich Village and Upper Eastside clubs, Jack has always given the music priority over antics and image.
DEAD MEN WALKING Wednesday, May 6th at 6PM
The core line-up of Dead Men Walking features England’s Captain Sensible of The Damned, Slim Jim Phantom of The Stray Cats from the USA, Welshman Mike Peters of The Alarm and Australian Chris Cheney from The Living End. A super-group unlike any other, these four come together for one-of-a-kind collaborative performances, often joined by special guests.
STEVE BARTON of TRANSLATOR
Thursday, May 7th at 7PM
Translator burst onto the music scene in 1982 with their radio/MTV hit “Everywhere That I’m Not”. Their prominence grew through their 4th major label release in 1986. 25 years later, they regrouped and made another stellar record—selling out shows. Now Translator returns with a 22 song collection of demos spanning 1979-1985.
Nominate now for your chance to win $250, What The Festival tickets, or movie passes for a year!
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Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
MUSIC c o u r t E S Y o F p r i M A r Y tA l E n t
PROFILE
YOUNG FATHERS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29 Is it hard to make music that truly sounds new in 2015? Because Alloysious Massaquoi, of Scottish trio Young Fathers, makes it seem gallingly easy: “It’s just wanting to make something that you haven’t heard before—it’s as easy as that.” It’s hard to argue with Massaquoi, whose band’s genrebending sound has been perplexing critics for years, drawing comparisons to everyone from the Beastie Boys to TV on the Radio. Its albums ebb from bass-driven rap tracks to soft and melodic synth pop to pulsing punk. The group’s debut fulllength, Dead, won the United Kingdom and Ireland’s coveted Mercury Prize last year, an accolade that previously had been awarded to PJ Harvey, Alt-J and James Blake. But the endorsement has hardly affected the band, which has stayed in the studio producing powerful new projects. White Men Are Black Men Too arrived earlier this month, and finds the trio moving more confidently into a pop context. But even with this newfound attention, Massaquoi wants more. “We’re very ambitious, you know. We want to be huge. We want to be worldwide,” he says. “With the kind of music that we do, it’s a long struggle. We’re putting forward new ideas, new ways of thinking about music, or thinking about creating music.” Perhaps the key to the trio’s far-reaching tendencies is its members’ multicultural backgrounds. Massaquoi was born in Liberia before moving to Edinburgh. “G” Hastings is a Scottish native, and Kayus Bankole was also born in Scotland, to Nigerian parents, and lived in Maryland for a part of his childhood. From the beginning, the group has operated on a philosophy of fearlessness. Its first official release, 2012’s Tape One EP, was produced in a visceral, seven-day recording session and made available the following week. That was far from its first project, though. The trio has been working together in a creative capacity since the members were 14—all three are now 27. But with two full-length studio albums released in the last two years, Young Fathers is just now hitting its stride. Pushed to calculate the formula that makes up its eclectic sound, Massaquoi demurs. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he says. “You can say it’s the weather. Or maybe it’s the people you’ve met throughout your life. There is no way of gauging it. “It’s not a process that’s very in-depth. We listen to so much and you’re exposed to so much at an early age. So when you get to point where you want to do stuff, make music and create, you’re able to tap into those things.” He then relents slightly, admitting that the need to push musica l boundaries is, more than any thing else, driven by personal morality. “I want to make music so that, when I’m an old man, I can be able to sleep at night.” MATTHEW SCHONFELD. Genres are for suckers.
SEE IT: Young Fathers plays Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., with Mas Ysa and Hosannas, on Wednesday, April 29. 8:30 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.
Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
SATURDAY–TUESDAY/CLASSICAL, ETC. Sounds. CHRIS STAMM. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., 473-8729. 8 pm. $5. 21+.
SUNDAY, MAY 3 The Diplomats, DJ Funkmaster Flex
[HARLEM WORLD] For a brief moment, Harlem group the Diplomats—Cam’ron, Jim Jones, Juelz Santana and Freekey Zekey— owned East Coast rap. The Dipset era was defined by excess: pink Range Rovers and mink coats; XXL basketball jerseys so long they could double as dresses; Timbs and bucket hats. But Dipset was more than just ridiculous clothes. The group’s debut, Diplomatic Immunity, is the rare double album you wish was longer, 27 bangers and skits and dick jokes and sped-up soul samples. After a brief reunion in 2010, this time the #squad is back together, ready to get gully onstage for those of us who remember a time when a Top 40 jam featured a shout out to OshKosh B’gosh MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-2300033. 8 pm. $25. All ages.
TUESDAY, MAY 5 Red Bull Sound Select: Deerhoof, Summer Cannibals, Killer Ghost
[UNORTHODOX POP] With influences ranging from Janet Jacksonesque pop to experimental noise rock, erratic San Francisco punk group Deerhoof has produced a myriad of distinctly unpredictable work for the past two decades. Each album differs greatly from the last—see last year’s eerily catchy La Isla Bonita, a major departure from the dance tunes of 2012’s Breakup Song—allowing fans to be surprised yet satisfied with each new metamorphosis. ASHLEY JOCZ. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9 pm. $3 with RSVP, $12 day of show. 21+.
Doldrums, Moon King
[NOISE ON THE DANCE FLOOR] There’s no mistaking the intention of Airick Woodhead—aka Doldrums—on his Sub Pop debut, The Air Conditioned Nightmare: This Montreal button-pusher is here to make bangers. What’s curious, however, is how he’s all but left behind the woozy, grimy noise that glued together the disparate yet danceable panorama of his excellent 2013 record, Lesser Evil. Sanding down the edges is likely to gain Woodhead traction in the undulating remix circuit of his adopted hometown of Montreal, but the four-on-the-floor pulses that steer his updated sound have ultimately driven an exciting future in populist cacophony right off the road. PETE COTTELL. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 8:30 pm. $12. 21+.
CLASSICAL, JAZZ & WORLD Eldar
[PIANO MAN] Some musicians drop the last name to be more recognizable. Eldar Djangirov probably just got tired of people mispronouncing it. The Soviet-by-way-of-KansasCity pianist began his career as a child prodigy, but made it through his Lohan days unscathed. With a style that recalls the fast-moving virtuosity of Oscar Peterson with Art Tatum’s stride, Eldar shapes the keys into an awe-inspiring orchestra, equally capable of howling like a tempest as he is shimmering like a late-afternoon breeze. PARKER HALL. Classic Pianos, 3003 SE Milwaukie Ave., 239-9969. 7 pm Thursday, April 30. $17. All ages.
Portland Cello Project, Rachel Grimes [CELLO, GOODBYE] For his last concert as Portland Cello Project music director, Douglas Jenkins (who founded the group in 2007) promises “all of my favorites.” So that means the usual eclec-
tic mix of classical, hip-hop and pop, plus a quartet of songs composed by (and performed with) the Kentucky-based pianist-composer Rachel Grimes, co-founder of the late, lamented indie-chamber rock ensemble Rachel’s. Jenkins deserves kudos for creating one of the most unusual yet accessible indie classical outfits in the land, and we’re looking forward to seeing what direction it takes under his successor, veteran Portland cellist and founding member Skip vonKuske. BRETT CAMPBELL. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St., 288-3895. 8 pm Thursday, April 30. Sold out. Under 21 permitted with legal guardian.
Third Angle presents Hearing Voices with Alex Ross
[WEST COAST VISIONARIES] The star of Third Angle’s show is neither a West Coaster nor even a musician, but rather award-winning New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross, that rare writer able to enlighten the broader audience of music lovers as often as hermetic classical-music insiders. Ross—in conversation with Third Angle musicians—will trace the evolution of West Coast classical music, from the radical ideas of the genial California-born composer and new music advocate Henry Cowell to his student, Portland native Lou Harrison, to Harrison’s protege, John Luther Adams. BRETT CAMPBELL. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055. 7:30 pm Friday, May 1. Under 21 permitted with legal guardian.
MUSIC
multi-instrumentalist George Colligan) inspired by, respectively, Northwest coffee, hoppy ales, and bacon-wrapped dates. The local flavors are just the latest of the homegrown inspirations for the last seven years of excellent recordings and concerts produced by the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, which this time out features regular contributors Meagher, trumpeter Douglas Detrick, reed players Gary Harris and John Gross, B3 organist Clay Giberson and drummer Ken Ollis, plus guest horns and woodwinds. BRETT CAMPBELL. Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., 286-9449. 8 pm Saturday, May 2. $5 students, $15 general admission. All ages.
Tim Berne’s Snakeoil, Blue Cranes
[LOFT JAZZ] Emotive group improv sits alongside tetchy soloing on just about any Tim Berne recording. And since picking up Snakeoil, which includes the dexterous Chess Smith behind the drum kit, as his band, Berne has issued three recordings with the ensemble, starting back in 2012 with an eponymous disc. The troupe’s latest, the ECM produced You’ve Been Watching Me, comes along with the same sort of stumble-drunk jazz rhythms and incendiary jamming as earlier installments. But as Berne and his troupe get more familiar with each other, the better defined all those extended melodic lines should become. DAVE CANTOR. Jimmy Mak’s, 221 NW 10th Ave., 295-6542. 7:30 pm Tuesday, May 5. $15. 21+.
PJCE Sextet 1
[ORIGINAL PDX JAZZ] This concert features new compositions (by Andrew Durkin, guitarist Ryan Meagher and nationally respected
For more Music listings, visit
ALBUM REVIEW
MICHAEL DEAN DAMRON WHEN THE DARKNESS COME (SAD CROW) [SOMBER SONGWRITER] His much-loved country-punk band I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House may not be entirely a thing of the past, but as he closes in on one year of sobriety, Michael Dean Damron seems to have left the extremes of his bloody-jowled rock persona behind with his boozing days. Now that he’s not shuttling between band and solo projects, Damron sounds more creatively invested than ever on the new When the Darkness Come. Adorning a slate of hard-won songs is simpatico production by the respected Fernando Viciconte, whose own albums have never failed to distinguish themselves sonically from Portland’s singersongwriter pack. “Diabetes Blues,” as harrowing a tune about illness as Van Morrison’s “T.B. Sheets,” sports a flesh-crawlingly spooky keyboard sound somewhere between roller rink and garage band, as played by Ralph Huntley. Richmond Fontaine’s Dan Eccles contributes blistering guitar leads throughout, never more so than on “Little Red,” a smoldering warning to a woman about a “big bad wolf” that Damron confesses was inspired by his father’s misogyny. Eels bassist Allen Hunter subtly glues the sound of the record together, bowing his bass to beautiful effect on “Monkey With a Brain,” while Scott McPherson provides song-sensitive drumming. The weak spots in the running order come courtesy of two covers: The gospel dirge of “We’re Getting Closer to the Grave Each Day,” a tune Hank Williams issued under his Luke the Drifter moniker, is more endured than enjoyed, and Damron’s touring and (former) boozing buddy Mishka Shubaly’s “Am I the Only One Drinking Tonight?” seems like a reflexive, gratuitous nod to Damron’s dissolute past. But Damron’s willingness to confront lyrical darkness, and to honor his songs by securing Viciconte and friends’ stalwart support, heralds a bright creative future. JEFF ROSENBERG. SEE IT: Michael Dean Damron plays Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., with Fernando, John Moreland and Sean Taylor, on Friday, May 1. 8 pm. $8. 21+.
NEWSLETTER
Beyond the Print
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MUSIC CALENDAR
[APRIL 29-MAY 5] Vie de Boheme
= WW pick. Highly recommended. Editor: Mitch Lillie. TO HAVE YOUR EVENT LISTED, send show information at least two weeks in advance on the web at wweek.com/submitevents. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: music@wweek.com. For more listings, check out wweek.com.
LAST WEEK LIVE
1530 SE 7th Ave. The Rhythm Renegades
White eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Bill Wadhams and Company
RONITPHOTO.COM
Fri. MAy 1
836 N Russell St. Vinyl Gold
Alberta rose Theatre
Wilf’s restaurant & Bar
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Storm Large
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave. Sir Richard Bishop, Robert Milis
Clyde’s prime rib restaurant & Bar
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Norman Sylvester
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside Street Richard Cheese & Lounge Against The Machine, iPod On A Chair
dante’s
303 SW 12th Ave. Beach Fire
Alberta Street public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Coco Columbia, LEO
Alhambra Theatre
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Curren$y, Corner Boy P, Young Roddy, Le$, Ty
Blue diamond
2016 NE Sandy Blvd. The Fenix Project
dante’s
350 W Burnside St Lightning Bolt, Liturgy, Consumer
doug Fir lounge 830 E Burnside St. Nikki Lane
duff’s Garage
2530 NE 82nd Ave Blues Jam, Arthur Moore’s Harmonica Party
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Young Fathers
Homebase Coffee
2620 SE Powell Blvd. Fred Van Vactor Show
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Christopher Brown Quartet, Mel Brown Quartet
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Nora Jane Struthers & The Party Line
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Aerial Ruin, Noesis, Hungers
The lodge Bar & Grill 6605 SE Powell Blvd. Pete Ford Band
White eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Reverb Brothers
White eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Heavy Gone Acoustic, Monica Nelson and The Highgates
Wilf’s restaurant & Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Ron Steen Band
THurS. April 30 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. GarthGuy Live
Alberta rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. On An Overgrown Path: Dreamscapes, Dances and Love Stories of the European Borderlands, Lyrical Strings Duo, Agnieszka Laska Dancers
Alberta Street public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Jeremiah Clark, The Reasons Why
doug Fir lounge
Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
The Bitter end
1981 W Burnside RocktownPDX Hosted By Chris Margolin
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Animal Throat, Fuzzy Dice
The lodge Bar & Grill
830 E Burnside St. The Handsome Family, Wildewood, Lewi Longmire
6605 SE Powell Blvd. Ben Rice B3 Trio
duff’s Garage
8105 SE 7th Ave. Pistol Creek
2530 NE 82nd Ave Down Home Music, Tough Love Pyle
edgefield-Troutdale 2126 SW Halsey St. Sloan Martin (of Steelhead)
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Karl Kling, Phone Call, Harriet, DJ Lamar Leroy
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Mel Brown B3 Organ Group
Kells Brewpub
210 NW 21st Ave. Sami Live
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Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Chatham County Line, the Earnest Lovers
The Muddy rudder public House
The Old Church
350 W Burnside St Michael Dean Damron, Fernando, John Moreland and Sean Taylor
doug Fir lounge
830 E Burnside St. Waxahatchee, Girlpool
duff’s Garage
2530 NE 82nd Ave Midnight Serenaders, Reverb Bros
Grace Memorial episcopal Church
1535 NE 17th Avenue English Masters 15501650
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE 39th Ave. Jake E. Lee’s Red Dragon Cartel, Earth to Ashes, Black Powder County, Laytem
Hollywood’s Hot rod Bar & Grill 10810 NE Sandy Blvd. Madson Band
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Eddie Martinez
Mississippi pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Jim Jams
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Old Time Relijun, Secret DrumBand, Like a Villain
Mothership Music
3611 NE MLK Brumes, Muyassar Kurdi (Chicago, IL), Soul Ipsum
ponderosa lounge
10350 N Vancouver Way Whisky Union
1422 SW 11th Ave KPSU + Banana Stand Media Presents: Shook Twins, Bevelers @ The Old Church
rotture
The Secret Society
13 NW 6th Ave. Buck 65, Astronautalis
116 NE Russell St. Emily Asher’s Garden Party, The High Water Jazz Band
The Tonic lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Orgy & 9 Electric, Death Valley High, Die Robot, Dead Animal Assembly Plant
527 East Main Street Oregon Mandolin Orchestra
White eagle Saloon
1036 NE Alberta St. The Parson Red Heads, Genders
Wed. April 29
Walters Cultural Arts Center
303 SW 12th Ave. Beach Fire
Alberta Street public House
Al’s den
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Attitude Adjustments & Spazztic Blurr, Tow Tag, Hammered Grunts, RKC
Al’s den
3000 NE Alberta St. Hearing Voices with Alex Ross
MAC AND CHEESE: The Portland contingent of Mac DeMarco’s teen legion filled Crystal Ballroom on April 22, many wearing the same brand of cheap, flat-brimmed cap he dons in press photos. It is a mite disturbing: Is there no realm too unholy, no hat choice too questionable for a young person in thrall to a Canadian-born singer-songwriter’s chill mythos? Following a brief intermission abuzz with anticipation—“Will he wear the hat? The hat that I am also wearing?”—DeMarco took the stage and he was not wearing the fucking hat. Despite that betrayal, DeMarco, backed by an able band of young goofs, gave the kids what they came for: souped-up takes on the laid-back stoner pop that is his stockin-trade. DeMarco is a charismatic performer, and while his no-shits-given persona is not only palatable but endearing in a live setting, this louder and rowdier version of the Mac Experience lacks the subtle sadness of his records. Without that wistful tenderness, the DeMarco catalog plays like a cruise-ship party mix meant to maximize “fun” for sunburnt stockbrokers of the future. Which is OK, because my mind ditched its meat container when DeMarco launched into a cover of Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years,” and I’m not sure it’s ever coming back. CHRIS STAMM. See the full review at wweek.com/lastweeklive.
The Tonic lounge
315 SE 3rd Ave. Visigoth, Spellcaster, Axe Wizard, Tanagra
Star Theater
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Fins
The Secret Society
116 NE Russell St. The Sentiments & The Sportin’ Lifers, Pink Lady & John Bennett Jazz Band
800 NW 6th Ave. Richard Arnold & Groove Swingers
Wonder Ballroom 128 NE Russell St. Jeff Austin Band
SAT. MAy 2 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Music Matters’ Benefit Concert, Redwood Son, Mbrascatu
Alberta Street public House 1036 NE Alberta St. The Parson Red Heads, Genders
Analog Cafe
720 se Hawthorne Blvd Monkey Safari
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St It’s Talking Heads Tribute Night
Brekken’s
8728 North Lombard Street The Foolhardy, Wooden Sleepers and Eugene Smith
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave. Fog Father
dante’s
350 W Burnside St Wayne ‘The Train’ Hancock, Hank Sinatra
disjecta interdisciplinary Art Center
8371 N. Interstate Avenue A Taste of Our City
doug Fir lounge
830 E Burnside St. Hustle and Drone, Psychomagic, Talkative
duff’s Garage
2530 NE 82nd Ave DK Stewart Sextet
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE Cesar E. Chavez Blvd Cavalera Conspiracy, Death Angel, Corrosion of Conformity Blind
Hollywood’s Hot rod Bar & Grill 10810 NE Sandy Blvd. Madson Band
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Metts, Ryan & Collins, Misty Mountain and Root Jack
laurel Thirst public House
2958 NE Glisan St. Amanda Richards & The Good Long Whiles
Mississippi pizza pub.
3552 N. Misssissippi Ave Patina
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Matt Pond PA, Young Buffalo
ponderosa lounge
10350 N Vancouver Way Melissa Mickelson Band
roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave. Ultra Van Krome
St. Mary’s Cathedral
Tabor Space
Star Theater
The Tonic lounge
1716 NW Davis St Shakespeare in Song
13 NW 6th Ave. Covenant, The Labyrnth, Alter Der Ruine, Cervello Elettronico
The Know
5441 S.E. Belmont Giacomo Fiore 3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Septic Flesh, Moonspell, Deathstars, Zorakarer
There Be Monsters
2026 NE Alberta St. Lie, N.213
1308 SE Morrison St. Jen Deale ‘Goodbye Town’ EP Release Show
The Muddy rudder public House
Tom McCall Waterfront park
8105 SE 7th Ave. Jennifer Smieja Trio
The Secret Society
1020 Naito Pkwy. Portland Cinco de Mayo Fiesta
116 NE Russell St. Blue Skies for Black Hearts, The Zags, DJ Hippie Joe, The Libertine Belles
Valentine’s
The Tonic lounge
White eagle Saloon
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Tribute to Jeff Hanneman of Slayer with Rutah, Fallen Angels, Victims of Internal Decay, Arachnid and Maniak
Townshend’s Tea House
2223 NE Alberta St Abstracted with Lifelike Family
Warner pacific College 2219 SE 68th Ave. Bridgetown
White eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Garcia Birthday Band
Wilf’s restaurant & Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Nancy Curtin Trio
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. Hillstomp, Lonesome Shack
Sun. MAy 3 Al’s den
303 SW 12th Ave. David Gerow
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Portland Youth Philharmonic Spring Concert
dante’s
350 W Burnside St El Vez & The Elvettes
edgefield
2126 SW Halsey St. Julie McCarl and Bodacious
Hawthorne Theatre lounge
1503 SE Cesar E Chavez Blvd. Seoul, Ballet School, Adventure Galley, DJ Sappho
High Water Mark
6800 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The Body, Full of Hell, Prizehog, A Volcano
232 SW Ankeny St Bangbakc, Steel Cranes, The Dark Backward, and Bashface 836 N Russell St. Rob Johnston
MOn. MAy 4 Blue diamond
2016 NE Sandy Blvd. Hot Tea Cold
dante’s
350 W Burnside St Soft Fangs, Cloud Cover
doug Fir lounge 830 E Burnside St. Inter Arma, Yautja, Atriarch
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Dan Balmer Trio, Rules of Motion
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. East India Youth
The Muddy rudder public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Lloyd Jones
TueS. MAy 5 Alberta Street public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Those Willows
Cadigan’s Corner Bar 5501 SE 72nd Ave. Soul Provider, Naomi T
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside Street Sleater-Kinney, THEESatisfaction
dante’s
350 W Burnside St Red Bull Sound Select: Deerhoof, Summer Cannibals, Killer Ghost
doug Fir lounge 830 E Burnside St. Della Mae
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE 39th Ave. He Is Legend, Must Be The Holy Ghost, Dirtnap, Against the Rising Tide
Holocene
Mississippi pizza
1001 SE Morrison St. Doldrums & Moon King
Mississippi Studios
221 NW 10th Ave. Tim Berne’s Snakeoil, Blue Cranes
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Moorea Masa, Yearly Sunset
Jimmy Mak’s
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Wishyunu, Jackson Boone, Cambrian Explosion
Mississippi Studios
newmark Theatre
The Know
1111 SW Broadway Ani & Nia Sulkhanishvili
rontoms
600 E. Burnside St. Sunday Sessions
roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave. Jim Jones, CamRon and Juelz Santana, Freekey Zekey
St. Mary’s Cathedral 1716 NW Davis St Shakespeare in Song
3939 N Mississippi Ave. The Bright Light Social Hour, Talk in Tongues 2026 NE Alberta St. Gaythiest, Baby Gurl, Wizard Hits
White eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. The Brian Odell Band, Less Cash
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. James Bay, Elle King
april 29–may 5
MUSIC CALENDAR Daniel G Cole
BAR REVIEW
Where to drink this week. 1. Stammtisch
401 NE 28th Ave., 206-7983, stammtischpdx.com. Stammtisch, our Bar of the Year, is slavishly dedicated to the German bierkeller experience—German-made beers served in their native glassware, littleknown Bavarian schnapps, and the city’s best currywurst.
2. The liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St., 421-4483, theliquorstorepdx.com. everything at the liquor Store is damn good: solid local taps, a truly excellent gin and housemade tonic, and a weathered casualluxe room that makes you feel like you’ve already been drinking there for years.
3. likewise
3564 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 206-4884, likewise.website. likewise, where the bartenders are artists and rotate out each month, is something extraordinary: a place where artists and poets and fiction writers and weirdo experimental musicians immediately feel at home.
4. Coopers Hall
404 SE 6th Ave., 719-7000, coopershall.com. Coopers Hall converted an old auto-repair warehouse into the first all-keg winery in oregon, with 44 taps pouring its product, alongside other mostly local wines, craft beer and cider, from its own in-house cidery, alter ego.
5. Habesha lounge
801 NE Broadway, 284-4299. Habesha is keeping Portland’s punk-rock house party spirit alive on top of an ethiopian restaurant, in a bar whose doubledecker patio is bigger than the interior—which looks like an attic at Christmastime and sports a giant picture of Haile Selassie meeting JFK.
BEER GOOD, WAREHOUSE BAD: Since it opened, The Commons has made consistently great beer. Five years after Mike Wright brewed his first batch of commercial beer in his Richmond neighborhood garage, the brewery has earned medals and a sterling reputation. Jeff Alworth, the Beervana blogger who authored the forthcoming Beer Bible, recently told me they’ve never made a beer he didn’t like. We like them, too: In 2013, the Commons’ Urban Farmhouse Ale was our Beer of the Year. So there are a lot of reasons to get excited about their shiny new brewery and taproom (630 SE Belmont St., 343-5501, commonsbrewery.com) in Buckman. But after two visits, I’m not feeling it. They’re going for industrial chic: a huge expanse of exposed brick broken up by gorgeous paned windows. Since their handmade chairs have not arrived, you’re meant to stand around a barrel with your stinky plate from the charcuterie window operated by cheesemonger Steve Jones. One barrel has been turned into a water station, but there are no cups to fill. OK, fine, same as the old place—except before, you could lean against barrels of Brotherly Love or actually pop a squat on the slatted steel stairs on the bright tanks. There, you traded comfort for intimacy. Here, we are kept away from the tanks by a metal railing and strands of yellow chain. It makes sense given the scale of the new operation, but the whole thing feels hollow. Could it be better? Sure, just look up the street, where Base Camp took a very similar space and turned it into a singular experience. Then again, Base Camp’s beer can’t compete with the Commons’. And the new pub was pouring the most exciting Commons beer I’ve had in years, a collaboration with Florida’s Green Bench that features kumquats and was fermented with 100 percent Brett. Hopefully they send a few kegs to Bailey’s Taproom and Belmont Station—the Commons makes great beer, but there are better places to drink it. MARTIN CIZMAR.
lola’s room
1332 W Burnside 80s Video Dance Attack
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Drew Groove
Star Bar
Wed. April 29 Bar XV
15 SW 2nd AVE Deep House Wednesday’s
Moloko plus
3967 N Mississippi Ave. The Diamond stylus with King Tim 33 1/3
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Mottavader
The lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. Event Horizon: Industrial Dance Night
The Whiskey Bar 31 NW 1st Ave Hannah Wants
639 SE Morrison St. Uncontrollable Urge with DJ Paultimore
SAT. MAy 2 holocene
ThurS. April 30 The lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. Shadowplay
Fri. MAy 1 holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Bubblin Finale: Todd Edwards, Kahn
1001 SE Morrison St. Booty Bassment: Dimitri Dickinson, Maxx Bass, Nathan Detroit
Sun. MAy 3 Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Dickeraoke
Mon. MAy 4 The lovecraft
lola’s room
421 SE Grand Ave. Departures, DJ Waisted and Friends
rotture
The lovecraft
1332 W Burnside Come As You Are, 90s Dance Flashback 315 SE 3rd Ave. Movement Pre-Party: Jeff Derringer, Keith Kemp
TueS. MAy 5 421 SE Grand Ave. Bones with DJ Aurora
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= 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: ENID SPITZ. Theater: ENID SPITZ (espitz@wweek.com). Dance: ENID SPITZ (dance@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: espitz@wweek.com.
THEATER OPENINGS & PREVIEWS America’s Got Downton
Alert your auntie: Luke Kemper is playing the entire Downton Abbey cast. That’s a lot of stairs and repressed sexual tension. Antoinette Hatfield Hall, 1111 SW Broadway, 2484335. 7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, May 2-3. $49-$52.
American Night: The Ballad of Juan José Juan José is determined to become a legal U.S. citizen—so determined that he takes a Midnight in Paris-style tour through U.S. history, guided by its unsung heroes. Director Elizabeth Huffman usually does Shakespeare and the white-washed classics, but this is a decidedly ethnic field trip, like liveaction AP U.S. History. Tamale Boy will cater opening night to drive home the point. El Centro Milagro, 525 SE Stark St., 236-7253. 7:30 pm ThursdaySaturday, 2 pm Sunday, through May 23. $24.
An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein
This sidewalk stroll ends in a pessimistic social analysis of misogyny and daddy issues. Shel Silverstein’s maturethemed vignettes are as stark, shaky and oddly unnerving as the doodles in your grade-school books. Imagine 1974 poem “Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too”grew up amid sexual abuse and domestic violence. Performers range from theatrical first-timerJames Tolliver to 20-year Portland stage veteran Kevin Sutherland Martin. Post5 Theatre, 1666 SE Lambert St., 971-258-8584. 10 pm Thursday-Saturday through May 2. $16. 18+.
Grounded
For an Air Force pilot, “grounded” is one of the worst words. A pregnant F-16 pilot gets boxed into piloting drones because fetuses don’t pull Gs well. But the change might shake up her family even more as she alternates between hunting terrorists from a Nevada desert trailer and playing My Little Pony with her daughter at home. Rebecca Lingafelter, who last played a Parisian yoga instructor in CoHo’s Belleville, pilots George Brant’s international award-winning play.CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 2202646. 7:30 Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, through May 23. $25.
Leapin’ Louie Lichtenstein
Leapin’ Louie Lichtenstein is a familiar Portland character: a loner with a German name who juggles and unicycles. This is his family-friendly Western show, but you could also take the kids on a walk around Saturday Market and spend $12 on parking. Clinton Street Theater , 2522 SE Clinton St., 2388899. 1 pm Saturday, May 2 and 9. $12.
Mame
Depression-era eccentric Mame Dennis introduces her nephew to a free-wheeling lifestyle of parties with washed-up actresses and unfortunate Southern gents like Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside. We’re supposed to find that “life’s a banquet” in this encouraging musical from the Lake Oswego theater, which will pelt you with famous jingles like “We Need a Little Christmas” and “Bosom Buddies.” Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, 635-3901. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm and 7 pm Sunday, through June 14. $37.
Show Boat
Hammerstein’s 1927 musical is a showy cruise through post-slavery race relations. Cap’n Andy Hawks kicks out his starlet for being mixed-race, but using his own daughter as her replacement leads their family through rough
waters. There’s nothing like over-thetop show tunes and bow ties, at the Keller no less, to couch racism comfortably in. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 800-745-3000. 7:30 pm various days through May 9. See portlandopera.org/production/show-boat. $31-$144.
Static
Sound is its own character in this introspective drama from Third Rail about a woman whose deaf husband unexpectedly dies, leaving her a perplexing mixtape. A message from beyond or an unfortunate copy of tween infatuation? In a rare move, the play is written for both spoken English and American Sign Language, reminding us that diversity isn’t just about skin color. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 231-3959. 7:30 pm WednesdaySaturday, 2 pm Sundays, through May 24. $24-$47.
mater, Grease gives the audience pure and simple entertainment. Stars Peter Liptak (Danny Zuko) and Claire Rigsby (Betty Rizzo) ham it up with deafending musical numbers but are also convincing in their angsty teenage vulnerability. Like an irresponsible spin in a flashy car, it’s pretty innocent, overly-optimistic, and really just fun. IAN CLARK. Broadway Rose New Stage Theatre, 12850 SW Grant Ave., Tigard, 620-5262. 7:30 pm ThursdayFriday, 2 pm and 7:30 Saturday, 2 pm Sunday through May 24. $30-$42.
Suddenly Last Summer
Stark, torrid and lyrical, Tennessee Williams’ 1958 one-act examines the aftermath of an American boy’s mysterious death in Spain. That tragic event left his cousin prone to insane babbling, which in turn has put her at the mercy of the boy’s imperious mother. After some delays in the fall, Shaking the Tree has finally moved into its new home—a bare-bones warehouse with soaring ceilings—which we’re hoping ever-industrious director Samantha Van Der Merwe converts into a hot and
humid New Orleans garden. Shaking the Tree, 823 SE Grant Ave., 235-0635. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays and 5 pm Sundays through May 2. $10-$25, free for ages 19 and under.
Terrifying Shrubbery
Clowns could be the one thing to make the Brothers Grimm’s overworked fantasies scary again. But Nomadic Theater Company and CoHo Theater director Philip Cuomo’s slapstick take on dark forests and fairy godmothers is goofy, red noses and all. Sounds terrifying, truly. Headwaters Theatre, 55 NE Farragut St., No. 9, 289-3499. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday through May 10. $8-$12.
The School for Lies
Theatergoers sit in the social parlor of sharp-tongued widow Celimene (Stephanie Cordell) for Theater Vertigo’s update of Molière’s The Misanthrope. a comic exposé of 17thcentury frilly civility. This intersection of parlor society and 21st-century staging becomes a show of anachronisms. The script is dense with heady
wordplay, but then comes Celimene freestyle rapping. The modern additions already seem outdated, but the play is more successful as a whimsical show. Flying pastries and rogue glasses of wine break the fourth wall to let us in on the joke. RIHANNA WEISS. Shoebox Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 971-244-3740. 7:30 pm ThursdaySaturday, 2 pm Sunday, April 10 through May 9. $20.
Twelfth Night
Post5 is known for putting Shakespeare’s lusty ladies in jeggings, and this performance goes all out. Viola disguises herself as a boy under the alias Sebastian and promptly falls in love with the Duke, who loves Olivia, who falls in love with Sebastian...and around in the Shakespearian rat race of twins, slapstick comedy and ukelele sing-a-longs we go. While lesser characters feel canned, Cassandra Boice’s casting of Chip Sherman as idyllic Olivia convinces us his role was meant
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PREVIEW CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN
PERFORMANCE
Tennessee in the Spring
Staged readings of six Tennessee Williams short plays are the sidecar to Shaking the Tree’s Suddenly Last Summer, which runs through May 2. One short, Something Unspoken, was the play’s original opening act and introduces its theme of middle-aged women bonking into homosexuality. Shaking the Tree, 823 SE Grant Ave., 235-0635. 7:30 pm Wednesday, April 29. $15.
NEW REVIEWS Soul Harmony
Stumptown Stages’ R&B musical has all the ingredients for a stunning show: a vapid Jewish songstress and fledgling black singing group popularizing a new genre, a lead descended from the Orioles’ Sonny Till himself, a live band and notable talent (Portland mainstay Amy Jo Halliday is the standout Jewish mama). But the play waxes long—nearly three hours. It’s downfall is self-pandering loyalty and placing historical accuracy before entertaining theater. With full performances of songs that melt into one another and too much biography between interesting plot points, the play needs editing. If anything, this is a testament to the talent of leads Monica Rodrigues and Halliday. The mother and daughter duo that carried the Orioles carry Soul Harmony too, along with refreshing interludes from choruses of nasal Jewish crooners and war-time candy girls. Brunish Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm Thursday-Friday, 2 pm and 7:30 pm Saturday, 2 pm Sunday through May 3. $29.65-$43.95.
ALSO PLAYING Cyrano
Cyrano’s 1897 premier introduced “panache,” meaning flamboyant, and there’s no better term for PCS’s largerthan-life staging. The talented wordsmith and swordsman, played with too much gusto by Seattleite Andrew McGinn, can’t woo anyone with his massive nose, especially muse-like Roxane (Jen Taylor). Roxane lounges on a rose-laden balcony as her lovers serenade from below; fighting scenes stage raucous swordplay; almost everything is overplayed to schnoz-like proportions. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm TuesdaySunday, 2 pm Saturday-Sunday, noon Thursdays, through May 3. $36-63.
Grease
As over the top and ostentatious as you’d expected from Broadway Rose Theater, this production maintains all the Pink Ladies and T-Birds drama, plus bursts from its tiny stage with athletic dance routines. From its beginning ode to the play’s fictional alma
taP tHat: Dorrance Dance is at the arlene schnitzer Concert Hall on april 29.
THE BLUES PROJECT (DORRANCE DANCE) NEW YORKERS SWING INTO PORTLAND’S UNTAPPED TAP SCENE. This ain’t your mama’s tap dancing. There is a drummer on stage. She starts up “this slow and sticky 12-beat blues.” Then the violinist comes in, and the audience starts clapping early. Portlander Karida Griffith was surprised at Dorrance Dance’s New York show earlier this month. “It was like, ‘Are we at a concert?’” Tonight, Griffith will dance on the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall stage with the New York tap company in The Blues Project. This is the only tap show you’ll see on any local stage this season. The show sets 35-year-old founder Michelle Dorrance’s provocative choreography to a live blues soundtrack from Toshi Reagon and her BIGLovely band. True to its name, The Blues Project is less a dance performance with music and more a musical performance using tap. “We are in a band with the dancers,” songstress Reagon says. “We are all instrumentalists onstage.” Griffith, who’s from a family of musicians, was never allowed to touch her brother’s drum kit. “Now I’m a drummer, just with my feet,” she says.
The show starts with the birth of tap. Like blues music, tap was spawned by oppression, when enslaved Africans had their drums confiscated and decided to use their feet. The six company dancers and tap celebrities Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards and Derick Grant tap through Appalachian backwoods, go shoeless in a zydeco scene, and wax acrobatic (one dancer does a headstand while splitting his legs so another can flip through). “Tap is just like rap or beat-boxing,” Griffith says of the show’s solos, which are completely improvised. The lines between dancing and playing instruments are purposefully blurry with Dorrance Dance. Some BIGLovely band members are taking tap now. “They’re naturals,” says Griffith, who will become an electronic musician for their next performance, which links dancers’ shoes to amplifiers. “The show is all EDM. We’re calling it ETM—electronic tap music.” In Portland, even analog tap in the style of Fred Astaire is rare. But peg The Blues Project as a concert and it’s another story. “Other dancers talk in counts, but we talk in bars,” Griffith says. “Tap dancers are all percussionists.” ENID SPITZ. see it: The Blues Project is at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm Wednesday, April 29. $26-$68. Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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for drag. Jessica Tidd as the disguised Viola switches sexes seamlessly; Portland veteran Jeff Gorham is a deliciously disgusting drunkard; and Boice, the pathetically lithping Malvolio, steals the show. This is Bard 101, little brain required. ENID SPITZ. Post5 Theatre, 1666 SE Lambert St., 971-258-8584. 7:30 pm Friday-Sunday through May 16. $20.
COMEDY & VARIETY Control Yourself: A Showcase of Funny JoAnn Schinderle—a Midwest transplant with a high-energy, engaging style—hosts a free, twice-monthly standup showcase, followed by an open mic at 10 pm. Alberta Street Pub, 1036 NE Alberta St., 284-7665. 9 pm every first and third Sunday. Free. 21+.
Funny Humans vs. the Wheel
Pastie Pageant
A nine-week-long competition, the Pastie Pageant promises a mix of RuPaul’s Drag Race and Survivor, with burlesque and boylesque dancers competing weekly for the winning prize. Designed to hone the skills of up-and-comers, the pageant picks a musical theme and a random skill for performers to play off. Produced by Zane Phoenix, expect a rotating panel of judges each week with some of Portland’s best in burlesque. Funhouse Lounge, 2432 SE 11th Ave., 841-6734. 9:30 pm Thursdays through June 11. $7-$10. 21+.
X-Posed
Polaris Dance Company’s annual series contains a chain reaction of introductions—of dancers to new choreographers, of new choreographers to the public and of the Portland community to avant-garde dance. No stranger to pushing the envelope, Polaris started the series to test its works-in-progress, and promises raw performances that peek inside the creative process. Polaris Dance Theatre, 1501 SW Taylor St., 380-5472. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday. $17.50-$25.
For more Performance listings, visit
PREVIEW oWEN CAREy
PERFORMANCE
If you go to enough shows around town, you start to memorize comedians’ sets. Think of this weekly show, hosted by silly duo Adam Pasi and David Mascorro, as an antidote to all that repetition: Comedians start out with a planned set, but halfway through, they have to spin a wheel to determine what comes next—crowd work, one-liners, maybe even a heckle battle. Bar of the Gods, 4801 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 2322037. 9 pm every Sunday. Free. 21+.
Helium Open Mic
Generally regarded as the best open-mic night in town, Helium’s sign-ups fill quickly. Show up between 6 and 7 pm to snag some stage time. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., 888-643-8669. 8 pm every Tuesday. Free with a twoitem minimum. 21+.
It’s Gonna Be Okay
Hosted by the ever-chipper Barbara Holm, this twice-monthly showcase is a prime spot to catch Portland’s top comics, as well as the occasional out-of-towner. The cozy basement room is almost always packed (especially impressive for a Monday night), and Holm often tosses out prizes—plastic dinosaur figurines, comic books—to audience members. Also: free skee ball afterward. EastBurn, 1800 E Burnside St., 2362876. 8:30 pm every first and third Monday. Free. 21+.
Kitty Kats of Comedy
Local indie rockers Woodge and comic Kristine Levine mix standup comedy and small-stage rock. Then they put a cat on it, because Portland is proficient in three main things: up-and-coming comedy, indie music and pussy on stage. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 2266630. 10 pm Thursday, April 30. $5. 21+.
Lez Stand-up
Turns out lesbians are funny and comedians like to talk about sex. Kirsten “Kupp” Kuppenbender hosts a quarterly feminist laugh-fest with local comics. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 4779477. 7:30 pm Thursday, April 30. $10.
Random Acts of Comedy
Curious Comedy puts on a freewheeling show that brings together sketch, standup and improv. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 477-9477. 9:30 pm every Saturday. $7-$10.
DANCE Jefferson Dancers Spring Concert
Just back from a sold-out tour in France, Jefferson High School’s elite teen dance company celebrates its 39th season with a highenergy spring concert of jazz, tap, modern, contemporary, hip hop and African dance, choreographed by standout Jefferson Dancer alumni. Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm WednesdayFriday, 7:30 pm-2 pm Saturday, April 29-May 2. $16.25-$27.25.
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COVERING GROUND: Vana O’Brien and Joshua Weinstein.
4000 MILES (ARTISTS REP) portland stages keep on trucking through amy Herzog plays.
New York playwright Amy Herzog became contemporary theater’s darling when her play 4000 Miles was the first from Lincoln Center Theater’s prolific new works program to get an off-Broadway run. Then it got nominated for a Pulitzer, won the off-Broadway version of a Tony Award, and was Time magazine’s top play of 2012. Herzog has only written four plays—all in a prolific five-year period—but Portland has already seen a lot of her. Belleville ended a run at CoHo Theater on April 18. A year ago, Portland Playhouse staged After the Revolution. And her most famous work, 4000 Miles, opens Saturday at Artists Rep. There’s nothing extraordinary in Herzog’s plays. Revolution and 4000 Miles are simple in premise and setting: An American family navigates relationship dynamics at home. “She does realism so well. People seem to be craving that,” says Artists Rep spokeswoman Nicole Lane. In 4000 Miles, Revolution’s ex-revolutionary grandma Vera— played by Vana O’Brien—is a toothless 91-year-old when her grandson Leo appears on her Greenwich Village doorstep before dawn, with a bicycle and a lot of emotional baggage. The play risks being pigeonholed as a stereotypical generational conflict between rudderless 21-year-old Leo and the grandmother who’s as traditional as he is a hippie. But Herzog is also known for making everyday moments surprisingly haunting. Artists Rep is taking deliberate steps to draw audiences in with sights and sounds. The stage’s wood flooring and hanging pictures extend into the entry halls. “You feel welcomed into her home, where’s she’s lived for decades,” Lane says. Resident sound designer Rodolfo Ortega composed an original soundtrack for the production that he says sounds like Texas rock band Explosions in the Sky. “And, of course, they smoke pot together onstage,” says Lane, explaining that it’s actually a raspberry leaf and an e-cigarette stuffed into a pipe. “But it looks just like bud.” As far as gateway drugs go, Revolution got Portlanders hooked. But now that the city has staged three of Herzog’s four plays—she wrote all of them in a prolific five-year period—after The Great God Pan is inevitably staged, we’ll need a new darling. ENID SPITZ. SEE IT: 4000 Miles is at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Sundays, 2 pm Sundays, May 2-24. $41-$59.
Beyond the Print
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= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By MEGAN HARNED. 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: mharned@wweek.com.
Ben Bushwell: No One Above or Below
This is Ben Bushwell’s third show in Portland in as many months, having exhibited at the Art Gym in March and been included in The Sum of Its Parts at Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art since February. I enjoy the near hallucinatory effect of his mark-making on photographic prints for how it restores the three-dimensionality that photography flattens, and because it looks cool. If you’re a fan of art that “blurs the line” between this and that, No One Above and Below promises to deliver a sculptural approach to image making that not everyone can pull off. Through May 7. Upfor Gallery, 929 NW Flanders St., 227-5111.
Carolyn Cole: New Paintings
Carolyn Cole uses rich hues to create atmospheric abstractions on fairly large-sized canvases, titled after their dominant color. Two of her works are unique for being smaller in size than the rest, and I like them both slightly better than the others on display. Perhaps it’s because the smaller scale of both Red and Taupe give the colors more intensity, or that it draws the viewer in closer into the work. Most likely it’s a combination of these: Because the colors don’t have to compete with the vastness of the larger canvases, they more powerfully catch the viewer’s attention. I’m always disinclined to tell women to go smaller, and the larger canvases do fill out the space more effectively than a collection of smaller ones would. But right now, most of the compositional action is centered, making the rest of the canvas feel like superfluous negative space. Through May 2. Butters Gallery, 520 NW Davis St., 2nd floor, 248-9378.
Intisar Abioto: Contents
Contents, Intisar Abioto’s show up at Duplex, is full of incomplete narratives. This is the point, because between the images, mostly portraits, and the story of how she took those pictures, Abioto asks us to imagine the details. She tells us how her subjects make her feel: comfort from the woman who works in the convenience store, pride for the young man who cares for the children, etc. She doesn’t know them all completely, and doesn’t try to present them completely to us. This means we have to work harder to know them, to know our friends, neighbors and community, but Abioto inspires us to rise to the challenge with beautiful people and evocative language. Through April 30. Duplex, 219 NW Couch St.
Jim Neidhardt: Nuts & Bolts, 15 Clues to Life
Jim Neidhardt, who’s previously been known for photographing museumgoers photographing art, has a new
batch of work at Augen Gallery. Nuts & Bolts, 15 Clues to Life is a series of digital prints that started as instruction manuals, made impenetrable with painterly additions and edits, that bring us in as viewers through the use of mannequin hands holding down the pages. These deconstructions of the picture plane as entryway into another, legible, world mirror the uselessness of trying to implement good advice. I’m not sure if we’ll find the answers to life, the universe and everything among these clues, but we surely can build something worth living in the meantime. Bound art books of the prints are on display in addition to others in the series, which actually manage to fit even my budget. Through May 2. Augen Gallery DeSoto, 716 NW Davis St., 546-5056.
Julia Oldham: Farewell Brave Voyager
Farewell Brave Voyager is an installation of video, animation, music and drawing that memorialize two doomed space explorers, one fictional and one historical. The animated piece, Laika’s Lullaby, was projected against the wall and told the story of an early Soviet space dog. Laika, man’s best cosmonaut, pants, sniffs, and looks out on Earth from the solitude of her grand voyage and coffin, set to a haunting composition by Lindsay Keast. Farewell Brave Voyager played on a smallish screen set perpendicular to the projection against the wall facing the door, and just about everyone could see both while they sat or stood. There were moments when the actors of the film seemed to be looking at the great emptiness of space alongside our canine hero. Through such moments the separate works coalesced into a single installation. Through May 23. Portland ’Pataphysical Society, 625 NW Everett St., No. 104.
Justin James Reed: Shining Bodies
In Shining Bodies, Justin James Reed starts with medieval reliquaries—originally used to house spiritually significant bones, shrouds and other relics—as framing devices that endow objects with mystical powers. The works are made of glass, referencing ideas of holy light. The show also includes experimental photographic work incorporating laser etching on paper, which burns away the surface layers to reveal a hidden image below. Traditional black-and-white photographs round out the show, which asks us to consider how medium structures the message. Through May 17. Melanie Flood Projects, 420 SW Washington St., No. 301, 862-7912.
Kim Osgood: Persephone’s Tale
Historically, landscapes were the domain of celebrating the creator’s domain and still lifes were designed
to inspire the viewer to reflect on mortality and the necessity to live morally despite, or because of, the brevity of life. Today’s artists often deal with these issues in a much more superficial light, so I’m interested in Kim Osgood’s monotypes which place flower vases, lamps, books and other signs of domestic life in the foreground of mountain valleys whose far-off peaks are just barely visible and recognizable. Perhaps the reference to the Greek goddess of the underworld and springtime offers some insight into the artist’s thinking. Through May 2. Laura Russo Gallery, 805 NW 21st Ave., 226-2754.
REVIEW COURTESY OF TRIANGLE PRODUCTIONS
VISUAL ARTS
Lyric Truth: Paintings, Drawings and Embroideries by Rosemarie Beck
If you were an “important” New York painter in the late 1940s and 1950s, you dutifully pledged allegiance to Abstract Expressionism and trafficked in dollops, drizzles, smears and drips. Not so for Rosemarie Beck (1923-2003), subject of a rigorous exhibition at PSU organized by art historian Sue Taylor. In her mature work, Beck eschewed abstract statements, preferring to portray fleshand-blood human beings. Sometimes, as in the oil painting Two with Horse, her depictions were frankly sensual and erotic. She also drew inspiration from the myths of Classical antiquity, a predilection that was not exactly considered forward-thinking by her contemporaries. Still, she persevered not only in the medium of painting but also in drawing and embroidery. Through May 3. Broadway Lobby Gallery at Portland State, Lincoln Hall, 1620 SW Park Ave.
Nancy Lorenz: Polished Ground
I love gold. It’s part vanity, because I’m blond and it suits my complexion, but it’s also deeply aesthetic: a result of having spent so much time with gilded medieval altarpieces, manuscripts illuminated with gold leaf, and the long history of Christian art. I was always bound to love Polished Ground, and in person I couldn’t resist the swirling, shimmering golds, silvers and platinum. The soft metallic pigments accentuate the coarse burlap canvases, and vice versa. Some even include mirrors, as if to scold the viewer for reveling in the artist’s vision. Through May 2. PDX Contemporary Art, 925 NW Flanders St., 222-0063.
The World Is Not the Earth
This is a group show that includes James Castle, Austin Eddy, John O’Reilly, Blair Saxon-Hill and Timmy Straw. The works all develop a highly personal, complex narrative using collage and appropriation. Blair Saxon-Hill was included in last year’s Portland Biennial at Disjecta. Through May 30. Adams and Ollman, 209 SW 9th Ave, 724-0684.
For more Visual Arts listings, visit
DRAGGING UP THE PAST: The cast of Triangle Productions’ Storefront Revue: The Babes are Back, opening May 7.
STOREFRONT REVISITED Storefront’s vintage costumes put sexuality front and center.
When a nearly naked black actor played Spartacus in American Theatre Company’s 1969 production of The Gladiator at Portland State University, it was the
beginning of the end. Costumes from the controversial theater group, which rebranded itself as Storefront Actors’ Theatre when PSU eventually kicked it out, are now art relics. It’s rare to see costuming in galleries, but Blackfish Gallery and Portland Center Stage both displayed a fashion show of outfits this month for their Storefront Revisited. There are rainbow-horned headdresses, grommeted codpieces, and a leotard with hamburger buns on the bum from Storefront’s 20 years of risque plays. The show’s highlight is the White Queen’s elaborate ensemble from Jewel Box: An Erotic Fairytale. It’s a concoction of full-length satin, tulle and silver embroidery that is gathered and beaded at the waist for a sleek profile. Her crown is embellished with pearls, beads and jewels, and a partial veil makes even the mannequin seem mysterious. Her counterpart, the Black Queen, is a genderqueer, dark cloud of layered petticoats and leather straps in contrast to the White Queen’s streamlined, innocent look. Part of the April pop-up show at PCS, this ignoble royal’s outfit paired masculine shoulder pads and a football cup with a foot-high, bedazzled headpiece and gray wig. But a cup on the queen seems tame next to the outfit from 1989’s Cuchulain Cycle. Or the accessories, rather. The mannequin display is weighed down with a cock-and-balls necklace, garland headpiece and horns. Storefront’s Theater of Horror, an Edgar Allen Poe remake, was its director’s “AIDS opus,” and its spartan ensemble captures all the drama “opus” implies. A full-length red cape and boas stream from the bulging shoulder pads. The chest is naked and we can only imagine the costume included a loincloth of sorts back in the day, but at Storefront Theatre who knows? MEGAN HARNED. SEE IT: Storefront Revisited is at Blackfish Gallery, 420 NW 9th Ave., through May 2.
STREET PG. 29
Elta Wilson presents
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Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
The Sentient Universe
5pm – 7pm Thurs., May 7, 2015 (part of First Thursday Art Walk) First Congregational, United Church of Christ Downstairs in the art gallery 1126 SW Park Ave., pdx (across from Portland Art Museum) Who are we? What is our collective fate? Is there a nexus between art, religion and science? A video, 10 large acrylic images, an essay, music.
BOOKS
april 29–may 5 REVIEW
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By PENELOPE BASS. 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.
Greg Iles
Southern lawyer Penn Cage finds himself on the run after attempting to defend his father of murder charges. Now Cage, his fiancee and his father are fleeing from corrupt cops and the Double Eagles, a secretive sect of the KKK. In other words, Greg Iles’ new novel, The Bone Tree (second in a trilogy following bestseller Natchez Burning), has all the classic elements of a Nic Cage movie. That’s high praise. Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 800-878-7323. 7 pm. Free.
Lisa Genova
Lisa Genova, whose debut novel, Still Alice, painted a hauntingly realistic portrait of Alzheimer’s disease and was made into an acclaimed film, now turns her focus to another terrifyingly subtle malady, Huntington’s disease. Her new book, Inside the O’Briens, follows 44-year-old police officer Joe O’Brien, who begins to experience disorganized thinking and involuntary movements until being diagnosed with the inherited neurological condition. Prepare for paranoia. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
Rabins
Daniel Wolff and Alicia Jo
Author, poet and filmmaker Daniel Wolff has focused his artistic eye on everything from a biography of Sam Cooke (You Send Me) to a documentary about slain Haitian civilrights leader Jean Dominique. His newly released collection of poetry, The Names of Birds, is a “field guide to perception.” Poet, composer and performer Alicia Jo Rabins spends her time touring with her band Girls in Trouble (whose songs tell the complicated lives of biblical women), creating and performing one-woman rock operas (A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff ) and now reading from her forthcoming book of poetry, Divinity School. These two ridiculously talented individuals will converge for an evening of words and music. TaborSpace, 5441 SE Belmont St. 7:30 pm, 238-3904. $5.
SATURDAY, MAY 2 Is Privacy an Option?
Even as today’s youths willingly share every detail of their lives regardless of how appalling or uninteresting, the issue of privacy becomes an increasingly relevant
topic. Mark Alfino, professor of philosophy at Gonzaga University, will lead a discussion about the social and philosophical implications of privacy in the current age. Bring your smartphones and tinfoil hats! Central Library, 801 SW 10th Ave., 988-5123. 2-3:30 pm. Free.
Independent Bookstore Day
Amazon may pretend like it knows you, offering suggestions of books you might enjoy until your search history is forever tainted by that Dale Earnhardt biography you bought for your father-in-law. But nothing beats a real person placing a book in your hand and telling you why they love it. So celebrate Independent Bookstore Day by stopping into your favorite local shop (such as Broadway Books, In Other Words, Daedalus, Powell’s, Mother Foucault’s, St. Johns Booksellers, Annie Bloom’s, Anthology, Monograph Bookwerks, Wallace Books, Murder by the Book, Microcosm, Jacobsen’s, Reading Frenzy and so many more) to catch special deals, hear authors read and straight-up express your appreciation. Multiple venues. All day. Free.
Free Comic Book Day
Like the geeky younger brother of Independent Bookstore Day (also May 2), Free Comic Book Day will be celebrated at comic shops across town. Local shops such as Floating World Comics will host Canadian illustrator Jillian Tamaki (Skim, This One Summer), Cosmic Monkey will host a signing with local artists and a sidewalk sale, and Things From Another World will fire up the barbecue along with a daylong schedule of signings. Plus, free comics. Sweet. Multiple venues. All day. Free..
SUNDAY, MAY 3 The Opposite of Loneliness
In May of 2012, five days after graduating magna cum laude from Yale, Marina Keegan died in a car accident. Her collection of essays and stories, The Opposite of Loneliness, published in April 2014, has been widely circulated and embraced. Author Anne Fadiman (The Spirit Catches You, You Fall Down), who was Keegan’s writing teacher, will discuss her relationship to Keegan and offer a reading from the book. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
For more Books listings, visit
MICHAELANGELO MATOS, THE UNDERGROUND IS MASSIVE Bankrolling so hard right now.
It’s right on the damn cover: “EDM,” highlighted in the divisive and corporate genre tag’s unofficial color, hot pink. Considering the inside pages, the placement of that term on the cover of Michaelangelo Matos’ The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America is a plain endcap attention-grabber. Matos is actually writing the history of post-disco dance music, a history he rightfully recognizes as far broader. His attempted scope is more massive than any festival crowd. The Underground Is Massive opens with Juan Atkins and Derrick May toying with disco and funk in 1983 Chicago and closes 382 brusque pages later with the insanity of Daft Punk’s party after sweeping the 2014 Grammys with Random Access Memories. The territory is covered unevenly: Matos editorializes practically nothing about the early days of dance music—when the author himself was an untested auteur and raver—and then inserts oneliners galore in everything post-dubstep. (“Everyone seems to be trying to outdo everyone else in the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ sweepstakes,” he writes of late-model festivals. A certain Swedish House Mafia track “could give Bryan Adams insulin shock.”) Still, he progresses first through micro-movements like
GO: Michaelangelo Matos speaks with Douglas Wolk at Powell’s on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 800-878-7323, on Monday, May 4. 7:30 pm. Free.
SCOOP P.G. 30
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29
U.K. garage or the origin of the Furthur festivals and then through time, stitching each scene together as much with section breaks as with an unsteady flow of facts. Matos wears the hats of both rote historian and snarky music critic well, but it’s when they’re changed that Massive grinds its gears. That’s not to say the book is impractical. The number of interviews Matos conducted, along with zones, Listservs and forums pored over, is stunning. Initially, early Chicago and Detroit dance history gets treated with a hand as light as Matos’ would have been in his childhood in the late ’80s, though that might be for want of data as much as the author’s own light tread. As the music matures, so do the stories. We have tales of a Midwest party crew requiring a hit of acid to be taken at the door (as the Drop Bass Network did in 1995) or of rookie cops getting hired on offnights to work security at massive break-in raves (as was standard practice in early ’90s Chicago). Much is left out, and understandably so, but for dance fans it could seem like a slight. Dubstep gets four pages; Trap, grime, glitch-hop and gabber get far less. Equally understandable is his exclusive focus on Europe, the Great Lakes region, New York, L.A. and San Francisco, though omission of Asia entirely is unforgivable. For the curious, Portland appears but once, adjacent on the page to Seattle as “rock towns.” However influential they have been on millennial dance and pop, one group is the subject of a few too many pages of circle-jerking. “What was Daft Punk going to do?” begins the long buildup to Matos’ admittedly impressive description of the French duo’s first stateside performance. If written in 1990, though, Matos could just as easily be gushing about the canonization of Madonna as dance’s mass-market savior. But there’s one big bone to pick with Massive, one the underground movement itself would probably like to stick in Matos’ eye. The term “EDM,” he claims, “originates in academia: Scholars began using it because it had no connotations to specific styles.” He goes on to note that “nearly everybody” is disappointed in the major labels’ minted term, but neglects to mention why, or that there are plenty of, say, house producers who don’t make EDM. EDM’s lifespan as an all-encompassing, music critic-infuriating term will eventually come to an end, just as those pink letters on the cover may eventually fade. But for all the bluntness of Matos’ widescreen tactics, what he’s compiled in Massive is a monument to dance music—and to its hapless critics. MITCH LILLIE.
Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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AUGUST 15-16, 2014 AUGUST 15-16, 2014
APRIL 30TH, OMSI
TechfestNW and Columbia Sportswear Company present:
A SHARED FUTURE A FRANK CONVERSATION ABOUT INNOVATION AND GROWTH ACROSS THE SHARING ECONOMY
PORTLAND GUIDES WILLAMETTE WEEK
Portland Guides
2014
RESTAURANT OF THE
UbeR in pORtlAnD?
BEER GUIDE INSIDE
YEAR
GLOSSY MAGAzine
2014 bike guide
PorPORTLAND t l and GUIDES Guides WILLAMETTE WEEK
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outdoor guide
PORTLAND GUIDES
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PORTLAND GUIDES
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WILLAMETTE WEEK
WILLAMETTE WEEK
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WILLAMETTE WEEK
Portland
OUTDOOR GUiDe Publishes: MAY 27, 2015 Space Reservation & Materials Deadline: Thursday, May 7 at 10pm Call: 503.243.2122 Email: advertising@wweek.com
David Plouffe from Uber and the Mayor discuss the economic, political and social impact of the Sharing Economy with Instacart, Spinlister and others on 4/30 at OMSI. GET YOUR TICKETS: http://bit.ly/ tfnw15tickets
$5 1
WW market guide
may 7, 2014
ReSeRVe YOUR SPACe TODAY! 54
Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
APRil 29-MAy 5 FEATURE
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
COuRTESY OF AIN’T NO FISH, PES AND TONKO HOuSE LLC
MOVIES
Editor: ENID SPITZ. 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: espitz@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
OPENING THIS WEEK
STILL SHOWING
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
’71
Robert Downey Jr. invents a magnet for tireless wit, Chris Hemsworth does more Shakespeare in the park, and the rest of the super buffet tags along to punch things. Screened after deadline. See wweek.com for a review. PG-13. Opens Thursday at Regal Pioneer Place, City Center, Cine Magic, Lloyd Center, Bagdad Theatre, St. Johns Twin Cinemas, Regal City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Century Cedar Hills and many other Portland-area theaters.
Black Souls
B Ancestral passions run deep as a trio of Calabrian mobster brothers— a fighter, a thinker and a melancholic farmer—undertake a longstanding vendetta with a rival mafioso. Veering away from the caricature of mafia men as just ruthless, overly passionate pasta lovers, director Francesco Munzi’s dark Italian drama meanders through the catacombs of a family with a shared history but deeply divided present. The film juxtaposes the eldest brother’s choice to raise goats and make wine in their withering ancestral enclave with his brothers’ contemporary lives in posh Milan, surrounded by leather jackets and ravishing women. This melancholy plot exposes suppressed emotions and social stagnation in rural Italy, where crime is the only way for peasants to become kings, and trust is hard to come by. NR. PARKER HALL. Cinema 21.
Dior and I
B+ “My work is my life’s reason,” says
king of couture Christian Dior in this decadent look at the work—or work of art—that is high fashion. From the introduction of House of Dior’s new creative director, Raf Simons, to its crowning spring fashion show, the film does not suggest a debate in the significance of fashion; it shows it. Dior was only with his eponymous house for 10 years, but in that time he grew haute couture from a trivial seed after the war into a validated art form. Seamstresses even say they can still feel his presence inspecting their work. Director Frédéric Tcheng reveals the behind-the-seams brainstorming, fabric cutting, and copious amounts of coffee people endure to see a single clothing line produced. It’s a world made tangible with inspiration from tropical gardens, a woman’s silhouette, paintings by the “gangster Rothko,” and a romantic notion of old mixed with new. Dior and I successfully shows us a dress and makes us see a people’s life reason. NR. KATE PEIFER. Fox Tower.
New Permutations
B+ Experimental Portland filmmaker
Vu Pham attaches a warning to his latest work: “The content of these films are intellectually and emotionally challenging. The material is controversial and psychologically intense.” The trilogy of short films explores tumultuous and neurotic relationships: A detached actress has nature hallucinations during sex, two aspiring radicals clash in their cult, and a sociopath’s wife ends his rampage. Pham himself is familiar with tough relationships. Since he arrived in Portland from Vietnam at age 6, he has endured an estranged father, an abusive uncle, and the death of his mother at the hands of her boyfriend. He tugs viewers unapologetically through the dense stuff—some of which is pure symbology, art for art’s sake. Pham has a knack for crafting dense, philosophical, and downright alarming stories that demand to be unpacked. NR. TED JAMISON. Cinema 21.
D Behind Enemy Lines, as seen through the eyes of an abandoned British soldier in the midst of the Troubles of 1971 Belfast. Despite myriad explosions, onscreen deaths, and visceral emotional stereotypes associated with action thrillers, ’71’s excellent pacing and a well-crafted, character-driven plot manage to evoke comparisons to films like Scorsese’s Departed. It’s an accomplishment that shows tremendous respect for its subject. R. PARKER HALL. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theater.
Adult Beginners
See Jay Horton’s review on page 56. PG-13. Living Room Theaters, Forest Theater.
The Age of Adaline
B For such a determinedly backwardleaning film, The Age of Adaline is surprisingly modern. Supernaturally ageless Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) starts by picking up secret-identitypaperwork and heading to a lair in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Though the wisp of a plot could never achieve the epic romance trailers promise, this is the nearest chick flicks have come to the superhero blueprint. Adaline doesn’t fight her way out of trouble but dominates through unerring good taste and a particular set of skills (like conversational Portuguese). Her foes, beyond the government agents following her, are all over-eager suitors until Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman) wins her over. Their love is pleasant, if pointless, until a weekend trip to meet Ellis’ parents brings Adaline face to face with an old beau (Harrison Ford), who happens to be her new beau’s father. This is typical 20th-century cinema, and the character of Adaline isn’t especially rewarding either. Over the century, shouldn’t she have developed more than a large wardrobe and a flair for Trivial Pursuit? The film follows the familiar practice of putting an impossibly glamorous gloss on workaday banality its audience can recognize. It’s a shame that she didn’t have more of a life, but, as the younger Ford muses, who does? PG-13. JAY HORTON. Living Room Theaters.
Birdman
B- If Birdman’s message is that Hollywood a place of debased, greed-driven entertainment, Alejandro González Iñárritu doesn’t make a convincing—or even amusingly satirical—argument. R. REBECCA JACOBSON. Academy, Laurelhurst Theater.
Chappie
B- Essentially a mashup of Short Circuit, Robocop and assorted directto-video action films from the ’80s. It’s all to say that Chappie is pretty fucking stupid. But if you lower your expectations, it’s also kind of a blast. R. AP KRYZA. Avalon, Movies on TV Vancouver, Valley Theater.
Cheatin’
A- The latest hand-drawn feature from Oscar-winning ex-Portlander Bill Plimpton is a sumptuous relationship drama about a newlywed wife’s drastic reaction when she discovers her husband cheatin’. Plymton’s purposefully messy style shatters the stereotype of animation as childish. Instead, we fall down a kaleidoscopic rabbit hole of graphic love scenes, musical numbers where dancing babies can-can around the kitchen and violently-morphing sketches that almost warrant a seizure warning. It all compiles into a beautiful film, set to an evocative and playful Frenchsounding soundtrack. NR. ENID SPITZ. Cinema 21.
CONT. on page 56
GoInG SWImmInGly: Ain’t No Fish, Submarine Sandwich and The Dam Keeper (clockwise from top) are at the Hollywood Theatre.
STOP-MOTION ON A ROLL NORTHWEST ANIMATION FEST CELEBRATES ITS FIFTH YEAR WITH MORE THAN 250 FILMS AT THE HOLLYWOOD THEATRE. By eN id sP itz
espitz@wweek.com
The Northwest Animation Festival is bringing an anthropomorphic mammoth longing for cryogenic sleep, Medusa as a stay-at-home mom, and a competitive Iranian lifeguard to the Hollywood Theatre. This guest list goes on, with more than 250 sketches and stop-motion films for the weeklong celebration. The lineup, created and curated by international artists, includes Oscar nominees, local labors of love, and work from a boatload of Canadian animators. Films are lumped into themes such as Exploding Mind! and Strange & Sexy, but for tips on what’s best, WW asked Oscar-winning Portland animator Bill Plympton to share his picks: A Single Life by Job, Joris & Marieke “This is a marvelous computer-animated short, an Oscar nominee. It’s about a magical record player linked to the characters’ lives. When it plays faster or slower, the person’s life speeds or slows. It’s very funny.” Ain’t No Fish by Tom Gasek and Miki Cash “This is a music video from another Portland animator. Tom Gasek is a wonderful stop-motion artist, and this one [about ocean life and inspired by 1940s show tunes] is especially beautiful.” Footprints by Bill Plympton “Yes, I am going to pick one of my own. But this one really is good! I did it in ballpoint, which I almost never do, so it has a very different look. When people watch the ending, they gasp.”
Monkey Rag by Joanna Davidovich “This is Davidovich’s first film, and I would highly, highly recommend everyone see it. First of all, there’s great music. It’s a real crowd pleaser. That’s why I’ve picked it to show at a few of my screenings. It played at the Woodstock Film Festival, and I showed it at Martha’s Vineyard.” Split Ends by Joanna Priestley “Priestley is another local. Really, I’d recommend anything by her. She’s a genius; we all call her ‘the Queen of Anime.’” Submarine Sandwich by PES “OK, PES is a buddy of mine, but his stop-motion is really fun. He did that Fresh Guacamole stop-motion short that’s really witty, and this is his latest.” The Dam Keeper by Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo “This should have won the Oscar! It was nominated, but Feast [by Patrick Osborne and Kristina Reed] won. It’s about a little pig in a village who runs the dam that keeps all the sludge out. It’s tragic because none of the other villagers give him the time of day, but there’s romance too, when he falls in love with another little critter. Tsutsumi was the old art director for Blue Sky, and now he’s art director at Pixar. So, he’s big!” Yellow Sticky Notes: Canadian Anijam by Jeff Chiba Stearns, Marv Newland, Paul Driessen and 12 other Canadian animators “Wow, this one has so many names behind it: Janet Perlman, Jody Kramer, Paul Driessen. They’re all Canadians, all the cream of the animation crop. Marv and Paul are my heroes. The whole film is drawn on sticky notes, and each artist did a section, some in pen, some Sharpie or pencil.” See IT: The Northwest Animation Festival is May 4-10 at the Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 281-4215. $7-$15, $70 festival pass. See nwanimationfest.com for tickets and showtimes. Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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April 29-MAy 5
Child 44
Gary Oldman as Gen. Mikhail Nesterov shakes up Soviet Russia and a serial killer with a penchant for young boys, backed by dissenting secret police agent Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy) and his wife, Raisa (Noomi Rapace). Not screened for critics. r. Cedar Hills, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village, Fox Tower.
Cinderella
D+ Kenneth Branagh’s tiresome live-
action retcon of Cinderella, pG. JOHN LOCANTHI. Cedar Hills, Eastport Plaza, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village, Division Street, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV.
The Clouds of Sils Maria
B- Directed by Olivier Assayas (Paris, je t’aime), this meta-narrative about an immensely talented, and uncomfortably aging, actress named Maria is as foggy as its titular clouds. Juliet Binoche as Maria and the ineffably relaxed Kristen Stewart as her savvy assistant, Valentine, wax philosophical and run lines for Maria’s next role, a new part in a revival of a lesbian relationship drama that once made her famous. With a modern Hollywood starlet (Chloë Grace Moretz) shining in Maria’s original role, Maria grapples with her waning fame. The film gets lost in laborious self-study at times. You can only watch two women talk about lesbian undertones in a romantic chalet, oblivious to the ones in their own lives, for so long. But it’s saved by the refreshingly tantalizing experience of watching these three women play the film’s key roles as bizarro versions of themselves. R. KELLY MCCRILLIS. Living Room Theaters.
Danny Collins
B This simultaneously hackneyed and likable rock-’n’-roll redemption tale follows Al Pacino as Danny, a music celebrity who, 40 years after the fact, discovers John Lennon wrote him a letter telling him to stay true to his art. Danny is living high on his own legacy, performing greatest hits for the AARP demo, when the belated arrival of Lennon’s letter sends him to a sleepy New Jersey Hilton where he hopes finally to connect with his neglected son Tom (Bobby Cannavale). Pacino has verged on self-parody in recent decades, but he turns Danny’s showmanship into a character trait, a reflexive instinct to connect with and charm everyone he meets, from entire concert halls to gobsmacked parking valets. Pacino makes even the shortest moment of banter feel genuine, true to his art. r. SEAN AXMAKER. Clackamas Town Center, Movies on TV.
Ex Machina
B- Frankenstein’s monster is easy on the eyes in Ex Machina, a sexualized science-fiction movie that comes right out and addresses what many of its forebears merely danced around: that robots will eventually be hot, and attraction is inevitable. Alex Garland’s tale of a coder named Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), whisked away by his genius boss (Oscar Isaac) for a top-secret project, is familiar. But we’re enticed enough to follow along anyway. r. MICHAEL NORDINE. Cedar Hills, Eastport Plaza, Clackamas Town Center, Hollywood Theatre, Bridgeport Village, Division Street, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV.
Fifty Shades of Grey
D Fifty Shades turns what was sup-
posed to be a torrid affair into an overly serious episode of Beverly Hills 90210 with some timid softcore erotica thrown in. r. JOHN LOCANTHI. Eastport Plaza.
Focus
B- Great con-man movies—a subgenre old as cinema itself—strike a difficult balance between breezy capers and deeper examinations of character motives. Focus hits most of the right notes. It’s a slick, funny and sometimes suspenseful yarn, a picture that’s light on its feet and mostly forgettable, but it still manages moments of intrigue. r. AP KRYZA. Kennedy School, Mission Theater, Vancouver Plaza.
56
Furious 7
A- Furious 7’s action and ridiculous-
ness make it perhaps the best yet. Its tribute to Paul Walker, who tragically died (in a high-speed car wreck) before the film wrapped makes it one of the most affecting movies about things exploding ever made. The central chase scene is frantic and ludicrous and Dwayne “The Rock” Robinson flexes his sinewy biceps so hard that he breaks a goddamned plaster cast. This time, the team takes on terrorists and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), AP KRYZA. pG-13. Bagdad Theater, Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village, City Center, Lloyd Center, Piioneer Place, St. Johns Cinemas.
Get Hard
C+ Get Hard is a movie about a
rich white guy hiring a poor black guy to get him ready for a stint in prison. r. JAMES HELMSWORTH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas Town Center, Cinetopia, Forest Theater, Bridgeport Village, City Center, Division Street, Evergreen Parkway, Movies on TV.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
A- Writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is an eclectic cinematic mishmash: an Iranian noir-spaghetti Westernlove story…with vampires. And yet, somehow, it all works. Arash, a handsome 20-something in a white T-shirt and jeans, is the son of a junkie in Bad City. His father is in a significant hole to his dealer. A vampiric girl prowls the shadows—following, waiting and judging. For all its spaghetti Western flourishes, this is a quiet film about loneliness at heart. The minimal dialogue and an understated romance leave the viewer with something rare: a movie quiet enough you can soak in the imagery and be bowled over by the propulsive score. Nr. JOHN LOCANTHI. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theater.
Home
A technicolor extraterrestrial descends to Earth. Children learn acceptance of all critters, no matter their gummy-bear hue. It’s basically Up, with more tech specs and less soul. pG. Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place.
The Imitation Game
B As geniuses often are, British math-
ematician Alan Turing was an odd duck. Turing pioneered the field of computer science and helped crack Nazi codes. And there’s something to be said for a drama as sturdy and watchable as The Imitation Game. With a story this compelling and a cast this good, it’s difficult not to play along. pG-13. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theater, Mission Theater, The Joy Cinema, Valley Theater.
Interstellar
C+ McConaughey and robots kicking it in space. Why so serious?. pG-13. AP KRYZA. Empirical.
Into the Woods
B+ Stephen Sondheim’s much-loved musical has finally made it to the big screen. pG. RIHANNA WEISS. Empirical
Insurgent
C- A dumb action movie, except with the traditional gender roles reversed. The second film in this series picks up where the first left off: Our hero, Tris (Shailene Woodley), is still reeling from the death of her mother (Ashley Judd), the destruction of her mother’s faction and the near annihilation of her own faction at the hands of Jeanine (Kate Winslet). Tris has an aptitude for multiple factions and is therefore “divergent,” which is bad. It’s best not to think about any of this too hard. The film is essentially one long fight with occasional changes of scenery. pG-13. JOHN LOCANTHI. Cedar Hills, Eastport Plaza, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village, City Center, Division Street, Fox Tower, Movies on TV.
Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
It Follows
A- When your guard is lowered,
something truly terrifying like It Follows can burrow into your psyche. We meet Jay (Maika Monroe), a normal 19-year-old girl falling for dreamboat Hugh (Jake Weary). Following their first sexual encounter, Jay awakens in an abandoned warehouse, bound to a wheelchair. That’s when Hugh lays it all out: When they had sex, he passed along a curse. Until she sleeps with somebody else, she will be followed by a malicious force. For most of the movie, you’ll be too nervous to think about allegories—and too busy looking over your shoulder. r. AP KRYZA. Hollywood Theatre, Clackamas Town Center, Movies on TV.
Jupiter Ascending
B A wholly illogical fairy-tale
denouement that leaves little expectation of sequels. pG-13. JAY HORTON. Vancouver Theater, Valley Theater.
McFarland
Having previously assisted underdog baseball and football teams, Kevin Costner now coaches an underdog 1980s track team. There are ethical epiphanies about race relations and being true to oneself. PG. Academy Theater, Avalon Theatre, Kennedy School, Laurelhurst Theater, Mission Theater.
Monkey Kingdom
Baby monkeys actually look like a fetal Bruce Jenner, but we still love letting these critters to swing from our heartstrings. pG. Eastport Plaza, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village, Division Street, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
Kevin James takes his daughter to Vegas and saves the world on a Segway. pG. Cedar Hills, Eastport
Plaza, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village, City Center, Division, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place.
The Salt of the Earth
B Sebastiao Salgado’s still photos are more alive than most moving pictures. The UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador honed in on Indian coffee harvesters and Brazilian gold miners, and now The Salt of the Earth follows the economist-turned-photographer to Africa. His equally beautiful and disturbing photographs do their job on the bigscreen, holding a magnifying glass that isn’t too sentimental to the massive scope of our social and ecological responsibility. Nr. KATHRYN PEIFER. Fox Tower.
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
B Old people. pG. JOHN LOCANTHI. Academy Theater, Kennedy School, Laurelhurst Theater, Mission Theater.
REVIEW
Kingsman: The Secret Service
COURTESY OF RADIUS TWC
MOVIES
A- Remember when spy movies were fun? Kingsman: The Secret Service does. r. Clackamas Town Center, CineMegic, Bridgeport Village, Movies on TV.
Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter
B+ A lost soul in Tokyo who takes
her fascination with Fargo to dangerous extremes. She sets off to unearth Fargo’s fictional buried treasure. In a lesser film, Kimiko’s innocence and her bunny, Bunzo, could easily devolve into the precious but hollow quirks typical of indie features. But the trajectory of Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is too tragic for precociousness or to inspire much laughter. MICHAEL NORDINE. Living Room Theaters.
Little Boy
B- This home-front family drama of friendship and faith from Roma Downey and Mark Burnett (The Bible and Son of God) is set in a Norman Rockwell-style 1940s California seaside where 8-year-old Pepper (Jakob Salvati) misses his dad (Michael Rapaport), a POW being held by the Japanese. So Pepper undertakes a mission of good deeds to please God and bring Dad safely home. You know the story: The earnest, comic-bookcrazy kid takes Bible parables literally, inspires the townsfolk and makes everyone believe in miracles. Oh, and Little Boy also overcomes racism. It’s biggest fault is how—like so many religious dramas—it rewards innocent faith with miracles. But Little Boy does wear its halo lightly, forgoing sermons, which is great for secular audiences who, rather than movies strewn with sex and foul language, may prefer nostalgia and heartwarming affirmation. pG-13. SEAN AXMAKER. Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village.
The Longest Ride
D+ Bullriding champ Luke (Scott Eastwood) and budding art gallery intern Sophia (Britt Robertson) take handheld strolls across North Carolina resortland. This is not Mr. Sparks’ first rodeo. pG-13. JAY HORTON. Cedar Hills, Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village, Division Street, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place.
Man From Reno
B Dave Boyle’s bilingual neo-noir, completed with Kickstarter assistance, burns so slowly in its first act that it threatens to go out altogether, but Man From Reno rewards patience with its subtly skewed take on familiar narrative conventions. Depressed mystery writer Aki Akahori (Ayako Fujitani) bails on her career to nurse her sadness in San Francisco, where a dalliance with a handsome stranger implicates her in a missing-person case being investigated by local sheriff Paul Del Moral (veteran character actor Pepe Serna). Boyle doles out the ensuing feints and revelations with a sure hand, and even though the surprises aren’t all that surprising, it’s fun being guided through them by a pro. Nr. CHRIS STAMM. Fox Tower.
siNK OR sWiM: Kroll and Byrne in Adult Beginners.
ADULT BEGINNERS Kroll’s failed entrepreneur needs a kickstart.
Nick Kroll has the kind of face that used to be called punchable: calcified smirk, dazed glare, sallow cheeks—his upcoming roles, Douche and Professor Poopypants, define the type. Given his trade, Kroll’s emoji-like features should be an asset. But not everyone can squeeze into the leading-man role in a light romance, and Kroll’s gross miscasting as Adult Beginners’ loathsome, miserable protagonist takes down the film. We meet Kroll’s Jake, a Manhattan tech financier, as he bleeds friends and family to fund his doomed product launch. The nihilistic glee of the opening scenes’ frenemy banter quickly downslides into an extended pity party for the newly jobless, homeless and friendless Jake. Forced back to his family’s New York mansion, Jake takes up the roles of terrible housemate to his estranged sister (Rose Byrne) and adorably hunky brotherin-law (Bobby Cannavale), and manny to their neglected toddler. So far, so familiar, but Jake never softens like we’d expect. If anything, the movie delights in detailing his bored ineptitude, callow entitlement, and blinkered disdain for any help. It’s a mystery why anyone would bother. Ross Katz, directing his first comedy, brings out the actors’ best, but the performances still won’t mesh. Cannavale burrows deep into his role like somebody planning a one-man show about the loves of a stoned woodworker. Byrne’s guidance counselor role is underwritten and unbelievably blameless—she gets away with sharing wine with a student (while also, y’know, pregnant). Some bits of humor do fly, and Kroll handles his sitcomlike scenes with satisfying familiarity, but an effervescent Joel McHale as Jake’s buoyant cokehead chum gives Adult Beginners its actual life. McHale’s too-few moments of unsweetened debauchery make it hard not to imagine how much more fun the film would’ve been if Kroll’s part had gone to McHale. There is the face of a born asshole lazily inured to the bridges he’s burning. While Adult Beginners tries to wring some grand allegory from its climactic swimming lessons, it badly misses the real point. Maturity has nothing to do with finally ducking your head underwater; it’s about understanding limitations and trying not to piss in the group pool. JAY HORTON. C- see it: Adult Beginners is rated R. It opens Friday at Living Room Theaters.
April 29-MAy 5
Saoirse, the last Selkie seal-child of Ireland, frees loveable creatures from a Celtic curse in this mystical fable from Academy Awardnominated Tomm Moore (The Secret of Kells). pG. Academy, Empirical, Laurelhurst Theater.
Still Alice
A- Still Alice charts a linguistics professor’s descent into earlyonset Alzheimer’s disease. As Alice’s memory worsens, MoThe film is somewhat hampered by an overly dramatic score and a few lackluster performances, though Kristen Stewart’s work as Alice’s free-spirited daughter is a refreshing turn for the usually stoic Julianne Moore. pG-13. BLAIR STENVICK. Academy, Laurelhurst Theater, Vancouver Plaza.
The Theory of Everything
B- A brief history of Stephen Hawking’s 30-year marriage to Jane Wilde, The Theory of Everything fits a tad too snugly into the biopic tradition. Here, Hawking’s contributions to the fields of physics and cosmology take a backseat to the story of his and Wilde’s courtship, marriage and eventual divorce. pG-13. MICHAEL NORDINE. Laurelhurst.
True Story
B- Disgraced New York Times reporter Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill) gets a shot at redemption in this true story based on his 2005 book. Jobless after fabricating the subject of a cover story for newspaper’s Sunday magazine, Mike keeps insisting on getting his “second chance,” making you wish the movie weren’t so aligned with that dubious goal. r. BRIAN MILLER. Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village, City Center, Division Street, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center.
is a satire of an entire class of narcissists (the director included). r. BRIAN MILLER. Cinema 21, Hollywood Theatre, Bridgeport Village, City Center, Lloyd Center.
Whiplash
B+ Nineteen-year-old Andrew
(Miles Teller) is practicing jazz drumming in a dark room of a New York conservatory. Conductor Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) happens upon him and invites him to join the school’s top band. A battle of egos and tempos ensues, but taking it as anything more than a portrait of a single studentteacher relationship would be a mistake. r. JAMES HELMSWORTH. Laurelhurst Theater.
White God
C The revolution is televised in Kornél Mundruczó’s White God. And it’s adorable. The film is an immigration allegory in the guise of a story about a girl and her dog. All the mutts and strays confined to the pound liberate themselves and descend upon the city like vengeful locusts. R. MICHAEL NORDINE. r. Kiggins Theater, Living Room Theaters.
Wild
A- Reese Witherspoon takes a walk. r. Academy Theater, Laurelhurst Theater.
Wild Tales
B+ Don’t let the dark subject matter fool you: Director Damián Szifron mines the humor out of all six stories in Wild Tales. He finds the smirk in a chef suggesting rat poison and even squeezes a few laughs out of a millionaire’s attempts to buy his drunken-driv-
ing son’s way out of prison after he kills a pregnant woman. The film even has an Aesopian moral: Sometimes it’s better to just let things go. r. JOHN LOCANTHI. Living Room Theaters.
The Wisdom Tree
D From the opening quotations from the Upanishads and theoretical physicists, the film follows the quest of idealistic, sitar-strumming Dr. Tisha Rao (Sheetal Sheth) to revive brain-dead Steve (Patrick Alparone) and elevate the world’s collective consciousness. Unfortunately, this involves actors staring glassy-eyed toward distant horizons, gesturing at whiteboards strewn with incomprehensible scribbles, and embarking on strangely expressionless conversations filled with cheesy dialogue: “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and I’ve seen a lot of brains!” The film may strain for metaphysical revelations, but it is ultimately as brain-dead as its protagonist. Nr. IAN CLARK. Fox Tower.
Woman in Gold
C+ Holocaust escapee Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren) and her lawyer nephew Randol (Ryan Reynolds) take the Austrian government to court to reclaim a painting of Altmann’s aunt that the family commissioned from Gustav Klimt. It was stolen by Nazi art thieves (Nazis are the worst!). Mirren proves yet again she could play a toaster and still entertain. Unfortunately, director Simon Curtis sucks out any emotion or shine. r. Clackamas, Bridgeport, City Center, Fox Tower, Movies on TV, St. Johns Cinemas.
For more Music listings, visit
VAN SANT SERIES C O U R T E S Y O F AV E N U E P I C T U R E S
Song of the Sea
MOVIES
Unfriended
B Unfriended ingeniously reboots
the tired, teen horror genre, employing a daunting menu of low-fi horror strategies to make fear incarnate in an uncloseable browser window. A group of frenemies virtually hanging out gets an uninvited guest using the screen name of a deceased classmate, Laura, who committed suicide after an anonymously posted video exposed her drunken misadventures. The plot line is nothing new, but a stock story and characters—the usual Bitch, Jock, Slut, Gamer—give director Leo Gabriadze and screenwriter Nelson Greaves more room to pile on the horrifying trickery and play on our digital anxieties. It’s a damn effective way of hacking depth, so maybe you can teach an old medium new tricks. r. JAY HORTON. Clackamas Town Center, Bridgeport Village, City Center, Division Street, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place.
The Water Diviner
D+ Actor-musician Russell Crowe adds another tragic hyphen to the CV with his feature directorial debut, a dumb and overwrought mess that aims for the heart with a sledgehammer. And misses. Repeatedly. For two long hours. Crowe stars (of course) as Joshua Connor, a recently widowed water diviner (not just a poetic title!) who treks to Turkey to retrieve the remains of his three dead (or are they?) sons from the World War I battleground of Gallipoli. This gives Crowe the rare Acting Opportunity to look sad while courting the most beautiful hotelier in Istanbul. He gets the girl. We get nothing. R. CHRIS STAMM. Bridgeport Village, Fox Tower.
While We’re Young
A- This Gen-X midlife-crisis movie is a career-best comedy for both Ben Stiller and Noah Baumbach. Filmmaker Josh (Stiller) and producer wife Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are stalled in careers and marriage. More than a generational clash, this
gIddyup: Matt dillon and Kelly Lynch.
DRUGSTORE COWBOY Why it’s Portlandy: Beyond the obvious—Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon) robs Good Samaritan Hospital on Northwest 23rd Avenue, lives in a brick house on Northeast Webster Street, and loiters outside iconic Seaton Pharmacy (now closed) at Southeast 60th Avenue and Belmont Street—the second film in Gus Van Sant’s Portland trilogy defied 1980s film conventions with what Northwest Film Center visiting professor Mario Falsetto calls an “almost picaresque” view of Portland addicts. Falsetto’s notes: “This is a new level of craftsmanship for Van Sant. Although he clearly has not abandoned his poetic ambitions, his quick evolution from the rough beginnings of Mala Noche is remarkable.” Van Sant said: “I wanted to make it for half a million dollars and use people that would fit into the roles in a less Hollywood way, maybe unknown actors. I wanted to make it basically like Mala Noche…, [but] the company that made it said that black-and-white was out of the question.” Best quote from the movie: “Dianne was my wife. I loved her, and she loved dope. So we made a good couple.” —Bob Hughes SEE IT: Drugstore Cowboy plays at NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., on Thursday, April 30. 7 pm. $9. Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
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AP FILM STUDIES COURTESY OF DRAFTHOUSE
MOVIES
EAT YOUR HEART OUT: Roar is playing at Hollywood Theatre and Kiggins Theatre.
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK KATY PERRY’S GOT NOTHING ON THE FEROCITY OF ROAR. BY A P KRYZA
HEADOUT PG. 31 58
Willamette Week APRIL 29, 2015 wweek.com
apkryza@wweek.com
It was a beautiful dream: Exorcist executive producer Noel Marshall and his wife, Tippi Hedren (The Birds), wanted to create the ultimate family adventure film, set at their home on the Shambala animal preserve in Southern California. It would star their children, including Hedren’s daughter Melanie Griffith, along with elephants and about 150 lions, tigers, panthers, cheetahs and other giant cats that were housed at the preserve. It was to be a conservationist take on The Swiss Family Robinson. Marshall would be the cats’ white savior, and the family would learn to love the wild animals after arriving at the compound to find their house full of creatures. There’s also some shit about poaching. All in all, perfect family entertainment. Except Roar is one of the most horrific things ever put to film. The nearly 10-year shoot became one of the most dangerous productions ever, with untrained big cats mauling the ever-loving shit out of everyone. It’s 90 hilariously unsettling and ridiculously dangerous minutes of flying bodies tossed like rag dolls and giant cats chasing dirt bikes like balls of yarn. Fleshy, meaty yarn. “Honestly, I am shocked no one died making this movie,” says Laura Weiner, senior keeper of African predators at the Oregon Zoo. Roar was never released in North America. Jan de Bont, the director of photography (who went on to direct Speed), was partially scalped. Marshall was mauled so many times he got gangrene. Griffith had to get massive facial reconstruction. It was such madness, in fact, that Drafthouse Films—that glorious purveyor of garbage revival—had to bring it back. Twenty-four years after its completion, Roar is hitting the Hollywood and Kiggins theaters in all its eviscerating glory (Hollywood: 7 pm Saturday-Sunday, May 2-3; Kiggins: May 1-5). It’s impossible to take your eyes off the flick, which is essentially what would happen if Werner Herzog decided to shoot Grizzly Man as a fam-
ily comedy. Characters will be talking, and a lion pops into frame and tackles them. Ever the auteur, Marshall refuses to call cut, forcing actors to awkwardly continue scenes even as gigantic fangs pierce their bodies. It appears he felt genuinely connected to the untrained cats, calling them by name and baby-talking to them even as they pounce on him and pin him to the ground. “Forging a safe relationship with a full-grown lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, etc., is extremely difficult,” says Weiner, who herself has raised two giant tigers. “Just look at Siegfried and Roy. Those men worked with those cats for many years, and then one day one of the tigers just decided to grab on. You are taking a risk every time you interact with a large animal in a freecontact situation.” Watching the film, you wonder whether the terror wrought on the film’s crew and hubristic director might be some sort of karmic retribution for Hollywood’s historic mistreatment of animals. “Although karma is an interesting proposition, I do believe that the filmmakers took major risks with that many large cats,” says Weiner. “Hollywood aside, their choices were unsafe and probably stressed the animals (and humans) to unnatural levels.” ALSO SHOWING: In celebration of Orson Welles’ 100th birthday, the Hollywood is screening his second- and third-best movies, Touch of Evil (May 1-3) and Citizen Kane (May 2-3). No word yet on his best, The Muppet Movie. See hollywoodtheatre.org for full listings. David Bowie and his horrifying bulge return to the screen in Labyrinth. Hollywood Theatre. 9:30 pm Friday, May 1. This summer, Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as a saggier version of The Terminator. We’ll go out on a limb and recommend just watching the original this weekend. Academy Theater. May 1-7. Before becoming synonymous with cinematic schmaltz, Frank Capra visited Shangri-La in the 1937 dramatic adventure Lost Horizon. Laurelhurst Theater. May 1-7. If you can get through Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant without welling up, you’ve got less soul than the titular robot of this overlooked gem. 5th Avenue Cinema. 7 and 9:30 pm Friday-Saturday and 3 pm Sunday, May 1-3.
MOVIES
C O U R T E S Y O F WA R N E R B R O S .
MAY 1–7
Avengers: Age Of Ultron XD-3D (PG-13) 11:30AM 3:15PM 7:00PM 10:25PM Home (PG) 11:25AM 1:50PM 4:25PM 7:00PM 9:35PM It Follows (R) 11:50AM 2:35PM 5:15PM 7:50PM 10:20PM Unfriended (R) 11:00AM 1:20PM 3:40PM 6:00PM 8:20PM 10:45PM Get Hard (R) 10:05AM 12:35PM 3:05PM 5:35PM 8:05PM 10:35PM Kingsman: The Secret Service (R) 12:35PM 3:45PM 6:55PM 10:05PM Monkey Kingdom (G) 12:30PM 2:50PM 5:10PM 7:30PM 10:30PM Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (PG) 11:05AM 12:20PM 1:40PM 2:55PM 4:10PM 5:25PM 6:40PM 7:55PM 9:20PM 10:30PM Little Boy (PG-13) 11:10AM 1:55PM 4:35PM 7:15PM 9:55PM Longest Ride, The (PG-13) 10:20AM 1:35PM 4:40PM 7:40PM 10:40PM
Monkey Kingdom (G) 10:55AM 1:10PM 3:25PM 5:40PM 7:55PM 10:10PM Home (PG) 12:05PM 2:35PM 5:05PM 7:35PM 10:05PM Woman In Gold (PG-13) 11:05AM 1:45PM 4:25PM 7:05PM
CATCH A LYFT: The Iron Giant plays May 1-3 at 5th Avenue Cinema.
9:45PM While We’re Young (R) 12:05PM 2:30PM 5:00PM 7:25PM 10:00PM Uttama Villain (Tamil) (NR) 10:15AM 2:05PM 6:00PM
Regal Lloyd Center 10 & IMAX
1510 NE Multnomah St. FURIOUS 7: THE IMAX EXPERIENCE Wed 12:20, 03:35, 07:00, 10:15 THE METROPOLITAN OPERA: CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA / PAGLIACCI ENCORE Wed 06:30 THE AGE OF ADALINE Wed 12:40, 03:45, 06:45, 09:40 PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2 Wed 12:00, 02:30, 05:00, 07:30, 10:05 TRUE STORY Wed 01:00, 04:25 UNFRIENDED Wed 11:55, 02:15, 04:35, 06:55, 09:20 EX MACHINA Wed 12:50, 03:55, 07:15, 10:10 FURIOUS 7 Wed 11:40, 03:00, 06:30, 09:45 HOME Wed 11:45, 04:50, 09:55 HOME 3D Wed 02:20, 07:25 WHILE WE’RE YOUNG Wed 12:10, 03:15, 07:10, 10:00 CINDERELLA Wed 12:30, 03:25, 06:40, 09:35 AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON -- AN IMAX 3D EXPERIENCE Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 11:45, 03:15, 07:00, 10:35 AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON Fri-SatSun 12:15, 12:45, 03:45, 04:15, 07:30, 08:00, 10:05 AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON 3D Fri-Sat-Sun 09:45, 11:15, 02:45, 06:30, 11:05 AVENGERS DOUBLE FEATURE -- 3D GRATEFUL DEAD MEETUP 2015 Mon 07:00 THE ROYAL BALLET - LA FILLE MAL GARDEE Tue 07:00
Regal Vancouver Plaza 10
7800 NE Fourth Plain Blvd. THE GUNMAN Wed 01:50, 04:50, 07:30, 10:05 RUN ALL NIGHT Wed 01:25, 04:30, 07:10, 09:55 CHAPPIE Wed 01:00, 03:40, 06:30, 09:20 FOCUS Wed 02:10, 04:40, 07:20, 09:50 THE LAZARUS EFFECT Wed 02:20, 04:55, 07:35, 10:10 THE DUFF Wed 01:35, 04:10, 07:00, 09:30 JUPITER ASCENDING Wed 01:00, 03:50, 06:40, 09:40 THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER Wed 01:40, 04:00, 06:20, 08:50 STILL ALICE Wed 02:00, 04:25, 06:45, 09:10 NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: SECRET OF THE TOMB Wed 01:10, 03:30, 06:10, 09:00
Bagdad Theater
3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-249-7474 FURIOUS 7 Wed 12:20, 03:30, 07:00, 10:20 AVENGERS: AGE OF
ULTRON Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 11:40, 03:00, 07:00, 10:35
Cinema 21
616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515 WHILE WE’RE YOUNG Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:30, 07:00, 09:15 WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 04:15, 06:30, 08:45 CHEATIN’ Wed 05:00, 07:00, 09:00 JACK TO A KING - THE SWANSEA STORY BLACK SOULS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 04:00, 06:45, 09:00
Laurelhurst Theatre & Pub
2735 E Burnside St., 503-232-5511 CONAN THE BARBARIAN Wed 09:05 THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL Fri-Sat-Sun-Wed 06:30 THE IMITATION GAME Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 07:15 A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 09:45 MCFARLAND, USA Wed 06:40 BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:20 STILL ALICE Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 07:00 WHIPLASH Wed 09:30 ‘71 Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 09:00 LOST HORIZON Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 06:30 WILD Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 06:45, 09:15 SONG OF THE SEA Sat-Sun 01:40
Mission Theater and Pub
1624 NW Glisan St. THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL Wed 05:30 THE IMITATION GAME Fri-Tue-Wed 08:30 FOCUS Fri-Tue 05:30 MCFARLAND, USA Sun 02:30 FIRE IN THE SKY Sun 07:00
St. Johns Cinemas
8704 N Lombard St., 503-286-1768 FURIOUS 7 Wed 04:00, 07:00 WOMAN IN GOLD Wed 05:20, 07:40 AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 04:00, 05:30, 07:00, 08:30, 10:00
Regal City Center Stadium 12
801 C St. THE AGE OF ADALINE Wed 11:40, 02:30, 05:20, 08:10 PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2 Wed 11:15, 01:40, 04:05, 06:35, 09:05
TRUE STORY Wed 11:05, 01:35, 04:10, 06:40, 09:10 UNFRIENDED Wed 11:50, 02:05, 04:20, 06:30, 08:50 THE LONGEST RIDE Wed 12:00, 03:05, 06:10, 09:15 FURIOUS 7 Wed 11:30, 02:45, 06:00, 09:10 WOMAN IN GOLD Wed 11:00, 02:00, 04:40, 08:00 GET HARD Wed 12:30, 03:10, 05:40, 08:15 HOME Wed 11:10, 01:30, 03:55, 06:20, 08:45 WHILE WE’RE YOUNG Wed 12:45, 03:20, 05:50, 08:20 THE DIVERGENT SERIES: INSURGENT Wed 12:50, 03:40, 06:25, 09:15 MERCHANTS OF DOUBT Wed 11:20, 01:45, 04:15, 06:45, 09:00 AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON Fri-SatSun 11:00, 12:25, 02:25, 03:50, 05:50, 07:15, 09:15 AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON 3D Fri-Sat-Sun 09:00, 10:00, 12:00, 01:25, 03:25, 04:50, 06:45, 08:15, 10:10, 10:40 AVENGERS DOUBLE FEATURE -- 3D
Kennedy School Theater
5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503-249-7474 MCFARLAND, USA Fri-SatSun-Tue-Wed 05:30 THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:45 FOCUS Fri-Sat-Sun-Tue 08:15, 10:30
Hollywood Theatre
4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-281-4215 EX MACHINA Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:00, 09:15 WHILE WE’RE YOUNG Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 06:45, 09:30 IT FOLLOWS Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 09:00 TOUCH OF EVIL Fri-SatSun 04:20 LABYRINTH Fri 09:30 CITIZEN KANE Sat-Sun 02:00 ROAR Sat-Sun 07:00 KUNG FU KILLER Sat-Sun 09:30 NW ANIMATION FESTIVAL MonTue 07:00, 09:00
Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10
846 SW Park Ave. THE WATER DIVINER Wed 12:40, 03:40, 07:00, 10:00 THE WISDOM TREE Wed 12:30, 03:30, 06:50, 09:30 CHILD 44 Wed 12:00, 03:20, 06:30, 09:40 TRUE STORY Wed 01:10, 04:10, 07:10, 09:50 EX MACHINA Wed 12:00, 01:00, 03:00, 04:00, 06:00, 07:00, 09:00, 10:00 THE SALT OF THE EARTH Wed 12:20, 03:30, 06:20, 09:10 WOMAN IN GOLD Wed 12:50, 03:50, 06:45, 09:20 MAN FROM RENO Wed 12:45, 03:45, 06:40, 09:15 THE DIVERGENT SERIES: INSURGENT Wed 12:15, 03:15, 06:10, 08:50
Regal Pioneer Place Stadium 6
340 SW Morrison St. MONKEY KINGDOM Wed 12:15, 03:15, 06:30, 09:45 PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2 Wed 01:00, 04:00, 07:10, 10:15 UNFRIENDED Wed 01:15, 04:15, 07:20, 10:15 THE LONGEST RIDE Wed 12:15, 03:30, 09:40 FURIOUS 7 Wed 12:30, 03:45, 07:00, 09:30 HOME Wed 12:45, 09:50 HOME 3D Wed 03:15 AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 12:00, 03:30, 07:00, 10:30 AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON 3D FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 11:30, 12:30, 03:00, 04:00, 06:30, 07:30, 10:00 AVENGERS DOUBLE FEATURE -- 3D
9:45PM Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (PG) 12:00PM 2:25PM 4:50PM 7:15PM 9:40PM Ex Machina (R) 11:15AM 2:00PM 4:45PM 7:30PM 10:15PM
Get Hard (R) 11:30AM 2:00PM 4:30PM 7:00PM 9:30PM Furious 7 (PG-13) 1:05PM 4:15PM 7:25PM 10:35PM Unfriended (R) 11:15AM 1:30PM 3:45PM 6:00PM 8:15PM 10:30PM Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (PG) 11:45AM 2:20PM 4:55PM 7:20PM 9:50PM Monkey Kingdom (G) 12:30PM 3:05PM 5:20PM 7:40PM 9:55PM Home (PG) 12:05PM 2:30PM 4:55PM 7:20PM 9:45PM Ex Machina (R) 11:30AM 2:10PM 4:50PM 7:30PM 10:10PM
Avengers: Age Of Ultron (PG-13) 10:45AM ® 2:30PM ® 6:15PM ® 10:00PM ® Avengers: Age Of Ultron (3D) (PG-13) 10:00AM 10:00AM ® 12:00PM 1:45PM 1:45PM ® 3:45PM 5:30PM 5:30PM ® 7:30PM 9:15PM 9:15PM ® 10:50PM Avengers: Age Of Ultron (PG-13) 10:45AM 1:00PM 2:30PM 4:35PM 6:15PM 8:00PM 10:00PM 11:10PM Furious 7 (PG-13) 10:55AM 2:20PM 5:40PM 9:00PM Age Of Adaline, The (PG-13) 10:40AM 1:45PM 4:30PM 7:25PM 10:20PM Divergent Series: Insurgent, The (PG-13) 10:30AM 1:25PM 4:40PM 7:45PM 10:40PM Ex Machina (R) 10:10AM 1:15PM 4:05PM 7:20PM 10:10PM Cinderella (2015) (PG) 10:15AM 1:30PM 4:20PM 7:10PM 10:00PM
Avengers: Age Of Ultron (3D) (PG-13) 9:25AM 10:45AM 11:25AM 12:55PM 2:05PM 2:45PM 4:25PM 5:25PM 6:05PM 7:45PM 8:45PM 9:25PM 11:20PM Age Of Adaline, The (PG-13) 11:00AM 1:45PM 4:30PM 7:15PM 10:00PM Furious 7 (PG-13) 10:00AM 1:10PM 4:20PM 7:30PM 10:40PM Divergent Series: Insurgent, The (PG-13) 11:10AM 2:00PM 4:50PM 7:40PM 10:30PM Cinderella (2015) (PG) 11:05AM 1:50PM 4:35PM 7:20PM 10:05PM Avengers: Age Of Ultron (PG-13) 10:00AM 12:00PM 1:15PM 3:30PM 4:30PM 7:00PM 8:00PM 10:30PM 11:00PM
Avengers: Age Of Ultron (3D) (PG-13) 9:30AM 10:15AM 11:45AM 1:15PM 2:45PM 3:30PM 5:00PM 6:30PM 8:00PM 9:30PM 11:00PM Age Of Adaline, The (PG-13) 11:15AM 2:00PM 4:45PM 7:45PM 10:30PM Fifty Shades Of Grey (R) 1:10PM 4:10PM 7:10PM 10:25PM Divergent Series: Insurgent, The (PG-13) 11:05AM 1:55PM 4:45PM 7:35PM 10:25PM Cinderella (2015) (PG) 11:00AM 1:45PM 4:30PM 7:15PM 10:00PM Avengers: Age Of Ultron (PG-13) 11:00AM 12:30PM 2:00PM 4:15PM 5:45PM 7:15PM 8:45PM 10:45PM
FRIDAY
St. Johns Theater
8203 N Ivanhoe St., 503-249-7474-6 HOME Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 01:00, 04:00, 07:00, 09:45
Academy Theater
7818 SE Stark St., 503-252-0500 THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:00, 06:45 MCFARLAND, USA Wed 01:50, 07:00 STILL ALICE Wed 02:10, 07:15 SONG OF THE SEA Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:40, 09:40 THE IMITATION GAME Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 04:30, 09:20 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND Wed 04:20, 09:30 ‘71 FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 02:30, 07:30 WILD Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 02:20, 07:05 A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 09:40 THE TERMINATOR Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 05:10, 09:30
Living Room Theaters
341 SW 10th Ave., 971-222-2010 CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA Wed 11:45, 02:15, 04:10, 06:50, 09:25 KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER Wed 11:45, 02:10, 04:45, 07:15, 09:30 THE AGE OF ADALINE Wed 11:50, 12:20, 02:00, 02:40, 04:20, 05:10, 06:40, 07:30, 09:10, 09:45 WHITE GOD Wed 01:20, 04:30, 07:00, 09:35 WILD TALES Wed 01:30, 04:00, 06:30, 09:00
SUBJECT TO CHANGE. CALL THEATERS OR VISIT WWEEK.COM/MOVIETIMES FOR THE MOST UP-TODATE INFORMATION FRIDAY-THURSDAY, MAY 1-7, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED
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I N S TA G R A M . C O M / F R O N TAV E M E D S
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HE’S BACK!!
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GRAND OPENING Saturday May 2nd
DISPENSARY REVIEW: FRONT AVENUE MEDICINALS When it comes to 24-hour dispensaries near Waterfront Park, the average Oregon Medical Marijuana Program patient might plan to bring pepper spray when showing up after midnight. But Front Avenue Medicinals (823 SW Naito Parkway, 971-2795544, cascademedicinals.com) has designed its shop to keep patients feeling at ease. The storefront’s wide, reflective windows serve as a one-way mirror for clerks to keep an eye on who’s coming and going. There’s plenty of exterior lighting after dark and an online ordering service to expedite your trip. Once inside, it’s a treat to watch the double takes of tourists walking past, the ones nervously shifting the items in their Powell’s gift bags to avoid eye contact with the green cross. Despite the possible controversy of being in such a prominent downtown location, Front’s subtle storefront and professional conduct have led to a successful integration into the waterfront culture. Joggers swing in before marathons, they say, and sun-kissed music fes-
tivalgoers can stop by the shop between sets. As the westside’s only 24-hour medicinal spot, it didn’t have to provide a massive selection in order to get business, but it went above and beyond filling the shelves of the spacious budroom. The knowledgeable budtenders deftly navigate the 60 to 70 strains lined up on a long counter, each jar accompanied by a substantial description placard. Though the five-tiered price range covers a significant range in quality, the top-shelf buds are definitely premium: The Liberty Bell flower was one of the most sparkly, kiefy nugs I’ve ever had the pleasure to grind up. A wide variety of concentrates and edibles fill cases on the opposite side of the room, not to mention regular candy for sale if you come down with a sweet tooth on a non-edible-friendly day. Also worth mentioning: Front is one of the only places in town with a restroom for patients’ use. The latest whispers from Salem suggest local governments will likely control the hours, place and manner of operations for medicinal and recreational facilities in the months to come. The 24-hour dispensaries may have to adjust their hours after this year, so enjoy this convenience while it lasts. MARY ROMANO.
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MCMENAMINS GRAND LODGE is now hiring EXPERIENCED BARTENDERS!
Qualified apps must have an open & flex sched including, days, eves, wknds and holidays. We are looking for applicants who have prev related exp and enjoy working in a busy customer service-oriented enviro. We are also willing to train! We offer opps for advancement and excellent benefits for eligible employees, including vision, med, chiro, dental and so much more! Please apply online 24/7 at www. mcmenamins.com or pick up a paper app at any McMenamins location. Mail to 430 N. Killingsworth, Portland OR, 97217 or fax: 503-221-8749. Call 503-952-0598 for info on other ways to apply. Please no phone calls or emails to individ locs! E.O.E.
MCMENAMINS SHERWOOD is now hiring PUB STAFF!
Qualified apps must have an open & flex sched including, days, eves, wknds and holidays. We are looking for applicants who have prev related exp and enjoy working in a busy customer service-oriented enviro. We are also willing to train! We offer opps for advancement and excellent benefits for eligible employees, including vision, med, chiro, dental and so much more! Please apply online 24/7 at www. mcmenamins.com or pick up a paper app at any McMenamins location. Mail to 430 N. Killingsworth, Portland OR, 97217 or fax: 503-221-8749. Call 503-952-0598 for info on other ways to apply. Please no phone calls or emails to individ locs! E.O.E.
MCMENAMINS ROCK CREEK TAVERN is now hiring LINE COOKS!
Qualified apps must have an open & flex sched including, days, eves, wknds and holidays. We are looking for applicants who have prev related exp and enjoy working in a busy customer service-oriented enviro. We are also willing to train! We offer opps for advancement and excellent benefits for eligible employees, including vision, med, chiro, dental and so much more! Please apply online 24/7 at www. mcmenamins.com or pick up a paper app at any McMenamins location. Mail to 430 N. Killingsworth, Portland OR, 97217 or fax: 503-221-8749. Call 503-952-0598 for info on other ways to apply. Please no phone calls or emails to individ locs! E.O.E.
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What’s up gals and dudes! Goffy here, makin my debut on the adoption scene fully stoked to make your life even more amazing. Just imagine being met with this big ol goofy Goffy grin each day. I’m the kind of guy who is ALWAYS happy to see you and will never turn down a good belly rub or scratch behind the ears or most especially the opportunity to make you smile just as big as me. I am a 2 year old Pit Bull who is just as much of a goober as I am a 65 lb stud muffin-- the perfect balance if you ask me. I come microchipped, neutered and current on all vaccines and my adoption fee is $250. If you suspect we could have as much fun together as I KNOW we will have, go ahead and fill out an application at pixieproject. org so we can make a time to hang out and get to know each other. I’ll be smiling and waiting and smiling til you walk through those doors, so please come through soon before these sweet cheeks cramp up!
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“In a Hotspot”–they’re connecting wirelessly, sorta. speak up 57 Mizrahi and Asimov 59 Swimmer with large pectoral fins 60 Little stream 61 Gives it a thumbs-up 62 Writer Sarah ___ Jewett 63 Not as much 64 Important 65 Answer, as to an invitation: abbr.
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Across 1 “Switched on Bach” synthesizer 5 Diamond stat 8 Jack on “24” 14 Sony co-founder Morita 15 Fine and dandy 16 Bring into harmony 17 What some things catch on like 19 Candle store choices 20 They can get busy during the winter and summer
China 35 XP protection 40 Frodo’s home, with “The” 41 Some Monopoly spaces: abbr. 42 Mauna ___ 43 “___ see it...” 44 Ending for Scooby or Scrappy 45 Space starter 46 Steadfastly 51 Pres. during V-J Day 52 Suffix for McCarthy 53 Least likely to
21 Half a dance step? 22 Badminton divider 23 Figures in early Salem history 26 The Rent Is Too ___ High Party 29 “I had too much root beer” noise 30 Carson Daly’s former MTV show 31 Late singer Cassidy 32 Airport readerboard abbr. 33 Counters in
Down 1 Bryn ___, PA 2 “The Grapes of Wrath” extra 3 Aromatherapist’s supply 4 Sink 5 Singer Bonnie 6 Russian soups 7 Tina’s ex 8 “Seven Whole Grains on a Mission” cereal 9 “No way!” 10 It comes between printemps and automne 11 Carnival food 12 Put in data 13 Takes a load off 18 Part of TGIF 21 Ozone layer pollutant, briefly 24 Avoided capture by 25 Play Pictionary 26 Drops on the lawn 27 Hertz competitor
28 Vermouth drinks 32 Ram’s ma’am 33 “___ longa, vita brevis” 34 Robert who played A.J. Soprano 36 Trade gossip 37 Where germs usually enter 38 Tyson’s ring nickname 39 Buddhist near Thailand 44 “The Chronic” rapper Dr. ___ 45 Request 46 Move like a top 47 Subscription unit 48 “___ die for!” 49 Really really tiny 50 Line section: abbr. 54 Dublin’s land 55 Job application nos. 56 “Sons of ___” (Digital Underground song) 58 Capone and Green 59 Panda Express kitchen fixture
last week’s answers
©2015 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JONZ498.
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TAURUS (April 20-May 20): eBay is a multi-billiondollar e-commerce business that has been around for almost 20 years. But it had an inauspicious beginning. The first item ever sold on the service was a broken laser pointer. Even though the laser pointer didn’t work, and the seller informed the buyer it didn’t work, it brought in $14.83. This story might be a useful metaphor for your imminent future, Taurus. While I have faith in the vigor of the long-term trends you are or will soon be setting in motion, your initial steps may be a bit iffy. GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Poetically speaking, it’s time to purify your world of all insanities, profanities, and inanities. It’s a perfect moment for that once-in-ablue-moon Scour-a-Thon, when you have a mandate to purge all clunkiness, junkiness, and gunkiness from your midst. And as you flush away the unease of your hypocrisies and discrepancies, as you dispense with any tendency you might have to make way too much sense, remember that evil is allergic to laughter. Humor is one of the most effective psychospiritual cleansers ever. CANCER (June 21-July 22): I was in the checkout line at Whole Foods. The shopper ahead me had piled her groceries on the conveyor belt, and it was her turn to be rung up. “How are you doing?” she said cheerfully to the cashier, a crabby-looking hipster whom I happened to know is a Cancerian poet and lead singer in a local rock band. “Oh, I am living my dream,” he replied. I guessed he was being sarcastic, although I didn’t know for sure. In any case, I had a flash of intuition that his answer should be your mantra in the coming weeks. It’s time to redouble your commitment to living your dream! Say it 20 times in a row right now: “I am living my dream.” LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): As I awoke this morning, I remembered the dream I’d just had. In the dream, I had written a horoscope for you. Here’s what it said: “The Kentucky Derby is a famous horse race that takes place on the first Saturday of every May. It’s called ‘The Run for the Roses’ because one of the prizes that goes to the winning horse and jockey is a garland of 554 roses. I suspect that your life may soon bring you an odd treasure like that, Leo. Will it be a good thing, or too much of a good thing? Will it be useful or just kind of weird? Beautiful or a bit ridiculous? The answers to those questions may depend in part on your willingness to adjust your expectations.” VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Don’t calm down. Don’t retreat into your sanctuary and relax into protective comfort. If you have faith and remain committed to the messy experiment you have stirred up, the stress and agitation you’re dealing with will ripen into vitality and excitement. I’m not exaggerating, my dear explorer. You’re on the verge of tapping into the catalytic beauty and rejuvenating truth that lurk beneath the frustration. You’re close to unlocking the deeper ambitions that are trapped inside the surface-level wishes. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): American author Stephen Crane wrote his celebrated Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage in ten days. Composer George Frideric Handel polished off his famous oratorio Messiah in a mere 24 days, and Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky produced his novel The Gambler in 16 days. On the oth-
CAMPAIGN
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In her book A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman describes a medieval knight who asked his lady for a strand of her pubic hair: a symbol of her life force. The lady agreed. He placed the talisman in a locket that he wore around his neck, confident that it would protect him and consecrate him in the course of the rough adventures ahead. I recommend that you consider a similar tack in the coming weeks, Scorpio. As you head toward your turning point, arm yourself with a personal blessing from someone you love. Success is most likely if you tincture your fierce determination with magical tenderness. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “An escalator can never break,” mused comedian Mitch Hedberg. “It can only become stairs. You should never see an ‘Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order’ sign, just ‘Escalator Is Temporarily Stairs.’” I think a similar principle applies to you, Sagittarius. If we were to try to evaluate your current situation with conventional wisdom, we might say that part of your usual array of capacities is not functioning at its usual level. But if we adopted a perspective like Hedberg’s, we could rightly say that this part of you is simply serving its purpose in a different way. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): I’ve got a tough assignment for you. It won’t be easy, but I think you’re ready to do a good job. Here it is: Learn to be totally at home with your body. Figure out what you need to do to feel unconditional love for your physical form. To get started on this noble and sacred task, practice feeling compassion for your so-called imperfections. I also suggest you cast a love spell on yourself every night, using a red candle, a mirror, and your favorite creamy beverage. It may also help to go down to the playground and swing on the swings, make loud animal sounds, or engage in unusually uninhibited sex. Do you have any other ideas?
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AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): When Aquarian media mogul Oprah Winfrey was born, “Oprah” was not what she was called. Her birth certificate says she is “Orpah,” a name her aunt borrowed from a character who appears in the biblical Book of Ruth. As Oprah grew up, her friends and relatives had trouble pronouncing “Orpah,” and often turned it into “Oprah.” The distorted form eventually stuck. But if I were her, I would consider revisiting that old twist sometime soon, maybe even restoring “Orpah.” For you Aquarians, it’s a favorable time to investigate original intentions or explore primal meanings or play around with the earliest archetypes.
Shatter Resistant
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): What I propose is that you scan your memories and identify everyone who has ever tried to limit your options or dampen your enthusiasm or crush your freedom. Take a piece of paper and write down a list of the times someone insinuated that you will forever be stuck in a shrunken possibility, or made a prediction about what you will supposedly never be capable of, or said you had a problem that was permanently beyond your ability to solve. Once you’ve compiled all the constricting ideas about yourself that other people have tried to saddle you with, burn that piece of paper and declare yourself exempt from their curses. In the days after you do this ritual, all of life will conspire with you to expand your freedom.
Homework What’s the decision you agonize about? The commitment you can never make? Tell all at FreeWillAstrology.com.
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ARIES (March 21-April 19): Chris Moneymaker was employed as an accountant in Tennessee. On a whim, he paid $39 to enter an online poker tournament. Although he knew a lot about the game, he had never competed professionally. Nevertheless, he won the tournament. As his award, he received no money, but rather an invitation to participate in the annual World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Can you guess the storybook ending? The rookie triumphed over 838 pros, taking home $2.5 million. I don’t foresee anything quite as spectacular for you, Aries, but there may be similar elements in your saga. For example, a modest investment on your part could make you eligible for a chance to earn much more. Here’s another possible pot twist: You could generate luck for yourself by ramping up a skill that has until now been a hobby.
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9966 SW Arctic Drive, Beaverton 9220 SE Stark Street, Portland American Agriculture ï americanag.com PDX 503-256-2400 BVT 503-641-3500
JiuJitsu
Ground defense under black belt instruction www.nwfighting.com or 503-740-2666
Nonprofit Attorneys
Sliding-Scale Payment Plans - Fee Reductions NEW Low-cost Bankruptcy Program (503) 208-4079 www.CommunityLawProject.org
OMMP CARDHOLDERS GET 25% DISCOUNT!
Quick fix synthetic urine now available. Your hookah headquarters. Vapes. E-cigs, glass pipes, discount tobacco, detox products, salvia and kratom Still Smokin’ Glass and Tobacco 12302 SE Powell 503-762-4219
SMOKE SIGNALS ON SANDY
Vaporizers, hookahs, glass pipes, tobacco, gift items 3554 NE SANDY BLVD. 503-253-0504
Oregon Medical Marijuana Patient Resource Center *971-255-1456* 1310 SE 7TH AVE Open 7 Days www.ommpResourceCenter.com
WWEEKDOTCOM
REWARD
For information leading to locating: Richard SutorisAKA: Rocky Valentine Eric SutorisLast known residence: Southwest HoustonThis is purely an important financial matter Monies are being held in an account for himContact: Mr. Dumaine c/o Cambridge Investment Associates Telephone: 610-346-8005
MEDICAL MARIJUANA Card Services Clinic
503-384-WEED (9333) www.mmcsclinic.com 4911 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland Mon-Sat 9-6
503 235 1035
ADVANCED NUTRIENTS
New Downtown Location! 1501 SW Broadway www.mellowmood.com
4119 SE Hawthorne, Portland ph: 503-235-PIPE (7473)
30% OFF!
Free Sample With Every Purchase
Hydroponics-Organics-Grow Lights
www.urbangardensupply.net 12115 SE 82nd Ave Ste. B • Happy Valley, OR 97086 • (503) 305-6531
Pizza Delivery
Until 4AM!
www.hammyspizza.com