Fried chicken, Seattle-style. P. 26
Box-office flops with free popcorn. P. 47
The man with a Wapato plan. P. 9
WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
“YOU CHOW IT UP, DRINK AWAY THE NIGHT.” P. 24 BY NIGEL JAQUISS
ROOFLESS WWEEK.COM
VOL 42/48 9.28.2016
PORTLAND CITY HALL IS ASKING YOU FOR $258 MILLION TO BUILD AFFORDABLE HOUSING. HERE’S WHAT IT DID WITH THE LAST $735 MILLION. PAGE 12
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FINDINGS
PAGE 27
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 42, ISSUE 48.
It often costs twice as much to renovate buildings as to build new ones. 12
If you want to learn how to play piano in prison, you’re gonna need some coffee. 29
OMG, it’s almost Mean Girls Day IRL! 23
One Old Portland musician admits the city’s ’90s indie scene was
Beware the owls in Forest Park, which are attacking people. 24 The hottest new restaurant in Portland is part of a chain based in Seattle. 26 The best German beer brewed in Portland is made of wheat. 27
ON THE COVER:
“mostly about getting high and not having jobs.” 31
If you want to see box-office flops like Ishtar and a remake of High Noon set in high school while eating free popcorn, there is a place. 47
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
Photo by Joe Riedl.
The entire 11th floor of Portland’s Yard high-rise is being rented out by the night.
STAFF Editor & Publisher Mark Zusman EDITORIAL News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Martin Cizmar Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Rachel Monahan, Beth Slovic Copy Chief Rob Fernas Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Maya McOmie Stage Editor Shannon Gormley Screen Editor Walker MacMurdo Projects Editor Matthew Korfhage Music Editor Matthew Singer Web Editor Sophia June
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
3
EUDALY’S COUNCIL CAMPAIGN
firm that Santilli is a dangerous and violenceReplacing Steve Novick with Chloe Eudaly would inciting individual. be replacing bad with worse [“The Eudaly Show,” —“Katherine” WW, Sept. 21, 2016]. What is Eudaly going to do for the tens of You don’t have to like Pete Santilli’s style of reporting, but at least he captured thousands of Portland residents who the truth of what was happening on still won’t have access to any housing, much less affordable housing, once the ground. We have a rogue government overreaching its authority and she and her friends are comfortably harassing American citizens into ensconced in their rent-controlled submission. units (which will drive up the price Locking up Americans with trumpedof every unit that becomes available even faster)? up charges is the way of Nazis. I appreciate her advocacy for dis—“bari2” abled children, but this rent-control CITY-SUBSIDIZED crusade is going to ruin Portland “Her HIGH-RISE and turn it into a carbon copy of San rent-control Francisco, prices included. Says Scott Breon, Vacasa’s chief rev—“pdan” enue officer: “Our focus is creating crusade is middle-income jobs and providing going to ruin Eudaly is clearly the people’s tax revenue to support the commucandidate. I love the idea of elect- Portland.” nities we operate in.” [“Yard Sign,” ing a woman to the City Council WW, Sept. 21, 2016.] who has spent her life amplifying the voices of If Breon had just said, “It seemed like a profitaverage (and often ignored) people. That seems able venture for Vacasa, given current city polilike the best sort of qualification for an elected cies,” I’d have been fine. It’s the blatant lies that representative. make the whole thing stink. —Jamey Duhamel —Jeff Snavely
TAKING UP THE BUNDYS’ CAUSE
This article is an attempt to portray the violent, abusive and sedition-promoting Pete Santilli and his “sidekick” Deborah Jordan as harmless promoters of freedom of the press [“Candid Camera,” WW, Sept. 21, 2016]. Having viewed Santilli on the front lines at Malheur Refuge (where his so-called “press” activities often crossed the line into the illegal, and at one point almost caused another reporter to be run down by a truck), I can con-
Instead of referring to the abomination at the east end of the Burnside Bridge by its post-rational name, “Yard,” why not use something easier to recognize it by: the Death Star Apartments. Or Hotel? —Jane McGary Milwaukie 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. Email: mzusman@wweek.com.
Just in case you missed it, our pals at Nike have finally come up with self-tying sneakers à la Back to the Future. Does the world really need this? —Biff Tannen Four billion people don’t have access to clean water, but please, let’s focus on the problem of consumers in the $200-sneaker-buying demographic having to waste 12 precious seconds of their day tying their shoes WITH THEIR BARE HANDS, like fucking cavemen. Does the world really need this? If by “world” you mean “U.S. economy,” then…yeah, maybe. Here’s the deal: Every year, increasing automation means it takes fewer man-hours to build the same amount of crap. Economists call this “rising productivity.” So, to keep everyone busy, we have to build ever more crap. We’re continually increasing the crap-to-person ratio, which economists call “the standard of living.” Most of this crap is designed to raise the level of ambient convenience, so the effort of, say, tying your shoes starts to seem like some kind of medieval ordeal that we need yet another product to save us from. The truth is, at this point probably 20 percent 4
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
of the working-age population could make enough crap to keep us all at a standard of living that was perfectly acceptable in 1950. But since that’s what economists call “mass unemployment,” we have to convince ourselves we now need Snuggies and Pokémon Go and Snapchat and Sauna Pants. Eventually, though, this process will become unsustainable. There will be only one job: turning on the robot that turns on the other robots. Productivity will be infinite! (As will unemployment.) At this point, there will be two kinds of people: shareholders in Mom’s Robot Co., who will live on their dividend checks, and everybody else, who will go back to scrabbling in the dirt for grubs like old times. Except you’ll be scrabbling while somebody walks by with $10,000 augmented-reality glasses that make you invisible and make everything else have the faces of kitty cats or some shit. Enjoy the future! QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
#wweek
C I S MU
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
Protesters with Don’t Shoot Portland marched into City Hall on Sept. 23, demanding to meet with Mayor Charlie Hales to discuss the new police union contract, among other issues. After several hours, Hales agreed to a meeting with the group, which regularly protests police violence against black people. When the building was cleared that evening, misogynistic and homophobic graffiti covered several walls of City Hall’s Lovejoy Room. “KATE BROWN I$ A LESBIAN LOL,” read one. “Charlie Hales is a pu$$y,” read another. A third scrawl read “ACAB,” a common abbreviation for “All Coppers Are Bastards.” Greg McKelvey of Don’t Shoot Portland said his group isn’t to blame, adding that anarchists unaffiliated with the movement crashed the protest. “If the mayor hadn’t kept us waiting for three hours, that wouldn’t have happened,” McKelvey says.
The saga continues for Jim Whitty, the former Oregon Department of Transportation official tasked with creating a tax that would charge vehicles for miles driven rather than fuel consumption (“Paying by the Mile,” WW, June 30, 2015). While at ODOT, Whitty signed contracts with companies to help establish the program. Now, he’s left ODOT and is co-owner of one of those firms, D’Artagnan Consulting. Whitty sought permission from the Oregon Government Ethics Commission to work on contracts he oversaw at ODOT. The agency ruled last week that he could—after waiting two years from the contract date of April 2, 2015. “The upshot is he can’t do business with ODOT until April 2017,” says his attorney, John DiLorenzo.
Portland Restaurateur Sues Home Flippers
Portland restaurateur power couple Naomi Pomeroy and Kyle Webster have sued the companies that renovated and sold their $799,900 Alameda house, alleging consumer fraud. (Pomeroy owns the celebrated restaurant Beast.) In a lawsuit filed Sept. 23 in VIVIAN JOHNSON
EVERYTHING IS MARKED TO GO
State Places Lifetime Ban on Janitorial Company
The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries this week brought a hammer down on Cornerstone Janitorial Services. It ordered the company to pay 46 workers $144,000 for failing to pay them the required prevailing wage on 16 publicly funded jobs, including one at Portland Community College. Cornerstone previously paid workers $200,000 for similar violations. Cornerstone agreed with BOLI’s punishment. “Our agency is committed to holding businesses accountable so that workers receive every dollar they’ve earned,” says BOLI Commissioner Brad Avakian.
POMEROY
Multnomah County Circuit Court, Pomeroy and Webster say they bought a 1939 art deco home on Alameda Ridge that was owned by KC Acquisitions and remodeled by 2Dads Design Build. The lawsuit says the construction company did the work without permits, installed faulty wiring and inadequately weatherproofed windows and doors, and staged the house to cover up the defects. Both sides declined to comment.
W W S TA F F
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
Where the Real Estate Dollars Flow $10,000
The amount given by Harsch Investment Properties last month to the campaign to defeat Measure 97, a union-backed $3 billion annual corporate sales tax. Harsch is run by Portland real estate magnate Jordan Schnitzer, who usually donates to Democratic candidates and causes.
Wapato Jail
Jordan Schnitzer
Smith and Bybee Wetlands
$50,000
Donation made by vintner, developer and patent heir Eric Lemelson last month to Portland’s housing bond campaign. Lemelson used to be Oregon’s largest Democratic giver and, after some quiet years, returned in a big way with checks of equal size to the bond campaign and Gov. Kate Brown.
NEAREST CONVENIENCE STORE:
Plaid Pantry
(1020 N Marine Drive)
15-minute walk, 13 minutes on No. 11 bus (to Jubitz) Kate Brown
US 30
(28 minutes)
$1,300
re s ark
Ellen Rosenblum
tP
FAST FIVE
I-5 NEAREST GROCERY STORE:
Fo
Total contributions this year from Terry Bean to Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum’s reelection campaign. Bean, the Portland real estate investor acquitted of a sex crime last year, gave Rosenblum $300 two weeks ago. (Rosenblum is married to the co-owner of WW’s parent company.) NIGEL JAQUISS.
Tobias Read
NEAREST LAUNDRY:
15-minute walk, 27 minutes on No. 11 bus (to St. Johns)
(2052 N Lombard St.)
Lee’s Laundrette
(8330 N Ivanhoe St.)
15-minute walk, 18 minutes on No. 11 bus (to St. Johns), 9-minute wait, 18 minutes on No. 4 bus (to Gresham), 3-minute walk.
(42 minutes)
State Rep. Tobias Read (D-Beaverton) is the Democratic nominee for Oregon treasurer. The tallest man in the Legislature at 6-foot-7, Read, 41, is running against Republican Jeff Gudman and independent Chris Telfer in the race to succeed current Treasurer Ted Wheeler. Here’s what you need to know about Read. NIGEL JAQUISS. 1. He was once mistaken for Peyton Manning. That was as an undergrad at Willamette University in Salem, where the Montana-born Read got his bachelor’s degree in 1997.
Safeway
(1 hour 3 minutes) I-405 FREQUENTLY USED DRUG TREATMENT CENTER:
Central City Concern Old Town Clinic (727 W Burnside St.)
15-minute walk, 18 minutes on No. 11 bus (to St. Johns), 9-minute wait, 49 minutes on No. 4 bus (to Gresham), 5-minute walk.
(1 hour 36 minutes)
2. He worked for Sheryl Sandberg.
From 1999 to 2001, Read was an aide to former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. His immediate boss: now-Facebook chief operating officer Sandberg. She leaned in to give his campaign $5,000 this year.
3. He helped start an Uber for airplanes.
When he returned to Oregon in 2003, Read worked for a Salem startup called SkyTaxi, which aimed to connect small planes and airports for commuters. It tanked.
4. He tried to build bridges.
A business-friendly Democrat, Read was a leading promoter of the Columbia River Crossing, the illfated $4 billion highway project between Portland and the ’Couv.
5. His favorite drink is an Arnold Palmer.
The late golf great’s signature iced tea and lemonade beverage is one of Read’s many ties to sports—he developed children’s sneakers at Nike.
W. Burnside
Doing Time
HOW FAR IS WAPATO JAIL FROM SERVICES HOMELESS PEOPLE NEED? WE FOUND OUT BY WALKING. BY JU LIA COMN ES
503-243-2122
The push to reopen Multnomah County’s neverused Wapato Jail as a temporary homeless shelter has become the center of policy debate—and at least one political campaign. (See story on page 9.) Homeless advocates object that the vacant facility is too far from social services to offer any meaningful relief for the 3,800 people sleeping on Portland’s streets or in shelters. Just how far is the North Portland facility from
grocery stores, laundries and treatment for mental health problems? WW gave this reporter bus fare and a map, in order to calculate how long it would take to travel by bus to the closest places to buy grub, clean clothes and seek help kicking an addiction. It starts with a 15-minute walk to the nearest bus stop on the No. 11 line, which doesn’t run on weekends. On Saturdays and Sundays, it’s a 4.2mile walk to the MAX station at the Expo Center. See above for what else we found on foot. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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OREGONHUMANE.ORG
&
BAD BEHAVIORS
A happy home includes a well-behaved companion. The Oregon Humane Society’s training & behavior department offers training classes, private consultations, and workshops for you and your pet. FIND OUT MORE OREGONHUMANE.ORG/JEEVES
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
Advertising space donated by Willamette Week. Creative services donated by Leopold Ketel.
TANYA ROBERTS & JEEVES
JOE RIEDL
NEWS
JULIA COMNES
WILL WORK FOR VOTES: Eric Zimmerman, a candidate for the Multnomah County Commission, disagrees with County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury that the unused Wapato facility is unsuitable for sheltering the homeless.
Go Directly to Jail MULTNOMAH COUNTY CANDIDATE ERIC ZIMMERMAN WANTS TO FORCE THE ISSUE OF SHELTERING HOMELESS PEOPLE IN UNUSED WAPATO JAIL. BY BE T H S LOV I C
bslovic@wweek.com
The ongoing din over whether Multnomah County should turn its mothballed Wapato Jail into a homeless shelter seemed to reach a crescendo last week. County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury led a majority of her colleagues in opposing repurposing the never-used jail as a shelter, because of its distance from social-service agencies. That seemed to mark an end to the debate. Not if Eric Zimmerman has anything to do with it. Zimmerman, a candidate for an open seat on the Multnomah County Commission, says if elected, he’ll push to fund Wapato as a shelter in his first 90 days in office. “This idea that we’re not going to increase the capacity to actually shelter everybody is offensive to me,” he says. Zimmerman’s pledge amounts to a palace coup by the standards of the normally placid county board. His stance puts him at odds with Kafoury and with departing Commissioner Jules Bailey, whose seat Zimmerman seeks. But Zimmerman has seized on Wapato, which could become a wedge issue in his race against Dr. Sharon Meieran, an emergency room physician who’s staked out campaign territory as the health expert in the race. He says he’s doing what he thinks is right, not betting on the frustrations of voters in the county’s first district, which
includes all of Portland’s westside within the county and most of inner Southeast. Zimmerman, chief of staff to Commissioner Diane McKeel, advanced to the November runoff by finishing second in the seven-way May primary. But he won just 22 percent of the vote compared with Meieran’s 42 percent. He has a lot of ground to make up, and he’ll need to draw a contrast with Meieran to do that. (Meieran says she hasn’t made up her mind on Wapato.) “He can talk credibly and with knowledge about county assets and how they can be used,” says Portland pollster John Horvick of DHM Research. “It would make sense to draw a contrast with her strengths.” As Portland and Multnomah County officials struggle to address an emergency that leaves approximately 3,800 people without permanent housing, the idea of remodeling a facility that cost taxpayers $58 million to build but was never used to house inmates holds consistent appeal for many, including the Portland Business Alliance, the city’s powerful downtown business lobby. Opponents of the conversion, including many leaders of nonprofits working to end homelessness, say the focus on opening Wapato is misplaced. Although it was never used as a jail, it looks like one, and it’s far from jobs and the kinds of mental health and financial services people experiencing
homelessness need to steady their lives. (See map on page 7.) But Zimmerman is doubling down on the idea. He tells WW he wants social-service agencies contracting with the county to move satellite offices into the empty jail. And he wants Portland City Hall to send homeless people to the shelter space by enforcing the ban on camping on sidewalks and parks. “It’s OK for this community to say you cannot just camp everywhere,” he says. “We owe it to the city overall, the county overall, to say we want our parks back. We want our streets back.” In an interview with WW last week, Zimmerman took issue with the question of whether such a policy would force homeless people to live in Wapato. (See video of the exchange at wweek.com.) “If someone does not want “I DON’T to be sheltered in our commuTHINK THAT nity, they don’t want to work toward more stability, then they SLEEPING IN would have a choice to leave THE MIDDLE this community,” he says. “I OF ANY don’t think that sleeping in the ONE OF middle of any one of our parks is something we should be OUR PARKS IS agreeable to.” SOMETHING Zimmerman may be testWE ing the political support for his plan. SHOULD BE A poll from City CommisAGREEABLE sioner Steve Novick recently TO.” asked voters whether they supported turning Wapato —Eric Zimmerman into a homeless shelter. Novick shares a political consultant with Zimmerman. That consultant, Jake Weigler, declined to discuss who paid for the Wapato question in Novick’s poll. He also declined to discuss its results. Zimmerman said it wasn’t his poll question. “This is not a new issue,” Kafoury says. “Some of us have been working a very long time on this. To show up at the 11th hour and insert yourself into the conversation is purely playing politics.” On Sept. 22, as county commissioners met in a regularly scheduled meeting to discuss potentially turning Wapato into a shelter, Zimmerman put up posters in the room with pictures of the facility and captions that described its “open lobby space” and “clean, plentiful hygiene facilities.” He says he did so on behalf of McKeel, his boss at the county. After the meeting, Bailey announced he would endorse Meieran, partly based on Zimmerman’s lobbying for Wapato. That endorsement comes despite the fact Zimmerman is Bailey’s designee to replace him on the commission if Bailey is unable to serve the rest of his term. “I would have a very difficult time supporting a candidate so focused on Wapato as a solution,” says Bailey, who wants the county to prioritize permanent housing. “I think her approach is better.” Meieran, who has Kafoury’s backing in the November race, is noncommittal on Wapato. “The devil is in the details,” she says. “We don’t have all the facts. You can’t say yes or no at this point.” It’s unclear Zimmerman could flip the commission to his side. Commissioner Loretta Smith, his second vote, has supported opening Wapato on a temporary basis. State Rep. Jessica Vega Pederson, who’s running unopposed to represent District 3 on the commission, says the facility isn’t suited for a shelter. “The issue of location is a huge concern for me,” she says. Meanwhile, candidates Lori Stegmann and Amanda Schroeder are running for the commission seat in District 4. Schroeder opposes it. Stegmann says she’s unsure. “I don’t know if Wapato is the best, most cost-effective,” she says. “I’d like to find out.” Zimmerman says he’s motivated purely by the desire to help more people, using a method his opponent has resisted. “I’m not interested in changing the status quo because I want to score political points,” he says. “But voters should know we differ.” Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
AUSTIN KOWITZ
NEWS
Tiny Troubles PORTLAND PARENTS SAY A MONTESSORI SCHOOL CHARGED THEM TUITION, THEN SUDDENLY SHUT DOWN. BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N
rmonahan@wweek.com
The demise of an elite preschool in Northeast Portland has led to allegations of financial deception against a well-regarded figure in the state’s Montessori education movement. Two parents have filed lawsuits in smallclaims court against Tiny Revolution Montessori, a preschool on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard for children, 3 months through 6 years old. The school’s owner, Kari Wax, announced the closure suddenly Sept. 4, the Sunday before Labor Day. The parents allege in court filings that the school billed them for September tuition—up to $1,213 per student—even after settling an eviction case July 27 and agreeing the school would vacate its MLK storefront by Aug. 31. “It’s the only school [my son] knew for four and half years,” says Shannon Grzybowski, who says she is preparing to file a lawsuit against Wax. “We’re crushed. My kids want to know what happened to the school, so I told them, ‘Kari stole our money and closed the school.’” Wax tells WW she thought there was a way to keep the school open. She hoped to work out a way to stay in the space, even after signing the agreement to leave. She says she is working with a lawyer to repay September tuition. “It was never my plan for this to happen,” Wax says, noting she sold personal possessions to try to keep the business afloat. “It closed anyway. This has been devastating for my family as well.” It’s remarkable for a preschool to leave parents scrambling just as the school year begins, let alone for the operator to be accused
of deception. But the allegations against Tiny Revolution cut to the center of the local Montessori movement—an educational philosophy, particularly popular among Portland private preschools, that prizes self-directed, hands-on learning. Wax was well-connected. She was president of the board at the Ivy School, the Montessori charter school in Northeast Portland, until she resigned Monday. She co-founded a Montessori training enterprise, Heart and Hand, and was on the board of the Oregon Montessori Association as recently as 2014. The two dozen children at Tiny Revolution Montessori participated in Suzuki-style violin lessons and ate “local, organic, healthy, vegetarian snacks,” according to the school’s blog. The Facebook page shows students hunting in the garden for small onions to peel and eat. The classroom pet was a guinea pig named Charlie. “I don’t know her personally, but from what I do know there was a lot of good in the past,” says Oregon Montessori Association executive director Tammy Ulrich. “It’s a very sad situation. It’s not at all reflective of how Montessorians operate.” Parents, as a rule, paid their Tiny Revolution tuition by the 15th of the month. That was the case in August, two parents tell WW. By that time, Tiny Revolution had already been kicked out of its rental space by its landlord, the housing nonprofit REACH Community Development. The eviction case, filed by REACH on July 17, says Tiny Revolution failed to pay its rent in May and June. REACH spokeswoman Lauren Schmidt says the nonprofit came to an agreement with Wax that let Tiny Revolution stay in
“IT’S A VERY SAD SITUATION. IT’S NOT AT ALL REFLECTIVE OF HOW MONTESSORIANS OPERATE.” —Tammy Ulrich
the storefront until the end of August, when the summer term ended. “We did extend her use of the space to allow adequate time for her to tell the parents,” Schmidt says. Grzybowski learned the school was closing via a Facebook post Sept. 4 by the Spanish immersion preschool Aprende con Amigos, which is opening a second location in the space. She emailed Wax at 1:01 pm, confronting her about what was happening. An hour later, Wax emailed parents announcing Tiny Revolution would not be open when the work week started. “Unfortunately TRM has lost its lease,” she wrote. “I have found TRM a great new home but can not announce the location until the paperwork and lease is finalized.” Parents say they haven’t heard from her since. But the state’s Early Learning Division says there’s nothing to stop Wax from opening another preschool. “We at Early Learning Division could not block someone from opening a business because of financial mismanagement,” says Karol Collymore, spokeswoman for the division’s Office of Child Care. “Our rules only oversee the care and health of children, not the incorporation of their businesses.” There were warning signs of financial trouble at Tiny Revolution. In September 2014, the school abruptly dropped its after-school program, meaning there was no child care after 3:30 pm. Court records show at least two sets of families sued after repeatedly being promised refunds. Troy Pickard, a lawyer who successfully sued Wax in April 2015 over failure to return a deposit, says this new case is different. “If they knew they weren’t going to be running a day care in September and October and they billed their clients, that’s fundamentally different than running low on cash,” says Pickard. Corrie Ragaway, who has sued Wax for $2,286 in September tuition, says she’s distressed about more than the money. “I’m heartbroken,” says Ragaway. “I love the school.” Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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JOE RIEDL
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
ROOFLESS PORTLAND CITY HALL IS ASKING YOU FOR $258 MILLION TO BUILD AFFORDABLE HOUSING. HERE’S WHAT IT DID WITH THE LAST $735 MILLION. BY N IGEL JAQU ISS
If there’s anything Portlanders can agree on in a fractious election year, it’s that residents of this city—especially those with low incomes—need more housing. That’s why a ribbon-cutting ceremony held this summer at one of downtown’s stateliest apartment buildings felt like Christmas in July. In a sun-dappled courtyard, City Commissioner Dan Saltzman basked in the applause of developers and dozens of residents. The crowd was celebrating the reopening of the Bronaugh, a 50-unit apartment building at Southwest 14th Avenue and Morrison Street. The city had financed REACH Community Development’s $14.65 million purchase and renovation of the building to house those who make less than $15,400 a year. “In Portland, we strongly believe that downtown should be a place where people of all incomes can live,” Saltzman said. Not up for discussion that day: Whether the city had gotten the most housing possible for its investment. The renovation of those 50 apartments had cost $514 per square foot. That’s twice as much as the new construction of market-rate apartments springing up all over the inner eastside without public subsidy. In other words, the city could have built 100 new units for the amount of money it spent restoring 50. Today, state and city elected officials are rushing to respond to Portland’s housing crisis. Salem will consider aggressive legislation next year. And the City Council voted in June to put on the November ballot a first-of-its-kind, $258 million housing bond for Portland. The quarter-billion dollars would be in addition to the record $153 million the Portland Housing Bureau will spend this year to help find or build housing for low-income Portlanders.
njaquiss@wweek.com
Dozens of interviews and an examination of bid documents, contracts and other public records reveal patterns in that spending. First, although Portland has deployed enormous resources to house people, city officials have paid little attention to delivering the most housing for the money spent. And second—rather than private, for-profit developers, those benefiting from the city’s largesse are nonprofits. “The Housing Bureau isn’t interested in economic efficiency or helping the greatest number of tenants,” says Portland State University professor Gerard Mildner, who once served on the board of REACH, the Bronaugh redeveloper. “They are trying to help a constituent community of nonprofits and advocates.” Housing Bureau documents are clear: “Increasing the availability of affordable rental housing is priority one.” In the past decade, the Housing Bureau has spent $735 million. The city doesn’t have annual figures on how many units it created during that time—but government-subsidized housing in Portland increased over the past 10 years by 9,363 units. If increasing the supply of affordable housing were in fact the top priority, by one calculation the bureau could have added at least 1,000 additional units—enough to house as many as half the people currently sleeping on the city’s streets. (See “How to Build 1,000 Units,” page 15.) “Our government is so caught up in efforts to appease so many interests that they step right over that guy on the sidewalk to accomplish other goals,” says Tom Brenneke, who develops market-rate and affordable housing. “We’ve spent a ton on homelessness and haven’t moved the needle.” CONT. on page 15
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
JOE RIEDL
ROOFLESS
UPTOWN: The city-subsidized Bronaugh apartments are on a light-rail line in the West End, catty-corner from Artists Repertory Theatre.
How to Build 1,000 Units Observers offer divergent estimates of how many apartments the city of Portland could finance if its goal were producing the most units for the lowest cost. Home First Development’s Rob Justus says the city could build for half the cost. Portland State University professor Gerard Mildner says the city could save one-third of the cost. City Commissioner Nick Fish says it might save 15 percent, although he thinks that would sacrifice housing durability and city priorities. Let’s be conservative and say it’s 10 percent. In the past decade, the Housing Bureau spent $735 million. Ten percent of that is $73.5 million. In April, the Housing Bureau said it would generate 901 affordable-housing units from a city investment of $47 million. It was able to do so because housing developers leveraged the city’s contribution, generating a unit for each $52,000 of subsidy. If the city were to leverage the 10 percent savings—$73.5 million—in similar fashion, it could have generated 1,394 additional units. NIGEL JAQUISS.
NICK FISH
DAN SALTZMAN
ROB JUSTUS
Last year, housing developer Rob Justus presented Portland Mayor Charlie Hales with a proposal: If the city could come up with $20 million, Justus could combine it with other financing to produce 1,000 units of new, low-income housing. The approach of Justus’ company, Home First Development, offered a partial solution to the worsening housing crunch. Hales praised Home First in his 2015 State of the City address. “They’re not building Cadillac spaces, but building small, quickly and well,” Hales said. “We need these types of creative solutions because we need housing stock now.” Blunt and intense, Justus is a veteran of the city’s struggle to address homelessness. He founded a nonprofit called JOIN in 1991 and spent the next 16 years helping people living on the street find housing. Justus became a housing developer in 2007. “I was frustrated with what wasn’t happening,” he says. “There just weren’t enough units being built.” Home First Development has now built 213 apartments, with 207 under construction, but the company still doesn’t have an office. Justus holds meetings in coffee shops and at the Green Dragon pub on Southeast 9th Avenue. Justus says after Hales’ speech, communication from the mayor’s office stopped. A Hales aide, Jillian Detweiler, says the city approached two charitable foundations about funding Justus’ idea but couldn’t pull together the money. Fast-forward 18 months. The City Council is now asking voters for $258 million to build, buy or renovate 1,300 units. That’s nearly $200,000 of public money per unit—10 times the subsidy Home First requested. That cost difference may seem like a misprint. But Justus says it’s characteristic of the city’s approach.
“The focus of the affordable-housing industry in Portland has not been on serving people,” he says. “The industry and the funders have not looked at efficiency—they’ve done ‘cool’ projects with lots of expensive bells and whistles.” The Housing Bureau was created in 2009 at the urging of City Commissioner Nick Fish. From the day he won election in 2008, Fish pushed to combine all of the city’s housing efforts in one place—and to beef up funding. He succeeded on both fronts. Fish rejects Justus’ criticism of the Housing Bureau. He says Home First Development performs an important function but does so on projects of lower quality and less durability far from the central city. Fish says focusing on low costs is “pennywise and pound-foolish.” “You could reduce the expense of our projects—but at what cost?” Fish says. “We do highquality work in neighborhoods where people want to live. I’m not going to compromise on those values—we should celebrate them.” “Affordable housing” is publicly subsidized and usually built by developers who agree to limit rents in exchange for public financing. In Portland, as in many cities, developers rather than the Housing Bureau own the finished buildings. Affordable-housing units constitute 13,000 of the 250,000 households in Portland: about 5 percent. The Housing Bureau has spent an average of $73.5 million annually in the past decade on housing and homeless services. Much of the money has gone to nonprofit developers such as Home Forward (formerly the Housing Authority of Portland), Central City Concern, and REACH Community Development. (Some of the Housing CONT. on page 17 Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
JOE RIEDL
ROOFLESS
“You could reduce the expense of our projects—but at what cost?” —Nick Fish
NO ONE HOME: The city used housing dollars to subsidize a new office building for Hacienda Community Development Corporation in the Cully neighborhood.
Bureau’s spending goes to shelters, rent subsidies, foreclosure avoidance and programs other than construction.) Unlike public services such as police, parks and streets, which are available to everybody, housing dollars are rationed. City officials say there is a shortage of 25,000 affordable-housing units in Portland. “There are many more people who are eligible for subsidized housing than can be served,” says Mildner, the PSU professor. That scarcity raises the stakes for how the city spends its affordable-housing funds. Given the shortage of affordable units, you might expect the city to try to build the greatest number of apartments for available money by awarding funds to the lowest bidder. In fact, the opposite often happens: The city shows little regard for the cost per square foot of publicly subsidized housing. Even beyond safety and design requirements, the projects the city subsidizes often include an array of expensive features—high-end architects, wraparound social services, and LEED Platinum environmental certification—to help win funding competitions that are effectively beauty contests. Here’s how a 2015 report from the Meyer Memorial Trust examining the cost of affordable housing diagnosed the problem: “There is pressure to bring in design ideas that go above and beyond the simplest, most basic housing,” the report said. “This pursuit of additional points tends to drive up costs in the absence of strong incentive for cost efficiency.” Part of the reason the Housing Bureau’s deals deliver fewer apartments than might be possible is that the bureau regularly violates its own guidelines for keeping costs low. Consider Greenview Terrace, a 31-unit project at Southeast 148th Avenue, just south of Stark Street. The Housing Bureau often loans money to nonprofits to build affordable housing. The loan is interest-free and has no repayment schedule—it is, in effect, a gift. That was the arrangement with Rose Community Development, which in 2013 purchased and renovated Greenview Terrace. (Established in 1991, Rose owns 331 apartment units in outer-Southeast Portland and has a $2.6 million budget.) City guidelines limit Housing Bureau loans to 100 percent of appraised value. Records show, however, that the bureau loaned Rose $2.82 million for Greenview Terrace,
almost three times the project’s appraised value. Rose used the money to rehab Greenview Terrace, but at the end of the project, rent restrictions made its value a fraction of the city’s investment. Financial projections show Rose is unlikely to pay back the loan. Rose acquired and renovated Greenview Terrace for $172,000 a unit, twice what Justus was spending to build a new project at the time in a nearby neighborhood. And contrary to city guidelines, which require developers to use their own money to invest at least 2 percent of a project’s value, Rose did not spend a dime of its own money on the project. Housing Bureau director Kurt Creager, who arrived in 2015, says he is tightening the rules. Rose executive director Nick Sauvie says very low tenant incomes required the large subsidy. The beneficiaries of the city’s generous subsidies are almost always, like Rose, nonprofit developers. In the past two years, the city has agreed to put $61 million into 13 affordable-housing projects. All but one of them are being developed by nonprofits. Only $4.5 million of the $61 million is going to a for-profit developer. To his credit, City Commissioner Saltzman, who oversees the Housing Bureau, in 2014 implemented maximum-cost-per-unit standards for projects financed by the city. (According to standards, one-bedroom apartments should cost less than $243,750, and two-bedroom units less than $337,000.) The problem is, the limits don’t necessarily mean anything. This year, for instance, the Housing Bureau and Saltzman awarded Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives the funds to develop a project on land near the intersection of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Rosa Parks Way, even though it included fewer units and required more subsidy per unit than a competing project. PCRI, which manages 700 units of affordable housing, has struggled financially. In 2013, records show, the city gave PCRI an $8 million bailout. PCRI’s cost for the current project will be $335,000 per unit—about twice the cost of typical new market-rate developments on the eastside, and above the maximum costs allowed by city guidelines. Yet it won funding anyway. (Saltzman told The Oregonian last week that he reversed the decision in response to concerns from PCRI and black community leaders.)
No Housing in Hacienda The new headquarters of the Hacienda Community Development Corporation in Northeast Portland is a 11,200-square-foot, concrete-andglass building with offices for the nonprofit’s employees. It was completed last year with a $2.4 million Housing Bureau loan. City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees the Housing Bureau, initially rejected the request because it conflicted with a 2009 council ordinance that dedicated the requested funds to “affordable-housing projects that meet citywide housing-preservation policy goals.” City Commissioner Nick Fish and other Hacienda supporters pushed for the loan. Fish says the city policy was ambiguous and the funds could have been forfeited if they weren’t allocated to Hacienda. “We had the opportunity to put the money to good use when nothing else was getting done,” Fish says. Under pressure from Hacienda’s allies, Saltzman changed his mind. “I relented on the basis that the money will be repaid,” he says. The office building does not include a single unit of housing. NIGEL JAQUISS.
CONT. on page 19 Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
JOE RIEDL
ROOFLESS
“In Portland, we strongly believe that downtown should be a place where people of all incomes can live.” —Dan Saltzman
ONE OF A KIND: The white “Tiffany” bricks on the exterior of Central City Concern’s Henry Building are unique in Portland. Central City will spend $1,000 per square foot to rehab the building’s 153 studio apartments.
350K 300K 250K
D STREET – HOME FIRST
STARK I & II – CENTRAL CITY CONCERN
THE HENRY – CENTRAL CITY CONCERN
0
INTERSTATE – CENTRAL CITY CONCERN
50K
GLADSTONE SQUARE/MULTNOMAH MANOR – HOME FORWARD
100K
72 FOSTER – REACH
150K
BLOCK 45 – HOME FORWARD
200K
N WILLIAMS CENTER – BRIDGE HOUSING CORP
REACH Community Development director Dan Valliere and other nonprofit developers say the best way to save on housing is scrapping a state law requiring payment of commercial-scale union wages for most affordable-housing projects. “Lowering the cost of construction would be big,” Valliere says. That wage law arose from a dispute a decade ago between the city of Portland and trade-union workers. But the political giveaway was so rich that the union leader who won it tried to give it back. Bob Shiprack, head of the Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council and the man who led the fight for union wages on publicly funded commercial projects, told WW in 2008 it was never his intention that affordable-housing projects pay commercial-scale union wages, a decision he called “illogical.” House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland) is pursuing a variety of housing reforms, including rent control. But not this one. “While labor contributes to the costs of a project,” she said in a statement, “I don’t believe the prevailing wage is the major cost driver.” NIGEL JAQUISS.
COST PER UNIT: The Housing Bureau funded eight projects this year. Although some eastside projects, such as Stark I and II, show lower costs, all are far more expensive than Home First’s D Street Salal, located at Southeast 171st Avenue and Division Street.
KING/PARKS – PCRI
The Wages of Fear
Saltzman acknowledges the Housing Bureau has put other priorities ahead of efficiency. “We haven’t paid a lot of attention to costs in the past,” he says. “We need to do better.” The Housing Bureau’s willingness to bend its own rules when doing business with Rose Community Development and PCRI is evidence of the significant influence nonprofit developers exert at City Hall. When the city solicits proposals from developers, panels of city and county officials make recommendations. The written comment of a panel member about the challenges faced by a developer competing with PCRI was telling: “For-profit developer,” the panelist wrote as a criticism, records show. Creager acknowledges that nonprofit housing developers wield substantial clout at City Hall. “They all have boards, and all the boards are politically connected,” he says. “That’s about 350 politically connected people associated with them.” In addition to funding new apartments, the Housing Bureau spends heavily to renovate existing buildings. Of the 901 affordable-housing units the city agreed to fund this year, only 646 will actually be new units—apartments that don’t currently exist. The rest are existing units that will be renovated. (The proposed bond has a similar structure: Only about 975 of the planned 1,300 units will be new construction.) That sometimes makes sense because all buildings eventually need renovation. But records show that rather than financing construction or purchasing relatively inexpensive buildings, the city has poured money into buildings that are small, old and located in the most expensive parts of Portland. In 2008, the City Council voted to renovate 11 affordablehousing properties in the central city by 2013 to preserve aging buildings and the federal rent subsidies attached to them. “If we hadn’t stepped in, those units would all be condos today,” Fish says. “Instead, we preserved 700 deeply affordable units in the most desirable parts of the city for 60 years.” From 2013 to 2015, the city subsidized the completion of just 773 new units, while renovating 638 units. One current city-financed renovation deal with an eyecatching price tag is Central City Concern’s renovation of downtown’s Henry Building. The Henry consists of 153 studio apartments of 150 square feet each, with shared bathrooms. It serves people who make far less than 30 percent of median family income. CONT. on page 20
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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CASCADE MANAGEMENT
ROOFLESS
GREEN LIVING: The city loaned Rose Community Development $2.82 million to help buy and rehab Greenview Terrace for $5.3 million.
The Henry will soon undergo a top-to-bottom rehab that will cost nearly $1,000 per square foot of actual living space—four times the cost of new development. Records show a panelist in the city’s recent affordable-housing funding decision said the project made no sense. “It is more expensive to rehab this building than it would be to build a new building,” the panelist said. Sean Hubert, Central City Concern’s housing director, says seismic repair accounts for much of the cost. He says at-risk residents would be difficult to relocate if Central City were to sell the building. “What we’re doing is cost-effective,” Hubert says. Critics say renovations are often inefficient. “Rehabs eat up too much money,” says Tom Kemper, a longtime developer of affordable housing in Portland who now runs Housing Works, a Central Oregon public-housing agency. “That’s a really significant issue.” Dan Valliere, executive director of REACH Community Development, which renovated the Bronaugh and manages more than 2,000 units of affordable housing, says critics miss the maze of expensive state and city requirements, spiraling costs and challenging tenants. “How can we make affordable housing more efficient? That’s the right question,” Valliere says. “But what we do is really frickin’ hard, and it’s not valued.”
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
The $258 million general obligation bond measure city officials put on the November ballot contains no cost-containment measures. But it is a change from the status quo. It’s even less cost-effective. Currently, developers combine city subsidies with money from the state and other sources to fund their projects. Every city dollar leverages as many as five outside dollars. But the Oregon Constitution limits the use of general obligation bonds in a way that requires the city to own 100 percent of the projects built with bond money. That restriction means the city cannot leverage outside funding with the bond. That’s why the city is budgeting nearly $200,000 in bond money per unit, far more of a subsidy than it spends on current projects. On Sept. 19, Denver, facing a housing crunch similar to Portland’s, approved a $150 million tax increase that will generate or preserve 6,000 units of affordable housing. That’s $25,000 a unit. Justus declined to comment on Portland’s bond. He’s busy working on a project in Bend, where, unlike in Portland, the public-housing agency welcomed him. Fish is no longer Portland’s housing commissioner, but he’s spending every spare moment raising money for the bond. “It’s not a perfect vehicle,” Fish says, “but it will make a difference.” People classified as homeless on Portland’s streets—at least 3,801 by last count, but probably a lot more—are banking on the city spending the money wisely. Mayor-elect Ted Wheeler says that must happen. “You can’t just declare a housing emergency and keep doing the same thing,” Wheeler says. “We’ve added a lot of programs to affordable housing that may be socially desirable. But when the goal is to create the maximum number of new doors, we have to reduce costs and get more supply on the market as quickly as possible.”
Street
Where are you from? “I’m from China. I’m here studying accounting at PSU.”
Where are you from? “I’m from Salem. I Where are you from? “I’m originally from Hawaii. I’ve been here about 15 years. came up to Portland to see the mermaids. I came here for school and loved the culture of the art scene and decided to stay.” Praise to Based God.”
PIONEER SQUARE OUR FAVORITE LOOKS THIS WEEK. Photos by chr istin e don g www.wweek.com/street
Where are you from? “I’m from Pendleton, here for Grand Entry. I’m an Oneida native.”
Where are you from? Where are you from? “I was born and raised in Portland. I moved to “I’m from Ho Chi Minh City. I’m here for a the East Coast for a while but I love it here.” business trip.”
Where are you from? “I’m from D.C. I’m here to live and achieve goals.”
Where are you from? “I’m from Arlington, Virginia. I moved here four years ago to study art history. I like the air here.”
Where are you from? “I was born in Portland. I chose to live here because the people are friendly. I just like the people.”
In a year, I purchased a home, and sold two homes. I needed and chose an expert.
- Actual Scout Realty Co. client
ALIA MARIE HAZEN, Broker 503.705.8414 alia@scoutportland.com
SCOUTPORTLAND.COM Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 28 MIKE RICHARDSON
LOMPOC SHRIMP BOIL
The Dark Horse comics founder speaks! He doesn’t give many interviews, so this is your chance to ask him pressing questions about Aliens vs. Predator or Concrete. Concrete Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Ave. Noon. Free.
Lompoc is holdin’ a good ol’-fashioned shrimp boil—and doing it on the cheap. Five bucks gets you both a pint of beer and a bowl of shrimp, sausage, corn and potato—and there will be other barbecue specials inside. Lompoc 5th Quadrant, 3901 N Williams Ave., lompocbrewing.com. 4 pm.
THURSDAY, SEPT. 29 MR. PIG
Join Portland’s Latin American Film Festival for a party and screening of Diego Luna’s newest. Mr. Pig tells the story of a California pig farmer trying to smuggle his last, precious porker across the border to Mexico. Afterparty at Magnolia’s Corner, a vegan-friendly establishment. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., hollywoodtheatre.org. 7 pm. $9.
FRIDAY, SEPT. 30 PORTLAND FRESH HOPS FEST
This annual beer fest at Oaks Park is always late to the party, but it’s the biggest fresh hops fest in Portland. Expect 60 different fresh-hop beers. Oaks Park, 7805 SE Oaks Park Way. 5-9 pm Friday, noon-8 pm Saturday. $20 for a glass and eight drink tickets. 21+ Friday, under 21 allowed till 5 pm Saturday.
DINOSAUR JR.
Get Busy WHAT WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT SEPTEMBER 28-OCTOBER 4
Fun fact: The Dinosaur Jr. reunion has now outlasted the original trio’s initial run together. And it’s continuing to produce music far better than it has any right to be. Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not, the band’s 11th album, is another fuming blast of riffage and melody that reminds just how miraculous the past decade of their partnership has been. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 503-225-0047. 8 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show. All ages.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
The insufferable boy hero of literature and Michelle Williams paramour comes to Portland to be himself at Powell’s, reading a book that’s like being trapped in an eternal argument under sexless sheets. Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., powells.com. 7 pm. Free.
SATURDAY, OCT. 1 DJ SHADOW
So the Avalanches album was kind of a letdown, but the man who originally elevated sampling to high art has been the model of consistency for the last two decades. And even if his latest album, The Mountain Will Fall,, doesn’t reach the heights of his 1996 masterpiece, Endtroducing,… well, what the hell does? Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-230-0033. 9 pm. $25. 21+.
THE WEDGE
Each year, about 50 different cheese and meat and jam makers from across the state show up and hand out their stuff on the street. The $20 admission will get you the biggest cheese board in all of Oregon. Green Dragon, 928 SE 9th Ave., thewedgeportland.com. 11 am-5 pm. $20 includes $5 voucher to buy cheese.
SUNDAY, OCT. 2 STARSHIP TROOPERS
BLAZERS FAN FEST
The jury is still out whether Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 dystopian sci-fi war flick was a straight-faced send-up of libertarian author Robert A. Heinlein’s “eccentric” source material, or a dumb blockbuster about alien bugs that suck out your brains. Either way, Starship Troopers is, like Verhoeven's Robocop and Total Recall before it, pure blood-splattered mayhem. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium, 934 SW Salmon St., 503-221-1156. 7 pm. $9.
Oh, basketball, we thought you’d never return! Sure, the only on-court action is an intrasquad scrimmage, but at this point, we’ll take what we can get. And besides, it’s never too early to start regretting giving Evan Turner all that money. Moda Center, 1 N Center Court St., nba.com/ blazers/fanfest. 3 pm. Free. All ages.
MONDAY, OCT. 3 He asked us what day it was. And OMG, we told him it’s Oct. 3. We died inside. Now we’re, like, dating. Anyway, it’ s Mean Girls Day. Celebrate with a three-way phone call. Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 503223-4527. 5:30, 7:30 and 9:30 pm. $4 adults, $3 kids.
NGUGI WA THIONG’O
A novelist, journalist and playwright whose work once put him in prison, Ngugi wa Thiong’o is one of Kenya’s most important living writers. After his family was torn apart by the Mau Mau War, Ngugi enrolled in college and eventually wrote a memoir called Birth of a Dream Weaver Weaver. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., powells.com. 7:30 pm. Free.
TUESDAY, OCT. 4 KING
The L.A. trio, comprising singer Anita Bias and twin sisters Paris and Amber Strother, makes some of the best mood music imaginable, anchored in silken testimonials to the enduring power of love that are as smooth as Sade and sensuous as Prince’s most lustful moments. Doug Fir Lounge, 803 E Burnside St., 503-231-9663. 9 pm. $17 advance, $20 day of show. 21+.
ANDREW W.K.: THE POWER OF PARTYING
Andrew W.K. is head-banging philosopher, a paragon of positivity, and a raging, sweaty, sometimes bloody ball of light. (He’s also musician, but that’s pretty far down his résumé.) On this speaking tour, he discusses his favorite subject— partying—and the liberation of living life as a never-ending kegger. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St., No. 110, 503-2883895. 8 pm. $20 advance, $23 day of show. All ages. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2016 wweek.com
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PA R A M O U N T P I C T U R E S ; H E N RY C R O M E T T; A S H L E Y E B E R B AC H
MEAN GIRLS DAY
STARTERS
USGS
B I T E - S I Z E D P O RT L A N D C U LT U R E N E W S
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C I S U M
SCRATCHED: Downtown’s Rialto poolroom and off-track betting parlor will soon be no more. After 96 years of existence in one form or another, the Rialto will call it quits Christmas Day along with the Jack London Bar downstairs. This is the second 90-year-old downtown gambling hall to close in the latter half of 2016; the Lotus Cardroom closed in August to make way for a boutique hotel. Staff at the Rialto say it is closing because owner Arthur McFadden is retiring. But on the Rialto’s Facebook page, the bar stated in a now-deleted post that the reason for closing was “inflation.” Meanwhile, Rialto general manager Michael Ackerman is reopening closed Kenton bar the Foggy Notion as the Lombard Pub. The grand opening is set for Oct. 15.
NewS ARTS & cULTURe FooD & DRINk eVeNTS mUSIc moVIeS coNTeSTS GIVeAwAYS
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
NOT WHAT THEY SEEM: The owls are attacking. A Sept. 24 “swooping” by an owl in Forest Park marked the sixth time since June that a Portland park visitor has reported being buzzed or attacked by an owl, says Portland Parks & Recreation ecologist Kendra Petersen-Morgan. She says they were the only animal attacks reported in Portland parks. The agency posted signs in June asking for reports of attacks by barred owls, a “highly territorial” species native to the East Coast. “We put up the signage because it’s pretty scary to have an owl swoop your head,” Petersen-Morgan says. “The injuries are minor, but people have gotten talon scratches.” In the past three years, barred owls have reportedly grabbed ponytails and made off with headlamps. These aren’t the first attacks by barred owls; a series of highly publicized attacks in Salem in 2015 also received nationwide media attention.
ROUND ’EM UP: The former Bar Dobre space on Hawthorne Boulevard will soon host a cocktail bar devoted to Vietnamese drinking food. Short Round will be opened by the people behind Nob Hill Vietnamese restaurant Fish Sauce. But owner Ben Bui says he expects it to be much more casual. “In Vietnam after a long day of working, everyone gets together at a big table and orders a bunch of food—drinking food,” he says. “You chow it up, drink away the night.” Bui expects the menu to include duck eggs, grilled squid and more unfamiliar items involving hearts, livers and intestines—plus Korean drinking food like kalbi and Korean romaine from his mother-in-law, Jinnie Song. Short Round is expected to open by the end of the year. YIKES: A KGW interview with Joel Magid, the Portland musician who earlier this month confessed in a Facebook post to committing a sexual assault, became the subject of a social-media uproar last week. Magid, who appeared in the interview with his lawyer, said he is guilty of the crime he admitted to in his initial post but denied another rape allegation made by a second woman. In a section of the interview that was later edited out, interviewer Chris Willis appeared to empathize with Magid, while a member of the crew refers to Magid as a victim. On Twitter, viewers said the interview perpetuated “victim blaming and slut shaming.” KGW removed the video and apologized for the “insensitive comments” made by its staff. The controversy led to protests outside the local NBC affiliate’s downtown studio Sept. 23, demanding a more substantive apology. “You cannot sweep victim shaming under the rug,” said one protester.
AMY CHURCHWELL
The Bump
Which Portland College Are You?
BY JAC K R US H A L L
Incoming college students make up an inaugural wave of transplants that, for whatever reason, natives are OK with. This year’s freshmen have already made their choice among Portland’s four main schools—Portland State, Lewis & Clark, Reed, and the University of Portland—and all have started classes as of this week (whaddup PSU). But dropout rates are high. Save some time and take this quiz to see if you made the right decision. May the (work) force be with you (someday). Good luck!
On a Friday night, I am…
A. Running from the OLCC because I’ve already had one fake ID taken away. B. Putting my two kids to bed. C. Looking for a party that will be shut down by 11, but I’m a virgin until marriage anyway, so who cares? D. Becoming too aware that the intimate group I’m smoking hemp with is (1) not that cool and (2) maybe doesn’t think my jokes are funny.
I would describe my class sizes as…
You’ll love this place if you love schools located…
A. On campuses nationally known for their beauty, with really outdated 1970s dorms. B. In a part of downtown where only a Subway is open after 10 pm. C. In way-gentrified areas. D. In New England, like the colleges that denied you.
Teachers will find time to talk to you outside of class if…
A. Not large enough for me to take a mental health day without being noticed. B. Too large—but there are a lot of MILFs and DILFs. C. Whatever the pope says. D. Expensive, and we spend a bit too much time coloring in fuzzy posters.
A. You’re willing to meet at their house, because picking up their kids is more important than office hours. B. They feel confident they can remember your name. C. You go to mass with them. D. They think they can lend their personal experience to your shroom-induced depression.
You’re most likely to lose a friend here because of…
If I get caught smoking weed in my dorm room, I will be…
A. “Rebellious” displays of white privilege. B. Getting expelled for selling drugs. C. Mysteriously disappearing after getting pregnant out of wedlock. D. Dropping out to join the Rainbow Family near Estacada.
A. Scolded for not listening to the right Beach House record. B. Fearful I’ll end up like the junkies who congregate around my downtown apartment. C. Expelled because God is not down. D. Asked if I support marijuana legalization, and if I say “yes,” I might get off.
The one thing I hate about going here is…
The hipster population here is _______.
Food on campus is…
Romantic relationships between students tend to be _________.
A. Art bros and anybody who lives in Copeland by choice. B. The fact that I probably won’t graduate. C. I see my ex too often, and I was saving myself for them, so… D. The detachment from reality, like living on a cosmic cloud. A. Pretty mediocre except for the grilled cheese and tomato soup nights. B. Food carts, so I’m really just commenting on Portland cuisine in general. C. Burrito bowls that are more expensive than Chipotle’s. D. Vegan, non-appropriative and infinitely better when you are high.
Sexually experimenting with the same gender here is… ______________.
A. Expected—let’s be real, the two white dudes who “discovered” Oregon weren’t just beating off. B. Maybe something I did after a night of too much drinking at the Cheerful Tortoise. C. Reason to join the priesthood. D. What is gender? I’m serious.
The sporty people population is _________. A. Difficult to process while one is taking a philosophy course. B. I think we have a football team? C. Integrated. D. Slacklining.
A. Full of kids who were not cool in high school, so this is their chance. B. Cool, but they don’t talk to you cuz they grown. C. Soon-to-be mommy bloggers. D. Post-hipster. Now we are SJW androgynous trap queens w shaved head + hoops.
A. Awkward and mostly available Friday nights in the safety of groups of friends. B. Centered on drinking and Hotlips Pizza. C. Sealed with a ring on a cliff. D. “Crescendos.”
I have considered transferring _____ times.
A. I did transfer. B. I can’t do it again. At this point, it’s embarrassing. C. Never. This is all part of God’s plan. D. I thought about it once on 2C-P.
The most exotic studyabroad program here is _____.
A. I wouldn’t use the term exotic, that’s problematic. B. Back to your home state when you drop out. C. Manifest destiny-y. D. Hitchhiking to Machu Picchu to research Ayahuasca effects on butterfly populations.
Most people seem to _______ here. (Example: Love it!)
A. Pull all-nighters and get C’s. B. Just want an education. C. Openly like Republicans. D. Either drop out or get groomed for the sky kingdom of academia.
ANSWER KEY: A. Lewis & Clark College B. PSU C. University of Portland D. Reed College Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK THOMAS TEAL
REVIEW
YING AND YANG: Revelry has great cocktails and sometimes-great fried chicken.
The Book of Revelrations
A SEATTLE SPIN-OFF LANDS IN PORTLAND. EARLY VISITS SHOW LOTS OF PROMISE, SOME CHALLENGES. BY M A RT I N C I Z M A R
mciz mar@wweek.com
Which is to say I’ve had a tough time sizing up The food-trend mill spins so fast these days, it’s hard to say Revelry, a place that’s great when it’s good, but merely average when it’s not. Are things headed downhill as the whether Revelry is ahead of the curve or behind it. The new Asian-fusion spot on Southeast Martin Luther Seattle-based chefs return to hometown projects? Or is King Jr. Boulevard comes from Seattle’s Beard-nominated the Portland crew going to iron things out? Revelry’s one must-order dish is Mrs. Yang ’s spicy Rachel Yang and Seif Chirchi. Revelry borrows much of the menu from the much-lauded Revel, which opened in fried chicken with peanut brittle ( $14). On our first Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood in 2010. Revelry has that visit, it was perfectly crisp and candied—if you’d told me it was fried, lightly dressed in a sugar early Instagram aesthetic: Sparsely modern aside from a stack of boom boxes, the sauce and carefully bruleed with a torch, ORDER THIS: restaurant bumps ’90s hip-hop, keeps bar I might have believed it. The crackle and hours and makes great use of fried chicken. Mrs. Yang’s fried chicken ($14), nutty punch of the brittle enhanced the rice cakes ($15), cocktails and experience so much you wonder why fried It’s also Portland’s most high-profile projthe Motherload ($7). chicken isn’t always nutted. ect from an out-of-town restaurant group in But on a later visit, the breading had an recent memory, and shares space with a chic outdoor store based in Seattle. Revelry’s Korean influence unwelcome heft, with heavier sauce. It wore its peanutfeels very of-the-season, arriving on the heels of the Han brittle coat like garish attire meant to distract from Oak pop-up and just before the new Kim Jong Smokehouse. physical flaws. It’s hard for fried chicken slathered in Six weeks in, Revelry still feels a little slippery—and peanuts to go too wrong, but it paled in comparison to not just when it comes to the big picture. It opened with its better self. a bang—we had a near-perfect meal in the first week— Another high point was the rice cakes—poker chips but subsequent visits haven’t been as impressive. In of pan-fried starch dressed with umami-intensive beef and black bean sauce. I’ve had it three times, and though Portland, that’s an odd trajectory.
I
Shandong www.shandongportland.com
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Shandong www.shandongportland.com
it didn’t have quite the same snap on the third visit, it’s remained consistently very good. It’s the most reliable thing on the menu alongside the excellent cocktails, especially the house Old Fashioned with miso maple ($10). On the other hand, the rice bowls at the bottom of the menu were uneventful. The bowl with short rib, mustard greens and chili-sauced daikon ($17) gave off a yoga-cafe vibe—even with charred ribs and a cured egg yolk. The same went for a bowl with tuna in black sesame sauce, served up with seaweed salad and escarole. Revelry’s desserts tilt unexpectedly hard toward rich and creamy. Get the Motherload ($7) with toasted marshmallow and a rich miso-caramel brownie, which was great both times we ordered it. For now, avoid the mochi doughnuts topped with caramel corn, which were fantastic on our first visit but soggy on the third. The near future of Revelry will be interesting—for all of us. EAT: Revelry, 210 SE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 971-339-3693, relayrestaurantgroup.com/restaurants/ revelry. 5 pm-midnight Sunday-Thursday, 5 pm-2 am Friday-Saturday.
DRANK
The Kaiser’s Cup
UPCOMING
OKTOBERFESTS THURSDAY, SEPT. 29
WHAT’S PORTLAND’S BEST GERMAN BREWERY? BETTER START WITH ITS BEST GERMAN-STYLE BEERS. BY PAR K E R H A L L
@pwhall
Quick, name the best German-style brewery in Portland. Whatever you said, you’re wrong—there isn’t one. In honor of Oktoberfest, we assembled a team of six tasters, including 10 Barrel’s Whitney Burnside, Saraveza’s Sarah Pederson, and New School Beer’s Ezra JohnsonGreenough. We tasted every German-style beer from Portland’s dedicated Deutschland breweries: Rosenstadt, Occidental and Zoiglhaus, plus the three German-style beers from Widmer. Beer was poured, data was collected, and we even created a name for the award we’d give the winner: the Kaiser’s Cup! Then we crunched the numbers. Out of a possible score of 100, the three breweries (and Widmer) averaged between 61 and 69 points. Depending on what you’re ordering, you can get a terrific beer—or a decidedly mediocre one—from each of our city’s Germanstyle locales. As far as we are concerned, this race is too close to call right now. Things might change in time for the second annual Kaiser’s Cup thanks to the impending arrival of Wayfinder, which will specialize in lagers and has a veteran of Washington’s famed Chuckanut manning the kettles. Here are the top beers we tasted in each style category, as rated by our blind tasters on a 100-point scale.
Occidental hosted a big Oktoberfest sausage party already in September; now it’ll be a guest of McMenamins—pouring the Kaiser’s Cup-winning altbier and Oktoberfest—along with three other beers—at the McMenamins bottle shop on Northwest 23rd Avenue. 23rd Avenue Bottle Shop, 2290 NW Thurman St., 971-202-7256, mcmenamins.com.
WEISSBIER: Rosenstadt Weissbier, 87 points
Rosenstadt knocked it out of the park with its take on the Southern German wheat beer, offering our panel a cloudy ale with notes of banana, clove and just a hint of sulfur leaping out of the glass. The tasters’ highest-rated beer, it’s as good as any real German wheat beer we’ve come across. Tasting notes: “Fuck. Yeah.” “Something nostalgic about it.” “I want to commit to a full pint of this.” “Smells like an orange fruit gummy.” “Cream dream!”
FRIDAY-SUNDAY, SEPT. 30-OCT. 2 Prost! Oktoberfest
Stammtisch had its Oktoberfest block party early; now the more hard-partying German sister pub takes the fest into its end stages by taking over a food-cart parking lot with a beer truck full of German beers while Prost grills up some meat. Mississippi Marketplace, 4233 N Mississippi Ave., 503-954-2674, prostportland.com.
KÖLSCH: Occidental Kölsch, 86
A fresh and crystal-clear batch of German ale that came in as the second-highest-rated beer in our tasting, Occidental’s Cologneinspired brew was grainy, clean and quaffable, just like the genuine article. Tasting notes: “Brings a certain Aaron Carter song to mind.” “Mineral-y and delicious.” “Lemon curd and fresh scone.” “Day-drinkable.”
HELLES LAGER: Zoiglhaus Lents Lager, 86
The most universally appreciated beer in the tasting, Zoiglhaus’ take on Munich’s malty all-Pilsner lager is about as authentic as they come. A crystal-clear brew with a perfectly frothy head, this beer was squeaky-clean with a slight bready afternote, a delicious version our tasters seemed sure could hang with its actual German counterparts. Tasting notes: “Hello, Munich!” “Nicely done—gimme another!” “So snappy.”
ALTBIER: Occidental Altbier, 77
As a stylistic average, the two hoppy copper ales submitted by Widmer and Occidental both did very well, earning solid B-plus scores in our tasting. That said, it was the creaminess of Occidental’s beer that gave it an edge over the Widmer bros’ original recipe. Tasting notes: “Beautiful copper color, crisp.” “Nice, malty chewy, creamy body.”
CAITLIN DEGNON
Occidental Oktoberfest
PILSNER: Widmer PDX Pils, 71
The winner of this year’s Oregon Beer Awards was once again the top Pils on the table, earning itself a solid B rating from judges. If anything, this lager dropped a letter grade from perfect due to what some tasters perceived as an almost overly drinkable quality. Tasting notes: “Crispy gold grain juice. Yum.” “Satisfyingly light.” “Very tasty.”
OKTOBERFEST (Märzen): Occidental Oktoberfest, 65
Neither of the amber lagers tasters sampled truly captured their hearts, with Occidental’s dark and malty take on the amber lager barely beating out Zoiglhaus’ paler submission. Both beers exhibited elements that tasters didn’t love, but it turns out they were a bit more patient with a beer they thought was too heavy than one they thought was too hoppy. Tasting notes: “Thick. Like a bitter chocolate that my grandpa gave me out of his pocket.” “Too astringent for my Oktoberfest party.” “Too much crystal malt.”
BERLINER WEISSE: Zoiglhaus Amerikaner in Berliner Weisse, 45
The most divisive beer of the tasting was the lone Berliner, a sharply acidic ale in which Zoiglhaus head brewer Alan Taylor uses three strains of yeast he saved from a beloved, now extinct German beer brand. We’ve loved the beer in the past, but our tasting panel was harshly divided whether they enjoyed the acidic bite of the beer, with a down-the-middle split that hurt its average overall. The highest rating it received was a 96, and the lowest a 0, though we suspect some palate fatigue may have played a role in the harsher judgments of the beer. Tasting notes: “Bill Nye gone brewer.” “Sharp apricot with nice flavor and complexities.” “Smells and tastes like a pickle.” Also tasted: Widmer Altbier, Zoiglhaus Schwarzbier, Occidental Pilsner, Zoiglhaus Weissbier, Rosenstadt Helles, Zoiglhaus OktoberFresh, Widmer No Lederhosen Kölsch, Rosenstadt German Pale, Occidental Hefeweizen and Rosenstadt Kölsch.
SATURDAY, OCT. 1 Rosenstadt Oktoberfest
The city’s only German brewery co-run by an actual German—and maker of our favorite Portland weissbier—will have its Oktoberfest in actual October. The festbier’s first tapping will be Saturday at porkshoulder masters the People’s Pig, who will also be serving a special menu. Tickets at eventbrite.com. The People’s Pig, 3217 N Williams Ave., 503-282-2800. 1-10 pm. $25.
O.C.toberfest
Oregon City will host an Oktoberfest with local flair, with Germanstyle brews from the southeast suburbs’ many breweries, including Bent Shovel, Coin Toss, Oregon City Brewing, Shattered Oak and Feckin. Lents’ Zoiglhaus will also be poured, as will a few echt-Bavarian brews, German sausage and some live tunes. Feckin Brewing, 415 S McLoughlin Blvd., Oregon City, feckinbrew.com. Noon-1 am.
SATURDAY, OCT. 8 Widmer Oktoberfest
For its long-running downtown Oktoberfest, Pilsner champ Widmer will tap five beers in Pioneer Courthouse Square tents and put on the decidedly un-German stylings of…the X Ambassadors of Ithaca, New York. But “DJ Gustav” of 94/7fm sounds kinda German. Maybe he’s into Kraftwerk. Pioneer Courthouse Square, 701 SW 6th Ave. Noon-9 pm. $35 for admission, stein and one beer token.
FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS, SEPT. 30-OCT. 15 Leavenworth Oktoberfest
If you’re gonna go German, go in hard. Leavenworth is a tiny Vashington willage, an almost perfect replica of Bavaria in the Pacific Northwest, and its Oktoberfest is like a small-town version of the real thing. Sooo many lederhosen. So many accordions. So much Ayinger and Hofbräu and Paulaner. And, what the hell, also Prussian beer from Kostritzer. Downtown waterfront of Leavenworth, Wash., leavenworthoktoberfest.com. $10-$20.
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C O U R T E S Y O F L I Q U I D B E AT R E C O R D S
MUSIC
How to Maintain PROFILE
LIBRETTO WAS PORTLAND HIP-HOP’S NEXT BIG THING. THEN HE WENT TO PRISON. IS THERE STILL TIME FOR A SECOND ACT? BY M AT T H E W S I N G E R
msinger@wweek.com
It was an act of desperation, really. At the time of the robbery, Mike “Libretto” Jackson had been out of work for a year and a half. His unemployment checks were running out, and whatever money he was earning as one of Portland’s most prominent rappers wasn’t enough for him to continue keeping the lights on, or providing for his family. When an acquaintance called him to visit New York, the original idea was to run some guns up from South Carolina to sell on the black market. Then a more lucrative oppor- the best-known MCs in the city. Armed with a calmly tunity came through. Jackson is cagey about the details, authoritative baritone and an outsider’s perspective— but it involved a heist on an immigrant-owned business his father moved the family out of Los Angeles and into the shocking quiet of Milwaukie in the mid-’90s—his operating as a front to wire cash back to Africa. Growing up in Watts, Jackson committed his share of mix of street-poet brains and gangsta brawn placed him misdeeds, petty theft and the like, but the way he looks on a tier with respected vets like Cool Nutz, Mic Crenat it, he just did what he had to do to survive in one of shaw and his Misfit Massive crewmates, the Lifesavas. L.A.’s roughest neighborhoods. As he puts it, “People His debut album, 2004’s Ill-Oet: The Last Element, was the first rap record released on Dim Mak, the punk-andcall it gangbanging, I call it maintaining.” In the midst of the recession, with his back against a dance label started by future megabucks DJ Steve Aoki, and it drew enough underground acclaim for Jackson to financial wall, he decided to maintain. It ended up landing him in federal prison for 4½ tour outside the Pacific Northwest. years. And if he ever runs into the judge who sentenced But in the fast-moving world of hip-hop, losing five him, Jackson promises things will get physical. years might as well be a generation, if not two or three; “I’m going to hug him and say, ‘Thank you for giving the scene in Portland alone has turned over several me that time,’” he says from a couch at the back of the times since Jackson went in to do his bid. He accepts Rosewood Initiative community space in East Portland, that re-establishing himself in the rap game means where he works part-time, “because that time made me ceding headliner status to emerging artists, some many a whole new man.” years his junior. But that doesn’t mean he’s always Gratitude isn’t what you’d expect from someone happy about it. only a few months out of an ankle bracelet. But to hear Once again, Jackson finds himself in a position of Jackson tell it, incarceration was like an extended self- figuring out how to maintain. As noted, though, his improvement workshop. instincts for self-preserHe read voraciously. He vation are well-honed. He studied business. He paid was forced to begin sharpanother inmate to teach ening them at a young him piano with bags of age. His parents divorced coffee. He changed his diet when he was 5 years old, and got into the best shape and his mother went on of his life—if he decided the road leading religious to play wide receiver in revivals; she died when he —Libretto the NFL, he could get an was a teenager. And while invite to training camp on his father, a former Black his physique alone. And he Panther and track coach, wrote—pages upon pages of lyrics, a small sampling of did what he could, work often forced him to leave the which forms the basis of his first post-release project, country for months at a time. Jackson spent his childhood in a constant state of Gangsta Jazz Vol. II. It wasn’t a spa retreat, of course— it took him away from his kids, stalled his career and left eviction, going from house to house, sometimes living him with personal-space issues he’s still trying to shake out of the family station wagon. “It was a daily struggle,” he says. His life didn’t stabilize until high school, when off—but overall, the experience was a net positive. “I don’t wish prison on no man,” he says. “But at his dad retired and, at the urging of his older sister, the same time, there’s an ancient Chinese proverb that relocated Jackson and his brother to Portland. And even says you’re not a real man until you experience time in then, he spent his first year sequestered in Milwaukie, exile. That sat with me in there, because I learned a lot never visiting the city proper, and using the Social Secuof discipline. It really made me a better person in the rity checks from his mother’s death to fly back to L.A. long run.” every weekend, “because that’s just home,” he says. For Jackson, the hard part really starts now. In the At that point, Jackson had already been rapping for a early aughts, the rapper known as Libretto was among number of years. He started as a preteen, climbing into
“PEOPLE CALL IT GANGBANGING, I CALL IT MAINTAINING.”
the DJ booth at local skating rinks and commandeering the microphone for spontaneous freestyle sessions. But it wasn’t something he thought he could make his name doing until he finally ventured to St. Johns and fell in with the then-ascendant Lifesavas. Onstage, Jackson’s imposing presence stood out among his more convivial peers. “People seen I wasn’t from here,” he says. “I rapped different, but my swag was more gangsta. I was more gangbanging, because I was still kind of banging back then, but I was turned down because I wasn’t in L.A.” After a few introductory singles, Ill-Oet arrived in late 2004, showcasing the black consciousness learned from his activist father and the street knowledge drawn from his own upbringing. Local media declared him Portland’s potential next big thing. In the intervening years, Jackson worked on several projects, only a handful of which have been released. Completed in quick-and-dirty fashion while Jackson transitioned back to freedom in a halfway house, Gangsta Jazz Vol. II—an album-length sequel to a previous EP put out through Portland’s Liquid Beat Records (see page 35)—isn’t the formal follow-up to Ill-Oet, but it’s a poignant reintroduction regardless. Over crackling jazz samples, Jackson reflects on his past (“All That Jazz”) and his imprisonment (“Black Codes”) while accepting whatever’s next with Zen-like calm. “Once I exited that prison complex/I suspect the streets won’t embrace me,” he raps on the dreamy closer, “So Good.” “It’s like I never left, so why stress?” Now that he’s out of prison, Jackson is trying to make up for lost time. He’s hoping to find a home for some of the records he finished before going away, the most crucial being Captain Crook, his official sophomore LP many years (and a lot of money) in the making. As he edges up against 40, and with the state of the music industry being what it is, Jackson knows the clock is ticking: He doesn’t expect to still be rapping three years from now. But as he says, he’s not stressing. Because if prison taught him anything, it’s to be satisfied with what he’s got right now. “You learn to be happy sitting in traffic with nothing,” he says. “You’ve got freedom, you’ve got life. Everything else is secondary.” SEE IT: Libretto plays Mic Check at White Eagle Saloon, 836 N Russell St., with the Last Artful Dodgr, on Thursday, Sept. 29. 10 pm. $5 advance, $7 day of show. 21+. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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MUSIC PROFILE R AY G O R D O N
= 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, SEPT. 28 Twin Peaks, White Reaper, Modern Vices
[RETRO POWER POP] I can count on one hand the number of bands that manage to remind of early Rolling Stones without ripping them off. Mail the Horse jumps to mind, but so too does up-and-coming Chicago outfit Twin Peaks. The young act formed as high-schoolers and probably owe their musical taste and appreciation of flower-power rock to nerd parents. This year, Twin Peaks truly arrived with Down In Heaven, a collection that oscillates wonderfully between Beggars Banquet-era Stones and the power-pop stature of Mikal Cronin. MARK STOCK. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
THURSDAY, SEPT. 29 Clorox Girls, the Fliptops, the Stops, Street Tramps
[CLASSIC PUNK] Portland’s Clorox Girls may not have originated in punk rock’s golden era, but in the early 2000s the band called back to classics like Red Kross and the Dickies, especially on its self-titled debut LP, which it’s celebrating the re-release of tonight. To boot, the album will be performed from start to finish by the lineup that played on the record. Revel in the energetic guitar playing and gruff vocals of Justin Maurer while Clay Silva pounds on those drums, but don’t expect to see OG bassist and former Maurer flame Jennique Mason on bass. We’re not going back that far in Clorox Girls history. But it’ll still be great to see Zack Lewis slapping those bass strings. CERVANTE POPE. Black Water Bar, 835 NE Broadway. 8 pm. $10. 21+.
Dinosaur Jr., Moon Duo
[EAR-BLEEDING COUNTRY] See Get Busy, page 23. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St. 8 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show. All ages.
Jah Wobble & the Invaders of the Heart [POST-DUB] Although it’s hard to compete with John Lydon, there’s an argument to made for who was the second-most crucial member of the original incarnation of postpunk overlords Public Image Ltd. One might say it was Keith Levene, who played guitar like he was using it to cut glass and then flinging the shards at the rhythm section. In my estimation, though, the band’s instrumental MVP was bassist Jah Wobble, whose burbling low end provided the classic Public Enemy and Metal Box albums with their menacing dub underpinnings. Since leaving PiL in the early ’80s, Wobble has continued to explore his reggae, dance and funk influences, and while his newest album with the Invaders of the Heart, the mostly instrumental Everything Is Nothing, can get a tad wallpapery at times, his knowledge of grooves is undeniable. MATTHEW SINGER. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave. 9 pm. $20 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.
CONT. on page 32
Logan Lynn FRIDAY, SEPT. 30 For Logan Lynn, Portland is an investment. “I’m not pro-gentrification. I’d love us to have a better plan for the people being left behind or displaced,” he says. “But we’re in a long-term relationship, me and this city. I love it still.” “There was a part of that scene that was mostly about getting high and not having jobs,” he adds, recalling the artist community he encountered here in the ‘90s. “I don’t know if I feel superprotective of that part of it. You can’t wish for something that’s not based in reality to last forever.” Lynn came to Portland in 1996, fleeing a fundamentalist Christian upbringing. (“I grew up in a cult, frankly,” he says.) With a bedroom demo of wounded electro-pop disguising soul-baring subject matter behind disco glitz, he befriended many of the mid’90s stalwarts of Portland music scene, like Elliott Smith and the Dandy Warhols, eventually signing to the latter’s Beat the World Records, a Caroline/EMI subsidiary. Lynn overdosed in 2008, and though he’s been clean since, he says the pressures of being signed to a major label made it more difficult to navigate sobriety. That same year, midtour, he “freaked out” and quit. “I walked away and sent a press release to everyone about my career suicide, in the middle of the night,” he says. “I went and worked at a community center the next day. I needed to reclaim my humanity on some level.” Devoting more time to queer and mental health activism, Lynn eventually partnered with Trillium Family Services to found Keep Oregon Well, a campaign to reduce the stigmas surrounding mental and behavioral health, in 2014. “I had a very marginalizing experience where I felt invisible,” Lynn says, describing his childhood in the church. But now? “I have something in me that fights against the invisibility.” That openness and honesty guides his new album, Adieu. Written with longtime collaborator Gino Mari, it’s more bare than anything Lynn has released before. It’s also less buried beneath technology, more indebted to Liz Phair, the Innocence Mission, the Sundays and a childhood favorite, Amy Grant. “The idea was to make a record that was about Logan when he was young and first getting excited about music,” Mari says. Adieu is never explicit in its depiction of childhood. Instead, it’s a document of vulnerability. “I was in a mental health crisis, my dog had died, my partner had left,” Lynn says of the circumstances around the album. “Luckily, I had the wherewithal to sort of shut my life down and stay in a safe room and scream and cry and talk into my phone.” He emerged from that safe place with pieces of songs—one about his abusive spiritual background (“Oh Lucifer”) and one “about leaving your body, not to go to heaven, but just to be done” (“Let’s Go Home”). One especially catchy sing-along (“The Most Wrong in the Whole World”) samples those depressed musings straight from his phone. Even after crisis, reconciliation and relapse, Lynn says he’s ready to embrace whatever comes next after his two decades in Portland. “I feel useful here,” he says. DOM SINACOLA. A veteran Portland songwriter releases the most uncomfortable album of his career.
SEE IT: Logan Lynn plays KINK-FM’s Skype Live Studio, 1210 SW 6th Ave., on Friday, Sept. 30. 5 pm. Free with RSVP at skypelivestudio.com. All ages. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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MUSIC FRIDAY, SEPT. 30 Machine Gun Kelly, Mod Sun
WED
TONIGHT!
BRUCE HORNSBY
28
& THE NOISEMAKERS
FRI
An Evening with Genre-bending Celtic Rockers
SEP
30
SEP TUE
4
OCT THU
6
GAELIC STORM
ANDREW W.K.
THE POWER OF PARTYING 50-STATE SPEAKING TOUR Chart-topping Soulful Pop
ERIC HUTCHINSON
OCT
w/ Magic Giant, Anya Marina
FRI
Dobro Master and Thirteen-Time Grammy Winner
7
OCT
JERRY DOUGLAS BAND
WED
Feminist pop punk from Seattle
OCT
W/ COCKEYE, THE BEDROOMS
SUN
Legendary Guitarist Celebrating One of the Greatest Instrumental Rock Guitar Recordings Of All Time
12
16
OCT SAT
17
DEC THU
2
FEB
TACOCAT
STEVE VAI ON SALE NOW!
DAVID BAZAN’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE Grammy-nominated Pop Icon Performs His Classic Album In Its Entirety
ADAM ANT
[HIP-HOP] Machine Gun Kelly’s reputation as a punk-rock rapper is both a gift and a curse. For audiences who follow his recent interviews, MGK has been at the center of the white-rapper conundrum, calling out Macklemore’s racially charged single “White Privilege II” and telling TMZ, “Race is not an issue, race is an issue for people like Macklemore.” He later clarified that they just exist in two different worlds. On Kelly’s wide-ranging General Admission—there’s some pop joints, some trap records, a song with Kid Rock—he writes from a more mature state of mind on topics like drug addiction and suicide, using his rebellious voice to speak for the demoralized. Hate it or love it, MGK is still doing him. ERIC DIEP. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave. 8 pm. $26.50. All ages.
Drive-By Truckers, Lydia Loveless
[THE REALNESS] At this point, it’s hard imagine there are many newcomers to Drive-By Truckers’ Southern-fried Springsteenisms, excellent as they may be. So let’s focus on the opener here, Lydia Loveless, an artist worth arriving early for if there ever was one. On her breakthrough third album, 2014’s Somewhere Else, the 25-yearold from Ohio ditched the contrived honky-tonkin’ of her previous efforts, working her twangy alto over power-pop guitars and delivering songs spiked with a level of honesty equally hilarious and harrowing. She continues her growth on this year’s Real, letting the bruises on her heart show with even less self-consciousness while still jabbing you in the throat with lines like, “If self-control is what you want/I’ll have to break all of my fingers off.” Few artists walk the line between sadness and badassness so deftly, and if there’s any justice, she’ll be headlining bigger places than this soon enough. MATTHEW SINGER. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St. 8 pm. $25 advance, $28 day of show. 21+. Through Oct. 1.
SATURDAY, OCT. 1 Red Bull Sound Select: Mick Jenkins and Smino
[HIP-HOP] Mick Jenkins and Smino are part of a new renaissance of post-drill Chicago rappers that’s being led by Chance the Rapper and the Social Experiment. Though Jenkins and Smino are in different places in their career, both are extremely confident in their versatility, often toying with flows, sung hooks and concepts with each new release. Jenkins became one of the city’s most important musicians with his concept tape The Water[s], a strong showcase of his connection to poetry and spoken word, while Smino is climbing up the ranks with SoundCloud loosies and recent EPs. ERIC DIEP. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St. 9 pm. $3 with RSVP at redbullsoundselect.com.
DJ Shadow, Noer the Boy
[TURNTABLE GOD] See Get Busy, pg. 23. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave. 9 pm. $25. 21+.
SUNDAY, OCT. 2 Hazel, Hex Vision FULL BAR ~ PATIO ~ SANDWICHES ~ VITTLES ~ ESPRESSO THURS, 9/29: ROOFTOP BAR OPEN, 5-10PM. Weather permitting. FRI, 9/30: ROOFTOP BAR OPEN, 5-10PM. Weather permitting.
SAT, 10/1: LAST DAY OF ROOFTOP BAR FOR 2016! OPEN, 5-10PM. Weather permitting.
WWW.REVOLUTIONHALL.COM 32
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
[HOMETOWN LEGENDS] Old Portland should remember Hazel, along with anyone who used to watch MTV’s 120 Minutes. In the mid-’90s, the local power-pop foursome issued two albums before dissolving, leaving beloved singerguitarist Pete Krebs, drummer Jody Bleyle, bassist Brady Smith and dancer Fred Nemo to go their separate ways. Now, Voodoo Doughnut Recordings is releasing a collection of live recordings from the
band’s grunge-era heyday, tracked from the bed of a flatbed truck and at the defunct X-Ray Cafe. It’s certainly cause for two nights of celebration, and probably the only chance you’ll get to hear the indie bliss that is “King Twist” for some time to come. BRANDON WIDDER. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave. 5:30 pm and 8 pm. Both shows sold out. Early show is all ages, late show is 21+.
Peaches, Christeene, Bomb Ass Pussy
[WOMEN’S STUDIES] If not directly responsible for the cultural sea change of raising eyebrows and widening perspectives, each album following Peaches’ epochal The Teaches of Peaches has seemed that slightest bit less necessary for a world increasingly woke to patriarchal injustice and inured to salacious whimsy. The former Merrill Nisker’s recent forays toward publishing and theater felt less like distractions from a halted recording career than logical next steps for our queer provocateur-in-chief. While Rub, her first LP in six years, leans upon her trademark arsenal of aggro-erotic fusillades, the Vice Cooler-produced collection dares to dig deeper beneath the familiar pose to bare an unfiltered venom borne of relationship pains not so easily fucked away. JAY HORTON. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St. 7:30 pm. $23 advanced, $25 day of show. 21+.
MONDAY, OCT. 3 Cymbals Eat Guitars, Field Mouse, Wildhoney
[EMO-ADJACENT] Pop music is littered with acts that were ahead of the curve—we’ve all heard the myth that the few people who bought Velvet Underground records all started a band—but what about those that are a few years behind? Philadelphia-via-Jersey rockers Cymbals Eat Guitars might have been huge in the grunge era, but instead they’ve settled into being one of the better “emotional but not emo” guitar bands of this decade. 2014’s Lose was a minor breakthrough, setting heartache and grief to upbeat tunes, and new record Pretty Years continues the winning streak. Musically it’s even brighter, with hearty doses of synthesizer and even skronking sax on highlight “Wish.” It might not sell like bonkers, but history should reflect kindly on these guys, too. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Doug Fir, 830 E Burnside St. 9 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.
Chief Keef
[HIP-HOP] Chief Keef has had a rocky career since getting dropped by Interscope Records in 2014. The 21-year-old rapper—who was previously sentenced to house arrest for pointing a gun at a cop and later served time in jail for violating his probation by handling a firearm at a gun range during a filmed interview with Pitchfork—hasn’t successfully maintained the superstar allure of the drill classic “I Don’t Like” from 2012. What’s keeping Keef’s name relevant these days is his musical output. Whether his output is official releases or leaks, there are few musicians who can compete with him in terms of sheer prolificacy. Nowadays, Keef has evolved from his early gritty soundscapes to cleaner productions (some even done by himself), but the content remains the same—it’s hard-edged, violent and unapologetic. ERIC DIEP. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd. 8 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show. All ages.
TUESDAY, OCT. 4 King, Joey Dosik
[MODERN SOUL SISTERS] See Get Busy, pg. 23. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St. 9 pm. $17 advance, $20 day of show. 21+.
Thievery Corporation, That 1 Guy
CLASSICAL, JAZZ & WORLD
foursome against two pre-recorded performances. “WTC 9/11,” Reich’s musical portrait of the Sept. 11 attacks (he lived four blocks from the World Trade Center) and their aftermathwill be performed, as well as the Grammy-winning 20thcentury classic “Different Trains,” which, like “WTC,” incorporates recorded voices, this time featuring those of Holocaust survivors. BRETT CAMPBELL. Oregon Rail Heritage Center, 2250 SE Water Ave. 7:30 pm Friday, Sept. 30. $35. $10 students and seniors, $35 general. All ages.
Lindsey Stirling
[ELECTRIC VIOLIN] The drama with which violinist Lindsey Stirling whips around her electric instrument is criticized by some in the classical music world as over-the-
top, but let’s face facts: The redheaded instrumentalist is among very few string musicians with the talent and creativity to capture younger audiences. Playing a blend of classical and electronic music that’s attracted over 8 million YouTube subscribers, this is someone who realizes that context is key when it comes to any genre. Her shows may be a bit TransSiberian-esque at times, but real classical fans should be rooting for Stirling—and hoping a few of those YouTubers become season-ticket holders someday. PARKER HALL. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway. 8 pm Saturday, Oct. 1. $70. $30-$70. All ages.
For more Music listings, visit
INTRODUCING S A L LY L O P E Z
[MIDTEMPO TRIP-JAZZ] Remember eighth grade? Remember passing the Garden State soundtrack down through your friend group? Remember that one slow groove that plays when Large, Sam and Mark run through Target or whatever it was? “Lebanese Blonde” (and its composers, Thievery Corporation, in general) might elicit little more than vague nostalgia from those born after 1990, but the band, now on its 20th anniversary tour, has elementally affected the way “world music” is classified and listened to. Combining traditional elements of jazz, Indian and MiddleEastern music and filtering it all through what is essentially a DJ collective, Thievery Corporation paved the way for global acceptance of modern international sounds like dub and reggaeton. ISABEL ZACHARIAS. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave. 8 pm. $45 general admission, $75 reserved balcony seating. 21+.
Ben Wendel Quartet
[SERIOUS SWING] Longtime Kneebody co-leader Ben Wendel showcases his sax chops in a different context on this trip to Portland, eschewing his normal, beat-driven collaborators for three of modern jazz’s most exciting swinging talents. Coming from a Grammynominated shredder, Wendel’s pillowy tone finds itself bolstered by young, jazz-famous collaborators Gerald Clayton (piano), Joe Sanders (bass) and Henry Cole (drums). An outfit whose individual technical abilities are a match for anyone in the world, it takes apart and examines Coltrane-style avant-garde, putting it back together again in ways which are humble, thoughtful and deeply virtuosic. PARKER HALL. The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Sept. 28. $20 PDX Jazz members, $25 advance, $30 day of show. All ages.
FearNoMusic presents Joel’s Greatest Hits
[BLUESTONED] If you’ve been to a FearNoMusic concert that involved percussion, you’ve noticed a dude with long frizzy locks, scarlet footwear and multiple mallets. That would be percussionist Joel Bluestone, a Portland State University prof who cofounded the new-music ensemble a quarter-century ago and is now turning over his mallets to Oregon Symphony percussionist Michael Roberts, who’ll join his predecessor and other FNMusicians in this greatest-hits concert. The program includes music by PSU composition prof Tomas Svoboda and his successors Joseph Waters and Bonnie Miksch. There will be a performance of Argentine-American composer Osvaldo Golijov’s poignant elegy “Mariel” for marimba and cello, Japanese composer Somei Satoh’s radiant “Toki No Mon” and FNM artistic director Kenji Bunch’s “Road Trip,” which the ensemble commissioned from the Portland native almost two decades ago. BRETT CAMPBELL. Lincoln Performance Hall, 1620 SW Park Ave. 7:30 pm Friday, Sept. 30. $10-$30. All ages.
Third Angle New Music
[REICH ON RAILS] All over the country, concerts are playing happy 80th birthday to composer Steve Reich, who more or less invented the pulsating minimalist music that made contemporary classical music appealing to broad audiences. But Portland’s Third Angle didn’t need a round-number birthday to occasion its own tribute. The ensemble brought the composer to Portland 15 years ago and has performed allReich concerts regularly since. This time, the group performs all three of Reich’s string quartets written for Kronos Quartet. The concert will also feature the Oregon premiere of Triple Quartet, which pits the live
Cilantro WHO: Brendan Deiz ( guitars, percussion, production), Arlyn Montas (vocals, songwriting). FOR FANS OF: Manu Chao, Los Lobos, Gal Costa. SOUNDS LIKE: Dancing to a South American political documentary. By playing Afro-Latin music in a city like Portland, Brendan Deiz and Arlyn Montas believe they “may be at the forefront of something.” In fact, Cilantro, the band they formed after Montas heard Deiz jamming Latin grooves in his L.A. apartment and knocked on his door, transplanted itself specifically to be at that forefront. Having grown up in Portland surrounded by an overabundance of bluegrass, indie rock and folk rock, Deiz saw an opportunity to stand out by playing “something so different from that Portlandia sound.” Once you get Deiz talking about Caribbean polyrhythms, though, it becomes clear what matters to Cilantro, much more than its competitive edge, is “feeling the music.” The live band features up to seven members, with percussion, sax and flute layered atop Montas’ earthy vocals. “It just makes you want to move,” Deiz says. “It,” in this case, is Cilantro’s broad, hybrid definition of Latin music. The band’s hip-swinging sound spans Dominican bachata and merengue, Puerto Rican reggaeton, Colombian cumbia and many other styles. While the members are still figuring out which permutations of Latin fusion work best for them, they consider stylistic fluidity the core of their identity. Cilantro’s other defining trait is its lyrical engagement with social and political issues. Deiz describes “Tierra Quemada,” a single from the band’s forthcoming debut LP, as an enumeration on the idea that “borders don’t really exist to anybody except the people being hurt by them.” And, in fact, the disintegration of borders is at the root of what Cilantro aims for. “It’s a celebration of all this difference—the Afro-Latino diaspora,” Deiz says. Revolution is all well and good, he says, but “you’ve got to be amped up to do it—and having a good soundtrack is important.” ISABEL ZACHARIAS. SEE IT: Cilantro plays Uno Mas Bar, 1914 W Burnside St., on Saturday, Oct. 1. 5 pm. Free. All ages. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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ECLECTIC FOLK AMERICANA DUO
MANDOLINW/ LEIFORANGE VOLLEBEKK AT WONDER BALLROOM
OCTOBER 5
KELLER AUDITORIUM TICKETS AT PORTLAND5.COM
SEP LERA LYNN W/ WILLIAM WILD 28 TONIGHT! BUZZWORTHY CONTEMPORARY COUNTRY SEP COREY SMITH 29 W/ LUKE COMBS OCT CRYSTAL BOWERSOX 1 W/ LENORE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED AMERICANA OCT ELIZABETH COOK 4 W/ LEE HARVEY OSMOND OCT THE RETURN OF BELOVED CLASSIC FOLK ARTIST GREG BROWN 7
TICKETS AT WONDERBALLROOM.COM
MUSIC HALL OF FAME OCT OREGONINDUCTION AND CONCERT FEAT. DUFFY BISHOP, 8 FERNANDO W/ PETE KREBS, THREE LEG TORSO OCT TAL WILKENFELD 10 W/ STEVEN TAYLOR OCTAL STEWART & GARY WRIGHT FULL BAND! W/ THE EMPTY POCKETS 13 OCT RALPHIE MAY 15 W/ THE SMASH BROTHERS LEE FIELDS DEC & THE EXPRESSIONS 5 ON SALE FRIDAY! ICONIC AUSTRALIAN BASS GUITARIST SUPPORTING HER DEBUT ALT-ROCK VOCAL ALBUM
A NIGHT OF ROCK CLASSICS WITH
MARC BROUSSARD - 10/16 | W. KAMAU BELL - 10/21 - LATE SHOW ADDED!
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
MUSIC
DATES HERE
FEATURE
Liquid Beat Records FRIDAY, SEPT. 30 Five of the local rap and R&B label’s best blasts from future past.
Matt Nelkin is a vinyl junkie and an avowed loyalist of hip-hop’s golden age. But that doesn’t mean he’s a hopeless nostalgist. “I don’t want to just dwell in that period,” he says. “There’s that propped-up myth of the person who’s only into retro music, and I don’t want to be in that space creatively or emotionally.” It’s a sentiment embedded in the motto of Liquid Beat Records, which Nelkin has run in Portland since 2011: ”Informed by the past, with an eye towards the future.” While the label’s production aesthetic hums with analog warmth and a deep appreciation for classic rap, funk, soul and disco, it’s cut with a distinctly modern edge. With Liquid Beat celebrating its latest release, the Street Player EP, featuring contributions from all three of its main producers, we asked Nelkin about the favorite records he’s put out so far. MATTHEW SINGER. Libretto, “Ride to Dat” feat. Guilty Simpson 12-inch It’s the release that started things off for Liquid Beat. While the A-side is obviously great and was the attention-grabber due to the Guilty Simpson feature, I always thought the Wolveryne-produced B-side track, “Da Bump!” was an overlooked sure shot. Reva DeVito and Roane Namuh, Cloudshine Deluxe There is a real magic to the chemistry between these two. The songs flow so naturally it feels like they just exist effortlessly. I think when it’s all said and done, Cloudshine Deluxe will go down as a classic underground R&B album. HOT16, “Rhythm” 7-inch Initially, HOT16 had a great demo of the beat. We recruited Farnell Newton to play horns, DeAngelo Raines to play guitar and Spencer Finnan to play keys. HOT16 then did an absolutely amazing job chopping those elements up, to make a song that feels new but whose influences are instantly recognizable. Libretto, Gangsta Jazz Vol. 2 It’s a concept album using just jazz loops as the musical background. It is also Libretto’s first project since being released from prison. The topics he raps about, and the nuanced way he does so, are incredible. Throughout the album, there are a wealth of really amazing insights and vividly painted pictures that come straight from Libretto’s lived experiences.
NEW VENUE! THURSDAY NIGHT!
DJ CANSAMAN
SEP 29TH • HAWTHORNE • 9PM • 21+
THE DIG & RAW FABRICS OCTOBER 22ND • DANTE’S • 9PM • 21+
OCT 24TH • DANTE’S • 8PM • 21+
OCT 27TH • STAR THEATER • 9PM • 21+
Various artists, Street Player EP Our latest release and the only release (so far) that features all of the Liquid Beat producers we work with—HOT16, Roane Namuh and DaiN. The EP features four unique covers of the disco classic “Street Player” by Rufus. We wanted to make something a DJ would love to keep in their record bag for every occasion. There is something really gratifying about executing your vision from inception to completion, and this project represents that. SEE IT: The Street Player release party, with Roane Namuh, HOT16, Matt Nelkin and DaiN, is at Valentines, 232 SW Ankeny St., on Friday, Sept. 30. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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for a full schedule vIsIt WWW.mIKethrasherpresents.com folloW us onlIne at: faceBooK.com/mIKethrasherpresents tWItter.com/mIKethrasherpdX · Instagram: @mIKethrasherpresents
r o s e l a n d T H e a T e r Wed ocT
& losT dog sTreeT Band
5
7:00pm doors all ages Bar W/proper Id
Maxo KreaM & ZelooPerZ
saT ocT
8
8:00pm doors all ages Bar W/proper Id
sun ocT
H a W T H o r n e T H e a T r e
WILLAMETTE WEEK’S 4th ANNUAL
saT ocT
22
7:00pm doors all ages Bar W/proper Id
& coin
Mon ocT
24
7:00pm doors all ages Bar W/proper Id
9
8:00pm doors all ages Bar W/proper Id
21 and over sHoW!
& aPoPHis THeory saT ocT saT ocT
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7:00pm doors 21 and over
15
21 and over sHoW!
7:00pm doors all ages Bar W/proper Id
& BallyHoo!
saT nov
& darci carlson
sun nov Tue ocT
13
In the lounge 7:00pm doors 21 and over
25
12
7:00pm doors 21 and over
roger clyne playIng solo
darci carlson
7:00pm doors all ages Bar W/proper Id
saT nov
19
7:00pm doors all ages Bar W/proper Id
on sale
fri
10:00am
& Plague vendor
855-Cas-tixx x2
& TWin liMB Wed dec
7
7:00pm doors all ages Bar W/proper Id
8 nw sixth avenue
coMing soon:
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1 5 0 7 s e 3 9 t h a v e n u e
yoB
& KoWloon Walled ciTy fri nov
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7:00pm doors all ages Bar W/proper Id
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26
7:00pm doors 21 and over
855-Cas-tixx x2
The PrivaTe Club Tour wiTh MadeinTYo · PennYwise · MdC · Chief keef · randY & Mr. laheY of Trailer Park boYs · PhanTograM (sold ouT!) · suM 41 JoYCe Manor · ¡MaYdaY! · bearTooTh · goJira · hoPsin · bruJeria · devin Townsend ProJeCT / beTween The buried and Me · The aMiTY affliCTion ghosT · alesTorM · anThrax (sold ouT!) · aliCe CooPer · he is we · sleeP · oPeTh · The dillinger esCaPe Plan · gnash · bad religion · niYkee heaTon
Open from 4 PM till late!
Vegan! Veggie! Meat!
Happy Hour
Your favorite place to catch live music is now your
FAVORITE PIZZA JOINT!
The Hawthorne Theatre lounge
$5 slice and a beer or soda plus $1 off well drinks
is now serving
Atlas Pizza 7 nights a week
Did you know we are a Pokemon Go gym as well? Play Pokemon, grab a slice, have a drink and relax! 36
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
32 BEERS HOME BREWER + PRO BREWER TEAMS SATURDAY, 10 /15 NOON– 6:30 P.M . wweek.com/beerproam @ The North Warehouse 723 N Tillamook • 21+ $15, $25, $55
MUSIC CALENDAR WED. SEPT. 28 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave Lera Lynn
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St The Roaring Lions, Curtis Irie, DJ Clover
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Twin Peaks, White Reaper, Modern Vices
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Royal Canoe, Animal Eyes, Mothertapes
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Christopher Brown Quartet; Mel Brown Quartet
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Love Gigantic; Ashleigh Flynn
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Tallulah’s Daddy
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Avi Buffalo, the Kickback, Kyle Craft
Revolution Hall
1300 SE Stark St #110 Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. A Certain Smile, Sun Riah, Candy Cigarettes; Such Gold, Noise Brigade
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Shafty
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St Thirsty City
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St, Brut, Pig Honey, Family Mansions
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave PDX Jazz presents Ben Wendel Quartet; Kay Robbins
Twilight Cafe and Bar
1420 SE Powell Show Me The Body, The Dirty Nil, Thurman, Gidrah
Wonder Ballroom 128 NE Russell St. KT Tunstall, Wilding
THURS. SEPT. 29 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave Corey Smith, Luke Combs
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway The Music of David Bowie
Ash Street Saloon
High Water Mark Lounge
1001 SE Morrison St. Ural Thomas & the Pain, Lola Buzzkill, DJ Bobby D
Crystal Ballroom
Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St. Matt Wertz
Duff’s Garage
2530 NE 82nd Ave Main Street Moan
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Mr. Ben
LaurelThirst Public House
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Natural Child, Faux Ferocious
2958 NE Glisan St Lewi Longmire & the Left Coast Roasters; Billy Kennedy Band
Muddy Rudder Public House
Mississippi Pizza
8105 Se 7th Ave. Lloyd Jones
3552 N Mississippi Ave Red Yarn
Roseland Theater
Mississippi Studios
8 NW 6th Ave Tegan and Sara
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Jah Wobble & The Invaders of the Heart
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St, Sun Foot, Sam Coomes
Star Theater
The Firkin Tavern
1937 SE 11th Ave Cemetery Suntan, The Strangers
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Funky 2 Death
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St Old Junior, Yogurt Brain, Ah God
The Old Church 1422 SW 11th Ave Ian Maksin
The Secret Society 116 NE Russell St The Newport Nightingales, The Barn Door Slammers
Twilight Cafe and Bar
1420 SE Powell The Lovely Lost, Midnight Divide, Ships to Roam, The Skeleton Keys
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St Litchis, Dr Identity, VOG, DJ Kennel Jitters
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St Mic Check PDX with the Last Artful Dodge, Libretto
Wonder Ballroom 128 NE Russell St. Allah-Las, Tops
FRI. SEPT. 30 Alberta Rose
Ash Street Saloon
1332 W Burnside St Dinosaur Jr., Moon Duo
1620 SW Park Ave. Choro in Schola
426 SW Washington St. Champion, Chunky Steez, Polyglamoury
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. BOGAN VIA, Luna Aura
225 SW Ash St Tengger Cavalry
Dante’s
350 West Burnside Reigning Sound, Tripwires, Hollow Sidewalks
Duff’s Garage
2530 NE 82nd Ave Rockin’ Ricki; MotorDude Zydeco
High Water Mark Lounge
6800 NE MLK Ave The Dedekind Cut, E3, Albino Gorilla, Knate Phaser
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave.
4122 NE Sandy Blvd Frizzi 2 Fulci: Fabio Frizzi Live
Lincoln Recital Hall
Kelly’s Olympian
The Analog Cafe
Hollywood Theatre
221 NW 10th Ave. Bob Sheppard Quartet; Dan Balmer Trio
221 NW 10th Ave. Mel Brown B3 Organ Group; Chance Hayden
13 NW 6th Ave. Psychic TV, Atriarch, Soriah, DDDJJJ666
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd. Chief Keef
Jimmy Mak’s
Jimmy Mak’s
Black Water Bar
722 E Burnside St. Kataklysm, Othrys, At The Seams, Trojan Swamp Monster
LAST WEEK LIVE
Holocene
3000 NE Alberta St Blackstar Rising (David Bowie Tribute)
Bossanova Ballroom
[SEPT. 28-OCT. 4]
6800 NE MLK Ave Beach Party, Friends in Love, The Dazies, The Lightheads
225 SW Ash St Menin
835 NE Broadway Clorox Girls, the Fliptops, the Stops, Street Tramps
For more listings, check out wweek.com.
COLIN MCLOUGHLIN
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
Editor: Matthew Singer. 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.
SHIRTLESS IN STUMPTOWN: It’s easy to stereotype Icelandic band Sigur Rós as fey post-rock softies. But the band also has a heavy, gnarly side, demonstrated Sept. 21 at Keller Auditorium by one awesome and shocking wardrobe choice. Near the end of the band’s two-hour, multipart set, drummer Orri Páll Dýrason took off his shirt. No, really, I’m not messing with you. Touring for the first time as a stripped-down trio (keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson left the band in 2013), Sigur Rós played two different sets with a brief intermission in between. The minimal approach worked well. Without distractions from superfluous horn or string sections, the focus was placed on the interplay between Jonsi Birgisson’s heavenly vocals, an underrated rhythm section and a very cool and trippy LED light show. Large swaths of the first section sounded almost like Sigur Rós Unplugged, with the band playing ethereal, delicate, keyboard-and-synth-led songs like “Ekki Múkk” and “Vaka.” But make no mistake—Sigur Rós is really a post-rock band at heart. By the end of the 10-plus-minute finale “Popplagid,” Birgisson was strutting to both sides of the stage with his mouth agape, screaming at the crowd to get loud. It was another unexpected gesture from a Serious Band, but he makes a good point. Even though Sigur Rós’ music might sound alien, it’s very much a living, breathing thing made by humans not afraid to remove an item of clothing in the name of rock ’n’ roll. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Tony Starlight vs Jazz
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Cowpunchers, Rajas
LaurelThirst Public House 2958 NE Glisan St Rose City Kings; Grasshopper
Lincoln Performance Hall
1620 SW Park Ave. fEARnoMUSIC presents Joel’s Greatest Hits
Lombard Pub (formerly the Foggy Notion) 3416 N Lombard St Shock Amplifier, Atomic 45, Red Letter
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Krebsic Orkestar; Bridge Creek
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Manatee Commune, Maiah Manser, Calm Candy
Moda Center
1 N Center Court St Casting Crowns
Oregon Rail Heritage Center 2250 SE Water Ave. Third Angle New Music
Revolution Hall
1300 SE Stark St #110 Gaelic Storm
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave Machine Gun Kelly, Mod Sun
Skype Live Studio 1210 SW 6th Ave. Logan Lynn
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave. The Weeks, Cold Fronts
The Analog Cafe
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St Ice Princess, Year of the Cobra
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The Bomb Shelter, Moments, Search/Party, In Reverie; SIMPLY 8
Doug Fir Lounge
The Know
Duff’s Garage
2026 NE Alberta St Wimps, Wild Powwers, Times Infinity; The Pynnacles, The Late Great, The Reverberations
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St, Spend The Night Willie Burns
Twilight Cafe and Bar 1420 SE Powell Peter Kasen/Dana Buoy(Akron Family)/ Mantis
Twilight Cafe and Bar
1420 SE Powell A Flourishing Scourge/ Rhine/Where Lovers Rot/ Saola
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St JT Wise Band
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. Drive-By Truckers, Lydia Loveless
830 E Burnside St. Red Bull Sound Select: Mick Jenkins and Smino 2530 NE 82nd Ave Jumptown Aces
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Louis Pain & LaRhonda Steele; Unforgettable: Tribute to Natalie Cole
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Fernando, Max Porter; Jawbone Flats; the Resolectrics
Lombard Pub (formerly the Foggy Notion) 3416 N Lombard St Metropolitan Farms
Michelle’s Piano
600 SE Stark St Albert ‘Tootie’ Heath with Richard Sears Qunitet
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. The Moondoggies, Banditos, The Jackalope Saints
Newmark Theatre
SAT. OCT. 1 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave Crystal Bowersox
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Lindsey Stirling
1111 SW Broadway Emerson String Quartet ()
Revolution Hall
1300 SE Stark St #110 Squeeze
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave DJ Shadow
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Cosmonaut Radio; Voodoo Ladyboys (Ween tribute); the Yacolt Burn
Doc Slocum’s Old-Time Jam; Freak Mountain Ramblers
The Goodfoot
Mississippi Pizza
2845 SE Stark St Jans Ingber’s Portland Funk Fellowship
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St Sad Horse // White Shark Shiver // Weird Cactus
TThe Secret Society 116 NE Russell St Everything’s Jake
Uno Mas
914 W Burnside St. Cilantro
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. Drive-By Truckers, Lydia Loveless
SUN. OCT. 2 Alberta Rose
3000 NE Alberta St An Evening With Jonatha Brooke
American Legion Hall 2104 NE Alberta San Lorenzo’s Ritual Sacrifice: EPic Release with Music and Art
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicides
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Jeremy Enigk, Jon Black
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd. MDC
LaurelThirst Public House 2958 NE Glisan St
3552 N Mississippi Ave Classical Revolution PDX
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Hazel
The Raven
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Christian Mistress, High Spirits, Visigoth
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St Sound Judgment Festival: Anna McClellan, Ryan Fox, A Peaceful Valley
TUES. OCT. 4 Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St Wild Ire, Introvert
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. KING, Joey Dosik
Duff’s Garage
2530 NE 82nd Ave Timmy Tombstone
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd. East Memphis Boys Tour
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Benoît Pioulard, Sheers, Skin Lies
Jimmy Mak’s
600 E Burnside St King Who
221 NW 10th Ave. Mel Brown Septet; Ron Howard & Paul Mazzio
Roseland Theater
Mississippi Studios
Rontoms
8 NW 6th Ave Pennywise, Strung Out, Unwritten Law, Runaway Kids
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas, Tancred
The Secret Society
8 NW 6th Ave Thievery Corporation, That 1 Guy
116 NE Russell St Steve James, Ernie Hawkins, Suzy Thompson, Mary Flower
Twilight Cafe and Bar
1420 SE Powell Ghost Wolves/Gentle Bender/Silver Ships/Black Fruit
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St Sound Judgment Festival
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. Peaches
MON. OCT. 3 Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St Dwight Church, Dwight Dickinson, Jake Cline, Wolf Song Dickinson, Bad Sex
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Cymbals Eat Guitars, Field Mouse, Wildhoney
Roseland Theater
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave. PIG with En Esch, Peter Turns Pirate & Dead Animal Assembly Plant
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Ultra Magnetic
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Jimmy Russell’s Party City 2034
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St Hang the Old Year, Phantom Family, Aradia
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave Pointed Man Band – Flight of the Blue Whale
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St Sound Judgment Festival: Cool American, Helens, Adult Mauling, Wet Trident
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
37
MUSIC COURTESY OF DJ EVIL ONE
NEEDLE EXCHANGE
DJ Evil One Years DJing: 18 years.
Genre: The clichéd answer—everything. I particularly enjoy classic hip-hop, funk, soul and disco. Where you can catch me regularly: I usually like to pop up at Tube, Fortune or Revelry a few times a month. [Editor’s note—DJ Evil One, aka Eric Bowler, owns all three establishments.] Craziest gig: At this party in L.A. called AFEX that I used to cover for Adam 12 when he would go on the road, I got the call that I was going to be playing for Special Ed and that B-Real was doing a DJ set after me. I’m not entirely sure how it went down, but I started juggling the original sample for “Hits From the Bong,” aka Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man,” and B-Real just grabbed the mic and we did an impromptu Cypress Hill show to a really intimate crowd. Kid from Kid ’n Play was in the booth that night, too. The young hip-hop head in me was so insanely hyped! My go-to records: D’Angelo, “Devil’s Pie”; Q-Tip, “Let’s Ride”; Jaylib, “Starz.” Don’t ever ask me to play: “The Cupid Shuffle.” NEXT GIG: DJ Evil One spins at Revelry, 210 SE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., on Thursday, Sept. 29.
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St, Wake The Town
The Lovecraft Bar
WED. SEPT. 28 45 East
315 SE 3rd Ave FKJ
Beech Street Parlor 412 NE Beech Street Freeform DJs
Killingsworth Dynasty 832 N Killingsworth St Sensoria w/ DJ Felix
Sandy Hut
1430 NE Sandy Blvd. DJ Hot Lips
The Embers Avenue 100 NW Broadway Knochen Tanz
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Event Horizon (darkwave, industrial, synth)
38
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
Whiskey Bar
31 NW 1st Ave Contact w/ Gangsigns and Token
421 SE Grand Ave Shadowplay: 10 Year Anniversary! (goth, industrial)
FRI. SEPT. 30 45 East
THURS. SEPT. 29 Beech Street Parlor 412 NE Beech Street DJ Eldorado
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave. Dirty Red (soul, r&b)
Gold Dust Meridian
3267 SE Hawthorne Blvd. DJ Buzzkill
315 SE 3rd Ave Audien, Darrius, Night City
Black Book
20 NW 3rd Ave The Cave w/ Massacooramaan (rap)
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St 80s Video Dance Attack
Moloko
Evergreen at Loyal Legion
The Embers Avenue
Gold Dust Meridian
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. Sappho (disco) 100 NW Broadway Thursday Electronic
618 SE Alder St. Brodinski 3267 SE Hawthorne Blvd. DJ Mudslide McBride
WILLAMETTE WEEK & HOLOCENE PRESENT
Where to drink this week.
HENRY CROMETT
BAR REVIEW
1.
Dame
2930 NE Killingsworth St., damerestaurant.com. The wine list at Dame, which opened recently, already makes it Portland’s most interesting wine destination, home to the finest natural-wine list within 500 miles.
2.
Rae’s Lakeview Lounge
1900 NW 27th Ave., 503-719-6494. Rae’s offers $1 mimosas Saturday and Sunday mornings, $1 Rainiers after 9 pm weekdays and $1 High Life till 6 pm daily. If you can’t see the lake from the patio, just wait until the lake is in your mind.
3.
Bartini
2108 NW Glisan St., 503-224-7919, bartinipdx.com. Bartini is basic in the best way—a place whose logo makes it looks like it houses Jazzercise, and where before 6:30 pm and after 10 pm a martini glass will come full of mintsprigged liquor for $4, and full of brie-topped mashed potatoes for a mere $3.
4.
Gil’s Speakeasy Tavern
609 SE Taylor St., 503-234-8991, gils-speakeasy.com. It’s easy to forget about Gil’s, the basement lounge hidden under an apartment building in a residential complex. But when you remember, you end up there on $1 sloppy joe night—which is an unturndownable dare if we ever heard one.
5.
Century
930 SE Sandy Blvd., centurybarpdx.com. Century is the sports bar with the best hair in all of Portland, and also the best shirts and pants, the best roof, and the best latehours nightclub.
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Snap! 90s Dance Party
Killingsworth Dynasty
832 N Killingsworth St Electric Dreams w/ DJ Drew Groove & DJ Acid Rick (80s new wave, synthpop)
Moloko
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. Klavical (modern soul, heavy breaks, hip hop)
Saucebox
214 N Broadway St LeMove & Friends
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave The Get Down
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Soul Stew (funk, soul, disco)
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Infinity Mirror (live hardware & cascadian occult techno)
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St Street Player EP Release Party w/ The Liquid Beat DJs
PIGGY BURGER: Brand-new North Killingsworth bar Backyard Social (1914 N Killingsworth St., 503-719-4316) is not the Hop & Vine, co-owner Danielle Healey wants to make very clear. Until this summer, that’s what the place was called. The somewhat eccentric craft-beerand-wine bar—best known for its burger and big back patio—closed this July, and that same month the new bar was announced, started by Healey and two former Hop & Vine chefs, Latima Chambers and Emory Brun (recently sous chef at Besaw’s). So the staff, by and large, is the same. You still order from a chalkboard menu on the wall behind the bar, and the back patio is still a bamboo bower punctuated by rows of picnic tables. You still get pleasant wafts of charcoal from the alwaysfired grill, and the beer list still skews eccentric, including a fresh-hop sour IPA and Ballast Point orange vanilla. But the walls have been repainted a sort of club-vibe gray and the liquor shelves rebuilt into a series of Kinfolk-ian wall boxes. The brioche-bunned burger ($10) is now dripping with American cheese and topped with pork confit, arugula, onion-aioli “awesome sauce” and housemade pickles. The dinner menu has been upgraded to include $14 hanger steak and a $13 plate of smoked pork ribs. Soon, Healey says, the back patio will be rebuilt into an Edenic event space where—who knows?—you might get married one day. The emptied bottle shop next door, largely unused when it was the Hop & Vine, has likewise opened up as an event space. Three weeks after opening, Backyard Social is still as much concept as realized vision. But that patio still feels like Mom’s backyard, and while the sun’s still out, that’s where everybody sits. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. SAT. OCT. 1 45 East
315 SE 3rd Ave Matt Lange
Crush Bar
1400 SE Morrison Pants OFF Dance OFF: Monster Mash Up
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St Come As You Are 90s Dance Flashback
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Family
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St Sugar Town: Spellbound (vintage soul)
Moloko
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. Roane (hip hop, soul, boogie)
Saucebox
214 N Broadway St Gothsauce w/ DJ Dark Entries (nu-wave, goth, darkwave)
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ OverCol
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St, Squid Thing
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Expressway to Yr Skull w/ MISPRID (shoegaze, goth)
SUN. OCT. 2 Star Theater
1305 SE 8th Ave East Bridge Club: Aaron Davis (Acid Camp, LA)
8:30PM
FREE
21+
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Metal Monday w/ DJ Cranium
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Black Mass (goth, industrial)
TUES. OCT. 4 Black Book
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Bonecrusher
White Owl Social Club
OCT 13TH
RASHEED JAMAL DJ LAMAR LEROY
511 NW Couch St. Reagan-o-mix (80s)
The Embers Avenue
421 SE Grand Ave Sad Day w/ Buckmaster
FRINGE CLASS
MON. OCT. 3
20 NW 3rd Ave Pop Out (dance party)
The Lovecraft Bar
PHONE CALL A L B U M R E L E A S E PA R T Y !
Ground Kontrol
13 NW 6th Ave. Church of Hive (goth, industrial) 100 NW Broadway Latino Night (latin, cubono, salsa)
FEATURING:
Star Bar
The Embers Avenue 100 NW Broadway Recycle (dark dance)
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Coma Toast (future, electro)
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Tubesdays
HOLOCENE - 1001 SE MORRISON Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
39
THURSDAY 9/29
KATAKLYSM, OTHRYS, AT THE SEAMS, TROJAN SWAMP MONSTER ALL AGES | 7PM | $12 ADV./ $15DOS
How Ca
n Be?
FRIDAY 9/30
REVIVE 80’S DANCE PARTY+ MUSIC WORKSHOP FUNDRAISER 21+ | 7PM | $50
WEDNESDAY 10/5 FRANKIE COSMOS, IJI, GUESTS ALL AGES | 7PM | $15ADV
FRIDAY 10/7
ONE YEAR
SATURDAY 10/8
PARTY
Anniversary
PDX RATED 21+ | $5-$15 ADV. BEARRACUDA PORTLAND BEARDLANDIA 2016 21+ | $6 B4 10PM $10AFTER 10PM
! At new location !
F R I DAY
SUNDAY 10/9
Sept. 30th
OCTOBER PAPERMOON CABARET *OOKY SPOOKY BURLESQUE* 21+ | $10-$20 ADV
DRINK SPECIALS & PRIZES!!!
UPCOMING SHOWS: CD BABY SHOWCASE-10/14 KRISTINE LEVINE & MISHKA SHUBALYCOMEDY-10/16
BARFLY AWARDS-10/17 BLOWPONY-10/22 FLESHED APOCALYPSE + ARKONA-11/17
CHECK US OUT AT BOSSANOVABALLROOM.COM
COME AND GET ‘EM BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Chapter & Verse
$13.95-CD/$28.95-LP
The musical companion to Springsteen’s autobiography is an 18-song collection that includes unreleased tracks from a teenaged Boss. Vinyl includes download code.
GIRAFFE TONGUE ORCHESTRA Broken Lines
$11.95-CD/$16.95-LP
Are you ready to ROCK? Giraffe Tongue includes Alice in Chains’ William DuVall, Mastodon’s Brent Hinds and Ben Weinman from Dillinger Escape Plan.
BON IVER 22, A Million
$11.95-CD/$21.95-reg.LP
Ten-track album is Justin Vernon’s follow up to his Grammy-winning Bon Iver Iver. Get an exclusive 12” on colored vinyl whilte supplies last. Available 9/30. Sale prices good thru 10/6/16
NEW RELEASES OUT NOW:
Warpaint • Beach Slang • How To Dress Well • Passenger • Ghost • Sword Devendra Banhart • Skylar Grey • Hamilton Leithauser (The Walkmen) Idina Menzel • John Scofield • Dwight Yoakam • Shawn Mendes Rachel Yamagata • Billy Bragg/Joe Henry • Neurosis MORE THAN A RECORD STORE! WE HAVE TURNTABLES, VINYL ACCESSORIES, POSTERS, HEADPHONES & MORE.
OPEN 10 A.M.-10 P.M. EVERYDAY • WWW.EVERYDAYMUSIC.COM 40
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
PERFORMANCE BRUD GILES
= 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: SHANNON GORMLEY. Theater: SHANNON GORMLEY (sgormley@wweek.com). Dance: SHANNON GORMLEY (dance@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: sgormley@wweek.com.
THEATER NEW LISTINGS
Hazardous Beauty
First premiered at this year’s Fertile Ground and updated for the election season, Hazardous Beauty is a dialogue between two women in a memoir-writing class. They’re instructed to give each other critical advice on their writing, and critiquing someone’s memoir is just as contentious as you might think. Things get personal as the two women work through their differences, difficulties, and their politics as well. Profile Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., profiletheatre.org. 7:30 pm Monday-Tuesday, Oct. 3-4. Free, donations welcome.
Jekyll and Hyde the Musical
Frank Wildhorn’s 1990 musical is a bit of an odd choice for a production: It generally gets at best mild reviews (OK, so it won a Tony or two, but so did The Phantom of the Opera). But it has a bit of a cult following, which isn’t that surprising considering it’s made up of the kind of stuff cult followings feed off of: Victorian costumes, good versus evil, horror kitsch, and showtunes. There is definitely a group of people that this stuff appeals to (particularly in Portland), so if that’s you, you’ll probably like it, critics be damned. Stumptown Stages, 1111 SW Broadway, stumptownstages. org. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 29-Oct. 16. $25-$40.
Looking for Tiger Lily
With the help of his drag persona Carla Rossi, Anthony Hudson explores his identity as a gay man of half-indigenous, half-white ancestry. Using short videos, Hudson’s family photos and the music of Cher, Hudson delves into the weirdness of experiencing half of his cultural heritage as invented by Disney movies and other forms of pop culture. A mix of humor and a genuine call to get woke, Hudson’s one man (sort of) show piqued interest when it premiered in short form at this year’s Risk/Reward Festival. The Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., hollywoodtheatre.org. 7:30 pm Friday, Sept. 30; 9:30 Saturday, Oct. 1. $15.
The Nether
In a twisted take on the dystopian play, The Nether follows Morris’s investigation of The Hideaway, a lush, secret garden-like virtual reality that’s meant for some seriously fucked-up stuff. With a plot that’s like a technology-age Bend Sinister, The Nether tests the boundaries of moral pragmatism, as well as our ideas about deviancy. Though previous productions of Jennifer Haley’s dark, weird, and thoroughly disturbing play have been accused of sensationalism, hopefully Third Rail can pull off a moral mind-fuck of a show so that it genuinely raises questions. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 503-231-9581. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Sept. 30-Oct. 22. $25-$42.50.
Richard III
Taking after the Royal National Theatre production and the Ian McKellen movie, Post5’s production of Richard III is set in an alternatehistory fascist England with Richard as its ruler. Though the adaption was originally intended to comment on the British political system, it’s hard to imagine Post5’s version won’t make itself available to comparisons of our
current election season. But even with political relevance aside, you don’t really need anyone to tell you to go see a production of Richard III. And Post5 know their Shakespeare, so at worst, it’s not like they’re going to screw it up. Post5 Theatre, 1666 SE Lambert St., post5theatre.org. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday, Sept. 30-Oct. 22. Additional show 7:30 Thursday, Oct. 20. $20 Friday-Sunday, pay what you will Thursday and Sunday.
ALSO PLAYING
Full Gallop
Triangle Productions takes on the immense personality that was fashion tastemaker Diana Vreeland. But instead of focusing on her decadespanning work at the likes of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, the play is a snapshot of Vreeland at a dinner party with friends after getting fired from Vogue and returning from a soulsearching trip to Europe. Full Gallop celebrates a powerful, charismatic woman who lived in a time when women were supposed to aspire to be June Cleaver. It’s also an optimistic show: the audience knows that its main character will emerge from her unemployment and uncertainty to do great things. The Sanctuary at Sandy Plaza, 1785 NE Sandy Blvd., trianglepro.org. 7:30 pm Thursday-Friday, through Oct. 8. 2 pm Oct. 2, no show Sept. 30. $15-$35.
The Gun Show
These are only five gun stories out of all America’s gun stories, says local playwright EM Lewis. That’s been enough. Her Gun Show has toured cities notorious for armed violence— L.A., Chicago, New Jersey—since it’s 2014 debut. Here, in it’s Northwest premiere, Portland actor Vin Shambry (who was voted Portland’s Best Actor in WW’s Best of Portland Reader’s Poll) presents Lewis’s five stories as a one-man show. Talk-backs after each performance give audiences a chance to share their own gun stories, and an accompanying art installation in the lobby means the performance is guaranteed to keep engaging you even after you leave your seat. CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., Portland OR 97210. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday through Oct 1. $20-$28.
Steel Magnolias
A Southern beauty salon filled with lightning-fast repartee and verbal jousting becomes a surrogate for the entire world in this classic by Robert Harling. We get hen fights, tragedy and moral uplift. That’s from the script. From Clackamas Rep, you can expect consistency and familyfriendly entertainment. At this point in the summer, if you’re not up for existential crisis at Imago Theater, this might be your best bet on stage. Osterman Theatre, 19600 Molalla Ave., Oregon City, 503- 594-6047. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday and 2:30 pm Sunday, Sept. 29-Oct. 2. $12-$30.
Trevor
From Orange is the New Black writer Nick Jones, this comi-drama centers around a 200-pound chimp. As the animal, who was once a famous performer, tries to communicate with the people around him, both he and the humans speak in broken English and gibberish to highlight the animal/human communication barrier. Trevor once starred beside
CONT. on page 42
MEMORY IS A POET: Victor Mack portraying August Wilson.
REVIEW
Immutable Characteristics
HOW I LEARNED WHAT I LEARNED IS A FEAT OF ACTING AND A PERSPECTIVE PORTLAND NEEDS.
lem by switching between channeling Wilson and inhabiting the scenes he recalls, like when he uses a stool to mime fending off a friend’s wife who came at him with a knife. But there are also Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that it is moments when he speaks with a dreamy dislegal to discriminate against job candidates with tance, or searchingly pauses after a particularly dreadlocks. The court ruled that dreadlocks, powerful line and looks as if he’s surprised at the along with effectively any other traditional poetry that just came out of his mouth. The lighting and music are just about the only black hair style, are not “immutable physical characteristics.” external aid Mack gets in telling his story, and That phrase, “immutable physical charac- they’re hugely effective. At one point, the stage teristics,” rings in your ears as Victor Mack lights turn a warm orange as a scratchy, old New stands on stage wearing a shirt that reads “I am Orleans record starts to play, and Mack dances supposed to be white” in Portland Playhouse’s along as if in a trance. When the song stops, he production of August Wilson’s How I looks for a moment like he’s just woken up Learned What I Learned. Directed from a good dream and realized it was only in his head. A later scene— by Kevin Jones, this producwhere Mack inhabits the time tion is the first time How I “HE WAS Wilson stood in a large crowd Learned has been put on by outside a Pittsburgh club to both a black director and a WILLING TO black actor, according to listen to John Coltrane play through the walls—is perhaps the Playhouse. As Wilson, ACCEPT ME AS even more remarkable in its Mack tells a story of a LONG AS I WAS ability to create a vivid setting white man who once told with nothing more than Mack, him that he didn’t see color. WEARING THIS a Coltrane song, and relatively When Wilson asked why he only chose to share that simple lighting. T-SHIRT” At the en d of i t all, after he doesn’t “see color” with a black man, the man responded recounting time and again how he that Wilson was being “sensitive.” refused to make even seemly small “He was willing to accept me as long concessions to not-so-subtle racism, Mack as Wilson gets to stand with his back to the as I was wearing this T-shirt,” says Mack. The autobiographical monologue strings audience, and watch the titles of his esteemed together scenes from Wilson’s life: people that plays projected in typewriter font across a inspired him growing up in Pittsburgh’s Hill myriad of hanging blank pages that make up District as well as moments when he refused to the stage’s backdrop. Though it’s a triumphant be complicit in the face of discrimination. It’s ending to a play full of hope, it doesn’t leave you a marathon: the actor who plays Wilson has to feeling that everything ’s OK, but that difficult monologue for a full 90 minutes. Moreover, he things are often what are most worth attaining. has to pretend to be a man recalling his past, SHANNON GORMLEY. while at the same time not acting exactly like a man recalling his past for a full hour and a half SEE IT: How I Learned What I Learned plays at Portland Playhouse, 602 NE Prescott St., (because frankly, that would be a little boring). portlandplayhouse.org. 7:30 pm WednesdayBut Mack, who’s now acted in all but one of Saturday, 2 pm Sunday. Through Oct. 23. Wilson’s 10-play Century Cycle, solves the prob- $5-$34. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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PERFORMANCE Morgan Fairchild. He now has a human mom and family. It’s hilarious to watch...until it’s really, really not. With Trevor Jones takes aim at the lies we humans tell ourselves with the adamancy of Palahniuk circa Fight Club and the inventiveness of Enda Walsh. The theater extended the show’s run once. We suggest buying your tickets in advance. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 503-241-1278. 7:30 Wednesday-Saturday, 2 and 7:30 pm Sunday, through Oct. 9. $25-$50.
FRIDAY, SEPT. 30 Trevor Noah
Everybody loves to not care about Trevor Noah. Noah’s takeover of The Daily Show has put him at the center of a lot of disappointment, partly just because he’s not Jon Stewart and nobody else ever fucking will be. Despite the fact that Noah seems like he’s struggling to find his place under Jon Stewart’s enormous shadow, his
standup has always been at worst decent. It’s equally poignant and absurd, and makes use of the global perspective The Daily Show supposedly hired him for. No, he’s not Jon Stewart, but he can be pretty funny in his own right. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1111 SW Broadway, portland5.com. 7:30 pm. $35-$55.
For more Performance listings, visit
REVIEW
DANCE L LOY D L E M M E R M A N
Frankenstein Cabaret
Clinton Street Theater takes up Frankenstein Cabaret, the Broken Planetarium production that premiered at this year’s Fertile Ground. The part-cabaret, part-folk-opera deals with female sexuality, which is sardonically represented by the monster. The cabaret addresses the problematic ways female sexuality is represented in our culture while simultaneously unleashing it on the audience, in a way that celebrates female sexuality free of consideration of the male gaze. Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., cstpdx.com. 8 pm WednesdayThursday, Sept. 28-29; 10 pm Friday, Sept. 30; 8 pm Saturday, Oct. 1; 2 pm Sunday, Oct. 2. $20 adults, $15 students and seniors.
COME INSIDE FESTIVAL PICKS SMUT Slam
A R T I S T S R E P E R T O R Y T H E AT R E
Have you gotten “down and dirty,” or at least had your heart broken into a million little pieces? Feel free to exaggerate and tell a bunch of random people who live in the same city as you. The Headwaters Theatre, 55 NE Farragut St., dancenakedproductions.com. 9:15 pm Sunday, Oct. 2. $15 advance, $20 day of show.
In Search of Cruise Control
What’s more complicated: losing your virginity at an age when your peers experience early rumblings of a midlife crisis, or losing your virginity as a middle-aged man and then being rendered the duty of giving the sex talk to your teenaged nephew? Probably the first part, but the whole thing is still awkward enough to ensure desirable ticket sales. The Headwaters Theatre, 55 NE Farragut St., dancenakedproductions.com. 9 pm Thursday, 7 pm Friday, 4 pm Saturday, 6 pm Sunday, Sept. 29-Oct. 2. $15 advance, $20 day of show.
COMEDY & VARIETY THURSDAY, SEPT. 29 Bianca Del Rio
by
Bess Wohl Shawn Lee
directed by
This post-recession, comedic commentary embraces the humor in misery, the creativity in despair and the ingenuity of the human spirit.
STARTS OCT 4 TICKETS ON SALE NOW! SEASON SPONSORS:
a r t i s t s r e p .o r g 503. 241 .1 278
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Bianca Del Rio is like the personification of humor’s mean side—which, let’s face it, most of us have. Instead of story/setup/ punch line, the RuPaul’s Drag Race season six winner’s comedy is mainly just a series of drag-culture-centric insults. Her last tour, Rolodex of Hate, was very much what it sounds like: Del Rio going through a list of things she hates, from sugar daddies and their sugar babies to drag queens that don’t wear fake breasts. The material in her current show, Not Today Satan, breaks away from her normal mode of straight insults and focuses on her post-RuPaul fame. Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 503-248-4335. 8 pm. $37.50.
Kelly Nesbitt in Cosmic Fucks.
Let’s Talk About Sex Come Inside Festival bares it all without ever showcasing any body parts.
T h e s e c o n d e ve r C o m e Inside: A Sex & Culture Theater Festival is like a casual hookup with your FWB: you can play games, drink booze to ease your nerves, and perhaps even make a fool of yourself in public. “It’s hard to find a lot of sex-positive shows that travel to Portland,” says Eleanor O’Brien, founder of Come Inside. “When you have conversations with people on the topic of sexuality, it turns into intimacy.” Returning after its first stint in 2013—when it was presumed DOA—the Come Inside Festival allows you to celebrate some of your sincerest insecurities. A mixed bag of theatrical storytelling, singing and staged readings, it’s like the walk of shame with 40 people by your side. Here, sex (even bad sex) is seen as a rite of passage. The festival is sprawled out over 11 days and features nine sex-themed shows, about double the number of performances as round one in 2013. Please note: There will be no actual sexual acts performed publicly during this festival. But, as you might expect, its content is hardly PG-13. At times, the Come Inside Festival acts as a safe space for boldness, allowing a live audience to collectively cringe. At “Phone Whore,” you can listen in on the live ramblings of a sex phone operator who may express nostalgia for some of your own late-night sexting sessions. Other shows, like “In Search of Cruise Control,” touch on hard-hitting issues like sexual abuse. Then there are pieces like “‘Ze’: queer as fuck,” which attempt to shade your high school sex education by speaking out on topics like gender fluidity. The festival kicks off with a visit from the nationally celebrated “Bawdy Storytelling” at the Star Theater, which is essentially a sexually frustrated version of The Moth. The Come Inside Festival celebrates the relatable, human properties of sex itself, but also the idiosyncrasies that surround one’s individual sexual identity. At Come Inside, you’re in good company. As it turns out, a lot more of us started out by placing the condom on the wrong end of the banana than we might have previously suspected. JACK RUSHALL. SEE IT: Come Inside: A Sex & Culture Theater Festival runs Sept. 28-Oct. 8. See dancenakedproductions.com for schedule.
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VISUAL ARTS P R I VAT E C O L L E C T I O N O F M I C h A E L - J Ay R O B I N S O N A N D J O h N G O O D W I N
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By JENNIFER RABIN. 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: espitz@wweek.com.
Morocco Photos 2015
There is a place in northern Morocco nicknamed “the blue city” because of the cobalt wash applied to the exteriors of homes. It is believed that the tradition began when the Jews immigrated there, applying the pigment as a way to mirror the heavens, reminding them to live a life of reverence. Portland-based photographer Stu Levy brings back from the blue city a series of photographs suffused with that impossibly rich color and with the history of place. Augen Gallery, 716 NW Davis St., 503546-5056. Through Oct. 1.
Escape
We have all fantasized about running away, about leaving behind our troubles and shedding the conventions of society. Russian documentary photographer Danila Tkachenko’s tells the story of a group of men who have done just that, who have fled civilization for the wilderness of Eastern Europe to live in hermitic solitude. Tkachenko’s series of color portraits captures each individual in their surroundings, and gives the viewer a window into the ways that they live, apart from the rest of us. Blue Sky Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 503-225-0210. Through Oct. 2.
See Me See You
Artist Samantha Wall, who was included in this year’s Contemporary Northwest Art Award exhibition at Portland Art Museum, continues her arresting large-scale work with a new series of portraits. The life-sized monochromatic drawings and prints seek to explore the discordant nature of being a woman of color, specifically the experience of being simultaneously invisible and hypervisible. Wall, who is of Korean descent, experiments with materials, making aqueous drawings into which black ink is introduced. The resulting lines and waves and eddies created when the pigment hits the water give the figures a texture not unlike the surface of the earth. Laura Russo Gallery, 805 NW 21st Ave., 503-226-2754. Through Oct. 1.
When We Dead Awaken II
In one of Elizabeth Malaska’s collage-like paintings, a bikini-clad woman lies in a seductive pose holding an automatic weapon, while statues of headless Rubenesque women, displayed classically and passively, stand on plinths in the background. On another canvas, Malaska depicts the split nature of female representation more literally: half of the figure is seductively posed, one arm behind her head, her breast exposed, her foot on pointed toe. The other half is fully clothed, standing strong, foot planted firmly beneath her. In all of her pieces, Malaska plays with forced perspective, flattening certain figures and objects while others remain true, a technique that supports her commentary on the perception and representation of women in art over time. Nationale, 3360 SE Division St., 503-477-9786. Through Oct. 10.
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MaMMy by Andy WArHol, PArt of The Soul of Black arT
The Soul of Black Art: A Collector’s View
Upfor’s third anniversary exhibition is guest curated by collector John Goodwin, who presents to us a survey of the depictions of black culture over the past century. The pieces range from abstract expressionist collage to black-and-white photos and the artists stretch from Andy Warhol to Portland’s own Arvie Smith who currently has a solo exhibition at Portland Art Museum. Through the work of these artists, who are separated by race, era and geography, we get a deeper understanding of how the passing of time changes our perceptions and our culture. Upfor Gallery, 929 NW Flanders St., 503-227-5111. Through Oct. 15.
Rhetorical Geometry
Geometry is defined as the investigation of “shape, size, relative position of figures, and the properties of space.” It is finite and quantifiable. Chicago-based artist Liz Mares is interested in all of the same questions, but her inquiry is abstract and intuitive. “Everything starts with a line as the base, then each placement after is a relationship to the first,” she says. “There is never a plan, rather a feeling of connection. how does each line, color and form speak to the other? The end result is either a harmony or a conflict.” Mares works with acrylic and ink in her smallscale 2-D pieces to explore ideas of relational balance and discord. Wolff Gallery, 618 NW Glisan St., Suite R1, 971-413-1340. Through Oct. 1.
Selected Works
If ever there was a love poem to the sea, it is José Diniz’s series of photographs, Selected Works. By making only black-and-white images of the ocean, Diniz eliminates the distraction of color, the turquoises and teals and aquas that draw our minds to memories of vacations or postcards or surf magazines. Instead, he gives us images
of people and land through the eyes of the water, and images of water— broody, frothing, calm, rippled— through the eyes of people and the land. Blue Sky Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 503-225-0210. Through Oct. 2.
In the Eye of the Beholder
The sculpture facing the door in Tanya Batura’s exhibition looks like a classical bust shrouded in white fabric, tied at the neck with a bow, head tilted to one side. It offers no indication of the gorgeous monstrosities waiting beyond. Keep walking through the gallery and you will see heads that look like pathology textbooks come to life. Batura plays with form and deformity, managing to create graceful lines that are pleasing to the eye and will simultaneously cause you to recoil. Batura’s body of work calls aesthetics into question as you reconcile the beauty in the grotesque. Hap Gallery, 916 NW Flanders St., 503-444-7101. Through Oct 1.
Material Witness
If you only have time for one gallery show between now and the end of October, go see what sculptor Ellen Wishnetsky-Mueller is capable of doing with felt and steel. In a mixture of small-scale wall-hung works and large-scale installation pieces, she gives us the interplay between the disparate natures of fabric and metal: softness and hardness, masculine and feminine, malleable and inflexible. This would be enough to make the work compelling, but Wishnetsky-Mueller’s mastery comes from her ability, in certain sculptures, to turn her materials on their ear by manipulating steel to look like fabric and giving felt an unyielding quality. Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art, 2219 NW Raleigh St., 503-544-3449. Through Oct. 29.
For more Visual Arts listings, visit
BOOKS = WW Pick. Highly recommended. BY ZACH MIDDLETON. 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.
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 28 Sandra Vischer
A messy divorce and a rebellious teen have left Alex Fisher reeling in the middle years of her life. Her struggle back to her feet takes her across the Caribbean, through Utah, down to Peru, and back home. Portland author Sandra Vischer reads from her debut novel, The Unliving Dream, which in many ways parallels her own life story. Annie Bloom’s Books, 7834 SW Capitol Highway, 503-246-0053. 7 pm. Free.
Dark Horse’s Mike Richardson
volcanic cultural forces. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
TUESDAY, OCT. 4
MONDAY, OCT. 3
The Columbia River Gorge is home to a lacework of trails and country roads, and is dotted with wineries, breweries, restaurants and historical sites you might never find on your own. The new guidebook Columbia Gorge Getaways by local guidebook guru Laura O. Foster (author of Portland City Walks, Portland Hill Walks, and The Portland Stairs Book) compiles a nearly comprehensive list of attractions along this 80-mile stretch of world-class geography. Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, 503-284-1726. 7 pm. Free.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
A Kenyan novelist, journalist and playwright whose disruptive work once put him in prison, Ngugi wa Thiong’o has since been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. After his family was torn apart by the Mau Mau War, Ngugi enrolled in college in Kampala, Uganda. His newest autobiographical work, Birth of a Dream Weaver, tracks his formative college experience as he first discovered the potential of the written word. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
Columbia Gorge Getaways
For more Books listings, visit
REVIEW
Regular readers of WW will likely remember our recent oral history of Dark Horse Comics, the Milwaukie comic company that advocates for independent author rights and rose to the forefront in a landscape dominated by DC and Marvel. Dark Horse Comics founder Mike Richardson will explain exactly how his influential company came about and how he helped put Portland on the map in the comics world. Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Ave., 503-2221741. Noon. Free.
Susan Faludi
If you’ve ever had a parent make a big life change, perhaps going vegan after a life of carnivorism, or changing careers late in life, it can be easy to wonder if you ever really understood that parent to begin with. Imagine, then, if your 76-year-old estranged father, whom you had long come to know as a violent and dangerous man, received gender reassignment surgery. Pulitzer Prize-winning feminist author Susan Faludi explores this story (which happened in her own life) and our modern concept of identity in her new memoir, In the Darkroom. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
THURSDAY, SEPT. 29 Colleen Houck
In the first installment of Salem author Colleen Houck’s Reawakened series, teenager Lily had a grand time traveling across the world with sun prince Amon. In Recreated, the two are forced to part ways, and Amon takes the most melodramatic course of action possible by banishing himself to literal hell. It’s then left to Lily to travel to the underworld to save Amon from himself so he can save the human race from its enemies. Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., 800-878-7323. 7 pm. Free.
Josefine Klougart
With four critically praised novels and multiple books of poetry, Danish writer Josefine Klougart has already established herself in Scandinavia as one of the most exciting young literary voices. Now with the release of a new translation of her 2012 novel One of Us Is Sleeping, her fiction is available for the first time in English. Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
iO Tillett Wright
Growing up in the New York City of the 1980s, when Basquiat was walking the streets with Warhol, and when art and self-expression were seeing a renaissance in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, iO Tillett Wright learned early on that fitting in isn’t required. Although born with female anatomy, Wright started presenting as a boy named Ricky at age 6. Meanwhile, his model and showgirl mother dictated the tone of the house, both accepting Wright’s gender identity and domineering him with emotional and substance abuse. Darling Days is Wright’s new memoir about developing identity among
Jonathan Safran Foer, HERE I AM
Jonathan Safran Foer is one of the most gifted prose stylists of his generation, and one of its most ambitious novelists. While still in his early 20s, he received a half-million-dollar advance for his 2002 debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated, which slips from Ukrainian nouveau-riche farce to sustained elegy for the Holocaust. His second, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, took on 9/11 in the voice of a precocious child. But in recent interviews, Foer has said he considers his new fourth novel, Here I Am (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 592 pages, $28), to be his very first book. Compared to the precious and ebullient prose of his earlier books, it would certainly seem to be his entree into a new adult seriousness: a nearly 600-page cement block of upper-upper-middleclass realism set against the distant backdrop of Israel’s destruction. Here I Am tells the story of frustrated ex-novelist Jacob Bloch— sexless, joy-free, literally impotent and unable to be present in his marriage—who, in an uncomfortable parallel to Foer’s own rumored history with Natalie Portman, is caught sexting an actress. The Blochs’ son Sam is also absent to his family, preferring to live in an online world whose currency comes in the form of “resilience flowers.” Benjy, the youngest, is a precocious child—prone to uttering Tumblr-worthy profundities like “Why isn’t falling the epitome of life?” The exposition comes mostly in long trains of dialogue so on the nose it often makes the novel clownish: “I would have respected you so much more if you’d fucked her,” says Jacob’s wife, Julia. “It would have proven something to me that I have found harder and harder to believe…that you’re a human being.” But if you’re unable to care about the tedious Blochs and their interminable anomie, their intimate flashbacks about how they could once give each other orgasms just with their eyes, no worries. Turns out, Jacob’s troubled marriage is actually an extended metaphor for the state of American Jewishness. The novel’s title is both commentary on Jacob and a statement of Abraham’s impossible double love for God and the son he’s about to sacrifice to God. “Jacob,” meanwhile, is a hand-me-down euphemism for “Israel.” Even their grotesquely sick and uneuthanized dog is a metaphor. Their grandfather’s suicide is a metaphor. Only the suffering is real. Unfortunately, it belongs to the reader. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. GO: Jonathan Safran Foer reads at Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, powells.com, on Friday, Sept. 30. 7 pm. Free.
PORTLAND’5 PRESENTS + PRESENT
For more information & tickets visit portland5.com
800.273.1530 | Portland’5 Box Office | TicketsWest Outlets Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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— NECTAR PRESENTS —
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
E M I LY J O A N G R E E N E
MOVIES GET YO UR R E PS IN
Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996)
Huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh. Heheheheheheheheheheheheheh. Academy Theater. Sept. 28-29.
CO U R T E SY O F PA R A M O U N T P I C T U R E S ; CO U R T E SY O F U N I V E R S A L P I C T U R E S
If you are between the ages of 24 and 30, Mark Waters’ Mean Girls probably played a formative role in your teenage development. The story of home-schooled, 16-yearold Cady Heron’s (Lindsay Lohan) plunge into suburban high school and recruitment into the tyrannical it-girl posse the Plastics (Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried and a pre-vape Rachel McAdams) is usually treated as the MySpace generation’s preeminent entry into the highschool canon. New WW intern Bennett Campbell Ferguson has a different take: The “everyone is just as insecure as each other, so let’s all get along” lesson is bullshit, and the cathartic release comes from watching the mean girls suffer. Teen classic or revenge flick? You be the judge. Mission Theater. Oct. 3 and 5.
“It’s High Noon, but in high school,” says Neale about Phil Joanou’s semi-autobiographical high-school comedy. In Three O’Clock High, a flop since reborn into a minor cult favorite, a misunderstanding between a high-school newspaper reporter and a bully leads to a parking-lot showdown after school in the style of the 1952 Western. “It’s super-stylish, and very funny,” Neale says. “This is a title I’d never heard of before last year, when I watched it with some friends at home. Perhaps I had just the right amount of beer in me, but it’s the most fun I’ve had at a home screening in a while.” (1987), Nov. 18-20
The Thing (1982)
Mean Girls (2004)
(1987),
Sept. 30-Oct. 2
Ishtar
5TH AVENUE CREW: (From left) Shannon Neale, Amy Epperson and Dan Molloy.
Speaking of cult classics, John Carpenter’s The Thing is as famous for its critical panning— Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it “a foolish, depressing, overproduced movie” that “aspired to be the quintessential moron movie of the ’80s”—as it is for being one of the best horror movies of all time. Kurt Russell and company are trapped on an Antarctic research base, desperately trying to stop a shape-shifting alien life form from escaping to civilization and ending life on Earth as we know it. The bloodtest scene will have you on the edge of your seat. Academy Theater. Sept. 30-Oct. 6.
Three O’Clock High
Pleading the 5th PSU’S STUDENT PROJECTIONISTS AND PROGRAMMERS SHOWCASE FLOPS AND QUIET CLASSICS FOR THEIR FALL 2016 SEASON. BY WALK ER M AC M U R DO
Coens’ breakthrough picture and for failing to recoup the $9 million it cost to make. This season is a big one for the theater, with this 5th Avenue Cinema ain’t much to look at. year’s crop of programmers not only douAside from the Smurf-sized marquee, it bling the number of films they’re showing resembles a Carter-era administrative office. from 10 to 20 but also working with a new Inside are two auditoriums with all the gray reel-to-reel projection system. glamour of lecture halls—which, during the “My heart’s racing just thinking about it,” day, they are. The theater’s office looks (and says lead projectionist Shannon Neale. “It’s going to be a lot of work, a lot of film handling, smells) like the living room of a punk house. But it’s one of the few places you can learn to but we’re confident and we hope that a lot of operate 16 mm and 35 mm projectors, handle people are going to come to the films.” film stock and understand the 5th Avenue—formerly PSU’s bookstore—was converted into business of managing a repertory theater. The popcorn is always niche market Cine-Mini “I’VE GOT A the theater in 1970 under Larry free, and the programming includes some of the most unusuFONDNESS Moyer, the lesser-known brothal movies you’ll find on a Portland er of now-deceased Portland FOR real estate and movie theater movie screen. This season’s soft theme, for example, is “flops.” BOX-OFFICE magnate Tom Moyer. Moyer bequeathed 5th Avenue to PSU “I like an ambitious movie FLOPS.” in 1989 to be run as a nonprofit. that for some reason was not received well in its day,” says Since then, 5th Avenue has been Dan Molloy, the 20-year-old managed by students like Neale projectionist who started at 5th Avenue over and Molloy, who are responsible for prothe summer. “This season, our program is gramming and operation of the theater. To kick off 5th Avenue Cinema’s fall guided by what we feel strongly about, and season, I asked Neale and Molloy to pick I’ve got a fondness for box-office flops.” On Sept. 30, 5th Avenue is kicking off some of their favorites from this season’s its fall 2016 program with the Coen broth- program. Here are three films you should ers’ 1991 Palme d’Or-winning Barton Fink, watch at 5th Avenue this fall after you see a critical darling notable both for being the Barton Fink this Saturday at 7 pm. wmacmurdo@wweek.com
“Ishtar is one of the films that I listed that recently made an impact on me when I applied for this job,” says Molloy about Elaine May’s legendary flop. A comedy about two hard-luck musicians who travel to a fictional country in the Middle East for a job, Ishtar was doomed from the start by enough production disasters, on-set infighting and bad press to warrant a dramatization of its own. The film infamously ran $30 million over budget and was brutally panned by critics, getting called “a lifeless, massive, lumbering exercise in failed comedy” by Roger Ebert. “People thought it was the worst movie ever when it came out because it was ravaged by bad production stories, but Ishtar is actually hilarious and gloriously stupid,” Molloy adds. “It’s a big, insane, globetrotting comedy with amazing performances by Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. I’m excited to see people’s reactions to this movie, because many people will come to it knowing that it is a notorious bomb.”
The Long Day Closes
(1992),
Dec. 2-4
Not every film 5th Avenue is screening this season bombed. Set in postwar Liverpool, this quiet drama from English director Terence Davies about an 11-year-old boy and his family has recently been reappraised as a deeply important part of queer cinema, being called “the greatest gay film ever made” by critic Armond White in 2015. “The Long Day Closes is a seemingly unknown queer cinema masterpiece,” Neale says. “I first happened upon it at the Cleveland Cinematheque because its director, Sir John Ewing, listed it as one of his personal favorites. The film is completely alive with an atmosphere billowing underneath its loose narrative, capturing the way things feel and look when you’re small: the way you would stare at the rug in the living room, or the way the metal prongs of the railing project the shadows over your porch. I want to share this movie with everyone, though not everyone will appreciate a film this tender.” SEE IT: 5th Avenue Cinema’s fall program begins Sept. 30, with Barton Fink screening at 7 pm. See 5thavecinema.com for showtimes. Free for PSU students, staff, faculty and alumni; $3 for other students and seniors; $4 general admission.
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#wweek #wweek
MOVIES = WW Pick. Highly recommended. Editor: WALKER MACMURDO. 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.
FILM SCREENINGS
THIS WEEK—SEPTEMBER 28-OCTOBER 4 All shows held at the Whitsell Auditorium 1219 SW Park Avenue.
Wednesday, September 28
Saturday, October 1
7 pm Abortion: Stories Women Tell dir. Tracy Droz Tragos, US, 2016
Thursday, September 29
7 pm The Insider dir. Michael Mann, US, 1999 - Probing exposé on big tobacco lobbying, whistleblowing, and journalistic “lesser evils.”
4 pm Hamlet Goes Business dir. Aki Kaurismäki, Finland, 1987 - An absurdist tongue-incheek noir take on Hamlet set in a rubber duck factory. 7 pm Je tu il elle dir. Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium, 1974 - Akerman’s first feature, an audacious exploration of intimacy in which the filmmaker is both behind and in front of the camera.
Friday, September 30
Sunday, October 2
5:30 pm His Girl Friday - Special admission $5 dir. Howard Hawks, US, 1940 - Wisecracking dialogue and romantic sparks fly between a hotshot reporter and her manipulative ex-husband. 8 pm Les rendez-vous d’Anna dir. Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium/West Germany Longtime collaborator Aurore Clément stars in Akerman’s study of a filmmaker on tour through Europe, focused on brief encounters with strangers.
4:30 pm Jheronimus Bosch—Touched by the Devil dir. Pieter van Huystee, Netherlands, 2015 - Art historians search the mysteries of Bosch’s fantastic imagery of heaven and hell. 7 pm Starship Troopers dir. Paul Verhoeven, US 1997 - Zany yet politically trenchant sci-fi dystopian tale of planetary alien invasion with a propagandistic bite. more films at
NWFILM.ORG
Album Release Event
DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
B+
Author: The JT LeRoy Story
When a mysterious, HIVpositive, queer former child prostitute going by the name JT LeRoy stormed onto the literary scene in 1999 with the staggering novel Sarah, celebrities lined up to harvest the cultural capital of being associated with such a fascinating figure. Everyone from the ever-lessrelevant Bono, to the fully irrelevant Courtney Love made sure to get photo ops with the new literary it boy. The only problem was that JT LeRoy was actually a persona (or delusion, or splintered personality) of Laura Albert, a New School-educated, middle-aged San Franciscan who had mostly failed at finding an audience for her fiction before creating the persona of LeRoy during a conversation with her therapist. In Author: The JT LeRoy Story, we see the elaborate (and possibly meta-artistic) plot Albert used to fashion her own fame out of whole cloth. ZACH MIDDLETON. Fox Tower.
Deepwater Horizon
C+ How do you make a movie about the worst oil disaster in U.S. history? If you’re director Peter Berg (Lone Survivor), you condense an environmentally devastating oil spill into an action blowout starring Mark Wahlberg as Mike Williams, a BP employee who escaped the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster that ultimately killed 11 people. As a disaster epic, Deepwater Horizon is too incoherent to be gripping and doesn’t acknowledge that the Deepwater tragedy not only gave rise to courage under oil and fire, but illustrated a primal truth: You mess with nature, nature messes back. PG-13. BEN FERGUSON. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Vancouver.
Jheronimus Bosch: Touched by the Devil
2016 marks the 500th anniversary of Jheronimus Bosch’s death, and this art history doc follows a team of Bosch experts who traveled the world for four years to find every single hellish creature in Bosch’s deeply elaborate paintings, delving deep into the creative process that spawned a hundred bird demons. Not screened for critics. NR. Living Room Theaters, Whitsell Auditorium.
Masterminds
Acoustic Performance from
Patterson Hood & Mike Cooley Saturday, October 1st at 4PM
Pre-buy the album to guarantee admission
AMERICAN BAND Out September 30th
Founded in 1996 by singer/songwriter/guitarists Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers have long held a progressive fire in their belly but with AMERICAN BAND, they have made the most explicitly political album in their extraordinary cannon.
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When a work crush ensorcells armored-truck driver David (Zach Galifianakis) into a committing a heist, he stumbles his way into stealing $17 million, is promptly betrayed, and must hide from the cops and a hit man while trying to set up the crooks who set him up. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Vancouver.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
B- According to Ransom Riggs, the author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,, the young adult bestseller was originally strung together as means of repurposing the author’s vintage photograph collection. If this narrative holds true, Tim Burton’s adaptation nearly ignores the dull business of storytelling altogether via expository plot dumps crumpled in between ever more fantastical evocations of ghoulish Victoriana. Once introduced to Jake (Asa Butterfield of Hugo and Ender’s Game)—a modern-day Floridian teen singularly
able to detect terrifying beasties known as Hollows—we’re given little understanding of why he must seek out his murdered grandpa’s old tweener-mutant academy, one hidden in Wales circa 1940 by a time-loop-manipulating, crossbowwielding, falcon-morphing headmistress Miss Peregrine (Eva Green). Nor are we given much reason to root along its defense against the eyeball-slurping Barron (Samuel L. Jackson as equal parts Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and velociraptor). Any other telling would surely have at least addressed the pitfalls of perpetual adolescence for freakish urchins driven to endlessly repeat the same day, but within Mr. Burton’s cinema for adult children, emotional maturity is the most transparent illusion of all. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
Mr. Pig
Kicking off Portland’s 10th annual Portland Latin American Film Festival is Diego Luna’s newest film, a story of a California pig farmer (a grandfatherly Danny Glover) attempting to smuggle his last pig across the border. Not screened for critics. NR. Hollywood.
Operation Avalanche B-
Neil Armstrong’s moon landing was faked in a scrappy CIA conspiracy, according to this gleefully silly mockumentary directed by Matt Johnson. In the film, Johnson stars as a secret agent named— why not?— Matt Johnson who, with his spectacled best friend Owen Williams (Owen Williams), concocts an elaborate scheme to fake the Apollo 11 mission using Stanley Kubrick-style special effects. As this con balloons into a fiasco, the film’s jittery cinematography grows irritating, but Johnson’s geeky performance is delightful, and the movie’s notion that two buffoons were behind history’s greatest space expedition is one of the year’s better gags. PG-13. BEN FERGUSON. Living Room Theaters.
B+ The irony of “based on a true story” preceding a live-action Disney film is that the movie to follow will probably feel like a fantasy. But Queen of Katwe’s finishing move is depicting Ugandan chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi’s rise to a world-class master with levity and without pandering. Director Mira Nair makes the day-to-day of making due in Mutesi’s near shantytown of a neighborhood—hawking maize to car windows and selling your last fineries for paraffin reading light—as vivid as street soccer. As Phiona’s coach, David Oyelowo meets the child actors on a deeply empathetic level, and as her mother, Lupita Nyong’o takes on a prideful posture. Get caught up in the sentiment, brush past some glaring overdubbing, and this is the kind of story you’ll know very well told in rare fashion. PG. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Lloyd.
STILL SHOWING Bad Moms
C Hangovers loom large in the films of Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (The Change-Up, The Hangover). Cue the inexplicably raucous party, supermarket-destruction and montage. R. JAY HORTON. Bridgeport, Cinemagic, Clackamas, Fox Tower, Moreland.
A
The Beatles: Eight Days a Week
Until Sir Paul kicks the bucket and “Carnival of Light” finally creeps out of the vault, there’s nothing new under the sun for Beatles fans. So the best reason to see Ron Howard’s new feature documentary on the Fab Four’s touring years is to witness the highest-quality versions of some exceptionally rare performances. Howard can’t help but overshoot the mark here, extending the story into a bit more of a biography than the subtitle calls for, but that’s also what makes this film a worthwhile gateway for the uninitiated. NR. NATHAN CARSON. Cinema 21, Hollywood.
The BFG
B- Like all Roald Dahl books, it’s an ecstatic mix of the sentimental and cruel—the story of a young orphan named Sophie abducted by a lovable Big Friendly Giant who catches and releases dreams. PG. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Academy, Avalon, Vancouver.
Ben-Hur
B- Even if the third filmic spectacular adapted from the 19th-century best-seller Ben-Hur is unlikely to leave the same cultural sandal print, it’s surely the fastest and most furious. PG-13. JAY HORTON. City Center, Jubitz.
Blair Witch
James Donahue ventures to the woods of Burkittsville, Md., to track down his missing sister, Heather, after footage of her surfaces on the internet. Not screened for critics. R. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, St. Johns 1 & 2, Tigard, Vancouver.
J AY M A I D M E N T
C I S MU
OPENING THIS WEEK
Queen of Katwe
MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN
C
The third installment of the Bridget Jones franchise is wearily formulaic both in storyline and characterization. R. MICHELLE DEVONA. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Living Room Theaters, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
Café Society
REVIEW C O U R T E SY O F FAC E B O O K
Bridget Jones’s Baby
C- The annual Woody Allen production machine has assembled 90 very recognizable minutes here, with self-aware industry commentary, platitudes about New York and L.A., and a male ingénue looking for approval. R. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. Fox Tower.
Captain Fantastic
Finding Dory
B+ For 13 years, the entire world eagerly awaited the return of Ellen DeGeneres as the forgetful Dory. There’s tears to fill a tide pool, wit to keep adults amused, and laughs for any audience with a short attention span. PG. AMY WOLFE. Academy, Avalon, Empirical, Vancouver.
Florence Foster Jenkins
B Making fun of terrible singing is cheap and easy, but Florence Foster Jenkins avoids cheap shots. PG-13. JOHN LOCANTHI. Cedar Hills, Fox Tower.
A
Ghostbusters
It’s been 32 years since the release of the original, and the Ghostbusters reboot has no chill. The script from Paul Feig and Kate Dippold hammers home the message that it’s 2016 and rebooting a classic Dude Comedy with an all-female cast will make people mad. The movie is maximalist. It’s glorious, and if it ruined your childhood, sorry bro. PG-13. ZACH MIDDLETON. Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Tigard, Vancouver.
B+
Hell or High Water
Was No Country for Old Men too smart and slow for you? Loved the gunfights and the misanthropic cowboy glamour, but maybe Javier Bardem’s haircut made you uncomfortable? Try Jeff Bridges’ new Western genre vehicle. R. GRACE CULHANE. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinemagic, Clackamas, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Oak Grove, St. Johns 1 & 2, Vancouver.
CONT. on page 50
C+ SEE IT: Best Fake Friends is unrated. It opens Friday at Cinema 21. 2 and 6:45 pm. A Q&A with director Paul Kampf follows the 6:45 screening.
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n!
The newest feature from comedian Mike Birbiglia follows members of a comedy troupe yearning to get on Weekend Live, a thinly veiled SNL surrogate. It might me their big break, and this film might be Birbiglia’s. It has already been called Birbiglia’s Annie Hall, and with the help of Keegan-Michael Key and Gillian Jacobs, this movie brings together a group of talent on the verge of superstardom. R. ZACH MIDDLETON. Cinema 21.
PUBLISHES: OCTOBER 26, 2016 Space Reservation & Materials Deadline: Thursday, OCTOBER 6 at 10AM
at io
Don’t Think Twice
If the writers of Mean Girls took a stab at adapting The Great Gatsby, the best-case scenario is that they’d arrive at a film in which the society of the very wealthy is revealed for what it really is: cliques of furiously banal gossips that have more in common with a high school cafeteria than a court of noble elites. This seems to be the goal of Paul Kampf’s Best Fake Friends, a new movie shot and set in Portland about a naive, nouveau riche housewife who finds herself swept up in a group of “fun moms” who always have a flask of tequila in case their uppercrust chardonnay parties get too dry. And yet while the film starts with a good idea—like hitting the tequila to spice up a dull party—the film eventually goes somewhat off the rails, also like hitting the tequila to spice up a dull party. Joy (Lauren Bowles), a recently laid-off journalist, finds herself in Portland after her husband relocates the family to take a lucrative new job. Joy spends increasingly more time with the fun moms, filling her days with trips to the spa, extravagant shopping, and late nights partying with wine, weed, coke, Adderall and anything else she can dump in her body. But with two kids and a husband at home, it’s only a matter of time before her daughter starts trying out Joy’s new habits—like drinking and smoking—and the husband gets fed up with her hard partying. Making matters worse, it seems Nikki (Victoria Smurfit), the devious, image-obsessed, alpha mom of the neighborhood, is always around with her collection of drugs and her deeply unsettling smile. Amid some solid acting, an interesting premise, and some legitimately funny gags, Best Fake Friends quickly gets unintentionally sinister. That a story about a housewife hitting a late-blooming, hard-drug phase could be played as a comedy isn’t unimaginable with someone like Melissa McCarthy as the lead. But you wouldn’t then expect it to pull off an emotionally fraught set of story lines involving infidelity, poverty, abuse and neglect we see attempted here. And who knows what the audience is supposed to do with some of the more bewildering scenes, such as when Nikki performs oral sex on a 17-year-old for a dime bag. Someone show her to a dispensary! Joy’s glamorous lifestyle certainly isn’t part of the gritty, Van Santian vision of Portland, but it’s probably becoming a more accurate description of the city every day. While the movie is sold as a dramedy, Best Fake Friends sometimes doesn’t seem to know what kind of film it wants to be. ZACH MIDDLETON
m
A-
Best Fake Friends doesn’t know if it wants to be a comedy or something more serious.
fo r
B+ A trio of serial burglars gets trapped in an isolated Detroit home after their mark, a blind vet played with quiet menace by Stephen Lang, turns out to be a brutally efficient badass. R. AP KRYZA. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Fox Tower, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Tigard, Vancouver.
And Your Enemies Closer
i
Don’t Breathe
COOL MOM, BRO: Best Fake Friends.
ll A a r to e m A y et d o n em i te d v u ai e A m li nq W A in m ui r ee t re e s k o d to e k ad ti th iA ve is n j e rt u is g H in A n g@ ir f d k ie v ie w in w er l l ee g d k. co ! ? ti oo m si k fo rm n i g n or e g in
Viggo Mortensen is mud-splattered, idealistic and good at killing things...again. But this time with six kids in tow. He raises his kids in isolation, schooling them in killing deer, the Bill of Rights and the banjo. When he leads the brood into society for their mother’s funeral, the film becomes a quirky, emotional quest that outshines Little Miss Sunshine R. ENID SPITZ. Fox Tower.
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A
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C O U R T E S Y O F WA R N E R B R O S .
t e G e r Mo WW in r u o y ! x o b n i
MOVIES
STORKS
The Hollars C
John Krasinski (The Office) directs and stars in this cutesy dramedy that misunderstands David O. Russell’s dysfunctional family movies as being only about their spirit. The Hollars has a winning cast on its side, but it’s just doing a broad-strokes approximation of something more thoughtful, a Little Miss Sunshine without the character detail. PG-13. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Hollywood.
A-
Director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon deliver on-brand thrills via hand-held footage of riots in Athens and many scenes in which assassins splash cold water on their faces and reflect in a mirror. PG-13. ENID SPITZ. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas.
A
Kubo and the Two Strings
Laika’s late-summer bid for animation domination manages multiple triumphs. It’s an original story that feels lived in, a kid-focused fable with real stakes, and it’s a high-octane spectacle full of whiteknuckle action and terrifying creatures that’s matched every step of the way by heart. In telling the tale of a one-eyed boy (Art Parkinson) in an ancient Japanese village, the Portland studio throws a lot at the screen. There are battles with building-sized skeletons, morbid floating apparitions and snarling beasts. Yet amid the eye-popping visuals, the film still takes time for small moments of tenderness. It’s glorious. PG. AP KRYZA. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinemagic, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Moreland, Pioneer Place, Tigard.
B Derek Cianfrance adapts M.L. Stedman’s novel in which a couple (Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander) tending a remote lighthouse is embattled over returning a beached baby to her mother. PG-13. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Clackamas, Living Room Theaters.
Lo and Behold
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When an evil industrialist seizes control of a Wild West town, its residents enlist the help of gunslinging mercenaries played by Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and company to save the day. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Bagdad, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Roseway, St. Johns 1 & 2, Tigard, Vancouver.
Jason Bourne
The Light Between Oceans
Sign up at
The Magnificent Seven
A
Werner Herzog’s new movie about the internet is more interested in fringe stories than in developing a line of hard criticism. Herzog films aren’t about criticism. They are about Herzog’s sense of wonder. NR. ZACH MIDDLETON. Academy, Laurelhurst.
A
Pete’s Dragon
Pete’s Dragon deserves the hype. Effortlessly evoking the triumphant emotions of Disney’s best live-action outings, it also provides a somber examination of the death of innocence. Your kids will cry through the majority of the film, and you probably will too. PG. MIKE GALLUCCI. Beaverton Wunderland, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Empirical, Oak Grove, Tigard.
A-
Sausage Party
Sometimes, a dick joke is just a dick joke. But sometimes, a dick joke can be an existential meditation on atheism butting up against organized religion, false gods and politics. That’s where Rogen and Goldberg’s Sausage Party transcends other R-rated animated provocations (Fritz the Cat, Heavy Metal) to become something more. This is a thinking person’s 90-minute dick joke. And shit, if we can’t ponder big issues while giggling at the sight of a talking, used condom or a sentient douchebag with the voice of Nick Kroll, maybe we’ve lost something in society. R. AP KRYZA. Clackamas, Eastport, Fox Tower, Tigard, Vancouver, Vancouver.
The Secret Life of Pets
Louis C.K. voices a pampered terrier who gets sucked from his NYC home into a tough gang of pets set on punishing the people who’ve wronged them. PG. Beaverton Wunderland, Bridgeport, Clackamas, Eastport, Empirical.
Storks
Hilarity ensues when delivery stork Junior (Andy Samberg) is tasked to deliver an unauthorized baby to a human family. PG. MATTHEW SINGER. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Milwaukie, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Tigard, Vancouver.
Suicide Squad
C- Suicide Squad rushes through an incoherent two hours of superhero mayhem, pureeing everything into a slush of clichés. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Tigard, Vancouver.
Sully
C- Clint Eastwood’s worst movie since 2011’s J. Edgar, his tale of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s 2009 emergency landing of a commercial jetliner in the Hudson River is weighed down by too many familiar actors and rote dialogue. EZRA JOHNSON-GREENOUGH. PG-13. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinemagic, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
War Dogs
C+ Dull narration and racist stereotypes turn what could have been a humorous tale of Bushera ineptitude into a haphazard rehashing that’s probably really funny if you’ve never smoked marijuana before. R. CRYSTAL CONTRERAS. Division, Living Room Theaters.
When the Bough Breaks
A young couple who can’t conceive decide to hire a surrogate mother, who becomes dangerously obsessed with the husband in this psychological thriller, written by crime journalist Jack Olsen. PG-13. Division, Eastport, Vancouver.
Snowden
C- Oliver Stone’s biopic about Edward Snowden doesn’t offer any insights beyond what you can get from Wikipedia. Stick to 2014’s Citizenfour. MICHELLE DEVONA. R, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Fox Tower, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Tigard, Vancouver.
For more Movies listings, visit
HBO
end roll
High of Fame LET’S TAKE A MINUTE TO APPRECIATE THE EXCELLENCE OF HIGH MAINTENANCE.
BY W M . W I L L A R D G R EENE
Imagine a Things to Experience Stoned Hall of Fame. The hall is expansive, with many corridors, and paintings and statues depicting skiing in the Alps. Now imagine the film and television wing. Visitors would gaze on bronzed copies of Reefer Madness, watch The Wizard of Oz synced with Dark Side of the Moon, or peruse more modern classics like Friday and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. High Maintenance will one day be enshrined in this imaginary hall as the first great player in a new era of the game. High Maintenance centers on the Guy, an affable weed courier who takes calls on his earbuds and delivers baggies of bud within an hour across Brooklyn. Each episode revolves around one of his customers. It was created by husband-and-wife duo Ben Sinclair (the Guy) and Katja Blichfeld and debuted in 2012 on Vimeo, finding its voice as a web series over six seasons. The eight-minute episodes garnered enough acclaim for the show to be picked up by HBO, which started airing the new season Sept. 16, with episodes running 30 minutes. If you’ve been a fan of this column since it debuted three years ago, you owe it to yourself to stream the entire series, which dramatizes the mainstreaming of cannabis and its effects on society—two things we’ve hoped to shine a light on here. High Maintenance is, basically, what we’re going for. It manages to tie together everything happening in cannabis right now—I even saw parallels in a recent New York magazine story on “presence” in our digital haze in which Andrew Sullivan credits cannabis’s recent rise in credibility for its status as “self-medication for an era of mass distraction.” High Maintenance, especially the early episodes, presents a quick-hitting cross section of New Yorkers. The Guy’s deliveries involve a guy
in his early 20s in love with a homeless girl, a comedian traumatized by violence, a metaphysical life-hacker, an eventful Seder meal, rookie tokers tripping on one hit, and an asexual schoolteacher. There’s genuine stoner comedy, as when the Guy innovatively attacks a man in padded armor in front of a crowd of screaming women as the credits roll, or when a freaked-out, middle-aged woman believes there’s an invisible box on her head. One dabber tells his severely burned gaming buddy: “I think it looks better, but I think I’m also just saying that ’cause I know you don’t have health insurance.” With the show’s move to HBO, there were concerns the DIY ethos of the web series would be dulled by network oversight. Happily, HBO’s production has left room for one of the show’s great strengths: a fluidity of style that adapts each story to the life of its subject. In the HBO premiere, the Guy weathers assaults on his masculinity from a Vin Diesel type and a Russian barber. The second episode centers on Eesha, a Muslim girl looking for a score to help with studying, a character I identified with as much as any other in the series. High Maintenance reaches its greatest heights in depicting the unique humanity of each character. Each client is rooted in reality, dosed with the peculiar pathos of city life. Some run about on wires of anxiety, others are mired in codependency and depression, and some suffer from grave illness. Painful secrets are unveiled. Characters reappear and are revealed in more depth. Throughout the show, we see weed’s benefits and drawbacks, a depiction of real people seeking comfort in the midst of it all. The Guy and his product offer a thread of connection, and maybe a little solace. High Maintenance is exactly the show this era of cannabis needs, and it’s a sure-fire, firstballot hall-of-famer.
pot lander N E W S L E T T E R
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W W S TA F F
BY N a t e Wa g g o n e r
Portland Once Had Great Statue Statutes OUR CITY STATUES ONCE HAD LUXURIOUS LOCKS. BY DR. MITCHELL MILLAR
When I was a younger man, it was my custom to amble around our city with an eye for sculpture. There was one for whatever my mood. If I was in need of courage, for example, I might go to Southeast Portland and gaze admiringly at Joan of Arc on her golden horse. I still enjoy Portland’s statues, though they fail to have the same effect. I blame this on the city, which in the past two decades has enacted major changes in its statue maintenance policy, most notably the decision to no longer augment the statues with wigs of human hair. From Portland’s earliest days, it was law that the city provide and regularly maintain a wig of human hair of appropriate style for every statue of metal or stone that depicted the human form. The law was referred to as the Hirsute Statue Statute or “Wig Law.” The rationale for this law was to make statues more relatable. When we are confronted with a statue that is not wearing a wig, the immediate effect is alienation. Though we recognize the human form, it is within the context of a sterile, lifeless material from which it was hammered. Wigs have the effect of humanizing the subjects of statues, of making the immortal mortal again. Their susceptibility to human frailties are revealed to us, which has the added effect of making it easier to aspire to their virtues. While the benefits of the Wig Law were obvious, the downside, from the city’s perspective, was the additional funding so that city workers could travel to the statues scattered throughout the city to remove gum, twigs and other foreign gunk from their wigs, wash them, and perform other necessary wig maintenance. It was not cheap, but few would argue it was not taxpayer money well-spent. Myriad small factors contributed to the decline of the Wig Law, but I saw two primary culprits. The first was the increased profile of Locks of Love, the charitable organization that gives wigs of human hair to children who have lost their own hair fighting cancer. While noble in its cause, this organization thinned the supply of human-hair wigs. The second pitfall occurred shortly after the 1985 unveiling of Raymond Kaskey’s Portlandia statue. For many months afterward, the citizens of Portland stood on the street staring up in awe at Portlandia and her luxuriously flowing flaxen wig. That was until a special investigation revealed the wig was not made from human hair at all—but horsehair. The wig was immediately removed, and the city sued Kaskey. But the famous sculptor fought back, and the ensuing costly legal battle lasted more than three years. Kaskey—not the city of Portland—won sole legal authority to choose a wig for the Portlandia statue. To pay legal fees associated with the lawsuit, the city’s wig maintenance division was gutted. Wigs were removed from most of Portland’s statues. A few remained, but eventually those wigs were removed, too. It is a sad state of affairs and symbolic of the way the city has changed that I can no longer punctuate my visits to Mr. Lincoln by climbing onto his back and tousling his auburn hair.
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CHATLINES
JONESIN’
by Matt Jones
“Movies on the Cheap”–working with a low, low budget. 53 Samoa’s capital 55 “Fake blood was too expensive, so we just used ___” 62 Inside info 63 List-ending abbr. 64 “Everything will be all right” 65 Bird associated with the Egyptian god Thoth 66 Shoe accessory 67 Like meshed fabric 68 Religious offshoot 69 They’re hot in Hanoi 70 Needing a pat on the back?
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Across 1 Flower’s friend 6 Beaver-made barriers 10 ___ Punk 14 With “The,” groundbreaking Showtime series 15 Jacob’s biblical twin 16 Singer Lorde’s real first name 17 Charity beneficiary 18 “Like” or “leave”, e.g. 19 Chick chirp 20 “We couldn’t get
alien blood, so we just sprayed plants with ___” 23 2016 U.S. Open winner Wawrinka 24 Abbr. at the bottom of an application 25 “Ring around the collar” detergent 28 “Of course we can’t have a monster destroy buildings, so we built entire ___” 34 Bit of slapstick 36 Jabba the ___ 37 Anti-___ hand
soap 38 Grosse ___, Michigan 39 How hordes advance 42 Mrs., in Mallorca 43 Quentin preceder 44 Ground beef packaging word 45 Fixate (on) 47 “Instead of alien spacecraft, we got fishing line and dangled ___” 51 “Shepherd Moons” Grammy winner 52 Hornswoggled
Down 1 Apt. complex unit 2 Mil. infraction 3 Hi-fi setting 4 It’s passed when someone requests “beer me” 5 “That is,” in Latin 6 “Workaholics” costar Adam 7 “Hey, wait ___!” 8 Put an X on 9 School curriculum categories 10 Portray 11 “Match Game” host Baldwin 12 Run like hell 13 Savion Glover’s specialty 21 Jazz guitarist ___ Farlow 22 Delta competitor 25 Belt place 26 Relative by marriage 27 Dictation taker, once
29 Kofi Annan’s home country 30 Ending for danger or thunder 31 “A Doll’s House” playwright Henrik 32 In advance 33 La ___ (Milan opera house) 35 Kind of issues aggravated by gluten 40 Be in a fix 41 It’s way easier to fold than a GPS 46 Unsatisfactorily watered-down argument, in slang 48 Hot tub maintenance task, often 49 Home city of pizza 50 Mineral spring site 54 Cupcake topper 55 Two-decade Laker Bryant 56 Insanely great 57 State with six sides 58 Rabanne of perfume and fashion 59 Approx. costs 60 Little ‘uns 61 Blue-bottled vodka brand 62 Insult
last week’s answers
©2016 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 #JONZ799.
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Willamette Week Classifieds SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 wweek.com
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Tarot Reading Classes With Ailynn
©2016 Rob Brezsny
Week of September 29
Starts: October 13th • 2016 From 6:30 to 8:30 pm At New Renaissance Bookshop For Beginners and Those who Wish to Expand their Tarot Knowledge
ARIES (March 21-April 19) What’s the difference between a love warrior and a love worrier? Love warriors work diligently to keep enhancing their empathy, compassion, and emotional intelligence. Love worriers fret so much about not getting the love they want that they neglect to develop their intimacy skills. Love warriors are always vigilant for how their own ignorance may be sabotaging togetherness, while love worriers dwell on how their partner’s ignorance is sabotaging togetherness. Love warriors stay focused on their relationship’s highest goals, while love worriers are preoccupied with every little relationship glitch. I bring this to your attention, Aries, because the next seven weeks will be an excellent time to become less of a love worrier and more of a love warrior. TAURUS (April 20-May 20) How will you deal with a provocative opportunity to reinvent and reinvigorate your approach to work? My guess is that if you ignore this challenge, it will devolve into an obstruction. If you embrace it, on the other hand, you will be led to unforeseen improvements in the way you earn money and structure your daily routine. Here’s the paradox: Being open to seemingly impractical considerations will ultimately turn out to be quite practical. GEMINI (May 21-June 20) Is it possible that you’re on the verge of reclaiming some of the innocent wisdom you had as a child? Judging from the current astrological omens, I suspect it is. If all goes well, you will soon be gifted with a long glimpse of your true destiny -- a close replica of the vision that bloomed in you at a tender age. And this will, in turn, enable you to actually see magic unicorns and play with mischievous fairies and eat clouds that dip down close to the earth. And not only that: Having a holy vision of your original self will make you even smarter than you already are. For example, you could get insights about how to express previously inexpressible parts of yourself. You might discover secrets about how to attract more of the love you have always felt deprived of. CANCER (June 21-July 22) I’m not asking you to tell me about the places and situations where you feel safe and fragile and timid. I want to know about where you feel safe and strong and bold. Are there sanctuaries that nurture your audacious wisdom? Are there natural sites that tease out your primal willpower and help you clarify your goals? Go to those power spots. Allow them to exalt you with their transformative blessings. Pray and sing and dance there. And maybe find a new oasis to excite and incite you, as well. Your creative savvy will bloom in November if you nurture yourself now with this magic. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) One of your old reliable formulas may temporarily be useless or even deceptive. An ally could be withholding an important detail from you. Your favorite psychological crutch is in disrepair, and your go-to excuse is no longer viable. And yet I think you’re going to be just fine, Leo. Plan B will probably work better than Plan A. Secondary sources and substitutes should provide you with all the leverage you need. And I bet you will finally capitalize on an advantage that you have previously neglected. For best results, be vigilant for unexpected help. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Attention! Warning! One of your signature fears is losing its chokehold on your imagination. If this trend continues, its power to scare you may diminish more than 70 percent by November 1. And then what will you do? How can you continue to plug away at your goals if you don’t have worry and angst and dread to motivate you? I suppose you could shop around for a replacement fear -- a new prod to keep you on the true and righteous path. But you might also want to consider an alternative: the possibility of drawing more of the energy you need by feeding your lust for life.
To Register for first class call (503) 224-4929
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) Thank you for all the entertainment you’ve provided in the past 12 months, Libra. Since shortly before your birthday in 2015, you have taken lively and gallant actions to rewrite history. You have banished a pesky demon and repaired a hole in your soul. You’ve educated the most immature part of yourself and nurtured the most neglected part of yourself. To my joyful shock, you have even worked to transform a dysfunctional romantic habit that in previous years had subtly undermined your ability to get the kind of intimacy you seek. What’s next? Here’s my guess: an unprecedented exemption from the demands of the past.
Please bring your own tarot deck Questions: contact Ailynn at twoladiestarotnw@gmail.com
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) Are you able to expand while you are contracting, and vice versa? Can you shed mediocre comforts and also open your imagination to gifts that await you at the frontier? Is it possible to be skeptical toward ideas that shrink your world and people who waste your time, even as you cultivate optimism and innocence about the interesting challenges ahead of you? Here’s what I think, Scorpio: Yes, you can. At least for right now, you are more flexible and multifaceted than you might imagine. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) You Sagittarians are famous for filling your cups so full they’re in danger of spilling over. Sometimes the rest of us find this kind of cute. On other occasions, we don’t enjoy getting wine splashed on our shoes. But I suspect that in the coming weeks, the consequences of your tendency to overflow will be mostly benign -- perhaps even downright beneficial. So I suggest you experiment with the pleasures of surging and gushing. Have fun as you escape your niches and transcend your containers. Give yourself permission to seek adventures that might be too extravagant for polite company. Now here’s a helpful reminder from your fellow Sagittarian, poet Emily Dickinson: “You cannot fold a flood and put it in a drawer.” CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) I believe that during the coming weeks you will have an extra amount of freedom from fate. The daily grind won’t be able to grind you down. The influences that typically tend to sap your joie de vivre will leave you in peace. Are you ready to take full advantage of this special dispensation? Please say YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES. Be alert for opportunities to rise above the lowest common denominators. Be aggressive about rejecting the trivial questions that trap everyone in low expectations. Here are my predictions: Your willpower will consistently trump your conditioning. You won’t have to play by the old rules, but will instead have extra sovereignty to invent the future. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you can expect an unlikely coincidence or two in the coming days. You should also be alert for helpfully prophetic dreams, clear telepathic messages, and pokes from tricky informers. In fact, I suspect that useful hints and clues will be swirling in extra abundance, sometimes in the form of direct communications from reliable sources, but on occasion as mysterious signals from strange angels. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) You know that inner work you’ve been doing with such diligence? I’m referring to those psycho-spiritual transformations you have been attending to in the dark . . . the challenging but oddly gratifying negotiations you’ve been carrying on with your secret self . . . the steady, strong future you’ve been struggling to forge out of the chaos? Well, I foresee you making a big breakthrough in the coming weeks. The progress you’ve been earning, which up until now has been mostly invisible to others, will finally be seen and appreciated. The vows you uttered so long ago will, at last, yield at least some of the tangible results you’ve pined for.
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