Willamette Week, April 22, 2020 - Volume 46, Issue 26 - "I Had It" by Willamette Week Newspaper

PROTESTS: LIVE FREE AND DIE. EARTH DAY: TRAFFIC JAMS UNCLOGGED CANNABIS: SALT, ACID, FAT, WEED. P. 5

P. 6

P. 26

WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY

“YOU CAN LAUGH, BUT IT PROTECTS!” P. 22 WWEEK.COM

VOL 46/26 04.22.2020

I HAD IT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH THE CORONAVIRUS. PAGE 11

WEEK #3

COVID-19 may have changed

the way we do business (for now), but many of us Southeast Hawthorne businesses remain open. For info, call us or check us out online. Businesses are listed in approximate order of location on the Boulevard, WEST to EAST, from SE 12th Ave. to SE 51st .

ORDER FOOD & DRINK FOR TAKEOUT OR DELIVERY The Toffee Club: toffeeclubpdx.com Burgerville: locations.burgerville.com Que Pasa Cantina: quepasacantinapdx.com Lardo-East: lardosandwiches.com Tiny’s Coffee: tinys.coffee Riyadh’s Lebanese: riyadhslebaneserestaurant.com Grassa: grassapdx.com Thai Touch Cuisine: 503-232-7774 Kabob: kabob.org Maruti Indian: maruti-restaurant.com

SHOP ONLINE FOR LOCAL GOODS & GIFT CERTICATES Really Good Stuff: 503-238-1838 Teascape: teascapepdx.com Hankins Hardware: 503-236-2372 Move Better Chiropractic: 503-432-1061 Farina Bakery: farinabakery.com Mudbay: mudbay.com 503-206-0323 *Hawthorne Cutlery: hawthornecutlery.net; 503-234-8898 Parting Waters: partingwatersmediation.com Wildish Botanicals: 503-206-4235; daniel@wildishpdx.com Eastside Guitar Repair: 503-232-0838; ryan@eastsideguitarrepair.com Tattoo 34: tattoo34pdx.com; 503-235-3606 Imelda’s and Louie’s Shoes: imeldas.com Postal Annex is OPEN Kids at Heart: info@kidsathearttoys.com Sloan Boutique: sloanpdx.com; 503-232-0002 Starflower: starflowerpassion.com * 503-225-9400 *Potala Imports: 971-998-3019 Tender Loving Empire: tenderlovingempire.com Jackpot Records: jackpotrecords.com Hawthorne Games: Facebook @hawthorne game exchange In Real Life: Instagram @in_real_life_shop Sylvia’s Psychic Insight: 971-280-5387

Presents Of Mind: presentsofmind.tv *Gold Door: 503-232-6069 *Memento: 503-235-1257; @memento.pdx Echo Theater: echotheaterpdx.org Powell’s Books: powells.com Asylum: pdxasylum.com *Fred's Sound of Music: 503-234-5341; fredsoundofmusic.com Adorn: adornbodyart.com/shop/ UPS Store is OPEN Fernie Brae: ferniebrae.com H&R Block: hrblock.com Mellow Mood Pipe & Tobacco: 503-235-7473 Fyberworks Boutique: fyberworks.com; * 503-232-7659 Hawthorne Auto Clinic: hawthorneauto.com Hawthorne Vision: Open for urgent care & emergencies 503-235-6639 Hawthorne Vintage: 503-230-2620 American Shaman: 971-678-8384 Michael Emert, CPA: 503-233-5931 Art Heads Frame Co.: 503-232-5299 Windermere Realty: 503-888-6999 Turning Pointe Acupuncture: turningpointeacu.com

Grand Central: grandcentralbakery.com HOTLIPS Pizza: hotlipspizza.com Talarico’s Produce: 503-265-8453 Culture: culturepdx.com Sea Sweets Poke: seasweetspoke.com Tight Tacos: tighttacos.com Rovente Pizzeria: roventepizzeria.com Tarboush: tarboushbistro.com Farmhouse: farmhousethai.com Cha Cha Cha: chachachapdx.com Mt. Tabor Fine Wines: 503-235-4444 Hello India: 503-232-7880; helloindiapdx.com Seven Virtues Coffee Roasters: 503-265-9643; sevenvirtuespdx.com Fried Eggs I’m In Love: friedegglove.com Toadstool: toadstoolcupcakes.com The Waffle Window: wafflewindow.com Bread & Ink Cafe: breadandinkcafe.com Mee Gin Thai: 503-231-9898 (find on Doordash) Portland Cider House: portlandcider.com/pdxciderhouse Straight From New York Pizza: sfnypizza.com Dwaraka: dwarakapdx.com Boba Dawg: 971-346-2420 Mio Sushi: miosushi.com Next Level Burger: nextlevelburger.com White & Green (Thai): whiteandgreenpdx.com Fat Straw: fatstrawpdx.com The Whole Bowl: thewholebowl.com/portland.html Kouzina: 503-894-8389 (find on Doordash) Hawthorne Spirits & Sundries: 503-235-1573 Eastside Deli: pdxdeli.com Apizza Scholls: apizzascholls.com The Sapphire Hotel: thesapphirehotel.com Tabor Bread: taborbread.com

AND OF COURSE Financial Institutions and Grocery Stores are available to serve you.

UPDATED 4/20/2020

* = ADDED SINCE LAST TIME DESIGN: BECCAROOSKY.COM

h tt p s : / / b i t . l y / H a w t h o r n e B l v d O p e n 2

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

FINDINGS

DIALOGUE

Right-wing groups have planned a May 2 rally at the Oregon Capitol in Salem to protest Gov. Kate Brown’s stay-home order to slow the spread of COVID-19. When WW reported the event on wweek.com, the protest’s backers objected to being called “right wing.” Most of our readers just objected to the protest. Sarah Thompson, via Facebook: “That’s fine. They just need to sign this waiver declining all medical services for COVID and quarantine for 14 days after the protest. They can get together and shout up a storm then.”

GADO GADO, PAGE 25

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 46, ISSUE 26. Oregon Health & Science University must release 74 videos of monkey experiments. 4

Ian Karmel has spent his quarantine rapping over Pearl Jam songs. 23

The organizer of a May 2 rally in Salem requested a citizen’s arrest of Gov. Kate Brown. 5

Shake Shack locations in New England sell lobster roll burgers.

Rush-hour commuters are traveling Interstate 5 northbound twice as fast as they did before the pandemic. 6

Gado Gado has temporarily pivoted to a pop-up selling “Asian

Linn County funded COVID-19 tests for every nursing home worker. 7 Prison inmates make 60 cents an hour doing hospitals’ laundry. 9

“This is like a 14-day flu.” 12 Paramedics now assess patients in their yards, in folding chairs. 13

stoner food.” 25

Actor Michael Rapaport is scared of edibles. 26 People in Pakistan are watching a Portland dance company’s past shows. 27 A ’50s Western filmed in Oregon was one of Quentin Tarantino’s inspirations for The Hateful Eight.

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

Oregon, California and Washington: COVID Super Friends.

MASTHEAD EDITOR & PUBLISHER

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Mark Zusman

Creative Director Joy Bogdan Senior Production Designer “Big Sexy” Rick Vodicka Illustration Intern Paola De La Cruz Photography Intern Mick Hangland-Skill

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Courtney Allison, via Facebook: “From the people that brought you ‘Protesters = speed bumps’ and ‘Protesting is illegal.’ Hypocrisy at its finest, all day, every day.”

Dr. Know

BY MART Y SMITH @martysmithxxx

The entire economy is completely fucked now. We all know that rich people always find a way to get richer. In what specific ways are they going to get even more money in the face of pandemic-fueled total economic collapse? —Prole Cat It will probably come as no great surprise that the best way to survive any kind of global crisis is to already have a shit ton of money in the bank before it happens. Having money is always great, but if you can have lots of it at a time when nobody else has any, that’s even better! Take beef torpedo Scott Disick, occasional boyfriend of one of the Kardashians and a bit player on their TV show. Disick has no discernible redeeming qualities, but his proximity to the Kardashians means he does have easy access to capital. He’s also lousy with social capital in the form of 23 million Instagram followers (his handle, horribly, is @letthelordbewithyou). Disick is using the capital that you and I so conspicuously lack to market hoodies that say “Please Wash Your Hands” at $129 a pop. It’s not like nobody else could have thought of this; it’s strictly a function of his ability to invest when others can’t. Or how about vulture capitalist and human tick Carl Icahn? He’s currently boasting to anyone who’ll listen how he’s shorting the com-

mercial real estate market. This means, more or less, that every time a business goes under and can’t pay its rent, Icahn makes money. It’s not like it’s difficult to see this train wreck coming. But even if you’re OK with profiting from others’ misery, do you have a couple mil lying around to cash in on it? Down at the local level, anecdotal reports suggest that many of Portland’s independent bars and restaurants that closed last month may never reopen. Who’s going to have the money to start new bars and restaurants in those now-vacant locations, taking advantage of what is likely to be a wide-open market? Not broke assholes like you and me! Of course, in the event of total economic collapse—as in complete failure of the banking and currency system—all bets will be off, since there will no longer be such a thing as money. Would it be worth it to see Rupert Murdoch eating grubs while attempting to fashion a crude spear to catch toads with? Your call. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

GET DAILY UPDATES ON HOW CORONAVIRUS IS AFFECTING PORTLAND

MURMURS SUPREME COURT RULING COULD OVERTURN CONVICTIONS: The Oregon Supreme Court has begun reviewing 74 criminal appeals possibly affected by Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Ramos v. Louisiana, which effectively banned split-jury convictions. The affected verdicts resulted from just 10 or 11 jurors voting to convict. “There are expected to be more, but they are not yet identified,” says Todd Sprague, spokesman for the Oregon Judicial Department. Sprague says the agency is working to identify cases where both state prosecutors and public defenders agree another trial may be warranted. Following the ruling, Oregon joined the 49 other states in requiring unanimous jury verdicts for felony convictions.

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CATALANI

Love endures Maloy’s oﬀers a fabulous selection of antique and estate jewelry. For now, you can browse online, then email us at shop@maloys.com for details. Be well! 4

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

CANDIDATE DENIED PUBLIC MONEY: Portland’s Open and Accountable Elections administrator, Susan Mottet, has denied candidate Ronault “Polo” Catalani’s request for public financing after her office determined some of Catalani’s donors made contributions to him with other people’s money and that other donors did not fill out required paperwork themselves. Catalani, a former longtime city employee, is one of 18 candidates seeking to succeed Commissioner Nick Fish, who died in January. “Unfortunately, your application has been denied,” Mottet wrote to Catalani on April 7. Catalani is appealing Mottet’s decision and asking her office to reconsider. TREE WARS REDUX: One of the largest trees in Northeast Portland, a giant sequoia 9 feet in diameter and more than 100 feet tall at 12th Avenue and Mason Street, may get the ax. On April 2, the city of Portland’s urban forester notified owners of two lots straddled by the tree that the sequoia must go because it is undermining one home’s foundation and

because city code “requires removal of trees damaging private property, and no other remedy for the foundation can be required by the city.” But owners of the property not undermined by the tree, Shayan Rohani and Claire Bollinger, have started a GoFundme campaign to save it. “We’ve spent the last decade trying to collaborate with our neighbor on ways to keep the tree and fix his house,” say the women, who filed an appeal April 16. “Removing this tree will not fix this house.” Their appeal blocks any action pending review. GOVERNOR’S LAWYER LEAVES: Gov. Kate Brown’s general counsel, Misha Isaak, left the governor’s office March 9, six months after he declined nomination to the Oregon Court of Appeals. Brown nominated Isaak last August, but the state’s first public records advocate, Ginger McCall, resigned just weeks later, citing Isaak’s efforts to block her work and protect Brown from scrutiny. That controversy effectively scuttled Isaak’s appointment. He joined the firm Perkins Coie on March 31. “The long hours and relentless crisis triage, plus the daily commute to Salem, takes a toll,” Isaak says, “especially on those of us with families.” OHSU MUST GIVE MONKEY VIDEOS TO PETA: Multnomah County Circuit Judge David Rees ruled April 20 that Oregon Health & Science University must turn over 74 videos of experiments it conducted on monkeys to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA filed suit against OHSU in 2019 after the university’s Oregon National Primate Research Center denied PETA’s public records request for the videos. Court filings say the videos show researchers documenting 11-month-old Japanese macaque monkeys’ anxiety and stress responses to a “novel object test” and a “human intruder test.” Rees ruled the videos are subject to public disclosure because OHSU is a public institution and the research was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Health. An OHSU spokeswoman says the university is pleased the order is limited to videos showing research that’s been published in peer-reviewed publications.

J U S I N K AT I G B A K

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

ORGANIZING

TRENDING

COVID Central Multnomah County is now the center of Oregon’s COVID-19 outbreak.

SHAKE IT OFF: Patriot Prayer protesters in Battle Ground, Wash., one year ago.

Social Distance Warriors

An Oregon rally against staying home risks conservatives’ health to benefit President Trump. BY TE SS R I SK I

tess@wweek.com

The event: ReOpen Oregon, a May 2 rally at the state Capitol in Salem. It’s expected to mirror an April 19 protest in Olympia, Wash., where thousands crowded the Capitol’s steps, sans masks, in open defiance of stay-home orders to slow the spread of COVID-19. What protesters want: For Oregon Gov. Kate Brown to lift social distancing mandates and reopen businesses statewide. “Gov. Brown has unconstitutionally restricted our freedom of assembly, infringed upon our right to freely worship, and closed access to public lands,” the event description says. “For these reasons and more, let us gather as one people.” Who’s organizing it: A group called Oregon Uniting for Liberty is behind the state’s May 2 event. The group was created just two weeks ago, on April 8, according to its Facebook page, but the closed group has already yielded 1,300 members. The key organizer appears to be Yvonne Griffith, who provides scant personal information on her public-facing Facebook page, but who often shares posts in support of the Republican walkout and the anti-vaxxer movement. On April 9, Griffith asked her followers if any of them wanted to conduct a citizen’s arrest of Gov. Brown. Griffith did not respond to a request for comment. Oregon Uniting for Liberty has been endorsed by a new political operation, ReOpen America, which was founded last month by Suzzanne Monk, a Washington, D.C.-based Trump supporter. The same group has backed a handful of nearly identical “ReOpen” protests nationwide in states like Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Why it matters: The protests may seem familiar, even wearyingly predictable, to Oregonians who’ve watched right-wing groups use Portland for political theater— and brawls—intended to energize President

Trump’s base. Indeed, longtime Patriot Prayer organizer Joey Gibson attended the Olympia rally last weekend. Watchdogs of political extremism see similarities and differences. What alarms Eric Ward, director of the Western States Center, is that ReOpen America formed a federal political action committee April 15. Ward says the PAC is significant because it indicates the group is seeking to select and support candidates for elected office. Unlike the protests on the streets of Portland over the past three years, Ward says, these new protest groups appear to be a part of a coordinated political campaign. “This looks different,” Ward says, “because we can actually see top political operatives and supporters stepping forward in the evolution of these protests very early on.” Some Oregon conservatives are receptive. Steve Pedery, director of environmental nonprofit Oregon Wild, says commenters are agitating for defiance of stay-home orders on the Facebook page of Timber Unity—the coalition of truckers and loggers who opposed a cap on carbon emissions. “Sounds like civil war time and we’re not talking football,” one Timber Unity commenter wrote April 19. (A spokeswoman for Timber Unity said the group’s board has not taken a position on the May 2 rally.) If some of this sounds like a call for a violent uprising, that’s no accident, says Randy Blazak, a Portland consultant who studies extremist movements. “There’s a much darker element of this: to push for their boogaloo, which is the second American Revolution.” Ward says the cynicism displayed by President Trump and his allies is staggering— because the rallies risk the health of participants to aid the political fortunes of the White House. “I’ve never witnessed political leadership be so willing to sacrifice its base like this,” Ward says. “Folks are willing to put their own political base in caskets in order to try to maintain polling.”

Oregon’s first confirmed case of COVID-19 was on Feb. 28 in Washington County, the suburban county west of Portland. Until nearly two weeks ago, Washington County still had more cases than Multnomah County. But Portland has overtaken the suburbs. Last weekend, Multnomah County crossed the 500-case threshold, and Washington County had just 408 cases.

Multnomah County also has 28 deaths, more than triple Washington County’s eight deaths. Multnomah County has tested nearly double the cases of its western neighbor, and has a slightly lower rate of positive tests, but public health officials have yet to explain exactly why Multnomah County’s cases have risen so much faster. One factor: Two of the nursing homes that have seen clusters of COVID-19 deaths are in Portland. “Washington County had the state’s first reported case in the state, so that area saw more cases earlier than other jurisdictions,” says Multnomah County spokeswoman Kate Willson. “We have a larger population, so we would expect to be on different timing and see more total cases if Multnomah County follows the same pattern.” RACHEL MONAHAN.

Oregon COVID-18 Deaths by County (April 20)

Source: Oregon Health Authority

THE BIG NUMBER

42% That’s the percentage of Oregon’s small business payrolls covered by the federal Paycheck Protection Program last week. The $350 billion program was designed by Congress to give companies with up to 500 employees the equivalent of two-and-half months of payroll in forgivable loans. Oregon’s yield from the program—42 percent of eligible payrolls covered—was the third-lowest figure in the country, according to calculations by Ernie Tedeschi, an analyst at the New York investment banking firm Evercore ISI. Those findings were first published by Bloomberg News. Tedeschi’s numbers show an imbalance: The top three states—Nebraska, North Dakota and Kansas—got an average of 79.4 percent of their small business payrolls covered. All are red states. The bottom three, Oregon, New York and California, which got an average of 40 percent, vote blue. The PPP program came out of Congress, where Democrats control the House and Republicans run the Senate. But the program is administered by the federal Small Business

Administration, which is part of President Donald Trump’s administration and run by Jovita Carranza, a Trump appointee. (Trump’s first appointee to the SBA post was Linda McMahon, wife of World Wrestling Entertainment boss Vince McMahon.) Both U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) questioned the PPP allocation. “ When COVID -19 has forced small businesses throughout Oregon into a daily battle to make payroll, it’s imperative that relief Congress passed to help gets distributed fairly without any partisan thumb on the scale,” Wyden said in a statement. “I won’t stop pressing the Trump administration to answer basic questions about how Paycheck Protection Program funds were distributed because Oregonians employed by those small businesses need those paychecks to pay the rent, buy groceries and more.” “Trump’s blatant corruption and self-dealing is always shocking but never surprising,” Blumenauer added. “From putting his name on stimulus checks to funneling taxpayer money to his base, he has politicized this crisis at every turn. Time will show he is the most corrupt president in history. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure he’s a one-term nightmare.” NIGEL JAQUISS.

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

NEWS

HENRY CROMETT

Decongestant The biggest traffic bottleneck on the West Coast is handling traffic at double the normal rush-hour speeds.

BY NIG E L JAQ U I SS

njaquiss@wweek.com

The past month of pandemic has offered a glimpse of a world in which Portlanders drive less frequently. In it, traffic jams disappear. Even at rush hour, cars flow freely where once were notorious snarls. But it’s also a world in which local transportation agencies are out of money. Joe Cortright was surprised by one result. When the Portland economist checked real-time traffic numbers in early April, he did a double take. Rather than declining, he found the number of vehicles traveling northbound on Interstate 5 from the Rose Quarter to Vancouver, Wash., during the afternoon rush hours had actually increased. And traffic figures, collected by Portland State University, showed vehicles were covering the 8-mile stretch—which transportation officials sometimes call the worst bottleneck on the West Coast—twice as fast as they did before the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was startling to me,” says Cortright, who has pored over traffic data for most of the past decade. Make no mistake: Overall highway traffic is down about 40 percent from this time last year, according to the Oregon Department of Transportation. And that includes I-5. But using Portal, PSU’s traffic archive, Cortright found that during the afternoon rush hour, more vehicles are traveling the region’s most notorious corridor—and doing it at more than twice the speed of a year ago. (At deadline, ODOT disputed his findings, saying rush-hour traffic was actually down 15 percent.) Before the pandemic, I-5 between Portland and Vancouver typically got jammed by 2 or 3 in the afternoon, slowing to 20 or 25 mph. “Once it hits that tipping point, it doesn’t speed up again until rush hour is over,” Cortright says. Now, however, with so many drivers staying home, traffic remains well below the tipping point. That means the midafternoon slowdown never occurs and commuters can drive as fast as they want on their way home to Washington. More of them complete the trip during peak hours, because they no longer have to sit and wait. Somehow, it’s appropriate that today— the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, a landmark in the environmental movement—our air is cleaner than it’s been in a long time. That’s mostly because COVID-19 is keeping vehicles off the roads: The 40 percent decrease in traffic from a year ago means vehicle-generated pollution is down about the same amount, according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. “The emissions reductions we’re seeing in Oregon and around the world are staggering,” says state Rep. Karin Power (D-Milwaukie), a co-sponsor of the controversial 6

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

carbon reduction bill stuck in Salem, “but it’s not sustainable.” The pandemic has brought illness, death, job losses, and disruptions unparalleled in most of our lives. It has also displayed what could happen if some transportation advocates like Cortright got their way and tolls were placed on Portland highways steep enough to cut into rush-hour traffic. To replicate such results in normal times would mean encouraging people to commute by other means and take nonessential trips during off hours. Cortright advocates congestion pricing to prompt such behavior. When the state eventually reopens for business, many of the environmental benefits will be lost. But Cortright says he hopes policymakers pay close attention to what this unplanned experiment has shown us about traffic flows. “The implication is clear,” he says. “We could make the congestion problem go away, even when things get back to normal, by managing demand.” Fewer cars on the road eases traffic and improves air quality, but it has a downside: City and state transportation departments are dependent on gas taxes and road-user fees. Without vehicles rolling, the agencies

THE FUTURE LIBERALS WANT: During weekday rush hours, Interstate 5 now flows freely through North Portland. Some officials argue that’s a lesson for how to manage traffic after the pandemic recedes.

the legislation would eliminate 99 percent of oil-powered vehicles by 2050. That report also highlighted an unintended consequence: Federal and state gas tax revenues, which pay for most highway and street projects, would disappear. Over the past month, ODOT and the Portland Bureau of Transportation have gotten an early taste of what a future without gas taxes could be like. City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly says PBOT is losing about $3 million a month in state gas tax money (as well as $4 million in forgone parking and parking enforcement revenue). As transportation commissioner, Eudaly has pushed to improve climate-friendly alternatives for Portlanders and earlier

FREE FLOWING: PSU’s Portal showsI-5 northbound rush-hour traffic is up during the COVID-19 shutdown, as measured in the red columns. Yet speeds have more than doubled, as shown by the blue line.

run out of money. Chris Smith, a longtime Portland transportation activist who’s running for the Metro Council, says that should be a wake-up call. “Funding transportation based on fossil fuel has always been problematic,” Smith says. “At some point, we have to break the connection.” The cap-and-trade legislation Power and her legislative colleagues have been pushing in Salem would gradually raise the price of fossil fuels so high that motorists would be forced to switch to electric vehicles. A 2019 Legislative Revenue Office forecast showed

this year scored a big victory for the Rose Lane Project, a PBOT investment aimed at improving clogged intersections and providing more express lanes for buses. PBOT would invest gas tax money to get people out of cars. Now, that project faces uncertainty because of the hole in the agency’s budget. “We’re going to be making a lot of hard choices,” Eudaly says. “Everything is on the table.” In 2019, Eudaly toured London and Stockholm, where charging drivers to enter the central city—congestion pricing—delivered traffic reductions nearly as large as the COVID-19 shutdown in Portland.

She came back from the trip (which was paid for by Michael Bloomberg’s foundation) as a committed proponent of using a pricing mechanism to reduce congestion and improve air quality. But she thinks transit improvements must come first and has convened an equitable mobility task force to examine how to implement congestion pricing without penalizing lowincome commuters. Eudaly reviewed Cortright’s findings on COVID-19’s traffic effects at WW’s request. “What I can comfortably say is that [Cortright’s] chart shows we could manage our existing roadways much better than we do now,” Eudaly says. “Our real issue isn’t capacity, it’s how we manage demand.” How ODOT handles congestion is a contentious issue. Earlier this month, despite opposition from critics, including Cortright and Smith, the Oregon Transportation Commission voted to move forward with a project to widen I-5 at the Rose Quarter in an effort to reduce congestion and speed the rush-hour commute. ODOT is proceeding with tolling and congestion pricing studies in parallel with the I-5 expansion, but Brendan Finn, the agency’s urban mobility director, says gaining the necessary federal approval to toll local freeways would be a slow process. “Tolling/congestion pricing on I-5 and I-205 remains years away,” Finn says. Smith acknowledges that convincing the public and policymakers that drivers should pay a toll for something they perceive is currently free—space on the highway—is challenging, but other cities’ examples show it’s possible. “If you look at polling on congestion pricing in London and Stockholm,” Smith says, “it shows people hate it until they try it.” Cortright says the takeaway from the COVID-19 shutdown is that demand management would save drivers time—and therefore money—and is a more efficient way to reduce congestion than building more lanes. “Highways are an incredibly important, expensive asset that work better when you manage them,” he says. “If you were running a restaurant, you wouldn’t just throw a bunch of raw steaks on the table and open the door. But that’s what we’re doing with I-5.”

WESLEY LAPOINTE

NEWS

Age of Accountability

UNEASY REST: Laurelhurst Village, a nursing home in Southeast Portland, had 38 cases of COVID-19 and four deaths among residents and staff as of April 12.

Oregonians demand widespread COVID-19 testing at nursing homes. BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N

rmonahan@wweek.com

The Oregon Veterans’ Home in Lebanon was an early site of Oregon’s COVID-19 outbreak, with 36 cases and six deaths reported as of April 19. The response to the outbreak there may also provide a model of how to counteract the risk the pandemic poses to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, which account for more than half of the state’s deaths from COVID-19. Every staff member and resident of the veterans’ home was offered a test for the virus in early March. And last week, the Linn County Commission voted to fund testing for everyone in nursing homes and other group facilities, including county jails. (The veterans’ home is located in Linn County.) That’s an approach to nursing homes that Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, an emergency room doctor, now calls for adopting statewide. “We need to test everyone. That’s the most bare-bones response,” says Meieran. “Every single nursing home should be testing everyone. There is no excuse. These are the most vulnerable and at-risk people.” Nursing home industry group the Oregon Health Care Association also says it supports widespread testing. Specifically, it’s asking the Oregon Legislature’s Emergency Board to approve $3 million for testing of long-term care workers whose tests might not be covered by health insurance if they are asymptomatic. “We believe there must be widespread testing of health care workers, both to protect them and those they’re caring for,” says Jim Carlson, president and CEO of the association. He attributes the current outbreaks at facilities mostly to asymptomatic workers and newly admitted residents or guests. The calls from nursing homes and Meieran are part of increasing questions whether the state’s response to deaths in nursing homes is adequate. As of last week, roughly 20 percent of Oregon’s cases

that infection control rather than testing should be the focus. But OHA also changed its testing criteria April 20 to allow residents and staff without symptoms to be tested at and more than half the state’s deaths were in nursing such facilities when testing capacity is available. homes and other long-term care facilities, including adult The state has been slow to release crucial data around foster homes. Forty-three out of the state’s 74 deaths were COVID-19 and nursing homes. OHA and the Department in nursing homes, adult foster homes or other facilities as of Human Services only last week shared full data on how of April 19. As of April 20, more than two-thirds of COVID- many deaths and cases were known to have occurred in 19 deaths in Multnomah County occurred in nursing the state’s nursing homes and similar facilities. The dishomes or similar facilities. closure came more than a month after Oregon’s first death It’s not yet clear whether Multnomah County or the from COVID-19. Oregon Health Authority will conduct testing of all nursThe influence of the nursing home industry on Oregon ing home workers and residents. politics is also receiving new scrutiny. Last week, a politiGov. Kate Brown remains noncommittal. “Increasing cal action committee controlled by Gov. Brown reported testing capacity and ensuring the safety of long-term care accepting a $20,000 contribution from a nursing home facility residents are key components of the governor’s company owned by prominent donor Rick Miller. WW plan to reopen Oregon,” says Brown spokeswoman Liz first reported that donation. Miller and Brown’s campaign Merah. “Our office is working say the contribution was unreto determine our next steps in lated to the pandemic, having those regards.” been promised last year, long “WE BELIEVE THERE County public health offibefore COVID-19 arrived. MUST BE WIDESPREAD cials say a lack of quick test It remains unclear what results makes testing workers influence the nursing home TESTING OF HEALTH CARE less useful. “If rapid testing industry has levied on state were available, we could rec- WORKERS, BOTH TO PROTECT regulation. Carlson says he’s ommend facilities test their asked the governor only for THEM AND THOSE THEY’RE staff frequently,” says county more equipment and testing. CARING FOR.” spokeswoman Kate Willson. O n A p r i l 2 0, B r ow n In group homes where an announced the Oregon —JIM CARLSON, OREGON HEALTH outbreak has been identified, National Guard had provided CARE ASSOCIATION county public health officials more masks, gowns and other already recommend testing personal protective equipanyone who has been in contact with a sick person or ment to nursing homes and other facilities. who’s been in the same area of a facility as sick people. More PPE may, in turn, provide an opening for more The health authority doesn’t go that far. “Once an testing. At an April 16 press briefing, Steve Allen, behavoutbreak has been established, OHA does not gener- ioral health director at OHA, noted that testing requires a ally recommend testing everyone, as the results would “tremendous amount of personal protective equipment” not usually change infection control efforts,” says agency to ensure the safety of the medical professionals adminisspokesman Philip Schmidt. “In situations where addi- tering the test. tional testing could help with infection control decisions, “The test strategy…is emerging,” he said. “A decision OHA does recommend additional testing.” with scarce personal protective equipment and scarce That’s the lesson OHA took from the veterans’ home— testing needs to be made with professional guidance.” Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

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NEWS

Tough Sheets Oregon hospitals rely on prison labor to do their laundry during the pandemic. BY TE SS R I SK I

tess@wweek.com

Paul Dawson may have the crummiest job in Oregon. An inmate at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, Dawson, 33, works five days a week at the prison laundry with 180 other coworkers. He makes about 60 cents an hour. The warehouse takes in about 40,000 pounds of laundry each day. The source of those 20 tons of dirty sheets, towels and robes? Thirty-three hospitals and clinics across the state, including Legacy Health and Oregon Health & Science University. Those medical facilities are now at the center of treating COVID-19 patients. And they clean their laundry with prison labor. “It comes in just as it left the hospital. There’s no cleaning process that happens before it gets to us,” Dawson tells WW. “We know it only takes one person to get the whole [prison] infected. We’re just stacked on top of each other. It seems like one of the worst places to be in the country [right now]. Working in the laundry gives me more anxiety about that.” Laundry facilities in the states’ prisons are run by Oregon Corrections Enterprises, which is a highly unusual private business operating inside the state Department of Corrections. Because it doesn’t receive public funding, company spokeswoman Jennifer Starbuck says, it is not legally required to disclose who its threedozen customers are. (Starbuck says all its clients are health care facilities.) Nor does it need to disclose how much it charges for its services, or what its profits are. Throughout the pandemic, Oregon’s prison laundries have continued to accept soiled linens from hospitals across the state with few changes to working conditions. Workers at these laundry facilities, mostly inmates at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla and the Oregon State Penitentiary, get paid between $90 and $100 a month for working full time. This breaks down to roughly 60 cents an hour. “At this time, the [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] is not recommending any changes to the current processing standards for the commercial laundry industry,” Starbuck said in a statement to WW, adding that there is a higher risk of exposure from direct person-to-person contact than through contaminated objects. Starbuck added that the corrections department has increased its frequency of cleaning laundry facilities, and that one of its hospital clients sent an infectious disease control team to inspect prison laundries this month: “No major concerns were identified, only minor adjustments.” A spokeswoman for Oregon Health & Science University tells WW the hospital has been using Oregon Corrections Enterprises’ laundry service since 1995, and that the two entities work together “through processes designed to protect patients, employees and laundry workers.”

BITTER PILL HILL: Oregon Health and Science University is among the hospitals using prison labor to launder their linens.

Legacy spokeswoman Kristin Whitney tells WW its hospital in Silverton, Ore., has used the prison laundry service for 16 years. Providence spokeswoman Kathleen Obenland says Providence St. Mary’s in Walla Walla, Wash., has sent its laundry to Two Rivers since September 2015. “For questions about the safety of prisoners at Two Rivers and the precautions being taken in the laundry there, please contact [them] directly,” Obenland said. Concerns about the effects of COVID -19 on inmates have received widespread press in Oregon over the past month. But hospital use of prison labor has received less attention. Because of Measure 17, passed by voters in 1994, inmates in Oregon must keep working full time. Some of that work keeps the prisons running: mopping floors and cooking meals. But other work is contracted out through Oregon Corrections Enterprises to sell products and services to outside entities. Inmates can request to switch jobs, but the process is often lengthy and convoluted, lawyers tell WW. “You have people being paid pennies on the dollar,” says Juan Chavez, project director of the Oregon Justice Rights Center, “and a state constitutional mandate that they do that work. The consequences of not working results in disciplinary punishment.” Dan White, an inmate at Two Rivers Correctional Facility, says he’s frightened by the work. “I can’t quit. Measure 17 means I have to be compliant with worker programs,” says White, 38. “I’m worried that I won’t make it back out to my family. I wasn’t sent to die in here.” In the state penitentiary’s laundry room, an assembly line of men in light green and blue gowns place the soiled linens— sheets, scrubs, surgical gowns, towels—into four massive washing machines, each about 10 feet tall and 4 feet wide. Workers touching soiled laundry wear masks and gowns to do the laundry, Dawson says, which is the same personal protective equipment they wore prior to the pandemic. White, who folds clean laundry, says he doesn’t get any PPE to do his job. “We’re standing right next to the soil room, so all that air blows on top of you,” White says. “They don’t have us socially distanced. We’re just crammed in a little room. There’s like 80 of us. I look over, and there’s four dudes from the soil room wearing the scrubs. Like, really, dude?” In response to an inquiry from WW, the governor’s office said it has instructed the ODOC director to ensure facilities are equipped with PPE. “Adults in custody who work in the OCE laundry are providing a vital service at a time when the demand from hospitals is high,” Brown spokeswoman Liz Merah says. “Their work—which DOC is ensuring continues safely—is helping to keep our frontline health care workers safe during this critical time.” White, who makes $100 a month doing laundry, says he and his co-workers feel they’re being exploited to help hospitals function. “We’re providing essential services to these workers during this critical time. I’m facing the potential of a deadly virus getting into my environment and me dying in prison,” White says. “Hell, it would even be nice to have an urn of coffee down there.” Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

HENRY CROMETT

CHECKING IN: A drive-thru COVID-19 testing center is set up in a Northeast Portland parking lot along Interstate 84.

LIVING WITH IT

Three Oregonians talk about their close encounters with the coronavirus.

As told to Nigel Jaquiss and Aaron Mesh

The life of every Oregonian has changed. Yet for the vast majority of us, the COVID-19 virus remains an abstraction. Yes, most of us are stuck at home, venturing out in masks for exercise and groceries. Many of us have lost our jobs. All of us wonder how long the shutdown will last, and how it will upend our well-planned but now chaotic futures. Still, the virus is a blur at the edge of our vision, a plague we hope will stay off our doorstep. That’s the essence of what makes COVID-19 so pernicious: uncertainty. Although COVID-19 has brought Oregon to its knees, the number of people who have actually tested positive for it is tiny: about 2,000 at press time out of a population of 4.2 million. State health officials estimate the number of people who’ve actually contracted the disease is closer to 8,000, which is still less than 0.2 percent of the population. And most of those who have tested positive—about 96 percent—survive. Little wonder that for many of us, the disease doesn’t seem quite real. That’s not true for the three people who tell their stories in the following pages. For them, COVID-19 is vivid, immediate and part of their every day. In prior coverage of the pandemic, WW has

examined the workplaces and workers on the front lines of fighting the virus. This week, we wanted to understand what it’s like for those who confront it in a different and more immediate way—because they test positive, or take someone to the hospital when they’re too sick to walk, or intubate someone who can no longer breathe. These three people are in close quarters with the one thing most of us are desperate to avoid. In recent days, calls have grown to reopen the state of Oregon for business. It’s hard to measure to what extent that demand is pragmatic or whether it’s foolish. Lives are being ruined by the shutdown as well as by the virus. But it’s important to know the risks of reopening the state. That’s what these stories show. No matter when Oregon reboots, the experiences you’ll read about in the following pages are going to become more regular in the coming months. Oregon may return to normal—but encounters with the pernicious virus will be part of the new normal. We asked each of the three about the reality COVID-19 brought to their lives. Their answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. CONT. on page 12 Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

Crabb, 49, works at Oregon Health & Science University, where the hospital has a floor just for COVID-19 patients. A self-described computer nerd who works in IT in the School of Dentistry, Crabb doesn’t interact with patients at all. It didn’t matter: She was among the early wave of confirmed cases of the virus, testing positive March 22.

I was the most scared when my wife walked into our bedroom with a spiral notebook. She was afraid I could die. She said, “Write your passwords down.” For computer nerds like us, passwords are everything. I said, “You know, you’re not wrong.” I was very sick. That day came after I had thought the worst was over. It started in March. I had been feeling a little rough, but I felt really sick on the 19th. Then the 21st, my fever spiked to 103 and I started coughing. It was a dry, heavy cough, not productive. I thought: Shit. I have it. I’m a systems application analyst in the dental school at OHSU. I’ve worked at the university since 2001. When I got sick, I was already working from home, but they told me to come in for a COVID -19 test on Monday, March 22. At that point, they had set up drivethru testing for employees. My wife drove me in our blue 2017 Subaru Forester. Was I scared? Yes. But I was superconcerned because my mother-in-law died suddenly on March 18 and I’d been around her and her oldest and best friends, staying at her house. I was pretty sure I had it, and I was afraid I’d infected them. Who else might I have given this thing to? We got to OHSU first thing after it opened at about 8:30 am. I was like the third person in line. They had a booth set up outside. One person in personal protective equipment approached the car. They knew who I was. A tech came forward and put a swab in my throat. The test results take some time, and my doctor told me we also needed to rule out the flu. I went to ZoomCare on Mississippi and did that. When I got home, I started calling people I’d been around to warn them I probably had it. The call from the lab came at 11:30 Wednesday night. I thought, wow, they’ve been working all day and all night. The wait was OK—there wasn’t much suspense because I was pretty sure I had it. I did a lot of thinking about how I might have gotten it. I remember reading a lot on the MAX Yellow Line train on the way home. I think that’s where I got it. In February and early March, I was watching on the train every day as more and more people on the train were ill. There were so many people coughing. I thought, “We don’t know enough about the disease. It must be here.” And I was thinking, “This train—it’s a petri dish.” Tuesday and Wednesday, I actually felt a little better. I still had a fever, but I was bringing it down with Tylenol and taking massive amounts of vitamin C and D. But I was feeling well enough to work part of the time. I was like, “Woo-hoo! I’m done with it!”

For Crabb, the uncertainty of COVID-19 is about whom she might have infected: elderly relatives and friends, coworkers, or scores of people she doesn’t even know. Only about 1,700 of Oregon’s 4.2 million people have tested positive for the virus. Crabb is one of few who can describe what it’s like.

On Friday, March 27, the seventh day I had it, things went downhill fast. I woke up with a raging headache. I was having a little difficulty breathing. I felt I like my chest was in a vise. We have a pulse oximeter, a device for measuring oxygen in the blood. If I was paying attention, I could keep it up in the high 90s. If I didn’t pay attention, it would drop. My doctor said it was important to keep the reading up over 93. My fever went back up to 102. And everything ached: It’s like what people who’ve had chemo or are immunosuppressed tell you: Your body hurts all over and can’t move. I didn’t lose my sense of smell, but everything I put in my mouth tasted old and moldy, flat and sour. It was awful. My wife is like me: a typical computer nerd. She’s very shy. She talked to the advice nurse three times that weekend. But when she called my doctor’s office, that’s when I knew how concerned she was. All I could think about was, please let me sleep. I just want to sleep. I think out of a 72-hour period, I must have slept for 60 hours. I was zombified. Late Sunday night and into Monday, my fever cleared up and the pain went away. I have not had a fever since March 30 or the 31st. I’ve been clear from the quarantine since March 7. The first thing I did when I could leave the house was to take our dogs, an 11-year-old Aussie-Siberian husky named Rufus and 5-year-old husky-timber wolf mix named Tonks, to the dog park out by Portland International Raceway. I can’t wait to go hiking again. I’ve already missed three camping trips. It’s killing me that the season is closed. But my recovery is pretty slow. I’m tired, 14 or 15 days after all symptoms cleared up. There’s a big cardiovascular impact: I’m getting winded on a half-mile evening dog walk. For me there are a couple of takeaways. The first is, there’s no way my wife doesn’t have it—she took care of me every step of the way—yet she’s been totally asymptomatic. There must be a whole bunch of people out there who have it and don’t know it. That’s really dangerous, and people really don’t seem to understand that. Second, this virus changes everything in our society. We are culturally used to a flu that knocks you out for maybe three days. We don’t think about viruses in terms of a 12-to-14-day illness. If my experience was typical, employers and everybody else will have to adjust because on a regular basis, this is like a 14-day flu. Think what that means for people’s jobs and their lives. That’s pretty staggering.

“I THOUGHT: SHIT. I HAVE IT.”

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

WESLEY LAPOINTE

TRISHA CRABB

Laas, 50, is a firefighter and paramedic at Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue with 25 years on the job. He’s trained to run toward danger, whether it be to enter a burning building or pull a victim from a still-smoking wrecked vehicle. But now, the most routine call for medical assistance—that’s most of his calls—could result in an exposure to the virus. (About

We’d responded to the same location three times that night already. The Elmonica MAX platform in Beaverton. Different patients, each with possible COVID symptoms. But this woman was in a wheelchair, suitcases along with her. She’d probably been riding the MAX train until the last run of the night. We got there at 4:30 in the morning, about a week ago. Metro West Ambulance was there just before us. I see them walking with this woman in a wheelchair, and her feet are dragging on the ground. So we hop out, we run over there. She’s unconscious, unresponsive, severe respiratory distress, audible wheezing. She’s really sick. Her oxygen saturations are bottomed out and she’s in severe distress. I have to do an interosseous line on her—that’s just basically drilling into her bone so they can give her fluids. Just get her oxygen saturation up. We could either do it on scene or just boogie to the hospital. As we rolled into the hospital, she had to be paralyzed to be intubated. I would be surprised if she survived. How did this woman get walked by for hours like that? She had been there for three hours, and people walked past her several times. She wasn’t making noise. She wasn’t making trouble. She was quiet. She was unobtrusive. She was an older black woman staying out of the way, not causing any trouble. So people just thought she was sleeping, and she was getting sicker and sicker and sicker the whole time. And she just kind of got forgot. I went off duty for a cancer treatment in March 2019. I had throat cancer, and I went through surgery and radiation. Last month, I came back on the line after being off for about a year. Things have changed quite a bit. Pretty much every medical call we go on, the entire time we are wearing a fully encapsulated Level B hazardous materials suit. Imagine a coverall. Plasticized. It’s basically heavy duty Tyvec. Hot: yes. Sweaty: yes. It’s essentially like wearing a fully encapsulating Gore-Tex rain suit, with a hood, on a sunny, 70-degree day. No pit zips and you can’t unzip to let it breathe. Oh yeah, and we are, most often, wearing a full face mask with filter—which has a certain degree of breathing resistance. In the early days, it really freaked patients out. They knew things were changing. Normally, we really pride ourselves on making connections with people. And a lot of what we’re doing now is: “Come outside. We’ll meet you at the front door.”

WESLEY LAPOINTE

MATT LAAS 8,000 firefighters around the country are currently quarantined according to the International Association of Firefighters.) That’s an especially fraught prospect for Laas, who is recovering from throat cancer. He discussed how his work has changed—starting with the COVID-19 case he remembers most vividly.

Then we walk them out to the driveway or a sheltered spot, if it’s raining. We have portable chairs. Metal and plastic foldout chairs. And that allows us to bring people outside and sit them down so we can do an assessment on them. Two shifts ago, we had a cardiac arrest and we just grabbed the patient, brought them straight outside, and worked the cardiac arrest in the front driveway. Everything you bring into a house you have to assume has a certain level of contamination. Last night, April 17, we were inside a house to help this elderly woman that fell down and had very fragile skin. She was bleeding everywhere. There was no indication of any COVID symptoms whatsoever. But the one of us that actually made patient contact— picked her up and put her on the stretcher—came out, and we have 1-gallon garden sprayers that are filled with a bleach solution. Head to toe—bleach-solutioned her down. Doffed all of her gear into a bag, let it soak for 15 minutes. Saturated in bleach. But our usual connection with our patients and their families is very different. We’re taking your mother to the hospital. You can’t go to the hospital. You can’t get in the ambulance with us because there’s the potential of cross-contamination. I just have straight conversations with people. I say: “We’re taking them to the hospital. They will likely not let you see your wife, your husband, your grandmother, whatever. She could be in there for several days. So take a second.” People are scrambling. They’re nervous. It’s hectic. And I just started slowing it down: Nothing’s going to change in the next minute, right? Let’s take 60 seconds. Make a connection with your loved one. Let’s just do this right. According to my oncologist, nine months post-radiation, I don’t have a significantly suppressed immune system. I would probably get sick more readily than I did prior to all my treatment. So am I worried? Absolutely. And I’m very cautious. On a day-to-day basis, we’re doing a job. And I’m still working. That fact is not lost on me. I feel really privileged. Yes, there’s a hazard, no doubt. But what we do is hazardous in general. It’s either this, or it’s on a freeway with cars whizzing by at 50, 60 miles an hour in the dark or any night, or it’s hanging off the side of a building or going down into the ditch to pull somebody out. We’re not heroes for this. We’re just trying to take care of people. Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

For Dexter, 47, who works in the intensive care units at Kaiser Sunnyside in Clackamas and Kaiser Westside in Hillsboro, the situation is different: Unlike Laas, she can be sure when she reports to work each day she’ll be in contact with patients diagnosed with COVID-19. She’s a critical care pulmonologist and treats the most severe cases. (Dexter is also running for the Democratic

The person was so sick that it went pretty fast. In early March, I was covering our COVID unit. We had had someone who had been doing poorly for a while. They were older and had other diseases, and those are the patients who are having the hardest time surviving this. And their family, with a lot of discussion, had decide they wanted to let them go. That conversation is normally one you have in the room, with the family able to see their face. But if you had COVID, there was no visitation. We had to have that conversation by phone. Not everyone is technologically savvy enough to do a Zoom call, so most of those conversations are over the phone. And the person was Catholic, and their family really wanted us to try to figure out how to deliver last rites. We did what we could. The priest couldn’t come in. The church apparently has made other mechanisms acceptable. The priest is on FaceTime, and was able to give the sacrament as much as they could. There was no holy water, none of that. But it was as good as they could get. I wasn’t in the room. To save personal protective equipment, our nurse was in the room with the patient. And she called the family and did FaceTime before they passed. I was standing there watching her as she turned off the blood pressure medicines that were keeping the pressure up, and watching their heart rate. It slowed down right away. I looked at the nurse—who’s the baddest-ass, most amazingly resilient nurse I’ve ever worked with, the person you want any time stuff is going badly—and she was crying. She looked at me and said, “I can’t imagine how we’re going to do this.” She said, “I was able to be in this room when the person passed. We are going to, over and over again, have these patients alone when they die. And no one’s going to be able to hold their hand.” At that point, we were still preparing for the surge. So we’re looking at each other through the glass as this person dies, knowing that their loved ones want to be there and can’t be. This person is dying and has no one they know or recognize at their bedside. And that this is not only as good as it’s going to get, but that it’s so unacceptable from where we are at this point in our careers. We would never choose that for a patient. So I think that’s really been the most profoundly upsetting parts of this: the distance that patients have had to have from their families, and feeling like, when we get busy, these patients might die alone. And how awful is it to have anyone in that situation.

nomination in Oregon House District 33, which covers Northwest Portland and parts of Beaverton.) For Dexter, the uncertainty is of a different kind: whether her patients will survive and whether, if they are going to die, they will be allowed any kind of closure with their loved ones—or whether, for the sake of safety, they must die alone.

We never got to a point where we couldn’t deliver care. It was all hands on deck, so we added shifts we’d never added before. I think the worst part was when we weren’t sure how things were working. Doctors, we’re data-driven, scientifically based professionals. There’s no data behind this telling us how to manage it. There’s no experts in this. We were being told things on the calls that were our best educated guess that are really not true. We didn’t think asymptomatic spread happened. This has been humbling in so many different ways. We are used to being able to find the right answer. And there’s no right answers right now. I’m not someone who’s afraid of stress. You don’t go into critical care if you don’t like being stressed. Usually, things are under control and manageable, and then there’s always the chance that, forgive my French, that shit’s gonna hit the fan. And that’s part of what you like about it. I can’t imagine fighter pilots like to always have sane, calm situations. There are some of us that choose more stressful careers. And yet the stress of not knowing how to control my situation is something I’ve never signed up for. That has been what has been draining. That’s what’s been emotionally depleting. Not knowing if I can take my kids in my car because I had COVID all over my hair and my neck and I drove home. Does that mean it’s in the car? My kids haven’t been in the car that I drive since this all started. I can’t come in the regular door because my shoes have been in the hospital, and I have to put my clothes in a separate washing bin and separate washing machine. We drew the line at me not coming home. Some people maintained distancing to such a point that people are living in a separate house or in a trailer in the driveway. My husband is also a physician. We’re a two-doctor family. Just the other day, we were actually just hanging out in our bedroom on different devices, texting our family members, making sure they knew where they were in the line of taking care of our children. And we had to have the conversation with our kids who are 13 and 16. Do you go live with your cousins or do you stay in separate cities? We had that conversation, and our daughter looked at me, and she was like, “Are you gonna die?” They took it all in stride, and then she was like, “Wait a second, is this real?” And I think that was the moment that I was like, yeah, I guess I don’t know.

“I’M NOT SOMEONE WHO’S AFRAID OF STRESS.”

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

WESLEY LAPOINTE

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Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

STREET: GHOST TOWN

“With the passage of time, our civilization progresses at an imperceptible rate. Within the last few months, however, the city that we all call home has gone through an incredibly rapid change. I’ve focused mostly on highlighting small, local businesses as they are the most vulnerable to what is currently taking place. My intention with this series is to create a narrative about the finite nature of the industrial landscape that we live in, and to challenge ourselves to use this as a chance to address the question of what kind of world we want to live in. Is this not only our present, but also our future? I’ve shot this series on a Mamiya RB67 medium format camera using Ilford Delta 100 film. Shooting with film is often chaotic and unpredictable, though the outcome is permanent, and it more honestly captures the imperfect beauty of the world as it is. It’s important to me that the method in which I create work is as much a part of the story that I tell as are the final images, and shooting with film adds a surreal, timeless quality to photographs which makes it difficult to place them in a specific era.” MIKE VOS (deadcitiesphoto.com) 18

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

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STREET: GHOST TOWN

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Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

alberta rose theatre presents

STARTERS

LIVE STREAM CONCERTs 5 nights a week!

4/24

DR, DANA YIP IN HIS UNDERWEAR MASK

THE BEST QUOTES SO FAR FROM WW’S DISTANT VOICES INTERVIEW SERIES Two weeks ago, WW launched “Distant Voices,” a daily video interview series for the era of social distancing. Our reporters are asking Portlanders what they’re doing during quarantine— among other questions. Below are the best quotes from guests so far. Want to watch the videos in full? See wweek.com/distant-voices. “It’s one documentary where there’s literally not a good person in sight. How bad do you have to be for me to be like, ‘I think the tigers are the heroes, and I hope they eat someone’?” —Comic Mohanad Elshieky on Tiger King “Literature has been here for thousands of years, it’ll be here for many more thousands of years. Books were dragged along with soldiers and they were dragged along through pandemics. There’s a reason people keep them so close.” —Andrew Proctor, director of Literary Arts, on why he believes the organization will survive the pandemic “It isn’t what I was hoping for in any way, shape or form, but it will birth a million dissertations, because it’s such a unique event.” —Economist Tim Duy on observing the economic impact of COVID-19 “So much of my inspiration from investing comes from being in crowds of people—what people are wearing, how they paint their faces creatively…I miss that. Being in this sanitary room, trying to think of how to invest capital for 20 to 30 years, I’m missing the inspiration from the street a lot. So I’ve learned that about myself. And I like sunflower seeds.” —Rukaiyah Adams, chief investment officer for Meyer Memorial Trust “You can laugh, but it protects!” —Dr. Dana Anthony Yip of West Linn, Ore., on his novel makeshift mask idea: boxer briefs “I’ve been practicing 80 percent social distancing for the last 40 years.” —Comic Dan Weber

5/1

“One of the things I never got over, and loved very much, whenever I would go through the studio, there’d be production assistants, and they’d say, ‘Talent walking!’ I’d look around and say, ‘Who is it? Who’s here?’ And they’d say, ‘It’s you, dumbass.’” —Portland cannabis chef Leather Storrs on shooting his new Netflix show, Cooked With Cannabis “Vote by mail is an important antidote to racist voter suppression and COVID-19. Politicians at the federal level have to step up and stop suppressing votes.” —Samantha Gladu, executive director of get-out-the-vote nonprofit Next Up “What’s funnier than ripping a fart in dead silence while everyone is nervous about a rocket hitting us?” —Comic Shain Brenden on developing his sense of humor while serving as a medic in the Navy “Afterward, there will have been situations where we can ask, ‘When this happens again, with a virus that is extremely deadly, how can we share the socially responsibility of protecting each other and going into quarantine without letting state powers increase their control in a way they may not want to give back?’” —Author Emily Suvada “Things are naturally going to change when we’re stuck with people all the time. Hopefully, if it’s a spouse or your family or someone you’re in a committed relationship with, you’re going to enjoy spending time with them. But enjoying spending time with someone is different from being stuck inside with someone.” —Gretchen Leigh, education coordinator at She Bop, on the effect of COVID-19 on long-term relationships

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Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

“I’m going to get laid like a motherfucker.” —Singer Storm Large on what she’s going to do when quarantine is over

GET INSIDE H OW I 'M SP EN D I NG MY Q UA R ANT I NE

WHAT TO DO WHILE YOU'RE STUCK AT HOME

H E AR T H IS

APRIL 22-28 P LAY THI S

COURTESY OF IANKARMEL.COM

Going In, Constellate PDX Artists When going out isn’t allowed, Going In is the only option. It’s a 20-track compilation curated by venerable Southeast Portland dance club Holocene, released to raise money while its doors are closed. Half the proceeds go to the contributing artists, and the rest goes toward the venue’s ongoing operating and maintenance costs. But Going In isn’t just a fundraiser— it’s an elegy for live music in Portland. The songs are structured in a loose arc that simulates the trajectory of a night at the club. Shy Girls’ Dan Vidmar provided a “sample pack” of sounds for each artist to draw from, and the contributors had 48 hours to assemble their songs. Most tracks lean toward the more atmospheric end of house and techno—what one of Holocene’s wildest club nights might sound like in the hazy memories of a housebound partier. The rest are largely ambient, making ample use of the field recordings Vidmar snuck into the sample collection. The most surprising track is “Cascadia Friday,” by Portland producer Paul Dickow, who records as Strategy. Clubbier and goofier than the beatless ambient soup he’s known for, Dickow says he was trying to invoke the music that was popular at the club shortly after it opened in 2003, when he’d often perform DJ sets as a warmup for touring acts. Dickow describes Holocene as a godsend for electronic music in Portland during the early 2000s. “There weren’t a lot of spaces for electronic music, but there also just wasn’t a lot to do,” he says. “Portland used to be a lot more boring, even worse if you weren’t 21. A lot of people are too new to Portland to remember those days, but that’s what it’ll be like if we let all these institutions die.” DANIEL BROMFIELD. BUY IT: Download Going In at constellatepdx.bandcamp.com.

Ian Karmel Occupation: Comedian, writer for The Late Late Show With James Corden Age: 35 City: Los Angeles How many people do you live with? Roommate and fellow comedian Zak Toscani. What have you been eating? I made a big soup. Outside of that, I’ve been alternating between delivery and just big, joyless salads, so I get vegetables. What have you been watching, listening to or playing during quarantine? Romcoms, for the first time ever. Just a ton of romcoms. Music-wise, lots of old reggae for some reason. Also, I decided to try to get into Pearl Jam. It’s kinda working! Have you picked up a new hobby or resumed an old one? I’ve been working a lot still so far. I’m sure that will change soon—then I’ll find out which hobbies come back. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done so far? I got really, really, really stoned and freestyle-rapped over a bunch of Pearl Jam songs. I was really feeling myself, too. I was thinking, “Dude, you’re really good at this,” while I was doing it. When’s the last time you were closer than 6 feet to someone outside your household? At the grocery store a couple days ago. What’s your secret to staying sane? I’m really good at being alone. I always have been. I’m very worried about everyone, but what’s being asked of me to help—staying inside—has been very easy for me so far. What’s the first thing you’re doing when this is all over? I’m going to fly home to Portland, and I’m going to go out to dinner with my family. I hope they’re all alive still. What has quarantine taught you about yourself ? I like romcoms and Pearl Jam.

E ART H DAY

Three Useful Weeds You Can Forage In Your Own Backyard Weeds get a bad rap. Sure, many of them are often an invasive species. But according to Peter Michael Bauer, executive director of outdoor education nonprofit Rewild Portland, they’re far from useless. “There are so many weeds in people’s yards they don’t know are edible,” he says. “That’s part of the thing for me— educating people about the things in their yard they can eat and don’t know and have demonized.” This Earth Day, the greater outdoors are basically off limits, but it’s still possible to interact with the natural world right in your own neighborhood. Here, Bauer offers a quick primer on three weeds that are easy to find and don’t require any further processing to consume. Important note: Only forage in areas you know have not been sprayed with chemical herbicides—your own backyard, for example. It’s not like you can travel far right now, anyway.

Return of the Obra Dinn (Unity) There is an elegant charm to old, monochromatic films shared by early video games. While retro-themed games often call on the 16-bit sprites of classic RPGs or the cartoonish proportions of old mascot platformers, Lucas Pope’s Return of the Obra Dinn instead channels the dithered, 1-bit black-andwhite graphics of ’80s computers like the Macintosh. By stripping visual presentation to its essentials, Obra Dinn has space to focus on the density and precision of its details instead. A ship, lost at sea in 1803, reappears in 1807. Details of its long absence remain a mystery. The player controls an insurance agent-cum-detective who boards the ship to investigate and compile a report on the deaths of all 60 crew. They are armed with a handy ledger and, more curiously, a pocket watch with the power to grant short visions into the past. Players can explore short vignettes of key moments during the ship’s history that contain just enough information to connect the dots but never enough to instill certainty. Piecing together the vast, interconnected logic puzzle of Obra Dinn is a task that masterfully tests players’ powers of observation and deduction while placing them at the center of a gradually unfolding tragedy. It is minimalist gold and, perhaps, the preeminent detective game. Pour some coffee, put on your thinking cap, and dive in. NOLAN GOOD. AVAILABLE FOR: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, macOS, Microsoft Windows.

Dandelion What can you do with it? The dandelion’s bitter compounds assist the liver in producing more bile, which stimulates digestion and acts as a cleansing medicine. The roasted roots in the fall and winter make a delicious, stimulating, coffeelike tea. What should you know? People don’t know the difference between dandelion and catsear, and catsear doesn’t taste very good. Catsear flowers later in the summer.

Chickweed What can you do with it? It’s a really succulent plant. It’s really juicy and watery, so it goes good as topping on a salad, or even on pad thai in place of bean sprouts. What should you be aware of? It has a few lookalikes that don’t taste very good. The chickweed stem has a small little line of hairs, which is one way to tell it apart. Some of them have hair stems all around— those are not chickweed.

Lambsquarters What can you do with it? Some people call it “wild spinach.” You can stir fry it, add it to eggs in a scramble, anything like that. What should you know? With spring greens, you want to get them early. Generally speaking, as the year goes on, those annuals are going to get woodier and woodier.

See rewildportland.com for free online courses related to foraging and other outdoor survival skills.

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

FOOD & DRINK

Editor: Matthew Singer / Contact: msinger@wweek.com

T.T S E N G / F L I C K R

PREVIEW

Another novelty? Its region-specific items. In Austin, for example, the special is a Lockhart Link—a ShackBurger topped with jalapeño-cheese sausage from the famed Texas BBQ joint Kreuz Market. New England has the Surf ’n Shack, which is basically a lobster roll burger, while Seattle’s Montlake Double Cut places Oregon Country Beef and Beecher’s Just Jack cheese on a Macrina Bakery bun. Whenever Shake Shack finally opens here, what might we get? Here are four possible Portland Shake Shack specials.

The Bacon Maple Burger

Shaking All Over Shake Shack is coming. What will the fast food chain do for its Portland-specific burger? BY JAS O N CO H E N

@cohenesque

Should Portland be excited about Shake Shack coming to town? A few years ago, absolutely. Before the influx of high-quality, fast food-inspired burgers—ones with thin patties, special sauce and squishy buns—it would’ve been the best in town. But then came Burger Stevens. And Bless Your Heart. And Super Deluxe. And Hit the Spot. And the sliders at Canard. Now, when the state’s first Shake Shack eventually opens in Southwest Portland, it’s debatable whether it would make the local top 10. Still, whenever I find myself in a city with a Shake Shack—New York, obviously, but also Philadelphia and Austin—I rarely pass it up. It’s not just the Martin’s potato rolls or so-called ShackSauce that sets the chain apart from its peers but the ShackBurger patty itself, cooked medium rare rather than well-done, its fresh-ground, proprietary-blended beefiness palpable on the tongue.

TOP 5

BUZZ LIST

Where to order beer this week.

1. Migration Brewing 2828 NE Glisan St., 503-206-5221, migrationbrewing.com. In the Before Times, Migration Brewing’s converted radiator garage pub was a reliable place to find neighbors congregating after work, watching basketball games or reminiscing about family vacations. But at least we’ve still got the beer. Hoppy offerings, like the West Coast-style Straight Outta Portland and juicy Mo-Haze-Ic, are where Migration truly shines. But no matter your tolerance for IPAs, you’re likely to find a complex beer to quench your thirst.

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

Shake Shack is not the state fair or a minor league baseball team—we’re not going to actually get a burger with a doughnut as the bun. But a collaboration with Voodoo Doughnut isn’t out of the question. Imagine a cheeseburger with barbecue sauce and IPA-marinated crispy shallots, plus bacon and maple-infused sauce.

A Burger Is a Sandwich It’s almost inevitable that Shake Shack would team up with sausage and charcuterie maker Olympia Provisions. But instead of going the wiener route—a return to Shake Shack’s roots as a hot dog cart—how about a burger that draws on both Olympia and Lardo? Put griddled mortadella and Mama Lil’s peppers atop the patty, keep the ShackSauce and American cheese. Voilà!

The Pok Shack What if Ike’s wings were a sandwich? Shake Shack’s buttermilkmarinated Chick’n Shack is already exemplary, so hit it with Pok Pok’s famous caramelized Vietnamese fish sauce, plus some pickled vegetables (do chua) and hoisin mayo, and you’d have a Portland fast food-bahn mi hybrid that definitely beats Fuku.

Chocolatier Concretes Many of Shake Shack’s specials are limited to the dessert menu. Its seasonal Pie Oh My concretes—custard whipped with mix-ins— use local pastry partners, while donating 5 percent to a partner’s chosen charity. Lauretta Jean’s would be a natural there, while its year-round concrete has to include some local chocolate. Start with Woodblock, Ranger or Cloudforest, just to name three.

2. Occidental Brewing 6635 N Baltimore Ave., No. 102, 503-719-7102, occidentalbrewing.com. Occidental founders Ben and Dan Engler never bothered to wait for drinkers’ tastes to learn to embrace lighter craft beer. They just started making impressive lagers from the get go, and are now perfectly positioned to attract the wave of customers moving away from hoppier beverages. Occidental’s most popular flagships, like the hefeweizen or altbier, hover around the 5 percent ABV mark.

3. Von Ebert Brewing 131 NW 13th Ave., 503-820-7721; 14021 NE Glisan St., 503-878-8708; vonebertbrewing.com. Ordering from Von Ebert is always a difficult decision: Do you get one of the tongue-stunning IPAs brewed by Sam Pecoraro’s team, or a beautifully intricate lager or wild ale made in Sean Burke’s facility? The easiest solution is to just say screw it and get a bunch. The Volatile Substance IPA has heady pine notes— what drops of dew in a nearby forest would taste like just before evaporating.

4. Level Beer 5211 NE 148th Ave., 503-714-1222, 7840 SW Capitol Highway, levelbeer.com. Level’s founders have children, which pushed them to produce beers with an alcohol content that won’t leave your head spinning, like the crisp, 4.5 percent ABV Grisetta Stone, whose flavors bob between citrus and black pepper. Two IPAs—the West Coast-style Game On! and the hazy Stable Genius—continue to be the brewery’s top performers, both in execution and popularity.

5. West Coast Grocery 1403 SE Stark St., 503-477-6011, westcoastgrocerycompany.com. The fifth generation’s West Coast Grocery sells no produce, but owner Charlie Hyde’s ancestors would be proud of the current agricultural products. The cozy corner bar across from Revolution Hall makes one of the finest cream ales in town, and its hoppy beers are quietly rising in the ranks as well. Pay a visit to the beer window, open 2-7 pm daily.

TOP 5

HOT PLATES

Where to get takeout or delivery this week.

1. Flying Fish Co. 3004 E Burnside St., 971-806-6747, flyingfishportland.com. For a city that’s bisected by a river, Portland has a shocking scarcity of fish sandwiches on its restaurant menus. Stop searching and head straight for Flying Fish Company. The 6-ounce fillet of steelhead is prepped simply and topped with a green confetti of slightly sweet cabbage and earthy kale doused in a piquant marinade of lime, jalapeño, cilantro and Arbequina olive oil. The dressing’s citrus is so bright, it will leave you vibrating like the first sunny, 70-degree day in spring. How to order: See website.

2. Ranch Pizza 1760 NE Dekum St., 971-288-5187; 916 NW 21st Ave., 971-202-7324; ranchpdx.com. Whether or not you believe ranch belongs on pizza, this joint’s Sicilianstyle deep dish evolved from a food cart to a brick-and-mortar as a direct result of instant popularity. You’re welcome to enjoy an entire pie, which includes the sausage-based cult favorite No. 4 or the aptly named Meat Tornado, but the density of the crust is all but guaranteed to put even the most hardened pizza addict in a coma by the end of just one slice. Delivery and takeout is available at the Woodlawn location and the just-opened outpost on Northwest 21st Avenue. How to order: Call in for pickup; delivery through Caviar.

3. Quaintrelle 3936 N Mississippi Ave., 503-200-5787, quaintrelle.co. After generating huge buzz upon opening in 2016, Quaintrelle lost some of its mojo over the ensuing years, but the New American bistro recently found new energy under chef Ryley Eckersley. Its takeout menu rotates, but recent offerings have included buttermilk fried chicken, braised lamb shank and “Dope Ass Fried Rice.” What’s more, the restaurant is now offering “everything but the booze” cocktail kits so you can make some of its house specials at home. How to order: See website for prepaid pickup; delivery through Caviar.

4. Nong’s Khao Man Gai 609 SE Ankeny St., Suite C, 503-740-2907, khaomangai.com. Starting with a food cart and working her way up to a series of restaurants, Nong Poonsukwattana became a Portland icon for her khao man gai—delicately seasoned, poached chicken on fluffy rice, served with cucumber, cilantro and sipping broth. It’s an exercise in perfection and simplicity. How to order: Caviar, DoorDash.

5. Stevens Italiano 736 SE Grand Ave., 503-801-8017, stevensitaliano.com. Bad news: Burger Stevens, perhaps the best interpretation of a Shake Shackstyle fast food burger found in Portland, is on hiatus. The good news? Owner Don Salamone has pivoted to Italian food. At Stevens Italiano—operating out of the to-go window at inner Southeast night spot Dig A Pony—families (or gluttonous singletons) can pick up huge multicourse meals headlined by red-sauce classics like manicotti, lasagna and meatball Parmigiano. The menu changes daily, and only 20 dinners are available, so check the website and plan ahead. How to order: See website.

TAKE ME OUT

Oma God Gado Gado’s “Asian stoner food” pop-up features a plate of brisket and green beans just like Grandma used to make. BY AN D I P R E W I T T

aprewitt@wweek.com

On a recent warm spring evening, Gado Gado threw a block party for one. The sun was dimming, but the restaurant’s parking lot off Northeast César E. Chávez Boulevard buzzed with a bright energy of its own making. Neon pink, green and blue fliers lined the street-facing windows, a disco ball dangled from an instant canopy sheltering to-go order pickup just outside the front door, and a collection of potted plants seemed to sway along to a rap remix of the Zombies’ “Time of the Season.” I had the shindig all to myself. The whole experience was buoyantly surreal—maybe the most fun I’d ever had picking up food, even with the nearest people being tucked in the dining room—just a few masked employees—well over the recommended 6 feet of distancing away. Co-owners Thomas and Mariah PishaDuffly intended it to be that way. “Instead of just showing up and grabbing your thing off the curb,” Thomas says, “you get this touch that says, ‘Hey, we’re still thinking of you, and maybe this can brighten your day a little bit.’” Like other restaurants that have abruptly pivoted to new models in the wake of the coronavirus and the ensuing mandated closure of dining rooms across the state, the couple briefly considered selling family-style meals that can be completed at home, but Thomas says that just didn’t fit well with the experience he and his wife envisioned for patrons. They decided to return to what they knew

best: fragrant, fiery and rib-sticking Asian-American mashups, now served under the name Oma’s Takeaway. “What felt more like us was getting back to our pop-up roots,” Thomas says, “and doing food that had a little more funk and flavor to it, a little more tongue in cheek.” That playfulness is evident in everything from puffy pork rinds dusted in chile cheese—a tribute to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos—to a delightfully sloppy Sunday-only burger featuring a dense patty made of brisket, dry-aged rib-eye and marbled rib meat slapped with a slice of American. As with Gado Gado, the inspiration for a number of Thomas’ creations is his 93-year-old grandmother, affectionately known as “Oma.” Some of her traditional Indonesian recipes are available to order, but always assume they’re molded into something entirely different and unexpected. “So much of what’s happening right now is so serious. Things are just so unsure,” Thomas says. “We wanted to provide a little bit of lightness and levity to the situation, which is part of what dining out is all about—being able to escape from your day, your reality.” My latest escape, delivered in a bag adorned with hand-drawn hearts, was Thomas’ green beans and brisket. Here’s what goes into it:

THE BRISKET

THE GREEN BEANS

The chewy nubs of meat at the heart of this recipe are “basically like a five-spice pastrami,” Thomas says, except it actually contains 10 different seasonings, along with brown sugar, salt, Shaoxing wine and water to brine the brisket. That slab is then smoked for eight to 10 hours and cubed once it’s cooled.

The brisket keeps working hard in this dish, even after it’s cooked. The leftover fat from the meat is used to fry the green beans until they just start to blister in a wok. Thomas then adds a house chile jam, which is sweet at the get-go with a heat that quickly encroaches, followed by the chunks of brisket. The whole mixture is deglazed with a splash of Shaoxing wine, a rice wine from China’s Zhejiang province.

THE SIDE White, clove-scented rice is popular in Indonesia. The version you’re getting here is straight from Oma’s recipe box. The grains are prepared with coconut milk, cloves, cinnamon, pandan, ginger and lemongrass, making them irresistibly aromatic. To finish, Thomas toasts ground garlic until it’s almost burned, then drizzles the oil over the rice.

THE TOPPINGS The beans and brisket come bedecked with a savory fried egg, topped with a briny crew of candied anchovy and dried baby shrimp and accompanied by fried shallots, garlic, peanuts and puffed rice.

ORDER: Oma’s Takeaway’s brisket and green bean bowl can be ordered at gadogadopdx.com for pickup at 3004 E Burnside St., or delivery through Caviar. $15. Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

POTLANDER COURTESY OF NETFLIX

The Great American Baked Show Portland chef Leather Storrs’ new Netflix show is like Chopped, with a cannabis-infused twist. BY M ATTH E W SI N G E R

msinger@wweek.com

At a glance, chef Leather Storrs’ new Netflix show looks like a lot of other televised cooking competitions. Three contestants are given a certain amount of time to whip up a meal. The hosts and a panel of celebrity guests critique each dish. At the end, a winner is chosen and awarded a generous cash prize. The difference on Storrs’ show? Every dish must have weed in it. That’s not some shocking curveball thrown at the cooks last minute—the name of the series is Cooked With Cannabis. But that one tweak to the formula is enough to flip the whole format on its head. After all, the judges on Chopped may be sassy, but they aren’t ingesting up to 24 milligrams of cannabis during the course of an episode. But for Storrs, who made his name in Portland’s restaurant scene in the early 2000s as a chef at Noble Rot and now co-hosts Cooked With Cannabis alongside the singer Kelis, the point isn’t to watch famous guests like Michael Rapaport and Ricki Lake get stoned out of their gourds—not the whole point, anyway. It’s more about showcasing the viability of cannabis-based cooking. “The numbers were in a place where the cannabis is not taking over everything and driving the entire discussion,” says Storrs from his home in Southeast Portland, where he’s whiling away quarantine writing recipes and occasionally going mushroom hunting. “It still remained a component of their food—a seasoning as opposed to the reason for doing it. You’re not just doing it to get high, you’re doing it to think about what this does as an ingredient.” Storrs has aspired to be on television ever since he started hosting infused dinners around Portland at the dawn of the recreation era in Oregon. With his endearingly scruffy personality, it’s not impossible to imagine him eventually becoming legal weed’s first celebrity chef. But as Storrs readily admits, he’s still adjusting to being on camera—and feeling like someone who belongs in front of one. “One of the things I never got over, and loved very much,” he says, “whenever I would go through the studio, there’d be production assistants, and they’d say, ‘Talent walking!’ I’d look around and say, ‘Who is it? Who’s here?’ And they’d say, ‘It’s you, dumbass.’” WW: You’ve been talking about wanting to do a cannabis-themed cooking show for a while. How did it finally happen? Leather Storrs: I was on a show called Bong Appétit on Vice, which was also a cooking contest show, but a little more of a parlor game—lots of milligrams, lots of weed, lots of on-camera smoking, lots of gags and handicaps. While I was on that show—which I did not win—I met the director, Michael Rucker, and I think he liked my approach, which had more to do with understanding dosage and really being kind of a shepherd for diners. Eating cannabis is so much different than smoking it. As Snoop Dogg says, it ain’t got no off switch, and you, or someone you know, has had a bad experience. Being able to bring a disparate group of people together and guide them through a meal or experience is a real skill. I really talked up this idea of, “Look, this is an ingredient. If we’re careful, and if we break it down and make it a little more scientific, a little more granular, much more interesting things will happen than people just being 26

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

locked into their sofa or having palpitations.” And for Rucker, that really resonated. What was your initial reaction to having Kelis as a co-host? Out of the gate, I was thinking to myself, “Great, a pop star who went to culinary school. This is going to be terrible.” And I was completely wrong. She not only has a deep and encyclopedic food knowledge, she’s an excellent cook, she’s extremely empathetic, she’s powerful and sharp. She’s the draw, and they needed to put somebody next to her who spoke more to the cannabis side of it. That’s where I came in. I got this title of “expert,” but that might be an overstatement. I’m certainly an enthusiast. In what ways did the contestants incorporate cannabis? Somebody made a flour, with the combination of wheat flour and actual flower, that they used as a dredge on a schnitzel variation. Some people blanched and cooked the leaves themselves, which would then not be psychoactive. Some people puréed the greens and worked them into stuff. One of the added layers of complexity I really appreciated on this show is all the cooks, the day before the contest, made their own infusions. I’m a big believer that if you’re going to be working in this arena, you really need to be working with flower. I don’t cotton to the chefs who are putting a dropper of distillate on top and saying, “Presto, it’s infused!” There needs to be a thoughtful integration. I imagine that doing a show where everybody is gradually getting more and more high presents some logistical challenges. There was one episode we did where one contestant was a really chuffy young cook. As I started to get more medicated, I started to sort of project onto him and dislike him more and more, because I recognized myself in him. It became this singular focus of mine. The director’s like, “At a certain point, we have to protect you from yourself. You didn’t look great insulting this guy.” But yes, there was an evolution in both people’s comfort, in their ease, in their ability to form sentences. You could definitely see that in some of our guests. For example, Michael Rapaport, who you think of as a really tough, no-nonsense guy, was terrified and avoided a lot of the things that had THC. You mentioned the guests, who aren’t really judges. It seems they’re just there for the purpose of watching them get gradually more stoned. Some certainly got loopier than others, but some of them were really into it. We had one table of Jo Koy, another comic, a woman named Elle King and Ricki Lake. Toward the end, when they were all pretty high, they did this amazing percussive arrangement of “Milkshake,” Kelis’ song, which just brought the house down. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, they couldn’t show that. But there were some good interactions with a lot of the guests. Ricki Lake came into the studio, and she had a funny little entourage. I’m sitting in the green room, I’ve got a

T-shirt on that says, “I Love Capers,” and I look sort of scrubby. I stand up and introduce myself and say, “Don’t worry about it, I’m a scrub.” She looks me up and down and tacitly agreed. Later, we’re in the makeup area, and she looks over and she goes, “Hey, you’re the host! I thought you said you were a scrub.” I said, “They’re not mutually exclusive, Ricki.” There’s not a lot of the staged drama you see in other cooking shows, like revealing surprise ingredients or any of that stuff. The idea of the handicaps has always been corny to me. I think the handicap in this show, if there is any, is the cannabis itself. But because the cooks were working with a theme over three courses, they really had an opportunity to stage how they wanted to present. The ones who did well really told a story throughout their meal. We were very lukewarm on one contestant until dessert, when she really put a bow on her story and alluded to courses before and made this beautiful connected piece that got her the victory. I felt that was a symptom of the ingredient, cannabis, but of also allowing chefs to do their work without the goofy parlor tricks that are part of other culinary shows. In the past, you’ve talked about wanting to do a show that would essentially be like No Reservations, but with cannabis. Is that still a dream of yours? Very much, and it’s literally click-dependent. If people like the show—and, more importantly, if they like me—then the production company, 25/7, would be much more open to my pitch, which I have made formally several times. [Laughs] I love the idea of bringing a spotlight to a community, and reading the community through the lens of cannabis. That’s always been my pet project in this vein. I’m really proud of Cooked With Cannabis, and I’ll film it as long as they let me. But I do feel like there are opportunities to plumb this that are a little more unusual, and might tell a rounder story. WATCH: The first season of Cooked With Cannabis is streaming on Netflix now.

BOOKS

PERFORMANCE JEREMY DUNHAM, POLARA STUDIO

REVIEW

IN SUSPENSION: While BodyVox’s live shows are on hold, you can watch Jillian St. Germain in Rain & Roses online.

Home Vox Office

Portland dance company BodyVox streams two of its shows for free to keep its audience connected during the pandemic. BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E LL FERGUS O N

In a world with no COVID -19, BodyVox’s latest production, Nineteen•Twenty, a celebration of the grit and glitz that defined that decade, would have already come and gone. “By now, it was going to be over, and I was going to be in Japan,” says Jamey Hampton, who cofounded the company in 1997 with his wife, Ashley Roland. With a rueful amusement, he adds, “So, the best-laid plans…” Hampton worried less about delaying Nineteen•Twenty, which will now debut in December, than the challenge of connecting with audiences during the pandemic. “The very beautiful and special thing about BodyVox is that it’s a community of people,” Hampton explains. “The thing that gets communicated to us more than anything isn’t, ‘Bummer, I can’t see that show.’ It is, ‘We just really miss coming to your space. We miss your vision and our community.’” To keep that communal spirit alive, BodyVox has made some of its shows available for free streaming—and the two currently online, 2019’s Death and Delight and 2018’s Rain & Roses, were shot with cinematic flair that makes for exhilarating viewing. “We know how to film a show and make it look really interesting,” Hampton says. “With Rain & Roses, I ran through that stage with a Steadicam at the beginning, and I had GoPro stuff all over the place. We do multicamera shoots of our shows and we think they translate well onto video.” Together, Death and Delight and Rain & Roses represent the sweeping scope of BodyVox’s capabilities. While Death draws inspiration from the past—it retells Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream with music by Mendelssohn and Prokofiev—Rain is raucously modern. Featuring songs by Norah Jones and Yoko Ono and others performed by live musicians, it’s an ode to Portland packed with

astounding images, like dancer Jillian St. Germain gracefully undulating inside a translucent halfsphere suspended above the stage. If BodyVox weren’t cinematically savvy, putting its shows online would merely be a thoughtful gesture. Yet its gift for fusing the languages of dance and film elevates every frame. Cameras seem to have been everywhere—on the ground, in the audience—and the sounds of the shows were captured so skillfully that, as Hampton puts it, “you can hear people’s footfalls.” Some parts of the performances translate to the screen better than others. If you only have time to watch one BodyVox show, pick Rain & Roses—not because Death and Delight is less impressive but because Rain’s outsized energy better compensates for the limits of the small screen. It’s hard to top a show where one of the dancers hangs from a harness and spins to the beat of Fiona Apple’s “Waltz (Better Than Fine).” As Hampton and Roland adapt to the reality of running BodyVox during a pandemic, they remain optimistic. “I think we’re all sort of wondering how long this virus is going to go and how we’re going to come out of it, but for us, it’s an important time to keep vital and keep creating,” Roland says. “There’s some exciting things coming. I’ll just leave it at that. We’re trying to reinvent the way we present ourselves” As for the appropriately named StreamingVox, Hampton is heartened by the breadth of its audience. “We have had literally hundreds and hundreds of views of these shows so far,” he says. “It’s really exciting because they’re from all over. It means that we can do a show and people watch it in Europe and people watch it in Pakistan, and our audience is watching it in Portland. It sparks our creative juices, figuring out ways to make this keep happening.” SEE IT: Rain & Roses streams through April 26 and Death and Delight streams through May 10 at bodyvox.com.

Written by: Scout Brobst / Contact: sbrobst@wweek.com

Five Great Essay Collections Make It Scream, Make It Burn, Leslie Jamison Leslie Jamison knows how to write a good personal essay because she doesn’t assume you want to read about her personally. This was true in her first collection, Empathy Exams, and it is true in her second, Make It Scream, Make It Burn, which pieces together the things that interest Jamison most. In “Sim Life,” Jamison examines our e-companions, those virtual characters we find ourselves strangely invested in. In “The Quickening,” she reflects on the anxieties of pregnancy, at times addressing her unborn daughter directly, drawing the reader into the most private spaces of pre-parenthood. Each essay is an exercise in thoughtful restraint, never allowing itself to be confused for the work of a diarist.

Black Is the Body, Emily Bernard On its most superficial level, Black Is the Body is a collection about storytelling within the family—as Bernard lays out in the subtitle, these are 12 stories from her grandmother’s time, her mother’s time, and her own. Beneath that, Black Is the Body is an expertly crafted collection about blackness in America, as only Bernard has lived it. One essay, “Interstates,” documents the time when Bernard, her parents, and her white fiancé pulled over to change a flat tire, exposing the family to every prejudice that may pass them on the highway. Other stories examine the relationship between white and black life in the American South, two experiences “ensnared in the same historical drama.”

Interior States, Meghan O’Gieblyn There are some writers who leave the worlds of devout religion—worlds that are at once large, and impossibly small— and spare no second thoughts, rejecting both the baby and the bathwater. Meghan O’Gieblyn’s debut collection leaves no thoughts behind, turning to her upbringing of conservative evangelicalism for a series of essays offering razor-sharp cultural criticism on the state of American life. “Ghost in the Cloud,” a particular strong point, sews together the parallel theologies of transhumanism (technology that works to avoid death) and Christian millennialism (salvation that works to avoid death). O’Gieblyn is unapologetic in her takes, producing wholly original commentary slated for these times.

Human Relations and Other Difficulties, Mary-Kay Wilmers Mary-Kay Wilmers, one of the founders of the London Review of Books and its sole editor since 1979, has a lot to say about writing, and women, and the ways women write for themselves and for men. Human Relations and Other Difficulties is the product of a veteran career in book reviewing, and it shows—the essays are clever, frank and delightfully readable. Some provide the literary commentary that Wilmer is known for—on Joan Didion, Alice James and Jean Rhys—while others turn inward, looking to Wilmer’s own life as a child and a parent. “There’s nothing magical about a mother’s relationship with her baby,” Wilmer writes of early motherhood. “Like most others, it takes two to get it going.”

Upstream, Mary Oliver If there were ever a time to renew your love for the natural world, as the late poet Mary Oliver did throughout her career, it’s now. Upstream, a collection of essays published three years before Oliver’s death, is the author in her purest form—reflecting on the beauty of codfish, grass, and seagulls on the beach. Life, as she writes about it, is precious in all things, without ever dipping into sentimentality. Oliver’s meditation on her literary counterparts, including Walt Whitman, a childhood “friend,” gives rare insight into the making of the poet, while other essays invite the reader to observe the outdoors with new eyes. Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

MOVIES

SCREENER

C O U R T E S Y O F WA LT E R WA N G E R P R O D U C T I O N S

G ET YOUR REP S I N

Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

COURTESY OF A24

While local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. This week’s theme of isolation and madness was inspired by The Lighthouse, one of the best movies of 2019. It’s cathartic, we promise!

The Lighthouse (2019) Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe star as two lighthouse keepers—one seasoned, one callow, both harboring secrets—assigned to tend to the light on a remote island off the coast of New England. But after a vicious storm leaves them stranded and the weeks stretch on, the intense isolation starts to drive them mad. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube.

Hour of the Wolf (1968) When The Lighthouse has you craving more black-and-white chamber horrors set on remote islands, look no further than Ingmar Bergman’s character study of a painter (Max von Sydow) who suffers a breakdown spurred by insomnia and the weight of his past regrets. Criterion Channel, Vudu.

Ex Machina (2014) Sci-fi prodigy Alex Garland’s directorial debut centers on a programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) from Portland who is invited to the isolated mansion of a tech guru (Oscar Isaac) to evaluate the humanistic qualities of an ultra-advanced AI (Alicia Vikander). Prescient, fascinating and featuring a phenomenal choreographed dance routine by Isaac. Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Kanopy, Netflix, Vudu, YouTube.

The Duke of Burgundy (2014) An entomologist specializing in the study of butterflies and moths engages in a series of sadomasochistic games with her apprentice/lover, probing the boundaries of their relationship. Written and directed by Peter Strickland, this arthouse drama is notable for its small, all-woman cast. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hulu, iTunes, YouTube.

Misery (1990) Based on Stephen King’s book, a romance novelist (James Caan) crashes his car in a blizzard and finds himself injured and bedridden in a remote cottage under the care of an unstable fanatic, Annie Wilkes (an Oscar-winning Kathy Bates), who forces him to write his stories exactly the way she desires. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hulu, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube.

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

Go West

CANYON PASSAGE

Stream your way through the ﬁve best Westernthemed films shot in Oregon. BY C H ANC E SOLEM-PFEIFER

@chance_s_p

Browse through any list of Oregon films, and the Western is an undeniable fixture. Before 1970, its presence here was borderline monopolistic, as Hollywood studios churned out dozens of gunfighter and pioneer pictures each year. The legacy of these films is complicated, of course, as they reflect the state’s inextricable relationship with frontierism, and do so with regret, romance and revision. That said, when a genre intersects with everyone from John Wayne to Jim Jarmusch, the meaning of a Western can vary widely. Here are the five greatest Oregon Westerns, with a few criteria: • Selections must have been shot in Oregon, if not set here too. No soundstages (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) or Spain (Sisters Brothers). • Civil War ﬁlms don’t qualify, so The General and Shenandoah are out. • They must espouse qualities or themes of the genre, even if not set in “The Old West.”

Canyon Passage (1946)

There is no canyon in Jacques Tourneur’s portrait of a fledgling Jacksonville, the small Southern Oregon town just southwest of Medford, circa 1856. No passage either. In fact, much of this early Technicolor Western seems fashioned to trick 1940s audiences into watching something far smarter and shiftier than normal studio fare. Canyon Passage brims with dramatic conundrums, poetic dialogue, free women, competing Old West philosophies and livewire flirting. Best of all, the director of Out of the Past and Cat

People eschews easy stereotypes for a slippery ecosystem of hustlers, nihilists, romantics and homemakers counting on each other not to shatter a fragile peace. Amazon Prime, Hulu, Sling TV, Starz.

Day of the Outlaw (1959)

A clear influence on Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, this snow-packed thriller claims eastern Wyoming as its setting, but its pines and peaks clearly betray the Deschutes National Forest where it was filmed. One of the best outings from André De Toth (House of Wax), Day of the Outlaw opens in a cattle town already on the brink of violence when mutineering cavalrymen thunder to its doorstep. In stark black-and-white, Burl Ives gives the film’s keystone performance as an Army captain who deigns to lead mad dogs. What’s his responsibility when their leash inevitably snaps? Watch for one of the tensest dance sequences ever committed to ﬁlm. iTunes.

Sometimes a Great Notion (1971)

Admittedly, this is a genre stretch, but Paul Newman’s 1971 family drama, based on the novel by Oregon legend Ken Kesey, does function as a logical update of frontier morality tales. A family of loggers in the fictional coastal town of Wakonda (actually Kernville meets Newport) defies a union strike to flaunt their independence. Not a Stetson or six-gun in sight, but as factions solidify, the Stamper family (Newman, Henry Fonda, Michael Sarrazin) absolutely resembles the archetypal ranchers who won’t admit the railroad is encroaching.

They can keep trying to embrace their definition of “The West,” but there’s always a price for beating back modernity. Amazon Prime, Netflix, YouTube.

Dead Man (1995)

Turning to a postmodern page, Jim Jarmusch dreams of the frontier as a purgatory with Dead Man. As in all Jarmusch, the psychological experience takes precedence in this Johnny Depp-helmed vision quest, and Neil Young’s score perfectly straddles the line between epic and woozy. Jarmusch uses the backdrop of Southern Oregon’s Josephine County uncommonly, too. There’s little natural majesty as Depp’s character ventures into the wilderness with bounty hunters on his tail and a Native companion called Nobody (Gary Farmer) at his side. No, Oregon stands in more for cultural and topographical déjà vu. Perhaps most notably, the respect paid to Farmer’s character is a high watermark for indigenous people in a genre with a foul history of exploiting them. Google Play, YouTube.

Meek’s Cutoff (2011)

You don’t need How the West Was Won when you have Kelly Reichardt. In her 2011 masterpiece, the filmmaker positions the audience to look through the eyes of pioneer women lost in the Eastern Oregon desert. Starring Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood and Rod Rondeaux, Meek’s Cutoff is an unparalleled meditation on Manifest Destiny in the micro. With wagon wheels cracking and water scarce, the sheer struggle blinds the settlers to their culpability. They can see only how far they’ve come, not what they did by coming. By the way, Reichardt’s new film, First Cow, would definitely be a contender for this list, once it’s officially released. Amazon Prime, Crackle, Hulu, iTunes, Tubi, Vudu.

April 22-28 C O U R T E S Y O F VA N I L L A M O V I E . C O M

OUR KEY

: T H I S M O V I E I S E XC E L L E N T, O N E O F T H E B E S T O F T H E Y E A R. : T H I S M O V I E I S G O O D. W E R E C O M M E N D YO U WATC H I T. : T H I S M O V I E I S E N T E R TA I N I N G B U T F L AW E D. : T H I S M O V I E I S A P I E C E O F S H I T.

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

Vanilla I’m typically wary of any indie romantic comedy that has “quirky” in the synopsis, but Vanilla writer, director and star Will Dennis manages to infuse the film with enough self-awareness and charm to keep the eye-rolling at bay. The story centers on Elliot (Dennis), a well-meaning elder millennial whose trust fund keeps him aimless; Kimmie (Kelsea Bauman-Murphy), a free-spirited (and, dare I say, quirky) would-be comedian; and the New York City-to-New Orleans road trip they suddenly find themselves on together. A large part of the film’s success lies in Dennis’ skewering of Elliot’s false wokeness, whether via his square reaction to sex work or the use of that goldem emblem of psuedo-hip guys across the globe: a copy of David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Bauman-Murphy possesses a magnetic screen presence and affability on par with the Broad City crew, making her the perfect vehicle for the audience to share “man dudes are stupid” laughs with. Like any good road movie, Vanilla features a fair amount of philosophical discussion—the philosophy here being white, cis men are often cluelessly presumptive, selfishly unaware and, well, vanilla. Wisely presenting a story about communication between the sexes from the perspective of Kimmie, Vanilla is among the rare romcoms that smartly dissects our evolving ideas of gender roles. NR. DONOVAN FARLEY. On Demand. VANILLA

ALSO PLAYING Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution The opening moments of the new documentary Crip Camp are immediately heartwarming: We see kids with disabilities jumping and rolling with joy as Richie Havens’ iconic ad lib Woodstock anthem “Freedom” plays in the background. Before the title card even appears, you’re already inspired by Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht’s archival-footage film. The origin story of the disability rights movement in the 1970s has largely gone untold until now: It all began with Camp Jened, a summer getaway in the Catskills for disabled youth, who were encouraged to use the time to explore their interests and identities. Co-director Lebrecht was a camper at Jened, and intentionally used the term “crip” in the title as a way of reclaiming the slur. The camp was also a place where teens and young adults could simply let their guard down: They played baseball, pranked each other, smoked pot with the counselors and sometimes even had sex. But before long, the filmmakers expand their narrative arc by illustrating how people were empowered by their experiences there, particularly Judy Heumann, a former camper who went on to become a disability rights activist and helped pass the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The ultimate message is revolution can start with the young, which aligns perfectly with the opening song’s theme of liberation. R. ASHER LUBERTO. Netflix.

Blow the Man Down While trapped at home under quarantine, it’s only natural to look for ways to escape. Right now, it seems one of our only options is using streaming services as virtual trips to new places. Amazon Prime’s new release Blow the Man Down takes audiences to Maine, where the atmosphere washes over you with its chilly blues and frosty whites. In a gritty fishing village called Easter Cove, director of photography Todd Banhazl captures the hardscrabble lives of its residents by using a lot of natural lighting and digitally re-created Super 8 footage of the town. Things get darker once bodies start washing ashore. The police are Fargo-level dumb. And that’s actually good for sisters Priscilla

(Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor), who end up stabbing a rapist with a harpoon and stealing his bag of cash. “Someone’s going to miss this,” says Mary Beth. Duh. Don’t go fishing for meaning why this neo-noir flips gender roles, with two girls pulling the strings, but it’s a refreshing twist. Blow the Man Down may not be the idyllic vacation you’re looking for, but it sure is fun. R. ASHER LUBERTO. Amazon Prime.

The Hunt Critics panned it. The president hated it. But I found myself elated by The Hunt, a social satire that uses provocation as ammunition, with both sides of the political divide in its crosshairs. Since this is a riff on 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game, expect a bunch of humans to be hunted, and every viewer to be grazed by the hilarious dialogue. In one corner are the “rednecks,” a pack of whites in flannels who wake up gagged in a field and are then shot at. These early scenes are remarkably well orchestrated, making us believe someone is a main character, only to show their brains turn into a cloud of red mist seconds later. In the other corner are the “liberal elites,” hunters who care more about podcasts than human lives. The thorn in their side is a woman named Crystal who speaks with a Southern twang and becomes a backwoods hero, played by GLOW’s Betty Gilpin with a ferocity that matches Charlotte Christensen’s cinematography. The harsh reviews that fly in the face of The Hunt’s brilliant performances and smart satire only drive home the point of the movie: Narrowminded political divisiveness drives pretty much everything these days. R. ASHER LUBERTO. On Demand.

LiME Emerging artists trying to find their voice often borrow from those who inspired them, which is what Donta Storey has done with their debut short film now streaming on Amazon Prime. LiME is a swirl of Storey’s influences, ranging from Barry Jenkins to Charles Burnett, which coalesces into a fresh semi-autobiographical short about the marginalization of a nonbinary youth. The film takes place in Storey’s hometown of Compton, Calif., where DeShawn (Urian Ross) lives with their mother (TaRhea Ray) and tries to stay out of trouble. One day while walking

home from band practice, DeShawn is beaten senseless for being queer—an assault similar to what Storey experienced while growing up. Like the director, DeShawn leans into their support system of women, anchored by their mother, to lift themself out of depression. “There are sour people in this world and there are sweet people in this world,” she tells her weeping child, lying bruised on the couch. It’s up to DeShawn—and all of us, really—to decide which one we want to try to be, even when living your truth can feel impossible in an acidic world. NR. ASHER LUBERTO. Amazon Prime.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always When we first meet 17-year-old Autumn (newcomer Sidney Flanigan), she’s singing in her high school talent show. Everyone around her is dressed up in ’50s and ’60s garb, performing dance routines or mouthing oldie lyrics, and Autumn is clearly out of place. Even though she’s belting out the Exciters’ 1963 song “He’s Got the Power,” it sounds more like something you’d hear on the radio today, and she makes sure to raise her voice when she gets to the chorus: “He makes me do things I don’t want to do.” The crowd boos, but we already love her, and for the next two hours director Eliza Hittman puts Autumn’s entire life on display. In this harsh and heartwarming portrait, Autumn struggles to get an abortion as a poor teenager in the suburbs of Pennsylvania—the title of the film refers to the four optional answers to a health worker’s questions about her sexual history. She and her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) end up taking a bus to New York City in order to terminate the pregnancy without parental consent. Along the way, we are confronted with a bleak style of filmmaking that recalls another feminist triumph, Barbara Loden’s first and only feature from 1970, Wanda. With 16 mm close-ups and barren landscapes that mirror Autumn’s inner despair, Hittman has expertly shot the picture through the protagonist’s eyes. It may not be pretty, but it is worth witnessing yet another female fight for control of her life and body. R. ASHER LUBERTO. On Demand.

The Platform The Platform works on two levels: First and foremost, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s horror

flick is a master class in building atmosphere, but it also functions as an allegory about the detrimental effects of trickle-down economics. Inside a prison with 250 floors, you can practically feel the cold cement enveloping the inmates. When a platter of food descends from one level to the next, with a minute for cellmates to scarf down what’s left, it’s clear that the lower classes are merely feeding on the upper echelon’s scraps. While there is nothing subtle about the message, there is a mysterious tone to the story. Since it moves at a snail’s pace (in a good way), we spend much of the run time trying to figure out what is going on, just like the protagonist, Goreng (Iván Massagué). His goal is to restore order to this rotten world, but that’s no easy task when other inmates are considering cannibalism to stay alive. A dash of Camus, a sprinkle of Kafka and helpings of Lovecraft, The Platform will leave you both sick and satisfied. R. ASHER LUBERTO. Netflix.

Butt Boy With an unruly midnight movie setting unavailable, the time seems ripe for demented schlock at home—like, say, a halfspoof about a serial killer addicted to sticking objects up his butt. Just by themselves, the title and premise of Tyler Cornack’s Butt Boy earn your double take. Cornack co-stars as Chip, an IT guy anesthetized by the drudgery of work and family until a prostate exam stirs something deep within (one guess where). Chip’s descent into anal fixation is committed and hilarious, but parody isn’t the larger aim here. No, Butt Boy aspires to be a straight cat-and-mouse thriller—with Tyler Rice as a dogged, alcoholic detective—that belies the absurd comedic hysteria of the setup. That (perhaps noble) genre aspiration runs the film up against a litany of banal low-budget problems, unbecoming of the insanity you want from a movie called Butt Boy: shaky dramatic acting, unnecessary night driving and a POV imbalance that handicaps suspense. (Nobody wants a Mindhunter episode that’s 65 percent BTK interludes.) The execution of Butt Boy is a little like holding court with a one-of-a-kind dirty joke but pausing constantly to insist it’s not a joke. The punchline may still kill, but the approach is a little up its own ass. NR. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. On Demand. Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

Spotlight

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

Featured artist: Ashley Wyatt

Instagram @a.wyatt_art Be a Willamette Week featured artist! Contact us at art@wweek.com.

THE QUARANTINE 13:

SONGS OF DESPERATION AND HOPE

by Terry at Music Millennium 1. Be-Bop Deluxe Panic In the World 2. Godley & Creme The Last Page of History 3. The Cure End of the World

Share your own Top 10 playlist! ART@WWEEK.COM

Willamette Week APRIL 22, 2020 wweek.com

4. Nine Inch Nails - The Day the World Went Away 5. Bob Dylan - Shelter From the Storm

6. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes? 7. The Kinks - Where Have All the Good Times Gone 8. The Animals - We Gotta Get Out Of This Place 9. Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come

10. Michael Franti Hey World (Don’t Give Up) 11. Neil Young - Don’t Let It Bring You Down 12. The Pointer Sisters Yes We Can Can 13. Sly & The Family Stone You Can Make It If You Try

JONESIN’

Week of APRIL 22

by Matt Jones

"Around the World in 1000 Steps" - a world tour of the home.

ARIES (March 21-April 19) In the future, when the coronavirus crisis has a diminished power to disrupt our lives, I would love for you to have more of the money you need to finance interesting new experiences that help you learn and thrive. Now is a good time to brainstorm about how you might arrange for that to happen. For best results, begin your meditations with vivid fantasies in which you envision yourself doing those interesting new experiences that will help you learn and thrive.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) Renowned Taurus composer Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) completed his first symphony when he was 43 years old—even though he'd started work on it at age 22. Why did it take him so long? One factor was his reverence for Ludwig van Beethoven, the composer who had such a huge impact on the development of classical music. In light of Beethoven's mastery, Brahms felt unworthy. How could any composer add new musical ideas that Beethoven hadn't already created? But after more than two decades, Brahms finally managed to overcome his inhibition. He eventually produced four symphonies and scores of other pieces, and left a major mark on musical history. For you, Taurus, I see the coming months as a phase comparable to the time when Brahms finally built the strength necessary to emerge from the shadow that had inhibited him.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)

Across

57 Part of SVU

29 Hopes to get

1 Door frame parts

58 Word before Palmas or Cruces

30 Sheet music line 32 Roller coaster reaction

59 *Portland thoroughfare often mispronounced by visitors (it's an "oo" as in "boot")

A Gemini friend sent me and three of her other allies a poignant email. "This note is a tender apology to those of you whom I've hurt in the process of hurting myself," she began. "I want you to know that I have been working hard and with great success to eliminate my unconscious tendency to hurt myself. And I am confident this means I will also treat you very well in the future." I received her message with joy and appreciation. Her action was brave and wise. I invite you to consider making a comparable adjustment in the weeks ahead.

34 "PrÍt-‡-Porter" actor Stephen

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

6 Some laptops 10 Ring decoration 13 Fish tank buildup 14 Heart chambers 16 "Ceci n'est pas ___ pipe" (Magritte caption) 17 *Largest city in Somerset, known for Roman-built spas

64 Land in a riviËre 65 Friendly, gender-neutral address for a child 66 Pakistani money

19 Tajikistan, once (abbr.)

67 Make a wager

20 "Abnormally Attracted to Sin" singer Tori

68 Backside

21 *Brooklyn neighborhood, colloquially 23 Hulu show starring Aidy Bryant 26 Big figure in pop? 27 "Whatever" 28 Cry of pain 30 Bobcat's cousin 31 Soccer stadium shouts 33 Be changeable 35 Actress Day of Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much"

69 Writer Zola

Down 1 Boxer's move 2 "Blue Rondo _ _ _ Turk" (Brubeck song)

49 ___-Magnon

41 Circus performers 46 Cleverly skillful 48 _ _ _ d'hotel 50 Extemporaneous response 51 Fictional anchorman Howard of "Network" 52 Beginning stage 56 African antelope with curvy horns

5 Respectable 6 GQ and EW, e.g. 7 Hartsfield-Jackson airport code 8 Item on a seafood menu

12 Streep of "Florence Foster Jenkins"

47 Internet address ender

40 Place to put your fedora

4 Believer in spiritual unity

42 Superfluous

45 Greek vowels

38 Flavor quality

54 Play the banjo

9 Tough and stringy

44 Breeze

37 "Go ahead, _ _ _ you!"

3 People in charge, briefly

39 *City in southern Ontario, a little over an hour from Toronto 43 Spider monkey's feature

36 Dressing named for the type of location where it was created

57 "That ain't good" 60 Inserts in some car changers 61 _ _ _Pen (injection for allergic reactions)

10 Blasts of wind

62 Fish that goes into some British pies

11 Follow logically

63 Concert wear

15 Back-of-the-book material 18 2010 Eminem song featuring Lil Wayne

50 On the train

22 Battle of Hastings combatants

53 Nut and bolt spacer

23 Light up

55 *Country home to Legoland

24 Shape of a DNA strand 25 Scarlett's Butler

©2020 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 #JNZ985.

last week’s answers

The Ojibwe are indigenous people of North America. Professor of Ojibwe studies Anton Treuer writes that in their traditional culture, there have been men who act and dress like women and women who act and dress like men. The former are called ikwekaazo and the latter ikwekaazowag. Both have been "always honored" and "considered to be strong spiritually." Many other Native American groups have had similar arrangements. Transcending traditional gender behavior is not unique to modern Western civilization. With that as inspiration, and in accordance with astrological omens, I invite you to explore any inclinations you might have to be your own unique gender. The time is ripe for experimenting with and deepening your relationship with the constructs of "masculine" and "feminine."

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) "The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes," wrote Nobel Prize-winning poet Czesław Miłosz. Wow! If a highly respected genius like him has spawned so much nonsense and ignorance, what about the rest of us? Here's what I have to say about the subject: Each of us should strive to be at peace with the fact that we are a blend of wisdom and folly. We should be tenderly compassionate toward our failures and weaknesses, and not allow them to overshadow our brilliance and beauty. Now would be a good time for you Leos to cultivate this acceptance and perform this blessing for yourself.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Helen Traubel (1899–1972) was best-known for her opera career, although she also sang in concerts, nightclubs, and musical theater. But in her autobiography, she confessed, "Opera bored me." She reminds me of Georgia O'Keeffe, famous painter of flowers. "I hate flowers," O'Keeffe said. "I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move." Now of course most of us have to do some things that we don't enjoy; that seems to be a routine

part of being human. And since the coronavirus arrived in our midst, you may have been saddled with even more of this burden. But I'm happy to inform you that the coming weeks will be a favorable time to brainstorm about how you could do more of what you love to do once the crisis has abated.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) What's the current state of the relationship between your ego and your soul? Is there an uneasy truce between the ambitious part of you that craves success and recognition and the lyrical part of you that yearns for rich experiences and deep meaning? Or do those two aspects of you get along pretty well—maybe even love and respect each other? Now is a favorable time to honor your ego and soul equally, Libra—to delight in the activities of both, to give them plenty of room to play and improvise, and to encourage them to collaborate in ways that will further your well-rounded happiness and health.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) Scorpio author Voltaire (1694–1778) was a crusader for freedom of thought and civil liberties, as well as a key player in the Enlightenment. He was very prolific. In addition to producing 2,000 books and pamphlets, his carried on such voluminous written correspondences with so many interesting people that his collected letters fill 98 volumes. Would you consider getting inspired by Voltaire's approach to cross-pollination? According to my calculations, the next phase of the coronavirus crisis will be a favorable time for you to intensify your communication via the written word.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) I like musician David Byrne's views on what constitutes meaningful work. It's not just the tasks you do to earn money. "Sex is a job," he says. "Growing up is a job. School is a job. Going to parties is a job. Religion is a job. Being creative is a job." In other words, all the activities he names, to be done well, require a commitment to excellence and an attention to detail. They are worthy of your diligent efforts, strenuous exertion, and creative struggle. I encourage you to meditate on these thoughts during the coming weeks. Identify what jobs you want to get better at and are willing to work hard on and would like to enjoy even more than you already do.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) At its best and brightest, Capricornian love isn't frivolous or flighty. It's not shallow or sloppy or slapdash. When Capricornian love is at its highest potency, it's rigorous, thoughtful, and full-bodied. It benefits anyone who's involved with it. I bring this up because I expect the coming weeks to be a Golden Age of Capricornian Love—a time when you will have the inspiration and intelligence necessary to lift your own experience of love to a higher octave.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) I hope you're not one of those Aquarians who regards stability and security as boring. I hope you don't have an unconscious predilection for keeping yourself in a permanent state of nervous uncertainty. If you do suffer from those bad habits, you'll be hard-pressed to stick to them in the coming weeks. That's because the cosmic energies will be working to settle you down into a steady groove. If you cooperate, you will naturally enhance your ability to be well-anchored, calmly steadfast, and at home in your life. Please don't resist this opportunity.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) I foresee the likelihood that you'll be having brilliant and evocative conversations with yourself in the coming weeks. Your heart and your head may become almost blissful as they discuss how best to create a dynamic new kind of harmony. Your left side and right side will declare a truce, no longer wrestling each other for supremacy, and they may even join forces to conjure up unprecedented collaborations. The little voices in your head that speak for the past will find common ground with the little voices in your head that speak for the future—and as a result you may be inspired to formulate a fresh master plan that appeals both.

HOMEWORK: Go to RealAstrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny's Audio Horoscopes and Text Message Horoscopes. Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes

freewillastrology.com The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at

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