THIS YEAR'S BEST NEW CAFES AND ROASTERS
AN AUDIO TOUR OF PORTLAND COFFEE SHOPS
GROCERY STORE COLD BREW TASTE-OFF
T
AND LOTS MORE!!!
WWEEK.COM
VOL 44/02 11.08.2017
OUR GUIDE TO PORTLAND’S WORLD-BEATING COFFEE CULTURE. PAGE 13
2
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
CAITLIN DEGNON
FINDINGS
Our 2017 Coffee issue, PAGE 13
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 44, ISSUE 02.
Portland cops are making bank by overstaffing for protests. 6 Portland’s city attorney has been sending out cease-and-desist letters over the use of a trademark the city doesn’t even own. 8 Avocado toast was invented in Australia. 15
Portland was home to the first drive-thru coffeehouse, which had its own radio station and poetry magazine. 22
ON THE COVER:
The best sound at any Portland coffee shop might come from a Bose speaker available at Target. 23
Somehow, a Portland band has the biggest song in the country right now. 34 Yes, the drummer of Fall Out Boy is a vegan anarchist, but he also does CrossFit and owns a tiny coffee shop on the South Waterfront. 39
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
Latte art illustration by Joanna Gorham.
The Bundy gang got away with it a year ago this week.
STAFF Editor & Publisher Mark Zusman EDITORIAL News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Martin Cizmar Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Rachel Monahan, Katie Shepherd Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Nicole Groessel Stage, Screen & Listings Editor Shannon Gormley Projects Editor Matthew Korfhage
Music Editor Matthew Singer Editorial Intern Anna Williams PRODUCTION Creative Director Alyssa Walker Designers Tricia Hipps, Rosie Struve, Rick Vodicka Photography Intern Abby Gordon, Hunter Murphy Design Intern Leah Maldonado, Parampal Singh ADVERTISING Director of Advertising Iris Meyers
Our mission: Provide Portlanders with an independent and irreverent understanding of how their worlds work so they can make a difference.
Willamette Week is published weekly by
Though Willamette Week is free, please take just one copy. Anyone removing papers in bulk from our distribution points will be prosecuted, as they say, to the full extent of the law.
Main line phone: (503) 243-2122 fax: (503) 296-2874
City of Roses Media Company 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210.
Classifieds phone: (503) 223-1500 fax: (503) 296-2874
Display Account Executives Michael Donhowe, Erika Ellis, Kevin Friedman, Christopher Hawley, Matt Plambeck, Sharri Regan, Sam Wild Classifieds Account Executive Matt Plambeck Promotions Manager Maria Margarita Caicedo Ad Designer Brittany Mohr COMMUNITY OUTREACH Events Director Sam Eaton Give!Guide Director Mahala Ray
DISTRIBUTION Circulation Director Spencer Winans WWEEK.COM Web Production Brian Panganiban OPERATIONS Accounting Manager Kim Engelke Staff Accountant Shawn Wolf Associate Publisher Jane Smith OFFICE DOGS Penny Garnet Angel, Benny the Jet, The Little Master Momotaro-chan, Bronx Meyers, Ziggy Ray, Scout
Willamette Week welcomes freelance submissions. Send material to either News Editor or Arts Editor. Manuscripts will be returned if you include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. To be considered for calendar listings, notice of events must be received in writing by noon Wednesday, two weeks before publication. Send to Calendar Editor. Photographs should be clearly labeled and will be returned if accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Questions concerning circulation or subscription inquiries should be directed to Spencer Winans at Willamette Week. Postmaster: Send all address changes to Willamette Week, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Subscription rates: One year $100, six months $50. Back issues $5 for walk-ins, $8 for mailed requests when available.
Willamette Week is mailed at third-class rates. Association of Alternative Newsmedia. This newspaper is published on recycled newsprint using soy-based ink.
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
3
DIALOGUE Last week, WW told the story of Nicole Lewis, a Legacy Health employee who was referred to collections by her employer after her medical bills piled up (“Company Store,” WW, Nov. 1, 2017). Here’s what readers had to say. Juan Marcos Feliciano, via wweek.com: “Shameful and completely disgusting! My heart and prayers go out to my friend Nicole Lewis. Stand tall and meet these oppressors head on, girl. Their reign will come to an abrupt end soon enough.”
middle- income people who have to buy their own coverage, including college students, while knowingly leaving large corporations, insurance companies, and even her own union exempt from the taxes. “Section 8 of the bill allows that insurance tax to be passed on to ratepayers, and hospitals will be able to pass their share of the tax onto people like Nicole Lewis who can barely keep their head above water. SEIU knew that, and didn’t oppose the bill.”
DEATH WITH DIGNITY
S osthenes, via wweek.com: STILL A BURDEN “Legacy is the successor organizaThe passage of Oregon’s Death tion to a number of prior entities, With Dignity law is something including the Lutheran Church’s to be celebrated and applauded. hospital (Emanuel) and the EpiscoThank you for the article about pal Church’s hospital (Good Sam). how this law came into being Each of these organizations retain a [“Happy Birthday, Death,” WW, voting seat on the board of trustees. Nov. 1, 2017]. “Shameful and “Sadly, there does not seem to be Your newspaper cover, however, I any church voices around to act as a completely find very distasteful. More impormoral compass to prevent the kind of disgusting!” tantly, your article fails to point situations set forth in this article. Big out that the law requires a person bucks out the door to pay the compensation for to jump through many hoops to access medical the professional-managerial-elite types while the aid in dying, the medication is very expensive, and rank and file, who do most of the dirty work, heavy many sick and suffering people do not qualify, e.g., work, and have-to-must-be there ready for work persons with ALS, dementia, and several other at the beginning of shift seem to get the shaft. debilitating chronic diseases. “As an Episcopalian, I am embarrassed by the Those Oregonians who do not qualify under laziness of the bishop and his failure to be a stron- the Oregon law may qualify for help by contacting ger voice within Legacy. But then I am reminded the Final Exit Network at finalexitnetwork.org or of the old saying, ‘Episcopalians are simply calling 866-654-9156. Republicans at prayer.’” Peter Vennewitz Southwest Portland State Rep. Julie Parrish (R-West Linn), via wweek.com: “Remember, Service Employees LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author’s street address and phone number International Union’s Felisa Hagins was just on for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer KATU’s ‘Your Voice, Your Vote’ advocating for a words. Submit to: 2220 NW Quimby St., tax on other people’s health care. Her statements Portland, OR 97210. Email: mzusman@wweek.com here are hypocritical. Hagins and SEIU supported a health care sales tax law that hits low- and
Dr. Know BY MART Y SMITH
Dr. Know, you disappoint me when you half-know. In the event of MARTIAL LAW in our Civilian Republican form of government and the Posse Comitatus, all sheriffs will equal the rank of a Major General. Any extra stars they wear boost only their own egos. —Semper Fidelis The reader is responding to an earlier column in which we determined that the number of stars on a county sheriff’s uniform means, basically, fuck-all. I hesitate to disagree with you, Semp, I really do. For starters, I can tell from your letter that you are both heavily armed and insane. However, your theory that, under MARTIAL LAW, every two-bit sheriff will outrank every one-star general isn’t true. If anything, it will be just the opposite, with even the highest-ranking police officers taking orders from low-level Army grunts. That’s the whole point of martial law—all city, state and county officials would have to defer to military rule. Except it doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to happen. The imminent establishment of nationwide martial law is a cherished hobbyhorse of the wack-right. 4
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
It’s pretty much exactly like when evangelicals bring up “Armageddon” or when hippies talk about “The Revolution”—they’re all big, scary events that, any day now, will reorganize the world in such a fashion as to teach a harsh lesson to everyone except the speaker and a few of his closest co-religionists. When martial law comes—the story goes—there’ll be nothing to stop the feds from coming to take your guns, your six-year supply of MREs, and all but one of your wives. Then we’ll see who’s sorry! Of course, you and I know it won’t come to that. The very idea! Still, it couldn’t hurt to put some tape over that built-in laptop webcam— just in case. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
5
426 SE GRAND AVE. PORTLAND, OR. 97214 NEXTADVENTURE.NET 503.233.0706 DealS gooD tHrougH 11/13
HUNTER MURPHY
BUY OF THE WEEK DEMO SKI SALE
grEaT Top brands, priced to move! dEals
In its most recent filing, the state accused Portland of discriminating against LGBTQ patrons by not requiring sprinklers in those clubs. A hearing is scheduled for early December.
$199.99 & UP
4
$ 99
LIST PRICE: $9.99
IITEms UndEr $20
savE 50%
Next Adventure Headlamp
Great value on a great headlamp!
savE 75%
1
$ 99
14
$
99
LIST PRICE: $30.00
Black Diamond Lightweight Liner Glove
COMPARE AT: AT $7.99
Great for aerobic activities or layering Multiple color options available. Incredible value! under a bulky winter glove!
Wilderness Technology Paracord
9999
$
savE 60%
COMPARE AT: $249.99
Wilderness Technology Tri Laminate Jackets
savE 50%
COMPARE AT: $260.00
Women’s Liquid Sunrise Shell Jacket
Men’s 3-layer con construction jacket that is fully waterproof, breathable, and helmet compatible! Assorted colors.
99 29Girl’s Outdoor
$
savE 33%
12999
$
COMPARE AT: $45.00
Gear Ruby Micro Fleece
Outdoor Gear Charger Fleece
59
$
99
Midweight fleece. Great for everyday use!
19
savE 33%
99
savE 55%
LIST PRICE: $44.00
grEaT dEal!
savE 40%
59
259
$
99
Super comfy classic Northwest brand. 3 colors!!
5999
Merrell Eventyr Bond
Waterproof fall book.
savE 49%
74
6
5999
$
58996
1999
8
$ 99
savE 63%
Two lenses, easy to change and spherical in shape
99 LIST PRICE: $175.00
9999
savE 28% Tubbs Vertex 25 Lightweight and efficient!
Outdoor School
Bluetooth speakers to drop into your helmet. “Dropping!”
12999
$
LIST PRICE: $180.00
Assorted Neff Stomp Pads!
Free with snowboard purchase or $1.99 a la carte! While supplies last.
LIST PRICE: $140.00
savE 80%
LIST PRICE:: $24.00
savE 29%
No seams, wool sock, and two colors!
14999
$
LIST PRICE: $210.00
Atlas 925 Snowshoe Kit Kit includes Trekking Poles and Bag!
LIST PRICE: $49.99
BE Link Gen 3.0 Headphones
MIPS! Reeco! The skier/ riders choice!! Sale on 2017 model only.
$
2499
$
savE 50%
LIST PRICE: $180.00
Farm To Feet Hampton
American wool in a 3 pack!
89 Lowa Ferrox GTX Low
LIST PRICE: $110.00
savE 29%
$
PRICE LIST PRICE: $30.00
savE 44%
19999
$
Protect your skis or boards when
Pret Cynic X
2018 freshness! Triple base tech with side kicks. This board is beautiful!!
$
grEaT dEal!
9999 Dragon X1s
$
Bataleon Bo$$
Men’s and Women’s waterproof.
Start Your Summer With
savE 45%
All-mtn performance w/ hike mode.
Transpack Hard Case Jet
Great entry level ski binding. Find your way out of the Maze with this rad lid.
Wigwam Wool Sock 3pk
$
LIST PRICE: $129.99
Smith Maze
nEW mOdEl!
savE 33%
7999
Lange XT 100 2018
Marker M10.0 EPS 2017 travelling. Rentals available!
You’ll dig it.
LIST PRICE: $209.99
savE 53%
mOdEl!
Ready for anything from park to pow.
$
49999
$
Faction Soma 2015
savE 48%
savE 38%
savE 50%
LIST PRICE: $39.99
32999 nEW
Balsa wood core keeps these super light.
$
12999
LIST PRICE: $180.00
A great deal on a high end knife. Titanium frame lock, KVT ball bearings, and an ELMAX steel blade. Mega-Rad!
Assisted opening and razor sharp!
LIST PRICE: PRICE $629.00
LIST PRICE: PRICE $89.99
$
8499
ZT 0562 Hinderer Slicer
$
99
Nordica Belle 84w 2017
savE 46%
$130.00
Northwave Legend Snowboard Boots
$
1999
$
LIST PRICE: $649.99
$ 99 Fun. Snappy. Bonus lens. Available with Jibby! Happy Lens technology. LIST PRICE:
savE 38%
LIST PRICE: $250.00
1999 Kershaw OSO Sweet $
savE 20%
19999
WHILE SUPPLIES LAST.
LIST PRICE: $39.99
COMPARE AT: $140.00
Women’s Craghoppers Madigan Classic Thermic Jacket
$
LIST PRICE: Grape, $52.00 Navy, and Steel FREE WITH AUTOMATIC KNIFE PURCHASE. IN STORE ONLY. Grey!
DMOS Stealth Shovel
Slash Paxson Snowboard Spy Ace Goggle
7499
$
Waterproof jacket with thermal air insulation liner to keep you warm! Available in Dark Rioja and Soft Navy.
White Sierra Kid’s Bib
349
savE 42%
LIST PRICE: $429.99
savE 46%
Free Crucial Multi-Tool with purchase of any Gerber Automatic Knife
Awesome price on an awesome neck knife!
Dalbello Kyra MX 80
savE 33%
Closeout ski touring pack. Other models available.
1999
savE 56%
$
Feat. walk mode and WARM liner.
Arva Patroller 24L
COMPARE AT: $60.00
Harbor Bamboo 1/2 Zip Fleece
COMPARE AT: $45.00
Reliable durable ski pant!
29995
PRICE: 99 LIST $99.99
Multiple sizes available.
1600Men’s Dutch
$
Former Roosevelt Coach Investigated for Harassment
Swix Techlite Ski Poles
Cork grip at a ludicrous price!
$
Outdoor Gear Youth Pinnacle Bib
savE 50%
LIST PRICE: $24.99
Wicking but warming bamboo fleece midweight top!
4999
COMPARE AT: $100.00
$
Loaded with survival gear! Fishing line, hooks, extra paracord, sharpening rod, magnesium fire-starter, and signal mirror discretely built in!
savE 40%
Ottoman fabric and a breathable polyester fabric for great comfort and warmth!
$
LIST PRICE: $49.99
savE 73%
savE 50%
Ti-Coated with serrated edge. BLOWOUT!
CRKT Terzuola Rescue Knife
$
COMPARE AT: $200.00
Men’s Liquid Express Pant
$
CRKT Minimalist Bowie
Gerber EVO Knife
LIST PRICE: $89.99
savE 55%
COMPARE AT: $45.00
Midweight fleece. Great for layering on the hill!
$
8999
2999Boy’s
$
LIST PRICE:
Men’s merino wool cap in $39.99 Black and Pewter.
ROOSEVELT HIGH SCHOOL
1499
$ 95 Rossignol Attraxion II XC Ski Pole
1199
$
savE 40%
9
$
Outdoor Research Motto Cap
Awesome shell for the PNW!
savE 33%
savE 80%
savE 70%
savE 50%
LIST PRICE: $9.99
$1.99 OR FREE WITH PURCHASE PU
4999
$
LIST PRICE: $74.99
2017 Pret Kid Lid
Keep those groms safe!!
savE 33%
Deals subject to product availability. Some quantities may be limited.
Come take a Snowshoe Day Trip with Next Adventure Outdoor School at our new locations in the Mt. Hood National Forest! Trips start in December! Visit https://nextadventure.net/outdoor-school
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
The former head coach of Roosevelt High School’s football team, who resigned abruptly in August, was investigated twice, including for allegedly sending lewd text messages and talking inappropriately about sex with at least one colleague, according to documents and interviews with Portland Public Schools officials. Roosevelt principal Filip Hristic, who conducted the first investigation, tells WW that Adam Kennybrew was given a letter of reprimand in June for “unprofessional and unacceptable behavior.” Hristic declined to discuss specific allegations. Kennybrew continues to work half-time for Roosevelt and half-time for the district’s central athletic department. The second investigation concluded last week with no additional discipline for Kennybrew. When contacted by WW, Kennybrew denied he had sexually harassed colleagues.
Regulators Battle Over Sprinklers in Darcelle’s XV
A long-running battle between the Oregon Building Codes Division and the city of Portland has devolved into an argument over which agency is more concerned about the safety of LGBTQ clubgoers. The case entered a new phase last week when the city filed a motion asking a state administrative law judge to dismiss the state’s case. At issue is who regulates sprinklers in Portland nightclubs (“Hot in Here,” WW, July 6, 2016). Court documents show the state sent an investigator to the drag bar Darcelle’s XV and to the gay strip club Silverado.
Legacy Avoids Strike
Following three lastminute, federally mediated bargaining sessions, Legacy Health averted a strike by Service Employees International Union Local 49, which represents 800 Legacy workers. The two sides reached a tentative agreement Nov. 1, the same day WW highlighted the plight of Nicole Lewis, a Legacy employee who faced collection notices from her employer (“Company Store,” WW, Nov. 1, 2017). Workers approved the new contract Nov. 6, just two days before a scheduled strike. Workers will now have access to a full-time counselor to help them navigate financial assistance programs and the complexities of their health insurance, and avoid collections.
Cops Outnumber Antifa During Protest
Portland police officers outnumbered protesters 2-to-1 around a Nov. 4 antifascist demonstration in the Pearl District. National antifa protests were the subject of wide-scale internet rumormongering before the event. Portland police dispatched 208 officers. About 100 protesters showed up. The heightened police activity probably cost the city thousands of dollars—in addition to the $1.9 million Portland police have already spent on overtime to monitor protests this year. DANIEL STINDT
Snowvember IS Here!
AUGUST ALT-RIGHT VS. ANTIFA RALLY
LEAH NASH
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
S
NEXT STOP: MILK STREET
Leaders from Portland’s LGBTQ, civil rights and business communities want to change the name of 13 blocks of Southwest Stark Street to Harvey Milk Street. Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California history, won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He was killed in City Hall in 1978 by a former colleague on the board. Benjamin Stark, the man for whom the street is currently named, was a New York merchant who made a fortune in Portland after buying out the holdings of another man who would later have a Portland street named after him, Asa Lovejoy. Proponents of the name change launched a campaign this month and are seeking permission from the city of Portland. Milk had no known connections to Portland, but before its recent gentrification, Southwest Stark Street served as the center of gay life in the city. There’s precedent for naming the city’s streets after civil rights leaders with little connection to Portland: Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in 1990, Rosa Parks Way in 2007, and César E. Chávez Boulevard in 2009. The Chávez name change was contentious and took two years. This time, the committee seeking to make the change, which includes former Oregon Govs. Barbara Roberts and Ted Kulongoski, says it has already secured approval from 75 percent of the businesses along Southwest Stark as well as many neighborhood groups. “We felt this could be a really positive, affirmative step, especially when President Trump is attacking some of the gains LGBTQ made,” says Mikki Gillette of Basic Rights Oregon. Here’s a rundown of the street’s current and prospective namesakes:
BY THE NUMBERS
Nike in Paradise Nike is enjoying its trip to Bermuda. That’s one revelation from the Paradise Papers, a huge leak of financial documents handed to a German newspaper. The records, most of which relate to offshore tax havens, were released Nov. 5 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Among the findings: The Paradise Papers allege that Oregon sportswear giant Nike has been reaping spectacular rewards from moving its trademark profits to a subsidiary in Bermuda, where the U.S. can’t get at them. (The company says that’s fine: “Nike fully complies with tax regulations,” Nike told ICIJ.) Here’s how much the Papers say Nike has lowered its tax payments. AARON MESH.
What Reedies Want
TARK ST S W
HARVEY MILK BORN: Woodmere, N.Y., May 1930 TIME ON THE WATER: U.S. Navy veteran BEST MOVE: Left New York City for San Francisco’s Castro District PO LIT ICAL H IG H LIG H T: Helped beat anti-gay Proposition 6 in 1978 DIED: Shot by ex-city supervisor Dan White, 1978 LASTING PORTLAND CONNECTION: The movie Milk, directed by Portland filmmaker Gus Van Sant
BENJAMIN STARK BORN: New Orleans, June 1820 ON THE WATER: Sailed to Portland, then China BEST MOVE: Bought Asa Lovejoy’s land in Portland POLITICAL HIGHLIGHT: Appointed to U.S. Senate, 1861 DIED: Old age, 1898 LASTING PORTLAND CONNECTION: The Ben Stark Hotel, now called the Ace Hotel Sources: Oregon Historical Society, Harvey Milk Foundation
For more than a year, Reed College has been embroiled in controversy as protesters disrupt a core humanities class that students must take as freshmen. But what do the student activists want? Professors are revolting, taking to the pages of national newspapers to complain about what they call an “extremist moment” on the famously liberal private college campus. Students who don’t support the in-class demonstrations have fled lecture halls to study in other classrooms and held their own counterprotest events. Reedies Against Racism, the student organization leading the protest movement, has made a list of 25 demands. They start by insisting that the university make more books by people of color assigned reading in the freshman humanities course. But then they stretch beyond. Here’s a look at some of the group’s demands, which have been summarized for clarity and space. KATIE SHEPHERD. 1. The group wants Reed to stop investing in companies that it says profit from prison labor. Its primary target is the bank Wells Fargo. 2. The group wants Reed’s required Humanities 110 course to “be conscious of the power it gives to already privileged ideas and welcome critique of that use of power.” In other words, it wants the course syllabus to include writings by people of color that critique works by Sophocles and Homer. If that doesn’t work, it wants the course made optional. 3. It wants Reed’s diversity policy to be explicitly “anti-racism/anti-oppressive”—to take a stand against white supremacy, instead of tolerating all viewpoints. 4. It wants student evaluations of instructors to include a new category: “the general openness of professors and their handling of racial topics, gender topics, and queer topics.” 5. It wants the university to hold an annual “antioppression workshop” for everyone on campus.
BERMUDA | ASHLEY CHRISTIANO
njaquiss@wweek.com
RUNDOWN
A C E H O T E L | K A R I S U L L I VA N
BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS
S
CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS WANT A STARK CHANGE IN THE WEST END.
ILK ST M W
34.9%
Nike’s worldwide effective tax rate in 2006, the year before it began shifting money to Bermuda
13.2%
Nike’s worldwide effective tax rate in 2016
3%
The tax rate for Nike International, which is based in Bermuda
$12.2 billion Nike’s offshore profits held offshore and untaxed by the U.S.
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
7
CHRISTINE DONG
NEWS
Oh Deer PORTLAND CITY HALL AGGRESSIVELY DEFENDS LICENSING OF ITS WHITE STAG LOGO. BUT SOMEBODY ELSE OWNS PART OF THE TRADEMARK.
BY KATIE S H E P H E R D
kshepherd@wweek.com
OTB PHTOOS: HUNTER MURPHY
Adam Milne’s brewpub is fighting City Hall. And as of today, Milne is winning. The issue is trademark rights, and Old Town Brewing prominently uses one of Portland’s most popular images. The white sign hanging above the front door of Old STAG PARTY: The city of Portland owns some federal trademarks on the leaping deer on the Town Brewing’s taproom on Northeast Martin Luther “Portland Oregon” sign (above). But other trademarks belong to Old Town Brewing (below). King Jr. Boulevard features the silhouette of a leaping buck. Behind the bar, a herd of white stags bound across eight wooden beer tap handles. The glasses, the coasters, The city set out to pay for the costs of maintaining the day Market, says he’s happy to pay the city’s fees. He paid and every bottle of Pilsner brewed in-house are festooned sign by obtaining federal trademarks for the image—but about $1,500 for a five-year license to use the image. with the jumping deer—the same one that glows on the WW has learned it began selling licenses even before any “The fees feel like they’re fair,” he says. “The shirts do iconic “Portland Oregon” sign. federal trademark was approved. really well. I don’t feel like it’s a burden.” For seven years, Portland City Hall has owned that The city can legally sell licenses, but its ability to Curiously, while the federal patent office ruled that Old neon sign at the west end of the Burnside Bridge. Shortly enforce them is limited without a federal trademark. As Town Brewing’s claim to the White Stag image is “inconafter its purchase, the City Attorney’s Office set out to soon as city attorneys started demanding license fees testable,” the city continues to negotiate with big brewers obtain federal trademarks for the image. between $100 and $20,000 from businesses and artists over licensing rights. Trademarks give the owner the right to control use of who used the image of the sign in their products, people Perhaps the largest conflict over the licensing of the the image and to license that use to others. For the past started to push back. sign involved Pabst Brewing Company. In 2015, Pabst seven years, Portland has aggressively hosted a music festival that it advertised sought payment from anyone who used with an image the city claimed was “conthe image for marketing, from Pabst Blue fusingly similar” to the sign: an outline of Ribbon beer to Christmas ornament venthe state with a unicorn jumping from the dors on Etsy. The city collected $39,330 in top and the words “Project Pabst” where licensing fees in fiscal year 2016. “Old Town” appears on the original sign. But in fact, the city owns only bits and In the end, Pabst paid the city $30,000 to pieces of the federal trademark. Although use the image in its promotions, settling the city now has a federal trademark for a lawsuit the city filed against the brewer. items like T-shirts, baseball caps and (Disclosure: WW has partnered with Pabst mugs, it still doesn’t have one for beer, to run music festivals.) wine and alcohol. The Pabst deal with the city doesn’t bother That’s because the trademark for the Milne—a unicorn isn’t going to be confused category that covers beer, wine and alcowith a stag, he says. But the local beer makhol belongs to Old Town Brewing. ers at Old Town Brewing fear the city will In the fall of 2016, the city attempted try to license the image of the stag to large, to expand its trademark into the terri“THEY’RE GOING AFTER THE LITTLE GUY, AND corporate alcohol sellers. tory of beer. This September, a year later, An Anheuser-Busch ad campaign in THAT’S JUST A SHAME. WE SHOULDN’T BE PAYING OUR CITY the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office 2014 included coasters and glasses with ATTORNEYS TO GO AFTER THAT STUFF.” rejected the city’s request, citing the the sign featured prominently. Milne says —KOHEL HAVER, TRADEMARK LAWYER similarity to Old Town Brewing’s tradethe image was too similar to his brand’s mark, issued in 2012. logo. He sent a cease-and-desist letter to “Getting the trademark was a very long, challengWhen city attorneys sent cease-and-desist letters to a the beer giant, and the stag disappeared from the macroing process,” Milne says. “We’ve built a brand we’re so number of Etsy artists who were using the image in their brewer’s coasters and glasses. proud of.” work, the creative community balked (“Three Etsy PiecCity officials say they didn’t license the image of the sign Bryant Enge, director of the city’s Bureau of Internal es,” WW, Aug. 4, 2015). Local company Roadside Vintage to Anheuser-Busch for the marketing campaign. But this Business Services, says he’s not discouraged by the patsued the city for trying to enforce a licensing fee for prints year, it granted a $20,000 license to Widmer Brothers, a ent office’s rejection of Portland’s trademark application. of photos that were taken before the city bought the sign. Portland-based brewery owned by a national company, Craft “Initial trademark application rejections are not uncomThe case settled out of court, and Roadside Vintage did not Brew Alliance. Anheuser-Busch holds a 32.2 percent stake in mon,” Enge says. “We’re confident that the trademark pay a licensing fee. CBA. Widmer uses the “Portland Oregon” sign on bottles of will be approved.” “We understand what the city is trying to do; it’s a noble its PDX Pils, but it leaves off the leaping stag. Why would he want the trademark? To partner with cause,” says Kohel Haver, the trademark lawyer who repreMilne says Old Town Brewing will keep on locking national brewers who want to use the image for marketsented Roadside Vintage. “But I don’t think they’re doing horns over the stag. ing purposes. Such an agreement could lead to lucrative it correctly. They’re going after the little guy, and that’s “They feel like they should be able to license to whoever licensing fees for ad campaigns—but Old Town Brewing just a shame. We shouldn’t be paying our city attorneys to they want,” Milne says. “We feel that licensing trademarks stands in the way. go after that stuff.” to multinational corporations is not really a Portland The city bought the “Portland Oregon” sign in 2010 to Not every business owner feels the same way. Nathan value. We’re very prideful of our local food, our local outsave it from being unplugged and torn down. Verhoeven, who sells graphic T-shirts at Portland Satur- doors and—especially in Portland—our local beer.” 8
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
9
Portland’s definitive annual look at the best of the robust culinary selection our city has to offer. Featuring our Top 100 Restaurants as well as the Restaurant of the Year. Find your copy at select locations including New Seasons Market and Powell’s Books. Call 503.243.2122 for more information.
RestauRant Guide
10
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
Out nOw!
SAM GEHRKE
NEWS
BUILDING COMMUNITY: The housing complex called NAYA Generations opened in February, but it doesn’t serve the groups it promised to help.
Lost Generations A NONPROFIT SPENT MILLIONS OF PUBLIC DOLLARS TO HOUSE NATIVE AMERICAN SENIORS AND FOSTER FAMILIES. IT’S FAILING. BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N
rmonahan@wweek.com
In February, the city’s top housing officials gathered in Southeast Portland’s Lents neighborhood to celebrate a project that promised to meet a significant need for Native Americans. The $11.5 million, 40-unit affordable housing complex called NAYA Generations was built with more than $10 million in public funds to address a systemic ill: More than 1 in 5 Native American children in Multnomah County lived in foster care, according to a 2011 study. In response, the Native American Youth and Family Center, which goes by the acronym NAYA, pledged to build a community for foster families with elders living on-site to support them. Ten apartments would be set aside for foster families, and another 30 units would go to seniors. “It will be a model project ensuring the success of Native children currently in foster care,” said Rey España, NAYA’s then-director of community development, in a 2014 promotional video still on the NAYA website. But the results don’t match those promises. NAYA Generations currently doesn’t house a single foster family, says Guardian Real Estate Services, the project’s property manager. And only seven of the 40 households include seniors age 55 and older. Guardian’s president says NAYA simply failed to recruit enough foster families and senior citizens. “They didn’t fulfill that part of the deal,” says Tom Brenneke, president of Guardian. “Somebody needed to be
engaged with the Native American community and with the foster system.” As the city of Portland prepares to spend more than $250 million with an affordable housing bond, NAYA Generations presents a cautionary tale about good intentions. Portland housing officials are increasingly focused on addressing historical injustices with their policies. The city, for example, has said it plans to spend the bond with a goal of serving people of color. In addition, the city is spending more than $50 million in North and Northeast Portland to encourage the return of Portlanders, many of them black, who were pushed out of those gentrified neighborhoods years ago. But the failure of NAYA Generations to reach its own benchmarks raises questions about how well the city monitors the nonprofits it uses to build housing. City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversaw the Housing Bureau when it approved funding for the project, says he’s troubled that NAYA has fallen so far short of what it proposed. “It’s disappointing to me in the extreme,” he says. “I believe sponsors of the project should be held accountable.” Mayor Ted Wheeler says the city should reassess how it watchdogs nonprofits. “If our partners do not or cannot hold themselves accountable for delivering the program they promised,” he tells WW, “then we have to.” NAYA Generations was based on a similar, successful housing development: Bridge Meadows, which opened in 2011 in North Portland. Seniors and families adopting chil-
dren out of foster care live side by side: 25 foster children and 28 seniors moved in within the first nine months of the project’s opening, according to the Bridge Meadows nonprofit. Funding for NAYA Generations included federal lowincome tax credits worth $8.7 million; $600,000 from the Housing Bureau; and free lease of the property on the site of a former school. When Portland Housing Bureau officials awarded $600,000 in funding, they also trumpeted the project’s goals: “permanent supportive housing with 30 units for seniors and 10 units for families with children,” they wrote in a 2014 press release. A year later, Meyer Memorial Trust awarded $545,000 to the project using similar criteria. But NAYA says finding foster families and elders who met the requirements to live there—incomes for a family of four of less than $44,820 a year, with no significant criminal history and no evictions in the past year—proved difficult. NAYA executive director Paul Lumley also cites federal housing laws. “NAYA did not expect that fair housing laws would be as constraining and inflexible with regard to implementation as it turns out they are,” he says. “This was coupled with the complexity of Native families with difficult backgrounds who just could not get their applications approved. We found the application and lease-up process frustrating and made even more difficult by the holidays and prolonged extreme winter weather.” One family at NAYA Generations is in the process of trying to become foster parents, according to Guardian. Children in two other households were previously in foster care and have reunited with their families at NAYA Generations. The Portland Housing Bureau has no way to penalize NAYA for not keeping its promises—because the only requirement the city put in writing was that Generations would serve low-income people. “Our regulatory agreement on this project is specific to the rent/income restrictions and financial performance,” says Housing Bureau spokeswoman Martha Calhoon. The Meyer Trust says such problems with grant awards are not uncommon. “Our expectation is that grantees are transparent with both successes and challenges,” says Candy Solovjovs, director of programs at Meyer. News that NAYA did not end up serving the population it had hoped is just the latest problem with the project. NAYA last year abandoned plans for a second phase of development for the site: a longhouse-style community center, built in cooperation with the school district. NAYA could not raise the $3 million for its contribution to the longhouse’s costs as the organization struggled financially and the leadership of NAYA changed. NAYA nevertheless defends what it has achieved with the project: 48 percent of the residents identify at least partly as Native American, and 78 percent are people of color. “While we have not yet met our goals,” Lumley says, “we are providing the kind of low-income housing relief for the Portland area that is in dire need.”
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
11
12
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
thiopia is the birthplace of all coffee. There, drinking coffee and meeting friends are synonymous. “Buna dabo naw,” the saying goes: Coffee is our bread. It’s not just a luxury, it’s true sustenance for the spirit. It goes deep. In Portland, too, a cup of coffee goes deep. Our city has become the home of American coffee culture. Since the early days of Stumptown in the ’90s, the idea of a good cup of coffee means more here than in any other city in the U.S. In a 100-city survey last year, we had not only the most roasters per capita, we also had the most cafes. We think a lot about which coffee shop to go to—Portlanders Googled “coffee” more than anyone last year. Every year, we celebrate the nation’s best coffee city, diving deep into Portland’s wide-ranging coffee culture. We talked to the founder of the world’s first drive-thru coffeehouse, here in Portland 27 years ago (page 22), and held an epic blind taste test of all the cold-brew bottles we could find in grocery stores (page 26). Our coffee industry has become so dense we have a de facto “roaster’s row” of eight roasters within mere blocks of each other (see page 17), and our cafes are so popular you may need to seek out a little hidey-hole (see page 25) to enjoy your heavenly coffee in peace. And yet, there’s always more to discover: Our new crop of 10 favorite cafes in Portland includes a Latin-style coffee kiosk with amazing espresso-drenched ahogado (see page 15)and a vegan-anarchist coffee shop founded by the drummer from Fall Out Boy (see page 39). Hell, we think so much about coffee it’s easy to forget we’re also a hotbed of American tea culture, with Stash, Tazo and Steven Smith. Our new crop of tea spots includes a hilltop vigil in the Japanese garden, next-level boba and holiday Russian tea service (page 18). With the coffee and tea so good here, we’re dedicated to the entire experience of drinking—after all, if we’re going to be there all day, we might as well make sure the sound is dialed. And so we brought an audio expert to Portland cafes (page 23) to see whether all those vinyl records and vintage amps are being put to good use. Really, the only thing we’re missing is a way to bring Portland’s great cultures of coffee and beer together. But we’re getting that too: Portland will soon have a combination beer brewery and coffee roastery (see page 21). Every time you think we’ve pulled the deepest cups in Portland coffee culture, there’s always something else to try. Here’s where to start right now. \
CAITLIN DEGNON
OUR GUIDE TO PORTLAND’S WORD-BEATING COFFEE CULTURE.
What We're Pourin': THE KLATCH NEW TEA
P A G E
P A G E
COFFEE NEWS MOTORIN'
PAGE
20 2 2
PAGE
HOW TO BE ALONE COOL BEANS
1 8
P A G E
HEAR & NOW
1 5
23
PAGE 25
P A G E
2 6
ABBY GORDON, ORACLE COFFEE
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
13
Give!Guide
Cheap drinks. Dope beats. Free entry.
All shows 5–7pm.
SmAll milliOn
BlOSSOm
NOVEMBER 8
NOVEMBER 15
mic cApES
rEvA DEviTO
NOVEMBER 22
NOVEMBER 29
SirEn
AnD THE
SEA
nATASHA kmETO DECEMBER 13
DECEMBER 6 DJ set
HOSTED BY
GIFT E D I U G 14
1305 SE 8th Ave, Portland // 21+
503.445.1426 advertising@wweek.com
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
Follow @GiveGuide GiveGuide.org
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE THOMAS TEAL
The Klatch COFFEE ISSUE 2017
OF 2017
OUR 10 FAVORITE NEW CAFES AND ROASTERS IN PORTLAND.
Proud Mary Cafe The flat white might be the perfect combination of coffee and milk. It’s essentially a latte without the mass of foam, allowing the nuttiness of the espresso to shine while the milk provides a light and creamy counterpoint. And yet, the Aussie innovation is not something Portland coffee shops do well. Before you form an opinion, head over to Proud Mary for the flat white. The shop is the first American offshoot of a Melbourne-based roaster known for outbidding other comers for the world’s best beans, for its friendly service and for super-authentic avocado toast from the continent that gave the world avocado toast. The Aussie seated next to us at this huge new sit-down cafe on Alberta, which is decorated with semi-functional speakers (see page 23) and long marble slabs, noted that Melbourne has some striking similarities to Portland—though this was the only flat white in town he liked. The Instagramfriendly brunch entrees, including that excellent toast with mashed-up avocado, come loaded with colorful, gnarled herbs. The service is warm compared to that at most Portland cafes— so meth i n g own e r Nolan Hirte got blowback for saying, and which he’s since repeated. As we say in this country, it ain’t tricking if you got it. MARTIN CIZMAR. THOMAS TEAL
PE AK S C OFFE E
Foxy Coffee Co. 3640 SE Belmont St., foxycoffeeco.com. 6 am-5 pm Monday-Friday, 7 am-4 pm Saturday-Sunday. Foxes craftily find small game and build small dens, and so does Foxy’s Josh Bonner. One of the smallest of Portland’s nano-roasteries, Belmont’s Foxy also sources beans from some of the smallest farms in Africa—little family plots once considered utterly noncommercial. One of these is an extraordinary Kercha Dubisa roast from a little piece of family land in Ethiopia, a nano-batch procured through Portland’s Catalyst Coffee Consulting: It’s one of the few coffees I’ve ever tasted with honest-to-God watermelon notes, lightly and pleasantly acidic with a warm, round finish. The art on Foxy’s gallery-white walls comes from friends, the chandeliers and mismatched stools and chairs are painstakingly refurbished “on an IKEA as-is budget,” and the crisp butter-bar of the Sweet Nothings golden cookie comes from a grandmother's recipe. The cinnamon toast, meanwhile, comes from a recipe all of America knows by heart. For years, Portland cafes have become slicker and more designed. Foxy is a reminder of the improvised excellence those brand-happy shops are trying to replicate. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
THOMAS TEAL
2012 NE Alberta St., 503-208-3475, proudmarycoffee.com. 7 am-4 pm Monday-Friday, 8 am-4 pm Saturday-Sunday.
Kiosko 1816 SW River Drive, kioskopdx.tumblr.com. 7 am-4 pm daily. In a world of avocado toast, Kiosko serves a wonderful ahogado. In their surf shack-sized South Waterfront shop with windows on four sides and a counter filled with pastel-colored flowers, co-owners Angel Medina and Lucy Alvarez serve a beautiful Spanish-language take on the Italian affogato, ice cream “drowned” in espresso. Chocolate mole and cajeta ahogados are also available, but we went with the horchata ice cream, which came topped with toasted, glazed almonds. The result is essentially an ice cream sundae
for grown-ups, perfectly delicate and decadent. The coffee comes from Medina and Alvarez’s own Smalltime Roasters coffees sourced in Africa and Mexico and brewed using the community roaster at Aspect Coffee Collective. From a menu written primarily in Spanish, you can also order such specialties as a cortadito (espresso and milk) infused with Kiosko’s cinnamon-andpiloncillo café de olla flavor. It’s the kind of place that may serve your coffee topped with a maplebacon skewer, or maybe with shaved cinnamon and sprig of mint, painstakingly brewed using the copper flower or Kalita pour over. But seriously: Get that ahogado. SOPHIA JUNE.
Oracle Coffee Company 3875 SW Bond St., 971-339-9002, oraclecoffee.com. 7 am-7 pm daily. The Southwest Waterfront’s Oracle is like a coffee emissary from the Midwest. It was founded by Andy Hurley, the straight-edge, vegan-anarchist drummer of Fall Out Boy (see profile, page 39). And rather than revel in local wares, Hurley is CONT. on page 16 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
15
ABBY GORDON
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
ABBY GORDON
THE KLATCH CONT.
spreading the love to flyover states in his roaster selection, with recent offerings from St. Louis’ Blueprint and Colorado’s Sweet Bloom, making Oracle well worth the streetcar ride. Alongside a spread of Shoofly pastries are vegan bagels from Bowery and cookies from Grand Rapids’ Bit Baking Co. The space is handsome and unobtrusive, with a handful of filament bulbs dangling from the ceiling’s bare wood and black metal. You wouldn’t know much about ownership’s day job from the looks and, more importantly, sounds of the shop, which is a management decision that deserves applause. PETE COTTELL.
P E A KS C O F F E E
Guilder
shop offers a pair of window-side countertops perfect for catching up with that best friend you spend only 15 minutes a year with. The full complement of Twin Peaks caricatures, from Laura Palmer to the Log Lady, provides enough of a conversation piece it maybe won’t even be awkward. Sip a cortado made with an Ethiopian bean from Foxy Coffee five blocks away (see page 15) and nosh on a maple-glazed doughnut from An Xuyen Bakery. There’s Wi-Fi, but the lack of tables big enough to fit a laptop indicates they would rather you enjoy one of their excellent Nutella lattes, admire the carefully placed foliage, then be on your way. PETE COTTELL.
2393 NE Fremont St., Suite B, 503-841-6042, guildercafe.com. 7 am-7 pm daily. A coffee shop claiming Scandinavian influence is no big surprise in 2017 Portland—but Guilder’s Mike and Caryn Nelson are really going for it. At their new Fremont Street cafe, which opened this spring, they’re pairing the light and airy aesthetics of their soaring cafe space with bright, light-roasted coffee and healthful hygge food. Mike Nelson’s résumé includes time at Stumptown and Blue Bottle, and Guilder serves the Nelsons’ own roasting brand, Junior’s, in a standard battery of espresso and filter coffee options. But there’s also an AeroPress brewed to order—and that’s what you should get. The ability to order an AeroPress across the counter is rare here in Portland, and in the right hands it is one of the tastiest ways to prepare coffee. With spacious upstairs seating, this cafe is ideal for camping or work meetings: I’ve done both. An AeroPress of whatever they recommend and some savory toast— hey, that actually is pretty Scandinavian. JORDAN MICHELMAN.
Jet Black Coffee Company 11150 NE Weidler St., 503-889-0739, jetblackcoffeecompany.com. 6 am-6 pm Monday-Friday, 8 am-6 pm Saturday-Sunday.
Peaks Coffee 3340 SE Hawthorne Blvd.,
Lord knows Portland is near critical mass in both vape shops and cafes, and yet Peaks Coffee is all the more charming for converting the former into the latter. Loosely built on the slogan “For coffee and conversation” emblazoned across its wall, Tight Tacos co-owners Mark and Annamarie Cosio’s twee little Hawthorne 16
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
ABBY GORDON
971-373-8192. 8 am-4:30 pm Monday-Friday, 8:30 am-5 pm Saturday-Sunday.
Vegan businesses often travel in symbiotic clusters, which explains the near-instantaneous success of Jet Black Coffee. When the Buckman vegan market Food Fight announced plans to expand east of I-205, the remora-like attachment of a coffee spot seemed a foregone conclusion. Overflowing with unfinished wood, vibrant light and enough potted plants to make Portland Nursery blush, Jet Black oozes a casual cool you’re more likely to find in Austin, Texas, than Gateway. Drinks are crafted with Pacific Foods alternative milks (soy, hemp or almond) and Dear You Blend—a Water Avenue custom roast named after the Jawbreaker album that contains Jet Black’s namesake song. Below the spacious patio is Vegan Gorditos, an
animal-free outpost of the popular local taco chain Los Gorditos, which opens for breakfast and serves some of the best tofu scrambles and soy curl burritos in town. Throw in a small list of bottled beers, wine, and pastries from locals like Sweet Pea and Shoofly, and you’ve got a solid option for a coffice with a conscience. PETE COTTELL.
Groundwork Coffee Slabtown 2355 NW Vaughn St., 503-222-2181, groundworkcoffee.com. 6 am-6 pm Monday-Friday, 8 am-5 pm Saturday, 8 am-2 pm Sunday. “That’s the best thing in Portland coffee right now,” one of WW’s news reporters said when she saw me with a to-go cup from Groundwork Coffee. She wasn’t talking about the coffee, although she likes that, too: She was talking about the cup. Groundwork’s to-go cups are not only double-insulated by default, but the lids come with a basin that catches coffee and allows it to cool. New ideas are apparently a bonus of cross-pollination: Groundwork is a 26-year-old coffee company from Los Angeles, and when it rolled in to open three cafes in Portland this year, it came in with its own ideas. Its vast, spare, high-ceilinged Slabtown flagship roastery—in the former Kobos Coffee space once home to the cluttered aisles of a coffee equipment store—also serves bulk-bin coffee straight from the roaster. It’s a great idea, one also planned at Nossa Familia’s forthcoming cafes (see page 20): You can wander out with small, super-fresh servings of craft-roasted beans for single-cup roasts. Still, some things have been localized at the capacious roastery, including a really nice vegan apple-cider muffin from Shoofly and a round, earthy, unique-to-Portland Slabtown medium roast. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
HUNTER MURPHY
Coava Brew Bar and Roastery 1015 SE Main St., 503-894-8134, coavacoffee.com. 8 am-2 pm Monday-Saturday, public cuppings at 1 pm. Coava’s new Southeast Portland Brew Bar is not a place to hang. It’s a place to look deep inside the Coava machine, and slurp from cups not often available to the public. This is the first new Coava space to match the cavernous vibe of the brand’s original cafe and roastworks a few blocks down Main Street. There’s no espresso service at the Brew Bar. Instead, there’s cold brew, filter coffee handmade with Coava’s own metal cone filter, and iced tea sourced from Chicago’s increasingly popular Spirit Tea. But at its heart, this is a working coffee factory, including multiple roasters, a massive destoner, and all of Coava’s coffee-packing equipment, which both provides a beautiful glimpse of the modern coffee factory and often makes the space very loud. Staff have ear plugs at the ready and you might consider doing so as well. The space also sprawls to include brew labs, office desk space, and an upstairs mezzanine. At the heart of the Portland Coffee Packing District—Elevator Coffee, Stumptown’s Cold Brew brewery, Heart’s production facility, the Buckman Coffee Factory, Roseline Coffee, Good Coffee, Water Avenue Coffee’s roastworks and Portland Coffee Roasting all lie within a few blocks—the new Brew Bar serves as a suitable emblem for what Portland coffee is becoming. But if you just want to sit and drink coffee, there’s a nice new Coava having its grand opening near the art museum this week. JORDAN MICHELMAN.
Bison Coffeehouse 3941 NE Cully Blvd., 503-288-3941, bisoncoffeehouse.com. 6 am-5 pm Monday-Friday, 8 am-5 pm Saturday-Sunday. The seed of Bison Coffeehouse was planted eight years ago, when Loretta Guzman was dying of cancer. Guzman dreamed of a large bison coming closer until they were face to face, staring into each other’s eyes. Soon after, her cancer went into remission. Now, everyone who enters her tiny, warm cafe in a 90-yearold building in Cully also comes face to face with the mammoth, woolly face of a bison, which for centuries was the lifeblood of her Shoshone Bannock tribe. At her cafe, Guzman pulls lightroasted Heart espresso or drip coffee, but also medium and dark roasts of the same Native-roasted Tribal Grounds coffee served at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. In a touch perhaps unique in town, the cafe runs rooibus tea through its espresso maker to deliver, it swears, “5x the anti-oxidants.” Every treat here is baked in-house, including a heavenly ricotta cake covered in sugar we heartily recommend; the décor is equally home-baked, including an old sideboard Guzman’s mother stenciled with an image of a bison, a bench her sisters upholstered with Pendleton blankets, and tribal carvings and pictures of Guzman’s forebears. And the cafe is still evolving, with a gift from Pendleton Woolen Mills of a bison-patterned blanket now on display on the shop’s walls. We were slow to catch on to Bison—the cafe celebrates its third year this week after a quiet opening—but glad to welcome it belatedly to the klatch of 2017. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Æ
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
17
NEW FOR TEA
OUR FOUR FAVORITE TEA SPOTS THAT OPENED IN PORTLAND THIS YEAR. BY MATTHEW KOR FHAGE
mkorfhage@wweek.com
Headwaters At the Heathman Hotel, 1001 SW Broadway, 503-790-7752. Tea served weekends and daily during the holidays, reservations required.
Umami Cafe In the Portland Japanese Garden, 611 SW Kingston Ave., japanesegarden.org. Can Kengo Kuma design everything in Portland, please? From Chef Naoko’s Shizuku restaurant to those huge swaths of super-tall apartment towers on the Portland waterfront to this impossibly elegant cafe in the Japanese Garden, the Olympic stadium architect makes geometry seem organic and empty space elegant. Umami Cafe showcases, as it should, the garden outside, which cascades down from the hilltop crest where the cafe sits; a ribbed roof descending in triangular planes toward full-length windows looking out on lush greenery. The cafe itself, in true Japanese fashion, is operated by a multifarious company called Ajinomoto—known for, among other things, motor oil—and offers Play-Doh-texture matcha sweets from local Japanese confectioners Yume and Oyatsupan, served with garnishes stamped in the shapes of leaves. The matcha or hoijicha tea sets are exquisite, and costly—a tea set with a sweet costs $12. But still: sooo pretty. 18
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
At Vitaly Paley’s seafood restaurant Headwaters at the Heathman, each weekend holds an experience that seemed lost in Portland: Russian tea service. At the center, there is always the samovar—a spigoted tabletop dispenser that’s like a baroquely Old World trophy full of tea—used here for chocolate peppermint pu’er tea or a smoked Caravan tea made specially for Paley by Steven Smith. It is all wonderfully civilized, served with walnut-stuffed eggplant rolls, smoked fish on rye, and piroshki filled with local mushrooms. Currently available only on weekends, the full $38 Russian tea experience will be served daily for the holidays after Thanksgiving.
Tea Bar Pearl 1055 NW Northrup St., 503-227-0464, drinkteabar.com. Tea Bar seems to exist inside a pristine world created by Instagram. Its Southeast Division Street location, which opened last year, is an endless-seeming hall of blond wood and white walls so clean the whole place might as well be CGI, a vacant apartment in Second Life. Though the traditional Eastern tea menu offers broad variety and a lovely pu’er, the three-deep packs of young women come here for boba, floral and pumpkin-spiced teas served in the matte-pastel rainbow of eternal Easter. All is harmless loveliness, and always on-trend. The first Tea Bar opened only three years ago
DANIEL STINDT
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
WWEEK.COM NEWS ARTS & CULTURE FOOD & DRINK EVENTS MUSIC MOVIES CONTESTS GIVEAWAYS Want to advertise? Email advertising@wweek.com for details.
on Northeast Killingsworth Street, but after sipping a blue “Mint Majik” boba or eating vegan coconut-milk tea soft-serve made gentle by lavender and ink black by the addition of “detoxifying” activated carbon, it’s hard to imagine how owner Erica Swanson doesn’t have 20 of these things in Los Angeles by now.
Zero Degrees 8220 SE Harrison St., 503-772-1500, zerodegreescompany.com.
LIZ ALLAN
If Tea Bar is taking boba to the design blogs, equally Instagram-obsessed Zero Degrees is taking the streets of the San Gabriel Valley to Portland. Virtually without English-language press—one expects the primary mode of publicity has been word of mouth on WeChat—the location just off 82nd Avenue of this Los Angeles-founded franchise has fans lined up out the door for wild, flavorful Mexican-Asian fusions like horchata frappe, mint chia-seed strawberry mojitos, Filipino-style purple yam shakes, and a killer tamarind-straw mangonada that may be served with tapioca balls. The Flamin’ Hot Cheeto elotes—to our knowledge the only exemplar of the LA trend to make its way north except at a recent Korean Food Festival—is one of the best new junk-food snacks Portland’s seen this year. K
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
19
IN THE PERCOL ATOR THE YEAR 2017 IN PORTLAND COFFEE. BY MATTHEW KORFHAGE AND PETE COTTELL
TH E FAM IL IA IS G E TTIN G M UCH BIG G E R Since 2015—the year Stumptown sold to Peet’s—Heart, Coava and Water Avenue have been in an arms race for the title of biggest name in local coffee. Since 2015, both Heart and Water Avenue built new downtown cafes and Southeast Portland production facilities—with Heart opening yet another cafe this year in the Woodstock neighborhood. And in 2017, Coava finished its own production roasting facility and two new cafes in Portland (see page 17), plus another in San Diego. But as 2017 draws to a close, Brazilian farmer-owned roaster Nossa Familia joins those three as among the most ambitious roasters in Portland. For three years, fans have pulled their espresso from a tiny annex space in front of Nossa’s original Pearl District Roastery. But this fall and winter, alongside a new espresso bar in Los Angeles, Nossa Familia will move that roastery and open three new cafes in Portland, each themed after one of the places where the roaster sources its beans. The suddenness of this expansion is “kinda by accident,” says spokeswoman Karen Lickteig. A new, Brazilian-themed Ladd’s Addition location at Southeast 19th Avenue and Division Street had long been planned as Nossa’s flagship cafe, patterned after a blue and white ranch building on the family farm—though it’s been held up for almost a year by the requirements of opening in a historic neighborhood. That cafe’s now planned to open closer to the spring of 2018. The Pearl District move was forced by a demolition notice that the roaster’s current warehouse location is to be leveled, which means Nossa Familia must vacate by the end of the year. The new space is only a block north of the old one at Northwest 13th Avenue and Lovejoy Street, and will be themed after the “cloud forest” of Nicaragua, with a jungle’s worth of plants more than 10 feet in the air above the cafe counter. This fall, Nossa will also open a new Central Eastside spot at Southeast 3rd Avenue and Clay Street next to Stacked sandwiches, in a coffee shop that will serve the many employees of the Simple bank upstairs—apparently the build-out offered an opportunity too good to pass up. That cafe will also include a wealth of highaltitude planters, along with an array of Guatamalan-pattern tapestries. WE ’RE S E L L IN G OF F ROAS TE RIES Portland’s century-old Boyd’s Coffee, one of the oldest family-owned roasters in the country, was bought in August by centuryold Texas coffee roaster Farmer Bros. This 20
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
is part of a broader trend of consolidation in the coffee world: In the past three years, major craft pioneers Intelligentsia, Stumptown and Blue Bottle were all sold to multinational companies headquartered in Switzerland and Luxembourg. T h e B o y d ’s s a l e i s a little different from Stumptown’s, however: At $95 million in revenue, Boyd’s was pulling more than twice what Stumptown was when it was sold to Peet’s Coffee. And unlike Stumptown, the production and oversight in Portland will be significantly and apparently adversely affected. Farmer Bros. has so far not offered specifics, but in an Aug. 22 notice to stockholders, the company promised to “improve overall operational efficiency by moving the production volume associated with the acquired Boyd’s business into its existing production facilities. The transition and integration of the Boyd’s business is expected to take place over the next 12 to 18 months.” WE’ RE INCU B ATING NEW O NES One of the least visible trends in Portland coffee is now having some very visible results. At the beginning of 2016, Buckman Coffee Factory opened in a part of inner Southeast that co-owner Joey Gleason calls “roasters’ row.” There, Buckman offers a commissarystyle roasting and green-bean storage facility designed to give small shops a chance to get in the game without dropping more than $100,000 to install their own. Gleason came to the idea when her other venture, Marigold Coffee, outgrew its Southeast Powell Boulevard location and realized the massive outlay of expanding could be better absorbed by a communal setup. The lowered barrier to entry that Buckman offers has helped local midmarket cafes like Barista and Good Coffee break into roasting. Barista added its own line of blends and single-origin coffees to supplement its impressive curation of beans from across the country. This year, Good Coffee stopped selling beans from other roasters entirely, switching exclusively to the beans it roasts at Buckman. Only about four other places in the country offer what Buckman Coffee Factory does—and one of the first is in Portland. In 2011, Mr. Green Beans coffee-roasting store began allowing small roasters like Tanager, Coco Donuts and Red E to use its 25-pound Probat roaster to make their coffee—a setup that allowed both Case Study and Happy Cup
NICOLE DADD ONA
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
to grow before investing in their own roasters. In 2015, Mr. Green Beans’ Mississippi Avenue community roaster spun off into a full-service coffee incubator called Aspect Coffee Collective in Southeast Portland. Kiosko, one of the best and brightest new cafes to open in Portland this year (see page 15), roasts its Smalltime beans in Aspect’s roaster. BREW E R M E E T S B R E W E R By as early as the end of next year, Portland will have one of the only combination beer breweries and coffee roasters in the country. On Jan. 1, San Diego-founded Modern Times Brewing will move into the Southeast Belmont Street space to be vacated by farmhouse brewery Commons Brewing on Nov. 11. Modern Times will begin brewing its own beer at the “Belmont Fermentorium” as soon as February 2018. Less publicized is Modern Times’ coffee-roasting arm. In San Diego, Modern Times became one of the first combination brewer-roasteries in the nation in 2013—allowing beer and coffee lovers to taste a pint of Black House coffee stout alongside a cup of espresso made from Black House beans. According to brewery CEO Jacob McKean, the company is bringing that same model to Portland. Modern Times is leasing the building next door to the Fermentorium at 630 SE Belmont St., and alongside the brewery’s canning arm, the neighboring building will house a coffee roastery and cafe. The roasting operation is expected to get into full swing as soon as late 2018. In the meantime, Modern Times will sell the beans it roasts in San Diego. È
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
21
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
Motorin’
WW: H OW’D YOU GE T THE ID EA ?
Jim Roberts: I can remember specifically what provoked me. We had a store in a kind of food mall called Holladay’s Market on Northeast Weidler, and I used to watch customers park in heavy rain, get out of their car, walk through the lot, stand in line to order, finally get to pay, stand in line again to pick up their drink, walk out the door through the parking lot in the rain, and try to open their door and get in the car. People just want that cup of coffee, you know? The principle was, the next person who makes it easier to get that cup of coffee is going to get a lot of business. So, that’s why we did it.
MOTOR MOKA EMPLOYEE TRAVERS, HARD AT WORK
McDonald’s probably sold a cup of coffee in their drive-thru, but they weren’t really focused on coffee. WHERE’D THE NAME COME FROM?
We wanted something with two M’s. I was friends with the Macheezmo Mouse people, and just liked the sound. Macheezmo Mouse. Marilyn Monroe. I was a poetry major in college and felt the words “Motor Moka” had a kind of rhythmic beauty. I remember sitting underneath a Shell gas station sign, looking up at that beautiful shell up against a red background, and thought we needed a picture like that, so we made this logo—a cup that had a wing coming out of its back in red, yellow, and white on a big orange sign. Red, yellow, orange and white. When I was a teenager, I worked at McDonald’s, and I’ve always thought there was a magic in those colors. HOW MA N Y DI D Y O U O P E N ?
We found a Dunkin’ Donuts on Grand Avenue that had gone broke. Initially, we only signed a one-year lease in case it wasn’t going to work, but it did. It worked quite well. The original one was 525 NE Grand— which became the Convention Center pretty much when we started. It took up an entire block between MLK and Grand. That was probably our biggest drive-thru.
We ended up leasing properties from this chain called Hot ’n Now and opened up several drive-thrus from Gresham all the way out to Hillsboro. They were scattered around, but I’m going to say 10, 15, something like that. MOTOR MOKA HAD ITS OWN R A DI O S TAT I O N ?
Yeah, that was fun. We had a radio station called K-MOKA—just a lot of short funny skits that ran all the time. It was broadcast from the top of the building. You could hear it a few blocks from us. It was just something to listen to while you were waiting in line, but we had some really good, funny material. THERE WAS A POETRY MAGAZINE?
I was in the MFA program at Oregon, and poetry was something I’d grown up really loving. So, we started a little poetry magazine called Mokas Ascending—kind of a takeoff on a piece of music called Larks Ascending—and customers sent in their poems. About coffee, usually. WA S S TA R B U C KS C O M P E T I T ION?
For a while after we opened, Starbucks was against drive-thrus. They didn’t see how people could have the “coffeehouse experience” inside their Buick. But I used to see a lot of big cars with Washington license plates pull up [to
I brought in MBAs to help me run the company... They thought it was crazy to have two separate brands, and so we changed it back to Coffee People. In retrospect, I sometimes think I should’ve perhaps trusted my instincts a little more. Coffee People had grown quite a bit from when Patty and I started it in 1983. We had a public offering in ’96 and expanded out across the country but found that our stores weren’t ramping up fast enough. In ’98, there was a reverse merger. We became a division of a Canadian company called Second Cup, and that’s when I resigned. I don’t have any regrets, but I have lessons. I’m not sure I would do it the same way again. We all learn as we go along. I know I try. WHAT’S THE FUTURE FOR MOTOR MOKA?
We have a Motor Moka coffee that we sell, and we’re looking at locations right now for a new Motor Moka drive-thru. PEOPLE DO SEEM TO MISS IT.
There was a sense of community among our customers. We gave out stickers called “Black Tiger Dawn Patrol” with numbers on them, and people would put those on their windshields. One time, a young woman came dressed in a formal outfit and brought her kitchen chair to sit near the drive-thru sign and play the accordion. Fancy people would come through, and a lot of the time, unfancy people would come through. Sometimes, one of the Trail Blazers’ players would come through and our staff would get excited. Al Roker from the Today show came through. You know the pay-it-forward sort of thing? Where people would pay for the drinks of other customers? They’d buy their own drink and then say they would buy for the guy behind them, and that would go on and on and on. Just like in any good place, there was a sense of community, which still amazes me because…I mean, it was a drive-thru.
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
X
LAST CUP OF COFFEE SOLD AT MOTOR MOKA
THE ORIGINAL MOTOR MOKA LOCATION ON GRAND AVENUE
22
COFFEE ISSU
WHAT FINALLY HAPPENED TO MOTOR MOKA?
@hortlan d
In retrospect, drive-thru coffee seems obvious. These days, if a Starbucks or Dutch Bros. doesn’t have a drive-thru, you’re pissed you have to get out of your car. But 27 years ago, when Coffee People co-founder Jim Roberts launched the world’s first drive-thru coffeehouse, across the street from the brand-new Oregon Convention Center, no one had seen anything like it. Motor Moka, the “motorist’s espresso bar,” confounded all expectations. “The first day,” Roberts tells WW, “we were out there filming the very first customer, and this guy comes through and asks for a hot dog. He didn’t know what we were. He had no idea. He just wanted a hot dog.” Within six years, Motor Moka had its own radio station, a poetry journal, and around a dozen locations all over Portland—and just as quickly it folded, after a failed national expansion caused Roberts’ Coffee People to implode. Starbucks bought every Oregon location outside the airport— including the flagship on Northeast Grand Avenue now popular with police officers. But now Roberts says he’s scouting locations to bring it all back. We spoke with the Motor Moka visionary about the birth of the coffee drive-thru.
/
Motor Moka] and take pictures. And then, they did it. They hired away our first manager and opened their first drive-thru here in Portland. I never considered it hostile. I mean, it’s been a lot of fun competing with Starbucks. We still consider ourselves competing, even though they’ve got, what, 26,000 stores and we have four right now.
THE FIRST DRIVE-THRU COFFEEHOUSE WAS FOUNDED IN PORTLAND 27 YEARS AGO. BY JAY H O RTO N
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF JIM ROBERTS
UE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
NICOLE DADDONA
THE HEAR AND NOW AN AUDIO TOUR OF PORTLAND COFFEE SHOPS. BY M A RT I N C IZ M AR
mcizmar@wweek.com
I
was halfway through my beer, and I couldn’t believe my ears. Hungarian guitarist Gábor Szabó’s jazzy cover of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” was on the stereo at Upright Brewing, and somehow the brewing room in the basement beer den sounded like the Schnitz, despite the concrete floors and walls and several huge metal tanks. I stood up and marched into the other room to ask about it. That lead me to Gary Alpern. Alpern is a former studio tech and record producer who moved to Portland from Los Angeles five years ago because he likes the vibes. He’s an importer, retailer and consultant, operating out of North Portland under the name True Audiophile. Much of Alpern’s work focuses on serious snobs with piles of disposable income. He puts together up-to-six-figure home stereos and charges $300-plus to do a precision alignment on an old turntable. “People are always stunned. They think I’m some big magician because they can hear so much more into the record, things they’ve listened to their whole lives and never heard all that information,” Alpern says. “What’s really sad is that most people never hear any of that. They’re listening to a really small fraction of what’s on that record, and if they heard all of it, they’d be amazed.” Wowed by his work at Upright, I asked Alpern to spend the morning with me, driving around to Portland coffee shops to critique their sound. Portland cafes love the visual aesthetics of turntables and old box speakers, but the sound they’re putting out is…bad. Here’s what we found.
B A RIS TA 1725 NE Alberta St., baristapdx.com/alberta. PL AY I NG: S. Carey, drummer of Bon Iver T H E S Y S T E M : A laptop and eight ceiling speakers that came
installed in the mixed-use building. Billy Wilson’s five Barista coffee shops are known for their sparse aesthetic and focus on skilled staff who do a great job executing espresso drinks. The sound was hardly worth talking about. “It’s a clean installation, so it doesn’t get in the way of anybody’s eyeline—at the same time, it’s hidden and so is the sound,” Alpern says. “The ambience was good, though.”
P R O UD MARY 2012 NE Alberta St., 503-208-3475, proudmarycoffee.com. PL AY I NG: The second half of Pearl Jam’s Ten and John Holt’s original reggae version of “The Tide Is High” T H E S Y S T E M : A vintage Marantz amp, a Yamaha tuner, a vintage Marantz turntable and a MacBook all running over JBL speakers, which are meant to be paired and sitting on the floor but which here were hanging as single-monitor speakers in seemingly random places.
Proud Mary is plenty proud. Before he even opened, owner Nolan Hirte was already wingeing about the poor quality of service at Portland’s top roasteries and bragging about how there was no risk opening here because Portland had “nothing.” It’s doing a lot right (see page 15), but the sound is a garbage fire. The word Alpern used was “tragic.” “You have paired speakers hung up as monitor speakers all over the place,” says Alpern. “And then they used the thinnest cable possible—it looked like about 20 gauge—so that’s not carrying enough bass energy anyway. Then they’re placed all over the place, they’re not firing in the right places in terms of the customers’ ears.”
P RI N C E C OFFE E 2030 N Willis Blvd., princecoffeepdx.com. PL AYI N G: Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill T H E S Y S T E M : A 1974 Bang & Olufsen receiver with Infinity
bookshelf speakers. Kenton’s cozy little coffee shop, Prince, is a small, pleasant space—doubly so thanks to its house stroopwafels. It had a little bookshelf system with modest speakers. “They didn’t even try,” Alpern says. “However, at least it was an honest presentation, and the speakers were coupled on the shelf, so at least they were giving you frequency response.” There’s an easy fix to making this system better—just by moving the speakers around a little. “They should reposition the speakers, spreading them out further and toeing them in, to get a better soundstage,” Alpern says.
D E A D ST OC K 408 NW Couch St., 971-220-8727, deadstockcoffee.com. PL AYI N G: Kodak Black’s “Patty Cake” TH E SYSTEM : Bose SoundTouch 20 III. (Deadstock also has
a locally made Case of Bass speaker on the wall that is sometimes used.) Bose speakers are designed for the contemporary ignoramus, with direct and reflective elements built into the box. You cannot fuck them up. And you know what? From where we were seated, the SoundTouch 20 III sounded the best of anything all day. Alpern shared my enthusiasm for the vibe created by Deadstock owner Ian Williams, even if he could not quite bring himself to praise a Bose speaker available at Target. “He was true to the experience, and it’s a cool little spot,” says Alpern.
ST UM P T OWN D OW N T OW N 128 SW 3rd Ave., stumptowncoffee.com. PL AYI N G: Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” T H E S Y S T E M : A turntable and hidden speakers driven by a
glowing vintage McIntosh amp. This was my pick as the probable winner, as I’d remembered being impressed by it a few years back. Unfortunately, the main space is being renovated, so Stumptown is staging a “pop-up” next door and the audio system is crammed where it’ll fit in the tiny alcove. Alpern isn’t sure it’ll sound any better when it gets unpacked. Vintage equipment can be great, but it needs to be serviced. Alpern points out that anything from the ’70s needs to be, at minimum, “recapped,” which means replacing the capacitors that store and filter energy. Capacitors of that vintage die after about five years of use. “This whole thing where people say, ‘I like vintage because it’s warm,’” he says. “That’s stupidity. They were never designed to sound like that.” These are consumer electronics, and the capacitors and diodes were never intended to last 50 years. “To borrow something from a scumbag: sad,” he says. “Maybe the chassis is forever and the resistors are forever, but the capacitors are not. You will lose more and more and more frequencies until you have muddy sound, and that’s what it was.”
COURIER COFFEE 923 SW Oak St., couriercoffeeroasters.com. P LAYING : The-Dream’s Love vs. Money T H E S Y S T E M : Hitachi tuner amplifier, one Boston speaker
with a crushed tweeter, another random mismatched speaker, a stack of Shure replacement needles. Courier has a big crate of vinyl, replacement needles and the cover of the album currently spinning all on display. It sounded like garbage. Alpern pointed out that the most basic elements of setting up a turntable appeared to have been ignored—things any kid in the ’70s would have known but which have been totally ignored by the hipsters buying up vinyl and destroying it with ignorance and old needles. For example, Courier’s turntable read that the needle weight was set to an absurdly light weight. “I called a guy who is a turntable expert just to check and asked him, and he said that there’s no cartridge in the world that’s a 0.8 gram,” Alpern says, “so it’s either inaccurate because they didn’t set it up right or it’s a travesty that they thought that sounded good.” How, I wonder, would Courier like it if a local business bought Courier’s beans then served a pot of lukewarm, burnt coffee next to a “Proudly serving Courier” sign? Why would you do that to a musician you love? “They work so hard on their product that they create and their service,” Alpern says, “and yet they enter into something they have no idea about. And worse, they try to showcase it, and it’s just offensive on every level—even subliminally, and especially subliminally.”
¥
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
23
AN INTERNA INTERNATIONAL A MARKETPLACE ARKETPL
Hot Pot
Fubonn Supermarket is a one stop shop for all the Hot Pot supplies and fresh ingredients so you can enjoy this unique dining experience at home.
• Electric burners & pots • Small strainers • Mini trays
• Spoons & chopsticks • Small & shallow bowls for dipping
OREGOn’s Largest asian MaLL Groceries · Housewares · Gifts · Jewelry · Restaurants
2850 S.E. 82nd Ave. · Portland OR 97266 · 9AM—8PM seven days a week (Restaurant Hours may vary from mall hours)
503-517-8877 · www.fubonn.com FOLLOW US @fubonnpdx
24
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
LIZ ALLAN
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
How to Be Alone OUR EIGHT FAVORITE COFFEE SHOP HIDEYHOLES IN PORTLAND. BY WW STA F F
The coffee shop is a Portland ritual and home away from bars—the social halls of daylight hours. But sometimes it’d be nice if so many people didn’t have the same idea. Here are the hidey-holes, secret spots and semi-private nooks we seek out in Portland when we’d rather not see you.
Tea Chai Té 7983 SE 13th Ave., 503-432-8747, teachaite.com. Built around an old train car, Sellwood’s Tea Chai Té looks cozy even from the outside. The renovated caboose has a narrow hallway lined with cushy couches and armchairs, and there’s a backroom with a fireplace. But the most unique nooks are the snug lofts built into the caboose’s walls. Accessible by ladders, they’re basically human cubbies. Tucked beneath a slanted roof covered in chalk graffiti, the wooden benches are just big enough for one or two. You can also climb up into the caboose’s cupola, where two more pairs of benches sit next to windows that look out onto the street. SHANNON GORMLEY.
Clinton Street Coffeehouse 2706 SE 26th Ave., 503-238-2547, cafes-unlimited.com. Just off Clinton Street since 1983, this two-room neighborhood coffeehouse has a secret. Near the children’s play area, there’s a tiny, hidden nook containing a single table with a single chair. If there are kids, you’re out of luck: Don’t sit there, you’ll look creepy. But if it’s empty, you have the only table in the cafe where you can’t see the door and nobody entering can see you. The only bummer
is, when Cleveland High kids get out for lunch, they’ll barrel in talking loudly about homecoming. Time your visit to this hidey-hole wisely. SOPHIA JUNE.
warm-wood refuge where reading a book on a Saturday afternoon feels like the only truly right thing to do. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
Pied Cow Coffeehouse
Rocking Frog Cafe
3244 SE Belmont St., 503-230-4866. With Nietzsche quotes printed on the menus and a cluttered altar dedicated to everyone from Nick Cave to Buddha, the Pied Cow is like a goth’s approximation of an Old World cafe. The lights are left off in the daytime, there’s no Wi-Fi, and it’s supposedly haunted. Since the Pied Cow doubles as a late-night hookah bar, it’s rarely crowded during regular coffeeshop hours, which makes the tiny tables pushed up against large windows perfect loner havens. In the garden, benches and plastic chairs are sectioned off from the rest of the yard by a large white tent. Lit by a heating lamp and multicolored Christmas lights, the tent houses a few tables, but during off hours, you’re most likely to have it all to yourself. SHANNON GORMLEY.
2511 SE Belmont St., 503-230-8914, rockingfrogpdx.com. Rocking Frog is claustrophobic in the best way possible—basically every table is nestled into its own little corner. There are round tables in an enclave of dark wooden bookcases, plus a backroom with board games and comfy leather chairs. If you’re willing to sacrifice some privacy for plushness, there are armchairs around a fireplace near the cafe’s counter. Otherwise, there are two-seat tables hidden behind a dividing wall. There, you’re fully obscured from the counter, which is key to being neither seen nor heard in coffee shops. SHANNON GORMLEY.
Kopi Coffee 2327 E Burnside St., 503-234-8610. On weekends in this packed coffee neighborhood, it is strangely impossible to find a place to work or read or have spare space inside one’s head. Heart has no weekend Wi-Fi. Crema is like an angry mob of librarians. But even though Spare Room patrons crowd the front counter at Indonesian- and Vietnamese-inspired coffee shop Kopi, they never go down the stairs into the little backroom. There, amid newly furbished benches and bamboo-slat shades, you can find one of the only truly calming rooms in the entire neighborhood—a
Cathedral Coffee 7530 N Willamette Blvd., 503-935-4312, cathedralcoffee.com. The hideaway at this cutesy cafe, itself tucked away along a residential stretch in almost-St. Johns, isn’t exactly hidden. It’s basically a two-seat reading nook built into a corner of the wide-open main room, distinguished by ceilinghigh wooden shelves stocked with random books and old issues of National Geographic. You won’t get a ton of privacy, but the slightly dingy thrift-store chairs are cozy enough to kick back in with a cup of Tanager and leaf through a copy of Uppity Women of Ancient Times. MATTHEW SINGER.
Fehrenbacher Hof 1225 SW 19th Ave., 503-223-4493. This converted old house is decorated with what looks like the contents of several grandmas’ kitchens: Worn hand-crank egg beaters hang from the ceiling, vintage toasters line the rafters, and there’s a bookshelf full of disintegrating dictionaries. But the homiest corner is the backroom, where there’s a chess set, potted ferns and two armchairs with cushions you can sink into. Best of all, the space can accommodate only two parties at a time. Aside from the armchairs, the only other seating is at a wooden table on the other side of the space. SHANNON GORMLEY.
Anna Bannanas 1214 NW 21st Ave., 503-274-2559, annabannanasnw.com. Anna Bannanas is hidey-hole heaven, but nothing beats the basement. When most of Slabtown’s power went out following the natural-gas explosion at Portland Bagelworks last year, the WW culture staff ended up meeting at this coffee shop—an accident that quickly became a habit. But one day, we found our usual backroom table occupied. “You could go to the basement,” the staff suggested. Minds: blown. Downstairs we found an alt-weekly meeting mecca—an unfinished stoner basement clubhouse straight out of That ’70s Show—with sunken couches and chalk-covered concrete walls. At times, a DVD playing on the basement TV will inexplicably be left showing the main menu, with a basket of microwave popcorn on top. Now WW’s culture staff meets there whenever possible—and the staff carries the coffee and pastries downstairs. It’s a special place: the kind that feels like it belongs to you and will forever belong to only you. Don’t come. SOPHIA JUNE. t Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
25
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSU
B OT T L E I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y T R I C I A H I P P S , N I C O L E DA D D O N A
COOL BEANS WE HELD A BLIND TASTE TEST OF EVERY READY-TO-DRINK COLD BREW WE COULD FIND. HERE ARE THE TOP 10. BY SETH SHA LER
sshaler@wweek.com
Cold brew isn’t new. The Japanese have been doing it since the 1600s, and my mother’s been doing it since I was young: The first time I drank it was in her kitchen, dripped into a Mason jar from a large plastic container that sat there seemingly forever. It was wonderful. But ever since those Stumptown cold brew stubbies popped up in 2011, bottled cold brew has been hailed as the savior of the smallbatch roaster—a way of selling ready-to-drink coffee in the grocery store instead of the cafe. We decided to taste every unflavored cold brew coffee we could find in Whole Foods, Safeway, New Seasons and Trader Joe’s—19 in all. Our tasting panel included a barista, the editor of this coffee issue, the editor of Sprudge coffee blog, and a drinker who normally prefers tea. We ranked each cold brew from 1 to 100, based on pure deliciousness. It turned out the flavor spread was insanely large: Some tasted more like acetone or Naugahyde than coffee, while the best were beautifully expressive, if still a bit flubbery compared to a freshbrewed cup. A few caveats, however: The Groundworks Original bottle we tried was horribly fouled somehow—after tasting a different bottle later, we figure it had a solid shot at landing in the top 10. Also, our bottle of Stumptown Holler Mountain mysteriously disappeared right before the tasting. We blame Trump and the spirit of kleptocracy. Here are the top 10, starting with the best.
1. (Tie) Stumptown Ethiopia Guji Organic
sugared cold brew we allowed in the tasting. It still tasted like coffee rather than cola syrup (looking squarely at you, Stumptown Sparkling!) and used less than a gram of sugar to temper the inherent rubber and acidity of much cold brew. This left the Black & Bold with robust coffee flavor, and a pleasant maltiness some tasters likened to a good stout.
Score: 86.25
The only surprise here is that Stumptown Ethiopia Guji had to share the podium. One of our tasters already called out this bottle in advance as his favorite—a result duplicated blind—and the strong berry flavor is so distinctive two tasters immediately said its name after sipping it. Only Starbucks was guessed as easily. According to Stumptown’s head cold brewer, Brent Wolczynski (who’s been making cold brew there since 2011, long before the roaster’s sale to Peet’s), the process on this Guji isn’t any different from the Stump’s other brews. It’s the beans themselves that are different, and he believes African coffee beans express themselves better in cold brew than beans grown elsewhere. “Ethiopia Guji is a gorgeous coffee with floral notes and a pleasant acidity that’s reminiscent of melon and finishes sweet,” says Wolczynski. “We think that really shows in the cold brew.”
Taster notes: “Super berrylike.” “Toasty, but also jarring in a good way.” “A good after-dinner flavor.” “This is Stumptown Guji. Clean. Light. Put in an IPA.”
1. (Tie) High Brew Black & Bold Score: 86.25
In April, The Austin Chronicle declared its city the “cold brew capital of the world,” the only real solution to Texas heat. From the results, it looks like the city is sharing the title—although it added a little Southern sweetness to do so. This smallish roaster from Austin made the only 26
/
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
Taster notes: “Lacto—
in a good way.” “Sweet potato.” “Malty, chocolaty flavor. Kind of like a stout. Pretty good!” “Tastes smooth and rich.”
3. Blue Bottle Score: 85.25
The Bay Area’s Blue Bottle— recently bought by Swiss food behemoth Nestlé—was an early favorite, with good reason. Alongside Stumptown, it’s a pioneer in packaged cold brew. In fact, it tasted so much like “what cold brew should be” that multiple tasters assumed it was Stumptown. Nope! The Blue Bottle was a bit more intense and round than Stumptown Original, giving it a score very close to the top slot.
Taster notes: “Round, earthy, lovely.” “Like a fancy cake.” “Would pair well with a blueberry muffin.” “Pleasant.”
4. Stumptown Organic Score: 82
What do you know? Organic is better: 1.75 points better, to be exact.
Taster notes: “Inoffensive.” “Round, complex.” “No off-notes, good, clean finish.” “Neutral.”
5. Stumptown Original Score: 80.25
The original Portland cold brew bottle was expected to fare well in the taste test—and it did. Especially notable was the sweetness pulled out of the coffee beans even without any sugar added.
Taster notes: “Smooth and sweet.” “Stuff in a hummingbird feeder.” “Natural process coffee.” “Nice like Charlie Brown or Death Cab for Cutie?”
6. Starbucks Score: 77.25
Starbucks is rumored to use flavor enhancers to make its cold brew taste so good. If true, it’s also managed to keep it a secret. Either way, we’d drink Starbucks’ cold brew long before we’d have a regular roasted cup: Its cold brew tastes great. That said, it tastes great in a slightly unnerving way. Multiple tasters noted a certain
UE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
/
COFFEE ISSUE 2017
strangeness to the flavor, the same way a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder can taste oddly good while still also tasting like Elmer’s wood glue.
Taster notes: “Straddling the uncanny valley of coffee.”
“Pleasant finish.” “Not gross, but fake.” “Is this Starbucks?”
7. Dutch Bros. Nitro Score: 71.5
Oregon-founded, Oregon-owned, caffeine-pumped Dutch Bros. makes its entrée at an admirable No. 7—but it almost didn’t make its way into the tasting. One of our tasters insisted that even if it wasn’t in the grocery stores we visited, its kiosks and bottles are so ubiquitous it’d be a crime not to include it. Well, it’s the first Oregonian cold brew in our top 10. And because it’s Dutch Bros., it’s nitro, bro.
Taster notes: “Bland but in a comforting way.” “Good body, mellow sweetness, creamy finish.” “Nitro bland.”
8. Signature Select Score: 70.25
Safeway, motherfucker. Though there was an oddness to this—our hypothesis was that some robusta beans came in with the arabica, something only possible with a larger roaster—this fared surprisingly well given it’s a grocery store chain owned by a faceless, many-headed monster whose no-shit name is Cerberus Capital Management. But cold brew doesn’t always favor small batch—cold brew is cold brew, and it’s weird. Safeway, oddly, is the last in our top 10 that we’d recommend drinking, and it’s a strange brew.
Taster notes: “Like peanut butter icing.” “Lemon poppy bread flavor.” “Safeway?”
9. Trader Joe’s Organic Cold Brew Score: 60
This is about where the bottom sprang a leak, although the boat’s not quite on fire yet—the tasting notes have started to include things like “upholstery” and “sour lake water.”
Taster notes: “’70s upholstery.” “Barrel aged?” “Sour lake water finish, kinda bright up front.”
10. Chameleon Organic Cold Brew Score: 57
This is the second in our top 10 from the cold brew capital of America, and the results are pretty middling at best. Capital cities are boring.
Taster notes: “Totally average.”
“Jarringly acidic for, like, a second.” “Not terrible.”
Also tried: Black Medicine, Clutch Unfiltered, Secret Squirrel, Columbia Gorge, Groundwork Nitro, Clutch Barrel Aged, Anchorhead, Stumptown Nitro, Groundwork Classic. Not tried, with regrets: Nossa Familia Iced Coffee, Stumptown Holler Mountain.
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
27
STREET
WHAT’S YOUR CAUSE? You can make a difference by visiting giveguide.org. Easily give to one (or more) of the 150 Give!Guide nonprofits that impact the causes you care about in our city.
“Taking care of our homeless, definitely. Too much money goes down the drain toward things that simply don’t work and are inhumane.”
“We need to put more emphasis on education in general. That is, in my opinion, the root of all of our social problems today. I think our country would be very different if everyone had access to a better education, and Trump wouldn’t be our president.” “Reconnecting with the Earth.”
PHOTOS BY SAM GEHRKE @samgehrkephotography
(Left) “I care about visibility for women being taken advantage of by men. That’s my semi-vague answer, but I’ll add this... #metoo.” (Right) “My cause is KAWS One. He’s the epitome of the activist/artist who sold out.”
“Black Lives Matter is the most important to me.”
WHAT CAUSE DO YOU MOST CARE ABOUT? OUR FAVORITE LOOKS THIS WEEK.
“Right now pretty much everything that’s been going on with civil rights. I care a lot about equality, and the issue is returning to the forefront of our society again.”
“It’s all about equality on all fronts for me. We’re having so much trouble with women’s reproductive rights, particularly. I have a daughter, and this is her future. I fought hard to get those rights and now they’re being taken away. It makes me very angry.”
(Left) “For me, it’s helping the homeless folks in our neighborhood. We moved from New York, and the homeless situation is totally different here. We need to create jobs, ones that they want to do. We need to figure out how to include them in the workforce, rather than just ignore them.” (Right) “I work for Nike, so of course I’m really invested in the Doernbecher children’s program, which does a lot of good. I am also involved in a partnership my company has with S4. It’s a program that makes soccer more accessible to kids underserved in sports. Giving kids more access to sports is something I really care about.”
VIETNAMESE SEAFOOD & HOT POT Advertise with WWEEK!
Happy Hour 3:30-5:30pm EvErydAy All Beers & Appetizers $1 Off
4229 SE 82nd Ave #3 • 503.841.5610 28
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
FRANCES MAY’S FIRST IN-HOUSE COLLECTION WAS 10 YEARS IN THE MAKING .
BY WA L K E R M AC M UR D O
C O U R T E S Y O F F R A N C E S M AY
I
Bringing Down the House
STYLE
The collection released at the end of October, and in true Portland style, it strikes a playful balance In 2008, Pamela Baker-Miller started between formal wear and upscale casual. The “RufFrances May, a tiny boutique working with a fle” dress in robin’s egg-blue vintage rayon features handful of designers she knew from studying a half-dozen wafer-thin ruffles cascading down the painting in New York. Today, Frances May chest, before tapering off with an elastic waistband is among the most influential boutiques in into a free-flowing skirt. The bright marigold spaPortland, a place that plays local home to inter- ghetti-strap “Simple Layer” dress is feminine and national streetwear powerhouses Common elegant, featuring a fitted bodice atop three flowing Projects, Acne Studios and A.P.C, and trendset- layers of rayon. My favorite is the cap-sleeve “Godet” ters Aimé Leon Dore and Études. dress, a flattering shift made of black silk and pat“We had four tiny racks with 3-inch finger terned with pastel pink and green Betta (“Siamese space between every garment,” says Baker-Miller. Fighting”) fish. Prices run from $385 to $575. “I didn’t know what to expect, or if people would “A lot of other boutiques do have their own even come. Dresses were $200 or $300, which at brands, but maybe they’re kind of more basic,” says the time, was a lot. You’d nervously swipe a card, Turk. “We thought this could be something a little ‘Are you sure I should do this?’ That’s how it felt— more directional. Long story short: We did this line, that excitement.” and we put it together in eight months.” With the boutique’s 10th birthday coming up in “We were kinda just going for it, to see what we April, Baker-Miller took a new step forward with would come up with,” says Baker-Miller. “I think a Frances May, introducing the boutique’s first-ever lot of times in fashion, people have stories you don’t in-house Houseline collection. really see in the collection, or that they make up “The collection is something I had wanted afterwards,” adds Turk. “I’ve always been product to do since we opened, but based, and based in what’s going I didn’t know how to do it,” to look good.” says Baker-Miller. “I feel like This collection will serve as a milestone for one of the the way retail is going, it’s important now, more than few boutiques that has made ever, to define who you are it to the 10-year mark in a as a store. With online sales, business where many, if not there’s a homogeneity of what most, fizzle within two years. people are carrying. One way “I think we’re digging our heels TOP 5 of getting through that is by in deeper,” says Baker-Miller. creating your own product.” “As we’re going on 10 years, To craft this collection— you’re just kind of figuring out six dresses, all made with vinwho you are. Having started 1. Plain white crewneck tage fabrics sourced from Los the business when I was 25, 2. Plain black crewneck Angeles—she enlisted Rachel and now being 35, I have more Turk, Frances May’s brand self-awareness and intention 3. Black band/musician director since 2014 and a vetwith what I do. The store has long-sleeve eran of Portland’s mid-2000s evolved as I’ve evolved, and the fashion scene. Turk started staff has evolved. It’s really a 4. Cool vintage pop-culture cult Portland label Church & family around here.” ephemera as long as you didn’t pay more than, say, $40 for it State with her now-husband GO: Frances May, 1003 SW Nathaniel Crissman in 2004, Washington St., 503-2275. Graphic tee of obscure and in 2010 they were and 3402, francesmay.com. holiday destination/mundane were tapped to design five Instagram: workplace—like a trucking com@Francesmayshop. seasons of Pendleton’s Portpany—worn with gentle irony land collection.
I
Sha
www.sha
Shandong www.shandongportland.com
@wweek
wmacmurdo@wweek.com
S W E N
T-SHIRT STYLES
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
29
Weekend Engagements Wednesday, November 8, 7 pm The Central Park Five, US, 2012
dirs. Sarah Burns, David McMahon, Ken Burns (119 mins., documentary, Digital)
The harrowing story of the five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. Admission by contribution to benefit the Oregon Innocence Project and NWFC.
Sunday, November, 12, 4:30 & 7 pm Dolores, US, 2017 Dir. Peter Bratt (95 mins.,)
American Madness
Pre-Code Cinema: Classics and Rarities
From the introduction of “talkies” until up until 1934, Hollywood studios produced films en masse that spared few topics and reveled in a ferocious and often problematic frankess in tackling social issues and moral codes. Our PreCode Cinema series, featuring everything from wisecracking gangsters to cunning “dames,” hardscrabble women, and the “forgotten man,” uncovers little-known gems and shines a light on some of the masterpieces of this short-lived yet legendary era. Saturday, November 18, 7 pm The Story of Temple Drake, US, 1933
dir. Stephen Roberts (70 mins., melodrama, 35mm)
A steamy and deeply troubling melodrama following the descent of Southern belle Temple Drake (Miriam Hopkins), this most legendary of pre-codes, adapted from William Faulkner’s controversial novel Sanctuary, prompted the PCA to amp up their censorship rules.
Sunday, November 19, 4:30 pm American Madness, US, 1932
dir. Frank Capra (75 mins., drama, 35mm)
This breakneck bank crisis drama, in which a brazen robbery sets off an uncontrollable chain of events, stars the rough-and-tumble Walter Huston as a CEO with a conscience and Pat O’Brien as his well-meaning right-hand man.
Sunday, November 19, 7 pm Working Girls, US, 1931
dir. Dorothy Arzner (77 mins., drama, 35mm)
Sisters Mae (Dorothy Hall) and June (Judith Wood) move to the big city and into a homeless shelter and quickly get on their feet with both jobs and men—but these turn out to be much more complex than they bargained for.
Friday, November 24, 7 pm Man’s Castle, US, 1933
dir. Frank Borzage (75 mins., melodrama, 35mm)
Spencer Tracy plays a homeless man masquerading as a society gentleman who becomes taken with a homeless woman (Loretta Young). The two develop a hardscrabble life together, only to be caught in a web of crime and deceit while simply trying to get by.
Friday, December 1, 7 pm Gabriel Over the White House, US, 1933
dir. Gregory La Cava (86 mins., drama, 35mm)
After a bout of reckless driving puts him in a coma, President Judson Hammond is reborn as a radical progressive who declares himself a dictator, relentlessly working against rampant unemployment, crime, and other pernicious societal ills.
Saturday, December 2, 7 pm Baby Face, US, 1933
dir. Alfred E. Green (71 mins., comedy/drama, 35mm)
Barbara Stanwyck lights up the screen as Lily Powers, a corporate climber in the most lurid sense of the word, in this breezy, bawdy, and gritty 1933 Warner Bros. production.
30
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
Friday, December 8, 8 pm Heroes for Sale, US, 1933
dir. William A. Wellman (76 mins., war drama, 35mm) Wellman’s pessimistic 1933 film presents the story of Tom Holmes (Richard Barthelmess), a soldier whose heroism on the battlefield is credited to a well-to-do friend.
Sunday, December 10, 7 pm Employees’ Entrance, US, 1933
dir. Roy Del Ruth (75 mins., comedy/drama, 35mm)
Set entirely inside a massive department store, this nasty and wisecracking ensemble drama is peak pre-code—replete with a horrible boss (the blistering Warren William) and deep economic insecurity.
Friday, December 15, 7 pm Bombshell, US, 1933
dir. Victor Fleming (96 mins., comedy/drama, 35mm)
An inside peek at Hollywood before it became fashionable, Bombshell is a first-class star vehicle for the amazing Jean Harlow, who plays a famous Hollywood actress who can’t catch a break in love and work.
Though icon César Chavez has gotten most of the credit, United Farmworkers co-founder Dolores Huerta, an astounding fighting force, played an equally important role in the Union’s struggle for civil and labor rights.
Friday, November 24, 9 pm Saturday, November 25, 4:30 pm Sunday, November 26, 7 pm 78/52, US, 2017
Tuesday, November 28, 7 pm Wednesday November 29, 7 pm Saturday, December 2, 4:30 pm The Force, US, 2017
dir. Peter Nicks (95 mins., documentary, DCP)
Winner of the Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Nicks spent two years embedded with the Oakland Police Department to chronicle its efforts to recast itself as a positive force in the community.
Marcel Pagnol’s Marseille Trilogy
French playwright, novelist, and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol (1895–1974) created one of the most celebrated trilogies in cinema with his epic love story set in a waterfront community in Marseille. Based on his stage plays, each film was produced separately and can be appreciated individually for its own self-contained story. Shot in a realistic style later adopted by Jean Renoir and the French New Wave, seen together they tell a single tale rich with Gallic warmth, humanism, humor, and unforgettable characters.
Thursday, December 21, 7 pm Marius, France, 1931
dir. Alexandre O. Philippe (91 mins., documentary, DCP) dir. Alexander Korda (127 mins., drama, DCP) The iconic shower screen in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho took exactly 78 camera angles and 52 cuts to create.
Saturday, November 25, 7 pm Sunday, November 26, 4:30 pm Psycho, US, 1960
dir. Alfred Hitchcock (109 mins., thriller, 35mm)
Filmed in thirty days using Hitchcock’s television crew, the densely pathological film, arguably Hitchcock’s most complete manipulation of point-of-view, has provided endless fodder for film theorists.”— Harvard Film Archive.
Friday, December 22, 7 pm Fanny, France, 1932
dir. Marc Allégret (127 mins., drama, DCP)
Saturday, December 23, 7 pm César, France, 1936
Dir. Marcel Pagnol (141 mins., drama, DCP)
Saturday, December 16, 7 pm Seed, US, 1931
dir. John M. Stahl (96 mins., melodrama, 35mm)
A married-with-kids writer (John Boles) sees an old flame (Genevieve Tobin) re-enter his life and hand him with a career opportunity, but when old feelings begin to resurface, they are left facing a nearly impossible choice.
Sunday, December 17, 7 pm Back Street, US, 1932
dir. John M. Stahl (93 mins., melodrama, 35mm)
An Evening with Gail Noonan
Marius
Northwest Tracking: Trailblazing Women of Independent Animation
A film which could not have been made under the eye of the Code, Stahl’s tender, empathetic chamber drama stars John Boles and Irene Dunne as a married man and the long-suffering woman relegated to the “back streets” of his life over a 30-year span.
Join us as we celebrate the work of six Northwest women who helped blaze the trail for the world of independent animation.
Thursday, December 28, 7 pm 42nd Street, US, 1933
Thursday, November 16, 7 pm An Evening with Ruth Hayes
dir. Lloyd Bacon (89 mins., musical comedy/drama, 35mm)
The first of three 1933 Busby Berkeley musicals produced at Warner Bros., this legendary song-and-dance parade follows the production of a Broadway musical in which the main star (Bebe Daniels) falls injured, forcing her understudy (Ruby Keeler) to step in and save the production.
Friday, December 29, 7 pm Gold Diggers of 1933, US, 1933
dir. Mervyn LeRoy (97 mins., musical comedy/drama, 35mm)
Busby Berkeley’s second 1933 Warner Bros. musical follows a broke Broadway production—and the careers of four “gold diggers” (Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, and Ginger Rogers)—hinging on the talents (and money) of a fledgling composer (Dick Powell).
Saturday, December 30, 7 pm Footlight Parade, US, 1933
dir. Lloyd Bacon (104 mins., musical comedy/drama, 35mm)
By the end of 1933, legendary choreographer Busby Berkeley was in top form, richly illustrated by the musical numbers in Footlight Parade, which sees James Cagney fight off business interests and a rival to produce a high-stakes series of dance performances.
Beginning with the earliest forms of animation and optical toys, Olympia animator Ruth Hayes has created handmade objects such as flipbooks, zoetropes, and praxi-scopes, some of which are in the library collections of the Museum of Modern Art and will be on display before the screening.
Thursday, November 30, 7 pm An Evening with Joan Gratz
The work of Academy Award winner Joan Gratz (Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase, 1992) began as moving paintings, but evolved into the process Gratz pioneered, termed “clay painting,” while working at Portland’s storied Will Vinton Studios. Incorporating improvisational and fine art techniques, Gratz’s work straddles the realm of poetry and storybook as lush moving palettes of color come to life.
Wednesday, December 6, 7 pm An Evening with Joanna Priestley
Starting her career as a film presenter in Central Oregon, Priestley made her first films using rubber stamps and sand before going on to study with legendary experimental animator Jules Engle at Cal Arts. Finding her stride with drawing and computer-based animations, and collaborating with sound artists, she has since become one the world’s most prolific independent animators.
Thursday, December 7, 7 pm An Evening with Rose Bond
Leader of the Animated Arts program at Pacific Northwest College of Art and a former NWFC student and faculty member, Bond first began animating by inking directly onto clear 35mm film strips in the tradition of such greats as Mary Ellen Bute and Norman McClaren. She has since pushed the realm of her hand-drawn animation even further from the screen and into the real world through installations and site-specific works.
Wednesday, December 13, 7 pm An Evening with Marilyn Zornado
Stop-motion animator Marilyn Zornado worked as a senior producer at Will Vinton Studios, honing her skills as an animator through a variety of award-winning projects. As both a collaborator and independent maker, Zornado incorporates her love of calligraphy, the graphic arts, and poetry into animated texts, re-imagining the ways in which print is seen.
Thursday, December 14, 7 pm An Evening with Gail Noonan
Vancouver, B.C., is home to some of the world’s great independent animators, including Gail Noonan. She studied animation at Emily Carr University of Art, and her early works featured hand-drawn cartoons confronting feminine issues related to media representation, with more recent mixed-media animations incorporating jazz and poetry.
Suspiria
Case of the Mondays
The Cat Returns
This revolving, ongoing series of classic films and cutting-edge new work will get you moving into the week. CLASSIC AMERICAN CINEMA FIRST MONDAYS
Monday, November 6, 7 pm A New Leaf, US, 1971
dir. Elaine May (102 mins., comedy, 35mm)
After running through his inheritance, man baby gazillionaire Henry Graham (Walter Matthau) hatches a plan to get back on his feet by marrying back into the upper crust. The target: Henrietta Lowell (Elaine May), an unimaginably wealthy yet socially awkward botanist.
Monday, December 4, 7 pm Dead Man, US, 1995
dir. Jim Jarmusch (121 mins., psychedelic western, 35mm)
Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer star in Jarmusch’s “psychedelic Western,” in which an accountant (Depp) heads West for a new job, only to end up traveling to the spirit world with the help of a Native American man (Farmer).
EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA SECOND MONDAYS
Monday, November 13, 7 pm Double Blind (No Sex Last Night), US,
1992–96 dir. Sophie Calle (76 mins., experimental documentary, digital file)
Genrified! Cult & Other Curiosities Saturday, November 18, 9:30 pm Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Japan, 1989
When buttoned-up worker “the Salaryman” accidentally hits the “Metal Fetishist” with his car, he contracts a metallic infection that begins to transform him into a man formed entirely of scrap iron.
Friday, December 1, 9:15 pm Saturday, December 2, 9:15 pm Sunday, December 3, 7 pm Suspiria, Italy, 1977
dir. Dario Argento (117 mins., horror, 35mm)
A horrific series of events unfold at a secluded ballet school. Limited tickets available at the door only. Arrive early.
Saturday, December 9, 9:30 pm Kill, Baby...Kill!, Italy, 1966
dir. Mario Bava (83 mins., horror/mystery, DCP)
Science is pitted against faith when Dr. Paul Eswai (Giancomo Rossi Stuart) arrives in a small, 19th-century town where a young woman has perished mysteriously.
dir. Dušan Makavejev (84 mins., experimental drama/documentary, 35mm) Makavejev’s innovative and legendary WR is half treatise on the sexual psychology of Wilhelm Reich, half adventure of attempted sexual awakening told through the story of a Yugoslavian woman’s relationship with a Russian celebrity.
ESSENTIAL FOREIGN CINEMA THIRD MONDAYS
Monday, November 20, 7 pm Casa De Lava, Portugal/France/Germany, 1994 dir. Pedro Costa (110 mins., drama, DCP)
At once sensual arthouse zombie film and atmospheric postcolonial missive, Costa’s second feature, set on the tiny islands of Cape Verde, acts as an unofficial “remake” of Jacques Tourneur’s 1943 creeper I Walked with a Zombie.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory The Cat Returns • The Black Stallion • Goonies • Babe
Animated Worlds: Stop-Motion Classics
In conjunction with Animating Life: the Art, Science and Wonder of LAIKA, on view at the Portland Art Museum through May 20, 2018, the Film Center will show LAIKA’s work and some of the classics of the genre on Sundays throughout the run. The screenings are free with admission to the Museum. Sunday, November 12, 2 pm James and the Giant Peach, UK/US, 1996
dir. Henry Selick (79 mins., stop-motion and live action, 35mm)
Based on Roald Dahl's delightfully dark children's story, Selick’s (Coraline) imaginative film tells the tale of an unhappy young orphaned boy who makes friends with some insects inside an enchanted peach and finds a world of adventure.
Calle and partner Gregory Shephard drive from New York to California, unspooling their most intimate feelings to their respective video cameras while unspoken tension builds.
Monday, December 11, 7 pm WR: Mysteries of the Organism, Yugoslavia/West Germany, 1971
KID FLICKS—Saturdays at 2 pm
featuring...Spirited Away •
dir. Shin’ya Tsukamoto (67 mins., cyberpunk horror, DCP)
Irma Vep
Special Screenings Friday, November 17, 8 pm Irma Vep, France, 1996
dir. Olivier Assayas (99 mins., drama, 35mm)
This essential treatise on film production and film stardom in the modern era slyly skewers the various levels of production labor, but is also an unfettered look into the quasi-fictional life of one of world cinema’s finest actresses, Maggie Cheung.
Sunday, November 19, 2 pm Coraline, US, 2009
dir. Henry Selick (100 mins., stop-motion animation, DCP)
Based on Neil Gaiman’s international best-selling novel, Coraline features an adventurous young girl (Dakota Fanning) who discovers a doorway in her home that enters into a parallel world. LAIKA’S first feature film earned Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Animated Film.
Sunday, November 26, 2 pm Fantastic Mr. Fox, US, 2009
dir. Wes Anderson (87 mins., stop-motion animation, DCP)
Adapted from a story by children’s author Roald Dahl, Anderson’s first animated film is a stop-motion thrill ride through the secret world of animals by way of the terror that is factory farming.
Sunday, December 3, 4:30 pm Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the WereRabbit, UK/US, 2005
dir. Steve Box and Nick Park (85 mins., stop-motion animation, DCP)
Wallace and his loyal dog, Gromit, set out to discover the mystery (rabbits!) behind the garden destruction that plagues their village and threatens the annual giant vegetable growing contest.
Sunday, December 17, 2 pm Paranorman, US 2012
dirs. Chris Butler and Sam Fell (92 mins., stop motion animation, DCP) Eleven-year-old Norman is gifted with the ability to see and speak with the dead. When a septet of zombies suddenly rises from their graves, Norman bravely summons up all that makes a hero—courage and compassion—as he finds his paranormal activities pushed to their otherworldly limits.
Saturday, December 30, 4:30 pm The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Germany, 1926
dir. Lotte Reiniger (67 mins., stop-motion animation, DCP)
preceded by
Moongirl, US, 2005
The oldest existing animated feature uses stop-motion and silhouette
dir. Henry Selick (9 mins., stop-motion animation, DCP) animation to tell the “Arabian Nights” story of a wicked sorcerer who
A young boy out fishing when the moon goes dark is magically transported to restore its light.
Saturday, December 9, 6:30 pm Ikiru, Japan, 1952
tricks Prince Achmed into mounting a magical flying horse that sends the rider off on a flight to his death. Fantastic Mr. Fox
dir. Akira Kurosawa (143 mins., melodrama, 35mm)
Kurosawa’s deeply humane portrait of a lowly bureaucrat (Takashi Shimura), given a year to live after a cancer diagnosis, is one of the master’s greatest works and one of the most tentatively hopeful films ever made.
The Decameron
Wordstock: Film to Page
Monday, December 18, 7 pm Solaris, USSR, 1972
Friday Film Club
In one of the most profoundly meditative sci-fi films ever created, Tarkovsky creates an ethereal and shocking vision of the alien planet Solaris, on which an exploratory crew has gone mad and a melancholy psychologist is called in to investigate.
$5 general admission with post-film discussion in the PAM galleries
Friday, November 10, 7 pm The Decameron, Italy, 1971
Saturday, November 11, 7 pm Troop Beverly Hills, US, 1989
Friday, November 17, 5:30 pm Sullivan’s Travels, US, 1941
One of Pasolini’s most famous films, a lush and provocative retelling of several of the tales from Boccaccio’s foundational early Renaissance text. Featuring a post-film conversation with novelist and screenwriter Jon Raymond.
Shelley Long unforgettably stars as Phyllis Nefler, a spoiled Beverly Hills social butterfly who takes charge of an equally-spoiled girl scout troop. Featuring a post-film conversation with novelist Edan Lepucki.
dir. Andrei Tarkovsky (167 mins., sci-fi drama, DCP)
DOC NIGHT FOURTH MONDAYS
Monday, November 27, 7 pm Spettacolo, US, 2017
dir. Jeff Malmberg & Chris Shellen (91 mins., documentary, DCP)
An endearing and complex portrait of the Tuscan village of Monticchiello, which every year is home to a piece of outdoor theater produced by and starring the townsfolk (pop. 136) about their lives and the wider world.
dir. Preston Sturges (90 mins., comedy/drama, 35mm)
Sturges’s humane, semi-autobiographical film follows a sheltered Hollywood director who leaves Tinseltown in search of struggle, seeking to know the experience of the downtrodden—but gets far, far more than he bargained for.
Friday, December 8, 5:30 pm The Long Day Closes, UK, 1992
dir. Terence Davies (85 mins., coming-of-age drama, 35mm)
Davies’s autobiographical portrait of a young boy’s burgeoning love of cinema, full of transcendent moments and beautifully understated performances. “A movie of endless raptures.”—Melissa Anderson, The Village Voice.
dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini (106 mins., historical drama, 35mm)
dir. Jeff Kanew (105 mins., adventure comedy, DCP)
Unless otherwise noted, all films screen at the Northwest Film Center—Whitsell Auditorium located inside the Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Avenue $9 General Admission
$8 PAM Members, Students, Seniors
$5 Silver Screen Club Friends, Children
subtitles visiting artist
The Northwest Film Center is a regional media arts resource and service organization founded to encourage the study, appreciation and utilization of the moving image arts; to foster their artistic and professional excellence; and to help build a climate in which they flourish.
WATCH. LEARN. MAKE. NWFILM.ORG Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
31
POOL TABLES SPORTS VIDEOPOKER GREAT FOOD OOK YOUR OUR PARTY ARTY HERE ERE!! BOOK 529 SW 4th Avenue (503) 228-7605 • Facebook.com/RialtoPool Open Daily 11am to 2:30am
Restaurant Magazine Pub
lis
Nov hes: .8 2FREE 017 ,
P O R T L A N D ’ S 50 B ES T R ES TA U R A N T S , R A N KED .
Restaurant Guide is Portland’s definitive annual look at the best of the robust culinary selection our city has to offer. Featuring our Top 100 Restaurants as well as the Restaurant of the Year. This glossy keepsake is a go-to year round for classic and new dining experiences in Portland.
Find your copy at select locations including New Seasons Market and Powell’s Books.
INSIDE
Our Restaurant of the Year! P. 14
plus: our f av o r i t e Pop-Ups and Pop-Ins
503.445.1426 advertising@wweek.com 32
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL PROBABLY SEE AT PORTLAND’S BIGGEST BOOK FESTIVAL. mkorfhage@wweek.com
ROSIE STRUVE
BY MATTHEW KOR FHAGE
THE BUMP
Chuck Klosterman
Guy Who Looks Like Chuck Klosterman but Isn’t
Mother Foucault’s T-Shirt
Shirt Buttoned All the Way to Top Button
Beret
Arthur Bradford Playing Guitar
Fan Trying to Impress Ta-Nehisi Coates With Insightful Question
Fan Nervously Clutching Author’s Book
School Group
Day-Drunk Willy Vlautin
Glitter Shoes
“Wild Feminist”
Moleskine and AntiqueStyle Pen
Pencil Skirt With Knee Socks
Person Softly Crying During Lidia Yuknavitch’s Talk
McSweeney’s Groupie
Byron Beck Taking Your Picture
Bag Way Too Full of Books
Insanely Long Line to Meet Cookbook Chef
Chloe Eudaly Glasses
Touring Author Discreetly Vaping Weed
Hopeful Writer Carrying Manuscript
Bribe Bowl of Candy at Small Press Table
Incredibly Long Scarf
GO: Wordstock. Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 503-227-2583, literary-arts.org. 9 am-6 pm. $15-$18. See preview, page 50. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
33
STARTERS
M A C L AY H E R I O T.
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
WHO’S THE MAN: After 13 years of relative anonymity, Portland-based band Portugal the Man suddenly has the biggest song in the country. “Feel It Still,” a retro-minded rock PORTUGAL. THE MAN ‘n’ soul number from this year’s Woodstock album, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Top 40 last week. It’s also reached the Top 5 of the Hot 100, and topped airplay charts in six different subcategories. Billboard says it’s “the biggest rock crossover hit in five years.” Portugal the Man’s core duo of John Gourley and Zachary Carothers moved from Wasilla, Alaska, to Portland in 2004, and over the next decade built a nice career, getting signed to Atlantic Records in 2010. While they’ve become an alt-rock radio staple in that time, the success of “Feel It Still” is something else entirely—it’s currently outpacing their next most popular song on Spotify by 158 million plays. Their next Portland show is at Crystal Ballroom and is already sold out. OFF-ROADING: The city of Portland released a plan to allow mountain biking in public parks. After two years of planning, the city has proposed an enormous network of off-road cycling trails that spans every quadrant of the city. It includes trails in parks where mountain biking is currently prohibited, new parks with jumps and pump tracks, and off-road trails alongside paved paths like the Springwater Corridor. The current plan isn’t necessarily indicative of what will actually be built, since its purpose is to determine interest through public feedback. “None of these sites are going to change overnight,” says project manager Tom Armstrong, noting that some components of the plan may be adopted by early 2018. R.I.P.: Boyd Littell, a drummer and vocalist in Portland hip-hop group ADDverse Effects, was found dead in Col. Summers Park on Halloween. He was 40 years old. Authorities say the cause of death was accidental, and likely the result of falling off his bicycle. Littell co-founded ADDverse Effects in his hometown of Norman, Oklahoma, and relocated to Portland in 2014. The group was a runner-up in Best Hip-Hop Artist and Best Band categories in this year’s WW Best of Portland Readers Poll. Littell’s family has started a crowdfunding campaign to pay for his funeral on youcaring.com.
W W S TA F F
DRUNKEN NOODLES: The winners are in from WW’s sold-out Ramen and Whisky Festival Saturday, November 4. Seven ramen makers squared off with specialty ramen bowls and whisky cocktails featuring Japan’s Toki whisky. Judges, mostly from Portland’s Japanese community, gave first prize to Division Street’s Double Dragon for their pairing of “brisket shoyu” and a “rhinestone cowboy” cocktail featuring coconut-washed whisky and sherry. The runner-up was Korean spot Han Oak, which paired a tea-and-whisky Paper Crane cocktail with “Gyukotsu Ramyun” GLORIOUS beef-and-bone marrow NOODLES AT RAMEN AND ramen with whisky-braised WHISKY beef shank. The attendees, who voted only on the bowls of ramen, picked Han Oak.
34
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
W E D N E S D AY
11/8
PATTY SCHEMEL
DANIEL JOHNSTON
The drummer from seminal ’90s rockers Hole left the band in 1998 to pursue a successful career as a heroin addict. In her new book Hit So Hard, Patty Schemel documents her fall and rise, which apparently took 20 serious runs at sobriety. She’ll be in conversation with Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss. Powell's City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323, powells.com. 7:30 pm. Free.
In the ’90s, outsider hero Daniel Johnston went from passing out crude homemade recordings around his hometown of Austin to an alt-rock cause celebre. Tonight is the penultimate show of what he says is his final tour, and he’ll be backed by one of his many champions—indie heavyweights Built to Spill. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St., #110, 503-288-3895, revolutionhall.com. 8 pm. Sold out. All ages.
T H U R S D AY
YEAR OF THE ROOSTER A play about a down-on-his-luck McDonald’s employee who gets into cockfighting, this pitchblack comedy shakes you up by humanizing difficult-to-like characters, even when their behavior is downright disturbing. CoHo Theatre, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 503-220-2646, cohoproductions.org. 7:30 pm. Through Nov. 18. $20-$32.
THE CLIENTELE
Just in time for the chilliest part of fall, the British band that basically owns the term “autumnal” has returned after a seven-year absence to wrap Portland in the psych-folk equivalent of a wool sweater. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895, mississippistudios.com. 9 pm. $16 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
KRYSTEN RITTER
WHERE WE’LL BE HOBNOBBING WITH THE LITERATI AND NERDING OUT OVER JESSICA JONES THIS WEEK.
Myq Kaplan has performed in our city so often he’s basically an honorary Portlander. But the New York comedian’s deadpan, fast-talking standup just keeps getting better. This time, he’ll headline a lineup that includes Portland comedians. Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., 503-328-2865, bunksandwiches.com. 9 pm. $15 advance, $17 at the door. 21+.
AVALANCHE
Polaris Dance Theatre opens its season with new choreography set to the music of David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and Prince. The contemporary performance isn’t so much mourning the recently departed icons as paying riotous tribute to the boundaries their work continues to push. Polaris Dance Theatre, 1826 NW 18th Ave., 503-3805472, polarisdance.org. $25.
N OV. 8 -14
11/11
S AT U R D AY
MYQ KAPLAN
Get Busy
11/10
F R I D AY
MYLES ARONOWITZ / NETFLIX
11/9
WORDSTOCK
BELGIANFEST
Wordstock is the biggest, baddest, most ridiculously great book festival on the West Coast—a mess of over 100 local and big-name authors taking over pretty much every cultural institution downtown, from art museums and churches to the Schnitz. It’s nice. Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 503-227-2583, literary-arts.org. 9 am-6 pm. $15$18. See preview, page 50.
Last year’s Belgianfest had one of the best damn beer taplists of the year, with unholy piles of Oregon brewers doing their takes on Belgian farmhouses, wilds, sours, barrel beers and krieks. Why should this year’s be any different? Bailey’s Taproom, 213 SW Broadway, 503-295-1004, baileystaproom. com. Noon-midnight.
S U N D AY
11/12
HUMAN HIGHWAY
BEACH SLANG
Neil Young’s psychedelic comedy about a smalltown gas station is made all the more surreal by the fact that it stars the likes of Dennis Hopper, Devo’s Gerald Casale and Young himself. Casale will attend the Portland screening. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.com. 7:30 pm. $15.
Philly quartet Beach Slang are sort of like Foo Fighters minus the distraction of Dave Grohl. Last year’s aptly titled A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings is full of jumpy, punk-inspired pop, with lyrics that swing through hormonal highs and lows. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE Cesar Chavez Blvd., 503-233-7100, hawthornetheatre.com. 8 pm. $17 advance, $20 day of show. All ages.
M O N D AY
11/13
REPO MAN
LIZZO
Featuring a kick-ass soundtrack, aliens, a radioactive car and Harry Dean Stanton as a coke-addled mentor to Emilio Estevez’s zoned-out punk kid, Repo Man is one gloriously pointless movie. Proceeds from the screening go to the Portland nonprofit Ride Connection. Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., 503-238-5588, cstpdx.com. 7 pm. Free, suggested $5 donation.
Given the daily bombardment of bad news these days, singer-rapper Lizzo’s anthems of self-love are in high demand. After crushing her set at Project Pabst, the first of her two-night stand at the Wonder sold out quick enough to necessitate a second show. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 503-284-8686, wonderballroom.com. 7:30 pm. $20 advance, $22 day of show. All ages.
T U E S D AY
11/14
SHOUT OUT LOUDS
KRYSTEN RITTER
While often overlooked, Sweden's Shout Out Louds are one of the best indie-pop acts of the last decade. This year’s Ease My Mind is probably the most downbeat album of their career, but it still has killer guitars and buoyant arrangements that hark back to their early triumphs. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 503-2319663, dougfirlounge.com. 9 pm. $21 advance, $23 day of show. 21+.
Holy shit, Jessica Jones is in town! She apparently has a book out? Like, a suspense novel? About lawyers? Anyway, holy shit: Jessica Jones. Powell’s Books in Cedar Hills, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd,, Beaverton, 503-228-4651, powells.com. 7 pm. Purchase of Ritter’s book Bonfire required to stand in signing line. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
35
FOOD & DRINK = WW Pick. Highly recommended. By MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Editor: MARTIN CIZMAR. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
THURSDAY, NOV. 9 Nano Pub Crawl
SUNDAY, NOV. 12 Division Fall Release
For four days until Sunday, November 12, nine spots along Mississippi Avenue from Ecliptic to Interurban will host a whole world of the tiniest breweries you’ve maybe never tasted. These include wonderful Gresham garage brewery Hop Haus, equally wonderful farm brewery Agrarian from Eugene and—wait for it—Beetje Brewing, the original brewery of the Commons’ Mike Wright. See nanobeerfest.com for details and tickets. $17-$30.
One of the best winemakers in Oregon is having its fall release party at a sausagehouse. Kick-ass. Pay $15 at OP Wurst and try the new fall line-up of Division Winemakers’ excellent bottles, or buy a bottle and pay nothing for the tastes. OP Wurst, 3384 SE Division St., 503-384-2259, opwurst.com. 2-5 pm. $15.
SATURDAY, NOV. 11
Kachka is the best Russian restaurant in America. Well, here’s the cookbook—the first American Russian cookbook since the ’80s. To celebrate Bonnie Morales’ Kachka: A Return to Russian Cooking, she’ll cook a big feast with her dad in the house. The $100 meal includes five courses, five drinks, tip and a signed copy of the $40 book. That’s a damn bargain. Kachka, 720 SE Grand Ave., 503-235-0059, kachkapdx.com. 5:30 and 8 pm. Beg to join at reservations@kachkapdx.com.
Belgianfest
Last year’s Belgianfest had one of the best taplists of the year, with unholy piles of Oregon brewers doing their takes on Belgian farmhouses, wilds, sours, barrel-aged beers and krieks. Why should this year’s be any different? Bailey’s Taproom, 213 SW Broadway, 503-295-1004, baileystaproom.com. Noon-midnight.
TUESDAY, NOV. 14 Kachka Cookbook Release
DRANK
Know When to Holden STERLING WHITTED’S MALVASIA IS THE BEST ORANGE WINE IN OREGON THIS YEAR.
TALK:
5am 7am – 2pm
MUSIC:
2pm – 5am
As the world turns orange, maybe you should start thinking about orange wine. Our state is already home to several exceptional orange wines—that ancient, recently cool-again winemaking style that exposes white grapes to extended skin contact. The result is a wine with the viscosity of a red, the complexity of a white, and the color of a Thanksgiving cornucopia. Johan Vineyard’s “Drueskall” pinot gris and Paetra Wines’ “O” riesling are already two local favorites. But this fall, young winemaker Sterling Whitted of Portland urban winery Holden Wine Company has released the best Oregon orange wine of the year. With distinctive label art by graffiti muralist Eat Cho (you’ve seen his work on Alberta), Holden’s orange wine starts with the Malvasia grape—a hearty, expressive grape variety that grows across the Mediterranean, from the Canary Islands to Croatia. Malvasia is famous as an orange wine grape variety, used in Italy’s Friuli valley by standard-bearers like the late Stanko Radikon. But back here in Oregon, Holden’s Malvasia begins its life in the Applegate Valley, in the hands of Oregon vineyard legend Herb Quady. Borrowing from the ancient wine techniques of Georgia in Europe, Whitted stomps these grapes with his feet and keeps them in clay amphorae for eight months with skins and stems intact. From there, Whitted’s orange wine hangs out in the barrel for two and a half years. It’s an agonizing wait, but for Whitted it’s worth it. “Not taking short cuts ultimately lends to more bad-ass wine,” the winemaker tells us. We agree. This is a big, round, utterly beguiling new Oregon wine—honeysuckle, persimmon, squash blossom and tangy orange curd cuddled up next to yammy autumnal sweetness. It’s great when you open it, and it’s great three days later—a testament to the winemaker’s patience and hands-off approach. (Only a tiny amount of sulfur was added.) Just 75 cases were made, making this a limited-quantity offering. Drink it with roasted pork or squash ravioli, or by itself on your front porch as you watch the leaves fall. JORDAN MICHELMAN.
RADIO IS YOURS 36
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
HOLDEN MALVASIA is $45, available at Division Wine, E&R Wine Merchant, Liner & Elsen.
PHOTOS BY AUBREY GIGANDET
REVIEW
SAY CHEESY: Omerta’s Cacio e pepe is tossed in a hollowed out cheese wheel.
The Oddfather OMERTA’S INTERESTING QUIRKS DON’T QUITE ADD UP TO “OLD WORLD ITALIAN.” BY M A RT I N C I Z M A R
mcizmar@wweek.com
They called Vincent Gigante “The Oddfather.” For decades, the head of the Genovese family would wander the streets of Greenwich Village in a tattered bathrobe, mumbling nonsense to himself to set up an insanity defense for when he eventually got pinched. All of his calculated eccentricities didn’t get him off the hook, and Gigante died in prison. There were moments during my two meals at Omerta—named for the mafia’s way of saying snitches get stitches—where I sensed a similar dynamic. The new “Old World Italian” spot managed by Kurt Huffman of ChefStable (Lardo, SuperBite, XLB), slathers itself in the red sauce of tradition, embracing the candlelit quirks of Italian fine dining in the spirit of a folklorist seeking to preserve the ancient customs of an endangered culture. There’s something refreshing about that. Omerta is an anti-Portland restaurant at a time when the city’s ultracasual formula is a bit worn. This week we’re releasing our annual restaurant guide, a project that finds WW spending several months and $10,000-plus dollars eating our way around Portland to rank the city’s 50 best restaurants. As you can see by picking up a free copy around town, the Portland food scene remains extraordinary. But we’re also at a point where stiff competition has pushed new eateries toward a model where you may pay $75 for two, including a 20 percent tip, after waiting in a long line and without getting table service. Omerta is the opposite of all that, something that’s immediately obvious after hoisting up massive flat-board menus roughly the size and weight of a laptop, which somehow still don’t include the specials. Your server may spend a few minutes detailing these with ramrod posture and arms held taut behind the back.
In a city where service seems to seesaw between aloof and overly familiar, Omerta sends out a full brigade. After ordering, you’re surrounded by a tornado of sleeves dispensing antipasto. The cacio e pepe is prepared tableside by a server who tosses it in a hollowedout wheel of cheese. Your plates and silverware are snapped up between each course, and every crumb will be swept up as the baby boomers at the table across the room assess support for “our bill” at the Statehouse and try to remember what day their housekeeper is coming. You’ll never get a great video loop of Omerta’s pasta prep because, in an era when some new restaurants paint one wall to become a Instagram backdrop, Omerta
sits in a dim catacomb beneath the Dossier hotel. The space is so dark the servers carry pen lights to help you read the menu. You can’t post that grainy video anyway, because there’s no cell service down here. Unfortunately, so many of these little rituals are minor distractions from execution that’s far from flawless. Omerta does have some very nice dishes, to be sure. That starts with the cocktails, which were uniformly excellent. Highly recommended is the Horse Head ($12, no apparent connection to the classic Horse’s Neck) which is a very well-rounded blend of Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey, apricot liqueur, amaretto and falernum. After your drinks will come the complimentary antipasto—expect a little hunk of hard cheese and some farro—and housemade foccacia. The pastas are very up and down. On one side, you have an excellent rigatoni di coniglio ($26) with braised rabbit and black olives, and the gemelli con funghi with potent wild mushrooms, arugula, pine nuts and a white wine sauce ($24). Both were perfectly al dente with umami-dense sauces. But on the other side, our tortelloni ($25) was terrible, with an overwhelming torrent of pungent goat cheese and earthy fennel battling a bracing lemon butter and losing. And the pappardelle ($24) in a traditional meat sauce was doughy and undercooked. The meats followed a similar hit-and-miss pattern. We were wowed by the hulking 20-ounce ribeye ($65 with seasonal vegetables), which was carved perfectly by our waiter tableside. But the veal osso bucco ($45 with saffron risotto) was braised in an overly sweet sauce that dissuaded us from spending too much time sawing through the tough shank with a knife ill-equipped for the job. Desserts are appropriately rich—the trio of chocolate and pistachio cannoli is recommended. Ultimately, the most endearing moments at Omerta were two tiny service missteps that revealed the place’s humanity and reminded me I wasn’t at Epcot. At one point, our server knocked over my red wine and broke character, yelping out “Shit!” before he could recollect himself. Then, when we left, we had to ask the host for our coats. “Oh no!” she said. “They were supposed to cue me that you were leaving so I could present them to you, as if by magic!” She was defeated, but I was charmed. This is Portland—our food scene has a different kind of magic. GO: Omerta, 614 SW Park Ave., 503-294-9700, omertaportland.com. Sunday-Thursday 5-9:45 pm, Friday and Saturday 5-10:45 pm. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
37
38
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
MUSIC
/
PROFILE
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
COFFEE ISSUE 2017 COURTESY OF ORACLE COFFEE
Prices listed are sometimes for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and socalled convenience charges may apply. Event lineups are subject to change after WW’s press deadlines. Editor: 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.
The Breeders, Melkbelly
[MEDIUM COOL] Since leaving the reunited Pixies a few years ago and going back to the Breeders, Kim Deal’s musical output has been largely outnumbered by her former bands. New Breeders single “Wait in the Car” falls comfortably in line with its predecessors—it’s a jagged, tumbling headbanger whose crown jewel is Deal’s gorgeous shrill. It marks the first Breeders release in eight years and coincides with their 25th anniversary, with a seven-inch vinyl version of the new track that will be released in triplicate, each featuring a cover song as its B-side. For a band largely considered a Pixies offshoot by some, it seems Deal is about to enjoy some long-awaited just desserts. CRIS LANKENAU. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 503-284-8686. 8 pm. $25 advance, $28 day of show. All ages.
THURSDAY, NOV. 9 Dead Kennedys, Millions of Dead Cops, Cliterati, GBA
[PUNK] If there has ever been a time for a critical reappraisal of Dead Kennedys, it’s right now. While widely regarded the first American hardcore act that truly mattered, the band’s far-left politics were often dismissed as heavy-handed and overly conspiratorial, depicting the Reagan government as a buffoonish horror show and viewing every other powerful institution with vitriolic contempt. But with the world growing more horrifying and buffoonish and contemptible by the day, their darkly sarcastic ravings seem more relevant than ever. Without manic lead singer Jello Biafra—who had such a contentious falling out with the other core members that a reunion seems unlikely in this lifetime—it’s hard to take this iteration of the band seriously, even with East Bay Ray’s underrated psycho-surf guitar still in the mix. But with “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” taking on new meaning over the last year, hearing it live should be more riveting now than it was 30 years ago, no matter who’s singing it. MATTHEW SINGER. Bossanova Ballroom, 722 E Burnside St., 503-206-7630. 6:30 pm. Sold out. 21+.
Fu Manchu, Mos Generator
[STONER ROCK] Forever a niche favorite of dudes with tricked-out Econolines and an affinity for three-fourth sleeved baseball tees, perhaps the high-profile of followers like Eagles of Death Metal and Jeff the Brotherhood will finally draw some mainstream attention to Fu Manchu’s fuzzed-out boogie. This year’s California Crossing is evidence of their durability, and even though the SoCal quartet is guilty of releasing the same album over and over again, no one writes high-octane road-trip metal as well as Fu Manchu. PETE COTTELL. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 503-226-6630. 9 pm. $15. 21+.
Mimicking Birds, Kilcid Band, Edwin
[IDYLLIC INDIE] Outside of their 2015 single and a handful of live shows opening for indie legends Modest Mouse—whose leader, Isaac Brock, signed them to his Glacial Pace label— Portland’s own Mimicking Birds have remained relatively silent since their 2014 album, Eons. Led by singer-songwriter Nate Lacy, the trio creates captivatingly beautiful tracks that combine pensive lyrics with atmospheric tones. Their upcoming third full-length release, Layers of You, promises to once again capture ears with its unique folk-shoegaze style. Unfortunately, they’re making everyone wait until January for the new tracks, but they’ll be previewing the new material on this current tour. SHANNON ARMOUR. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895. 8 pm. $15. 21+.
Wifisfuneral, Danny Towers, 458KEEZ, Chris Dinero, DJ Yazmine
[SOUNDCLOUD RAP] Wifisfuneral exploded from Southern Florida’s burgeoning underground rap scene that also birthed controversial rappers Kodak Black and XXXtentacion, rapping about how nothing matters over morose, lo-fi beats. His career is one that is only possible now, in the age of SoundCloud, vaping, and Snapchat. His flow is fast, venomous and puncturing. He has face tattoos and racked up millions of streams on various outlets without ever getting any love from radio. His Instagram account is filled with photos of him taking bathroom selfies and posing with giant stacks of crumpled bills. Expect this show to be filled with teenagers having the time of their lives. JUSTIN CARROLL-ALLAN. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-230-0033. 8 pm. $15. All ages.
ORACULAR SPECTACULAR: Andy Hurley (second from right) and the Oracle Coffee crew.
Grind Core
FRIDAY, NOV. 10 The Clientele, EZTV
[AUTUMN SWEATER] There are few bands better suited to soundtrack the autumn than the Clientele. The Londonbred trio, led by singer-guitarist Alasdair MacLean, perfectly embody all the hallmarks of a crisp fall day—falling leaves, dark evenings, the chill in the air. After a seven-year hiatus, the group returned nearly intact this September with Music For the Age of Miracles. MacLean’s melodies, perpetually drenched in reverb, are as lovely as ever, though this time he favors a nylon-stringed guitar over a sturdy electric. Nobody has ever accused the Clientele of rocking out, but these 12 songs are a gentle beast, adorned with strings and woodwinds like buttons on a well-worn cardigan. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895. 9 pm. $16 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
SATURDAY, NOV. 11 Blues Traveler, Los Colognes
[POP-ROCK] Blues Traveler is touring in support of their 30th anniversary, but fans of the band from their “RunAround” heyday will find the group’s newest music barely recognizable as their own. Blow Up the Moon, from 2015, left their traditional blues-rock sound in the dust. Aside from the occasional harmonica riff, the new tracks have a much more polished sound—imagine modern reggae combined with high-school pop music. This being an anniversary tour, though, expect them to stick to older tracks, if they’re smart. SETH SHALER. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 503-225-0047. 8 pm. $29.50 advanced, $35 at the door. All ages.
Dwarves, The Accused AD, Feti$h
[TRIGGER-HAPPY PUNK] San Francisco-based misfit punkers Dwarves may have carved their niche with songs that range somewhere between lewd and offensive to just plain fucked up. But in reality, they’re just another poppunk band that still manages to put on a high-energy spectacle every time they take the stage. The onstage sex acts, fights and 12-minute shows may be things of a more transgressive past, but frontman Blag Dahlia and guitarist Hewhocannotbenamed continue to capture audiences’ attention just by being their scummy, charismatic selves. The iconic group hasn’t released any new material since 2014’s The Dwarves Invented Rock & Roll, but they shouldn’t have a problem filling time with crowd favorites from the last three decades. SHANNON ARMOUR. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 503-226-6630. 9 pm. $13. 21+.
CONT. on page 41
FALL OUT BOY’S ANDY HURLEY BALANCES ANARCHY, CAPITALISM AND COFFEE IN SOUTHWEST PORTLAND. BY PETE COTTELL
Andy Hurley is a self-described “vegan straightedge anarchist.” He’s also the drummer of the band Fall Out Boy. And, as of August, he’s part-owner of a vegan coffee shop in Portland’s Southwest Waterfront neighborhood. The contradiction of playing in a platinumselling emo act currently touring arenas with support from Jaden Smith and operating a commercial venture at the base of an opulent westside high-rise isn’t totally lost on Hurley. But when asked about it, his response is serious. “We all live under the yoke of capitalism,” says Hurley, fresh from a CrossFit session while on a short break from tour. “It’s an inescapable thing since we have to work jobs and make money and pay rent and pay for utilities. Living in America, which was built on slavery and the backs of people economically, I think it is kind of a hard thing to escape. It would have to be in a completely different system, and who knows if that would ever happen in our lifetime. “But, you know, being vegan is a similar thing,” he continues. “It’s a personal decision I can make. Having a coffee shop with friends who try to run it ethically and sustainably allows us to kind of approach it a little differently.” In 2015, Hurley, 37, moved from his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisc., to Portland, mostly to make his weekly flights to L.A. to convene with his bandmates more bearable. It helped that Portland is a mecca for individuals with similar values as his, which endeared him to the idea of investing time into a capitalist venture he could be proud of. The result of those efforts is Oracle Coffee, currently one of Portland’s only 100 percent vegan coffee shops dedicated to a rotating cast of roasters.
Hurley co-owns the cafe with Travis Bennin and Wil McCarthy, two friends from back home who came to live with him in his mansion near Scappoose. Proud of his Midwestern roots and the work of his coffee comrades in America’s flyover states, Hurley sees Oracle as an opportunity to spread the names of roasters that are likely foreign to Portlanders, like Blueprint in St. Louis and Colorado’s Sweet Bloom. “At the time, there was no vegan multi-roaster specialty shop,” Hurley says. “So we thought it would be a cool thing to try out. The other two guys were baristas for a long time, and I had a few connections as well. A lot of the multi-roaster shops carry Pacific Northwest roasters, so we thought it would be cool to bring in some stuff from the Midwest and beyond.” Oracle operates in stark contrast to the amped-up nature of Hurley’s main job. The baristas are polite and reserved, the ambiance is spartan and the music is chill. Hurley might be a rock star, but the sophisticated, no-frills nature of Oracle speaks to his personality. He admits to being the most lowprofile member of one of pop-punk’s biggest bands, and in that regard, both the politics and the proximity of Portland are a perfect fit for both his lifestyle and his business. “I have it OK because I’m not really the highprofile dude in the band,” Hurley says. “I don’t have paparazzi ever recognizing who I am. It’s a good intersection, because I can raise these issues with people who are fans of the band and get them thinking about being vegan or straight edge or getting into fitness or thinking about political issues. Fall Out Boy isn’t an outright political band, but we all have beliefs on our own, and it’s cool to have a dialog with people.” ABBY GORDON
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 8
GO: Oracle Coffee is located at 3875 SW Bond St., 971-339-9002, oraclecoffee.com. Open daily 7 am-7 pm. See listing on page 15. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
39
#wweek
y p p a H Hour 40
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
MUSIC Propagandhi, RVIVR, Bad Cop Bad Cop
[SECULAR PROGRESSIVE THRASH-PUNK] Propagandhi— everyone’s favorite Chomskyquoting Canucks—released their new LP, Victory Lap, earlier this year. Combining blistering licks, concussive rhythms and a deathmetal drum pummel with biting lyricism, the political punk veterans offer up another insta-classic to their heralded discography. Their progression into an even harder hardcore continues but also retains the melodic sugar that makes their cold-served truth so much easier to swallow. CRIS LANKENAU. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd., 503-233-7100. 8 pm. $20 advance, $25 day of show. All ages.
Hot Snakes, Hurry Up, The Suicide Notes
[PUNK] Long-time vets of San Diego’s punk scene Hot Snakes have reunited again after brief jaunts in 2012 and ‘13-—this time for a tour and new LP on Sub Pop, plus reissues of the band’s backcatalogue throughout next year.
Rick Froberg’s unmistakable shriek was made famous in seminal posthardcore outfits Rocket From the Crypt and Drive Like Jehu, two lively, bombastic garage punk groups whose soulful, sweaty, leave-it-all-on-stage ethos has been attempted by many but with much less success. CRIS LANKENAU. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., 503-2484700. 9 pm. Sold out. 21+.
Elbow, C Duncan
[MELODRAMA IN MANCHESTER] Elbow has settled into a sound that checks all the right boxes for devotees of sweeping British romanticism a la the Smiths, Blur and Oasis. But that’s not to say the group’s songwriting has gotten any less enthralling in the process. This year’s Little Fictions finds subtle beauty in the margins with dramatic production flourishes that retain the humanity and heart of Elbow’s best work from across the past decade. Although they’re not likely to win over any new fans at this point, the feverish followers they already have are likely to be pleased with the outcome. PETE COTTELL. Roseland Theater, 10 NW 6th Ave., 9 pm. $35. All ages.
CONT. on page 42
COURTESY OF FERNANDO VICICONTE
FLASHBACK
FROM LEFT: Marilee Hard, Dan Eccles, Joe Chuisano, Clayton Jones, Fernando Viciconte.
Fernando Viciconte is getting the band back together. Specifically, the band that helped the roots-inspired singer-songwriter record his breakthrough album, 1997’s Widows. To mark the record’s 20th anniversary, and its vinyl reissue, Viciconte is going to play it in full with the musicians who helped him make it for the first time in 19 years. Here, he explains how the album helped him start to get his life together after a turbulent few years. “This is a promo shot of the original Widows-era band circa 1997. We did not end up using this picture when the record was released, maybe because Dan Eccles did not get the memo that we were supposed to look menacing. “I moved to Portland from Los Angeles in 1994, trying to outrun a nasty cocaine addiction and a failed marriage. It took me a couple of years to mend my broken heart and probably a little longer to stop snorting lines off public bathroom toilets. But I’d finally found a place that felt like home. “In 1996, I formed my first Portland band, and with their help and support I recorded my first full-band record, Widows. We recorded over the course of three days in my friend Johnny Beluzzi’s basement in Northeast Portland, and the goal was to record a rough-around-the-edges and honest country-influenced record in the vein of John Prine’s Pink Cadillac. “I remember being sick as a dog during these sessions, and that we were all perpetually stoned during the entire three days, but it ended up being one of the easiest records I have ever worked on. This was my first full-band record as a solo artist, and it was pivotal in establishing me in Portland and I credit this record for creating the majority of the fan base that we still enjoy to this very day.” SEE IT: Fernando plays Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., with the Old Joe Clarks and Little Sue, on Friday, Nov. 10. 9 pm. $12. 21+. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
41
#wweek
304 SW 2nd & Oak 971-2428725
T E E R ST
LIVE MUSIC FRIDAY BURGERS - SHAKES KARAOKE SATURDAY BEER & BOOZE
MUSIC SUNDAY, NOV. 12 Chad VanGaalen, NE-HI
[JANGLE POP] Chad VanGaalen has become one of the most consistent forces in indie rock over his 16-year career. Hailing from Calgary, VanGaalen is a Canadian hybrid of Ty Segall and Deerhunter. He’s mastered the art of D.I.Y., lo-fi jangle and is able to craft clamoring guitar noise into perfect little balls of sound with beautiful moments of harmony. The indie landscape has been inundated with fuzzy garage rock for a decade or so, but VanGaalen’s sticks out with his ability to apply advanced pop sensibilities to the genre. His sound will go over big with fans of Destroyer, Wolf Parade and the criminally underrated, now defunct Women. JUSTIN CARROLL-ALLAN. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St, 503-231-9663. 9 pm. $14 advance, $16 day of show. 21+.
Beach Slang, Dave Hause & the Mermaid, Hannah Racecar
[POWER POP] In many ways, Philly quartet Beach Slang reminds of Foo Fighters minus the distraction of Dave Grohl. The band’s jumpy sound is pure, powerful, punk-inspired pop, served up with few bells and whistles. The lyrical pendulum swing of love and loss is set to dragging bass lines and crashing electric guitar, creating dramatic, hormonal-like highs and lows. Beach Slang’s latest effort, the aptly-titled A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings, is certainly intense, akin to putting the blues in a blender and jacking up the volume. MARK STOCK. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd., 503-233-7100. 8 pm. $17 advance, $20 day of show. All ages.
Diarrhea Planet, Eyelids
[WANK ROCK] There’s nothing subtle about Diarrhea Planet. With four guitarists and a name that sounds cribbed from a 12-year-old’s detention doodles, the Nashville sextet make music that scan as pretty pedestrian garage rock were it not for all the intertwining guitar histrionics and emphatic gang vocals. This approach only goes so far on the band’s albums, though the latest one, 2016’s Turn to Gold, is their most involved and varied showing yet. When experienced live, though, Diarrhea Planet’s shtick sheds its cheesiness, transforming into something visceral and life-affirming. Sometimes, all the pick-me-up you need is shouting “Woo!” in unison along with a few dozen fellow mosh-pit aficionados. PATRICK LYONS. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895. 9 pm. $15. 21+.
Music for Mental Health: Jeremy Wilson, Small Leaks Sink Ships
MONDAY, NOV. 14 Lizzo, Doja Cat
[FEEL-GOOD HIP-HOP] A show so nice, it’s happening twice. Good thing it is. Minneapolis singerrapper Lizzo is a powerhouse of self-love and empowerment. The 29-year-old’s got no problem acknowledging and celebrating the curves, supple skin and overall attitude that make her and everyone else out there the sexiest beings alive, and her highly-touted major label debut EP, Coconut Oil, expresses that. Tracks like “Good as Hell” and “Phone” were hard to escape last year, while her selfesteem anthem “Scuse Me” rang in 2017 with sensual pride. It’s hard to leave a Lizzo show without feeling like the best damn thing ever created, and with the constant bombardment of bad news coming in on a daily basis these days, that positive feeling is one we all deserve to experience. CERVANTE POPE. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 503-284-8686. 7:30 pm. $20 advance, $22 day of show. All ages. Sunday’s show is sold out.
TUESDAY, NOV. 14 Shout Out Louds, Surf Rock Is Dead
[INDIE-POP MASTERS] Sweden’s Shout Out Louds are the perfect example of a band that seems to constantly hover between being on and off the indie radar. Their breakthrough record, 2007’s Our Ill Wills, was one of the best albums of that year, but the record ended up getting overshadowed by more “important”-sounding records such as The National’s Boxer. The band has continued a run of excellent albums from there, right up to this year’s Ease My Mind. It’s probably the most downbeat and meditative of the Shout Out Louds’ storied career, with tracks like the buoyant “Porcelain” and “Crying Game” harking back to their earlier triumphs. Earnest, high-fidelity indie pop is certainly less en vogue than it was in the mid-’00s, but you’d be a fool to miss one of the genre’s best live acts on their first U.S. tour in several years. BLAKE HICKMAN. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 503-231-9663. 9 pm. $21 advance, $23 day of show. 21+.
GWAR, Ghoul
[GORE METAL] It’s been a long time coming, but GWAR has finally
CONT. on page 44 RICK FROBERG
[ALT-FUNDRAISER] There’s no denying how prevalent mental health issues are in the country, and in Portland especially, which is why causes like Music for Mental Health are so important. This newly launched organization is dedicated to combining music and mental health awareness through creative projects, benefit concerts
and kids events. In appreciation of this cause, art-pop foursome Small Leaks Sink Ships and former Dharma Bums frontman Jeremy Wilson will be playing an early show at the organization’s launch party. A raffle will be held featuring prizes from Jackpot Records, Blacklist Tattoo, Portland Rock Gym and more, with all the proceeds raised going to Wilson’s own foundation, which provides financial aid to musicians and their families during medical emergencies. Nothing but good vibes for good causes tonight. CERVANTE POPE. White Owl Social Club, 1305 SE 8th Ave., 503-236-9672. 6 pm. 21+.
BIG PINK: Hot Snakes play Star Theater on Saturday, Nov. 11. 42
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
ASHLEY JENNINGS
INTRODUCING
The Hague WHO: Shawn Steven (vocals, guitar), Jesse Tranfo (drums), Matt Thomson (vocals, bass), Jeff Massingil (guitar). SOUNDS LIKE: The halcyon days of indie rock. FOR FANS OF: Braid, Jets to Brazil, Slint. The guys in the Hague will hate being boxed in like this, but they’re probably the best emo band in town. “We’ve struggled to find a niche,” says drummer Jesse Tranfo. “We’ve had record labels be like, ‘This record sounds cool, but you guys have like four different styles on it.’ But that’s what we do. It always seemed more cohesive to me.” The band’s eclectic sound is partially the result of the many lineup changes they’ve gone through since forming in the suburbs of Idaho eight years ago. Starting off as a mostly pop act, Tranfo and guitarist Shawn Stevens were reluctant to settle on a particular “sound” or aesthetic. happy to follow their current taste. “I was in a post-rock band a few years ago,” Tranfo says. “They gave me so much shit for liking bands like Alkaline Trio or any sort of pop-punk I was into. They were such pretentious snobs. I was definitely wanting to just play some simple stuff.” As the primary songwriter, Stevens always maintained a liberal, laissez-faire policy of what the other members could do with the ideas he brought to the group, eschewing the perfectionism and rigid standards so prevalent in other bands that are run like dictatorships. “I honestly resent that trope,” he says. “A band is like a dream. Everyone is invested equally because there’s nothing to gain financially. Seems so unfair to have someone in a band who can’t express themselves.” The Hague’s new single is the first recorded music to feature the current lineup, despite having been together the last four years. A-side “Globes” is a bitingly complex array of angular, math-rock guitars reminiscent of late ‘90s singles from labels like DeSoto and the Self-Starter Foundation, showcasing an earnestness delivered in aggressive but ingratiating tones through pop choruses that serve as an emotional release valve. The song walks a tightrope between the huge and heavy and shamelessly sincere, much like the classic emo acts of 20 years ago—a time before the genre tag was a dirty pejorative evoking red-and-black eyeliner and purple-haired Hot Topic shoppers. Luckily, the guys in the Hague agree. “Totally good with that comparison,” Tranfo says. CRIS LANKENAU. SEE IT: The Hague play the Know, 3728 NE Sandy Blvd., with Ice Queens and Rare Monk, on Thursday, Nov. 9. 8 pm. $6. 21+. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
43
MUSIC
DATES HERE
embraced their little brothers from the Bay Area. Ghoul’s music is far more extreme—incorporating elements of gore-grind, death meta and thrash—but the latex and prosthetics they wear onstage are clearly cut from the same cloth as their cult heroes. As for GWAR themselves, new album The Blood of the Gods is the first album in GWAR’s catalog to not feature founder Dave Brockie, who died in 2014. It’s a mixed bag of excellent musicianship, juvenile lyrics and soggy hooks that can never hope to overshadow the band’s spectacular, blood-soaked live show. NATHAN CARSON. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-2300033. 7:30 pm. $20. All ages.
choirs in the world. Days later, the choir released its third CD, on the world’s largest classical label, which became not only the first recording by a college choir to reach Billboard’s classical music charts but also went to No. 1. Immaculately recorded at a Portland church, First Tears is the first recording by an American choir entirely devoted to the moving, sometimes shadowed music of the world’s hottest young choral composer, Latvia’s Eriks Esenvalds, who’ll be at the show. BRETT CAMPBELL. First United Methodist Church, 1838 SW Jefferson St. 7:30 pm Friday, Nov. 10 and 4 pm Sunday, Nov. 12. $7-$12. All ages.
CLASSICAL, JAZZ & WORLD
Star Wars Spectacular
The Bad Plus
[JAZZ FUSION] The Bad Plus is known for their eccentric take on jazz, with grungy undertones burbling under low-end melodies. On their most recent album, It’s Hard, the trio takes on everyone from Prince to Johnny Cash, injecting their DNA into a set of well-known songs and making them barely recognizable—an impossible-seeming task they somehow accomplish with ease. SETH SHALER. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., 866-777-8932. 8 pm Wednesday, Nov. 8. $25. 21+.
Makrokosmos Third Anniversary
[EWOK-CORE] One thing that neither George Lucas nor Walt Disney has been able to ruin is the music of Star Wars. Thanks to the immortal scores of John Williams, even the prequels can be enjoyed… if you know when to just close your eyes. This children’s program features selections from throughout the saga. Guest conductor Norman Huynh leads the Oregon Symphony and the Pacific Youth Choir to a galaxy far, far away. “Yoda’s Theme” and the “Imperial March” will cause listeners to feel the flow, and be bound together by
the force of Williams’ elegant music from a more civilized age. NATHAN CARSON. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 503-2484335. 2 pm Sunday, Nov. 12. Sold out. All ages.
Jason Moran & The Bandwagon
[MOD SQUAD] Pianist Jason Moran and his Bandwagon—bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits—create the kind of id-fueled, abstract modern jazz you can imagine stumbling upon in a whitewalled gallery. Each section inside the band’s ocean of dense, coexisting improvisations feels like part of a never-ending Rothko painting. Deep grooves dissolve into chaos, then dark and introverted solo piano pieces, then fully formed compositions, then into chaos once more. It may be a little much for the uninitiated, but longtime lovers of jazz and improvisation will find food for the soul tonight, as Moran and co. shine a light on the cutting edge of modern musical exploration, with little regard for mass appeal. PARKER HALL. Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 503228-9571. 7:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 12. $35-$45. All ages.
For more Music listings, visit
PREVIEW AMY PRICE
[AVANT CLASSICAL] Husband-andwife duo Saar Ahuvia and Stephanie Ho are passionate about modern classical music. The two not only perform together as pianists, they also curate and promote the annual Makrokosmos Project, a celebration of cutting-edge American artists like Steve Reich and John Adams. This anniversary bonus event features a redux of Reich’s “Six Pianos,” which is possible thanks to Portland Piano Company’s generous hosting. If you’re into the mindexpanding possibilities of classical music, this is a free opportunity to witness exhilarating performances from immaculate players. NATHAN CARSON. Portland Pianos, 711 SW 14th Avenue, 503-775-2480. 7 pm Thursday, Nov. 9. Free. All ages.
Third Angle presents Glass Within Reach
[GLASS WORKS] It’s rare to see an octogenarian cheered like a rock star, but that’s what it felt like when the crowd at the Schnitz greeted Philip Glass last month. The 80th birthday of America’s most popular composer in the classical tradition has sparked dozens of tribute concerts around the world, including this one by Portland’s oldest new-music ensemble, Third Angle. The brick Pearl District showroom Design Within Reach is an appropriate venue because of the furniture’s relatively sleek, minimal proportions, and the fact that Glass’s early breakthroughs happened in SoHo artists lofts, not concert halls. On the other hand, Glass’s post-modernist music rebelled against the sterile, emotion-shunning mid-century musical modernism that produced so many DWR designs. The music spans several decades of Glass’s career: a violin solo from Glass’ paradigm-shattering opera with Robert Wilson, Einstein on the Beach; one of his mesmerizing string quartets; and a sextet arranged from his third symphony, one of Glass’ most “classical” sounding creations. BRETT CAMPBELL. Design Within Reach, 825 NW 13th Ave., 503-220-0200. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday, Nov. 10-11. $30-$35. All ages.
The First Tears: Portland State Chamber Choir, Man Choir, Vox Femina
CHORAL CHAMPS] With its win last summer in one of the most prestigious international choral competitions, in Bali, the Portland State Chamber Choir secured its position as one of the finest college
44
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
Daniel Johnston & Friends with Built to Spill [LO-FI LEGEND] You might not be able to pick Daniel Johnston out of a lineup, nor name one of his songs. But if you grew up in the ’90s, chances are the songwriter exists somewhere on the periphery of your musical consciousness. If nothing else, you’ve probably seen his unofficial mascot: a self-drawn, googly-eyed bullfrog cheerfully asking, “Hi, how are you?” Originally appearing on the cover of his self-released 1983 album, the image became part of the iconography of the era the way most things did back then—when Kurt Cobain wore it on a shirt. As with the Vaselines, the Raincoats or any of the other underground heroes the Nirvana frontman championed, Cobain’s advocacy didn’t exactly make Johnston a household name, but he did become an alt-rock cause celebre. Though his early home recordings were crude to the point of straining listenability, the sweet melodies and sense of wonderment that poked through the tape hiss formed the building blocks of twee and lo-fi years before either were recognized as legitimate pop movements. Of course, with Johnston, who has long struggled with mental illness, it’s hard to determine just how much of his legacy is rooted in well-meaning exploitation. But the significance of his influence is undeniable. Tonight is the penultimate concert of what’s being billed as his final tour, with Built to Spill serving as his backing band. A screening of the 2005 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston precedes the show. MATTHEW SINGER. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St., #110, 503-288-3895. 8 pm Wednesday, Nov. 8. Sold out. All ages.
MUSIC CALENDAR WED. NOV. 8 Alberta Rose Theater 3000 NE Alberta St Brand X
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Ne Obliviscaris
Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St Dead Horses
Fremont Theater
2393 NE Fremont St Trio Uncontrollable
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St Phantoms
Jack London Revue 529 SW 4th Ave Rebecca Kilgore
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave Michl
Revolution Hall
1300 SE Stark St #110 Daniel Johnston & Friends with Built to Spill
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave The Bad Plus
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd David Ryan Harris
The Fixin’ To 8218 N Lombard St Man Forever, Secret Drum Band, Mike Gamble
The Know
3728 NE Sandy Blvd Airport, Citrus Clouds, Death Valley Rally, Risley
The Lovecraft Bar 421 SE Grand Ave Blood of Others
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Shadow Age, Shadowlands, Over
Turn! Turn! Turn!
8 NE Killingsworth St Husky Boys, North by North, The Toads
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St Edison
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St The Breeders, Melkbelly
THU. NOV. 9 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave Emily Saliers
Alberta Rose Theater
3000 NE Alberta St The Jerry Douglas Band
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway The Music of Michael Jackson
Bossanova Ballroom
722 E Burnside St Dead Kennedys, Millions of Dead Cops, Cliterati, GBA
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St Fu Manchu, Mos Generator
Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St SonReal
Holocene 1001 SE Morrison St Bitch’n, Wild Powwers, Moon Tiger
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St Southerly, Ritchie Young
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St
Phantom High, Mountain Tamer, Greenbeard, Stoner
LAST WEEK LIVE
Rontoms
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave Mimicking Birds, Kilcid Band, Edwin
Portland Pianos
116 NE Russell St Pointed Man Band, Casey Neill
Tonic Lounge
Star Theater
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Pushy, Thee Unsound, Gardener, Meat Creature
13 NW 6th Ave Gondwana
Star Theater
Twilight Cafe and Bar
13 NW 6th Ave The Abyssinians, Gondwana
1420 SE Powell Blvd Die Like Gentlemen, Witch Ripper, Skulldozer
The Analog Cafe
White Eagle Saloon
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd Brian Marquis & Divided Heaven; HIRIE
836 N Russell St Ronnie Carrier, The Toads
White Owl Social Club
The Goodfoot
1305 SE 8th Ave Music for Mental Health: Jeremy Wilson, Small Leaks Sink Ships
2845 SE Stark St The Garcia Project (Recreating Jerry Garcia Band shows from 19761995)
421 SE Grand Ave DZR, For Joris
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave Julianne Johnson featuring Storm Large
The Secret Society
116 NE Russell St Thursday Swing featuring the Cherry Blossom Hot 4, Pink Lady & John Bennett Jazz Band
Turn! Turn! Turn!
8 NE Killingsworth St WL, Jeff Beam
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St JM Long and Band
Winningstad Theatre 1111 SW Broadway Kate & The Crocodiles
Wonder Ballroom 128 NE Russell St Ani DiFranco
FRI. NOV. 10 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave Alejandro Escovedo and The Burn Something Beautiful Band
Alberta Rose Theater 3000 NE Alberta St Taylor John Williams & The Crooked Hand
Bossanova Ballroom
722 E Burnside St Mettā, Kalya Scintilla, Whitebear, Kaminanda, Sixis
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave Busman’s Holiday
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St The Devil Makes Three
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St Great Niece, Stormandy
Design Within Reach
825 NW 13th Ave. 97209 Third Angle presents Glass Within Reach
Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St Son Little
First United Methodist Church 1838 SW Jefferson St The First Tears: Portland State Chamber Choir, Man Choir, Vox Femina
13 NW 6th Ave Stabbing Westward
The Secret Society
8 NW 6th Ave Wifisfuneral, Danny Towers, 458KEEZ, Chris Dinero, DJ Yazmine
The Lovecraft Bar
Star Theater
3728 NE Sandy Blvd Hemingway, Giant Peach, Person Be, Loose
Roseland Theater
3728 NE Sandy Blvd The Hague
600 E Burnside St The Tamed West, Jane Machine
The Know
711 SW 14th Avenue Makrokosmos Third Anniversary
The Know
[NOV. 8-14]
For more listings, check out wweek.com.
LIz ALLAN
= 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.
Winningstad Theatre
KRULE TO BE KIND: Playing Portland on Nov. 4, Archy Marshall only made one mistake. “I just found out that The Goonies was filmed here,” he deadpanned. “So that’s cool.” The 23-year-old Brit may have mixed up Portland and Astoria during a bit of onstage banter, but the rest of his Wonder Ballroom show was decidedly on point. He deftly led his five-piece band through a tight set composed almost entirely of songs from last month’s The Ooz, his second album released under the King Krule moniker, and 2013’s 6 Feet Beneath the Moon. The performance sat at the exact intersection of indie-rock, jazz, punk and hip-hop. Positioned on opposite ends of the stage, the band’s saxophonist and keyboardist-DJ were the sheepdogs guiding the constantly shifting chemistry experiment. Marshall was the farmhand, his body-language cues the clear stimulus for the band’s many fluid transitions. As gleaned from the sold-out crowd’s rapturous reception, Marshall is emerging as the singular, strangely voiced songwriter of choice for artsy millennials. Boomers may not get the frequent Tom Waits comparison, and Gen Xers may laugh in your face if you invoked Stephen Malkmus or Dan Bejar, but for the fans that repeatedly yelled “I love you, Archy” and crumbled at the opening notes of their favorite songs, Marshall’s ragged, precocious talent is once in a lifetime, or at least once in a generation. They’ll surely forgive him for his Goonies-related error—most of them weren’t alive when the film was released. PATRICK LYONS. Fremont Theater
2393 NE Fremont St Jaws of Love
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd Phoebe Ryan
High Water Mark Lounge
6800 NE MLK Ave Vibrissae, Teleporter and Pulsing Death
Jack London Revue 529 SW 4th Ave Tezeta Band
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St American Murder Song
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Matty Charles & Katie Rose, Miller & Sasser
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave The Clientele, EZTV
Mock Crest Tavern 3435 N Lombard St Alexa Wiley & the Wilderness
Roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave MIKNNA
Slim’s PDX
8635 N Lombard St. Live Band Karaoke with Hans & The Wanted
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave Fernando
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd Dance With The Dead, GOST
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd Within the Ruins, Aversions Crown, Currents
The Know
3728 NE Sandy Blvd International Jonnyfest: The Speds
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave Minor Key Series presents Jolie Holland & Samantha Parton
The Secret Society 116 NE Russell St Pete Krebs and his Portland Playboys
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Sasquatch, House of Broken Promises, Robots Of The Ancient World
Turn! Turn! Turn!
8 NE Killingsworth St Cockeye, Creature to Creature, & Whisper Hiss
SAT. NOV. 11 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave Sam Bush
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Beethoven’s 5th
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave Korey Dane, Gold Star
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St Blues Traveler, Los Colognes
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St Dwarves, The Accused AD, Feti$h
Design Within Reach 825 NW 13th Ave Third Angle presents Glass Within Reach
Doug Fir Lounge
Twilight Cafe and Bar
830 E Burnside St Grand Royale (Beastie Boys tribute), Massage School
White Eagle Saloon
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd Propagandhi, RVIVR, Bad Cop Bad Cop
1420 SE Powell Double Over, Headless Death, Nekro Drunkz, Caustic Wound
836 N Russell St The Novel Ideas, Jason Hawk Harris
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St Adam Timothy Black
Wonder Ballroom 128 NE Russell St Vintage Trouble
Hawthorne Theatre
Jack London Revue
529 SW 4th Ave Skerik Band featuring Andy Coe, Damain Erskine and Tarik Abouzied
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St Ships to Roam, Nick Arneson, Holly Cole, David Lincoln Mann
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St Born Cosmic & Slept on
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave Lenore., Cave Clove
Roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave Elbow, C Duncan
Slim’s PDX
8635 N Lombard St. Buddy Jay’s Jamaican Jazz Band
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave Hot Snakes, Hurry Up, The Suicide Notes
The Fixin’ To
8218 N Lombard St Mini Blinds, Zebra Hunt, Collate, Alternative Milks
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Jujuba
The Know
3728 NE Sandy Blvd Coastlands, Dayluta Means Kindness, Wander, Honeybender
The Secret Society
116 NE Russell St The Jenny Finn Orchestra; Robin Jackson, The Colin Trio
Turn! Turn! Turn!
8 NE Killingsworth St Dana Buoy, Holy Golden, Drunken Palms
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St Hawthorne Roots, Melville; King Columbia
Wonder Ballroom 128 NE Russell St Noah Gundersen
SUN. NOV. 12 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave Gin Blossoms
Al’s Den at Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave Odell Fox
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Star Wars Spectacular
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St Love Sloth
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave Walker Lukens, The Toads, Maurice and The Stiff Sisters
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St Chad VanGaalen, NE-HI
First United Methodist Church 1838 SW Jefferson Street The First Tears: Portland State Chamber Choir, Man Choir, Vox Femina
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd Beach Slang, Dave Hause & the Mermaid, Hannah Racecar
Jack London Revue
529 SW 4th Ave Neo Soul Sunday featuring Fritzwa, DJ House
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave Diarrhea Planet, Eyelids
1111 SW Broadway Jason Moran & The Bandwagon
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St Lizzo, Doja Cat
MON. NOV. 13 Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St The Dip
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd Waterparks
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St Kacy Hill
Roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave Eric Bellinger
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Modal Zork, Angel 11, Jakub Jerzy & the Beast Friends
Turn! Turn! Turn!
8 NE Killingsworth St I Hate Mondays #2: Verstehen, Geological Creep
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St Lizzo, Doja Cat
TUE. NOV. 14 Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St Foxtrax
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St Shout Out Louds, Surf Rock Is Dead
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd Silverstein
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St Susanne Sundfør
Lincoln Performance Hall 1620 SW Park Ave Pacifica Quartet
Roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave GWAR, Ghoul
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Andy Coe Band
The Know
3728 NE Sandy Blvd Plastic Weather, Night Shapes, Dr. Burtrum, The Social Stomach
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
45
MUSIC COURTESY OF URBAN REBEL PR
NEEDLE EXCHANGE
YO U R LY K E WE PERK
Darude (FINLAND)
Years DJing: Originally started doing live shows in 1999, DJing since 2003. Genre: Progressive and uplifting trance and house, some tech, breaks and techno flavours. Where you can catch me regularly: Around the world gigging. On my free time, at my local ice rink either playing hockey myself or taking my son to practice. Craziest gig: The opening party for the celebration year of 100 years of Finnish independence in Helsinki, Finland. Ending 2016 with the build-up of my song “Sandstorm,” then starting 2017 right at the drop with fireworks, lasers, lights, screens and 80,000 of my people there with me. Unreal.
wweek.com
My go-to records: Robert Miles, “Children”; Warp Brothers, “Phatt Bass 2016”; Orjan Nilsen, “Iconic”; Orkidea, “Nana (Jerome Isma-Ae Remix).” Don’t ever ask me to play…: I really don’t think I have a big ego about what I do in general, but it sometimes irks me greatly when people ask for random tracks outside of my house-trance-electronic dance music realm. While I don’t think people should ask a headliner for tracks while they play, I’m not against requests beforehand, like online on Facebook or at a meet-and-greet. When they’re certain classics or other tracks that fit a spot in my set, I’m happy to play them. NEXT GIG: Darude spins at 45 East, 315 SE 3rd Ave., on Saturday, Nov. 11. 10 pm. $10 advance, $15 day of show. 21+. Moloko
3967 N. Mississippi Ave Rap Class (slow disco, deep jazzy house cuts)
The High Dive
WED, NOV. 8 Beulahland
118 NE 28th Ave Wicked Wednesday (hip-hop)
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave Marti
Elvis Room
203 SE Grand Ave Paul Q & DJ Honeychild
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St TRONix: Popcorn Mixed Signals
Killingsworth Dynasty
832 N Killingsworth St Helter Skelter II w/ Judy Gloom & Choralone
Sandy Hut
1430 NE Sandy Blvd DJ Lex Lurker & DJ Oxblood
Starday Tavern 6517 SE Foster Rd Gnosis Drum & Bass Feat. Subduction Audio
The Embers Avenue 100 NW Broadway Knochen Tanz (ebm, industrial)
46
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Event Horizon (darkwave, industrial)
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Death Throes (death rock, dark wave)
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave Dubblife
THU, NOV. 9 Black Book
20 NW 3rd Ave Ladies Night (rap, r&b)
Century Bar
930 SE Sandy Blvd The Warm-Up (hip hop)
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave Jimbo (funk, rap, electro)
Elvis Room
203 SE Grand Ave DJ Atom 13
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St DJ Rob F Switch / DJ EPOR
Killingsworth Dynasty 832 N Killingsworth St Love is for Sops
1406 SE 12th Ave Do The Swim! Left of Center Dance Party
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St Subduction Audio Presents: Spinscott (Jungle Plus Drums, US)
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Shadowplay (goth, industrial, 80s)
The Paris Theatre 6 SW 3rd Ave Rare 92
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St FREQ
White Owl Social Club 1305 SE 8th Ave East Taken by Force (rock ‘n roll)
FRI, NOV. 10 45 East
315 SE 3rd Ave Adventure Club
Black Book
20 NW 3rd Ave The Cave (rap, r&b, club)
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St Video Dance Attack: Soul / Funk Night
Where to drink this week.
DANIEL STINDT
BAR REVIEW
1. Stammtisch
401 NE 28th Ave., 503-206-7983, stammtischpdx.com. Stammtisch’s just added an echt-Deutsch choucroute garnie. Do something weird and have it with German wine instead of beer.
2. Bar Casa Vale
215 SE 9th Ave., 503-477-9081, barcasavale.com. . Is it weird that in the winter we’res pending this much time thinking aobut Bar Casa Vale’s city-beating anejo daiquiri? Maybe it’s the hearth fire that makes it seem wintry.
4. Capitol
1440 NE Broadway St., capitolpdx.com. Well, that cocktail and karaoke bar in David La Chapelle’s weird lighthouse building finally opened, and it looks like a spaceage bachelor pad fucked a rainbow peechee.
3. Zero Degrees
8220 SE Harrison St., 503-772-1500, zerodegreescompany.com. Taste the flavors of the San Gabriel Valley at this new franchise spot mashing up Taiwanese boba, purple shakes made with Filipino yams, mangonadas and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos elotes.
5. Urban Farmer 525 SW Morrison St., 503-222-4900, urbanfarmerportland.com. For a steep $20 at this steakhouse high in the Nines, you can get the finest Vieux Carré we’ve ever had in Portland.
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave Maxx Bass (funk, boogie, rap)
TRAP HOUSE: For 30 years, the Trap (3805 SE 52nd Ave., 503-7776009) has been Southeast Foster’s unchanging home to cheap-ass breakfast and dirtbag karaoke. But after passing on to a new generation of family, the bar caught a major overhaul last month. Anyone used to entering through the parking lot will immediately be confused by an enclosed patio surrounding what was once the main entrance. You now enter at the bar’s proper entrance on 52nd avenue, and the interior resembles an inversion of its prior self, with a marble-topped bar flanked by three televisions: two for sports and one for the CCTV that keeps parking-lot shenanigans to a minimum. What once was a dimly lit backroom used only for karaoke is now the Coors Light- and Fireball-dispensing heart of a cohesive whole, with a wide open panorama of the entire establishment. But despite the upgrades, those worried New Portland has come for the Trap can calm themselves. This is still the Trap, and there was plenty to behold on a recent Halloween visit—including a guy with frosted tips and a hunter-orange Superman tee mumbling his way through Tracy Chapman’s 1988 hit “Fast Car” just feet away from a disgruntled woman with an oxygen tank at a video lottery machine. Once the kind of place where your estranged alcoholic father would buy you breakfast, the Trap now feels like that weird bar in the suburbs your friends from high school settle on for an annual evening of bad decisions the night before Thanksgiving. The Trap has grown up a bit, and so have you. PETE COTTELL. The Secret Society
Escape Bar and Grill
116 NE Russell St Jai Ho! Global Jukebox Dance Party
Ground Kontrol
1006 SE Hawthorne Blvd Waves (hip hop, trap, r&b)
Holocene
232 SW Ankeny St Honesty Seven
9004 NE Sandy Blvd Back to the 80’s Dance Party 511 NW Couch St DJ Mechlo (retrowave) 1001 SE Morrison St Dance Yourself Clean
Killingsworth Dynasty
832 N Killingsworth St Cake Party w/DJ Automaton
Lay Low Tavern
6015 SE Powell Blvd DJ Andy Maximum
Moloko
3967 N. Mississippi Ave Sappho & Friends (disco)
Quarterworld
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd Quarter Flashback (80s)
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave The Hustle (disco)
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Soul Stew (funk, soul, disco)
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St Believe You Me w/ Sooma
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave NecroNancy: Marilyn Manson Fest
Toffee Club
Valentines
SAT, NOV. 11 45 East
315 SE 3rd Ave Darude
Black Book
20 NW 3rd Ave The Ruckus (rap, r&b, club)
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St 90’s Dance Flashback
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave Montel Spinozza
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St DJ Chip (hiphop, r&b)
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St Manatee Commune
Jade Club
315 SE 3rd Ave Kill Frenzy
Killingsworth Dynasty
832 N Killingsworth St J-Boogie 2 w/ Carly Barton & Nightchilde
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave Jump Jack Sound Machine Vs. Club Kai Kai
Moloko
3967 N. Mississippi Ave Klavical (modern soul, heavy breaks, hip-hop)
Quarterworld
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd DJ Provoke (new wave, electro)
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St FOLDING|SPACE 5th Birthday w/ Urulu (house, techno)
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Musick For Mannequins w/ DDDJJJ666, Magnolia Bouvier & DJ Acid Rick (creep-o-rama)
The Paris Theatre 6 SW 3rd Ave Break The Battle
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St Devil’s Pie (hip-hop, r&b)
SUN, NOV. 12 Black Book
20 NW 3rd Ave Flux (rap, r&b, club)
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave Tittsworth & El Chingon (hiphop)
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Infinity Mirror (occult techno, esoteric ambiance)
MON, NOV. 13 Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave Motown On Monday (funk, soul, r&b)
Elvis Room
203 SE Grand Ave DJ Daddy Issues
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St Reaganomix: DJ Nate C. (80s)
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd A Night For Dancers: Mambo/Salsa Social
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Black Mass (goth, post-punk)
TUE, NOV. 14 Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave Bad Wizard (50s-60s)
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St Party Damage DJs: DJ Jimbo
Killingsworth Dynasty 832 N Killingsworth St Final Report
Sandy Hut
1430 NE Sandy Blvd DJ Craceface
The Embers Avenue 100 NW Broadway Recycle (dark dance)
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave Tubesdays w/ DJ Jack
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
47
PERFORMANCE
REVIEW D AV I D K I N D E R
ARTS
Editor: SHANNON GORMLEY (sgormley@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: sgormley@wweek.com.
= 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.
THEATER OPENINGS & PREVIEWS Mojada
Straight from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Mojada is a modernized Medea set in LA. Playwright Luis Alfaro combines Mexican folklore with Euripides’ vengeful tale of a woman whose husband leaves her, and it sets the tragedy in the home of recent US Immigrants instead of among Greek aristocracy. Portland Center Stage, 128 NW 11th Ave., pcs.org. 7:30 pm Tuesday-Sunday, 2 pm SaturdaySunday Nov. 10-26. $25-$72.
SPIN
Boom Arts is producing a Canadian play that couldn’t be more Portland. Evalyn Parry’s one-woman show tells a feminist history of biking. Apparently in the 19th century, it was socially taboo for women to ride bicycles, not to mention physically difficult due to the corsets and petticoats they were expected to wear. In 1895, Annie Londonderry helped change that by becoming the first woman to travel around the world by bike. Parry’s play tells the story of Londonderry and other literally trailblazing women through a folky song cycle and spoken word poetry. The Sanctuary at Sandy Plaza, 1785 NE Sandy Blvd., boomarts.org. 7:30 pm FridaySaturday, 2 pm Sunday Nov. 10-12. $20.
Hands Up
Commissioned by the New Black Fest after the death of Michael Brown, Hands Up is seven monologues by black playwrights about their experiences with institutionalized racial profiling. Produced in Portland by August Wilson Red Door Project It’s an intense collection of monologues that all seven actors deliver with deeply visceral performances. Wieden + Kennedy, 224 NW 13th Ave., reddoorproject. org. 7:30 pm Saturday, Nov. 11 and 2 pm Sunday, Nov. 12. Pay what you will, $30 suggested.
ALSO PLAYING Insignficance
When Marilyn Monroe meets Albert Einstein in Insignificance, she’s wearing dark sunglasses and the white dress from The Seven Year Itch. Lazy thinking may suggest that she’s the beauty and he’s the brains, but Defunkt Theatre’s production convinces you that they’re each a little bit of both. Not long into their conversation, she explains the theory of relativity to him. In 1953, in a hotel, we meet the Professor (Gary Powell), whose cloud of wild hair betrays his identity in the first scene. Then the Actress (Tabitha Trosen) shows up. Eager to meet the professor whom she idolizes, she barges in and demonstrates the theory of relativity using flashlights and toy trains. The Professor seems delighted by his star-struck visitor, even when their solitude is disrupted by her instantly recognizable husband, “the Ballplayer” (Morgan Lee), whose jealousy turns the play into a pressure-cooker narrative of dispa-
48
Julana Torres and Duffy Epstein in Water by the Spoonful.
Dissonant Resolution PROFILE THEATRE STAGES TWO AMBITIOUS PLAYS AT THE SAME TIME. BY S H ANNO N GO RMLEY
sgormley@wweek.com
In the first act of Water by the Spoonful, music professor Yaz (Crystal Ann Muñoz) gives a lecture on John Coltrane. “Freedom is a word used to express chaos without spinning into it,” she says. Challenging what counts as freedom and what counts as chaos doesn’t always sound pretty, which Yaz demonstrates by playing a few second of John Coltrane’s screeching, arrhythmic Ascension. “People don’t like it when you break the rules,” she says. Water by the Spoonful is a play about a Puerto Rican-American family trying not to spin into chaos when rules and patterns have failed them. But since it’s told with playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes’s empathy, humor and gorgeous language, it’s hardly a play about quiet desperation. Yaz’s cousin Elliot (Anthony Lam) is an Iraq War veteran in his early 20s who dreams of being an actor, but works at a sandwich shop and suffers from PTSD. Yaz is going through a divorce (“You can only live in mediocrity for so long,” she tells Elliot), and they’re both planning a funeral for their aunt who raised Elliot. Mixed in with their stories is that of Odessa (Julana Torres), a woman who moderates an online chat room for recovering and sober crack addicts. Produced by Profile Theatre, Water is the second of three plays by Hudes that follow
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
Elliot and his family. Profile is also staging the final play in the trilogy, The Happiest Song Plays Last, with an overlapping cast and a set that they convert after each show. It’s the first time the plays have been simultaneously staged. Though Water and Happiest Song stand on their own, they build on each other so much that it seems a shame not to see both. For Water, the set is an armchair and a clunky desktop computer on a platform made of cinder blocks and wood planks. It’s there that Odessa runs the chatroom, while the other members (Bobby Bermea, Akari Anderson and Duffy Epstein) speak their typed messages from the theater’s aisles. Odessa isn’t just the moderator, she’s the matriarch of the chatroom. She talks members out of relapsing, settles their arguments and offers empathy that few people can. “I used to have a beautiful family” she tells the chatroom members. “Now all I have is six years sober.” It’s not until the second act that we learn Odessa’s painful connection to Elliot and Yaz. But Torres (who was equally transcendent in 26 Miles, the last Hudes play that Profile staged) has spent the first half winning not only our respect, but also our admiration, so we’re willing to see her side of even the darkest situations. Still, it might be Yaz in the Happiest Song who most personifies the ability to find joy amid uncertainty. Most of Happiest Song is set in Yaz’s home. The space around the platform has been transformed into her kitchen, where her policy is “open door, open store.”
Her stove is always stacked with pots of food she cooks for her neighbors, including a homeless man named Lefty (Duffy Epstein) who calls her mom. It’s in her kitchen that we see her relationship unfold with her married neighbor Augustín (Jimmy Garcia). Their relationship isn’t physical until he asks her to have a baby with him, and she agrees. Meanwhile, Elliot is in Lebanon acting in his first movie. There, he befriends Ali (Wasim No’Mani), who fled from Iraq with his wife and daughter during the war. Elliot attempts to come to terms with his past in a literal way, too. For years, he’s carried in his pocket the passport of the first person he killed in the war, a man who was an Iraqi civilian. Elliot hopes that Ali will help him return the passport to the man’s widow and son. Even though it’s about Yaz falling in love and Elliot searching for resolution, Happiest Song isn’t all happy. We learn something about Elliot that complicates his happy ending, like we do with Odessa in Water. You don’t leave either play believing time heals all wounds or that love guarantees forgiveness. In Water, Elliot shares his darkest moment of grieving his aunt’s death with his older cousin. Instead of a resolution, Yaz offers “Plastic covered sofas to park our communal asses.” At least for the moment, it’s enough. SEE IT: Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., profiletheater.org. In rotating repertoire Wednesday-Sunday, through Nov. 19. $20-$36 per show.
REVIEW OWEN CAREY
rate celebrities vying for dominance in a single room. Thanks to a dextrous cast and the lush imagination of director Andrew Klaus-Vineyard, Insignificance portrays Monroe and Einstein as charming caricatures—she baby talks and his mustache is atom bomb-sized—without letting either of them become one dimensional. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Defunkt Theatre, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., defunktheatre. com. 7:30 pm Thursday-Sunday, through Nov. 18. Pay what you will, $20 suggested.
Year of the Rooster
As the fearsome rooster in CoHo’s production of Year of the Rooster, actor Sam Dinkowitz is absolutely ridiculous and absolutely terrifying. As Odysseus Rex, he wears a baggy parka, red Nikes and camouflage pants and carries a knife in lieu of a beak. Playwright Olivia Dufault’s Year of the Rooster is a pitch-black satire of male inadequacy, twisted American dreams and, above all, cockfighting. Leading the play’s cast of luckless characters is Gil (Rolland Walsh). Gil, who works at McDonald’s, lives with his mother and is forced to wear an eye patch due to a rooster-related injury. We never learn the full story behind the incident, but whatever it is, it hasn’t dissuaded Gil from training Odysseus to compete in a local cockfighting competition. Its fusion of mockery and empathy makes for an uncomfortable viewing experience, but that’s exactly the point. Year of the Rooster shakes you up by humanizing difficult-tolike characters, even when their behavior is downright disturbing. Even at his worst, Walsh portrays Gil with enough tenderness that you’re reminded that as warped as his bond is with Odysseus, it’s all Gil has. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. CoHo Theatre, 2257 NW Raleigh St., cohoproductions.org. 7:30 pm ThursdaySaturday and 2 pm Sunday through November 18. $20-$32.
DANCE Avalanche
Polaris Dance Theatre opens its season with new choreography set to the music of David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and Prince. The contemporary dance show isn’t so much mourning the recently departed icons as paying riotous tribute to the boundaries their work continues to push. Polaris Dance Theatre, 1826 NW 18th Ave., 503-380-5472, polarisdance.org. $25.
COMEDY Myq Kaplan
Myq Kaplan has performed in our city so often he’s basically an honorary Portlander. But the New York comedian’s deadpan, fast-talking standup just keeps getting better. This time, he’ll headline a lineup that includes Portland comedians. Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., 503-328-2865, bunksandwiches.com. 9 pm. $15 advance, $17 at the door. 21+.
Please Underestimate Me
For his second scripted comedy show, improvisor and storyteller Jay Flewelling is taking you inside his mind. Directed by Jason Rouse, the show is based off Flewelling’s soon-to-be released book of essays about the triupmh of the underdog. The comedians acting in the show will speak their lines and deliver them through ASL. Curious Comedy Theater, Wednesday Oct. 30-Nov. 15. See curiouscomedy.org for times and tickets.
Joseph Gibson
Purgatory on Earth
THE EVENTS GOES INSIDE THE MIND OF A MASS SHOOTING SURVIVOR. On the traumatic day at the center of The Events, Claire (Maureen Porter) hides in a music room. A man enters and says he has one bullet for the two of them, so who should he shoot? After the gun goes off, Claire is still alive. Written by Scottish playwright David Greig in 2013, the fragmented, nonlinear play follows Claire as she tries to deal with the trauma of a surviving a mass shooting at her community choir practice. Ever since the shooting, Claire can’t sleep, and her every waking moment is consumed by reliving the events and trying to figure out why they happened. “Anything in the world that might explain him, you devour,” a friend says to her. There’s only one other actor in the The Events. Joseph Gibson plays The Boy, a character who represents the shooter. Gibson also voices the people Claire talks to in order to gain insight into why the shooter did what he did: her psychiatrist, her partner Katrina and The Boy’s father. It’s all performed on a stage that’s sparse except for a choir on risers off to the side of the stage. The choir is played by a rotation of local singing groups (in the show I attended, it was B-Side Book Club). It’s the kind of thing that risks coming off as trite, but it’s not at all gimmicky. That’s largely thanks to Porter’s performance—she seamlessly integrates the choir as a third character. For Claire, returning to choir practice is a constant reminder of the events. But it’s also the place where she can most easily isolate herself from the questions that constantly haunt her. The Events is a deeply personal meditation on Claire’s specific experience that acknowledges there may be no satisfactory answer to her own questions—was the shooter crazy, or was he evil? Does it matter? But the play isn’t afraid to speculate on deeper, more topical causes, like the dangers of tribalism and fear. “It’s not so easy to feel confident when your tribe is weak,” says one of the characters that Gibson voices. “I don’t hate foreigners. I hate foreigners being here,” says another. But ultimately, The Events is more about empathy than answers. It’s an immensely cathartic experience in a world where we’re frequently forced to wonder why mass shootings happen, and what it would be like to survive such a tragedy. R MITCHELL MILLER. SEE IT: Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., thirdrailrep.org. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, through Nov. 18. $25-$45. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
49
BOOKS PHOTOS COURTESY OF LITERARY ARTS
FEATURE
At Home and Abroad
TWO VERY DIFFERENT CURATED TOURS OF THE BIG, COMPLICATED WORDSTOCK BOOK FESTIVAL. BY S HA N N O N G O R M L E Y
AND
M ATTH EW KO RFH AGE
The massive 100-author Wordstock festival offers a unique opportunity. Among its readings sprawled out across nearly every big-ass cultural institution across downtown this Saturday, November 11, the fest is nearly evenly split between our own excellent crop of local authors and big-name touring luminaries like Claire Messud, Tom Perrotta and Ta Nehisi-Coates. This gives you the chance to visit two very different festivals at the same festival. (Technically, there’s a third version of festival devoted to watching children’s and YA authors, but you’re on your own there, breeders.) Anyway, here are our two dream schedules—one local, one starfucky.
LOCAL 9:45-10:45 am: Rene Denfeld at the “Families in Crisis” panel Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway
Rene Denfeld is uniquely qualified to talk about delicate and deeply personal crises. The Oregon author has worked as an investigator who helps to exonerate prisoners on death row. Her new novel draws from the darkest corners of her work as an investigator. The Child Finder is a sublimely empathetic book about an 8-year-old girl who goes missing in the snowy Oregon wilderness. 11 am: Grab a quick burger at the Higgins bar one block away, to fill your gut. Hell, get a beer from their terrific local collection. 11:30 am-12:30 pm: Literary Dinner Party Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway
Pretty much everyone you want in a room to talk about Northwest food and booze is here— Russian spot Kachka’s chef and owner Bonnie Frumkin Morales, the authors of the legendary Myrtlewood Cookbook devoted to Northwest ingredients, and the Toro Bravo and Tasty n Sons cookbook author Liz Crain. 12:45-1:45 pm: American Absurdity: Jon Raymond, Deb Olin Unferth, Dennie Wendt Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Ave.
Who could possibly better understand the absurdity that accretes to well-meaning people than writers in Portland? Writer Jon Raymond is not only Portland’s finest Todd-Haynes-movie screenwriter, he’s also one of its finest fiction writers. His new book Freebird is about activism gone horribly wrong. Meanwhile, former Nike exec Dennie Wendt’s book is about a Portland soccer team at the heart of a communist plot. Rounding out the panel is Texas writer Deb Olin Unferth, who once tried to join a Central American revolution. 50
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
2-3 pm: Pop-Ups in the Museum! Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave
At 2:30 pm, catch local memoirist Kate Carroll de Gutes reading from her new book devoted to authenticity, in the intimate environs of Gallery 113 in the first-floor Modern & Contemporary collection. If you get to that gallery room early enough—at 2:15—you can see Kachka’s Bonnie Frumkin Morales talk about something maybe entirely different. Why not? 3-4 pm: State of Wonder: Katie Kitamura, Chuck Klosterman, Hannah Tinti Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave.
Hey, did you know Chuck Klosterman lives here now? He totally does. The great ginger one and internal hall-of-mirrorsand-nerdlore has brought himself to the natural home of such things. Anyway, he’ll be hanging out with two serious literary powerhouses: One Story lit-mag founder Hannah Tinti and Katie Kitamura, whose new novel A Separation should be on every awards shortlist you can think of. 4-5 pm: Grab a perfect cocktail at nearby bar Shift Drinks, then wander the smallpress tables at the museum book fair to find a book to take home. 5-6 pm: Dystopian Fiction: Omar El Akkad, Benjamin Percy, Lidia Yuknavitch First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Ave.
Recent Portland transplant Omar El Akkad’s American War is the story of the U.S. after it implodes—which pretty much makes it current events. Longtime Portlander Lidia Yuknavitch’s Oregon-BookAward winning Book of Joan features a propagandizing clown presiding over a ruined world. Which pretty much makes it current events.
TOURING BIG NAMES 10-11 am: Tom Perrotta First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Ave.
When Tom Perrotta sneezes, they make a movie. When he wipes his sleeve, it’s an HBO miniseries. The Election, Little Children and Leftovers author will be hangin’ out in support of new book Mrs. Fletcher, about the sex lives of mothers. It’s probably already a Netflix series somehow. 11 pm: Grab a quick sandwich to go at the Bunk Sandwiches cart: When you’re watching touring authors, eat what every tourist will eat! Then go stand in line at the Schnitz for a half-hour to secure your spot. Noon-1 pm: Ta-Nehisi Coates Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway
Virgin Suicides—will talk with novelist Danzy Senna, who more than perhaps any writer other than Zadie Smith has probed the lacunae, wounds and deep discomfort of being biracial in a world that keeps choosing sides. Her newest deals with the Jim Jones mass poisonings—because, as she’s said in interviews, she’s always looking to write books that will trigger herself. 3-4 pm: New Black Poetry: Dawn Lundy Martin, Morgan Parker, Danez Smith Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway
In her new collection of poems There Are Things More Beautiful Than Beyoncé, Morgan Parker writes about the nuances of identity with astonishing lucidity. Parker manages to be both vulnerable and unflinching, whether she’s writing about microwaving multiple Lean Cuisines instead of going to parties or titling poems “All They Want Is My Money My Pussy My Blood.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the most insightful, moving, empathetic and intelligent voices on race and politics in America. His new book, We Were 4:30-5:30 pm: New Eight Years in Power, Fiction: Julie Buntin, tackles one of the most Rachel Khong, Edan profound mysteries Lepucki and tragedies in this Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 country—that we could SW Park Ave. go from our first black Here are three debut president to one who novelists from all over p r ov i d e s sa f e h a v e n the country sharing a to white nationalists. stage—it’s been a whole Pretty much everybody day of big and famous at Wordstock will be people, exciting people, standing in line to see people about whom him at the Schnitz. you maybe already had Ta-Nehisi Coates expectations. Maybe it’s Good thing you brought a sandwich. time you made a discovery of your own on this stage. 1:30-2:30 pm: Desperate Characters: GO: Wordstock. Portland Art Museum, Jeffrey Eugenides and Danzy Senna First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Ave.
Weirdly puckish literary phenomenon Jeffrey Eugenides—he of Middlesex and
1219 SW Park Ave., 503-227-2583, literary-arts.org. 9 am-6 pm. $15-$18. See preview, page 50.
C O U R T E S Y O F F O U N D F O O TA G E F E S T I VA L
MOVIES Screener
GET YOUR REP S IN
Purple Rain
(1984)
Even though it’s kind of ridiculous to watch Prince act, Purple Rain is still awesome thanks to one of the greatest soundtracks ever. Plus, the physical lack of Prince in this world is still a raw wound. Academy, Nov. 8-9.
Human Highway
(1982)
Neil Young’s psychedelic comedy about a small-town gas station is made all the more surreal by the fact that it stars the likes of Dennis Hopper, Devo’s Gerald Casale and Young himself. Casale will attend the Portland screening. Hollywood, Nov. 12.
Repo Man
Carole Maggio, Facercize, 1996
From the Crypt
This Is Spinal Tap
down a few guys for us,” says Prueher. When asked why, Prueher responds with the equivalent of a shrug. “We like finding out why they make [the videos],” he says. The most notable investigation began when the pair discovered footage of a man named Frank Pacholski dancing in front of an uncomfortable audience wearing a Lone Ranger mask and a Speedo. In an attempt to unlock the mystery of the performance, Prueher and Pickett traveled to California just to meet Pacholski. “We probably spent $2,000 on plane tickets and on our hotel,” he says. “And we definitely left with more questions than we arrived with. But we got a few details and included that in our live show.” Since VHS tapes are a dead medium, the Found Footage Fest runs on a finite resource. But it’s unlikely they’ll run out of material anytime soon. The vault now outsizes Prueher’s apartment, and he says he and Pickett have enough footage to last the apocalypse. When asked if the festival has a higher purpose, Prueher laughs before calling it a “celebration” of the weird corners of the human race. “These videos, I feel like, almost say more about us as a people than the greatest movies of the last 50 years,” he says. “We’re happy to be the archivists and preserve these forgotten and maybe regrettable moments.” SEE IT: Found Footage Festival is at Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., hollywoodtheatre.org. 7:30 pm Thursday and Friday, Nov. 9-10. $13.
The Shining (1980)
Stanley Kubrick’s visual masterpiece never gets old. No matter how many times you’ve seen it, it’s still always scary thanks to Jack Nicholson and all those spooky shots of long hallways. If you go on Sunday, your ticket comes with a Bloody Mary, which is kind of gross but also very fitting. Mission, Nov. 12-13.
ALSO PLAYING:
5th Avenue: Eva Hesse (2016), Nov. 10-11. Academy: Big Trouble In Little China (1985), Nov. 10-16. Hollywood: Mothra (1961), Nov. 11. Joy: Werewolf Woman X (1976), Nov. 8. Laurelhurst: 9 to 5 (1980), Nov. 10-16. Mission: Fatal Attraction (1987), Nov. 12-14. NW Film: The Central Park Five (2012), Nov. 8. The Decameron (1971), Nov. 10. Troop Beverly Hills (1989), Nov. 11. James and the Giant Peach (1996), Nov. 12. Double Blind (No Sex Last Night) (1996), Nov. 13.
COURTESY OF EDGE CITY
After decades of unearthing the strangest VHS tapes, Nick Prueher has seen some shit. So when he uncovered a video from the ’80s of a Satanist growling on local TV, it wasn’t out of the ordinary. “There was a local talk show called The Best Talk in Town, and this episode was on Satanism,” says Prueher. “They had a Satanist expert on, and a seventh-generation Satanist who went by the name Dark Lord Blood.” At one point, the interviewer asks Dark Lord Blood about the practical uses of a ritual knife. His only response is a threatening growl. It’s typical stuff for the Found Footage Festival, an exhibition of wacky tapes from the ’80s and ’90s that Prueher co-produces. Part stage production and part Mystery Science Theater 3000, the festival, which will play at this week at the Hollywood Theatre, showcases the strangest finds from the VHS underground. Prueher says he and his co-host Joe Pickett have “always been into comedy;” both wrote for The Onion right out of high school and started a humor magazine at the University of Wisconsin. Afterwards, Prueher wrote for the Colbert Report. But he says their tape-hunting obsession began at a far earlier age. “We grew up in a small town and didn’t have a whole lot to do,” says Prueher, who’s from Wisconsin. “So we would have friends over on Friday nights, and for lack of anything better to do we would hang out at thrift stores and look for things to entertain ourselves.” The pair started finding old VHS tapes
that were troves of unintentional comedy, including an instructional video packaged with a beard trimmer. “We started watching them all and added commentary to entertain ourselves,” Prueher says. “We just took it way too far.” That might be a bit of an understatement. The pair started touring their collection on a whim in 2004, and their archive now includes over 10,000 tapes. Their vault grew with the size of their audiences. “We started in the back of a bar, and for whatever reason we had a line out the door,” Prueher says. “Later we kept getting offers to do larger and larger places, and here we are.” Finding and laughing at weird stuff isn’t exactly a new concept, especially with YouTube. But the festival has strict rules regarding content, including a guideline that states all showcased videos must be from physical media. It makes the outlandish finds —someone out there actually produced a tape called How to Have Cybersex On the Internet— even more hilarious. The show thrives on lovingly poking fun at a bygone era. “Finding a VHS tape is more like an archeological dig than typing something into a search bar,” Prueher says. “I don’t think any of our footage this year is on the Internet.” Lately, the festival has accepted submissions from audiences to help broaden the search. Prueher and Pickett even try to find the stars of some videos to interview them for the show. It’s not always easy. “If we can’t find someone using the Internet, we’ll actually hire a private investigator who’s tracked
(1984)
Hollywood screens the mother of all mocumentaries and the movie that get mentioned anytime anyone wants to make fun of hair metal. Hollywood, Nov. 11.
FOUND FOOTAGE FESTIVAL UNEARTHS ODDITIES FROM THE VHS ERA. BY DA N A A L STO N
(1984)
Featuring a kick-ass soundtrack, aliens, a radioactive car and Harry Dean Stanton as a coke-addled mentor to Emilio Estevez’s zoned-out punk kid, Repo Man is one gloriously pointless movie. Proceeds from the screening go to the Portland nonprofit Ride Connection. Clinton, Nov. 13.
Repo Man Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
51
COURTESY OF A24
MOVIES
THE FLORIDA PROJECT Editor: SHANNON GORMLEY. 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. : This movie sucks, don’t watch it. : This movie is entertaining but flawed. : This movie is good. We recommend you watch it. : This movie is excellent, one of the best of the year.
NOW PLAYING American Made
American Made is like a blackmarket Forrest Gump—just slick and loose enough to outweigh its historical foolishness. It tells the hyperbolized story of pilot Barry Seal (Tom Cruise), who flew covert smuggling missions for the CIA and Medellín drug cartel in the early ’80s.Seal’s wild brushes with figures like Oliver North, Manuel Noriega and George W. Bush are rendered with narration and montage. Director Doug Liman doesn’t just make Tom Cruise act, he makes him sweat and stumble through the action sequences. The director-star dynamic made a hit of their first movie together (Edge of Tomorrow), and it’s what makes American Made work, too. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Vancouver.
Baby Driver
It takes a scant five minutes for Baby Driver to feel like one of the best car-chase films of all time. At the wheel is Baby (Ansel Elgort, whose face really sells the “Baby” business), who combats his tinnitus by constantly pumping tunes through his earbuds. Every sequence plays out perfectly to the music in Baby’s ears, whether it’s the rat-a-tat of gunfire punctuating the snare on an old funk track or clashing metal with the cymbal smashes on classic-rock oddities. It’s hysterically funny, but not a straight comedy. It’s often touching, but seldom cloying. It’s the hyper-stylish car chase opera the world deserves. R. AP KRYZA. Laurelhurst.
Battle of the Sexes
Battle of the Sexes had every excuse to be a straightforward biopic. It retells the epic 1973 tennis match between rising women’s tennis star Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and aging legend Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell), who publicly proclaimed he could beat King because she is a woman and he is a man. It’s already an epic premise that could have just piggybacked on Emma Stone’s post-La La Land high. But it goes further, creating multidimensional characters and taking a nuanced look at gender dynamics in the ’70s.. PG-13. LAUREN TERRY. Living Room Theaters.
Blade Runner 2049
With an overwhelming dissonant, bassy score by Hans Zimmer, 2049 looks and sounds spectacular. But as a testament to the influence of the original, there isn’t much 2049 has to add about how technology blurs our sense of self and
52
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
soul. 2049 seems less concerned with tiny moments of emotion than big reveals from a twisty plot that seems to define 2049’s imaginative boundaries rather than expand them. Still, it’s one hell of a spectacle. R. SHANNON GORMLEY. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Living Room Theaters, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Tigard, Vancouver.
Cars 3
Cars 3 is a tribute to the bonds shared by teachers and students, albeit with a slapstick demolition derby scene dominated by a comically sinister school bus. Yet it’s Pixar’s gift for imbuing inanimate objects with humanity that makes you care when Cruz and Lightning lean into the curves. G. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Empirical.
Despicable Me 3
Conventional Hollywood wisdom dictates that animated children’s movies must vigorously trumpet the merits of kindness (good!) and condemn the evils of selfishness (bad!). Yet that memo clearly hasn’t reached the makers of this anarchic entry in the Despicable Me franchise, in which the bulbous, reformed supervillain Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) finds his lust for mischief is stoked by his twin brother, a cheerful moron named Dru (also Carell). Among their adventures is a tussle with the mullet-sporting master criminal Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker) that allows for plenty of delightfully nonsensical scenes, including a dance-off that features Gru and Balthazar busting moves to Madonna’s “Into the Groove.” Like the film itself, that scene eschews forced wholesomeness and delivers a truckload of dumb fun. PG. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Academy, Avalon, Empirical, Vancouver.
Dunkirk
In Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. we get to follow a few soldiers and pilots and civilians at sea, but they’re more like standins for the other 400,000 like them marooned on the beach or assisting in the rescue effort. That’s fine, though. This movie doesn’t really need characters, and wasting time on distracting details like what’s waiting at home for these boys would only slow down the headlong pacing of the operation. I don’t think this film will win Best Picture at next year’s Oscars, but it’s a shoo-in a handful of technical nominations. PG-13. R. MITCHELL MILLER. Academy, Empirical, Jubitz, Laurelhurst, Valley Cinema Pub, Vancouver.
Six-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Kimberly Prince) lives in a harsh, impoverished world. The Florida Project’s heroine resides in a budget motel. Her mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), is so strapped for cash that she has to work as a petty thief and a prostitute to make rent. The movie makes you worry that both mother and daughter will either starve, go broke or, given their delightful but dangerous recklessness, be dead by the time the end credits roll. Yet director Sean Baker’s luminous odyssey overflows with wit and joy. That’s mainly because of the happiness Moonee finds with her friend Jancey (Valeria Cotto) as they frolic across the sun-soaked outskirts of Orlando, Fla. Rather than begging us to pity these pint-sized scoundrels, Baker (Tangerine) lets us bask in the joy of their parent-free adventures. Most of all, there’s the wild image of Moonee and Jancey sprinting together, laying claim to a world that may be brutal and imperfect, but is still theirs. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Fox Tower.
Goodbye Christopher Robin
If you don’t want Winnie the Pooh’s innocence ruined by publicity stunts, Oedipal anguish and World War I flashbacks, you should avoid this biopic of writer A.A. Milne. Otherwise, Goodbye Christopher Robin is a bland but fascinating creation myth. In the film’s first act, Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) is passionate about a decidedly not-childish project—a pacifist manifesto inspired by the trauma he experienced from servicing in the War to End All Wars. Yet, he ends up crafting a book inspired by the stuffed-animal pals of his son Christopher Robin. the movie holds your gaze because Milne is a brittle and unforgettable figure: a tormented veteran who, like many of us when we revisit the sweet and blissful adventures of Pooh, longs to slip into youthful dreams. PG. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, City Center, Fox Tower.
Happy Death Day
A sorority girl named Tree (Jessica Roth) wakes up in the dorm of a guy she met the night before. She can’t remember anything from the night before when she was blacked out. It’s her birthday, and by the end of the night someone will have brutally murdered her. But then, as the knife drives into her, she wakes up—in the same dorm. She’s doomed to re-live the same day, Groundhog Day-style. That may sound funny in a kitschy way, but really, it’s just an unrewarding slog. PG-13. R. MITCHELL MILLER. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Oak Grove, Vancouver.
The Hitman’s Bodyguard
The Hitman’s Bodyguard sounds like a title plucked from an internet random action-movie trope generator. The same could be said of its storyline: Ryan Reynolds plays disgraced security agent Michael Bryce, and Samuel L. Jackson is master assassin Darius Kincaid. For reasons that don’t seem totally clear, Bryce is sent to safely ferry Kincaid from Coventry to testify against a Slavic despot played by Gary Oldman. But the movie never takes itself all too seriously. Films like The Hitman’s Bodyguard live and die on the addled chemistry between mismatched leads, and the endlessly enjoyable sparks that fly between Reynolds and Jackson render further criticism irrelevant. R. JAY HORTON. Avalon, Joy, Jubitz, Vancouver.
Killing of A Sacred Deer Steve Murphy (Colin Farrell) is living the American dream. He’s a successful cardiologist who lives in the suburbs with his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) and their two children. But it doesn’t take long into The Killing of the Sacred Deer, director Yorgos Lanthimos’ follow-up to The Lobster, before we realize that something is off. The Murphys seem devoid of any kind of familial affection or emotion. Things seem stable in the Murphy’s hyperlogical
world until we meet an awkward teenager named Martin (Barry Keoghan). Steve took Martin under his wing after his father died on the cardiologist’s operating table. When Martin is revealed to be a sinister supernatural presence, the tension of the psychological thriller begins to build. Ultimately, Sacred Deer disrupts your understanding of familial love and loyalty so much that by the end of the movie, you’re forced to succumb to a world where logic cannot survive. R. SETH SHALER. Cinema 21, Clackamas, Hollywood.
Logan Lucky
You don’t have enough fingers to count the ways Logan Lucky draws from director Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s series. Soderbergh’s first film in four years is a manual for conducting the perfect, victimless, NASCARadjacent robbery. After the robbery plays out in the movie’s second act, Logan Lucky flashes back to the steps it intentionally left out. The pitchperfect band of thieves thrives on folksy glibness while never throttling all the way over to wackiness. As the Logan brothers, Channing Tatum and Adam Driver, are laconic and weatherbeaten, gentle roughnecks who need a win in this life. We’ve already seen Soderbergh’s played this hand before with snappier pacing and editing. Even so, Soderbergh is perhaps Hollywood’s finest technician, and it’s a pleasure to watch him tour his Vegas act through Appalachia. R. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. Laurelhurst.
Mother!
In his new psychological thriller, Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky continues to be extra. Mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem as a couple living in a secluded house. Bardem (listed as “Him” in the credits) is a writer struggling to complete a follow-up to a revered work. Aronofsky surrounds Mother with unnerving, bloodthemed imagery. Soon mobs of people, for whom “personal space” is a foreign concept, are swarming the house. For a while, it works simply as exercise in anxiety. But the last third of the movie drops into heavyhanded metaphor. Rendering the Struggles of the Artist into an exhibitionist nightmare is an exercise only the Artist could love. But man, what a nightmare. R. DANA ALSTON. Academy, Laurelhurst.
The Snowman
Adapted from a best-selling novel by Jo Nesbø, The Snowman tells the story of Detectives Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) and Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson) trying to find a serial killer who targets married women with children. The killer strikes whenever there’s a fresh snowfall, and leaves behind a snowman as a creepy calling card. The film’s biggest problem is that it’s been stretched to the seams with thin plot points and shifting perspectives, leaving us with no time to explore and forcing us to think about what is happening rather than what could happen. R. R MITCHELL MILLER. Eastport.
Suburbicon
Written by Joel and Ethan Coen, Suburbicon’s title refers to the name of the town where the film takes place, a planned 1950s hellscape of a community. It’s home to Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon), the milquetoast vice president of finance for local corporation Pappas & Swain, Gardner’s paraplegic wife Rose (Julianne Moore), their son Nicky (Noah Jupe) and Rose’s sister Maggie (Moore). Suburbicon claims to be idyllic, but really, it was built as a haven for racist white people. We experience this through the plight of the Mayers, a black family who move in next to the Lodges at the beginning of the movie. Their neighbors build fences to separate themselves from the Mayer family. Naturally, none of these “nice folks” harbor any suspicions about Gardner, who is masterminding an insurance fraud that will go horribly wrong. It’s directed by George Clooney who, along with cinematographer Robert Elswit, does an admirable
approximation of the brothers’ visual style. The performances throughout are solid, with Oscar Isaac stealing the show as the Edward G. Robinsonesque claims investigator. The Mayers subplot occupies very little of the film and is more context than storyline. It’s not given enough space for nuanced commentary. As it is, it’s an oversimplification. Suburbicon is sort of like a one-man band. It may sound muddled, but it’s unique enough that it’s hard to look away. R. R MITCHELL MILLER. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Fox Tower, Lloyd, Oak Grove, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Tigard, Vancouver.
Stronger
Most movies described as “inspirational” practically beg to be dimissed as manipulative feelgoodery. Yet this biopic of Boston Marathon bombing survivor Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal) resists the allure of the triumph-over-adversity cliches that would have doomed it. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Academy, Laurelhurst.
it—Renner’s character has a backstory that makes this crime personal. There are constant references to predators and prey, and it’s fueled with male aggression and female pain. But while those pitfalls are common, Wind River’s unexplored geography, depth of spirit and honoring of survivalism are not. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Fox Tower.
Wonderstruck
Wonderstruck interlocks heartfelt storylines about two deaf children who run away to New York City, Ben (Oakes Fegley) and Rose (Millicent Simmonds). The eighth movie by Portland-based director Todd Haynes (I’m Not There, Far From Heaven) is unabashedly sentimental—its central message is literally spelled out in typewriter font above the main character’s bed. But even though the
movie’s point of view can be distilled to a single sentence, Wonderstruck brings the sentiment to life with such imaginative detail that it hardly seems heavy-handed. Rose and Ben wander through the city with the kind of sage wisdom only 12-year-olds can possess, where bravery and naivety are indistinguishable. Eventually, Ben and Rose’s connection is explained through a lengthy, didactic monologue. It pulls the loose ends a little too tight, and some previously miraculous moments lose their magic once they’re revealed to serve a plot summary. But even when its symbolism is more on the nose than evocative, Wonderstruck’s message about finding wonder in daily life is still vivid. SHANNON GORMLEY. Bridgeport, Clackamas, Fox Tower.
REVIEW G E O R G E B A L L I S / TA K E S TO C K / T H E I M A G E W O R K S
The Florida Project
Thor: Ragnarok
It’s a rare movie that casts Cate Blanchett as a comic book villain. Yet despite its kitschy visual delights, Thor: Ragnarok is a garish mishmash from Marvel Studios powered by lame jokes, blurry battles and unearned weepy moments. Director Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wilderpeople) follows the Marvel playbook. The film pits Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the forever-buff God of Thunder, against yet another apparently indestructible menace: his genocidal sister Hela (Blanchett), who wears a creepy, antler-covered helmet. She has good reason to despise Thor, but any hint of pathos is squashed by lazy writing—the movie expects you to giggle every time someone says the word “anus”—and a clunky subplot that ropes the incredibly pouty Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) into the mayhem. The story also makes room for Tom Hiddleston, whose sinister, sensitive presence as the scheming Loki is as welcome as ever. Yet even he can’t change the fact that Ragnarok is a glorified commercial for next year’s Avengers: Infinity War. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bagdad Theater, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinemagic Theatre, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Milwaukie, Moreland, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Roseway, St. Johns Twin Cinema & Pub, Tigard, Vancouver.
Victoria & Abdul
Even the power of Judi Dench’s fearsome gaze isn’t enough to redeem Victoria & Abdul, a whitesavior fantasy from director Stephen Frears (Philomena, The Queen). At the center of the plot is Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), an Indian prison clerk who travels to England to present Queen Victoria (Dench, who also played Queen Victoria in 1997’s Mrs Brown) with a ceremonial coin. We learn little of Abdul’s life, family or personality. Instead, the film uses him as a means for Victoria to prove her nobility. It’s meant to be a tender story of an unlikely friendship, but it’s hardly about friendship at all. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Fox Tower.
Wind River
Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation is as sprawling as it is empty. It’s prone to blizzards except for when it’s too cold even for snow. It’s a hell of a place to examine an ignored America and a fitting setting for a noir thriller. In the directorial debut from Taylor Sheridan (writer of Sicario and Hell or High Water) a game tracker (Jeremy Renner) discovers the frozen body of a young Native woman. A hardscrabble investigation unfolds, and the tracker joins forces with an FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen), the tribal police chief (Graham Greene) and myriad snowmobiles. Sheridan excels at simple turns of phrase and leading us into a rat’s nest of violence. But Wind River meditates on loss more than it burns through plot, and it occasionally feels heavy handed. We get
OUT IN FRONT: Dolores Huerta
Not-So-Quiet Courage A NEW DOCUMENTARY EXPLORES THE LIFE OF AN OVERLOOKED CIVIL-RIGHTS LEADER. At a peaceful demonstration in 1988, Dolores Huerta was beaten so violently by police that her spleen had to be removed. It was a gruesome setback for the woman who, alongside Cesar Chavez, had long been fighting for the rights of exploited farm workers. Yet Huerta refused to be defeated and, at 87 years old, her work continues to this day. Even so, her activism hasn’t had the same widespread recognition as Chavez’s. That’s something Dolores fights to change. Director Peter Bratt has effectively compressed Huerta’s history-making life into a rousing 95-minute documentary. Dolores chronicles not only the terrifying battles of Huerta’s activism, but her struggle to raise a family even as she led a crusade for America’s farm workers. The first act is packed with tributes to Huerta from politicians, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In one scene, Obama freely admits to borrowing Huerta’s rallying cry, “Sí se puede”—Spanish for, “Yes, we can.” But it becomes clear that her dedication to social justice rivals that of her high-profile admirers. The film recounts Chavez and Huerta’s founding of the United Farm Workers union, Huerta’s crucial role in a nationwide boycott of abusive grape growers during the 1960s and her courageous decision to call out sexism among her allies. Bratt relies on the standard-issue mix of talking-head interviews and grainy archival footage. Showier filmmaking techniques would have distracted from Huerta’s extraordinary experiences, which come into focus largely through interviews with her sons and daughters. Their recollections of their mother’s all-consuming work result in some of the film’s most affecting passages—they believe that while their mother’s role in history divided the family, it was a price worth paying. Dolores is a sobering portrait of a woman whose every victory has been met with daunting horrors. Yet the film is filled with reminders that the fight is worth it, including a scene where Huerta shuts down an interviewer who patronizingly asks if she ever feels like getting her hair done and visiting a spa. That, Huerta declares, “would be a terrible waste of time.” BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. SEE IT: Dolores is at NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., nwfilm.org. 4:30 pm and 7 pm Sunday, Nov. 12. $9. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
53
E M I LY A N N E B P H O T O G R A P H Y.
POTLANDER
A Witchy Introduction to Tokeativity TOKEATIVITY IS A WOMEN-ONLY, CONSUMPTION-FRIENDLY BUSINESS MIXER DISGUISED AS A HOUSE PARTY. BY LAU R EN TER RY
Sign up to receive the latest cannabis news, events and more.
potlander newsletter wweek.com/follow-us
54
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
When I registered to attend the Witchy Woman Social just before Halloween, I really didn’t know what to expect. The location for Tokeativity ’s 21-plus, all-female, cannabis-centric party (“a womanfriendly space in NE Portland”) wasn’t revealed until the day of the event. Attendees had only been instructed to bring their own cannabis, and to park in the nearby church lot. I expected an industry crowd; the familiar faces of budtenders and growers who typically make appearances at conferences. I imagined I’d listen to the usual speakers touching on legal updates and new political action committees. But as I peered through the dimly lit neighborhood for the right house, the laughter emerging from the darkness and stream of women funneling into the same foyer hinted at something new in our city’s cannabis community. The Tokeativity event series is curated by Lisa Snyder and Samantha Montanaro, and hosted at Montanaro’s Northeast Portland home, known as the Prism House. Walking into the Witchy Woman night was nothing short of a supernaturally feminine celebration of cannabis. Women clad in glitter wigs or just a black hoodie wandered around the three-story house sipping on cannabis tincture-spiked cider and stopping to try a puff on a Hitachi-shaped ceramic pipe by local artist Make Good Choices. It was the most non-industry crowd I’d seen at any cannabis event: friends and girlfriends and mothers and daughters, most just interested in having a good time. Kindred spirits swapped business contact info in the hazy, live DJ-adjacent buffet area. Conversations and smoke circles popped up in
the bathroom/tarot card reading line, and others settled into mala bracelet-making and custom body oil concocting with the Sativa Science Club. The house’s massive attic was transformed into something that can only be described as Scheherazade’s smoke chamber. Gauzy veils and string lights were draped across the ceiling beams, and pillows perfectly strewn across the rugs for impromptu joint circles. There was even a dressup room curated by the Ladies of Paradise, where attendees could try on their vintage sequin jackets and layer on several glimmering accessories for photos by Emily Anne B and Nic Porter. Both Montanaro and Snyder are experienced in the industry and media, design and event planning. They take what could just be a fun girls-night-in and build it into a radically different opportunity to make connections and inspire other women involved with cannabis. Their events range from entrepreneurial workshops like Crafting Your Elevator Pitch on November 15, to more party-styled socials like Witchy Woman. It gives vendors a chance to connect in a more intimate environment, and also gives women a safe space to just let loose and revel in the presence of fellow chicks who smoke. It’s no surprise that a professionally planned, consumption-friendly house party is fun. But an all-women, business-oriented yet whimsical, and fully legal cannabis soirée feels pretty revolutionary. Snyder and Montanaro have created something that hasn’t had the social or legal room to exist before, and at their events, the smoky air is pulsing with productive, feminine electricity. GO: The next Tokeativity social is Back to the ’90s on November 17, and know that they typically sell out fast. $3 off your $25 ticket if you’re a Scorpio.
SUDOKU PUZZLE
RICK VODICKA
You know the drill.
Fill in the numbers so that every row and column has one of every digit from 1 to 9.
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
55
SKip
LEAH MALDONADO
two lattes
Give
three months of medication to a low-income patient.
Visit giveguide.org to learn how. Follow @GiveGuide
56
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
CLASSIFIEDS
TO PLACE AN AD CONTACT:
MATT PLAMBECK
WELLNESS, SERVICES, BULLETIN BOARD, MUSICIANS MARKET, EMPLOYMENT, PETS, REAL ESTATE, RENTALS CHATLINES, ADULT, JONESIN’ FREE WILL ASTROLOGY, INSIDE BACK COVER
503-445-2757 • mplambeck@wweek.com
JOBS HOSPITALITY/RESTAURANT
57 58 59
HOSPITALITY/RESTAURANT
SERVICES
RENTALS
PAINTING/WALLPAPERING
APARTMENTS SW
REAL ESTATE
PRISTINE PAINTING
bird + bear FOOD + DRINK
MCMENAMINS IS NOW HIRING LINE COOKS AND ENTRY LEVEL KITCHEN MANAGEMENT!!! **We offer a $300.00 Signing Bonus**
West Side Locations Include West Linn Pub, John Barleycorn’s, Sherwood Pub, Wilsonville Old Church and Pub, and Cedar Hills New Pub! What we need from you: An open and flexible schedule, including days, evenings, weekends and holidays. Previous cooking experience preferred, but we are willing to train the right person! Management experience is required for Kitchen Management positions. A love of working in a busy, customer service-oriented environment; Seasonal and Long term positions are available. Interested in a career in the hospitality industry? We offer opportunities for advancement as well as an excellent benefit package to eligible employees, including vision, medical, chiropractic, dental and so much more! Apply online 24/7 at mcmenamins.com OR stop by any of these McMenamins locations, and fill out an application. EOE.
2801 SE HOLGATE BLVD. PORTLAND, OR 97202 - 503.954.2801
LINE COOK NEEDED
1 Experienced line cook needed for the evening kitchen staff. Dinner line cook 32-40 hours a week. Must be a self starter be able to multi task, clean cut, able to work Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday nights. 3:30pm-10pm Must be able to follow direction. The right candidate will have good communication skills, be compliant with health standards and be organized. Job Type: Full-time Salary: $12.50 to $13.00 /hour
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES DRIVE NEW CARS !!
503.516.7715 ccb#111849 Interior/Exterior Mark, Since 1997 A good job, done right at a fair price.
TREE SERVICES STEVE GREENBERG TREE SERVICE
Pruning and removals, stump grinding. 24-hour emergency service. Licensed/ Insured. CCB#67024. Free estimates. 503-939-3211
CLEANING BRAZILIAN STYLE HOUSE-CLEANING Call Anna 503 803 3455
HAULING/MOVING LJ’S HAULING ANYTHING Removal of Metal/Cars free 503-839-7222
WELLNESS
get paid weekly - North Portland M-F day and swing positions open part & full time men & women 18 yrs up must drive stick shift immediate openings call 360-718-7443
BEAUTIFUL 3 BEDROOM APARTMENT
featuring newly refinished oak floors, 9’ ceilings, working fireplace, lots of storage. Goose Hollow, close to downtown, freeways. $1,750 (garbage, water, sewer included). NO SMOKING, Cats/Small Dogs OK. Ron: 503-851-8366 call or text. $20 background check fee
Sunlan Lighting
MUSICIANS MARKET LOCALLY OWNED FOR FREE ADS in 'Musicians Wanted,' 'Musicians Available' & 'Instruments for Sale' go to portland.backpage.com and submit ads online. Ads taken over the phone in these categories cost $5.
BILL PEC FITNESS Personalized Training
CHATLINES
MUSIC LESSONS Play what you want to play.
Since 1955 LEARN PIANO ALL STYLES, LEVELS Beginners welcome.
503-252-6035
Visit Sunlan Light Playroom & see Full Spectrum Light 3901 N Mississippi Ave 503-281-0453 sunlanlighting.com Hailing proudly from Fargo, North Dakota:
LESTER SHY & THE SHYPHONICS Live at P.J.’s Astrological Love Lounge Monday, November 31 - 2:00pm
MASSAGE (LICENSED)
With 2-time Grammy winner Peter Boe 503-274-8727
INSTRUMENTS FOR SALE TRADEUPMUSIC.COM
RELAX!
INDULGE YOURSELF in an - AWESOME FULL BODY MASSAGE
call
Charles
503-740-5120
lmt#6250
Buying, selling, instruments of every shape and size. Open 11am-7pm every day. 4701 SE Division & 1834 NE Alberta.
Open to 2:30 am 365 days a year Over 30 great dancers and a friendly all-female staff 129 SW Broadway
503-227-3023
www.marysclub.com
BULLETIN BOARD
WILLAMETTE WEEK’S GATHERING PLACE. NON-PROFIT DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE.
GROUPS EMOTIONS ANONYMOUS
12-step for people w/depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, bi-polar anger and control issues Saint Aiden Church 17405 NE Glisan, PDX 97230 971-313-9802
LESSONS CLASSICAL PIANO/ KEYBOARD
ALL AGES. STANDARDS, CLASSICAL, MUSICALS. EUROPEAN TRAINED. PORTLAND 503-227-6557
PUBLIC NOTICES HEALTH/PERSONALS/ MISCELLANEOUS:
IF YOU HAD AN IVC FILTER PLACED FOR BLOOD CLOTTING, between 2010 -present time, you may be entitled to compensation. Call Attorney Charles H.Johnson 1-800-535-5727
Willamette Week Classifieds NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
57
TO PLACE AN AD CONTACT:
matt plambeck
503-445-2757 • mplambeck@wweek.com
JonesiN’
Chatlines
by Matt Jones
Portland 503-222-CHAT Vancouver 360-314-CHAT
Salem 503-428-5748 I Eugene 541-636-9099 Bend 541-213-2444 I Seattle 206-753-CHAT Albany 541-248-1481 I Medford 541-326-4000 or WEB PHONE on LiveMatch.com
ALWAYS FREE to chat with VIP members
(Unlimited VIP membership $15/week. No worries about minutes.)
MAN to MAN
Free Live chatrooms & forums! 503-222-6USA
Across 1 Lumber mill equipment 5 Frittata ingredients 9 Datebook abbr. 13 Defendant's response 14 Turing played by Benedict Cumberbatch 15 "___ directed" (prescription phrase) 16 Somewhat 17 First-choice 18 "The Hunchback of ___ Dame" 19 No-frills hair
stylings to look like a breakfast mascot? 22 Hall who followed McMahon on "The Tonight Show" 23 Teensy 24 "Fighting" NCAA team 26 "King" bad guy in Super Mario Bros. 28 Barbershop offering 31 Article for the Brothers Grimm 32 1040 recipient 34 Swelling reducer 35 "NFL Live" network
36 Injuries from your book on the beach? 40 Mark Harmon military series 41 Smartphone program 42 ___ La Table (kitchen store) 43 Hockey legend Bobby 44 PC drive insert, once 46 Result of a threeputt, maybe 50 Basketball Hall of Fame sportscaster Dick
"Chopped"--a little bit off. 52 "Quite so," in Quebec 54 Channel skipped on old TV dials 55 Sparring with a punching bag for only half the usual time, e.g.? 59 President born in 1961 60 Kristen of "Bridesmaids" 61 Laila and Tatyana, for two 62 Saucer-steering creature 63 Former education secretary Duncan 64 Actress Garr of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" 65 Houseplant with fronds 66 Cribbage markers 67 Old Internet suffix for Friend or Nap Down 1 “In the Bedroom” Oscar nominee Sissy 2 Reflectivity measure, in astronomy 3 Creep 4 Fill fully 5 Flyer with exceptional sight 6 World representations? 7 Cat, in Colombia 8 Cold shower? 9 Not ___ (nobody) 10 Most trifling 11 Pale carrot relatives 12 “The Waste Land” writer’s monogram 15 Mom’s brother 20 Cup, maybe 21 Sources of bile
25 Word after Days or Quality 27 Alley targets 29 Zoo attraction with a big bite 30 Do superbly on 33 “The Blacklist” star James 35 100 cents, in some places 36 Doodle 37 High-altitude type of missile 38 Letters in a car ad 39 Noah’s Ark measurement 40 Election Day mo. 44 Tidied up 45 Providing some “Old MacDonald” sounds, maybe 47 Crooner Robert portrayed by Will Ferrell on “SNL” 48 Complete 49 Compliant agreement 51 History Channel show about loggers 53 Impulses 56 Make a trade 57 Add to the payroll 58 They’re good at landing on their feet 59 Fumbling person last week’s answers
©2017 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 #JONZ823.
REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.
Try FREE: 503-416-7098 More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000
Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+ 58
Willamette Week Classifieds November 08, 2017 wweek.com
TO PLACE AN AD CONTACT:
matt plambeck
503-445-2757 • mplambeck@wweek.com © 2017 Rob Brezsny
Week of November 9
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Adriana Martinez and Octavio Guillen got engaged to be married when they were both 15 years old. But they kept delaying a more complete unification for 67 years. At last, when they were 82, they celebrated their wedding and pledged their vows to each other. Are there comparable situations in your life, Aries? The coming months will be a favorable time to make deeper commitments. At least some of your reasons for harboring ambivalence will become irrelevant. You’ll grow in your ability to thrive on the creative challenges that come from intriguing collaborations and highly focused togetherness.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
I had pimples when I was a teenager. They’re gone now, although I still have a few pockmarks on my face as souvenirs. In retrospect, I feel gratitude for them. They ensured that in my early years of dating and seeking romance, I would never be able to attract women solely on the basis of my physical appearance. I was compelled to cultivate a wide variety of masculine wiles. I swear that at least half of my motivation to get smarter and become a good listener came from my desire for love. Do you have comparable stories to tell, Taurus? Now is an excellent time to give thanks for what once may have seemed to be a liability or problem.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
The next two weeks will be one of the best times ever to ask provocative, probing questions. In fact, I invite you to be as curious and receptive as you’ve been since you were four years old. When you talk with people, express curiosity more often than you make assertions. Be focused on finding out what you’ve been missing, what you’ve been numb to. When you wake up each morning, use a felt-tip marker to draw a question mark on your forearm. To get you in the mood for this fun project, here are sample queries from poet Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions: “Who ordered me to tear down the doors of my own pride? Did I finally find myself in the place where they lost me? Whom can I ask what I came to make happen in this world? Is it true our desires must be watered with dew? What did the rubies say standing before the juice of the pomegranates?”
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
“Things to say when in love,” according to Zimbabwe poet Tapiwa Mugabe: “I will put the galaxy in your hair. Your kisses are a mouthful of firewater. I have never seen a more beautiful horizon than when you close your eyes. I have never seen a more beautiful dawn than when you open your eyes.” I hope these words inspire you to improvise further outpourings of adoration. You’re in a phase when expressing your sweet reverence and tender respect for the people you care about will boost you physical health, your emotional wealth, and your spiritual resiience.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
Are you working on solving the right problem? Or are you being distracted by a lesser dilemma, perhaps consumed in dealing with an issue that’s mostly irrelevant to your long-term goals? I honestly don’t know the answers to those questions, but I am quite sure it’s important that you meditate on them. Everything good that can unfold for you in 2018 will require you to focus on what matters most -- and not get sidetracked by peripheral issues or vague wishes. Now is an excellent time to set your unshakable intentions.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
Every one of us experiences loneliness. We all go through periods when we feel isolated and misunderstood and unappreciated. That’s the bad news, Virgo. The good news is that the coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to make loneliness less of a problem. I urge you to brainstorm and meditate about how to do that. Here are some crazy ideas to get you started. 1. Nurture ongoing connections with the spirits of beloved people who have died. 2. Imagine having conversations with your guardian angel or spirit guide. 3. Make a deal with a “partner in loneliness”: a person you pray or sing with whenever either of you feels bereft. 4. Write messages to your Future Self or Past Self. 5. Communicate with animals.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
The drive for absolute perfection could undermine your ability to create what’s very good and just right. Please don’t make that mistake in the coming weeks. Likewise, refrain from demanding utter purity, pristine precision, or immaculate virtue. To learn the lessons you need to know and launch the trends you can capitalize on in 2018, all that’s necessary is to give your best. You don’t have to hit the bull’s eye with every arrow you shoot -- or even any arrow you shoot. Simply hitting the target will be fine in the early going.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Remember the time, all those years ago, when the angels appeared to you on the playground and showed you how and why to kiss the sky? I predict that a comparable visitation will arrive soon. And do you recall the dreamy sequence in adolescence when you first plumbed the sublime mysteries of sex? You’re as ripe as you were then, primed to unlock more of nature’s wild secrets. Maybe at no other time in many years, in fact, have you been in quite so favorable a position to explore paradise right here on earth.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
As a courtesy to your mental health, I minimize your exposure to meaningless trivia. In fact, I generally try to keep you focused instead on enlightening explorations. But in this horoscope, in accordance with astrological omens, I’m giving you a temporary, short-term license to go slumming. What shenanigans is your ex up to lately, anyway? Would your old friend the bankrupt coke addict like to party with you? Just for laughs, should you revisit the dead-end fantasy that always makes you crazy? There is a good possibility that exposing yourself to bad influences like those I just named could have a tonic effect on you, Sagittarius. You might get so thoroughly disgusted by them that you’ll never again allow them to corrupt your devotion to the righteous groove, to the path with heart.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
In the coming months it will be crucial to carefully monitor the effects you’re having on the world. Your personal actions will rarely be merely personal; they may have consequences for people you don’t know as well as those you’re close to. The ripples you send out in all directions won’t always look dramatic, but you shouldn’t let that delude you about the influence you’re having. If I had to give 2018 a title with you in mind, it might be “The Year of Maximum Social Impact.” And it all starts soon.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
The punk ethic is rebellious. It transgresses conventional wisdom through “a cynical absurdity that’s redeemed by being hilarious.” So says author Brian Doherty. In the hippie approach, on the other hand, the prevailing belief is “love is all you need.” It seeks a “manic togetherness and all-encompassing acceptance that are all sweet and no sour -- inspiring but also soft and gelatinous.” Ah, but what happens when punk and hippie merge? Doherty says that each moderates the extreme of the other, yielding a tough-minded lust for life that’s both skeptical and celebratory. I bring this to your attention, Aquarius, because the punk-plus-hippie blend is a perfect attitude for you to cultivate in the coming weeks.
SAMBA THE CAT
DANDY
AurEliA
sponsored by
sponsored by
sponsored by
antoinettejewelry.com
fetcheyewear.com
mellowmood.com
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
I’m falling in love with the way you have been falling in love with exciting possibilities that you once thought were impossible. Oh, baby. Please go further. Thrilling chills surge through me whenever you get that ravenous glint in your mind’s eye. I can almost hear you thinking, “Maybe those dreams aren’t so impossible, after all. Maybe I can heal myself and change myself enough to pursue them in earnest. Maybe I can learn success strategies that were previously beyond my power to imagine
Homework If you could change your astrological sign, what would you change it to and why? Write: FreeWillAstrology.com.
check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes
freewillastrology.com
The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at
1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700
ElFiE
CASPEr
CAMErON
sponsored by
sponsored by
sponsored by
furryfrenzypets.com
petsonbroadway.com
mysteryboxshow.com
Changing the image of rescue, one animal at a time... Interested in adopting from the Pixie Project? CALL 503.542.3433 Willamette Week Classifieds November 08,2017 wweek.com
59
BACK COVER
Inspired by ink, driven by passion.
DEBT RELIEF NOW
Our team of experts is ready to help you promote and deliver the message that ignites the passion and makes your business or organization great.
Get a Fresh Financial Start! Call Today at 503-808-9032 Attorney Scott Hutchinson FREE Confidential Consultation. Affordable Payments. Go to: Hutchinson-Law.com
A FEMALE FRIENDLY SEX TOY BOUTIQUE
Atomic Auto atomicauto.biz
for every body
610 NE 102nd. Text: (503) 969-3134
Guitar Lessons
Personalized instruction for over 15yrs. www.portlandguitar-lessons.com 503-546-3137
Comedy Classes
Improv, Standup, Sketch writing. Now enrolling The Brody Theater, 503-224-2227 www.brodytheater.com
ARE YOU BURIED IN DEBT?
PRINTING • DIRECT MAIL • SIGNS & BANNERS PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS
FISTING W/ ANDRE SHAKTI / SUN, DIY PORN&W/MANUAL MADISONSEX YOUNG / THUR, OCT 19 - 7:30 - $20NOV 12 - 7:30 - $20 POLY-CURIOUS 101 HOUR W/ ALLISON MOON & REID / WED, NOV 15DIVISION - 7:30 - $20 HALLOWEEN HAPPY W/ CLONE-A-WILLY! / OCTMIHALKO 25 -7:30 - FREE - SHE BOP - RSVP FB SEX CANNABIS THURS, &NOV — 7:30 — YOUR $20 BDSM EXPERIENCES / OCT 26 - 7:30 - $20 EVENAND MORE PLEASURE,/ POWER, PAIN:30EXPANDING / WED, DEC- $20 6 - 7:30 - $20 EXPLORING BURLESQUE: STRIPTEASE FISTING & MANUAL SEX W/ ANDRE SHAKTI /SALON SUN, NOV 12 - 7:30 THE JOYS OF TOYS! THURS,MOON DEC 14 - 7:30 - $15 / WED, NOV 15 - 7:30 - $20 POLY-CURIOUS 101 W/ /ALLISON & REID MIHALKO FELLATIO 2.0: AN ORAL NOV SEX30 UPGRADE! SEX & CANNABIS / THURS, - 7:30 - $20/ SUN, JAN 7 - 7:30 - $20 INTRODUCTION TO/ THURS, ROPE BONDAGE / WED, 17 - 7:30 Workshops can- $20 be ASL INTERPRETED upon request THE JOYS OF TOYS! DEC 14 - 7:30 - $15 JAN Workshops can beST ASL INTERPRETED uponST. request 3213 SE DIVISION AND AT 909 N BEECH PORTLAND AND SHOP ONLINE AT SHEBOPTHESHOP.COM
503-736-0111 · morelink.biz
3213 SE DIVISION ST AND AT 909 N BEECH ST. PORTLAND AND SHOP ONLINE AT SHEBOPTHESHOP.COM
Tired of creditors harassing you? I will kick their asses and help you get your financial life back on track Call Christopher Kane, Attorney at Law NOW! A debt relief agency kicking ass for 20 years. 503-380-7822. bankruptcylawpdx.com.
$BUYING JUNK CARS$ Wrecked, running or not. call Jeff 971-804-8124 sellyourcarpdx@GMX.com
Top 1% Buyer’s Agent Kami Price, Broker 13+ years experience Permiere Property Group, LLC 503-773-0000
Eskrima Classes
Top 1% Portland Agent
Personal weapon & street defense www.nwfighting.com or 503-740-2666
Stephen FitzMaurice, Broker Home Selling Specialist 14+ Years Experience 4.5% Max Commission Premiere Property Group, LLC. 4300 NE Fremont St. 503-714-1111. RealEstateAgentPDX.com
Community Law Project Non-Profit Law Firm Sliding-Scale · Payment Plans Bankruptcy · Debt · Eviction Call 503-208-4079 www.communitylawproject.org
Marijuana Shop *971-255-1456* 1310 SE 7TH AVE
20595 SW TV Highway. Aloha, OR 97006 503-746-4444
CASH for INSTRUMENTS 2017 BoP Winner! Tradeupmusic.com SE - 503-236-8800 NE - 503-335-8800
SO, YOU GOT A DUI. NOW WHAT?
Get help from an experienced DUI trial lawyer Free Consult./ Vigorous Defense/ Affordable Fees David D. Ghazi, Attorney at Law 333 SW Taylor Street, Suite 300 (503)-224-DUII (3844) david@ddglegal.com
JiuJitsu
OMMP CARDHOLDERS GET 25% DISCOUNT!
Quick fix synthetic urine now available. Kratom, Vapes. E-cigs, glass pipes, discount tobacco, detox products, Butane by the case Still Smokin’ Glass and Tobacco 12302 SE Powell 503-762-4219
Ground defense under black belt instruction www.nwfighting.com or 503-740-2666
NORTH WEST HYDROPONIC R&R
We Buy, Sell & Trade New and Used Hydroponic Equipment. 503-747-3624
ROSE CITY GUN & KNIFE SHOW Nov 18th & 19th Portland Expo Center Sat. 9-5, Sun 9-3. Admission $10. 503-363-9564 wesknodelgunshows.com
MEDICAL MARIJUANA Card Services Clinic
503-384-WEED (9333) www.mmcsclinic.com 4911 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland Mon-Sat 9-6
503 235 1035
New Downtown Location! 1501 SW Broadway www.mellowmood.com
4119 SE Hawthorne, Portland ph: 503-235-PIPE (7473)
Pizza Delivery
Until 4AM!
www.hammyspizza.com