SURVIVING THE TRUMPOCALYPSE 2017
WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
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VOL 43/10 1.4.2017
SELF-DEFENSE FOR WOMEN
IS YOGA + RACIST?
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julian alexander
FINDINGS
PAgE 29
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER
SERVICE SPECIAL
VOL. 42, ISSUE 10.
More than half the state’s landmass belongs to the feds. 9
The end of the Pony Village era may be upon us. 35
Political novice Chloe Eudaly must now corral her NIMBY allies. Will hilarity ensue? 11
Because of gentrification, you now have to wear pants at all times while inside the Paris Theatre. 37
If you would like to attend a health
A Portland cop who viciously beat an innocent man, costing
rave, there is a place. 14
Some people of Indian descent find white people doing yoga to be not just problematic, but humiliating and dehumanizing. 16 Rhodiola is the new maca. 19
ON THE COVER:
taxpayers $200,000 in a lawsuit, is still working the streets, and now has a dog to pet. 41 January is Vape Awareness Month. 43
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Christine and Walker photographed by thomas teal.
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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
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Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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TED WHEELER’S POP QUIZ
Good answers by Ted Wheeler [“Testing Ted,” WW, Dec. 28, 2016]. No on Measure 97—it was hastily conceived. No on a rent freeze, which is a quick answer to a complex problem. And good answer on the Office of Neighborhood Involvement—let’s hope we can claw back that money into the budget. Come on, Ted. We’re hoping you’ll get back to the basics and put this city on a better path for the working middle class, not just 22-year-old transplants. —“Mark F” Ted Wheeler does not want to rock the boat, or upset his corporate backers. He’s more of the same. —Anne Uumellmahaye After the Great Hales Homeless Disaster, Wheeler will be a welcome addition. —“Concerned Citizen”
GOODBYE, CHARLIE HALES
self-respect to sponsor housing for those seeking medical help for their families. Charlie Hales cannot get any sort of housing done for anybody. Thank you, Ronald McDonald House! —“TC”
PROPOSED RENTER AID
When John DiLorenzo shows up with an idea to help low-income people, pretty good chance he’s full of it [Murmurs: “Landlords Propose Renter Aid Program,” WW, Dec. 28, 2016]. He has made a career of defending polluters, and now he’s shilling for landlords. —JD Mulvey
“After the Great Hales Homeless Disaster, Wheeler will be a welcome addition.”
It was either Charlie Hales or Jefferson (her-face-ran-into-my-closedfist) Smith; and so, you go with Hales [“Bon Voyage, Charlie Hales,” WW, Dec. 28, 2016]. This was after Sam Adams sold off the city’s road-paving equipment and raided the Water Bureau for bio-ditch money. Ted Wheeler seems like he has some direction, but he also is talking of belt-tightening (let’s see how long this lasts, as it didn’t last but a blink of an eye with Hales; after this, he became a wind sock). —Bob Clark The illustration with this story was such an insult to Ronald McDonald. At least Ronald has the
John DiLorenzo, thank you for trying to find a solution. It’s too bad that those in elected politics and who earn money off elected officials spend their time trying to create negative messaging against those they perceive as threats and who are outstanding at bringing people to the table to find solutions. Protecting renters and keeping the peace is what we appreciate. —“op0QXaaqj7”
THE YEAR IN NUMBERS
This definitely shows the changing state of the city. Good or bad, growth is imminent [“The Year in Numbers,” WW, Dec. 28, 2016]. —Debbie Lusk 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.
The Audubon Society claims 1 billion birds are killed in Portland every year flying into buildings. I’ve worked downtown for 30 years and have never seen a single dead bird. I bet none of your 17 other readers has either. So what gives? —Ronn E. I admire your canny, homespun suspicion, Ronn, but saying that birds don’t fly into buildings because you haven’t seen any dead ones is like saying there’s no such thing as global warming because you once saw Al Gore wearing a sweater. Even if there really were no dead birds, it wouldn’t prove the Audubon Society was wrong. It would just prove that birds are immortal. Since that seems unlikely, we’re left to conclude that dead birds happen, but they’re difficult to find for some reason. Perhaps—as one internet wag has suggested—most birds die while flying, so their bodies are still up in the air? Well, no. Here’s the thing about nature: It’s a lot of fun to ride dirt bikes through, but actually being a part of it sucks. Very few birds (or other wildlife) have the luxury of dying of old age, surrounded by friends and family. 4
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
Instead, a bird’s life is spent evading predators, having what appears to be profoundly unsatisfying sex, and raising ugly, hyperdemanding young. It’s a lot like your life, really, except for the predators. The point is, when a bird is slowed by age, illness or injury—like that suffered when flying into a building—it gets eaten by a predator. If it’s killed outright, it’s eaten by a scavenger (crows and seagulls have zero problem with this). Even if the bird is somehow missed by those higher up the food chain, it won’t be around long. While songbirds may look lovely on the wing, they’re really quite insubstantial, with hollow bones, minimal fat and thin skin, such that insects and bacteria can melt them away in about a day, like a Cheeto in the rain. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
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For the second time in a little over a year, Gov. Kate Brown has abruptly changed her chief of staff. Brown announced the resignation of her current chief, Kristen Leonard, on Jan. 3. Last month, WW reported that Leonard had failed to disclose potential conflicts of interest involving a contract her husband’s company had with the state, and also his lobbying on behalf of district attorneys. Leonard belatedly made the disclosures, but the issue was awkward for Brown, who had pledged to clean up state government after conflicts of interest led to the resignation of her predecessor, Gov. John Kitzhaber. Leonard, who replaced Brown’s first chief of staff, Brian Shipley, less than 14 months ago, will leave Brown’s office Jan. 31—one day before the start of what promises to be a bruising
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OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR
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Give!Guide Raises More Than $4 Million
WW’s 2016 Give!Guide might just have been Portland’s biggest New Year’s Eve event. Including stragglers who gave after the midnight deadline, funds raised hit $4.249 million—an increase of $749,000 over last year. And 9,319 individuals made donations—430 more than last year. One of G!G’s major goals is to encourage giving from Portlanders under age 36. Those numbers also increased. Next week, we’ll have a full report with lots of data, including winners of the Schlesinger Family Foundation Challenge. We also remind you to celebrate our five fantastic Skidmore Prize winners: Casey Block from College Possible, Cole Merkel at Street Roots, Daisha Tate at North by Northeast Community Health Center, Janice Martellucci at Peace in Schools, and Jasmine Pettet at Outside In. To all WW readers who gave this year: Thank you!
THOMAS TEAL
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
FOUR QUESTIONS FOR:
SASHA INGBER ALEX EBSARY
Sasha Ingber and Alex Ebsary TWO JOURNALISTS RECORD REFUGEE MUSICIANS ON THE RUN FROM ISIS. CITY HALL SHUTS DOWN SHORT-TERM RENTALS IN A LUXURY HIGH-RISE.
BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N
rmonahan@wweek.com
The most extravagant short-term rental in Portland— an entire floor of apartments in a waterfront highrise—is being shut down by city officials. WW reported in September that the entire 11th floor of the 21-story apartment tower Yard was available for rent by the night. Located on the east end of the Burnside Bridge, the 18 units, when rented together, cost up to $7,215 a night, not including taxes and fees (“Yard Sign,” WW, Sept. 21, 2016). But after WW reported on the short-term rentals at Yard, the Portland Housing Bureau threatened to yank the tax credits for the building. The 284-unit complex includes 57 affordable apartments, qualifying its owners for an estimated $771,079 in tax breaks in 2017. Guardian Real Estate Services, which owned a stake in the building, agreed to remove the short-term
Green Tape
Portland’s cannabis businesses have been complaining for months about the bureaucratic red tape they’ve faced at City Hall after Oregon voters legalized recreational weed. Business owners have argued that the city duplicated the state’s licensing process, charged them double what businesses in other cities pay— and have moved slowly in issuing permits. Those complaints factored into Mayor Ted Wheeler deciding this week to assign the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, and its marijuana program, to rookie City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly. (See page 11.) The statewide deadline was Dec. 31 for medical marijuana businesses to get an Oregon Liquor Control Commission license to sell pot in the recreational market. And the numbers show that state regulators have so far granted far more cannabis permits than City Hall. RACHEL MONAHAN and BETH SLOVIC.
rentals to keep the tax credits. Guardian just sold the building for $126 million to Land and Houses, a Bangkok-based real estate company. Housing Bureau director Kurt Creager says the building ’s tax credits were based on Yard apartments being used only as full-time residences. “We are delighted we still have 57 affordable units in the building,” Creager says. “We will be monitoring the compliance. It’s a good case in how inclusionary zoning could work in this town.” Vacasa, the company responsible for renting out the 11th floor, says it is leaving Yard by the end of April. “We were helping to subsidize the affordable units,” says Cliff Johnson of Vacasa. He blamed WW’s stories for driving out the short-term rentals, calling the coverage “nitpicking” and “sensational news stories.” He called the city’s decision “a disincentive to developers to provide affordable units.”
TOTAL
73 27 73:
Recreational licenses issued by the state to Portland cannabis shops.
27:
Recreational licenses issued by the city to Portland cannabis shops.
In 2009, Sasha Ingber was an aspiring journalist trying to find a steady job in Portland. Seven years later, she landed in the Kurdistan region of Iraq as millions of refugees were arriving from cities captured by ISIS. Ingber, 32, is co-founder of Music in Exile, a nonprofit that records the songs and stories of people who have been displaced by war. A former WW intern, she now works in Washington, D.C., and travels the globe to record music. Ingber and Music In Exile co-founder Alex Ebsary talked about their project, which can be heard on musicinexile.org. TARRA MARTIN. WW: Why did you choose to start this project in Kurdistan? Sasha Ingber: The population was increased by a third with the influx of refugees. I find myself so fascinated by this large exodus and what is lost in the movement—what they left behind and the vastly rich cultures that they now have to carry with them to another place. What was it like hearing the stories of these displaced musicians? Ingber: In the refugee camps, they were very welcoming and incredibly generous—wanting to cook us lunch and then cook us dinner and show us more and more. We never had enough time with them. The hardest part was really listening to what they had gone through. At least one of us was crying every day. Alex Ebsary: One of the unexpected positive things was showing up at a refugee camp, and there are nine people waiting already at 9 o’clock in the morning to
get recorded. They’ve had their lives totally shattered. And they lived lives that you and I would recognize as being normal. They had schools, they had houses that look similar to yours and mine, they had cars, things that feel very Western. And suddenly, there’s this death cult that runs through their village, and they had to leave, and now they live in a tent. You’ve spoken about how music is really important for many Middle Eastern people, especially for the Yazidis, an ethnoreligious cultural group in Northern Iraq. What does that mean for your work? Ebsary: When ISIS took various parts of Sinjar [a city in Northern Iraq home to many Yazidi people], they would go around and smash musical instruments, because they knew that was how the Yazidis communicate their oral history. ISIS has been quite explicit in the fact they want to exterminate the Yazidi religion and destroy their culture. We met a Yazidi musician who told us: “They would burn our books. So we stopped writing things down, and now we remember our history through song.” So he had memorized 250 songs, as his contribution to Yazidi culture. Where will you go next? Ingber: Sadly, there is a tremendous wealth of places that we could go, because so many people have been displaced. There are Haitians who have relocated to Brazil. We thought it’d be fascinating to talk to people who left New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, because New Orleans has such a musical tradition.
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L O VAT T O
NEWS
Year of the Grouse ONE OF THE STATE’S ICONIC SPECIES IS AT THE CENTER OF THE LATEST BATTLE OVER WHO SHOULD CONTROL FEDERAL LANDS. BY KA R I N A B R OW N
@karinapdx
No story dominated Oregon news in 2016 quite like the occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by Ammon Bundy and his anti-government militants. A new lawsuit shows that another battle over federal control of land and animals in Eastern Oregon is heating up. The subject? The greater sage grouse—a flamboyant bird that’s the size of a chicken but packs the attitude of a samba dancer. For five years, federal and state officials have been hammering out a deal to save the sage grouse across 11 Western states, while avoiding the more drastic measure of placing it on the Endangered Species List. A compromise reached in 2015 was touted from Salem to Washington, D.C., as a model for getting cattle ranchers to work with the government and conserve wildlife. But 2017 is the year when Oregon ranchers must actually put that plan—called the Greater Sage Grouse Conservation Strategy—into practice, using more than $9 million in federal funds to clear pastures of hazards that can kill the birds. And the lawsuit, filed Dec. 7 in federal court by a local government agency that works with ranchers in Oregon’s rural Harney County, shows the agreement is fracturing before it gets started.
For the first time, a local government agency in Oregon— one that’s supposed to manage a part of the grouse strategy —is threatening to back out. The reason? Requirements to keep cows away from sage grouse mating sites on public lands in the spring and to keep grass at least 7 inches high on public pastures. Ranchers say those rules could push them out of business. Such squabbles a five-hour drive east of Portland may seem a world away. But the Bundy invasion showed how a distant disagreement over the management of federal lands can be exploited by outsiders with their own agendas. The sage grouse is a symbol of the wide open spaces that attract many newcomers to this state. Like salmon and spotted owls, the grouse finds itself at the center of the state’s urban-rural divide, pitting ranchers who want to make a living off of federal lands against environmentalists—many of them city dwellers who want to preserve the vast federal lands that constitute 53 percent of the state. The underlying question is the same as in the Malheur occupation: Who should benefit from those lands—the people who happen to live near them, or everyone? “This doesn’t have to be Oregon’s next major land-use fight,” says Bob Sallinger, conservation director for the Audubon Society of Portland. “But it is the test of the collaborative process. It’s easy to sing ‘Kumbaya’ when signing documents, but more difficult to work through
challenging issues.” Ranchers who want the deal to succeed are also worried—fearing if the bargain fails, what comes next could cripple them. “It has the potential to be real serious,” says John O’Keeffe, president of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association. “We’re all losing sleep over this.” The sprawling rangelands of Eastern Oregon, where sagebrush sprinkles the desert like Christmas tinsel, are home to two iconic sights: grazing cattle and the mating dance of the greater sage grouse. The grouse, which attracts a mate with a swaggering display that brings to mind Popeye impersonating a peacock, has had its habitat decimated by cattle—which chew native bunchgrasses down to the dirt, clearing the ground for invasive annual grasses that fuel devastating wildfires and choke out the tender, leafy plants that sage grouse chicks depend on. Ranchers have modified their grazing practices. But by 2010, sage grouse were in such decline that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would list the bird as “threatened” on the Endangered Species List. That distinction would empower the government to ban killing the bird, even by accident. That ban would be tough for ranching operations, CONT. on page 10 Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT
FLOCK OUT: Environmentalists say state and federal officials aren’t doing enough to stop the steep decline of sage grouse in Baker County, Ore.
where the low-flying birds impale themselves on But it is the first such lawsuit in Oregon, and fences, drown in water troughs and are vulner- its timing has set off warning bells for governable to predators attracted by cattle herds. ment officials: Local ranchers have talked about The 2010 warning of an Endangered Species accepting stricter rules, but aren’t willing to folAct listing spurred ranchers across the West to low through. work with the government. Erin Maupin, a Harney County rancher, says Oregon ranchers agreed to match government the lawsuit was necessary because the rules funds with their own money and sign agreements would be disastrous for ranchers. Spring is a to flag fences for the bird, remove the juniper crucial time for cattle to graze on public land, trees where their predators perch and add little Maupin says. ramps to water troughs so the birds don’t drown. “That’s when we’re growing a hay crop,” (Much of this work in done on private property, Maupin says. “We can’t turn our cows out on not just public lands—the birds regularly cross [private] meadows then because then we’d have between them.) nothing to feed them in winter. If this was long It seemed to have worked. In 2015, U.S. Fish term, it would be the end of family ranching in and Wildlife announced there were already the West.” enough solutions in play that the bird didn’t need to be listed. Last March, U.S. The lawsuit places new pressure on Secretary of the Interior Sally federal and state agencies that are Jewell visited Burns, Ore., to praise already nervous about provoking the compromise: the Greater Sage backlash. “IF THIS WAS Grouse Conservation Strategy. Ammon Bundy and more than “There’s a real opportunity to LONG-TERM, a dozen other anti-government showcase the good things about militants still face federal trials this IT WOULD what happened here as a real model year for armed standoffs with the for cooperation that could be feds. The political aftershocks of BE THE END brought across the American West,” the Malheur occupation left PresiOF FAMILY Jewell said. dent Barack Obama unwilling to RANCHING IN seek additional federal protections In 2017, even more money will start flowing into the plan: The U.S. for the Eastern Oregon wilderness THE WEST.” Department of Agriculture gave of Owyhee Canyonlands (“Bundy —ERIN MAUPIN Oregon a $9 million grant to be National Monument,” WW, Nov. 8, used over five years and matched by 2016). private landowners. Gov. Kate Brown is no bolder. “The [grant] funding was the “At this point, we’re not considfirst big shot of money,” says Gary ering any regulatory actions,” says Miller, field supervisor for U.S. Fish and Wild- Brown spokesman Bryan Hockaday. life. “There hasn’t until now been this huge pot And the Harney lawsuit arrives even as new figof money to help folks get things going on the ures show grouse populations are rapidly declinground.” ing in their northernmost habitat in Oregon. But on Dec. 7, the Harney Soil and Water ConGrouse numbers around Baker County, Ore., servation District sued Jewell, the Department have dropped by 76 percent in the past 13 years, of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Manage- according to Lee Foster, sage grouse conservation ment in federal court in Washington, D.C. coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish The agency that filed the suit is the primary and Wildlife. Environmentalists say the drop is vehicle to funnel federal dollars to ranchers who because federal officials are afraid to crack down agree to make improvements that will help the on grazing, ATVs and other human activity in sage grouse. grouse habitat. (Federal and state wildlife manIn the lawsuit, Harney Soil and Water Con- agers blame ravens preying on grouse eggs and servation objects to requirements to keep cows chicks.) off grouse breeding grounds in the spring, and to By 2020, wildlife managers will have to prove keep grass 7 inches high. to their federal counterparts at U.S. Fish and The suit claims the government is managing Wildlife that the strategy stopped the bird’s the land strictly for sage grouse recovery without decline enough to keep it off the Endangered considering the impact on ranchers. And that’s Species List. illegal, the lawsuit says, because the government Sallinger says the next moves by state and fedis required to manage the land for “multiple eral officials will reveal whether the government uses”—including human ones like ranching and has the will and muscle to protect the sage grouse. recreation. “The problem is relatively obvious: This This isn’t the first time a local government population is declining down to nonexistence,” agency has sued the feds over the sage grouse: Sallinger says. “But does the government have Several counties in Nevada filed suit as soon as the teeth and the buy-in that will result in a real the federal plan was announced in 2015. solution?” 10
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
City Haul
CHRISTINE DONG
NEWS
TED WHEELER DIVVIED UP CITY BUREAUS. HERE’S WHO GOT HANDED THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS IN PORTLAND. BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N
rmonahan@wweek.com
On Jan. 3, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler made the first big decision of his young administration: He divvied up the city bureaus. Portland’s “weak mayor” form of government means the assignment of bureaus is the chief power the mayor has over city commissioners. Wheeler’s announcement is giving his new colleagues both a potential base of support and new challenges. Political missteps in posting commissioners to bureaus can end a mayor’s prospects before they begin. (In a vivid recent example, Mayor Charlie Hales tossed Commissioner Nick Fish the unwanted water and sewer bureaus in 2012, and their relationship never recovered from the move.) Even more importantly, assigning the bureaus is an opportunity for fresh eyes to examine what is and isn’t working in Portland. It’s the earliest opportunity to change the direction of city government. Here are five bureaus that present their new leaders with the biggest challenges. HOUSING Assigned to: Himself The challenge: This bureau will receive a lot of attention during the next couple of years. The shortage of affordable housing in Portland, the decision by voters in November to give the city $258 million to build more homes, and the promise that Wheeler made during the campaign to build units less expensively than have previous housing Commissioners Nick Fish and Dan Saltzman (“Roofless,” WW, Sept. 28, 2016), mean that the new mayor had little choice but to keep this bureau. Wheeler’s key housing policy proposal—to protect tenants from no-cause evictions—will require action from the Oregon Legislature. “It will test whether he is a good mayor,” says Portland Tenants United organizer Margot Black, “a test I hope that he passes with honors, and not by memorizing last year’s answers.” OFFICE OF NEIGHBORHOOD INVOLVEMENT Assigned to: Chloe Eudaly The challenge: This office (which does everything from regulate cannabis to license bars) received poor grades in a recent city audit, and in a WW interview, Wheeler himself pointed to it as the bureau most in need of reform (in a tie with the Police Bureau). Wheeler is taking the office away from its champion, Commissioner Amanda Fritz, and handing it to a political novice, Eudaly. Wheeler spokesman Michael Cox says handing Eudaly a “tough, complicated” office is a vote of confidence. “With regard to both outreach and neighborhood involvement, Commissioner Eudaly demonstrated during the campaign that she excels at both.”
TRANSPORTATION Assigned to: Dan Saltzman The challenge: This bureau had been the responsibility of Commissioner Steve Novick, who lost his bid for re-election in November, in part because of his hamhanded attempt to pass a “street fee” two years ago. Voters eventually supported a 10-cents-pergallon gas tax in May. The bureau will now have an estimated $64 million in funding over the next four years to make street repairs as well as install upgrades for pedestrians and cyclists. Someone must watchdog that money if the city expects voters to renew the tax in 2020. There’s mounting pressure from advocates for a bolder plan to prevent deaths on city streets. With no obvious leader on transportation, Wheeler viewed Saltzman’s experience as an asset. EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS Assigned to: Amanda Fritz The challenge: The Bureau of Emergency Communications— which handles the city’s 911 calls—is among the city’s most troubled departments. Wait times for 911 callers have increased by at least one key measure. Just last month, a report from the Ombudsman’s Office said the city had no way of returning more than 18,000 cellphone calls to 911 that were dropped or hang-ups. Fritz is a puzzling choice to handle reforms—she led the bureau before and drew criticism during her 2012 re-election campaign for her leadership of it. Fritz declined to comment to WW. Rob Wheaton, a representative for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 75, the BEOC workers’ union, says Fritz is ready to run 911 again. “She’s a lot more savvy than she used to be,” Wheaton says. (Disclosure: This reporter’s husband works for AFSCME.)
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POLICE BUREAU Assigned to: Himself The challenge: Even as Portland remains a relatively safe city, the assignment is likely to prove complicated. Last fall, City Hall approved a new police contract that will last three years, giving Wheeler little leverage for any reforms he wants to make. Mayor Hales faced repeated protests this fall after he negotiated a contract with significant raises for police but failed to expand authority for the Independent Police Review. “[The contract] gave the police chief and the police union the tools that they said they needed to improve recruitment and retention,” Wheeler told WW last month. “And now I’m going to hold them accountable for it.” WW staff writer Beth Slovic contributed reporting to this story. Read about more bureau assignments at wweek.com. Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
THOMAS TEAL
+HEALTH & WELLNESS
It’s probably time to take down the Bernie signs. America is now just two weeks away from the Donald Trump presidency. We need to get serious. To organize, donate, activate and finally let go of our dreams of a socialist utopia. This year, as we were planning our health and fitness issue, we couldn’t ignore the looming public health crisis of the Trump administration. And so we dedicated this issue to preparing Portland for the 1,461 days to follow the Trumpocalpyse. First thing ’s first: Calm down! We don’t blame you if you’ve been hyperventilating for two months, but you need to unclench, and we’ve got you covered. Maybe that involves some meditation? One of our writers spent
10 days in complete and total silence to improve his technique (page 18). If you’re into yoga but worried that it’s cultural appropriation? Well, you can relax a little, because we talked to local experts who say you can pose in peace (page 16). Maybe you’d benefit from some anxiety-busting herbs? It’s time to bust out the adaptogens (page 19). And if none of that works, we’ve got an introduction to ASMR videos, which induce euphoria via YouTube (page 21). But we also need to be ready to fight. Because we realized we need to build community while we build our muscles, we tried five different group fitness classes across the city, and found that it’s much more rewarding than lifting alone (page 14). You might need to use
those muscles to protect yourself from rapists, racists and racist rapists, so we attended a women’s self-defense class and learned how to knee a grabber right square in the balls (page 17). Because it seems there are things more important than food but we still want to eat healthfully, we tested the new wave of nutritionally complete omnifoods (page 20). And since it really does feel like this apple cart could flip at any moment, we have included a primer on building a disaster preparedness kit using local products (page 23). In just a few days, President Obama will be working the lecture circuit, and the nuclear football will be in the hands of a madman. With discipline, sweat and a little luck, we can survive this. Here’s how to start.
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
13
HEALTH & WELLNESS
WORK,
WORK, WORK, WORK, L O VAT T O
WORK
I SPENT TWO WEEKS TRYING DIFFERENT MODERN GROUP FITNESS CLASSES ACROSS PORTLAND. BY WA L K E R M AC M UR D O
wmacmurdo@wweek.com
Spend enough time in the Pearl District and you’ll begin to see the pattern: names that indirectly reference energy, abstracted images of lotuses, glass doors where packs of tall, 27-year-old women enter on the hour. Interiors are airy, sparsely decorated and heavy on the concrete, Marie Kondo meets brutalism. There are a lot of inspirational slogans, a lot of #branding, and a lot of money. Everyone is beautiful. Everything is beautiful. Yes, these new group fitness classes can be intimidating. It’s why I confined my routine exercise to solitary activity at my local 24 Hour Fitness, cynically dismissing these newfangled studio classes as expensive fads, free from the shame of getting torched on an exercise bike by someone my mom’s age. But these new, hyperspecialized studios are popping up across Portland, mirroring the nationwide growth in boutique gyms, which accounted for 42 percent of 54 million gym memberships across the U.S. in 2015. Clearly, there’s more to these studios than meets the ab. After attending classes at six gyms across Portland, I learned I was wrong to discount them so fast. I found myself working much harder, the pace of the class ratcheting ever skyward by ecstatic trainers. I was too focused, or too entranced by the sight of 24 people moving in unison, to feel self-conscious. I left almost every class in a great mood. The new wave of Portland group fitness—whether a bicycle-based health rave or a bewildering run between rowing machines with three women named Becky—is wonderful. If you’re looking to get into better shape this year, consider starting it with a survey of local group fitness classes.
PYROLATES AT FIREBRAND SPORTS 500 NW 14th Ave., firebrandsports.com. First class $15.
THE GYM: Firebrand is clean, modern and serious, exempli-
fied by its tidy red-orange-yellow branding and glowing neon sign. It offers three workouts: the Pilates- and yogainfluenced Pyrolates, the cardio- and ballet-style FireBarre and spinning- and ballet-based Bike + Barre. THE WORKOUT: Pyrolates, designed by Los Angeles fitness guru and Portland State alum Sebastien Lagree, is a series of body-weight resistance workouts performed on a body-sized device called a Megaformer—basically a yuppie torture rack. Lagree’s workouts are hugely popular 14
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
in Southern California and a reported favorite of Kim Kardashian and Michelle Obama. You’ll need grip socks, which Firebrand sells for $18, with a 15 percent discount for your first pair. DIFFICULTY: 5/5. In Pyrolates, you’ll primarily use your abdominal muscles to perform slow, gentle movements on or through the Megaformer’s mobile central platform, which uses bungee cords to provide resistance. This translates to brutal, muscle-shaking, sweat-dripping intensity from the first moments of the workout. I’ve never been set on fire and left to burn in slow motion for 50 minutes, but I imagine it feels similar to inching my kneeling, quivering body forward and back with two handheld pulleys. I was so exhausted that I could barely string a sentence together for an hour after this class. MOST HELLISH PART: “Pulses,” tiny back-and-forth movements that finished off most exercises, depleting the targeted muscle of its last drops of energy and replacing it with white-hot pain.
FULL BODY BURNCYCLE AT BURNCYCLE PEARL 910 NW 10th Ave., burn-cycle.com. First class $15.
THE GYM: Created by Portlander Jessi Duley, and now
expanded to Lake Oswego (4811 Meadows Road, No. 109), BurnCycle is a spinning class not to be confused with the extremely popular NYC-based SoulCycle. When you pass through the doors, you’ll find a small, windowless exercise studio packed full of stationary exercise bikes. THE WORKOUT: You don your cycling shoes (rentals are free with the first class), teeter over and strap into your bicycle. Before you begin, your instructor explains that you’ll bike along to the beat of whichever song is queued up, mostly in a half-standing, half-crouching position, for 45 minutes. You’ll intermittently incorporate other cycling positions, crunchlike movements and some arm exercises with light dumbbells. DIFFICULTY: 4/5. By the way, you’re going to be doing this workout in the dark, about 18 inches away from people on every side of you. As soon as the music begins—a trancier variation on exercise house with a distinctly nostalgic bent—the lights dim and your instructor begins enthusiastically screaming instructions. You and your classmates will sometimes
cheer as you peddle. If this sounds bewildering, it is. You’re to dip and crunch to the beat of the music, and you will botch this maneuver several times before you correctly execute it, joining in glistening tandem with your classmates. You’ll exercise in intervals, sometimes at a hamstring-shredding full bore, other times at a not quite leisurely pace, enshrouded in darkness and sweat fog, the only light sneaking in from under the doors. Once you get the feel for the class, you’ll begin to enter a quasi-euphoric state—it becomes a health rave. MOST HELLISH PART: You’re in a pitch-black, sweltering, cramped box with a guy screaming at you over blaring music.
ORANGETHEORY LLOYD DISTRICT
1107 NE 9th Ave., portland-lloyd-district.orangetheoryfitness.com. First class free.
THE GYM: From the beaches of Fort Lauderdale to a sparkling
high-rise in the Lloyd District comes one of the most popular new fitness classes in the country. Orangetheory splits the class in three groups, assigning each to a set of treadmills, rowing machines or free weights in a sizable studio. The class will rotate through each station in the roughly hourlong workout, each client wearing a monitor that tracks heart rate, which is displayed on televisions in the studio, sports bar style. THE WORKOUT: Company founder Ellen Latham designed Orangetheory based on a concept called “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption,” or EPOC. The idea is that if clients can get their heart rate above 84 percent of maximum for at least 12 minutes of the workout, they’ll enter this EPOC state and burn more calories than they normally would for 36 hours after the class. Thus, the heart-rate monitors track how long you spend in this range, which is designated by the color orange on the screen. How they get you orange? Mostly through interval-style cardio training on the rowing machines and treadmills. DIFFICULTY: 4/5. The difficulty of the exercise is 3/5, but trying to figure out what is going on is so confounding that Orangetheory gets a bonus point. Before we began, the instructor rocketed through an explanation of how to adjust the machines and how the interval periods in the class would work. As Orangetheory has one instructor managing three groups of people, I immediately lost track of what I was supposed to be doing. The instructions are too jargony to be decipherable. MOST HELLISH PART: Trying to figure out how fast or hard I was supposed to be doing anything, until out of frustration I just ran or rowed at whatever intensity I felt like. I nonetheless ended the workout with 14 minutes in the orange zone. Success?
New Year’s Health and Wellness Goals? DRENCH AT STUDIO X
2839 SE Stark St., studioxfitness.com. $20 for up to four classes for two weeks.
THE GYM: Between Baby Doll Pizza and Bonfire Lounge is an inaus-
picious black door. Enter a long, orange-walled hallway and then go through double doors to an austere, concrete-walled studio packed tightly with squat racks, ropes and weights. A vintage VHS exercise tape lies alongside The New York Times on a small table. In this and two other studio gyms, Studio X offers small, hourlong classes covering cardio, power lifting, suspension training, as well as yoga, personal training and massage. THE WORKOUT: Drench is a boot camp-style workout that packages small groups of body weight- and light weight-based exercises, running you through them consecutively in circuits with short (10-second) bursts of rest in between exercises and slightly longer (1-minute) rests between sets. Do this for about an hour. DIFFICULTY: 4/5. Things start easy enough: bouncing a weighted ball off of a wall into a squat, then some assisted pull-ups off of a giant rubber band. Later, you’ll whip some inch-thick ropes around, and round things out with kettlebell cleans. Forty minutes in, you’re heaving, deliriously trying to squat-jump with a medicine ball over your head, begging for death, while the trainer personally tells you how to fix your form. MOST HELLISH PART: The bear crawl, an exercise in which you bend your knees to contract your abs, then crawl on all fours across the ground, is significantly more difficult than it sounds.
We will inspire and support you. NEW YEARS SPECIAL One month of unlimited yoga for $79 offer ends 1/31/17
BARRE3 PEARL
1000 NW Marshall St., barre3.com. Single class $23.
THE GYM: Founded in Portland in 2008 by Sadie and Chris Lincoln,
Barre3 now sports over a 100 franchises as well as a lifestyle magazine (b3) and online workouts, available through subscription. Its flagship studio in the Pearl looks out on Tanner Springs Park and sports a large play area for children. THE WORKOUT: Barre3 combines ballet movements, oftentimes performed on the ballet barre (handrail) that runs across the studio’s walls, with cardiovascular exercises, yogalike stretches and some light dumbbell movements. You won’t need shoes and may wear grip socks. DIFFICULTY: 2/5. Barre3 is not easy: You’re going to do a lot of squats, suspend a lot of limbs in the air and work your core until you’re heaving. I was sweating, a lot, by the end of the class. MOST HELLISH PART: The pulsing. You hold a left leg out for long enough it starts to burn, then move it up and down an inch for even longer until you’re gritting your teeth hard enough to crack them.
2305 SE 50th Ave., Portland • info@yogaunioncwc.com • 503-235-YOGA (9642)
PIL-OGA-ROBIC 1804 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., pil-oga-robic.com. First class free.
THE GYM: A portmanteau of Pilates, yoga and aerobic, Pil-oga-robic
hosts a variety of body weight- and light weight-based exercise classes that blend the aforementioned techniques in varying proportions and intensities, also offering personal training. Its spacious, wooden-raftered studio stands out in a Portlandy manner. THE WORKOUT: Pil-oga-robic is mostly body weight-based, less focused on maintaining particular poses than on keeping moving across the gym or through a series of poses. It’s more boot-camplike than Barre or Pyrolates, but less aggressive than Drench. DIFFICULTY: 1/5. As I grapevined across the studio with my older, comparatively diverse classmates, I realized Pil-oga-robic was the only class I attended that was closer to a fun PE class than exercise hell. The first half of the class consisted mostly of robic—think bodyweight lunges across the floor—with the Pil-oga coming later. Although it was a little difficult to follow as we quickly shifted through the movements (I’ve never attended a yoga class), the instructor was clear and the exercises intuitive. I broke a sweat but left the studio refreshed. MOST HEAVENLY PART: The class wrapped up with the instructor dimming the lights for a stretch-down, during which she made the rounds to every student, anointing our heads with a eucalyptusscented oil that made the world smell beautiful for hours afterwards.
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HEALTH & WELLNESS
POSING THE QUESTION IS YOUR YOGA PRACTICE CULTURAL APPROPRIATION? BY I SA BE L Z AC H A R I AS
@isabelzach
Yoga, as practiced in the modern Western world, is exercise. But it can be practiced as much more than exercise— that’s what makes it yoga. It’s also what makes questions about whether yoga is cultural appropriation complicated. “Yoga is not a religion,” says Sri Rajagopal, a swami at the Portland Balaji Temple and Hindu Educational and Cultural Society of America. “And yoga is not Hindu.” Yoga isn’t Buddhism, either. It also isn’t New Age quackery, and it isn’t spiritualism. According to Swami Rajagopal, yoga is experiencing another re-definition in its centurieslong history of absorption and synthesis of evolving developments and demands. “Yoga makes for a very good way for people to live and be healthy. Everyone should be able to practice,” he says, “and the fact that more people are practicing is, in my understanding, a good thing.” Not everyone agrees. Some say yoga is being defaced by the majority-white, middle- and upper-class Americans who practice it. Websites like Everyday Feminism, Vice and Huffington Post have all written about issues surrounding cultural appropriation and yoga. There’s even a site called Decolonizing Yoga, with essays by writers like Susanna Barkataki, who discusses the way she feels at Western yoga studios: “My culture is being stripped of its meaning and sold back to me in forms that feel humiliating at best and dehumanizing at worst.”
Derived from the Sanskrit root “yuj,” yoga has been foundational to the physical and spiritual wellness traditions of both the Indian subcontinent and the East African continent for millennia. Yoga probably began as seated meditation as early as 2500 B.C.E., developing pranayama and chanting a millennia later, and not incorporating any postures at all until the medieval period. Of the 196 sutras in the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali, one of yogic philosophy’s formative texts, you can count the ones that mention poses on one hand. Although we typically think of ’60s counterculture as the start of modern yoga in the West, the physical focus is actually a century older than that, according to Stuart Sarbacker, a professor of philosophy and comparative religion at Oregon State University. “A revitalization movement was happening in India, in some ways connected to the rise of Indian nationalism and the independence movement, to re-valorize indigenous Indian, and especially Hindu, practices,” he says. In 1893, Swami Vivekananda gave yoga a formal introduction to the West at the World Parliament of Religions
But focusing on the perspective of these two swamis may itself be problematic. Many contemporary yoga studio spaces borrow Hindu iconography, including depictions of the curved Sanskrit icon for “Om” and of the deities Shiva awnd Shakti, and some teachers include readings from the Yoga Sutras or the Bhagavad Gita. That’s also problematic, since Western yoga culture’s tokenization of Hindus as the knowledgebearers of yoga leaves out the centuries-long exchange of ideas between yogic philosophy and other major Eastern religious movements like Buddhism and Jainism and the evidence that some yogic concepts originated with the Kemetic people of ancient Egypt. Nothing exempts yoga-practicing members of the dominant culture from vetting their practices, seeking to expand their understanding of yoga’s roots and using that education to work toward a practice that isn’t reductive. Credit must be given to those who’ve shared their knowledge—not just your teachers and their teachers, but the centuries on centuries of Indian, East African, Chinese and Southeast Asian yoga practitioners who, because of how history’s been written, will remain nameless to you. But that’s the beauty of the tradition, says Chandrashekharananda: Inclusivity is one steadfast rule in yoga. The philosophy is built on the idea that the path to enlightenment should be open to everyone. “Light is shining for you,” he says. “And for me also.”
THOM GLICK
16
Before you toss out your mat and take up Viking-style rowing, consider the perspectives of two members of the Portland Hindu community and a local academic, who feel differently. Relax, they say. Breathe.
in Chicago. The yoga-as-calisthenics model now offered at your local LA Fitness was specifically engineered at the turn of the century by teachers of classical Indian yoga as India’s competitive counter to Europe’s flashy new physical practices, like gymnastics and bodybuilding. “[They] saw yoga as a way to reclaim their heritage, but also to become strong in body and mind as a way of preparing themselves to resist, en masse, colonial occupation,” says Sarbacker. “Some people will argue that yoga today isn’t authentic because it’s been adapted in some ways to fit the modern world, but really, that’s been the story of yoga throughout its history.” In another narrative, though, Westerners’ continued practice of that physique-focused yoga that ignores yoga’s complex history of influence on the Eastern world’s religious belief systems exemplifies how our dominant culture still benefits from the colonial oppression that drove traditional Indian yoga teachers to sell a watered-down version of their practices. According to Rajagopal, the essential differences between a typical, secular American yogi and a yogi who practices asana as an element of religious ritual are mostly just differences of context and scale. “Let’s say you wake up in the morning and you want to spend a half hour doing yoga, so you sit in one place on your mat, in a Western meditation style,” he says. “You are doing yoga, in that time frame. But Hindus, they do it in the morning and the evening, and every day they do the worship of the Sun God. Everywhere, they’re practicing yoga.” Swami Chandrashekharananda of the Portland Vedanta Society echoes these sentiments, saying, “Doctrines, dogmas, churches, Bibles—these are all secondary details. To manifest one’s divinity is the goal of life.” And though studio-style yoga often functions as only a tiny piece of a huge spiritual puzzle, he says, it’s not a bad place to start piecing things together. In fact, Chandrashekharananda says that many members of his temple have backgrounds in Western yoga styles and came to Vedanta out of a desire to deepen the spiritual and existential questions their yoga practices were attempting to answer. There’s nothing wrong with someone being drawn to Western yoga primarily for its health benefits and comfortable stopping their exploration at that point, Chandrashekharananda says. “Those who come to yoga are looking for something positive,” he says. “Maybe it’s not very articulated. But they sit and chant ‘Om’ and feel something—that’s fine. But it’s only class one.”
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sjune@wweek.com
three-hour class, you do learn practical skills, It was the last fight of the day, and I was a little but you connect to something much, much nervous. deeper, too.” We were lined up after an exhausting, threeOne With Heart’s class costs $59. If you’ve hour Saturday class. This time, our instructor got less money but a longer lead time, you can said she wouldn’t tell us how she would sign up for a free, three-session class from come at us. Would she grab my wrist? the Portland Police Bureau. Or only catcall? Did I want to knee the Don’t avoid taking a class because you groin or elbow the face? How many times don’t think you can fight. You might surwould I say “Stop!” until it was time to prise yourself. I learned to hit someone’s attack? I didn’t have too long to think. groin with my forearm if grabbed from Like in real life. behind, to twist my hips to deliver a swift For years, I had said I was going to take a self- kick to their face if I’m pushed to the ground, to defense class. Every time someone grabbed me elbow someone in the face if grabbed by my waist at a bar or catcalled me, I thought about it—then or wrist, and to hold someone’s shoulders and knee time, money and life got in the way. them if they still don’t let go. Donald Trump changed all that. W hen Everything is taught step-by-step, and then the president-elect of the United States brags you practice it, again and again and again. about assaulting women, calls them “We want to be simple and effective pigs, hints that some aren’t attracfor everyone,” Erickson says. “In a tive enough to assault, and has been three-hour class, it’s about building “SELFaccused of raping both his ex-wife rapid response that doesn’t have time DEFENSE and a 13-year-old girl, it was time. to get processed through your mind.” CLASSES So I signed up for two classes last More difficult than learning those ARE THAT month—in both, at least one woman self-defense moves, though, was just said Trump was her primary reason THING YOU practicing saying “no.” for taking the class. We learned to say no, a lot. It sounds ALWAYS On a Saturday in December, as I sat SAY YOU’RE silly. We stood there and yelled, “No!” in a circle of 30 women in a studio on “No!” “No!” And I can’t explain how GOING TO Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, my strangely emotional that was. DO BUT instructor’s opening line hit pretty Realistically, if I’m hooking up NEVER GET with a guy who does something that close to home. AROUND “Self-defense classes are that thing I’m not totally cool with, I’m probTO.” you always say you’re going to do but ably not going to kick him in the never get around to,” she said. groin—although that would be pretty Like so many things you never badass—but I can say no, a skill that seem to get around to doing, I’m really glad I took requires practice. the classes. And I’d wager that most of the other The most practical scenario we played out was 30,000 women who’ve taken classes from One walking down a street and having the instrucWith Heart in the past 30 years feel the same. tors aggressively catcall us. With each scenario, “Training self-defense gives you peace of everyone became more and more angry. We mind,” says Annie Erickson, a self-defense cheered each other on and watched this ferocity instructor at One With Heart for eight years. “It come out, even in tiny 12- and 13-year-olds. has this ripple effect in other places in your life, I realized that having pent-up anxiety about where you see more choices and more power being attacked actually makes it easier to act in the world. You can affect more things like when the time comes. There’s anger and strength relationships and the choices you make. In this inside every woman. Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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thom glick
S D R O W O N
ION. IT WAS AT IT ED M T N LE SI IN S AY D I SPENT 10
By Co rB I n Sm I T h
On the fourth day of my 10-day silent meditation retreat, someone spoke to me. “Hey, you.” I didn’t look. You’re not supposed to engage with people. Noble silence is a foundational tenet of the exercise. “I want you to know that you’re freaking everyone out, tromping around out here, playing with that stick like it’s a gun.” OK, that’s weird, I think. I am a larger man, I suppose, and I have been known to tromp on occasion, and I had been flipping a stick I found underneath a tree. But I’m not acting like it’s a gun. I don’t engage. “And playing with knives in the eating space.” I thought this was an exaggeration. Had I practiced zesting oranges with sharp knives to stave off lunchtime boredom? Yes. But I wasn’t doing butterfly tricks or anything like that. “I am an Army veteran with PTSD. Don’t worry, I’m leaving after this, but I want you to know that you ruined this for me.” I continued not to look at him, as per the tenets of noble silence. “You’re not gonna look at me, huh? Keep playing with that stick, like a little boy. That’s what you are. A little boy.” I continued not to look at or talk to him. He walked away. I was freaked out. Aside from my teacher and the attendant, this was the first time someone had talked to me in four days. I worried that I had, in fact, ruined 18
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
i’m a perpetually distracted loudmouth who can’t even watch a basketball game without checking Twitter, and I’ve always loathed that about myself. at a time when I was feeling as raw as ever, when my feelings were burrowed up and jumping out of my face like zits…
BRUTAL.
this experience for him. I spoke to my teacher about it after the next group sitting. He said I wasn’t the only reason the man left, that he was complaining about a lot of things, and I should pay it little mind. People like me come to Onalaska, Wash., for this Vipassana retreat for 10 days, expecting the silence and inaction to give them instant peace. There are 11 hours a day of active meditation, no meals after noon, no reading, no writing, no meat, no killing bugs. There’s no writing, which is harder than not talking, because all your thoughts just sit in your head with no feasible release whatsoever. There’s also no strenuous exercise—though one guy did chin-ups on a tree. There’s no nothing. The silence exposes you to extraordinary boredom the likes of which you can barely imagine in the modern world. The silence isn’t gentle, not a pillow for sleeping. It’s for isolation, to make you square off with the chatter and trauma in your mind, strip you of all your pretenses, and make you deal with it through the meditation techniques you learn in 10 days. If you’re jumpy, you’ll be jumpy. If you’re anxious—and I was anxious as hell—you’ll be anxious. If you’re prone to boredom, you’ll be bored. You can’t escape your own mind. You can only learn to breathe with it, sit with its noise until it
shuts up. How I ended up at Vipassana is a long, boring and private story. The gist is that I had some pretty severe anxiety problems this past summer, and I saw a specialist who emphasized mindfulness and taught me breathing exercises to help deal with it. I soon found that these exercises were helpful in other parts of my life, so I started just kind of closing my eyes and paying attention to my breathing for, like, 20 minutes at a time. I found it colossally helpful. And so, one day, I said to myself: “Hey, I like this. Maybe I should really learn about it, go deep.” I attended Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and some friends from that venerable and beloved wackadoodle institution had dedicated 10 days of their life to attending this free retreat. No one had anything bad to say about it, except that it was hard. In that moment of my life, the difficulty appealed to me. I’m a perpetually distracted loudmouth who can’t even watch a basketball game without checking Twitter, and I’ve always loathed that about myself. At a time when I was feeling as raw as ever, when my feelings were burrowed up and jumping out of my face like zits, doing something so totally out of proportion with what I have always considered comfortable seemed like the right thing. And, good Lord, I was uncomfortable. My legs were too big, my posture was poor, my mind’s tendency toward boredom was tearing at me. I would stroll the walking paths during downtime, calculating how long it would take for someone to get me and take me home. But I was learning how to meditate and focus. In the absence of my life full of distractions, I was finally in a space where I could learn how to accommodate and observe my own mind. On Day 10, when we were allowed to talk again, I spoke to more than one person who said I seemed to be going crazy. But in this highly stressful, solitary environment, I was quickly learning that sitting with my eyes closed and observing my breath and my body and my mind was the ultimate tonic for that slow madness. You don’t need to go to Onalaska to learn how to meditate. You could, right now, drop this newspaper in the gutter, close your eyes, focus on the feeling of your breath entering and exiting your nose, notice your mind straying from this task, and gently bring it back. With that, you’ve figured out a good portion of the technique. Take a Transcendental Meditation class, use an app, a recording, do controlled breathing, whatever. The purpose of all these methods is pretty much the same, to observe your feelings and thoughts objectively. If you want to be more centered, especially in troubled times, there are few things you can recommend more. But if you really want to learn how powerful this stuff can be, the extent to which it gives you a clear sense of your own mind, there is no substitute for deserting your brain on an island with nothing to feed it but the gentle awareness of your own body.
Herb ’n’
Life HOW ADAPTOGENS, THE HORMONE-REGULATING FAMILY OF HERBS, ARE SHAPING DISCUSSIONS OF CHRONIC STRESS.
HEALTH & WELLNESS “In the way I practice,” Powell says, “it really depends what’s going on in that person’s body and life and disease or wellness process.” The herbalists I talked to all stressed reverence for each herb’s properties and a deep personalization of herbal strategies for each patient. There’s no consensus, though, as to the exact consequences of not following that advice. Powell, for example, says adaptogens cannot be misused. “One of the definitions of adaptogens in the botanical medicine world is that they are not toxic,” she says. “It’s like nature provided us with a tonic herb to be used longterm that is safe and effective.” Smaka disagrees, saying adaptogens can throw the neuroendocrine system out of balance and do more harm than good. He’s even acknowledged the probable threat of “ginseng abuse syndrome,” a condition in which heavy ginseng users can experience elevated blood pressure, nervousness, sleep trouble, skin problems and diarrhea. Unless you’re in recovery from a disease or suffering from extraordinarily high stress, he suggests not using adaptogens.
“They’ll facilitate you transitioning from a place of stress or recuperation to a healthier spot,” Smaka says, “and then you’re done. Adaptogens are really targeting deficiency, weakness and recuperation. The problem is that the average American is walking around with that: chronic stress and chronic malnutrition.” Smaka says that without combining the herbs with other positive changes to your diet and routine, it’s just dumping a bucket of water on a bonfire: “The flame won’t rise up as high, but the source of the flame, the embers, are still there.” Powell, too, stresses the need to choose herbal practices based on what’s needed rather than just trying something a friend is using. But she also sees adaptogens as an obvious way to cope with the unavoidable stresses of modern life. “As we’re all grappling to survive where we’re at in the world these days—politically, economically, socially—I think we’re all looking for strategies,” she says.
Remember maca? Echinacea? St. John’s Wort? Every year or so, it seems, a new herbal remedy rises to mainstream consciousness, instantly appearing in good-for-you bottled juices, powders and even capsules at Walgreens. Well, get ready for a new wave of up-and-comers: rhodiola, bacopa, schisandra, rhaponticum and reishi mushrooms. Meet adaptogens, a family of herbs roughly defined by their link to the secretion of stress hormones in the body. You’ve already heard of some, like ginseng, and maybe eleuthero and ashwagandha. But more are popping up at hip juice bars and in publications like Entrepreneur and Bustle. These herbs sound like a revelation: They can relax the body and energize it at the same time, evoking a kind of idealized equilibrium, and help us handle chronic stress, a major contributor to heart disease, obesity, memory impairment and mood disorders. Some coffee drinkers even find certain varieties stimulating enough to replace their morning cup. But if that all makes adaptogens sound too good to be true, that’s because, depending on whom you ask, they are. Herbalists debate widely even such basic questions as what makes an herb an adaptogen, how adaptogens work in the body, whether they can be misused, who should and should not be using them, and for how long they should be used. Christopher Smaka, founder of Vital Ways, a “school of traditional Western herbalism” in Northeast Portland, says herbalists’ approach to adaptogens depends on where they start. “To one person, herbalism is botany and medicineman healing, to another, it’s traditional or alternative medicine, and to another, it’s a clinical practice,” he says. Smaka, whose work falls solidly in the last category, says adaptogens are herbs that work through the endocrine system to keep stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine from becoming chronically elevated. That makes adaptogens different from nervines, a separate class of herbs traditionally used for mental (as opposed to physical) stress. In addition to many nervines being incorrectly labeled as adaptogens, Smaka says one big misstep to avoid as adaptogens become more common is the temptation to lump them together. “Each adaptogen is a radically different plant,” he says, “and you can’t say someone needs an adaptogen, then just reach into the bag and grab one.” Herbalist Jo Powell, who founded, directed and instructed at the Northwest School of Herbalism and now teaches herbalism seminars at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, presents adaptogens on a spectrum of stimulation intensity. Some, like Chinese red ginseng, are quite stimulating—in traditional Chinese medicine it was reserved for the elderly or those in recovery from illness.
ZELDA GALEWSKY
BY I SA B E L Z AC H A R I AS
ASHWAGANDHA
Like most adaptogens, this Ayurvedic herb helps relieve stress, enhances endurance and calms the nervous system, and it’s also known for treating inflammatory conditions like arthritis. In traditional Ayurvedic medicine, it was used to manage anxiety, insomnia, nightmares and obsessivecompulsive tendencies.
ELEUTHERO
Sometimes (incorrectly) called Siberian ginseng, this herb shares ginseng’s stimulating properties but is gentler in its sharpening of mental functions. Associated mostly with traditional Chinese medicine, eleuthero is especially good for treating depression and boosting the immune system.
RHODIOLA
Studies have shown this herb is effective in treating a wide range of conditions, from erectile dysfunction to ADHD. Versatile rhodiola can correct an irregular heartbeat and support lung function, offering effective use as an antioxidant, antidepressant and rejuvenating tonic herb as well as an adaptogen.
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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HEALTH & WELLNESS
PEOPLE PELLETS
If you could live on only one food, what would it be? The emotional answer is pizza, but the practical answer is soylent. For all its faults, late-stage American capitalism has given us a product that meets all of our nutritional needs and which could theoretically provide indefinite subsistence. Soylent is mostly used to power code-monkeying, but could also stock the bunker where you live after our “tremendous, really tremendous” nuclear negotiations with North Korea don’t work out. With mushrooms clouds forming on the horizon—and with the new year being a good time to eat clean—I tested five competitors of classic Soylent-brand soylent, eating each for breakfast with a large cup of coffee. MARTIN CIZMAR.
100% FOOD
Powder in bottles, $4.40 per bottle, chocolate flavor, spacenutrientsstation.com. Satiety: 4/10 Tastiness: 0/10 Convenience: 5/10 Aleh Manchuliantsau came to this country without his wife. So he decided to eat like an astronaut. “Normally my wife handles the cooking, but while I was in the U.S. I needed to find a way to eat healthily with my very limited culinary skills. I tried restaurant food, but eventually that made a negative impact on my wallet and was rather fatty,” he writes on his astronaut-themed website. On the upside, you just add water to the powder-filled bottle and shake. On the downside, his self-admitted “very limited culinary skills” are on full display with this dirt-flavored powder, which is riddled with halfground seeds.
TSOGO COMPLETE
20
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
Powder packets to be dissolved in water, $4.50 per meal, three flavors, tsogo.com. Satiety: 3/10 Tastiness: 2/10 Convenience: 4/10 Tsogo was funded last year with $36,000 raised on Indiegogo. Odd to me given that it came years after Soylent and had essentially the same pitch: Never grocery-shop again and get perfect nutrition! The blend is the same stuff you see other
L O VAT T O
TESTING COMPLETE NUTRITION MEALS, THE FOODS OF OUR VERY BLEAK FUTURE.
places—chia, flax, hemp and brown rice—but in smaller packets and with a chalkier flavor.
JOYLENT
Powder in one-day packets to be scooped out, $6.31 per bag (paid in Euros), joylent.eu. Satiety: 4/10 Tastiness: 6/10 Convenience: 3/10 Joylent started because Soylent wasn’t shipped to Europe. Rather than just ripping off the Soylent look (sup, Huel), it took things in a twee direction, with anthropomorphic strawberries poised to eat each other (sup, Soylent Green). It adds bits of freeze-dried fruit for nutrients and flavor, and the strawberry almost tastes like off-brand Nesquik.
TWENNY BAR
Bars with 20 percent of your daily nutritional needs, $2.02 (paid in Euros), joylent.eu. Satiety: 2/10 Tastiness: 2/10 Convenience: 10/10 Like Soylent’s “Food Bar,” Joylent has flavored oat bars. Five of them equal a day’s nutrition, though it’d be hard to make yourself eat five of these in a day. The Twenny is convenient, but unpleasant in texture and flavor. The banana flavor, for example, tastes like batter left out overnight.
MEALSQUARES
Brownie-size bread squares, $2.90 for a meal, mealsquares.com. Satiety: 9/10 Tastiness: 4/10 Convenience: 4/10 MealSquares are essentially sciency breakfast bars: little flat squares of very dry bread that have 400 calories of ingredients like oats, rice bran, sweet potatoes and chickpeas. If you microwave them, they get a little moister and the few tiny bits of dark chocolate melt, making them much more palatable. They are quite filling, though, and about as close to “real food” as you’re going to get from a soylent product.
TAP THAT
CRUNCH: A woman eats three Taco Bell crunchy tacos.
trated, soft movements, and I could feel a tingling sensation in my arms and in my head.” Evans says she first found ASMR videos after waking up from a nightmare five years ago, brought on by her PTSD. When she couldn’t fall back asleep, she openedYouTube to find ocean sounds. Instead, she found a video called “Relaxing Makeup Artist Roleplay.” “I woke up and realized I hadn’t even made it five minutes into that video. I watched a couple By S op h i a J un e sjune@wweek.com more, and during one of her videos, I noticed that I I first discovered ASMR while in a strange corner was feeling that ASMR. I was getting those tingles of YouTube. I had just watched a 20-second video in my scalp and spine,” she says. of seagulls and another 30-minute video chroniDr. Karen Chenier, a psychology professor at cling the fertility struggles of a Florida couPortland State University, believes people ple named Kim and Tad, when YouTube are drawn to ASMR because of mirror suggested a video of a woman eating neurons, which relate to empathy and are scrambled eggs. activated by watching other people. For “They’re perfect,” she whispers while example, if you see someone yawn, you chewing loudly. “It’s a long weekend.” She may also yawn. Similarly, you can watch takes a bite of crunchy toast. “Which I don’t someone brush their hair and empathize really need because I just started school.” She clinks with that relaxing feeling, she says. her fork on her plate. This goes on for 18 minutes. “It hooks in your memory what that video is A joke? A fetish video? Nope, it’s just ASMR. like: the time you got to bond with your mother or Maybe you’ve never heard older sibling; a video of hair of autonomous sensory brushing could hook you into meridian response, but it gets that. The mirror neurons a fair share of bandwidth can take us back to that even on YouTube: A quick search though we’re not experiencyields more than 6 million ing it,” she says. videos. Chenier says ASMR For some people, hearing can be mind-altering, in a certain noises, like tapping, similar way to drugs, alcohol JUICY: A man massages a whispering or chewing, trigraw turkey, speaking softly. or running. gers a tingling sensation of Evans says watching euphoria. ASMR videos has signifiThink long nails tapping a cantly improved her life, and wooden hairbrush, as seen in she frequently gets emails “Simple Pleasures” from Youfrom people who are helped Tube user GentleWhispering, by her videos. which has been viewed more “It seems weird to talk than 8 million times. about, like I tap on things Listening to someone and read children’s books TAP: A famous ASMRtist unscrew a pickle jar isn’t taps on glass. out loud and upload it to going to stop the Trump-ocaYouTube—that’s kind of a lypse, but it might help you sleep better at night. weird thing,” she says. “But I get emails from It’s not unlike ambient noise—which is popular people all the time saying it’s the only way they in Portland, as Spotify’s records show. The track can sleep at night. ASMR is a really big security Portland streamed disproportionately more than blanket.” the rest of the country last year was a 90-second Chenier says she thinks ASMR can absolutely track from an album called 50 Shades of Ambience. be used for people experiencing PTSD. Maddy Evans has been using ASMR for the past “To treat any trauma, we have to involve the five years to help her sleep. whole body and the whole mind, so for them to be “I first felt the sensation of ASMR when I was able to train the body to relax is something they about 6 years old,” says Evans, a junior at the Uni- have to cultivate. A cool thing about the videos is versity of Oregon who makes her own ASMR videos. that they’re teaching them to get into their body,” “I remember being with my friend in my house, and she says. “These experiences seem almost lumiI was watching her pour the tea and grab everything nous to people, like, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize and cut the finger sandwiches, and those concen- I’m almost drooling now.’”
HOW THOSE WEIRD CORNERS OF YOUTUBE CAN HELP US SLEEP.
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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The solution to your New Years resolution? MUV Training’s boutique exercise facility. Strength training, cycling, barre and yoga classes — getting into shape has never been easier.
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FRIDAY, JANUARY 6TH AT 6PM
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Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
Chuck Westmoreland shears away all outré influences for a singer-songwriter’s lunch pail full of bare-knuckle blood and guts. Much like Springsteen turned his back on streetracing anthems for noir Heartland story telling on Nebraska, Westmoreland gets to the gritty business of life and death and loss on his solo debut.
HEALTH & WELLNESS
QUAKE: Deathmatch
BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E LL FERGUS O N
THOM GLICK
HOW TO BEGIN PREPARING FOR THE WORST NATURAL DISASTER IN U.S. HISTORY. bferguson@wweek.com
What will the apocalypse look like? Ever since Nov. 8, it’s been hard not to imagine the United States morphing into a lawless, post-nuclear wasteland ruled by Immortan Trump. Yet Oregon faces a threat that’s arguably more dangerous than the rise of any despot, the looming Cascadia earthquake. It’s a terrifying prospect, especially in the wake of New Yorker writer Kathryn Schulz’s notorious 2015 article, in which Kenneth Murphy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency ominously declared, “Everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.” The quake is predicted to devastate Portland and up to 140 square miles of the Pacific Northwest—quite an event for a city where a few inches of snow is considered a “Snowpocalypse.” When I first heard about this, I shelved it in one of the back corners of my mind, near my youthful love of The Phantom Menace. When I finally read “The Really Big One,” I was stabbed with despair: the collapse of a million buildings and our region’s economy. According to FEMA, thousands of people will die. There’s not much we can do about that. What’s the best way to give ourselves a fighting chance? Build a disaster preparedness kit. It’s not hard to find a list of items for that kit. But before you start shopping, pause for a minute and think about your overall strategy. “There’s a lot of groundwork that needs to be done before you even start worrying about the kit,” says Althea Rizzo, geologic hazards program coordinator at Oregon Emergency Management. Rizzo says the key isn’t to hit Costco and stuff everything on the Red Cross’ exhaustive list into a big duffle bag, it’s to make plans to stash that stuff wherever you expect to be when the quake hits. “We really recommend that people look at their lifestyle, look at where they spend time, and just squirrel away food and supplies there,” she says. “Make sure you have a flashlight at work or a gallon or two of water. Maybe that’s all you can put in your cubicle, but if you do, it’ll still be more than you had yesterday.” You’ll want to spread supplies across multiple locations—and in your car, which will be in multiple locations. “We recommend people keep seven to 10 days’ worth of supplies in their car because we’re Americans, so we usually have our cars with us,” Rizzo says. “So if you have seven to 10 days of supplies at your office and seven to 10 days of supplies in your car, that’s two weeks’ worth of supplies.” Of course, if disaster strikes while you’re at work, you’re still going to need a way to get home. The Hawthorne, Steel, Interstate and Fremont bridges are expected to collapse. Anyone who needs to cross the Willamette should prepare to walk across the revamped Sellwood Bridge or Tilikum Crossing, both of which are earthquake-resistant. Rizzo is also quick to emphasize that communication is crucial to surviving any natural disaster. That’s why picking a post-fallout meeting spot for family and friends is important, as is tapping a relative who lives outside the impact area as an emergency contact. The other pressing issue is water. If you’ve got water, you’ve got at least a few days to figure things out. “One gallon per person per day is the rule of thumb,” says Monique Dugaw, director of communications for the Red Cross in the Cascades region. When expanding your kit, Dugaw says water, nonperishable food and first-aid supplies “are the three basics to start with.” Rizzo also emphasizes the importance of post-disaster hydration. “At home, I have 14 days’ worth of water for two people,” she says “But that’s probably not going to be enough. So what I have is a couple of different ways to purify water.” This is something anyone can do. A basic water-purification straw costs $14 on Amazon, allowing you to stash them in your car, house and office. The more I talked and read and learned, the more I realized that survival, like anything, depends on strategy. “Most of the people who died in the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami died because of the tsunami,” Rizzo says, “and they died because they did not know what to do.”
PRODUCTS TO HELP YOU SURVIVE PORTLAND WOOLEN MILLS SKY MASTER, $135
There are only a handful of privately owned woolen mills in the country now. This company in Bend makes hardy wool-lined sleeping bags for the outdoors. This bag is rated to 40 degrees, and it’s heavy for backpacking but perfect for a base camp. The big difference between this and other bags is the naturally anti-microbial liner, which uses none of the chemical treatments you find on most modern sleeping bags. When you can longer do laundry every week, this is the sleeping bag you’ll want.
LEATHERMAN CHARGE ALX, $130
Sure, you’ve had a little lightweight Leatherman for fishing trips. Sorry, kids, playtime’s over. The big daddy Charge ALX has a large locking blade, real screwdrivers, a wire-stripper and a real saw—for bone, should you need it. It’s heavy for a pocket tool, but very light for a toolbox. The locking blade is a game-changer.
WALLREST, $159
Have you ever wanted a waterproof Snuggie? Me too. Now, Portland-based Wallrest has delivered. The project began with soccer parents working to beat the chill while their kids ran around by using this combo blanket and poncho with a cozy fleece lining and fully taped seams. You can zip it together with other Wallrests, which means anyone else with a Wallrest is automatically a valuable ally in the battle for winter warmth.
DURA ROCKET STOVE BY ECOZOOM, $100
In parts of Africa, women and girls sometimes spend four hours a day gathering wood for inefficient open cooking fires. Two Oregon MBA students came up with a solution: the EcoZoom stove, an insulated cast-iron stove that burns much more efficiently. The company started in Portland but its offices are now in Nairobi, Kenya—a testament to the good it’s done in the developing world. Post-Trumpocalypse, this could be the new La Cornue.
SOLARBAG, $70
This solar-powered water filter bag comes from a Beaverton company. Just fill it with 3 liters of water, plop it in the sun, and wait for the nasty bugs to die. We haven’t had a chance to experiment with it, and there are cheaper products out there, but if you want to stay local, this is your option. Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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Street
“My New Year’s resolution is to not get so angry about things.”
NEW YEAR, NEW YOU
“Shit, not really. I’m just winging it.”
WHAT’S YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION? PHOTOS BY JOE R IEDL www.wweek.com/street
“I have a lot of little ones, nothing special. Maybe intermittent fasting.”
“Not really. I just want to do better in school.” “Not really, no.” 24
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
“I signed up for a marathon.”
“Nope. I’m not into making New Year’s resolutions.”
THE
PORTL ANDIA
IN OTHER WORDS
➜
(14 NE KILLINGSWORTH ST.)
Fe m i n i st b o o k st o r e a n d community center of long standing (est. 1993). ON THE SHOW: Feminist bookstore and community center of long standing (Seasons 1-6). B FC :
EFFECT
T H E P O R T L A N DI A E F F E C T:
Briefly became the most famous bookstore in Portland after putting up a “Fuck Portlandia” sign.
WHAT HAS CABLE TV DONE TO PORTLAND?
PUT A MOTHERFUCKING BIRD ON IT!
Carrie and Fred are headed for a hospice. Portlandia, whose seventh season debuts Thursday, Jan. 5, will end its run next year. How will it be remembered? We assess its legacy by seeing what became of its most iconic filming locations. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. LAND GALLERY (3925 N MISSISSIPPI AVE.) BFC: Twee gallery. Twee store. ON THE SHOW: “Put a bird
GILT CLUB (306 NW BROADWAY)
on it!” THE PORTLANDIA EFFECT:
BFC: Home to pointless luxu-
BFC (Before Fred and Carrie):
The city’s crowning achievement in charming livability—bike lanes on a river! Vera’s statue looks out proudly on God’s work. ON THE SHOW: In the first episode, the esplanade was home to the show’s sales pitch, the short-shortsy, beardy, tatted, high-bikesy, artsy, craftsy, sing-songy vision of Portland as a place for the young to retire— the sort of thing we once, maybe, in 2011’s kinder moments, might even have believed ourselves.
VOODOO DOUGHNUT (22 SW 3RD AVE.) BFC: Quaint, regional doughnut shop in Portland and Eugene—home to unregulated nonprescription drugs, countless weddings and family-friendly activities involving fluffers. ON THE SHOW: In Season 2, Episode 4, Voodoo co-founder Tres Shannon appeared as God, while in a later sketch the doughnut shop was a component in a very high-pitched scavenger hunt. THE PORTLANDIA EFFECT: Voodoo goes global, bringing its confectionary penises to locations in Austin, Denver, Universal Studios, Taipei, and soon Tokyo. The Ankeny Alley becomes the Ankeny “Plaza,” whatever that is. Coincidence? We think not.
THE PORTLANDIA EFFECT:
Within three years, the Gilt Club succumbed, and is now closed. The darkened storefront serves only as a black mirror for homeless people displaced by Portlandia.
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VERA KATZ EASTBANK ESPLANADE
ry’s raised middle finger, a $20 foie gras burger. ON THE SHOW: In Season 1, the Gilt Club was home to perhaps the series’ best-realized sketch, in which the restaurant’s chickens are so humanely treated you can visit Colin the Chicken’s Mansonian-cult farm to see how he lived, before chewing, swallowing and digesting him.
GOOD NEIGHBOR PIZZERIA (800 NE DEKUM ST.) BFC: Casual Woodlawn pizza shop. ON THE SHOW: With the Dekum
THE PORTLANDIA EFFECT:
Now, the esplanade’s mighty Dock is home to angry river-warrior turf battles between vicious dragon boaters and peaceful pot smokers, there are people slashing each other with machetes, and somebody spraypainted a swastika on Vera. Thanks, Portlandia.
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neighborhood branded as “Brunch Village,” the entire Season 2 finale takes place waiting in a brunch line for Good Neighbor, which has been renamed “The Fisherman’s Porch.” T H E P O R T L A N DI A E F F E C T:
Google review, Oct. 12, 2015: “A nearby recommended restaurant had an hour wait, so we wandered across the street into Good Neighbor…and so glad we did!”
Land Gallery is so steadfast one suspects it may be the divine, unmoved mover behind all of Portlandia. The most recent exhibit, by onetime K Records mitten artist Nikki McClure, featured intricate clamshell paper-cuts created for a children’s book about appreciating the sea.
WILLAMETTE WEEK OFFICE (2220 NW QUIMBY ST.) BFC: Pulitzer-winning investigative
journalism. ON THE SHOW: In Season 3, our
offices played the role of the Portland Tribune during a hostile takeover. Beleaguered editor George Wendt, while sitting at reporter Nigel Jaquiss’ desk, is harangued into embracing “sideboob” as clickbait. THE PORTLANDIA EFFECT:
WW’s web traffic is up 179 percent from 2012, when this episode was filmed. Thanks, Portlandia! WATCH: Portlandia’s Season 7 premieres at 10 pm Thursday, Jan. 5, on IFC, with a viewing party at Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave. Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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PHOTOS COURTESY OF IFC
The Bump
STARTERS
JOE RIEDL
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
#wweek #wweek
INCOMING AND ANTICIPATED
C I S U M
FOOD: Former Aviary co-owner Jasper Shen has two highprofile projects in the works for early 2017. In January, he will open his long-promised XLB in the former Lardo space on North Williams Avenue, devoted to the xiao long bao Shanghai soup dumpling that’s become a nationwide obsession. He’s also been tapped as project manager of the Portland outpost of Can Font, the Michelin-recognized Catalan restaurant in Barcelona, planned for Northwest 10th Avenue and Northrup Street, under chef Joseph Vidal. >> Among street food in early 2017, expect a cocktail-happy, brick-and-mortar version of Yucatecan torta spot Güero in the former Tabla space on Northeast 28th Avenue and a Beijing-style dumpling and meat pie eatery called Danwei Canting from former Clarklewis chef Kyo Koo on Southeast Stark Street. The owners of Fish Sauce will open a Vietnamese street food and drinking snack spot called Short Round later this winter on Southeast Hawthorne, and Tiffin Asha will throw its South Indian dosas and street snacks on Northeast Kilingsworth. >> Downtown, the 3,000-square-foot Portland Food Hall is slated to drop in early 2017. Located five blocks south of Pine Street Market on Southwest 2nd Avenue, the hall will have a bar and seven food vendors, including ramen from the people behind Hapa PDX, and a Lebanese spot from Andre Karam of Zaatar. MUSIC: After selling out their inaugural collaboration last year, MusicfestNW presents Project Pabst returns to Tom McCall Waterfront Park on Aug. 26-27. >> Vince Staples, one of the best live rappers in the game, graduates to Roseland Theater for his Life Aquatic tour March 1. >> Finally touring behind a new album, resurgent power-punk duo Japandroids hits Revolution Hall, a venue that isn’t exactly conducive to ecstatic moshing but is perfect for balcony-diving, on March 17. >> Legendary mistress of scuzz PJ Harvey visits the Northwest for the first time since 2009, playing Crystal Ballroom on May 7. On June 21, Nick Cave returns to further defile the Schnitz, the same stage he spat on two years ago. STAGE & SCREEN: Last year, Portland theater took a hard tilt toward social justice with runaway hits like Hands Up. That will continue in 2017 with Beirut Wedding World Theater Project, a company founded with the intent of encouraging social change. The company had its debut production this past fall. >> Artists Rep is staging Roger Guenveur Smith’s one-man show, Rodney King, and next month White Bird is bringing in the internationally recognized ballet company Ballet de Lorraine. >> In July, Portland Opera is forgoing safe-bet, overly familiar operas with the West Coast debut of a double bill from contemporary composer David Lang, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Little Match Girl Passion, under the theatrical direction of Imago Theatre’s Jerry Mouawad. >> Portland’s presence on little screens across the nation will take a hit in 2017, with the sixth and final season of ghost-and-cop procedural Grimm premiering Jan. 6, and the seventh and final season of civic cultural manifesto Portlandia premiering Jan. 5. And then we roll directly into film festival season, with Reel Music Festival (Jan. 13-Feb. 5) at NW Film Center, the Portland Black Film Festival (Feb. 9-22) at the Hollywood Theatre, and the gigantic Portland International Film Festival (Feb. 9-25).
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WEDNESDAY, JAN. 4 Two Trains Runnin’
Coastlands, Eclisse Get a
The new documentary from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sam Pollard (4 Little Girls), Two Trains Runnin’ tells the story of the search for forgotten bluesmen Skip James and Son House at the height of the 1964 Freedom Summer civil rights protests in Mississippi. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., hollywoodtheatre.org. 7:30 pm.
sampling of Portland’s burgeoning post-rock scene via two bands that sound nothing alike. Coastlands evoke Explosions in the Sky but with a more ambient approach, while Eclisse are dark, loud and abrasive. What links the two is a knack for crafting vivid sonic landscapes that’ll paint images behind your eyelids. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., dougfirlounge.com. 9 pm. $7-$10. 21+.
THURSDAY, JAN. 5
Ed Luce
Blazers vs. Lakers
Ed Luce’s Wuvable Oaf is a meaty bear way into queercore, fuckin’ heavy metal, and the San Francisco wrestling scene. Which is to say, he’s just like you. Everybody who shows up to meet Luce, buy a book and see the art also gets a pin of Goteblüd, which is exactly as cool as it sounds. Floating World Comics, 400 NW Couch St., wuvableoaf.com. 6 pm.
For the fi rst time in what seems like forever, the Blazers and Lakers are on a similar trajectory— downward. But don’t let the fact that both teams are below .500 detract from one of the most storied rivalries in the NBA...well, in the minds of Blazer fans, anyway. Moda Center, 1 N Center Court St., nba.com/blazers. 7 pm. $40-$128.
FRIDAY, JAN. 6
Kyle Morton
Get Busy
With his band, Portland indie-pop orchestra Typhoon, on an extended hiatus, leader Kyle Morton recorded his fi rst solo album. What Will Destroy You strips away the grand ornamentation of his main project, leaving little more than bare emotion. The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave., theoldchurch.org. 8 pm. Sold out. All ages.
Portland Story Theater
Unlike a lot of other storytelling showcases, Portland Story Theater isn’t an open mic. The storytellers are vetted by the organization’s personal narrative workshop, and for this edition, the five performers have also toured with Portland Story Theater’s On the Road series. Fremont Theater, 2393 NE Fremont St., fremonttheater.com. 8 pm. $15 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
WHAT WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT JANUARY 4-10
SATURDAY, JAN. 7 WrestleSport
Finally, indie wrestling comes out of the dingy bingo halls where it typically resides and into the setting it deserves—the thee-uhtah. WrestleSport promises “a new look and feel of professional wrestling,” telling a self-contained story that’ll thread through the show just like, y’know, a play. Imagine A Raisin in the Sun, but with chair shots. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., wrestle-sport.com. 6 pm. $12-$25. All ages.
Bowie Birthday Bash
One good thing about 2017 is that David Bowie can’t die again. Tonight, celebrate the Thin White Duke’s should’ve-been 70th birthday by singing along with the OK Chorale and local all-star tribute act Boys Keep Swinging, then become the Starman yourself at a late-night session of Bowie-exclusive Baby Ketten Karaoke. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., mississippistudios.com. 7 and 8:15 pm. $15. Early show all ages, late show 21+.
SUNDAY, JAN. 8 Farm Brunch
Have your own real, live Colin the Chicken experience: Drive out to a farm in Sherwood and eat meat from pasture-raised animals whose cousins you might have seen on the way in. It’s $35 for a three-course meal, and $15 more gets you some wine with that. Our Table Cooperative, 13390 SW Morgan Road. 9:30 am and 12:30 pm. Tickets at ourtable.us.
MONDAY, JAN. 9
Ride the MAX pantsless and donate a spare pair or two to less-pantsed Portlanders in need, then enjoy an after-party at the revamped Paris Theater, which was once a popular place to be pantsless regardless of the occasion. The event is all ages, so keep your lower half PG-13, please. Skidmore Fountain MAX Station, Southwest 1st Avenue and West Burnside Street, facebook.com/No.Pants.PDX. 2 pm. MAX fare required. All ages.
The Godfather
Diane Simmons
Somewhere between history and true crime, Diane Simmons’ The Courtship of Eva Eldridge: A Story of Bigamy in the Marriage Mad Fifties is all about the shipbuilding women of Portland—yes, that was a thing— after they got fired from their jobs and pushed into marriages, in particular one unlucky farm girl whose letters Simmons found at the Oregon Historical Society. Another Read Through Bookstore, 3932 N Mississippi Ave., dianesimmons.net. 7 pm.
TUESDAY, JAN. 10
No Pants MAX Ride
Cruise Ship Job Fair
Get priced out of your apartment? Hate the transplants? Hate the locals? Hate everything? Well, fuck it. Get on a boat, under Norwegian autocrats, in international waters. Then hop off in Indonesia or whatever. Embassy Suites, 319 SW Pine St. Attendees must fill out an application at career8.successfactors. com . 10 am and 3 pm.
ATTENTION ALL DADS! ATTENTION ALL DADS! Your favorite or second-favorite movie, the fi rst chapter in Francis Ford Coppola’s legendary epic of the Corleone crime family, returns to the big screen this week. Relive the drama and get pissed off at your son for not liking it as much as you do, miming young Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) when he slams his hand on the table and screams, “Enough!” Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 503-2234527. 6:30 pm. $4.
36th Chamber of Shaolin
The second film in the Hollywood’s new Insurgent Cinema series stars Gordon Liu as a young revolutionary who learns kung fu to overthrow the oppressive Manchu government. Presented in an extremely rare 35 mm print, Liu Chia-liang’s 36th Chamber is considered one of the best kung fu movies ever made, inspiring cinema dorks and Wu-Tang Clan affiliates alike. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., hollywoodtheatre.org. 7:30 pm. Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK
Shandong www.shandongportland.com
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Editor: MARTIN CIZMAR. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
FRIDAY, JAN. 6
Shandong
3 Baptists Walk Into a Bar
New Year’s weight-loss resolutions aside, it’s stout season. Baptize your year with whiskey-aged Baptists from Epic: cocoa-nib and coffee Big Bad Baptist Imperial Stout, a version with cinnamon, and a version made with whiskeyaged coffee. Oh, and a Hook n Orchard sour from Epic that’ll be the only one you’ll find in Portland. Tin Bucket, 3520 N Williams Ave., 503-477-7689. 5 pm.
www.shandongportland.com
SATURDAY, JAN. 7 Belgian-Style Beer Bash
The 23rd Avenue Bottle Shop is busting out a whole mess of
727 SW Washington St., 503-954-1987, taquerianueve.com. After an off visit this summer, a recent visit found T9 in top form, with bright salsas and soul-warming corn tortillas topped with achingly tender carnitas. Stop by. $.
2. Duck House
1968 SW 5th Ave., 971-801-8888. Jasper Shen’s soup dumpling spot XLB will be coming soon to North Portland—but for now, take heart that you can get good Shanghai soup dumplings downtown at new Chinese spot Duck House. $.
Bold FlAvor vegan Friendly
3. Afuri Ramen
923 SE 7th Ave., 503-468-5001, afuri.us. The new Afuri space is ridiculously impressive—and so is the ramen. The shio yuzu broth is the purest distillation of chicken and fish, the
open 11-10
everyday
SUNDAY, JAN. 8 Our Table Farm Brunch
At its farm in Sherwood, the Our Table Cooperative is hosting a brunch with meat from pastureraised animals you might see on the drive in. Hooo! Despite the rustic setting, you’ll be eating indoors with a multicourse $35 meal, plus optional wines to pair for $15—you’re at the edge of wine country, after all. Oh, and no kids, people. This is a drunky farm brunch for grown-ups. Tix at ourtable.us. Our Table Cooperative, 13390 SW Morgan Road, 503-217-4304. 9:30 am. $35-$50.
shoyu is deeper than Mishima, and that shiitake broth as rich as most meat broths. Pair them with sake from a very deep list. $$-$$$.
1. Taqueria Nueve
Simple ApproAch
Belgian-style beers on a taster tray that includes a strong golden from 21st Amendment, Deschutes’ pinot sauvage, a couple Goose Islands, Ordnance Brewing’s Saison Af Urt and a red wedding saison made by Ruse and Culmination. If you need a bribe, it’s also knocking 10 percent off the price of all Belgian beers in the shop. Prost/Salut! 23rd Avenue Bottle Shop, 2290 NW Thurman St., 971-202-7256. 10 am.
4. OP Wurst
126 SW 2nd Ave. (in Pine Street Market), 971-386-2199. Did you know the only thing you have to do to make a hot dog into a breakfast hot dog is put some eggs and bacon on it? Now you’re totally justified getting the city’s best hot dog at, like, 8 am. Because it’s a breakfast hot dog now. With bacon and eggs. $.
5. Traditional Russian Cuisine
5235 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-449-1531, pdxrussiancuisine.com. You ever had Russian ramen? Borrowing from the same Chinese influence, Russians make a beef and lamb noodle soup called lagman, tinted red from tomato and full of cabbage, dumplings and squash. $.
DRANK
YO U R Y L K E 500 NW 21st Ave, (503) 208-2173 E Wkungpowpdx.com PERK
I T ’S SH E R F
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Bloops
(ORDNANCE BREWING)
If it weren’t for berry beer, I’m not sure we’d have such a vital craft-beer culture. It seems silly to geeks today, but back when the idea of a brewpub was new, pints of McMenamins Ruby and Pyramid Apricot Ale dramatically expanded their appeal. Nowadays, most geeks I hear talking about respect for the history of American brewing nonetheless look sideways at beers like Ordnance’s Bloops, a throwback wheat with no connection to today’s fruited sours. But Ordnance brewer Logan Mayfield has done a pretty remarkable job with this much-maligned style, creating a cloudy, juicy brew that delivers everything you could ever want from a fruit wheat. The secret is in the berries, grown by owner Craig Coleman on his farm. Ordnance does use some berry powder to increase the intensity of the flavor—made partly with berries Coleman sells to a fruit processor. Coleman’s extended family also owns hop farms in the Willamette Valley, and hops power many of Ordnance’s beers. If drinkers can set aside their snobbiness, they might be surprised how much they like this beer. Recommended. MARTIN CIZMAR.
JULIAN ALEXANDER
root-based beverage native to the island cultures of the South Pacific, also doubles as a pleasant cafe serving tropical food, including acai. The nut bowl’s blend complements the berry’s natural earthiness with peanut butter, giving it a rounder flavor and silky mouthfeel. And Bula Kava House sets it off correctly, with warm flavors from local Hammer & Tuffy’s deeply roasty granola, toasted almonds and cinnamon, with blackberries for refreshing contrast.
Original Bowl at Carioca Bowls
827 NE Alberta St., cariocabowls.com. $9 ($6 half size). Blend: Acai, banana, blueberry, strawberry. Alberta hippie sanctuary Carioca Bowls offers the best build-your-own options for diners looking for a healthy meal in a neighborhood heavy on bars and fast-casual spots. Blueberry is featured prominently in the Original Bowl blend, providing an ester note reminiscent of Belgian beer. And there are an unparalleled choice of toppings—fresh fruit, dried fruit, nuts, nut butters and weird health boosts aplenty. I went with tried-and-true almond butter and some dried dates, a sweet complement to the acai.
ACAI YOU LATER Sunnyside Bowl at Kure Juice Bar
Five locations in Portland, kurejuicebar.com. $8.50. SUMMER BREEZE BOWL AT KIVA
REVIEW
Purple Swag
SUPERFOOD OR NOT, I ATE EVERY ACAI BOWL IN PORTLAND. HERE’S THE RUNDOWN ON THE BRAZILIAN TREAT. We live in a post-acai America. The small, dark-purple berries, originally a delicacy of the Ribeirinhos people of the Brazilian Amazon, were heralded as a superfood. Acai became a favorite of celebrities and chiseled beach bums after it was brought to the United States as frozen puree in 2001. In the mid-2000s, acai (pronounced ah-sah-ee) exploded into a mini-health craze when the antioxidantrich berry was marketed as an anti-aging, weight-loss miracle food. But by the early 2010s, it was being exposed by The New York Times and The New Yorker as a fad whose health benefits were tenuous at best. Today, acai and acai bowls are greeted by a mix of scorn and, usually, gendered derision— a big bowl of homeopathy and white-person dreadlock chunks for 19-year-old heiresses wearing Lululemon. Which is ludicrous, as acai bowls are healthy icecream sundaes. Just replace the ice cream with a sorbet that tastes like a lightly sweet mix of grape juice, blueberries and strawberries, trade the cookies and whatnot for fresh fruit and granola, and replace the sauces with a big pile of almond butter, honey and nuts. That’s an acai bowl—it’s delicious and cheap, and you can eat one for a meal and not feel sick. So I did. For many meals, in fact. WALKER MACMURDO.
THE BEST, NOT CLOSE Summer Breeze Bowl at Kiva Cafe & Spa 1533 NW 24th Ave., kivateaspa.com. $9.
Blend: Acai, banana, mango, lime, orange blossom water, mango juice. The Summer Breeze Bowl at Nob Hill’s Kiva literally and figuratively towers over the competition. Kiva’s orange-
pink, silky-smooth acai blend so exceeded the grocerystore, frozen-berry flavor of most of its competitors, it might as well have been a different dish entirely. Gently tart, floral and tropically round, the base made me feel fine in the dead of winter, by far the most nuanced and complex of any acai I’ve eaten. Whoever figured out that coconut oil can be used as Magic Shell deserves a Nobel Prize. The fatty goodness of the oil and fresh coconut flakes magically played off the lime juice and mint-enhanced dried cranberries and strawberries, rounded out with earthy banana and granola. All of this was presented beautifully, like a sunsetcolored Mount Hood.
ALSO GOOD Rip City Bowl at Moberi
Three locations in Portland, moberiblends.com. $9.75 ($7.25 half size).
Blend: Acai, strawberries, banana, apple juice. I’m melting! Kure had by far the thinnest acai blend of any bowl sampled, including one that thawed so quickly that its flavor was indistinguishable from the crackly granola that sank into the slurry. The toppings make the grade: Toasted hazelnuts and tart goji berries (another former superfruit) are an upscale touch, and the strawberries were unseasonably sweet and fresh. But the acai let the whole thing down, turning to soup even as two people tried to quickly gobble up one bowl.
Soma Bowl at Greenleaf Juicing Company Four locations in Portland, greenleafjuice.com. $8.50.
Blend: Acai, blueberry, banana, almond butter, kale, orange juice. Greenleaf sticks to its name, mixing kale into the Soma Bowl for a tart, bitter and fairly thin acai blend. That’s not necessarily a bad thing if it’s accompanied by bright toppings. But granola, untoasted cashew, flavorless coconut and bitter cacao nibs are not bright toppings.
Acai Primo at Jamba Juice
Multiple locations, jambajuice.com. $6.99. Blend: Acai, soy milk. I wanted Jamba Juice’s sole foray into acai to be a tasty underdog, the nice, not-deep-fried snack to enjoy while foraying into the bowels of Lloyd Center. Alas, the otherwise acceptable but slightly thin acai base was harshly let down by its toppings. The granola was flavorless and crackly like Rice Krispies, while the banana was overripe and the honey acridly sweet. Everything tasted like it had been left sitting out.
Blend: Acai, strawberries, bananas, almond milk. Moberi’s simple, gently tart acai blend holds its sorbetlike texture for much longer than most other bowls, supporting a heap of almond butter, granola and honey like an island suspended on a purple sea. Throw in (maybe) healthy superfoods bee pollen and omega-3-and-6-heavy hemp hearts for good measure, and turn it into a power lunch with an onsite exercise bike that you can use to run the blender mixing your bowl.
Nut Bowl at Bula Kava House
3115 SE Division St., kavabar.bulakavahouse.com. $9.50. Blend: Acai, almond milk, banana, mixed berries, peanut butter. Portland’s sole house dedicated to kava, the sedative
NUT BOWL AT BULA KAVA Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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MUSIC HOTSEAT J e r e m e y Pau l H e r n a n d e z
work as a Typhoon record. I wasn’t making a conscious effort to not make it a Typhoon record, but I did feel like if I didn’t slap the name “Typhoon” on it, I had a freedom to write in ways I hadn’t before and try some things out that wouldn’t really work with Typhoon. You’ve mentioned how this theme of love that surrounds the record arose organically. Do you have an idea of why that is and where it came from? If I can be somewhat confessional, my own love life has gone rather well lately. I just got married to my longtime girlfriend, so there’s no juicy breakup story, at least not a recent one. An old professor friend of mine and I had been trying to work on this idea of why people in the modern, so-called secular age still get married, aside from maybe tax benefits and child-rearing. We were asking, “What does it really mean to do that?” Because it still seems like even if people don’t identify with being religious anymore, there’s this element of the sacred there. That had been on my mind a lot, and I was thinking about love as this extreme, destructive and creative force—a very ambivalent force that can level you or build you up.
Love and Destruction TYPHOON’S KYLE MORTON IS USED TO BEING LOST IN A CROWD. NOW HE’S GOING IT ALONE. BY M AT T H E W S I N G E R
msinger@wweek.com
The last time Portland heard from Kyle Morton, the news wasn’t good. In 2014, the driving force behind the beloved indiepop orchestra Typhoon fell ill—sick enough to cancel a swath of tour dates and send the band into an extended hiatus. Although he never went into detail about what was afflicting him, Morton suffered from Lyme disease as a child, a trauma that informed White Lighter, the group’s grandiose album from a year before. He’s better now. Typhoon, however, has been slower to recover. Turns out, wrangling together a dozen musicians doesn’t get easier as everyone gets older. With the ensemble taking its time getting back into playing shape—a new record is promised by the fall—Morton got restless. So he did what a lot of songwriters do when their creative partners are preoccupied: He made a solo album. Released in September, What Will Destroy You strips away much of Typhoon’s sweeping ornamentation, leaving the emotions bare save for guitar and bits of instrumental shading. As opposed to his main project’s often painstaking process, Morton wrote quickly, almost subconsciously, and what ended up emerging was a meditation on love in all its forms—“from old-fashioned heartache to acute sadomasochism,” as he puts it. As he prepares to embark on his first-ever solo tour, Willamette Week caught up with Morton to discuss playing by himself, his health, his obsession with death, and where Typhoon fits in a changing Portland music scene. WW: How are you feeling health-wise these days? Kyle Morton: Have you seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail? The “bring out your dead” scene, where the old man’s like, [affects a feeble voice] “I’m feeling much better, I’d like to go for a walk now”? I’m completely over that bit. It derailed a lot of touring, and it was kind of the reason for the hiatus we took the last couple years, but my health has been pretty stable the last year or two years.
There’s a lot of references to death and imagery relating to death, too, particularly on the first song, “Poor Bastard.” Well, that one is a parody of Typhoon in general. I’ve sung about death and dying for so many years and I’m still here, so I thought it was funny to make a song making fun of me for that. I’ve spent so many years examining this idea of mortality and the finitude of life, to the point of getting sick of talking about it and having it be my whole thing. You’re going on tour solo for the first time. Are you comfortable with that idea? I’m a little apprehensive about it. I’ve gotten more comfortable with solo shows, and some of them I really like, because I don’t have to worry about embarrassing anyone else onstage—it’s just me. I’m also a little nervous because it’s a totally different thing. I think Typhoon fans will be able to get something out of it, but it definitely won’t be the big fanfare, visual spectacle of having a million people squashed onstage.
You’ve described What Will Destroy You as a “detour” you took while preparing for the new Typhoon record, which makes it seem like you didn’t plan for it to happen. It was pretty extemporaneous. I had several songs kind of kicking around, and they weren’t Typhoon songs. Typhoon was starting to write and practice and play together again, but we’d kind of been on hiatus. So we had this time on our hands where the whole band wasn’t What’s the update on the next Typhoon record? really around. I was trying to keep myself busy, so I did It’s close. Right now, I’m working on some lyrics still, a video project with my friend Matt Ross called Book and we’ve got a lot of finishing touches to do in a lot of of Matches, and then I recorded this solo record. To places on the record, but the bulk of it’s there. I can’t say much about it, but it’s me, the two things are kindefinitely the biggest record dred spirits. The recording we’ve ever made. styles came from the same “I’ve SPent SO many yearS place, and experimenting Typhoon has been around with different ways to examInIng tHIS Idea OF 11 years now, and it seems write songs than the normOrtalIty and tHe FInItude OF like many stalwarts of the mal Typhoon way. That’s Portland music scene are kind of how it came about. lIFe, tO tHe POInt OF gettIng winding down. Has that It was really boredom. SICK OF talKIng abOut It and made you think about HavIng It be my WHOle tHIng.” Typhoon and how much How did you know these longer it may last? songs weren’t meant for —Kyle Morton It seems a little bit like the Typhoon? sun’s setting right now. For some, it’s a lot clearer Bands are hard to keep than others. Typhoon often goes for this grandiose thing, and I wanted to do together. Their de facto position isn’t to stay together. something that was quite a bit more understated. The You have to work to keep it together, or else it’ll just elegance of it is something I like about this record. To drift. There were times where we were touring a lot where I thought, “How long can I really do this?” On the me, it feels somewhat effortless. converse, I’m now having the thought, like, “How long How much conscious thought did you put into try- can I not do this before I go crazy?” Because I’m not ing to distinguish the sound of the record from that good at that many things, and this is the one thing I’ve got. I think I speak for everyone in that we want to keep of Typhoon? This was kind of a crossroads, because there was a point working at it and not let it just fade away. where I thought these songs could just be the next Typhoon record if we wanted to really do something dif- SEE IT: Kyle morton plays the Old Church, 1422 SW 11th ave., on Friday, Jan. 6. 8 pm. Sold out. all ages. ferent. As I was recording it, somehow it just didn’t quite Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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C O U R T E SY O F FAC E B O O K
MUSIC
ALL THAT GLITTERS: Gold Casio plays Holocene on Wednesday, Jan. 4. = 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, JAN. 4 Coastlands, Eclisse, Rader
[POST-ROCK] Since 2009, Portland’s Coastlands have delivered their pareddown aesthetic via free downloads, “pay what you want” downloads and the occasional vinyl pressing. This past December they released the second installment of their Milieu Archives, a collection of ambient sounds centered around spontaneity and atmosphere. Soft, gentle and brimming with heart, the disparate guitar chords backed by lingering effects pedals evoke Explosions in the Sky, but with a more delicate approach. Distorted vocal fragments paired with unassuming beat structures add depth to their tracks, bringing energy and a sense of girth to their landscape of soft seclusion. Prepare to drift into space with the serenity of the moonlight on a still mountain lake. Tonight’s show is also the last for dark post-rock act Eclisse before leader Febian Perez moves to New York. LYLA ROWEN. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 503-231-9663. 9 pm. $ 7 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.
Gold Casio, Glasys, Holidae House
[PDX SYNTHS] So far, Gold Casio has only released a few singles—the synth pop-imbued “Last Song” and ’70s-funky “Colors on the Wall”—but it’s quickly become a Portland fixture, playing PDX Pop Now and receiving plenty of local music coverage. The group likes to dress up in gold while also decorating the stage in the color of its favorite element, an aesthetic it’s described as “glam-trash.” The theatricality of the band’s onstage presence coheres with it’s keyboardheavy, dance-ready numbers. Tonight, it’ll be joined by two other synthdriven acts, solo artist Glasys and indie group Holidae House, which have both released promising EPs in the past year. MAYA MCOMIE. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 503-239-7639. 8:30 pm. $6. 21+.
THURSDAY, JAN. 5 Hate Drugs, Onion the Man, Mustrd, Ellipses, Hormones
[SURF POP] Imagine an ideal, lazy beach day. Lying on a terry-cloth towel—gently picking up sand as it slips through your fingers, the sounds of seagulls and children floating nearby—you open your eyes to a babe in sunglasses hovering over you, a sun halo surrounding her head. Central California’s Hate Drugs embody this fantasy, offering dreamy musings of sweet love and playful days in the sun.
Placing low-key but sweeping orchestral sounds into pop structures and overlaying it all with warm vocals, the group’s mellow surf tunes blend the beautiful folk harmonies of Fleet Foxes with the positive ethos of Vampire Weekend. Few surf-pop bands carry the warmth and sincerity of people who genuinely live the experience, and I’d bet a trip to Santa Barbara that these guys do. LYLA ROWEN. The Analog Cafe, 720 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-206-7439. 6 pm. $10. All ages.
1939 Ensemble, Tezeta Band, Derek Smith
[POST-TORTOISE] With a collective background spanning indie pop, punk and post-everything else, 1939 Ensemble’s 2015 album, Black Diamond Pearl, was guaranteed to refract its whirring, jazz-tinged compositions through a wealth of Western music. Perhaps benefiting from Tortoise’s John McEntire throwing down an assist during the recording process, the band’s sophomore album comes off a bit darker than its first, Howl & Bite, as the levity of those floating vibraphone tones is supplanted by ominous keyboard dirges. But a subtle drifting toward darkness might be a fitting open to 2017, and a suitable contrast to opening act Tezeta Band’s funked-up strutting. DAVE CANTOR. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895. 8 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.
WaveSauce, the Apollo Four, the Cool Whips
[SPY-FI] Local quartet WaveSauce is an instrumental act that sounds like the appropriate house band for a Coney Island fun house. Mixing surf rock with healthy helpings of pure kitsch, the band comes off like the soundtrack to both a ’60s espionage film and a sandy Southern California picnic. Its 2014 record, Stop Go!, is built around the use of the theremin, an instrument producing wavy, oscillating frequencies famously cloaked in cinematic fog. For WaveSauce, it adds a healthy amount of weird to its ’60s-pop core. MARK STOCK. White Eagle Saloon, 836 N Russell St. 8 pm. Free. 21+.
FRIDAY, JAN. 6 Indubious, Sol Seed
[REGGAETRON] Though the wellspring of inspiration dates back to early dancehall and dub acts, the way in which Indubious—a brotherly duo from Ashland—grafts reggae rhythms and samples onto bass-heavy elec-
tronica is an entirely modern experience. As attention spans at festivals grow shorter and thirstier for undulating EDM sounds, Indubious has been right around the corner with a clutch of psych-inspired roots jams that are tailor-made for the dance floor. Expect some fresh mixes the pair has been cooking up since it dropped 2013’s Wake the Lion. PETE COTTELL. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895. 8 pm. $10 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
SATURDAY, JAN. 7 Drouth, Sól, Will
[HIKING METAL] Tumultuous sludge cascades over a thick veil of black metal on Drouth’s EP Vast, Loathsome. Another fine example of Portland’s heavy underbelly, Drouth’s shredding, thrash-inspired solos, quivering over blast-beaten drum kits with rising and falling tempos, will wash your clean egos filthy again. Joining it is Portland post-metal colossus Sól, self-described on its Bandcamp page as “atmospheric calm” that “reflects the dense and expansive landscape of the Pacific Northwest” that hopes to evoke “the beauty and fear of the natural world.” CASEY MARTIN. High Water Mark Lounge, 6800 NE Martin Luther King Blvd., 503-286-6513. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
David Bowie’s 70th Birthday Bash with OK Chorale, Boys Keep Swinging, Natasha Kmeto, Ezza Rose, St. Even, the Morals, Wonderly, Brian Koch, Little Sue
[SING-ALONG] David Bowie would be turning 70, if 2016 hadn’t reared its ugly head and taken him along with seemingly every other music legend. Since no human has ever been able to defeat time, the only thing we’ve got left to do is sing our little hearts out. For Bowie’s birthday, Mississippi Studios is offering early- and lateshow celebrations where guests can sing along to Bowie tunes in a group setting with OK Chorale or the supergroup Boys Keep Swinging, which features members of Wampire, Fur Coats, Gossip and Snowblind Traveller. Local luminaries such as Natasha Kmeto, Boone Howard and many others will also be participating in the Bowie festivities. And if you’re looking to take the stage in Starman style yourself, wait until after 10 pm when a Bowie-themed edition of Baby Ketten Karaoke begins. CERVANTE POPE. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895. 7 and 8:15 pm. $15. Early show all ages, late show 21+.
The Ramodes
[TRIBUTE PUNK] For the longest time, couples like Sid and Nancy and Kurt and Courtney have been the most influential marriages in music. While they’ll still take the cake as far as actual nuptials are concerned, it’s the Ramodes’ marriage of Depeche Mode and the Ramones that’s got our hearts all in a flurry lately. Members of Chartbusters, Scourge of Ians and PS-AX formed the band as a Halloween tribute act that’s become so beloved, it’s started to play year-
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MUSIC round. By pulling the best from the punky innocence of the poppunk originators and the depressed moods of the ’80s-synth darlings, the Ramodes honor the greats while still sounding incredibly original. CERVANTE POPE. The Lovecraft Bar, 421 SE Grand Ave., 503-719-7384. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
SUNDAY, JAN. 8 Pony Village, Ali Muhareb
[SONS OF SAM] At what is rumored to be its last show, Pony Village walks into the Portland-music sunset gracefully, if not prolifically. Given that it’s been around about six years, the band has only a scant few recordings to its name. But it’s about quality, not quantity, and it more than makes up for in the former what it lacks in the latter. Pony Village’s 2015 debut LP, Wouldn’t You Like to Know, mixed the daydreaming of Youth Lagoon with the indie heart-wrenching of Elliott Smith. If the band is truly calling it quits, we’re going to sorely miss its genuine approach to affected Northwest rock. MARK STOCK. Rontoms, 600 E Burnside St. 8 pm. Free. 21+.
No Aloha, Emily Davis and the Murder Police, Future Historians
[DARK FOLK] El Paso singer-songwriter Emily Davis is eight years and three LPs deep into a career she’s carved out for herself as an independent acoustic act that bends genres. The Worst Kind of Curse, from 2015, showcases her brand of rocking folk pop, which pulsates with a punk mentality at its core. Although her style has progressed from earlier releases, a consistent dark current runs through the subject matter—the song inspired by a documentary on bridge suicides, for example. The result is a unique body of work that’s hard to find an easy comparison for. MAYA MCOMIE. The Liquor Store, 3341 SE Belmont St. 9 pm. $7. 21+.
TUESDAY, JAN. 10 Fuzzy Logic: Proqxis, Mr. Projectile, Todd Armstrong
[ELECTRONIC COCKTAIL] This three-act lineup runs the gamut of Portland electronica, with a trio of scene vets sure to make the night a memorable one. I’ve still been listening to Wave Exploit Lens, the last
COuRTESY OF DJ BAD WIzARD
NEEDLE EXCHANGE
DJ Bad Wizard Years DJing: Nine. I got my start doing a little half-hour set at Pala, which is no longer around, with other people I worked with at Music Millennium at the time. Everything began to catch on once my roommate played an acoustic set on her guitar—all 30-second songs about boys—at Tiga. She could pick her own DJ for between songs, and she picked me. The owners liked me so much they asked me to do a monthly gig. It snowballed from there. Genres: I play anything from 1930s swing jazz, 1950s and ’60s rock ’n’ roll and soul music, funk, ’60s psychedelic, garage, Kitty Wells-kinda country, early hip-hop, indie rock and grunge. Where you can catch me regularly: Gold Dust Meridian, Beulahland, Tryst, Dig a Pony, the Tannery, the Red Fox, Beech Street Parlor, Migration Brewing, Punch Bowl Social. I have a radio show on XRAY.fm from 4 to 5 pm on Sundays called Inside the Wizard’s Hat, which mainly focuses on the older genres of music I play, pre-1969. Craziest gig: I once DJed someone’s mom’s graduation party on the rooftop of a sports bar. I remembered to wear sunscreen. My go-to records: A 45 rpm single I got from a free box called “In a Persian Market” by LeRoy Holmes and His Orchestra. Also a current heavy in the rotation is the Gary U.S. Bonds’ 45 for “Havin’ So Much Fun.” And I feel like I end up bringing four records by the Miracles to every gig. Don’t ever ask me to play…: I am so tired of hearing “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey that I wish the song could be unwritten. I will never play it. NEXT GIG: DJ Bad Wizard spins at the Tannery, 5425 E Burnside St., on Thursday, Jan. 5. 9 pm. 34
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proper release from Proqxis, since a friend sent it to me back when it came out in 2012. Here’s hoping for another one next year. There’s definitely no lack of DJ dance-night lineups in Portland, but it’s rare to see one like this that manages to blend artists who will move the floor with a more ambient and contemplative act like Proqxis. BLAKE HICKMAN. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 503-239-7639. 9 pm. $6. 21+.
The Old Church Concert Hall Presents
CLASSICAL, JAZZ & WORLD David Watson’s Rebirthing the Cool: Bebop and Beyond
[MOON DREAMS] The first installment of local saxophonist Mary-Sue Tobin’s monthlong series of curations at the newly opened Fremont Theater will feature classic tunes and a band assembled by renowned vocalist David Watson. Watson’s large ensemble will swing through a series of note-fornote transcriptions of Gil Evans and Miles Davis’ astonishing Birth of the Cool music, as well as a few of his own classic-sounding originals, with Tobin lending her beautiful reeded vibrato to the mix. A gorgeous blend of layered woodwinds and brass with upright bass, round vocals and swirling brushes, this is a rare musical treat that will set a high-water mark for intimacy in this new jazz haven. PARKER HALL. Fremont Theater, 2393 NE Fremont St., 503-946-1962. 8 pm Thursday, Jan. 5. $7. 21+.
Oregon Symphony with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
[VIOLIN VIRTUOSO] Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and Bizet’s music for his opera Carmen are two of the most overplayed chestnuts in classical music. And yet, thousands will pay to hear them again for one reason: vibrant violinist Nadja SalernoSonnenberg. For the past three decades, she’s been proven so wellrehearsed, charismatic and devoted to connecting with audiences that she’s known by her first name only. Unlike so many technically immaculate yet emotionally detached classical music virtuosos, Nadja pours unfettered emotion—as well as a huge tone and supreme skill—into her interpretations, which some stuffy critics once decried as vulgar. Like the admittedly overfamiliar music she’ll be playing and conducting, she’s so compelling that she makes you want to hear her over and over again. BRETT CAMPBELL. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 503-248-4335. 7:30 pm Saturday, Jan. 7. $23-$135. All ages.
Byrd Ensemble
[SPANISH RENAISSANCE DEATH MUSIC] If only our new imperial leaders, who can’t even find musicians for the inaugural, could be as pro-art as Europe’s Habsburg dynasty. For six centuries, the extended family not only ruled much of Europe and South America, but also obliged many of the continent’s top artists and composers with jobs, commissions, stipends and social standing. One of the royals, musicloving King Philip II, proved a better arts patron than military strategist, subsidizing some of Spain’s greatest composers, including Tomás Luis de Victoria, whose 1605 Requiem mass is some of the Renaissance’s most magnificent music. Seattle’s acclaimed dozen-member Byrd Ensemble will sing that masterpiece, along with Victoria’s Magnificat; a motet his contemporary Alonso Lobo wrote for Philip’s funeral; sacred music by the Renaissance composer Palestrina; and funeral music by Victoria’s predecessor, Cristóbal de Morales, that was sung at the funeral of Philip’s father, Emperor Charles V. Unlike today, artists then had reason to mourn the deaths of rulers. BRETT CAMPBELL. St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, 1114 SE 41st Ave., 503-234-5019. 3 pm Sunday, Jan. 8. $25-$44. All ages.
For more Music listings, visit
Bryan Sutton
Dave Alvin
with opener Mary Flower Sunday, Jan 15 • 7:30pm
with Christy McWilson Tuesday, Jan. 17 • 7:30pm
David Olney
Edna Vazquez
Macho Boys Who: Tekiah Elzey (vocals), Samantha Gladu (bass), Chris Mason (guitar), Sam George (drums). Sounds like: A supergroup born of radioactive sludge in Portland’s grimiest punkhouse. For fans of: Negative Approach, Descendents, Minor Threat. Tekiah Elzey really makes it look easy. Her entry into the band that would become Macho Boys is exactly the kind of happenstance origin story that makes musicians all over the rest of the country eager to move to Portland. Like any self-respecting punk, she worked a steady day job at a grocery store, attended basement shows and kept a notebook of thoughts and musings that could be perfectly set to aggressive, three-chord blasts. Before long, she happened upon several other musicians. Samantha Gladu was the first, the sort of human channel of encouragement that burgeoning musicians dream of playing with. “My favorite thing is getting people to start new bands,” Gladu says. “I was the go-between when we started. Talk to one person, take a shot of tequila, talk to the other person.” Gladu tapped Chris Mason, a guitar player with his own record label and several other bands under his belt—most famously Low Culture, which he played in with Sam George, the kind of utilitarian, math-wiz drummer who never says no to a new project. “I just went home and told him we were in a new band,” Mason says. Macho Boys played their first show in February—a mere three months into their tenure as a band—at the now-demolished Darkplace, a punk house with all the amenities one might expect from such an aptly named spot. Each member recalls the event with an even split of reverence and regret. Elzey couldn’t hear herself sing. George searched the premises in vain for a drum rug. Mason played with an expensive, brand-new guitar he was deathly afraid of damaging, and ultimately got locked out of the gig once the band had loaded out. “It was a total shithole,” Gladu says. “Sewage leaking in the basement. Rats in the walls. Dead animals in the grass outside. Skate ramp in the backyard.” On their self-titled debut on Neck Chop Records, Macho Boys utilize an especially tightly wound dynamic rooted in the classic era of mid-’80s American punk. Somewhere between the early days of Dischord and the Chicago scene that spawned Naked Raygun and Big Black, Macho Boys distill the vibrancy of young angst to its essence in the form of songs that barely cap the minute mark. Mason’s furious chord progressions set an ideal foundation for Elzey’s bellicose critiques of modern life. It’s barely been a year since that fateful formation, and they’ve already played dozens of shows and toured the West Coast. But Macho Boys remain humble enough to remember their beginnings in the dank basement of Darkplace. “One of the songs on our new album is about that house,” Elzey says. “It’s two minutes, one of the longer songs—our slow jam!” CRIS LANKENAU.
Friday, Jan. 27 • 8pm
Friday, Feb. 17 • 8pm
UPCOMING SHOWS
2/18 Leonard Cohen Tribute, 2/26 Emmet Cahill, 3/6 Keith Harkin, 3/25 Jim Curry Band
THEOLDCHURCH.ORG
SEE IT: Macho Boys play Black Water, 835 NE Broadway, with Heavy Hands, B.D. and Shortline, on Friday, Jan. 6. 8 pm. $7. All ages. Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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MUSIC CALENDAR
For more listings, check out wweek.com.
LAST WEEK LIVE HENRY CROMETT
= 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.
WED. JAN. 4 Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St Sweet Invicta
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Coastlands, Eclisse, Rader
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Shoring, Norman Baker; Lynn Conover & Gravel
13 NW 6th Ave. Blackstar Rising: Bowie’s Birthday
3552 N Mississippi Ave Tallulah’s Daddy 1422 SW 11th Ave Erin Adair, Gwen Halstead
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St Sparkle Carpet, The Van Rontens, Scratchdog Stringband
350 West Burnside Dookie Jam
Fremont Theater
2393 NE Fremont Street David Watson’s Rebirthing the Cool: Bebop and Beyond
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Three Sigma, The Hugs, Bermuda Love Triangle
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Larry Yess & Nate Lumbard, Optimist Club, Ground Daggers; The Mutineers
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. 1939 Ensemble, Tezeta Band, KMHD’s Derek Smith
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Hate Drugs, Onion the Man, Mustrd., Ellipses, Hormones
TRAIL BLAZER: “Wait, he’s from Portland?” That question, bellowed out by a teenage girl to her circle of friends at rapper Aminé’s “homecoming” show, was one most likely muttered by quite a few people in attendance at Roseland Theater on Dec. 27. The confusion is somewhat understandable. Most were there to hear “Caroline,” the endlessly catchy tune that’s amassed over 64 million plays on YouTube. It also doesn’t sound like anything that’s ever come out of Portland—a straight-up hit that is taking Aminé to levels no other rapper from the local scene has ever reached before. For the most part, Aminé confirmed our inklings of his potential, though questions remain as to whether he yet has the material to fulfill it. Onstage, he was both commanding and personable, constantly cracking jokes at his and the crowd’s expense. At one point, a large screen onstage displayed images of Aminé as a kid growing up in Portland—another deeply endearing move. But there were also some moments of confusion. For one, Aminé played only six or seven songs of his own; the rest were either covers or songs performed by other artists entirely. While it was thrilling to see soulful crooner Leon Bridges and R&B singer Kehlani—who drew maybe the biggest reception of the whole show—make out-of-nowhere appearances, it made you wonder whether Aminé had to lean on more established talent to get through a full set. While he’s obviously still figuring things out, wherever Aminé’s career goes from here, it will be built upon the success of “Caroline,” which he played mostly in a capella form, with the help of the crowd. But the high point for me came during one of his other new songs, seemingly titled “I Wanna Flex.” Over hard-hitting production, a fresh take on the “trap” sound du jour, he spits a chorus that includes the line “503 is my home,” merging the current sound of hip-hop with hometown pride. It seems as though finally those two worlds are merging. REED JACKSON. 225 SW Ash St King Ghidora, Monica Nelson and The Highgates, The Misfortunes of Mr. Teal, Dartgun & The Vignettes
Black Water Bar
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave. Outline of the Sun with The Adio Sequence and The Yacolt Burn
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Joseph Demaree & the Square Tires, Voices of the Sea; Enjoy Things
The Firkin Tavern
835 NE Broadway Macho Boys, Heavy Hands, B.D., Shortline
The Goodfoot
1028 SE Water Ave. Kulululu, Sheers, GVSPVR, Dusty Fox
1937 SE 11th Ave PAC Benefit: Lee and the Bees, Lord Becky, Arlo Indigo
2845 SE Stark St Jay Cobb Anderson Band, Kory Quinn and The Comrades
Dante’s
The Fixin’ To
The Liquor Store
2530 NE 82nd Ave MidNight Serenadors
1937 SE 11th Ave Sam Densmore, Laryssa Birdseye
3341 SE Belmont St, Bryson Cone
The Secret Society
116 NE Russell St Thursday Swing! Featuring Baby & The Pearl Blowers, The Pepper Grinders
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St WaveSauce, the Apollo Four, the Cool Whips
FRI. JAN. 6 Alberta Street Pub 1036 NE Alberta St Korgy & Bass, Fresh Track
Bunk Bar
350 West Burnside Channel 3, the Derelicts
Duff’s Garage
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd. No Gentleman
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St Rubella Graves, High Praise, Wax Edison
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Deadstring Family Band, Baby Gramps
Lombard Pub
3416 N Lombard St Trick Sensei, Piefight, RILLA
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Indubious, Sol Seed
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The Firkin Tavern
SAT. JAN. 7 Alberta Street Pub 1036 NE Alberta St Hammerhead, Tumbledown
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Oregon Symphony with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St Kingdom Under Fire, Amerikan Overdose, Senescense, Beyond Theory
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Midge Ure
The Old Church
The O’Neil Public House 6000 NE Glisan St. Mr. Musu
The Secret Society
116 NE Russell St The Tumblers, Medallion, Stars Of Cascadia; The Barn Door Slammers
Twilight Cafe and Bar 1420 SE Powell Ireshrine, Ghostblood, Carve the Earth, Sabateur
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St Makaena Durias; Ojos Feos, Michelle Decourcy and Rocktarts
2530 NE 82nd Ave The Waysiders, Matty Charles & Katie Rose, Malachi Graham, Joe Baker; Joe Baker
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. TRONix: DJ Metronome (techno)
Sandy Hut
1430 NE Sandy Blvd. DJ Hot Lips
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Sparks
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Event Horizon w/ DJ Straylight (darkwave, industrial)
The Raven
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Wicked Wednesdays w/ DJ Wicked (hip hop, soul, funk)
18 NW 3rd Ave. Easy Egg
THURS. JAN. 5 Double Barrel Tavern
2002 SE Division St. DJ Easy Fingers
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. Fiasco w/ DJ Brokenwindow Community Library Records w/ Strategy
Moloko
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. Nik Nice & Brother Charlie (Brazilian)
1315 SW Park Ave. Bach Cantata Vespers
St. Stephen’s Catholic Church 1114 SE 41st Avenue Byrd Ensemble
The Secret Society
116 NE Russell St Ashley Xtina, Santiam, The Late Great
MON. JAN. 9 Ash Street Saloon
The Firkin Tavern
Dante’s
1937 SE 11th Ave Old Outfits, Sorta Ultra, Grandfather
350 West Burnside Karaoke From Hell
The Goodfoot
221 NW 10th Ave. Dan Balmer Trio
2845 SE Stark St Farnell Newton & The Othership Connection
The Lovecraft Bar 421 SE Grand Ave The Ramodes
The Secret Society
116 NE Russell St The Libertine Belles; The Bandulus, Buddy Jay’s Jamaican Jazz Band
The Vault at O’Connor’s
7850 SW Capitol Hwy Moody Little Sister
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St The Von Howlers with the Reverberations
SUN. JAN. 8 Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St A Sun, A Moon
350 West Burnside Cellotronik
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Freak Mountain Ramblers
Jimmy Mak’s
LaurelThirst Public House 2958 NE Glisan St Kung Pao Chickens; Portland Country Underground w/ Morgan Geer
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Mr. Ben
TUES. JAN. 10 Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St The Mercury Tree, Televangelist
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Fuzzy Logic: Proqxis, Mr. Projectile, Todd Armstrong
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Jackstraw; Pig Honey
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Lorna Miller; Maxwell Cabana
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Brad Parsons and friends
6800 NE MLK Ave Drouth, Sól, Will
2958 NE Glisan St Doc Slocum’s Old-Time Jam (all ages)
836 N Russell St Water, Water and Dan Lurie
No Fun
Crystal Ballroom
Swift Lounge
1332 W Burnside St 80s Video Dance Attack: George Michael Tribute
The Goodfoot
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Glittle Sean
Tube
St. James Lutheran Church
LaurelThirst Public House
Star Bar
WED. JAN. 4
Rontoms
600 E Burnside St Pony Village, Ali Muhareb
High Water Mark Lounge
1709 SE Hawthorne Blvd Questionable Decisions (disco, soul, funk)
8218 N. Lombard St Plankton Wat, Tunneler, {[(gang radio)]} 1422 SW 11th Ave Kyle Morton from Typhoon
Duff’s Garage
3552 N Mississippi Ave The Jamblers
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The Casimir Effect
Dante’s Ash Street Saloon
Mississippi Pizza
225 SW Ash St Dwight Church, Dwight Dickinson, Eddie Kancer
The Analog Cafe
The Old Church
Dante’s
3552 N Mississippi Ave The Bayou Boyz; Tallulah’s Daddy
Star Theater
Mississippi Pizza
225 SW Ash St Empire of Blood, Dead Nexus
Mississippi Pizza
3939 N Mississippi Ave. David Bowie’s 70th Birthday Bash with OK Chorale, Boys Keep Swinging, Natasha Kmeto, Ezza Rose, St. Even, the Morals, Wonderly, Brian Koch, Little Sue
1001 SE Morrison St. Gold Casio, Glasys, Holidae House
Ash Street Saloon
2958 NE Glisan St Jawbone Flats (all ages); Hank Sinatra; The Resolectrics
Mississippi Studios
Holocene
THURS. JAN. 5
LaurelThirst Public House
[JAN. 4-10]
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Shadowplay w/ DJ Carrion & friends (goth, industrial)
The Raven
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Fresh Takeover at House Call feat. Sappho
FRI. JAN. 6 Bit House Saloon 727 SE Grand Ave NoFOMO presents: Coast2c
Black Book
20 NW 3rd Ave The Cave w/ Massacooramaan (rap)
White Eagle Saloon
1932 NE Broadway St Rip The Cut w/ DJ ATM
Evergreen at Loyal Legion
2845 SE Stark St First Friday Superjam w/ DJ Magneto & friends (funk, soul, disco)
Gold Dust Meridian
The Liquor Store
Ground Kontrol
The Lovecraft Bar
618 SE Alder St. Infinite Vision presents Jack Beats 3267 SE Hawthorne Blvd. DJ AM Gold 511 NW Couch St. DJ EPOR (electronic jams)
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Tribute Night: Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Beyonce
Moloko
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. DJ aTrain
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Uncontrollable Urge w/ DJ Paultimore
3341 SE Belmont St, Uplift w/ DJ Manoj 421 SE Grand Ave Darkness Descends w/ DJ Maxamillion & friends (classic goth, dark alternative)
The Steep and Thorny Way to Heaven SE 2nd Ave. & Hawthorne Blvd. Brickbat Mansion: a Tribute to Kate Bush w/ DJs Curatrix & Wednesday
Whiskey Bar
31 NW 1st Ave
Where to Drink This Week 1.
The Old Portland
thomas teal
BAR REVIEW
1433 NW Quimby St., 503-234-0865. “this is the coolest wine bar in the world,” Courtney taylor-taylor told us of his own wine bar, which pours 17-year-old French wines in a bar full of vintage concert posters and tables from the lotus. Well—it’s pretty fuckin’ cool, anyway.
2.
Cosmo Lounge
6707 SE Milwaukie Ave., 503-233-4220. Cosmo lounge, home of spanish coffees and $1 high life ponies, was a rollicking dive this Christmas and a gem in the front tooth of sellwood, which stands alongside st. Johns as one of the last lively dive-bar districts in Portland. Bless you, Kay’s, Yukon and limelight. RIP Black Cat.
3.
Tony’s Tavern
1955 W Burnside St., 503-228-8527. Dry your tears, West Burnside. tony’s ain’t goin’ nowhere. the owner signed a lease, the kegs are coming back, and the juke’s still one of the best in town.
4.
Laurelthirst
2958 NE Glisan St., 503-232-1504, laurelthirst.com. Instead of taking a developer’s offer, the owners of the venerable old laurelthirst sold their bar to supporters, staff and musician lewi longmire—so the music won’t stop. Celebrate here.
5.
Rialto Poolroom
529 SW 4th Ave., 503-228-7605, rialtopoolroom.com. or here, for that matter. this downtown bar, nearly a century old, also just got new owners and a stay of execution. happy fuckin’ New Year.
STYLSS, NastyNasty, ONHELL, Sigrah
SAT. JAN. 7 Club 21
2035 NE Glisan St. Hot Shot Presents Watch That Man! A Tribute to David Bowie w/ DJ Major Sean
Crush Bar
1400 SE Morrison Pants OFF Dance OFF: Happy Nude Year!
NO-JACK PARIS: “No longer a jack shack,” the marquee of The Paris Theatre (6 SW 3rd Ave., facebook.com/theparispdx) proudly proclaimed for much of December. For more than a decade, the century-old theater had been entered only in a sidelong way, by public masturbators and coupled exhibitionists careful not to make eye contact with tourists in line for doughnuts. But on Christmas Eve, the first person I saw at the Paris Theatre was Voodoo Doughnut co-owner Tres Shannon, who probably remembers the theater’s ’90s tenure as an all-ages venue specializing in the disenfranchised, the goth and the punky semi-homeless. The sex dungeons of its most recent owner are gone, as are the sticky theater seats, but the movie screen has been kept. So on Hurricane Saturday EDM night—one of only two nights the venue and club is guaranteed to be open, alongside ’80s night on Friday—the DJ’s skittering beats are accompanied by the psychedelic dragon-riding spectacle of James Cameron’s Avatar. Both the cocktail menu—a “Snoops T&T” is a Tanqueray and tonic—and the chickenskewer food menu seem to invite you to ignore them. But the burlesque past of the Old Town hall has been laid bare, and the many-chandeliered Paris now looks like a strange combination of stained-glass church, table-service nightclub and Folies-Bergère. The back wall is covered in 19th-century ads for all things French, while the middle is a descending arrangement of tables on platforms. At the bottom is the dance floor—lit by the blues and greens of Pandora onscreen—where, for now, a lone break dancer is doing his own flat-brimmed version of a hat dance while a woman offers fist-pumping hype from her table. It’s a slow holiday night downtown, but the 15 or so people holding court in the Paris before midnight all seem mostly to know each other, leading to a heartening sense of community absent in neighboring bars. If Old Town is your country, Paris is your hometown. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Beat Parlor (house, electronic, future funk)
Moloko
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. Frankeee B (scandinavian synthetic funk)
Sandy Hut
1430 NE Sandy Blvd. DJ Billy Club
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ OverCol
Crystal Ballroom
Saucebox
Double Barrel Tavern
The Fixin’ To
Gold Dust Meridian
The Liquor Store
1332 W Burnside St 90’s Dance Flashback 2002 SE Division St. DJ Low Life
3267 SE Hawthorne Blvd. DJ F
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. DJ Vaporware
214 N Broadway St. GothSauce 8218 N Lombard St David Bowie’s Birthday 3341 SE Belmont St, Saints of Bass w/ John Tejada
The Lovecraft Bar 421 SE Grand Ave
Expressway to Yr Skull w/ MISPRID & friends (shoegaze, deathrock, goth)
Reaganomix: DJ Nate C. (80s hits, hair metal)
Vendetta
639 SE Morrison St. Metal Monday
4306 N Williams Tribute to David Bowie w/ DJ rndm noise
Whiskey Bar
31 NW 1st Ave Mission Trance
SUN. JAN. 8 Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave Church of Hive (goth, industrial)
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Infinity Mirror w/ DJs Ogo Eion & Opalescent Toad (occult techno, esoteric ambiance)
Star Bar
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Black Mass (goth, new wave) Second Mondays Suck (emo, hardcore)
TUES. JAN. 10 Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Robert Soxx
The Secret Society 116 NE Russell St Tuesday Salsa with Lynn and Mark
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Tubesdays w/ DJ Jack
MON. JAN. 9 Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St.
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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COURTESY OF DALLAS MONACO
PERFORMANCE = 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. (sgormley@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: sgormley@wweek.com.
La Belle
Wendy Weiss hosts Comic Strip. The show’s shtick is about finding a new host for the comedy club, which might sound like a lot of pressure on the audience and the comedians, but it’s probably like those HGTV shows where they’ve already made a decision and signed a contract pre-show. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., portland.heliumcomedy.com. 8 pm Wednesday, Jan. 4. $5. 21+.
Portland theater is getting in on the buzz around the upcoming live-action Beauty and the Beast movie. There’s the more straightforward adaptation opening at Newmark Theatre this month, and then there’s Imago’s version. La Belle is basically a steampunk version of the tale. Set in a steamship’s engine room, the play plans to go heavy on effects, from animation to puppets. And unlike the PG-13 rating on the Disney update, this one’s geared toward family crowds. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., imagotheatre.com. Noon Wednesday, 7 pm Friday, noon and 3:30 pm SaturdaySunday, through Jan. 8. $24.50-$42.50.
John Witherspoon
John Witherspoon has a long résumé, but he’s probably most famous for taking a shit while having a conversation with Ice Cube. Aside from his legacy as the dad in the Friday series, there’s something undeniably dad-like about his standup. His punchline-style jokes are usually about weather, or Costco, or his take on the recent news. Witherspoon’s ability to get weird, is on display in his deeply bizarre YouTube cooking show, Cooking for Poor People, which features Witherspoon wearing just an apron with his face emblazoned on it, and Tim and Eric-like production values. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., portland.heliumcomedy.com. 8 pm Thursday, 7:30 and 10:30 pm FridaySaturday, Jan. 5-7. $25. 21+.
For the past four years, Finding Neverland has been continuously moving up in the world. In that short amount of time, the musical has gone from a premiere in Leicester, England, to an inflated version in Cambridge, Mass., then to a hyped 18-week run on Broadway. A fantasy-tinged history of playwright J. M. Barrie and the people in his life that inspired him to write Peter Pan, the Broadway version featured Kelsey Grammer, starred Matthew Morrison of Glee fame, and had its producer Bryan Cranston on the red carpet talking about how touching it was. Now on a national tour that kicked off when the Broadway production was just barely over, there are just as many haters as there are raving testimonials. The haters mainly take issue with the plot: it’s flimsy feel-goodery, and the songs sound are geared to be breakover pop hits (Finding Neverland: The Album features everyone from Zendaya to Trey Songz). The haters are probably right, but the people who are into the show are probably right, too. It’d be surprising if a feel-good, Peter Pan-related musical was conceptually compelling. But what Finding Neverland does have is the kind of elaborate, flawlessly executed production values that basically only Broadway musicals can afford. It may be little more than a crowd pleaser, but the whole thing about crowd pleasers is that they please crowds. Keller Auditorium, 1111 SW Broadway, portland5.com. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 pm and 7:30 pm Saturday, 1 pm and 6:30 pm Sunday, Jan. 4-8. $35-$100.
Portland Story Theater
Portland isn’t exactly short on storytelling showcases. But unlike a lot of others, Portland Story Theater isn’t an open mic. The storytellers for this particular show have not only been vetted by the organization’s personal narrative workshop, they’ve also toured with Portland Story Theater’s On the Road Series. And unlike most storytelling showcases, there’s not a specific theme the storytellers have to adhere to. The narratives have to be true and personal, but other than that, anything goes. The fact that the lineup is a little more controlled than other showcases tends to mean that the material is more quirky StoryCorps and less Lena Dunham. Fremont Theater, 2393 NE Fremont St., fremonttheater. com. 8 pm Friday, Jan. 6. $15 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
COMEDY & VARIETY New Faces
Not all the faces in Helium’s New Faces lineup are particularly new. In fact, a bunch of them host a frequently occurring show: Kirsten Kuppenbender hosts Lez Stand Up, Andie Main hosts Revolution Comedy, Katie Nguyen hosts Earthquake Hurricane, and
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FIGHT FOREVER: WrestleSport heavyweight champion Chris Masters (right) battles Mason Ryan.
PREVIEW
Theater of War
WRESTLESPORT MAKES THE CASE FOR PRO WRESTLING AS A PERFORMING ART.
C O U R T E S Y O F H E L I U M C O M E D Y. C O M
Finding Neverland
BY MATTHEW SIN GER
John Witherspoon
Slide Show
The Liberators are one of the longest running improv groups in Portland— they’ve been at it for over 10 years, and they’re helmed by Siren Theater founder Shelley McLendon. The setup for their most recent improv show (their first Slide Show performance was last September) is pretty simple: the audience helps to pick a bunch of vintage photos for a slideshow, and the troupe has to improv a story based on that slideshow. Siren Theater, 315 NW Davis St., sirentheater.com. 8 pm Saturday, Jan. 7. $8 advance, $12 day of show.
Smut
Among the six comedians in the lineup at this sex-themed showcase curated by Belinda Carroll, there’s Adam Pasi, whose sets usually include details about his own sex life, Amanda Arnold, whose dating humor spares nothing, and Don Frost, who once had a roommate who had a sex slave. Besides comedy, burlesque performer Vanity Thorn will also perform, along with an unnamed musical guest. Funhouse Lounge, 2432 SE 11th Ave., funhouselounge.com. 8 pm Sunday, Jan. 8. $5 advance, $8 day of show. 21+.
For more Performance listings, visit
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
msinger@wweek.com
If you ask Dallas Monaco, there’s nothing strange about putting on a pro-wrestling show in a performing arts theater. The way he sees it, that’s exactly where it belongs. But that doesn’t mean it was easy to talk Artists Repertory Theatre into hosting a match. “They initially didn’t want anything to do with professional wrestling, because it has this stigma around it,” says Monaco, the proprietor of WrestleSport. “You have to break down what it really is. It’s improv in the purest form.” Admittedly, that stigma is well-earned. In the late ’90s, American wrestling exploded out of the post-Hulkamania doldrums on a wave of blood and boobs, which didn’t help its reputation as the pastime of yokels with an affinity for TruckNutz. But capitalism has a way of forcing change. After WWE—the only true big league left in the country—went public and made itself accountable to shareholders, it gradually scrubbed out the more transgressive elements, bringing the focus back to the athleticism and Shakespearean storytelling at the core of the medium for over a century. Now, Rolling Stone, ESPN, Forbes and other mainstream outlets cover the industry with at least the same seriousness afforded comic books and Joss Whedon projects. Wrestling has finally earned respect as a geek subculture, so why couldn’t it be taken seriously as a dramatic art form? Monaco is betting on it. A lifelong wrestling connoisseur, the 30-year-old Portland native founded WrestleSport two years ago after discovering that the rigors of being an in-ring performer didn’t agree with him. He held his first show at the Oregon Convention Center and managed to draw 300 fans—not bad, considering all he did was “slap a few faces on a poster.” With Artists Rep, he saw an opportunity to up the production values, and potentially intro-
duce the sport to a whole new audience. All he had to was convince the people in charge that this isn’t their grandson’s pro-wrestling. “It’s very daunting going into a meeting with a whole group of theater folk and trying to explain to them how this fits with the image of their theater, and that it’s not going to hurt them,” he says. They bought his pitch. But it’s not just the venue that’s changing. Monaco promises “a new look and feel of professional wrestling,” optimized for the theatrical setting. Where wrestling storylines normally play out episodically over the course of several shows, at Artists Rep there will be one self-contained story, involving WrestleSport champion and former WWE star Chris Masters attempting to fend off “the forces of evil.” “We’re giving people a show where they will get a story from start to finish with a resolution at the end, and where every match will mean something to the overall larger picture,” Monaco says. “People will go home feeling like they saw a movie or a play, basically.” Of course, the difference is in the way the story’s told. While there are specific plot points to hit, the path between them is determined by the guys in the ring, often on the fly and using only their bodies to trace the narrative. Monaco is confident in WrestleSport’s ability to entertain die-hard fans. What he’s hoping is to connect with attendees who never imagined they’d enjoy a wrestling show. Yes, the competition is “fake.” But it’s the realest thing they’ll see in a theater this year. “People understand that a lot of it is predetermined. However, it’s about suspending your disbelief,” Monaco says. “Someone can be watching and say, ‘I know it’s fake, but how did they do that?’ That’s what it’s about.” SEE IT: WrestleSport is at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., on Saturday, Jan. 7. 6 pm. $12-$25. All ages.
VISUAL ARTS PREVIEW
5 Shows to See in January THE GALLERY SHOWS WE’RE MOST EXCITED TO SEE THIS MONTH. BY JE NN I F E R R A B I N
jrabin@wweek.com
Going to the galleries always comforts me, either by providing a distraction to current events or a response to them. I expect these five shows to help steel us for the upcoming inauguration. Some will do so by reminding us of the beauty that is everywhere for the taking, while others will reassure us that in the face of so much violence, jingoism and hate, we all care about the uncertain future of our humanity.
Metro: Scenes From an Urban Stage
It’s hard to get me riled up about landscape paintings, but I am excited about Victoria Adams’ quiet realist compositions that focus on the play of light over water and sky. Postelection, there is something deep inside of me that pines for the order of the natural world, and Adams’ large-scale paintings confer its rightness, beauty and comfort. Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417 NW 9th Ave., 503-224-0521. Jan. 5-28.
Cityscape Burma
Eric West’s series of large-scale photographs of Burmese cities show us a country that has long been hidden from the rest of the word. His technicolor vignettes of urban life offer glimpses of traditional markets and temples, but they also document a place on the cusp of Western influence. One heartbreaking image tells the story more succinctly than anything else might: a billboard for a Samsung phone written in Burmese with the word “Selfie” on it. Blue Sky Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 503-2250210. Jan. 5-29.
COURTESY OF ELIZABETH LEACH GALLERY
Inspired by the photojournalism in Life magazine, photographer Stan Raucher brings us a series of black-and-white photographs that he took in subway trains and metro stations all over the world. The subway car acts as a frame inside of which the glorious differences and similarities of the human experience reveal themselves to us. Blue Sky Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 503-225-0210. Jan. 5-29.
Fathom
Clear Blue by Victoria Adams, part of Fathom
Bad Dreams
Artist Emily Wobb feels betrayed by her patriotism and deep love of country, and has responded by making a body of work about “American identity as spectacle.” It isn’t clear from the press release what form the exhibition will be taking, but Wobb is co-founder of Bronco Gallery—an exhibition space in the back of a Ford Bronco that tailgates all over town—so regardless of what medium she’s working in, I already know I want to see it. Duplex, 219 NW Couch St., 503-719-6517. Jan. 5-27.
Bas-Relief
Artists Kerry Davis and Anna Daedalus cast photograms and objects into concrete to create new relics of our hyper-violent culture in ruin. Two 3-D “hoodie totems” stand guard over the exhibition—a traditional and sacred form that invokes the memory of Trayvon Martin, whose death has become a symbol of the deep failings of this country. Roll-Up Photo Studio and Gallery, 1715 SE Spokane St., 503-267-5835. Through Jan. 29. Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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BOOKS PROFILE
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 4 Annie Bellet
We all have that ex who, try as we might, we can’t seem to escape. The difference for Jade Crow is that her ex-boyfriend Samir is the most powerful sorcerer in the world, and if she doesn’t defeat him by leveling up and finding her own power, she’ll die. Collecting for the first time in print three installments of the Twenty-Sided Sorceress fantasy series, Boss Fight contains the novels Heartache, Thicker Than Blood and Magic to the Bone in one new omnibus by Annie Bellet. Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 800-878-7323. 7 pm. Free.
FRIDAY, JAN. 6 The Reindeer in Sámi Culture
For the Sámi, the indigenous people of Northern Scandinavia, reindeer represent something more than a rednosed holiday signifier. The animals give the people warmth from their fur, sustenance from their meat, and transportation, making the semiannual reindeer-herding trek one of their most important cultural practices. Dr. Susan G. Carter, an expert on the naturalistic and spiritual practices of native peoples, will present on the reindeer throughout Sámi culture, including in their music, rock art, and poetry. Cramer Hall at Portland State University, 1721 SW Broadway, 503-725-3423. 7:30 pm. Free.
Emily Ruskovich
Although she now lives in Colorado, author Emily Ruskovich chose to return to her home state for the setting of her debut novel, Idaho, a state that offers a physical landscape every bit as rugged and unforgiving as her characters’ interior one. As husband Wade’s memory fades, wife Ann attempts to uncover the history of his previous marriage and children and how that previous life came to a violent end. As the story progresses, told through multiple perspectives, Ann must reconcile the disconnect between Wade’s former life and their current marriage. An O. Henry Prize winner and Iowa Writer’s Workshop alumna, Ruskovich has created a strong first offering. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
SUNDAY, JAN. 8 The Courtship of Eva Eldridge
During World War II, while the majority of men were fighting in Europe or the Pacific, the demands of the domestic placed upon women took a backseat to a new place in the workforce. For Eva Eldridge, a shy, Eastern Oregon farm girl, that meant long hours working in the Swan Island shipyard. But then after the war, the tough, independent farm girl found herself in the precarious position of having to defend her own independence while dealing with the demands of a culture that expected her to get married and stay at home. This may be how she found herself in the predatory gaze of a bigamist who preyed on women whose lives were destabilized by the war. Oregon Book Award-winning author Diane Simmons used over 800 letters found in an Eastern Oregon attic to form the base of The Courtship of Eva Eldridge. Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Ave., 503-222-1741. 2 pm. Free.
Matt Schumacher, Kirsten Rian and James Grabill
Three local poets join together to present their newest work. Matt Schumacher is the author of four collections of poetry, including, most recently, Ghost Town Odes, and is the poetry editor of the journal Phantom Drift. Kirsten Rian is a widely
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C O U R T E S y O F PA N D E R B R O S .W I x . C O M
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.
published poet and essayist and curates the Comma reading series at Broadway Books. Her newest book is Life Expectancy. James Grabill is an Oregon Book Award for Poetry winner and his most recent collection is SeaLevel Nerve, an environmentalist and poetic exploration of sea biology big and small. Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 800-878-7323. 4 pm. Free.
Kathleen Dean Moore
Oregon author Kathleen Dean Moore’s new book, Piano Tide, relays the story of a young woman who attempts to protect the environment by taking on a greedy businessman in Alaska, and is the author’s first foray into fiction. Moore has become a quintessential Northwest environmental writer; a longtime professor of environmental philosophy at Oregon State University, Moore has published several well-regarded books of essays, one of which won her an Oregon Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Moore now writes and speaks full-time about the dangers of global warming and the continued use of fossil fuels. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
MONDAY, JAN. 9 Bark Ecology Club: The Red Tree Vole
A few facts about the red tree vole: they only eat the needles of conifers, specifically Douglas Fir, and when they do, they discard the fine resin ducts of each needle, placing them in neat little piles under the tree. They may live their entire lives in the same tree with multiple generations occupying the same tree. Finding just one active red tree vole nest activates a ten acre protection buffer from logging and deforestation. The discussion on these strange but important little critters takes place as part of local nonprofit Bark’s Ecology Club. Bark Office, 351 NE 18th Ave., 503-331-0374. 6:30 pm. Free.
Dena Rash Guzman, Leah Noble Davidson and Stephen Lackaye
Three local poets will gather to read from their newest. Dena Rash Guzman’s collection, Joseph, which takes aim at the ironic patronizing of the #notallmen crowd, started from her excellently named poem, “Back Away From My Blood Hut, Joseph.” Leah Noble Davidson is the author of two poetry collections: Poetic Scientifica and, recently, Door. Stephen Lackaye’s debut collection, SelfPortrait in Dystopian Landscape, earned him the 2015 Unicorn Press First Book Award. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
TUESDAY, JAN. 10 The Art of Being There
Portland activist and philanthropist Duncan Campbell has had three distinct acts in his life, and each successive stage has progressed as if in reaction to the previous. The first was growing up in poverty in an unstable household. The second was making a fortune investing in the timber industry before retiring in his 40s. Now, in his third act, Campbell runs Friends of the Children, an international organization that connects over 400 at-risk young people with mentors who teach them professional skills as well as how to connect to the community. In his new book, The Art of Being There, Campbell tells his own story and the stories of those helped by the foundation. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.
For more Books listings, visit
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
PAnDER, PAnDER: Arnold (left) and Jacob.
Day of The Dissident PORTLAND COMICS LEGENDS THE PANDER PROTHERS ARE RE-RELEASING THEIR DARK, DYSTOPIAN GRAPHIC NOVEL JUST IN TIME FOR TRUMP. BY JAY HORTON
@hortland
The Pander Brothers, Arnold and Jacob, are Portland’s original comics provocateurs—they’re the artists behind the first issues of Matt Wagner’s legendary 1980s comics series, Grendel, and probably the only Portland comics artists who’ve ever had their works banned in England and New Zealand. “A tribunal in New Zealand recognized the artistic merit,” says Jacob of their 1990 sex-murder comic Exquisite Corpse, but banned it “because its form and shape would be attractive to a young person. That might have been our best review.” “We actually had to smuggle our own book into London,” says Arnold. “We were interrogated by the border authorities. There were two manila envelopes—one with Exquisite Corpse and one with pencils of Triple X, which had no sexual content. Luckily, the one they grabbed happened to have the more benign art. Only weeks before, bobbies had been going into comic-book stores and confiscating issues off the racks.” The dark, political conspiracies fueling that more “benign” comic, Dark Horse Comics’ 335-page graphic novel Triple X, now seem as if they could be ripped from the post-Trump headlines—the story of journalist Hans Nobel battling the machinations of a global cabal in Amsterdam. With an all-new “Issue Zero” focusing on Hans’ flight from a fascistic 2032 New York, the Panders are now re-releasing the graphic novel one page at a time on thedissidentdaily.com, in full color for the first time. But now, the densely plotted saga will bear its original title: The Dissident. The brothers had argued against Dark Horse’s insistence on Triple X as the title. Arnold still remembers “driving down Broadway when a TriMet bus pulled out with this huge ad down the side for the Vin Diesel movie, Triple X. We had spent most of our 20s finishing this very large, personal piece— our magnum opus, if you will—and, boom, the name
was co-opted by a film franchise. To have the title pulled out from under us was just devastating.” Having reclaimed its name, the online pages of Dissident: Resurrection XXX will also link up to Amsterdam’s actual streets. The Panders drew on their familiarity with Amsterdam when originally drawing Triple X, incorporating the real urban geography to further the creeping verisimilitude. “You’ll be able to experience where the story’s taken place,” says Jacob. “We lived there off and on for two years and drew all of these scenes in actual places. When we launch each one of those pages, they’ll be hotlinked to the locations in Amsterdam on Google Street View, so you’ll be able to leap right out of the comic to the very street where the action was taking place—a kind of quasi-walking tour of Amsterdam, with an add-your-own dystopian filter.” The Panders are no stranger to multimedia enterprises. “It’s more like the technology has caught up to our creative process,” says Arnold. Arnold had a brief stint as fashion artist-in-residence for America’s Next Top Model, and the pair spent a decade pursuing film and video projects, including a full-length, Selfless, before a triumphant return to comics with 2015’s vampiress-in-love graphic novel, Girlfiend, from Dark Horse. In many ways, they think the current societal discontent and fears of dystopia will prove far more amenable to The Dissident than the relative peace and prosperity of the mid-’90s. “So many of the concepts we’ve been tackling in the series have been bubbling up,” says Arnold. “One of the reasons we did [prequel] Opt Out was to contextualize the bigger project within a contemporary setting. There’s a lot of anxiety right now about the direction of the world. Some of these fears are existential, but when you look at history and how fast things can change, they’re also very real.” READ: The Dissident: Resurrection XXX is being released one page at a time on thedissidentdaily.com.
courtesy of united Artists
MOVIES G et yo ur r e ps in
La Nuit Fantastique
(1942)
denis works as a night porter to pay his way through earning his philosophy degree. While dozing off one night, he meets irene, the literal and figurative girl of his dreams, whom he must save from the villains who occupy the deepest parts of his psyche. no longer content to show films from the ukrainian poetic movement, church of film ups its game with a dip into the surrealism of Vichy france. Clinton Street Theater. 8 pm Wednesday, Jan 4.
The Godfather
(1972)
banned by tHe man: The Spook Who Sat by the Door.
Attention ALL dAds! your favorite or second-favorite, if you prefer Part II, movie is playing on the big screen this week. Mission Theater. Jan. 9, 12 and 15. By
Princess Mononoke
(1997)
next week, oMsi kicks off its second annual retrospective of legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki’s many studio Ghibli films. Bide your time until then with the 20th anniversary screening of one of his most revered movies, the epic tale of man versus forest gods set in medieval Japan. Clackamas, Century and Lloyd Center. Jan. 5 and 9.
Something Wild
(1986)
A screwy road movie from Jonathan demme, much better known for early-’90s prestige flicks The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, Something Wild stars Melanie Griffith and Jeff daniels in an ’80s-ed out take on nerd meets free spirit in a stolen car. Laurelhurst. Jan. 6-12.
The Thing From Another World (1951)
John carpenter’s 1982 take on the “shapeshifting alien hunting down government forces on an arctic base” story may be more recognizable today, but Howard Hawks’ original is a campy classic of early sci-fi. enjoy it this week on 35 mm. Academy Theater. Jan. 6-12.
also Playing: academy theater: Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), Jan. 4-5. Hollywood theatre: The Philadelphia Story (1940), Divorce Italian Style (1961), 7:30 pm, thursday, Jan. 5, Jan. 7-8; Ultraman double feature, 7 pm, sunday Jan. 8. Kiggins theatre: Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982, 2007), Jan. 4-5. laurelhurst: The Simpsons Movie (2007), Jan 4-5. mission theater: The Princess Bride (1989), Jan 4 and 6.
Walker Macmurdo
Revolution in 35 Millimeters DAN HALSTED’S NEW PROGRAM IS INSPIRED BY THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY AND GETTING BRUTALIZED BY POLICE.
BY Walker MacMurdo
didn’t settle. The kung fu defense obviously wasn’t going to work.” On the night of June 17, 2008, Dan Halsted was You can only imagine what the city attorney beat up by Portland police while walking home would say about Halsted’s new series, Rebellion and Revolution: Insurgent Cinema. This program, from a bar. “I was only a few blocks from my house,” says kicking off this week with ultra-rare 35 mm prints Halsted. “All of a sudden, I got a flashlight in my of Ivan Dixon’s 1973 story of inner-city revolution, eyes and I heard a voice say, ‘Get him!’ I heard The Spook Who Sat by the Door, on Saturday and someone coming at me, so I turned and started to Liu Chia-Liang’s kung fu classic 36th Chamber of Shaolin on Tuesday, comes with a mesrun. I thought I was just getting jumped. I sage: You aren’t safe under Trump. had no idea it was cops.” Halsted, the Hollywood The“I want people to be aware of how atre’s head film programmer, was terrifying this time is that we’re entering,” says Halsted. “I think brutalized. Mistaking him for a that so many people, white people, vandal, the cops shot him with a who have been able to coast by in Taser five times and threw him life, are now realizing, ‘Shit, we’re to the ground, fracturing his face. It took four years of lawsuits, but entering a time when our rights are Halsted was awarded $200,000 by going to be jeopardized.’ Our lives are Halsted going to be changed.” a federal jury who found that Officer Benjamin J. Davidson (still a Portland cop, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is based on now with the canine unit) had violated Halsted’s Sam Greenlee’s award-winning 1969 novel and constitutional rights. was inducted into the National Film Registry of During the lawsuit, the city tried to blame the Library of Congress in 2012. But for decades, the movies. Deputy City Attorney James Rice it was rarely seen. Set in 1970s Chicago, the film told the jury that Halsted resisted arrest by using tells the story of Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook), a martial arts. Specifically, that he tried to use kung black nationalist recruited into a recalcitrant CIA fu—which Rice alleged Halsted learned from his as part of an equal opportunity program, which, collection of kung fu movies. after training him to be a spy, puts him in charge “Now it sounds almost comical, but at the of the agency’s copying machine. After resigning, time it was so serious, in such a serious environ- he uses his training to recruit Chicago’s impovment,” says Halsted. “I have no idea why they erished black youth to become freedom fighters, wmacmurdo@wweek.com
teaching them violent and nonviolent tactics to overthrow the city’s racist establishment. “It’s a really well-made movie, even though it’s a low-budget, underground film,” says Halsted. “The action scenes are really well done. It’s an exciting, intelligent movie.” Spook was so exciting that the film was pulled from theaters by its distributor shortly after its release in a campaign that Greenlee and others allege was facilitated by the FBI. The film disappeared for decades, its mislabeled (to avoid discovery) negatives stored in a vault by Dixon, until they were tracked down and rediscovered in 2004. “They were totally terrified that it was going to spark a revolution,” continues Halstead. “The movie was hidden for years; you couldn’t even find it. It was never on video; it wasn’t in theaters again until very recently. They had to dig up the negatives to find it.” Halsted got hold of a theatrical print of Spook on 35 mm from a collector, one of a few known copies that exist on film. “You’re never going to see it anywhere else. This is a oncein-a-lifetime movie.” Less obscure but equally rare on film is 36th Chamber of Shaolin, one of the most influential action movies in history. It follows the young monk San Te (Liu Chia-Hui), who rebels against the Manchu government and it’s brutal enforcer General Tien Ta (Lo Lieh) by learning kung fu at the Shaolin Temple, establishing a secret school to teach laypeople how to defend themselves. “I think it’s one of the greatest movies ever made,” says Halsted. “It’s my own personal 35 mm print, and there’s only a couple out there. This is probably the only one in the Western hemisphere.” Rebellion and Revolution isn’t just about watching rare prints of kickass movies. “It’s really important to me to get across why we’re doing this series,” says Halsted. “After Sept. 11, my wife’s grandma, who grew up as a black woman in the Jim Crow South, said, ‘Now white people know what it’s like to live in fear.’ This is the same sort of situation we’re entering into now. Middle-class white America is realizing that their lives aren’t as safe as they thought, and that their rights could be ripped away at any point.” see it: The Spook Who Sat by the Door screens at 7:30 pm on saturday, Jan. 7, and 36th Chamber of Shaolin screens at 7:30 pm on tuesday, Jan. 10, at the Hollywood theatre. Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
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MOVIES OPENING THIS WEEK A German Youth
Arthouse collective Cinema Project’s penultimate screening, A German Youth, chronicles the ultra-left-wing terrorist group Red Army Faction, which carried out a string of bombings, assassinations and robberies across West Germany during the Cold War. NR. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorum, 7:30 pm Tuesday, Jan. 10.
Hidden Figures
C “Here at NASA, we all pee the same
color,” bellows Kevin Costner, after dismantling a “Colored” restroom sign with a crowbar. He’s desperate to make it a rousing moment. All movie, we’ve seen mathematics virtuoso Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) forced to run—in rain, in heels, in fear of her reputation—to the segregated toilet across the NASA campus. Hidden Figures argues this workplace discrimination was an imposing obstacle to putting the first Americans in space in 1961. Tellingly, it’s Costner who gets the biggest, racismbusting line in a movie supposedly illuminating underappreciated black women, like Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe). These STEM pioneers, along with some baffling arithmetic, are the “hidden figures.” Yet, when racism and sexism aren’t labeled with signs, the drama has trouble pointing out how these biases historically buried these women’s contributions. Even as Henson, Monáe and Spencer push for guile and camaraderie in their performances, Hidden Figures adds up to sap, not a proper reappraisal. On the other side of the equals sign is a movie calibrated through the same white, patriotic eyes that failed to recognize Katherine Johnson in the first place. PG. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Clackamas.
Inside Peace
In a Texas jail, three offenders in this documentary attend a “peace class” to try to rebuild their lives. NR. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Tuesday, Jan. 10.
The Prison in Twelve Landscapes
A- The prison industrial complex isn’t
confined to the steel bars and razor wire of its federally funded physical locations. This may be why Brett Story’s debut documentary chronicles people and places affected by the system without ever entering a prison. We are warned that we might get hit by a Nerf dart as we take a tour through the infuriatingly upbeat Quicken Loans headquarters in Detroit, a company that’s found the loan-sharking, er, mortgage business booming while the rest of the city languishes around it. Then we visit what amounts to a kangaroo court held in a high school gym near St. Louis. Here, the multitudinous municipalities fund themselves with harassment campaigns targeting low-income and black residents through the fastidious enforcement of minor civic violations. Example: One woman spends 15 days in jail for leaving the lid off her trashcan. The film is more impressionistic than investigative, and it sometimes takes some work on the part of the viewer to connect each spoke back to the hub. There’s no narration, no statistics-cluttered slides. The subjects of the film, more often victims of the system than academics or experts, do the explaining. But the pill works. If you don’t want to change this shit by the end, you weren’t watching. NR. ZACH MIDDLETON. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Friday-Sunday, Jan. 6-8.
Silence
Martin Scorcese’s new film diverts from the course by venturing to 17th-century Japan, where Portuguese monks Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield try to track down their master, Liam Neeson, while spreading Catholicism. See next week’s issue for a review. R. Theaters.
Two Trains Runnin’
B+ On June 21, 1964, two unrelated
groups of blues lovers successfully com-
42
pleted the same implausible quest: locating long-lost musicians Skip James and Son House. On that same date, civil rights activists James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman disappeared while traveling through Mississippi. They were found dead six weeks later, murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. Directed by Academy Award nominee Samuel D. Pollard (Eyes on the Prize), Two Trains Runnin’ follows two seemingly separate historical narratives that collide in astounding coincidence as unwitting music buffs journey to Mississippi, finding themselves in the heart of the civil rights movement. Narrated by rapper Common and featuring brief performances by Buddy Guy, Gary Clark Jr., and Lucinda Williams, the film reminds viewers that both blues music and activism remain important and influential aspects of American culture. In joining the story of a hunt to preserve the legacy of country blues with an an all too familiar account of hateful violence and loss, Two Trains Runnin’ reflects on the triumphs that inspire the soul and the tragedies that continue to plague the fight for racial equality. NR. CURTIS COOK. Hollywood.
Underworld: Blood Wars
Between this, the upcoming XXX reboot and a Republican presidency, it looks like the early 2000s are back. Kate Beckinsale stars as vampire assassin Selene, who juggles motherhood with trying to end an eons-long war with werewolves. Not screened for critics. R. Clackamas.
STILL SHOWING The Accountant
C Ben Affleck stars as an autistic and brutal serial murderer who’s somehow also the hero. Must’ve been a stretch. R. Academy, Avalon, Joy, Jubitz, Kennedy School, Valley, Vancouver.
Arrival
A Arrival inspires because of sorrowful linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams), who enters a spaceship hovering above Montana shrouded in grief but still has compassion for both aliens and humanity. PG-13. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Fox Tower.
Assassin’s Creed
B The best line in this lurid, noisy adaptation of the best-selling video game series about time-traveling assassins comes from Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender): “What the fuck is going on?” It’s a fair question. PG-13. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Fox Tower, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Tigard, Vancouver.
The Brand New Testament
B God as a bitter, drunken father who spends his days typing away at a desktop computer, compiling an ongoing list of sadistically Seinfeld-ian annoyances to force upon humanity in this sacrilegious Golden Globe-nominated satire. NR. Living Room Theaters.
The Eagle Huntress
A- Set in the wilderness of Mongolia, this astounding documentary follows a 13-year-old Kazakh girl who hunts with the help of a golden eagle. PG-13. Fox Tower.
The Edge of Seventeen
B+ As Nadine, Hailee Steinfeld delivers one winsome tirade after another, and she never sells short simple adolescent growing pains. It’s the best combination of well-written ranting and genuine alienation in a high school comedy since Easy A. R. Laurelhurst.
Elle
A- By stripping away both the kid-
gloves and exploitative approaches to sexual violence, Paul Verhoeven and Isabelle Huppert have crafted a grimly humorous but life-affirming portrait of strength and survivorship. R. Cinema 21.
Willamette Week JANUARY 4, 2017 wweek.com
Fences
A- Denzel Washington swings for the
fences with his adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a struggling African-American blue-collar family in 1950s Pittsburgh, hitting a home run and, uh, stealing third base? PG-13. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Living Room Theaters, Lloyd, Tigard, Vancouver.
The Handmaiden
B+ Park Chan-wook’s revenge tale is
an undeniably lush, meticulously constructed film whose celebration of perversity is among the most artful you’ll see. R. Academy, Laurelhurst.
Jackie
A Aided by Mica Levi’s ghostly string score, Pablo Larrain’s peppering in of archival news footage from the time, and Portman’s most spectacular performance yet, this film is less an isolated Jackie Kennedy biopic than a dark and conceptual statement on how the American people classifies, experiences and remembers historic tragedies. R. Cedar Hills, Fox Tower, Tigard, Vancouver.
Bagdad, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lake, Lloyd, Milwaukie, Moreland, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin Cinema & Pub, Tigard, Vancouver.
Sing
C+ If you’ve been yearning for Seth MacFarlane to play a mouse who sings like Sinatra, this is your movie. PG. Beaverton Wunderland, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Living Room Theaters, Lloyd, Milwaukie, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin Cinema & Pub, Tigard, Vancouver.
Things to Come
B+ Mia Hansen-Løve’s sleepy French drama about the crumbling life of a middle-aged academic (Isabelle Huppert) captures the jaggedness and inconsistency of daily life. PG-13. Living Room Theaters.
Trolls
B+ Poppy (Anna Kendrick), the bubbly leader of the troll community, and Branch (Justin Timberlake), a serial pessimist, must save a handful of their goofy friends from ending up as troll soufflé on the dinner table of the Bergens—ugly giants that suffer from depression. PG. Academy, Avalon, Kennedy School, Valley.
Why Him?
C+ I ask this question every time James Franco is cast in a comedy, too. R. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
For more Movies listings, visit
REVIEW COURTESY OF MAMA BEAR STUDIOS
= 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: wmacmurdo@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
La La Land
A For some reason, many “cool,
smart” film dorks have decided that Damien Chazelle’s gorgeous modernization of golden-era musicals is bad. Fuck them. La La Land is funny, poignant and as charming as they come. PG-13. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Fox Tower, Lloyd, Vancouver.
Loving
A- The true story of Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred Loving (Ruth Negga), the interracial couple who challenged U.S. miscegenation laws all the way to the Supreme Court, Loving emits slow, relaxed scenes that rely on touch rather than dialogue to illustrate the Lovings’ palpable tenderness. PG-13. Living Room Theaters.
Manchester by the Sea
B- How do you start over when your transgressions refuse to stay buried? According to director Kenneth Lonergan, you don’t, and that denial is one of too many reasons Manchester by the Sea, while admirably tough-minded, is also a drag. R. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Fox Tower, Hollywood.
Moana
B+ If you were curious whether Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson could carry a tune, Moana is a ringing affirmative. PG. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
Moonlight
A Moonlight follows Chiron, played by
three different actors, coming of age over two decades on the rough Liberty City blocks of 1980s Miami. If you haven’t seen this film yet, do so: It’s probably going to get screwed at the Oscars, but it’s among the year’s absolute best. R. Cinema 21, Hollywood, Kiggins, Lake.
Office Christmas Party
B- The smartest move in the latest story by Jon Lucas (The Hangover trilogy) is to focus on the innately funny interactions within the insular world of a run-of-the-mill data storage company. The second is an ultimatum to charm a big client, plus a cocaine-fueled snow machine. R. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Fox Tower, Tigard, Vancouver.
Passengers
C When a malfunction in Chris Pratt’s hibernation pod leaves him awake and alone decades early on a 120-year space voyage, he decides to wake up Jennifer Lawrence for companionship, telling her that her pod malfunctioned as well. This is very creepy when you think about it. PG-13. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinemagic, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Tigard, Vancouver.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story A The best Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back, this gritty spinoff brings a depth of humanity to the galaxy that the series hadn’t ever seen. PG-13.
gaTHErIng STEam: Hunter Gatherer.
Hunting for Empathy
The last thing Josh Locy wanted to make was another movie about two young people falling in love. While struggling to write the film that would ultimately become Hunter Gatherer, he scored an aspiring filmmaker’s dream gig, working as an assistant to director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, Your Highness). Through Green, Locy befriended Eddie, a reformed pimp and former heroin addict with whom he spent nights off drinking. Listening to Eddie’s fascinatingly bizarre adventures in 1980s Detroit, Locy was inspired to write a haphazard script full of pimps, prostitutes and gratuitous shots of blood commingling with dissolved narcotics in barrels of syringes. Then Eddie died just after the film secured financing. Suddenly, Locy’s foray into the dark underbelly didn’t seem so chic. “I realized that most movies about the urban world and heroin-addicted pimps really glamorize that lifestyle,” he says. “They’re about how cool things are. I didn’t have any personal connection to that.” In his crisis of faith, he returned to his script and removed any and all references to drugs, violence and even profanity while retaining the basic plot. “I took out everything that was between the characters and their emotional states,” Locy adds. “I created an environment where they actually have to deal with their feelings, put words to them, feel their pain. That’s where the title comes from, taking humans back to their emotional core.” Locy’s revision sets familiar archetypes among new settings. The film’s protagonist is played by Andre Royo, a man already famous for his portrayal of optimistic addict/scam artist-turnedinformant Bubbles on The Wire. Royo’s performance in Hunter Gatherer earned him a Jury Award at South by Southwest in 2016. As the ever-confident ex-con Ashley Douglas, Royo makes ramshackle attempts to earn a living, secure housing and rekindle an old flame that are all hopelessly ill-advised, but his intention is something primal that Locy hopes anyone can relate to. “That’s part of filmmaking—finding yourself in the story,” he says. “These are people who are way different than I am—different lives, different experiences. But we all share that desperate need for human connection.” CRIS LANKENAU. How tragedy helped Josh Locy build a compassionate story.
SEE IT: Hunter Gatherer is not rated. It opens Friday at the Clinton Street Theater. Donation suggested.
TR EAT F L E S ’ YO
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BY N a t e Wa g g o n e r
Mumm’s the Word WE TRIED DIFFERENT BRANDS OF MUMMY POWDER SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO. BY DR. MITCHELL MILLAR
2220 NW QUIMBY STREET, PORTLAND, OR
I make a tidy profit every year during carnival season by daring the barkers to guess my age. They scrutinize me up and down and inevitably come back with a number at least a decade less than my actual age. No, I am not a vampire, but you’re on the right track. So to what do I owe my impressive longevity? In my estimation, there are two main contributing forces. The fi rst is the revitalizing power of long days and late nights conducting painstaking analyses of Portland’s rich and varied history. The second is a daily regimen of Powdered Mummy, my favorite dietary supplement. For those unfamiliar, Powdered Mummy is a wellness supplement and panacea made from the finely milled corpses of embalmed ancient Egyptian royalty. Powdered Mummy offers a variety of restorative and invigorating effects, with no side effects (that I know of). Recently, it has gained something of a dubious reputation due to a rash of unfortunate “fake news” articles purporting to deny its numinous medical benefits, or decrying there are too few mummies remaining in the world, and therefore is not a “sustainable product.” Ignore these bogus claims—Powdered Mummy is not only effective, but there are still plenty of mummies out there. I’ve sampled all of the brands available in Portland. Here’s what I uncovered. Note that you might not find all of these on the shelf and may need to ask your friendly pharmacist to fetch it from the storeroom.
Rick O’Connell’s: Don’t be swayed by the cutesy packaging featuring Brendan Fraser as the eponymous character from Stephen Sommers’ 1999 adventure fl ick. One capsule packs an Imhotep-sized wallop: rich, sandy flavor, followed by hours of intense mummyinduced vitality. Fraser also owns the company, and donates 100 percent of the profits to the British Museum. Score: 9/10.
Cat and Girl
Valley of the Kings: The first brand I ever tried, and still one of the finest. Who was I but a lonely boy in the ninth grade hoping for some wonder drug to cure my chronic acne? Grant High School’s Sadie Hawkins dance followed a few weeks after my first dose, and never had I been so inundated with social invitations. Score: 10/10. Dave’s Killer Powdered Mummy: Unlike other brands on this list, Dave’s Killer Powdered Mummy comes not in capsule form, but loose in a jar so you can dump a spoonful in your morning cereal or green smoothie. They also recently came out with a spreadable Nutella-like paste. Both options tasted strongly of flaxseed. Score: 10/10. Cascadia Mummy Co.: With packaging that advertises powder
made from “100% pure Egyptian mummy,” Cascadia Mummy Co. faced criticism in 2011, when documents revealed several tons of Central American mummy had been shipped to the Tualatin processing plant. The company denied wrongdoing, blaming the mix-up on a purchasing error, and added that the wrongly acquired mummies would be distributed to local charities. When I tried Cascadia, the taste was unadulterated. Like the inside of a sarcophagus—in the best way possible. Score: 10/10.
Summation: All of them were wonderful. This truly is one of those rare instances in which the only way to lose is to not play. 44
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“The Best of 2016”–yes, there were some things. table 55 “Inside ___ Schumer” 56 “Blueberries for ___” (Robert McCloskey kids’ book) 57 Donald Glover dramedy called “the best show of the year” by the New York Times 60 What Bertrand Piccard flew around the world using clean technology (one of BBC’s “Four good things that happened in 2016”) 63 Mascara ruiner, maybe 64 “A horse is a horse” horse 65 “SNL” producer Michaels 66 Former Montreal ballplayer 67 Cong. gathering 68 Key near the quote marks 69 Goulash, e.g.
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Across 1 Hairless on top 5 Had in mind 10 Backstage access 14 Lyft competitor 15 Tree with chocolateyielding seeds 16 “At Last” singer ___ James 17 Red gemstone 18 Singer whose “Blonde” was Esquire’s #1 album of 2016 20 Late Jeopardy! contestant Cindy with an inspiring sixday streak (despite treatment for Stage 4 cancer and running a fever during taping)
22 Cries of exasperation 23 Clubber Lang portrayer in “Rocky III” 24 Shrewd 25 2016 animated movie with a 98% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes 27 El ___ (Peruvian volcano) 29 Furniture wood 30 Puts on, as clothes 31 One way to find out 32 Founder of analytical psychology 34 “Spy vs. Spy” magazine 36 With 38-Across, 2016 headline that
ended a 108-year streak 38 See 36-Across 42 LBJ’s VP 43 Self-defense system with throws 44 “Westworld” airer 45 Beverage brand whose logo is two lizards 48 Dandified dude 49 Copier paper orders 51 Newfound planet similar in mass to Earth (from National Geographic’s “6 Science Discoveries Worth Celebrating in 2016”) 54 “S” on the dinner
Down 1 They may get stuck to hikers’ socks 2 Lie adjacent to 3 Movie millionaire sought by a same-lastnamed “Dude” 4 Deadpan style of humor 5 “Back to the Future” hero Marty 6 “My Name Is ___” (Jason Lee sitcom) 7 Obamacare acronym 8 “___ of the North” (1922 silent documentary) 9 2020 Summer Olympics city 10 Chest muscle, slangily 11 “Resume speed,” to a musician 12 Be the headliner of 13 Seasonal mall figures
19 East, to Ernst 21 Actor Wood of “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” 25 Follow a jagged path 26 Bookie’s calculations 27 Cheese’s partner 28 “Kinda” suffix 29 Yoko who loved John Lennon 33 “I’m not touching that!” 34 Pretend pie ingredient 35 Opposite the mouth, in biology 37 Party mix cereal 38 Coffee holder 39 “And then ...?” 40 Watson’s creator 41 Head-shaking replies 43 “You had one ___ ...” 45 Hiccups, e.g. 46 At least 47 Actor Peter and singer Susan, for two 48 Jokey Jimmy 50 Cheers up 52 Jerusalem’s home: abbr. 53 Syrup flavor 54 Take the wheel 57 A Bront¬ sister 58 Record, in a way 59 Get your ducks in ___ 61 Freemium game interrupters, perhaps 62 Curator’s canvases
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 #JONZ813.
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Week of January 5
ARIES (March 21-April 19) Light, electricity, and magnetism are different expressions of a single phenomenon. Scottish scientist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) was the first to formulate a theory to explain that startling fact. One of the cornerstones of his work was a set of 20 equations with 20 unknowns. But a younger scientist named Oliver Heaviside decided this was much too complicated. He recast Maxwell’s cumbersome theory in the form of four equations with four unknowns. That became the new standard. In 2017, I believe you Aries will have a knack akin to Heaviside’s. You’ll see the concise essentials obscured by needless complexity. You’ll extract the shining truths trapped inside messy confusions. TAURUS (April 20-May 20) “The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road,” wrote Franz Kafka. “It must catch fire if you want to go further.” Let’s analyze this thought, Taurus. If it’s to be of maximum use for you in 2017, we will have to develop it further. So here are my questions. Did Kafka mean that you’re supposed to wait around passively, hoping the thornbush will somehow catch fire, either through a lucky lightning strike or an act of random vandalism? Or should you, instead, take matters into your own hands -- douse the thornbush with gasoline and throw a match into it? Here’s another pertinent query: Is the thornbush really so broad and hardy that it blocks the whole road? If not, maybe you could just go around it. GEMINI (May 21-June 20) The fictional character Scott Pilgrim is the hero of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s series of graphic novels. He becomes infatuated with a “ninja delivery girl” named Ramona Flowers, but there’s a complication. Before he can win her heart, he must defeat all seven of her evil ex-lovers. I’m sure your romantic history has compelled you to deal with equally challenging dilemmas, Gemini. But I suspect you’ll get a reprieve from that kind of dark melodrama in 2017. The coming months should be a bright and expansive chapter in your Book of Love. CANCER (June 21-July 22) The creature known as the short-eared elephant shrew is typically four inches long and weighs a little more than one ounce. And yet it’s more genetically similar to elephants than to true shrews. In its home habitat of southern Africa, it’s known as the sengi. I propose we regard it as one of your spirit animals in 2017. Its playful place in your life will symbolize the fact that you, too, will have secret connections to big, strong influences; you, too, will have natural links with powerhouses that outwardly don’t resemble you. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) “When I look back, I see my former selves, numerous as the trees,” writes Leo poet Chase Twichell. I’m sure that’s an experience you’ve had yourself. Do you find it comforting? Does it feel like being surrounded by old friends who cushion you with nurturing familiarity? Or is it oppressive and claustrophobic? Does it muffle your spontaneity and keep you tethered to the past? I think these are important questions for you to meditate on in 2017. It’s time to be very conscious and creative about shaping your relationships with all the people you used to be. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) “’Life experience’ does not amount to very much and could be learned from novels alone . . . without any help from life.” So said Nobel Prize-winning author Elias Canetti, who was born in Bulgaria, had British citizenship, and wrote in German. Although his idea contradicts conventional wisdom, I am presenting it for your consideration in 2017. You’re ready for a massive upgrade in your understanding about the nature of reality -- and firsthand “life experience” alone won’t be enough to ensure that. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) I am rooting for you to be flagrantly unique in 2017. I vehemently want you to be uninhibited about expressing your deepest, rawest, hottest inclinations. In this spirit,
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I offer the following four rallying cries: 1. “Don’t be addicted to looking cool, baby!” - my friend Luther. 2. Creative power arises when you conquer your tendency to stay detached. - paraphrased from poet Marianne Moore. 3. If you want to be original, have the courage to be an amateur. - paraphrased from poet Wallace Stevens. 4. “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” - Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) “There is a desperation for unknown things,” wrote poet Charles Wright, “a thirst for endlessness that snakes through our bones.” Every one of us has that desperation and thirst from time to time, but no one feels the pull toward perplexing enchantments and eternal riddles more often and more intensely than you Scorpios. And according to my astrological meditations on your life in 2017, you will experience this pull even more often and with greater intensity than ever before. Is that a problem? I don’t see why it should be. In fact, it could make you sexier and smarter than ever -- especially if you regard it as a golden opportunity to become sexier and smarter than ever. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) I hope you will seek out a wide range of intoxicating experiences in 2017. The omens predict it. Fate sanctifies it. I hope you will gracefully barrel your way through the daily whirl with a constant expectation of sly epiphanies, amusing ecstasies, and practical miracles. There has rarely been a time in your life when you’ve had so much potential to heal old wounds through immersions in uncanny bliss. But please note: The best of these highs will NOT be induced by drugs or alcohol, but rather by natural means like sex, art, dancing, meditation, dreamwork, singing, yoga, lucid perceptions, and vivid conversations.
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CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) I thought of you when I read a tweet by a person who calls himself Vexing Voidsquid. “I feel imbued with a mysterious positive energy,” he wrote, “as if thousands of supplicants are worshipping golden statues of me somewhere.” Given the astrological omens, I think it’s quite possible you will have similar feelings on regular occasions in 2017. I’m not necessarily saying there will literally be golden statues of you in town squares and religious shrines, nor am I guaranteeing that thousands of supplicants will telepathically bathe you in adoration. But who cares how you’re imbued with mysterious positive energy as long as you are? AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) When it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, the birds known as arctic terns hang out in Greenland and Iceland. Before the chill sets in, they embark on an epic migration to Antarctica, arriving in time for another summer. But when the weather begins to turn too cold there, they head to the far north again. This is their yearly routine. In the course of a lifetime, a single bird may travel as far as 1.25 million miles -- the equivalent of three roundtrips to the moon. I propose that you make this creature your spirit animal in 2017, Aquarius. May the arctic tern inspire you to journey as far as necessary to fulfill your personal equivalent of a quest for endless summer. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) In June 1962, three prisoners sneaked out of the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, located on an island in San Francisco Bay. Did they succeed in escaping? Did they swim to safety through the frigid water and start new lives abroad? No one knows. Law enforcement officials never found them. Even today, though, the U.S. Marshals Service keeps the case open, and still investigates new evidence when it comes in. Are there comparable enigmas in your own life, Pisces? Events in your past that raised questions you’ve never been able to solve? In 2017, I bet you will finally get to the bottom of them.
SERVICES OFFERED • Pap smears and annual exams • Sexually Transmitted Infection testing • Contraception including IUD insertions • Irregular bleeding • Menopause Management • Herbal Consultations both western and traditional Mayan herbs • Nutritional counseling
Homework Send me a list of your top five New Year’s resolutions. Go to RealAstrology.com and click on “Email Rob.”
Referrals and coordination of care as needed
check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes
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