NEWS: PROTESTS ROCK POLICE BUREAU. FOOD: 24 HOUR PASTRY PEOPLE. CULTURE: PRIDE GOES DIGITAL.
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VOL 46/33 06.10.2020
BY RACHEL MONAHAN | PAGE 11 PHOTOS BY BRIAN BURK
6/19
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DIALOGUE
ALEX WITTWER
FINDINGS
PAGE 7
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 46, ISSUE 33. The police chief stepped down from her job, and a black lieutenant took command. 5 Damian Lillard marched across
the Morrison Bridge in an uprising against police violence. 6
Protesters sued the city of Portland to stop police officers from using tear gas. 7 Portland is dissolving the Police Bureau’s Gun Violence Reduction Team. 8 A lot of people jam into the elevator inside the Multnomah County Justice Center. 9 People between the ages of 20 and 29 catch COVID-
19 more often than any other demographic. 10 A homeless woman living along the Peninsula Crossing Trail opened a general store for other campers. 12 A Florida man defrauded an Oregon casino by pretending to represent the Village People. 18
For Mitchell S. Jackson, the protests are already successful because they made Donald Trump hide in a bunker. 19 Even an 89th-place finish at the Disc Golf World Championships
will win you money. 19
Footage of the 1999 Portland Dyke Parade is now considered “historical.” 20 Portlanders are leaving their homes at 1 am to buy French desserts and “Rick Astley for President” stickers from a vending machine. 23 Former NBA player Al Harrington owns an interest in a 40-acre cannabis farm in rural Oregon. 25
Todd Haynes’ 25-year-old film Safe foreshadows today’s intersection of contagion, quarantine and white privilege.
Happy camper Cecilia Lazcano, photo by Brian Burk.
Portland police tweeted a photo of projectiles thrown at them by protesters. It didn’t go over well.
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Eugene, via wweek.com: “Meanwhile, in other news not reported, protesters—that Teddy Boy and Hardesty were so enamored with—were throwing incendiary devices, projectiles, bottles and cans, and slingshot objects at the police…so that must be OK?”
Brad Wasbrough, via Facebook: “‘Less.’ Thanks, Mayor. You sure told them!”
@jessicaWithaG, via Twitter: “Clearly, the protests must continue. This is ridiculous.”
Torm Delgado, via Facebook: “Wow what a nice guy! (Sarcasm.)”
Raoul Dole, via wweek.com: “Stay home and watch Netflix like you’re supposed to and I’ll guarantee you that you won’t get tear gassed.”
@HiddenStashArt via Twitter: “Talks are happening about banning tear gas, so now they’re just going to fuck up your hearing instead? Cute.” Jon Cohen via Facebook: “Using tear gas during a pandemic is especially reckless. Tear gas makes its victims cough, and coughing is how the virus gets spread.” Cristina Hutchins via Facebook: “Hopefully, City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty can garner the votes to completely disband the PPB, as they are doing in Minneapolis.”
Suzanne Fleming, via Facebook: “Everlasting loophole–only use it when you feel threatened.” Jessica Giannettino Villatoro via Facebook: “Money for sonic sound machines, but not community centers. Got it.”
Rachel LeFeu via Facebook: “There wouldn’t be protests and riots if there weren’t racist cops. Racism is the core problem, riots are just a symptom.” Dog Lipsky, via wweek.com: “In January, after the commission has five progressive female members, the mayor will be Sarah Iannarone. She will hold the police portfolio. Then, things will start to change.” LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: mzusman@wweek.com
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OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
ON THE COVER:
As a Portland uprising against police killings of black people continued into a second week, public debate heightened over the tactics that the Portland Police Bureau uses to disperse crowds, as WW reported at wweek.com. City Commissioners Jo Ann Hardesty and Chloe Eudaly called for tear gas to be banned. After police used a long-range acoustic device against protesters, Mayor Ted Wheeler banned its use for anything but public announcements. He directed officers to use tear gas only if “there is a serious and immediate threat to life safety.” But he stopped short of banning the chemical’s use. Here’s what our readers had to say:
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Dr. Know
BY MART Y SMITH @martysmithxxx
I moved away from Portland a couple years ago. At a recent protest in my new city, I saw a dude riding a 10-foot-high tall bike and realized I hadn’t seen one in Portland since like 2008. What happened? Where did all the tall bikes go? —Tucker J. When complaining about your city’s decline, it’s often a good idea to stop for a minute and make sure the decline you’re bemoaning is really the city’s and not, you know, yours: “Remember when Portland was cool? When it was easy to have a bowel movement, and you never had to cut holes in your sneakers so your bunions could stick out? Good times.” Given this, I won’t say for sure that the changes that doomed Portland’s tall bikes are the same ones that made me have to put tennis balls on the feet of my walker. I can say, however, that they’re pretty much the same changes we’ve been complaining about in various other contexts around here for the past 15 years. For those fresh out of the monastery, a “tall bike” is a home-welded contraption where two (or more) bicycles are welded on top of each other to make one exquisitely dangerous conveyance. Favored by indestructible young people who enjoy falling off skateboards onto concrete stairs, tall bikes are the personal transportation equivalent of shotgunning a PBR.
As Tucker implies, there was a time when these home-welded rolling death traps dominated every Critical Mass event and Naked Bike Ride in the Rose City. Tall bike aficionados staged Olympic-type events where riders would joust, race and otherwise maim themselves for the benefit of delighted onlookers. What happened? Portland’s housing costs went bonkers. Suddenly, those big, cheap houses, with their welding-friendly basements and ample garages, were out of reach for most of those indestructible young people. Meanwhile, the same rising cost of living made it harder to survive on those part-time jobs that used to give kids plenty of free time for street art/self-maiming. Tall bikes are still around, though. Birmingham, Alabama, mounted its seventh annual bike joust last year, and there appears to be a tall bike scene in stillcool Detroit. I bet those kids never break their hip getting out of the shower. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
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WESLEY LAPOINTE
MURMURS
STEWART HOTEL
DISPUTE OVER STEWART HOTEL INTENSIFIES: In February, tenants in Portland’s downtown Stewart Hotel sued their building’s owners alleging squalid conditions, which they say became worse when the property management company Westwind LLC went bankrupt in 2017. The tenants also stopped paying rent, since no one came by to collect it anymore. The owners have responded—with a legal action that says because the tenants no longer have a rental agreement, they are squatters, and can be kicked out. Despite Gov. Kate Brown’s executive order prohibiting residential evictions during the pandemic, attorneys for Pamela and Leon Drennan say they’re within their legal rights to eject the residents. “Her moratorium is on evictions on residential tenancies,” says attorney Kimberly Hanks McGair. “This is not a residential tenancy. It’s similar to if you have an abandoned house and some squatters move in and just start living there.” The residents, some of whom have lived in the building for decades, disagree they’re squatters. “I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s cold-blooded,” says Wesley Appling, a tenant who’s lived in the Stewart since the early 2000s. “They’re going to have to literally take me to jail before I leave.”
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MINGUS MAPPS REGRETS TAKING POLICE UNION DONATION: Over the weekend, Mingus Mapps, who is challenging City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly in November, called his acceptance of a $15,000 in-kind donation from the Portland police union’s political action committee a “mistake” in social media posts. Advocates for police reform point out the union has been an obstacle to police reform. “Accepting this donation was a mistake,” Mapps wrote on Twitter. “That’s why I returned it. I have learned some things. And will make different choices in the future.” But his campaign then acknowledged Mapps got his facts wrong while making his apology—he had not returned the donation or rejected the union’s endorsement. He had instead returned some matching funds to the city’s public financing program. His campaign says he regrets misspeaking. “The past few weeks
have been intense for Black Portlanders,” says Mapps’ campaign manager, Bob Dobrich. “Like all Black men, Mingus is outraged. He is raising two Black sons and knows he could have been the guy lying facedown. In fact, he has been. Mingus regrets the error.” MOVEMENT ON TERRY BEAN TRIAL: COVID19 has delayed most court proceedings, but Portland real estate magnate and LGBTQ+ pioneer Terry Bean will appear (remotely) in Lane County Circuit Court this week for pretrial motions on charges he sexually abused a 15-year-old boy in 2014 and committed a related computer crime. (His co-defendant in the sex abuse case, Kiah Lawson, was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison in 2019.) Bean has wide-ranging business interests, and Lane County Judge Charles Zennache last year allowed him to remove an ankle bracelet that Bean said impeded his passage through airports. But Zennache refused to give Bean his passport back. Since then, public records show, Bean took a step to make travel easier: In February, one of his companies bought a 1998 Cessna Citation V, an eight-seat private jet, for an undisclosed sum. OREGON CITY MAYOR IN DOUBLE TROUBLE: The mayor of Oregon City, Dan Holladay has now managed to distinguish himself from his peers for the second time in three months. As WW reported in April, Holladay first fell afoul of the Oregon Department of Justice when he threatened to allow businesses to reopen in violation of Gov. Kate Brown’s stay-home order. Then, last week, Holladay inserted himself into the national conversation over George Floyd’s death with social media posts citing bogus statistics about black deaths at the hands of police and by complaining civil protests related to Floyd’s death were allowed but Oregon City’s July 4 fireworks show was not. At an emergency meeting of the Oregon City Commission on June 7, colleagues decried his behavior and constituents called him an “embarrassment.” Holladay declined to comment.
J O N AT H A N I N T H AV O N G
POWER In its second week, Portland’s nightly uprising against police killings of black people became a tale of two protests, united in their aims but diverging in their tactics. One of the gatherings expanded, and the other intensified. In the early evenings, demonstrators gathered at Revolution Hall in Southeast Portland, then took to the streets, filling parks and pausing on bridges to remember George Floyd, killed last month by Minneapolis police. The marches grew as large as 10,000 people, including basketball superstar Damian Lillard, and debuted a list of policy demands, including the defunding of specific police units (see page 8). Each night, a group numbering in the hundreds gathered along a fence at the Multnomah County Justice Center to confront police. They taunted officers and tossed fireworks, hog feed and cans of White Claw at them. Police used explosives and tear gas to expel the crowds, filling the air with noise and a nauseating fog. Officers allegedly beat two freelance journalists who were filming them and arrested another. On June 8, Police Chief Jami Resch stepped down, ceding her command to Lt. Chuck Lovell, a black man. Four days prior, organizers told a crowd in Tom McCall Waterfront Park they would no longer be referring to the nightly actions as “peaceful protests” but as “nonviolent resistance.” While that change might seem like semantics, it speaks to a growing belief among activists that only violence by police will shock Americans out of supporting officers. “Nonviolent resistance!” the crowd chanted along the waterfront as the last light fell. —Aaron Mesh
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Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com BRIAN ROSE
BRIAN ROSE
ALEX WITTWER
ALEX WITTWER
ALEX WITTWER
ALEX WITTWER
ALEX WITTWER
ALEX WITTWER
DOUG BROWN
ALEX WITTWER
ALEX WITTWER
ALEX WITTWER
POWER
WEAPONS
WESLEY LAPOINTE
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
paintball guns. Don’t confuse them with pepper balls, projectiles that are shot from similar weapons but usually cause less severe injury. Why are they used? To inflict serious pain on someone who poses a threat. Rather than piercing the skin, they’re intended to strike with blunt force, but from a distance. What could go wrong? They can kill or blind someone. More recently, a freelance photographer in Minneapolis was blinded in one eye by a rubber bullet while covering a protest May 29. Who wants rid of them? Some advocacy groups, like Physicians for Human Rights, have called for rubber bullets to be banned. But they remain common in police departments throughout the United States. Who’s suing over them? Brandon Farley, a conservative videographer who regularly films protests, is suing the city, saying an officer shot him in the knee with a rubber bullet during a June 4 protest. Farley was then sent to the hospital for his injury, the complaints says, which has caused him “pain, discomfort and distress.”
5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT
Crowd Control
Portland police have used three controversial weapons against protesters in the past two weeks.
An uprising in the streets of Portland over the past two weeks was intended to draw attention to police violence against black people. It’s succeeding—in part because police repeatedly deployed gas, smoke and other militarygrade crowd control devices in quantities rarely seen even in this fractious city. The images of police spraying and beating demonstrators alarmed much of the city. More than 2,300 people filed official complaints with the city’s Independent Police Review in a single week. At least six protesters and a nonprofit have sued the city. These three weapons are drawing the most scrutiny and backlash. TESS RISKI. TEAR GAS, OR CS GAS What is it? A potent, aerosolized chemical agent that is typically sprayed out of a canister. Why is it used? To disperse large crowds of people by causing intense burning in the eyes, throat, lungs, and on the skin.. What could go wrong? Exposure to the gas can cause coughing or even retching, and the effects get worse the harder someone breathes. So protesters who’ve been gassed and run away from the source may begin to cough even more. Who wants rid of it? Worldwide, many people. The Geneva Conventions designated it a chemical warfare agent after World War I, and in 1993, the nations who signed those treaties banned the use of gas during war. In Portland, numerous public officials have called for its ban, including City Commissioners Jo Ann Hardesty and Chloe Eudaly. Mayor Ted Wheeler told police last week to use it only if they felt their safety was threatened. Who’s suing over it? On June 5, a black activist group called Don’t Shoot Portland sued the city of Portland in federal court to halt the use of tear gas on protesters. Teressa Raiford, founder of Don’t Shoot Portland and a former mayoral candidate, decried the use of CS gas: “We’re out screaming for justice for Black people and asking the state to stop its violence against us,” Raiford said, “and the
WHOSE STREETS: Portland police have used a range of crowd control devices.
city responds by using tear gas when we’re in the middle of a pandemic of respiratory disease.” A Portland couple named Andy and Samira Green have also sued. The Greens say they were sprayed with tear gas shortly after 9 pm on June 2. The two now suffer from migraines, coughing and fear, says the lawsuit filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court on June 8. Samira Green is pregnant. FLASH-BANGS What are they? Explosive devices, often ejected from a grenade launcher. Why are they used? To disorient people with loud bangs and bright flashes, and, ultimately, to disperse crowds. What could go wrong? If used as intended, police aim the devices in the air, where they detonate. But activists allege police sometimes aim them directly at protesters. Getting hit with a flash-bang, also called a “concussion grenade,” can be fatal. A ProPublica investigation found that between 2000 and 2015, at least 50 Americans were maimed or killed by police use of flash-bangs. A Portlander named Anthony Cantu suffered a traumatic brain injury after getting hit with one during a 2018 protest. His attorneys argued that if it weren’t for his thick bicycle helmet, he probably would have died. Who wants rid of them? They’re very common in police departments nationwide. The Portland Police Bureau said it would halt the use of flash-bangs in 2018 pending an internal review of the dangers they posed to protesters. But a bureau representative now tells WW the devices deployed this week are different from the ones used in 2018. Who’s suing over them? Julia Leggett filed a lawsuit against the city in Multnomah County Circuit Court on June 7 after a concussion grenade exploded near her right leg while she was walking away from police during a June 5 protest. “The grenade exploded near Ms. Leggett’s right leg, shredding her pants,” the lawsuit says, “producing hematoma, and requiring immediate medical attention, causing her pain, discomfort and distress.” RUBBER BULLETS What are they? The name is somewhat of a euphemism. “These kinetic energy (KE) rounds are rarely made of rubber these days, and some even have metal components, just like conventional bullets,” Fast Company reported. They are often shot from grenade launchers or modified
Chief Charles “Chuck” Lovell In a surprise move amid the second week of protests over police treatment of black people, Mayor Ted Wheeler and Portland Po l i c e C h i e f Ja m i Resch announced June 8 that Resch would step down and be replaced b y L t . C h a r l e s S. “Chuck” Lovell III, 46. It was a move nobody saw coming, both because Resch took the top cop spot only about six months ago and because Lovell, though highly regarded, was a midlevel manager. In his promotion to the top job, Lt. Lovell jumped three levels: captain, assistant chief and deputy chief. He now becomes the bureau’s eighth chief in the past 10 years. Here are five things to know about him. NIGEL JAQUISS AND LATISHA JENSEN. 1. A native New Yorker, Lovell joined the Portland Police Bureau in 2002 after serving in the U.S. Air Force, including three tours overseas. 2. Among his bureau assignments, Lovell served as a school resource officer at Jefferson High, served on the crisis negotiation team, led the Human Trafficking Detail and, most recently, led the Community Services Unit, which oversees police response to citizens with addictions and mental illness. 3. Lovell becomes Portland’s fourth African American chief, following Charles Moose, Derrick Foxworth and Danielle Outlaw, whom he served as executive assistant. 4. Like many Portland police officers, Lovell does not live in Portland. He lives in Washington County. He is not a member of any political party and has rarely voted except in general elections. 5. Lovell is a longtime volunteer and current board member at Lines for Life, a Portland nonprofit that works on substance abuse and suicide prevention.
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MARIAH HARRIS
SOLUTION
STAFF CHANGE: Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty gets her wish on GVRT.
Defunding the Police
ONE QUESTION
Should Portland Defund the Police’s Gun Violence Reduction Team?
Dan Ryan, former executive director of the educational nonprofit All Hands Raised, and onetime Multnomah County Commissioner Loretta Smith finished in the top two in the May 19 primary for the City Council vacancy created by Commissioner Nick Fish’s death Jan. 2. Because it’s a special election to fill that vacancy, Smith and Ryan will appear on the ballot for a runoff Aug. 11 rather than in November. To help voters make a choice, we will ask them questions each week.
This week, we asked about City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty’s proposal to scrap the Portland Police Bureau’s Gun Violence Reduction Team. Hardesty and other critics, including Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, say that unit disproportionately targets black men, as did its predecessor, the Gang Enforcement Team. We asked Ryan and Smith: “Do you support getting rid of the Police Bureau’s Gun Violence Reduction Team?” NIGEL JAQUISS.
Loretta Smith: Yes. “I wholeheartedly support Commissioner Hardesty’s proposal to divert funding away from the Gun Violence Reduction Team (Gang Enforcement Team) and invest in community-centered, nonmilitarized public safety. “The very first thing we have to remember is that the Gun Violence Reduction Team is simply a new name for the old Gang Enforcement Team. This is a team that has disproportionately profiled and targeted black and brown boys in Portland for decades. We can’t just give them a new name and expect some sort of transformational change; they are still disproportionately profiling and targeting black and brown boys in Portland today. “We continue to see a rise in shootings in Portland because the Gun Violence Reduction Team (Gang Enforcement Team) is not the answer to the systemic root issues that underpin gun violence; it’s not even an appropriate prescription for the symptoms. We need to be focused on implementing promising strategies to reduce gun violence that are rooted in, and supported by, community. I’ve called for a 20 percent reduction in PPB’s overall budget this fiscal year for reinvestment in alternative non-police public safety efforts and needed socioeconomic services and programs, among other reforms, so this move is also aligned with my vision for how we move the conversation around public safety forward.”
Dan Ryan: Yes. “We are well past the time when we as a city and a country need to throw out policing models rooted in Jim Crow laws and built expressly to punish and oppress. Even the name “Gun Violence Response Team” implies that our system is engineered to wait for desperate people to take desperate measures and then say, ‘See, we told you so,’ while we lock them up and throw away the key. “We also need to acknowledge that we have dumped a whole host of responsibilities in the laps of our police departments that they are not trained for or equipped to handle, such as mental health crisis response. Too many Portlanders have been killed by police when they were experiencing mental health crises, including several Black men. “That is why I strongly support pulling all monies from GVRT immediately and using them to fund programs that work, such as Portland Street Response. PSR is a community organization that uses trauma-informed practices to respond to 911 calls involving mental health or substance abuse situations in our homeless population.”
Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty is on the cusp of achieving a long-desired reform. Here’s how it might work. On June 10, the Portland City Council will vote to defund the police—or at least a specific portion of the police. Mayor Ted Wheeler on June 9 acceded to demands from City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty and others that Portland dissolve a unit of the Portland Police Bureau called the Gun Violence Reduction Team. Wheeler said the council would take that step and shift $12 million from police and other bureaus to new programs benefiting people of color. “We can’t do this incrementally,” Wheeler said. “We must do it through bold actions.” The mayor’s concession was an historic achievement for protesters who have jammed city streets every night for nearly two weeks. For this uprising to succeed so swiftly in defunding a police unit demonstrates its power and urgency. “With COVID-19, people are risking their lives to demand change,” says Kayse Jama, executive director of Unite Oregon. “That’s how much the people are angry and frustrated.” But the decision to eliminate the Gun Violence Reduction Team, which includes about 35 officers, did not emerge overnight. It was also the result of a yearslong campaign by Hardesty— who recognized this moment as an opportunity. Hardesty told protesters June 5 they had given her the leverage she needed. “For 15 years, I was banging my head against the walls of City Hall,” she said. “I did not have those three votes to remove [police] units. Until you.” The details of reallocating police funding and reassigning officers were still being hashed out at press deadline, and remain the subject of intense negotiations among city commissioners. But the basic concept Hardesty champions is elegant in its simplicity. It has two parts: Defund the Gun Violence Reduction Team. Since long before she was elected in 2018, Commissioner Hardesty had her eye on disbanding a unit of the Portland Police Bureau that used to be called the Gang Enforcement Team but is now the Gun Violence Reduction 8
Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
Team. Hardesty and other critics say GET and now GVRT disproportionately focus on young black men. In a waterfront speech to protesters June 5, Hardesty told the crowd that 52 percent of GVRT stops involved blacks, who make up just 6 percent of Portland’s population. “That makes no sense,” Hardesty said. She tried, without success, to defund GVRT in May 2019, shortly after arriving in office. Her effort led to public sparring on the council dais with Wheeler, who defended the team’s work and disparaged Hardesty and Commissioner Chloe Eudaly for using its old name. He immediately apologized, but the exchange displayed how raw feelings are surrounding GVRT. Give the money to Portland Street Response. Hardesty and Wheeler teamed up last year to persuade the City Council to invest in a two-employee pilot program in Lents called Portland Street Response. Collectively, the Portland Police Bureau and Portland Fire & Rescue respond to more than 300,000 calls a year, most of which involve neither a serious crime, a fire, nor a medical emergency. Portland Street Response borrows from a nationally lauded program in Eugene that sends a community health worker and an emergency medical technician, rather than sworn public safety officers, to routine calls. The idea is to dispatch more appropriate personnel who can meet 911 callers’ needs more effectively and cheaply—without the conflict that sometimes occurs when armed officers respond. “I’ve received more than 12,000 emails in support of this agenda,” Hardesty told the crowd last week. “We’re going to win this!” In his announcement that GVRT was finished, Wheeler said Tuesday it was too early to say whether Portland Street Response would benefit. “I am a strong advocate and am very hopeful this will lead to more money for Portland Street Response,” Wheeler said. “[But] we have not specifically prescribed where money will go.” NIGEL JAQUISS AND LATISHA JENSEN.
WESLEY LAPOINTE
NEWS
Stay Tight
HAULED IN: Portland police have arrested more than 150 people during recent protests— including a freelance journalist on June 7.
When a pandemic met a protest, public health fought the law and the law won. BY TE SS R I SK I
tess@wwe ek.com
As Portland police clear an uprising from downtown streets on a nightly basis, protesters and their attorneys say cops are putting low-level arrests and unnecessary detention ahead of public health. Take, for example, the saga told to WW by Jesse Swordfisk. After Portland police arrested Swordfisk, 30, for disorderly conduct as he fled a downtown protest on June 6, he says an officer crowded him into an elevator, along with two other arrestees and two more police officers. As the elevator lifted its six passengers to the 13th floor of the Multnomah County Justice Center for processing, one protester mentioned they weren’t quite socially distanced in the confines of the tight space. “Yeah, that’s kind of out the window at the moment,” Swordfisk, 30, recalls one of the officers responding. “But all the protesters were 6 feet apart, right?” another officer joked. At 1:40 am, Swordfisk called his wife to let her know he’d been arrested. For the next eight hours, he remained in the jail, which at one point became so crowded with protesters, he says, there was standing room only left. At its peak, there were about 30 to 35 people in the communal room, waiting to be released. About a third of the 50 law enforcement staff he interacted with throughout the night wore masks, Swordfisk says. “Social distancing—whether possible or not—no effort was made there,” Swordfisk says. “I would certainly characterize it as a willful disregard for COVID-related guidelines.” Representatives of the Portland Police Bureau did not respond to a request from comment from WW about whether officers were wearing masks or keeping arrested people apart. The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office says the agency is committed to fighting the public health crisis, and that all adults in custody are given face coverings upon entering the booking area of the jail on the 13th floor. “Because of these processes and physical distancing, to date, we have not had an outbreak, and no adults in
custody have tested positive for COVID-19,” said Chris Liedle, the communications director of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. But Swordfisk’s story matches the accounts of two other protesters arrested on misdemeanor charges. All three spoke on the record. They described a booking process and jail stay that adhered to few of the health guidelines recommended during the pandemic. That’s a danger to the health of both officers and protesters. Yet as COVID-19 intersects with an uprising against racism, health experts warn that mass arrests of protesters in cities across the nation could further spread the virus. In four U.S. cities— New York, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Washington, D.C.—civil rights groups have sued police departments for keeping protesters locked up without protecting their health. Protesting is a tradition in Portland. But demonstrating during a pandemic is something new. The intimate, often violent clashes between police and protesters raise questions about how to balance an uprising of anguish that stems from decades of police violence against black Americans, and directives from public health experts to practice social distancing. At points during the demonstrations, social distancing has all but disappeared. Thousands of protesters mourning the killing of George Floyd have chanted, “Stay together, stay tight!” as they marched across the Burnside Bridge, and again as they braced for riot cops to charge them on downtown streets. The chant, intended to protect stragglers from attack and arrest, contradicts public health guidelines. Police tear gas has also caused protesters to tear off their masks, to cough, sneeze, spit and rinse their faces. City Commissioners Jo Ann Hardesty and Chloe Eudaly last week called for a tear gas ban. “It is sadistic,” Eudaly said. It also spreads bodily fluids on which the virus can hitch a ride. Months ago, Portland police tried to lower jail populations to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Then-Chief Jami Resch announced March 20 that
the bureau would continue to arrest suspected felons but would halt most misdemeanor arrests during the pandemic. That policy would protect officers and citizens from needless contact. Yet since May 29, Portland police have arrested more than 150 protesters, nearly all on misdemeanor charges. During that same time frame, 111 people have been booked in the Multnomah County Jail on misdemeanor charges related to the demonstrations, according to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. Kenneth Kreuscher, a veteran Portland civil rights lawyer, says it looks like business as usual—including exposing arrestees to each other and holding them unnecessarily. “In general, the process that the police and the jail have been following has not been changed to accommodate concerns related to COVID,” Kreuscher says. “They should be changed and they easily could be changed.” He says police should apply the practice of cite and release—arrest protesters but issue them a citation, like a ticket, with a scheduled court date. “There’s no reason why people need to be processed and booked and held in jail for eight hours for a misdemeanor,” Kreuscher says. “ What’s probably happening is, they’re getting people to jail to get them off the streets, and so they can punish the people they’re arresting.” When asked when the moratorium on misdemeanor arrests was lifted, Portland Police Bureau spokeswoman Lt. Kristina Jones said the bureau included a specific exemption for public safety risks. “The executive order related to this included a provision for booking instead of citing if there was an identified ongoing public safety risk,” Jones said. The bureau did not respond to a public records request for a copy of the executive order, and WW could not verify the existence of such a provision in the bureau’s press releases or in media coverage about the moratorium. Jonathan Langvin, 29, is another protester who says police aren’t following health guidelines when making arrests. Langvin was arrested June 6 after walking up to the fence surrounding the Multnomah County Justice Center to confront police officers about their tactics. He says he observed several officers covering their badge numbers. “Are you hiding your identity so you can commit war crimes?” he recalls asking the officers. Police then arrested him for disorderly conduct and interfering with a peace officer. He was placed in the back of a squad car with another protester, sans masks, and driven to the Justice Center, where he was booked on the 13th floor and then taken down to the jail in the basement. “They were strict about masks for a while, but as the night got going it kind of seemed less of a thing,” Langvin says. “Once you’re arrested, they’re not doing anything to protect people from the lethal virus that’s killed 100,000 people in this country.” Langvin says he had to weigh the risk of joining a crowd of thousands of protesters with the threat of the pandemic. He says the human rights issues outweigh the risk to his own health. Nicholas Barlow, 27, was arrested June 1 while filming the arrest of another protester. The cops told him to move away, and he called them terrorists. “To me personally, I would feel selfish if [COVID-19] stopped me from trying to go out and do my part and be an ally,” Barlow says. “That being said, I understand being in a crowd of thousands of people, masks or no masks, is a dangerous setup. But that just seems like a small risk considering what we’re fighting for.” Barlow says he was thinking less about the pandemic and more about his bloodied face and the zip ties tightly squeezing his wrists as police escorted him into the Justice Center on June 1. As he and two officers rode the elevator to the 13th floor for processing—the same way Swordfisk would do five nights later—Barlow noticed a sign on the wall that reminded people to maintain social distancing. Someone had written “LOL” on it. Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
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BRIAN BURK
NEWS
No Turning Back Oregon’s largest county is sailing into the teeth of a pandemic. BY N IGEL JAQU ISS
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On Friday, June 12, Portland is expected to reach a long-awaited milestone: the reopening of bars, restaurant dining rooms and beauty salons. It is unclear whether the city is ready, and warning signs suggest the results could be calamitous. As Multnomah County prepares to become the state’s last to reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic, officials worry that complacency— and the overlay of mass protests against police killings of black people—presents major risks. County Chair Deborah Kafoury worries people will mistake reopening as confirmation the pandemic is over. “It’s not over and won’t be until we have a vaccine,” Kafoury says. “COVID fatigue is real, but we need to continue to try and limit our risks as individuals and as a community, to protect the people most likely to get seriously ill and die.” But county officials have not paused their plans to reopen June 12. Instead, they have turned to Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and asked her for two additional protections: mandatory COVID -19 testing in nursing homes and a requirement to wear masks in public places. A common perception of the novel coronavirus is that it mostly sickens the old. But state figures show that the same people most likely to attend protests are actually the most likely to get infected: The greatest number of positive tests since the pandemic began is among those aged 20 to 29, followed by those aged 30 to 39. On June 5, Kafoury and the other officials calling the shots on public health in Oregon’s largest county filed paperwork with the state attesting that social distancing had beaten back COVID -19 sufficiently that the county could begin reopening. In what felt like a cosmic rebuke, the Oregon Health Authority over the next three days reported the largest single-day totals of new COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began. The percentage of tests coming back positive also increased sharply, nearly doubling to 5 percent. OHA experts say it’s too soon to judge the significance of the increases, which they attribute to more testing and aggressive contact tracing, particularly around workplace outbreaks. The numbers were skewed by a massive outbreak at Pacific Seafood in Newport, they say, but case numbers in Multnomah County are also rising. State and county officials worry the rash of protests that have occurred in Portland and around the state could become a super-spreader event. “We’re just at the beginning of the window where we’ll find that out,” says Dr. Tom Jeanne, an OHA senior adviser. At Multnomah County, the decision to reopen is an acknowledgement of the obvious: Officials can no longer keep more than 800,000 people locked down when demonstrators gather in large groups every night. “This is exactly what we’ve been trying to avoid, a bunch of people mixing together,” says Dr. Jennifer Vines, the leading health officer for the tri-county region. M u l t n o m a h C o u n t y ’s f i v e e l e c t e d commissioners have expressed solidarity with the protesters—the county categorizes systemic racism as a public health hazard—but they are
also keenly aware that just because the state is resuming some normal activities, the risks haven’t diminished. So they are seeking strategies to mitigate the damage. Last week, at the urging of Commissioner Sharon Meieran, an emergency room physician, the board collectively asked Gov. Brown to “issue an executive order imposing a statewide mandate for COVID 19 testing for all long-term care facilities in Oregon.” Several states, including Washington, California and Colorado, have already issued such mandates. About half the state’s 169 COVID-19 deaths have occurred in nursing homes, assisted living or other long-term care facilities. Advocates fear reopening Portland adds to the risks for seniors. “Folks haven’t thought about the fact that many residents in these facilities can come and go as they please,” says Ruby Haughton-Pitts, the state director of AARP Oregon. “We can’t flatten the curve in one part of society and leave people in congregate settings vulnerable.” Jim Carlson, president and CEO of the Oregon Health Care Association, which represents senior living centers and occupies a powerful position in state politics, says his group is not standing in the way. “We support widespread surveillance testing of long-term care staff and residents,” Carlson says, “and have expressed this publicly and in private conversations with a wide variety of public officials.” Charles Boyle, a spokesman for Brown, says protecting seniors is a top priority for the governor. She is considering the county’s request and changes are likely, Boyle adds. “We will be able to share the details of this plan within the next few days.” Meieran has been so persistent in her advocacy for mandatory testing at senior facilities that county officials merely nod and move to the next agenda item when she brings it up. She and more than 140 other doctors are also pushing Brown to mandate masks. “When you put a double barrier between people, you significantly lower the risks,” Meieran says. “It’s been done thoughtfully in most major cities and counties on the West Coast and particularly well by King County in Washington.” Requiring masks is something the county could do alone, but Meieran’s colleagues, led by Commissioner Lori Stegmann, pushed back last week, citing news reports that some people of color would feel stigmatized. “For black men, according to The New York Times,” Stegmann said, “the fear is that masks will expose them to harassment from the police.” That’s why the protesters march—to seek an end to institutionalized racism in policing. “We have to work to mitigate those kinds of impacts,” Meieran says. “We’re dealing with a double epidemic here: racism and COVID-19, and we’ve got to take them both on.”
CAMP CORONA
IT TAKES A VILLAGE: Women campers have put down stakes along one portion of a North Portland trail. They've grouped together to keep one another safe, they say.
During the virus, Portland officials chose to let this homeless camp take root. That could soon change. STO RY BY R ACH E L M O NAH AN
rmonahan@wweek.com
PHOTOS BY BRIAN BURK
Torri Quesinberry, 33, has lived on the streets of Portland since 2015, when she was evicted from her mobile home. And her residence since COVID -19 broke out in Oregon has been in a camp along the Peninsula Crossing Trail, a paved bike and jogging path at the edge of the University Park neighborhood near North Lombard Street. Quesinberry, who has a warm smile and bleach-blond hair with bright red highlights, lives in a tent she has outfitted with batterypowered LEDs, a bed and a makeshift kitchen that even has a hanging basket for fruit. Outside her tent: pots of petunias, bursting in pink and red. She’s not alone. Her blue tent sits next to an electric transformer station, just north of where the miniature goat herd called the Belmont Goats grazes in a pasture. And she has many neighbors: dozens of tents, a garden, even a
makeshift general store where you can buy a Coke. Across Lombard, another 25 tents. Combined: some 70 or 80 people. For several years, Portland City Hall policy would be to uproot this camp as soon as it grew beyond a few people and scatter its residents to other places. But the city suspended such sweeps the first week of March, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. That decision gave Quesinberry and her fellow campers a semi-permanence she hasn’t enjoyed since she was evicted and relapsed into heroin addiction. “I want a house so bad,” she says, “I made one out of tarps.” In the past two months, increasingly visible tent camps have grown across the city—in Old Town, along Southeast Powell Boulevard and on the Peninsula Crossing Trail in North Portland, where Quesinberry lives. CONT. on page 11 Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
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“It’s been a failed strategy. Sweeps are police violence. It falls on mayors to change course.” —Israel Bayer
The city stopped its usual sweeps of homeless camps in March, after Gov. Kate Brown issued her stay-home order. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised against dispersing homeless camps in the midst of the pandemic. Homeless people are among the most vulnerable to contracting diseases and often have health conditions that put them at risk of getting much sicker from the coronavirus. Police have stepped in where they have found criminal activity, particularly in Old Town. But the city’s decision not to enforce the usual rules gave way to larger camps—and the problems that often accompany those places. With Multnomah County planning to reopen in the next week or so, it’s only a matter of time before Mayor Ted Wheeler decides that Quesinberry’s and other camps have to go. WW has learned City Hall has drafted a plan to resume evicting residents of homeless camps, but has paused in finalizing the language and enacting it—because city resources are strapped by the recent nightly protests against police brutality and racism. Quesinberry knows she will soon be told to pack up and leave, a situation that casts into sharp relief the contrast between the region’s ambitions and the immediate choices leaders face. Last month, the region passed a $250 million-a-year tax measure to address the root causes of homelessness. Yet the city is poised to return to the controversial practice of sweeps, which no one disputes is anything other than triage. “It’s been a failed strategy,” says Israel Bayer, a longtime advocate for homeless people in Portland. “Sweeps are police violence. It falls on mayors to change course.” It is perhaps one small measure of how much the virus has upended social norms that a return to sweeping homeless camps—business as usual in Portland for decades—is no longer a political certainty. Advocates argue this is a moment to reimagine the city’s approach to addressing homelessness. “We can do better than choosing the better of bad options,” says Kaia Sand, executive director of Street Roots, which publishes a newspaper sold by homeless people. “We are in a transformative moment. My God, we are going to start sweeping—knowing this is counter to all public health advice. It feels cruel.” 12
Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
GREEN ACRES: The Belmont Goats (above) now have a home in the University Park neighborhood, not far from where Natasha Melton (right) was out for a walk on a recent evening.
The camp leaders have set rules: no noise after 11 pm, no more than two trash bags outside a tent.
HOME AWAY FROM HOME: Torri Quesinberry, 33 (above and below), runs a camp store and has outfitted her tent with some of comforts of home. The camp also shares a communal table (left) for meals.
The first camper arrived along the Peninsula Crossing Trail in December. But the camp exploded this spring, when the city halted sweeps. The bike path now looks more like a state park campground: Amid green overgrowth, tents are spaced several feet from each other. There’s even a fire pit. Most of Quesinberry’s fellow campers are women. They chose to live together for their own protection. They have started a garden of potted tomato plants and strung a hammock between trees. A long table in the center of camp provides a shared dinner space. On a hot afternoon late last month, they served orange popsicles. The campers use bags of crushed and dry ice to keep their perishables cold. A porta potty sits just south of camp, though Quesinberry uses a toilet with a plastic bag, set up in her tent. A city contractor regularly picks up garbage, including specially designated human waste. The camp leaders have set rules: no noise after 11 pm, no more than two trash bags outside a tent. Three violations of the rules and the other women evict scofflaws, they say. The camp doesn’t have a name, but Quesinberry runs a store she dubbed Pay Here. She posted a chalkboard in front of her tent: “SPEND $3, GET $1 MORE FREE!” She sells bike lights, batteries, cigarette lighters, lighter fluid for refills, potato chips, candy bars and soda. Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
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"COVID has highlighted the sad reality of how many people live outside in our region." —Tim Becker OREGON TRAIL: The Peninsula Crossing Trail mostly gives the campers some space from the surrounding neighborhood; their closest neighbors are an apartment building (above).
There’s a dark side to life in Quesinberry’s camp. Drug use is open: This reporter observed a camper packing a glass pipe with an unidentified substance. No one in the camps wore a face mask during the week of WW’s visits, or reported being worried about contracting the coronavirus. And Raafat Abdel Famad, who runs a used car dealership on Hayden Island, says thieves who have stolen autos from him live in the camps. Famad says nine cars—including two 2017 Cadillac Esplanades, worth an estimated $55,000 apiece—were stolen from his lot. Two of the cars turned up near the camp last week. He says police never made an arrest—they couldn’t make a case against the man they believed did it. “It’s crazy here in Portland,” Famad says. As soon as this week, Multnomah County will become the last county in Oregon to begin reopening from the governor’s stay-home orders. That’s creating pressure on the mayor, both from business owners, who want Wheeler to remove tents from their doorsteps, and neighborhoods that want tents gone from parks as the city starts to reopen. "Unsurprisingly, there are ongoing concerns from the business community about the impact our homelessness crisis has on the local economy," says City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly. While homeowners near Peninsula Crossing Trail do not have a vocal constituency at City Hall, other parts of Portland seeing a growing number of tents do. In Old Town and downtown, business and property owners have been outspoken. Downtown property owner Greg Goodman wrote an unvarnished letter to City Hall two weeks ago. “While COVID and homelessness are major issues, it doesn’t condone open drug use, vandalism, and crime being permitted,” he wrote to the mayor and Portland City Council in a May 29 email. “If beds are available, it should not be optional for people on the street not to use them.” In North Portland, neighbors in Overlook are concerned about a homeless camp in nearby Madrona Park, which suffered a brush fire June 3 that homeowners say was started by campers. 14
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“Please remove these camps from this neighborhood public park,” wrote Chris Trejbal, president of the Overlook Neighborhood Association, in a June 3 email to City Hall. “They prevent Portlanders from enjoying their public spaces, which is something people need at this time of social distancing.…This area is designated a wildfire hazard zone for a reason. We got lucky this time. Let’s not press our luck.” There is also a legitimate concern about large homeless camps spreading the coronavirus. So far, a dozen people in Multnomah County who are homeless, or were within the last six months, have been diagnosed with COVID-19. But in other cities, the coronavirus has had a much deeper effect on people living on the street. Local officials expect things could get worse: Homeless camps started expanding even though Portland hasn’t yet experienced an increase in residential evictions since the pandemic started. In other words, COVID-19 hasn’t made more people homeless, but it could soon. (“There’s nothing to suggest there are more homeless people in our community right now,” says Wheeler’s spokesman Tim Becker. “COVID has highlighted the sad reality of how many people live outside in our region.”)
PARTY BALLOONS: Sheila McGarry celebrated her 60th birthday last month at her camp, where she has lived for at least five months.
To make matters worse, health officials expect a second COVID-19 wave to descend by autumn. While the pressure mounts for Mayor Wheeler to act, the CDC guidance is less than decisive. “If individual housing options are not available, allow people who are living unsheltered or in encampments to remain where they are,” the CDC advised. Wheeler’s office says it is trying to strike a balance, but provided few logistical details. “The county and city have been most successful with an approach that combines outreach, common-sense cleanup protocols, and enforcement against illegal activity,” says Becker. “When COVID emerged, the basic advice was to leave people where they were to reduce the risk of spreading the virus. [But] people have started concentrating in larger and larger groups, which isn’t safe.” Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury says the city must act gently or risk spreading the virus as it scatters homeless people. “When the city decides to begin addressing some of these camping issues,” Kafoury says, “we know that minimizing the dispersal of people will prevent the potential spread of COVID.” Portland’s political landscape is changing rapidly. This week, two racial justice nonprofits, Portland African American Leadership Foundation and Unite Oregon, issued demands for police reforms in the hours after Police Chief Jami Resch resigned. Among the demands: End all sweeps of homeless camps. And the camps at Peninsula Crossing are drawing more attention. The Oregonian dropped by last month for a story. A few weeks ago, Sarah Iannarone, who is running against Wheeler in the November mayoral runoff, paid a visit to Peninsula Crossing Trail. She’s among the critics of sweeping camps during COVID—at least this camp. “You can’t start sweeping people when they’ve been allowed to create stability,” she says. “You have to have somewhere for them to go.” Among her solutions: more sanctioned camps in neighborhoods that might have the resources to support people in distress.
At the same time, Iannarone acknowledges she would be furious if she were a business owner in Old Town. “I’m hearing reports of open-air drug dealing that is more aggressive than historically,” she says. “I am seeing intense need for food and hygiene. There is trash and waste accumulation. It’s certainly concentrated.” Sheila McGarry had a bouquet of balloons hanging outside her tent, a memento from her 60th birthday celebration. On a recent evening, she was sitting outside her tent on one of three dark hardwood dining room chairs with red cushions. Her nails were painted a pale green. She changes her nail color more often than most women change their underwear, joked a fellow camper. It’s an easy and inexpensive way to feel good, she explained. McGarry, who grew up in St. Johns, was the first woman to move into the camp—around Christmas. After her mother died five years ago, she has been outside more than not. She grew up in a large family with nine brothers and sisters, so she likes that people joined her. She made shrimp salad for dinner for everyone in camp; someone else had brought popsicles for the unseasonably warm, 90-degree day. (Another camper had cooked barbecue ribs the previous night.) A friend stopped to chat and took a popsicle from the main table. McGarry is on Social Security disability for a mental health condition, and she would like an affordable apartment. She’s working on it, with Northwest Pilot Project. She took the first step: getting an ID. What she doesn’t want is to be swept down the trail. “That scariest part of being homeless is you have 30 minutes [to move]—too bad, too sad,” she says. She can’t see the point of the city making her move a few blocks. “I've been here five months, six months. I've had apartments for less time than that," she says, calling sweeps the "scariest part of being homeless. I'll go, but I don't know where I am going to go to.”
Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
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DAMIAN LILLARD
DAME TIME On June 4, as the ongoing national protests over the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other black people entered their second week, a famous face stood out in the crowd in Portland: basketball superstar Damian Lillard. The Trail Blazers point guard, dressed in a Malcolm X shirt, locked arms with other demonstrators as they marched across the Morrison Bridge, chanting, “Black lives matter!” and reciting Floyd’s name. On Instagram Live the following day, Lillard reflected on the experience. “The moment we’re in as black people, all the protests across the country—it’s us connecting with the icons of black history,” he said. “We’re basically participating in something they started.” Several of Lillard’s Blazers teammates followed his lead: Gary Trent Jr., Nassir Little, Wenyen Gabriel, Rodney Hood and Anfernee Simons also participated in subsequent marches. A’Z IN THE TRAP Aminé bought Tblack Portlanders lunch last week. The Portland-born, L.A.-based rapper bought out Trap Kitchen for the day so the soul food cart could give out free meals. Aminé couldn’t be there himself, but the cart—which first opened in Compton, Calif., in 2016, earning a celebrity fan base that includes Dave Chappelle and Kendrick Lamar—matched his funds to feed even more people. Kee’s Loaded Kitchen, WW’s 2018 Food Cart of the Year, has also been accepting donations toward meals for black Portlanders, Eater first reported. FIELDS OF GREEN Oregon cannabis sales reached another milestone in May, topping $100 million for the first time since recreational use was legalized in 2015 and marking the third consecutive record-breaking month for weed sales in the state. When sales first spiked in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, some in the industry suspected it was the result of panic buying, but the numbers continued to climb, from $83 million in March to $89 million in April. Even before last month’s sales figures came in, cannabis tax revenues for 2020 were expected to be $9 million more than earlier projections, according to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. GET YOUR REPS IN While most downtown businesses are doing what they can to prevent protesters from spray painting their property, one Portland theater company decided to tag its own building to express its support for the Black Lives Matter protests. Artists Repertory Theatre in Southwest Portland posted a video on its Facebook page displaying the graffiti on its building, which includes messages like “No justice, no peace” and “We will build anti-racist theatre at ART!” “You want to talk about who deserves better? Black people deserve better,” the person in the recording says. “So this is just a building, which is our choice to tag.” BUBBLIN’ Where there’s water, there’s lif.e. In case you missed it, the century-old Benson Bubblers in downtown Portland started spouting water April 17 at the recommendation of the Multnomah County Health Department. Still, public fountains can spook germaphobes even in the best of times. So last weekend, to allay any fears about sanitation, the Portland Water Bureau released a video about Mark Day, who regularly scrubs the historic drinking fountains. Despite Day’s rigorous cleanings— and the fact that the fountains are arguably some of the city’s most hygienic infrastructure—extra caution still seems prudent, given you can’t drink from a fountain while wearing a face mask.
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Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
STOP THE MUSIC A Florida man last week pleaded guilty to defrauding a North Bend casino, in a deeply “Florida Man” sort of way. Howard Harlib, 67, admitted to falsely claiming to represent the Village People—the costume-wearing ’70s disco band most famous for “Y.M.C.A.”—and charging Oregon’s Mill Casino $12,500 for a fraudulent booking. Mill Casino figured out Harlib’s ruse when the business noticed the Village People were scheduled to play a show in Florida the same day the band was supposedly set to perform in North Bend. Harlib was charged with wire fraud in April 2019, and pleaded guilty June 2. He’s been ordered to pay $12,500 in restitution to the Coquille Indian Tribe, which runs the casino.
GET INSIDE
WHAT TO DO—AND WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING—WHILE STUCK INSIDE.
Q(UA RA N T I N E) & A
JUNE 10-16
S PO RTS -IS H
2019 Disc Golf World Championships Every year, thanks to Seinfeld, countless people believe this will be their personal “Summer of George.” While George Costanza only had himself to blame for not conquering the season, the coronavirus is letting you off the hook this year. But while the lockdown might put a serious damper on your attempts at achieving frolfing supremacy, I’m here to bring you the next best thing: glib commentary on the 2019 Disc Golf World Championship, courtesy of YouTube. 0:00 We start on the back nine of the final round following the top four golfers: Paul McBeth, Ricky Wysocki, James Conrad and Emerson Keith. In my extensive research, I learned there is a difference between frolf, or “Frisbee golf,” and disc golf, which is mainly that you can make money playing the latter. Secure the bag, boys.
Mitchell S. Jackson, Author of Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family WW: America has seen sustained mass protests against police brutality before. Does what we’ve seen the past week feel different to you? Mitchell S. Jackson: The character of it that seems different is the passionate violence. For it to be so widespread seems uncharacteristic. I don’t condone that, but I think you need both the people laying down on the Burnside Bridge disrupting traffic and someone who’s actually putting a hurting on someone’s economic prosperity, because you need their attention. What were your interactions with Portland police like growing up? I didn’t really start having contact with the police until I started selling drugs. I got pulled over a few times when I had drugs on me, and they actually let me go. I had my glasses on, I had a book bag—I looked like a student. Later, I was thankful to the officers who arrested me. I had a gun in the car, it was dark, anything could have happened. I’ve actually established a kind of relationship with my arresting officer. But I’m aware my relationship is not emblematic of the larger relationship between people of color and police. You’ve been researching the 1965 Watts riots for your next book. What similarities and differences have you noticed between then and what’s happening now? Everything is the same. They were flipping over police cars. There was a long stretch in Watts where they burned down every store there and they called it Charcoal Alley. It got militarized—they called in the National Guard after the second day. What was different was, the character of that riot was almost all black. This is more diverse. In the near term, how do you think we’ll know if these protests have been successful? I think we already know they’ve been successful. The four officers have been charged, and their charges have been escalated. We’re already exposing the complete inadequacy and callousness of this administration—it just felt good knowing [Donald Trump] had to run to the bunker. So the short term effects are already present. I was talking to a woman today, and she compared it to the #MeToo movement. To me, the engine of the #MeToo movement wasn’t that all of a sudden men thought women were equals and couldn’t harass them. It was that they were going to be punished severely for what they did—that they would lose their livelihood and their lives. That’s born of fear. If these protests strike fear in officers who are inclined to be abusive, then that’s a good thing. See an extended video interview with Mitchell S. Jackson at wweek.com/distant-voices.
2:42 James Conrad is probably a nice guy, but his first putt gives him the look of a pervert in the woods: lots of squatting, bending and deep concentration from behind a bush. The long ponytail probably doesn’t help. 4:30 This is a park in Peoria, Ill., in August. I’ve had Midwestern family barbecues in places like this: muggy and full of dead grass. I guarantee a Slip ’N Slide has been torn to shreds out there.
H E RE ' S AN IDE A
6:47 Any sport that has a suburban water tower as part of its course is a sport I must respect. 15:20 After a sick throw by Paul McBeth, what sounds like a Muppet in the crowd can be hard saying, “Damn!” 18:42 Hole 15 features a pair of sweet-looking portable toilets just behind the hole. Disc golf is the true gentleman’s game. 25:06 Emerson’s near-splits really shows how sexy disc golf can be, folks. 33:01 With a little late drama, Paul McBeth emerges as the PDGA World Champion. The wife is crying, and I learn you can win money even if you get 89th place. 2019 truly was the Summer of Paul. JAKE SILBERMAN.
T W E E T OF THE WEEK
Teach Your Cat to Wave! 1. Find some kind of clicking device—it can be an actual cat clicker, or even just your own voice. If it’s a physical object, hold it behind your back.
LThis isn’t
that big a problem. It’s just one bad apple.
2. Grab a treat—cats love a spoonful of meaty baby food. Hold just beyond the cat’s head. Repeat a verbal cue each time the treat is presented.
R
—Ashley Nicole Black (@ashleyn1cole)
3. Wait for the cat to reach a single paw out toward the food. If the cat gets up on its hind legs, pull the treat back. 4. When the cat responds correctly, award it the treat, and use the clicker to reinforce the behavior. —Paula Ratoza, owner of Feathers & Fur Talent Agency
BOY, BYE
RE AD T HI S
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler “I did a virtual discussion with 35 seventhand eighth-graders who read it. You haven’t really understood this deeply dystopian and ultimately hopeful novel until you’ve heard middle schoolers’ thoughts on it in the midst of a global pandemic. Parable’s main character is a Black teen, Lauren Olamina, who is just a couple years older than these students. She lives in a U.S. devastated by climate change, immense economic disparity, rabid political conservatism, and cataclysmic racial inequality. In the midst of this, Lauren imagines a better future, something that seems impossible at the time, and gathers others on a difficult journey to make that visionary future into reality. One girl said every politician should read Parable as homework right now. I couldn’t agree more.” —Walidah Imarisha, author of Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption (2016) See page 25 for more book recommendations. Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
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CULTURE June 11 CAPPY Hour with Darcelle XV & Poison Waters Portland drag legends Darcelle XV and Poison Waters take questions from viewers in a drag queen talk show supporting Cascade AIDS Project’s COVID-19 Community Action Fund. capnw.org. 5:30 pm. $20.
June 12 Karaoke with Kari Anne Pride Northwest organizer and KJ Kari Anne Horton’s Zoom karaoke streams were Pride Northwest’s official opening and closing party before last weekend’s roundtable with black queer and trans leaders was added during Portland’s first week of #BlackLivesMatter rallies. portlandpride. org/together-in-pride. 6 pm. Free. Virtual Bearracuda The long-running bear circuit party Bearracuda has turned into a living room get-down while shelterin-place orders remain in effect for Multnomah County. Dress down to your underwear—or however you like—as you listen to DJs, dance and watch go-go dancers. bearracuda.com. 8 pm. $10 suggested donation benefiting performers.
Pride Inside
A calendar of (mostly) digital events for a socially distant month of LGBTQ celebration. BY A N DR EW JA N KOWSKI
@andrewjank
It’s going to be a much different Pride this year. In addition to the coronavirus pandemic forcing the postponement of this year’s festival at Waterfront Park—along with, well, everything else—Portland’s LGBTQ+ event organizers have also had to consider whether digital events would distract from the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests. While some chose to cancel events or move them to July—the time now known as Gay Wrath Month—others are continuing on, providing entertaining, educational morale boosters for a still-vulnerable community while also raising money to help the fight against racism and police brutality. Here is a calendar of standout local Pride events, the vast majority of which are happening online—though a few have found ways to mark the month safely in real life.
June 14 Streaming 1999 Dyke Pride Pride Northwest streams historical footage—oof, I feel old—of the 1999 Portland Dyke Parade. As spaces for lesbians and queer women have vanished over the past two decades, the footage reflects a time when Portland’s lesbian community was more centralized. portlandpride.org/together-in-pride. 11 am. Free.
Pride Shabbat Jewish Federation of Greater Portland and Jewish Pride Greater PDX host a half-hour Zoom call to unite queer Shabbat observers, ending in time to observe the holiday electronics-free. jewishportland.org. 8 pm. Free.
Drag Delivered Rogue Safari, Bolivia Carmichaels, Honey Bea Hart, Jenuwine Beauté and T’Kara Starr will pull up to the location of your choice and deliver a star-studded show from a safe distance, schedules permitting, to benefit local nonprofit Our House. Contact events@ ourhouseofportland.org for booking. $60.
Q Center’s Trans Women’s Support Zoom Q Center’s weekly support group for Portland-area transgender women moved online during shelterin-place orders from the coronavirus. Find the link at the center’s website, along with a calendar of meetings for its other support groups. pdxqcenter. org/calendar. 7 pm. Free.
June 17
June 13 Virtual Pride Festival Pride Northwest hosts a digital show featuring an as-yet-unannounced roster of queer Portland entertainers, politicians, community leaders and other figures. portlandpride.org/together-in-pride. 4 pm. Free. Digital Darcelle Night This ain’t Darcelle’s first digital drag show—she’s already been featured in 3D videos and onscreen at her namesake Old Town venue. Tonight, she opens her legendary stage for drag queens to stream performances. portlandpride.org/together-in-pride. 8 pm. Free, tips strongly encouraged. Introvert: Digital Drag Show New girls Coco Jem Holiday and Donatella Mysecrets organized over a dozen local and national drag queens—including Flawless Shade, a former Miss Gay Oregon—for a night of socially distant drag. thecdsdrag.com/introvert. 6 pm. $5 general admission.
Poison Water + Artslandia Zoom Bingo Portland drag icon Poison Waters and the theater media company Artslandia host a bingo session over Zoom. Players can win prizes donated by local businesses. artslandia.com/vip-events. 6:30 pm. $20. 18+. Cathedral Park Drag Show St. Johns’ Pride celebrations are among the few live events taking place this year. Jesykah Marie Valentine of the legendary Valentine drag family brings together drag queens and an audience at a safe distance, encouraging app-based tips instead of cash. Cathedral Park. 5 pm. $5-$15 suggested donation. Club Kai-Kai Normally hosted at the sex club Sanctuary, Club Kai-Kai is among Portland Pride’s steamiest parties. Patrick Buckmaster’s freaky posse of strippers, drag queens and sex workers stream live from the Portland Productions warehouse. facebook.com/clubkaikai. 9 pm. $5-$13.
June 20 Still Chasing Rainbows Summer Lynn Seasons hosts Our House’s digital party, which will include games, prizes and a virtual variety show to benefit the nonprofit’s services for HIV/AIDS patients. ourhouseofportland.org. 3 pm. $10 suggested donation.
June 21 Proud Wherever You Are Singing drag pianist Saint Syndrome serenades her audience over Twitch and Facebook Live. twitch.tv/ saintsyndrome. 7 pm. Free. 18+.
June 22 Glitter Girls Stefhannie Calhoun and Victoria DuPont share the stage with eight other local drag queens, streaming live from Kelly’s Olympian. This is the second show of a regular twice-monthly series. facebook.com/ heyglittergirls. 8 pm. Free, tips strongly encouraged.
June 23 Pronouns & Gender Identity: Rethinking the Model Local nonprofit New Avenues for Youth hosts an online workshop for young people who have just begun navigating parts of their identity, or who have already done so for a few years and need peers to connect with on their journey. Register at eventbrite.com. Noon. Free.
June 25 Cascade AIDS Project Art Auction Poison Waters hosts Cascade AIDS Project’s annual art auction, interviewing guests over livestream as works by esteemed local artists are auctioned to support queer health services, including STI and HIV testing. capnw.org. 5:30 pm. $20.
Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
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W W S TA F F
LOVE SICK
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STAY SAFE, STAY INFORMED. WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER. WWEEK.COM
Mix and Match Dating apps have failed me. Would a socially distant singles mixer be any better? A month ago, I made the biggest quarantine mistake one could possibly make: I emailed an ex. The saddest part is, he’s not even an ex. He is a man I went on two dates with who texted me a week after that second date to tell me that while he thought I was awesome, he was super busy with work and couldn’t give me the relationship he thought I deserved. I was devastated at the time, but that was in September. Do you realize how long ago that was? We have gone through almost three seasons since this man last messaged me! When I sent him that email—around 2 am on a Wednesday night—I was attempting to open lines of communication that, truth be told, were never truly open in the first place. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was becoming a little desperate. I needed to be brought back to earth. At the beginning of 2020, I made a resolution that I was no longer going to seek out love that wasn’t coming back to me tenfold. I deserve to be loved greatly, but sometimes I forget that promise to myself when I look at the clock, realize it’s 3 am and I’m watching happy couples confess their love to each other on back-to-back episodes of Say Yes to the Dress. I concluded that after swiping, liking and messaging on these apps for almost a decade, and having less than stellar results, maybe it was time for something new. Enter Jacqueline Nichols, the founder and owner behind Discover Love Matches, a Portland matchmaking service. We talked on the phone, and I asked her point blank if dating in Portland is as bad as single women, and especially single Black women, say. “People think that Portland is terrible for dating because it’s a small city, but there are some really great singles here,” she said. When I asked where they all were, Nichols elaborated: “They’re all around you. I think that the act of dating has changed. Now, there are so many apps, which has created what I call the ‘shopping cart mentality.’ However, I will say that people in Portland can be too passive when it comes to vocalizing what it is they are looking for in a relationship.” It’s me—I’m people.
A week after we chatted, I deleted my apps and signed up for a three-month trial with Discover Love Matches. I had never been to a singles mixer—in person or otherwise—so I put on my nicest outfit, touched up my lipstick and logged on to Zoom, where I chatted directly with others. The first one I attended was small and made up mostly of women. At 26, I was the youngest face on the screen, which made me feel fairly brave. Here were some incredible people: some never married, others divorced. One man I met was a math teacher in his mid-50s who loved traveling and watching old movies. I instantly thought about setting him up with my mom. Everyone was in good spirits, still looking for their happily-ever-afters. Their hope made me hope again. After the event, I re-downloaded my apps, swiping into the void yet again. I matched with over 20 people. I sent about 10 messages. One person responded, and the conversation died after two messages. I curled up in a ball on my couch and sobbed, wondering out loud what it was about me that made me seem undesirable. My second mixer was a lot more casual. I told myself to relax. Was I here to find someone? Absolutely! But would it I be OK if I didn’t? I had to tell myself it would be. I made people laugh. I displayed my personality as best as I could, smiling at myself in the Zoom camera. One woman turned her camera around so we could all witness the beautiful sunset outside her home. Another told us about the hike she took on the trail by her house and how great it felt to be active after spending months in quarantine. I even got to see some dogs, the highlight of any interaction. When I logged off, I felt pleased with myself. Even if I didn’t receive any messages, I still had a good time. The next afternoon, Nichols sent out the profiles of the people who attended, encouraging us to take charge and message each other. I sent three messages and received two responses. One of the men I’m still talking to, which surprises me because I haven’t gotten this far in a long time. I deleted the apps again. Maybe it’s time to put away my shopping cart for good.
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MWM for MWW Passion, Connection, Butterflies Extraordinary times right? I’m 55 (6’2” 190), intelligent, professional, attractive, athletic, nice, very healthy, totally clean (UB2), at no particular risk of the flu. I’m married but allowed a sidecar. I’m not looking to change my situation or yours. I prefer ongoing affection, romance, honesty and trust. I need someone sensual. I’m orally inclined, endowed and love to please. I have free time and the form this takes is up to you. Please be 40ish or older and tell me about yourself by email at inpdx1234@ yahoo. Confidentiality and discretion are assured.
Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK
Editor: Matthew Singer / Contact: msinger@wweek.com
TAKE ME OUT
Keep It Simple
3. Ataula
TOP 5
HOT PLATES
Where to order takeout or delivery this week.
John Hunt downsizes with Union Burger. BY JAS O N CO H E N
@cohenesque
At John Hunt’s last burger joint, if you kept it simple, you were literally boring. On the menu at Stoopid Burger, the restaurant he co-owned until earlier this year, a hamburger with lettuce, pickle, tomato and onion was called the “Boring Burger.” Even the name of the bacon cheeseburger judged you: It was called the “Almost There.” Meanwhile, the signature eponymous burger came topped with cheese, a fried egg, ham, bacon and a hot link sausage. It was as much about the fixings as the meat. But at Hunt’s new place, he’s embraced simplicity, with a menu that includes just three basic items: a hamburger ($6), cheeseburger ($7) and veggie burger ($8.50). “I cut everything down so I could focus on giving people a better burger,” says Hunt of Union Burger, his cart along Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. “People love a classic American hamburger. And I noticed a lot of successful chains, like In-N-Out or Little Big Burger, all have simple menus. People are gonna order what they see.” Hunt’s partner at Union is Deon VanZee, whom he met when both worked at Washman Car Wash 13 years ago. The cart was set for a grand opening in late March before COVID19 shut down every restaurant in the city. But becoming takeout-friendly turned out to be a blessing, as did its location in a busy shopping corridor full of essential businesses that have remained open during the pandemic. The location also brings Hunt home: Stoopid Burger originally opened as a cart on North Vancouver Avenue before relocating to restaurant pod the Ocean in 2017. The new cart’s name and street sign-themed logo is a tribute to Portland history: Union Avenue is what became Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in 1989. “The heart and soul of Portland is MLK,” Hunt says. “I always say I’m back in the ’hood, and it feels good to be back. I’m very personal with my customers, they’re like my family. Food is what we use to tie back to the community in a positive way.” Although minimalism is the cart’s defining characteristic, Hunt’s brother, Dante, suggested a few weeks after opening that he put a lemon-pepper chicken sandwich on the menu. It’s become the cart’s bestseller, even as the Popeyes drive-thru down the street remains packed. But the pride of Union remains its classic cheeseburger. Here’s how it breaks down:
THE BUN In-N-Out bakes its own, while Shake Shack and Portland’s own Bless Your Heart use Martin’s Rolls from Pennsylvania. At Union, Hunt keeps it local, heading over to the Franz Bakery four times a week to keep the cart supplied with what he says is “a top-quality brioche bun.”
THE SECRET SAUCE Fry sauce, special sauce, Shack Sauce, In-N- Out Spread— everybody’s got their secret, vaguely pinkish, mayonnaise-based dressing. Besides mayo, the main ingredient in Hunt’s is barbecue sauce, which can do the work of several condiments.
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Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
1818 NW 23rd Place, 503-894-8904, ataulapdx.com. In normal times, the Slabtown dining room is packed with raucous groups stopping in for Spanish and Pacific Northwest-inspired small plates crafted by Jose Chesa. Newly opened for takeout, Chesa is focused on large dinners that can keep families fed for multiple meals—think paellas, rossejat and roasted chicken in romesco sauce. Takeout and delivery: ataulapdx.com. 3-6 pm Thursday-Sunday.
4. Sammich 1. Frog & Snail 3553 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-7369381, frogandsnail.com. What was once cozy French bistro Chez Machin is now a casual creperie. The highlight is the German, a buckwheat crepe stuffed with potatoes au gratin, caramelized onion jam, crispy bacon and scallions, topped with a healthy serving of homemade crème fraîche. Takeout and delivery: frogandsnail. com. 9 am-8 pm WednesdayMonday.
2. Ken’s Artisan Pizza 304 SE 28th Ave., 503-517-9951, kensartisan.com. Another contender for Portland pizza dominance, Ken’s Artisan serves super-thin-crust pizzas are best when piled with arugula and paired with a bottle of one of the many stellar wines on offer, which are available for takeout—just bring your own bag to carry it in. Takeout: 503-517-9951. 4:30-8 pm Wednesday-Sunday. Orders open at noon.
2137 E Burnside St., 503-477-4393, sammichrestaurants.com. For sandwich lovers, this is mecca, Chicago style. You’ll never want to eat another sandwich made from packaged meat after you’ve sunk your teeth into the flagship Italian beef, which comes sliced thin and topped with an addictive, chopped vegetable and hot pepper sauce called giardiniera and sweet peppers brined in beef juice and roasted. Takeout: sammichrestaurants.com. Delivery: Caviar. 11 am-6 pm daily.
5. Aviary 1733 NE Alberta St., 503-287-2400, aviarypdx.com. Everything chef-owner Sarah Pliner serves is thoughtfully delicious, and her takeout lobster roll and jojos are no exception. The rolls are of the warm, dressed variety: 2 ounces of lobster meat mixed with a mayobased sauce enhanced by herb, cayenne, celery and lemon zest, served on a pillowy soft, brownedin-butter roll. Takeout: 503-2872400. 4-8 pm Thursday-Saturday.
THE BEEF Hunt says Union uses “a more premium blend of beef” compared to Stoopid, which did its buying from a restaurant wholesaler. Union started out getting its freshly ground meat exclusively from Cason’s Fine Meats, a Northeast Portland staple now located just a few blocks south; the Cason’s logo is still on the cart. But its current supplier is another locally owned stalwart, Western Meat Market on North Lombard. It’s a larger patty— more Five Guys than In-N-Out—that’s still thin enough to get a good crust on the griddle. The 90/10 ground beef also shrinks less than an 80/20 blend, without sacrificing flavor. The patty is seasoned not just with salt and pepper but onion powder and other undisclosed spices.
THE TOPPINGS Nothing local or artisan about American cheese, as it should be. The lettuce is shredded romaine, and the onions and tomatoes are freshly cut each day. If you’re so inclined, though, you can still get pretty Stoopid at Union Burger: extra cheese, bacon, a fried egg and, yes, a Zenner’s hot link, are all available as add-ons—only ham is missing. EAT: Union Burger, 7339 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503744-9745, unionburgerpdx.com. Noon-7 pm Monday-Thursday, noon-8 pm Friday-Saturday, noon- 5 pm Sunday.
FOOD & DRINK
Automatic for the People The new vending machine outside Pix Pâtisserie doesn’t just dispense some of the city’s best desserts—it’s also a 24-hour party. BY M AT T H E W S I N G E R
msinger@wweek.com
On a recent Saturday afternoon, a dozen Portlanders lined up in the rain along East Burnside Street, waiting their turn at a freshly installed vending machine. At a glance, it would seem like the apotheosis of the city’s well-documented queuing culture—a bunch of hypebeasts risking health and dryness just to grab a Milky Way and experience the thrill of standing single-file again. But the Pix-O-Matic, the new dessert-dispensing apparatus outside French pastry shop Pix Pâtisserie, isn’t just a retro-chic update on the machines you used to grab an apple from in college, although that’s partly the inspiration. For one thing, the desserts are, well, from Pix. Owner Cheryl Wakerhauser had the idea to revive the old-fashioned automat years ago, but, like a lot of restaurateurs forced to reevaluate how they do business over the past three months, it took the pandemic for her to finally give it a shot. It’s appropriate for the moment: She can make sales without having to interact with customers or handle cash, and the automation means it can operate 24 hours a day. She bought a refurbished 20-year-old machine from a supplier in Southeast Portland and began filling it daily with the items that have made Pix an after-dinner destination for two decades: decadent pies, rich mousses, truffle cakes, crème brûlées and those famous macarons. But it’s not just sweets bringing out the crowds. During the first week, the main draw was the item occupying the rotating “pop-up” slot with offerings from outside businesses: Chinese dumplings from dearly departed Sichuan palace Lucky Strike. And because this is Portland, where wacky vending machines are a dive-bar staple, it’s also stocked with “Rick Astley for President” stickers, anti“Moscow Mitch” face masks and still-valuable rolls of toilet paper. After launching last week, Wakerhauser says it took only three days for the machine to make back her investment. Even in the midst of a health crisis and nightly clashes between protesters and police, the Pix-O-Matic has logged transactions as late as 1 am. It makes sense: With disco lights and a playlist pumping David Bowie and Kinks jams into the street, it’s about the closest thing to “nightlife” that exists on the eastside right now. Sadly, Lucky Strike will have already cycled out of the machine by the time you read this. But here’s what you are likely to find in stock this week:
• FRENCH MACARONS • INDIVIDUAL PIX DESSERTS (the Amelie, Concord, Une Fantôme, Jane Avril, Queen of Sheba and Pixie Bar) • GIFT BOXES OF CHOCOLATE • SPARKLERS • TINNED FISH (squid, cod, trout, anchovies, sardines, mussels) • “DEFEAT MOSCOW MITCH” BUTTONS AND FACE MASKS (with a free roll of toilet paper) • “RICK ASTLEY FOR PRESIDENT” STICKERS • COCKTAIL MIXERS (tonic water, club soda, fresh citrus fruit) • KELLOGG’S CORN POPS • RODOLPHE LE MEUNIER SALTED BUTTER • EGGS • ITEMS FROM COW BELL CHEESE SHOP INCLUDING SHEEP’S CHEESE WITH APRICOT JAM AND CRACKERS AND FONDUE KITS (pop-up runs June 11-18) GO: Pix Pâtisserie, 2225 E Burnside St., 971-271-7166. Open 24 hours. Credit cards only. See pixpatisserie. com/pixomatic for info on future pop-ups. Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
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PRESENTED BY:
2020
BOP! BEST OF PORTLAND
READERS’ POLL
Take out.
Stay home.
Support Local. Dining rooms across the city are shut down right now—but in a culinary capital like Portland, there’s always a way to get great food and drink, while supporting local businesses. Stay safe and enjoy an awesome
meal by ordering pick up or delivery from these restaurants, wineries, and breweries. See more of our recommendations at wweek.com/take-out-stay-home/
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C J M O N S E R R AT
POTLANDER A Quick-Hit Guide to Black-Owned Oregon Cannabusinesses Where to shop, what to buy and who to follow. BY BRIA N N A W H E E L E R
Real talk: It’s one thing to feel empowered to foment tremendous change, but it requires effort, intention and consideration every single day—that includes how and where we spend our dollars. Now is the time to put your money (if you’ve got it) where your mouth is (not literally, there’s still a pandemic going on) and change your spending habits to support black-owned cannabis businesses in Portland. Maybe that means driving to a dispensary a few blocks out of your way, or requesting more black-owned brands at the dispensary closest to you. Maybe that means staying home entirely and having your weed delivered instead. Maybe it means taking some time to learn precisely how racist drug enforcement policies have informed the police state we’re currently living in. Whatever the case, we’ve compiled this collection of black-owned Oregon cannabusinesses to get you started. It is by no means comprehensive, so if we’ve left any out, please let us know.
❋ DISPENSARIES ❋ BUDDING CULTURE
6802 NE Broadway, 503-719-6192, buddingculturepdx.com. This well-stocked shop features daily deals as well as two daily happy hours.
CLUB SKY HIGH
8975 N Lombard St., 503-719-5801, clubskyhigh.net. This St. Johns dispensary offers daily deals, free delivery, and a deeply rooted commitment to community leadership. Also, their moonrocks are legendary.
EXODUS WELLNESS CENTER
16211 SE Powell Blvd., 971-242-8079, exoduswellnesscenter.com. Exodus functions as a full-service dispensary, as well as a de facto social club, showing sporting events on its big screens and encouraging customers to sit and stay a spell. It also has a sizable inventory of pipes, rigs, bongs and associated accoutrements.
GREEN BOX
(DELIVERY ONLY)
971-263-1975, pdxgreenbox.com. Green Box was the first licensed cannabis delivery service in Oregon and, according to its website, remains the only one in the state. Order from an online menu or subscribe to receive a personalized box at your doorstep. Pay with cash or Venmo.
GREEN MUSE
(FORMERLY GREEN HOP)
5515 NE 16th Ave., 971-301-5859 gogreenhop.com. At one time known as “the first hip-hop dispensary,” Green Muse is another small shop, offering premium cannabis at every price point as well as industry master classes for aspiring cannabis entrepreneurs.
RELEAF HEALTH
3213 NE NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 971-255-1447, releafhealth.green. This full-service, mom-and-pop dispensary features a wide variety of local and private label products.
❋ PRODUCTS ❋ LEVELS BEVERAGE COMPANY
levels-beverage-company.myshopify.com Levels’ lightly carbonated, fresh-pressed, CBD-infused juice tonics are made in Oregon and available online— ask your local grocers and dispensaries to stock up.
NUTTY BEE MAGICAL SALVE
teepdx.com All-natural CBD salves, body butters, oils, soaking salts and more.
MAGIC HOUR
connection. Founder Mss_Oregon’s premier event is the National Cannabis Diversity Awareness Celebration, a weekend summit celebrating people of color in the cannabis industry.
MINORITY CANNABIS BUSINESS ASSOCIATION
minoritycannabis.org Co-founded by local cannabis luminary Jesce Horton, the Minority Cannabis Business Association is the first not-for-profit business league created specifically to create policy considerations, social programming and outreach initiatives to achieve equity for the communities most affected by the War on Drugs.
NULEAF PROJECT
nuleafproject.org NuLeaf ’s minority business accelerator program features education, technical skill-building, and mentorship by successful cannabis industry leaders: Past grantees include Green Box, Green Muse and Levels Beverage Company.
magichourcannabis.com Available through Green Box and Green Muse, Magic Hour Cannabis is a Tier 1 producer of organic cannabis, headquartered in Molalla.
❋ CANNABIS INFLUENCERS ❋
SWAY CBD/SESS CANNABIS
COCO MADRID
sesscannabis.com Maker of hand-rolled hemp CBD blunts and Thai sticks, available in Portland at Lumi Wellness Shop, 2929 SE Powell Blvd.
VIOLA BRANDS
@chubbykush Madrid, one of Portland’s favorite body-positive models, event host and fashionistas, also runs a cannabis lifestyle Instagram that celebrates femme consumption with a sensually curated feed.
violabrands.com Former NBA player Al Harrington started his brand in Colorado, but Viola’s multistate presence now includes a 40-acre farm in Falls City, Ore.
VANGUARD
❋ COMMUNITY RESOURCES ❋
WOMEN.WEED.WIFI
HIGH 5
86531 College View Road, Eugene, 541-726-9333, cannabishigh5.com. If you find yourself in Eugene, High 5 features indoor flower only, as well as a wide variety of cannabis products at all price points. Show your support next time you’re in the area.
WEED IS FROM THE EARTH: Northeast Portland dispensary Green Muse, formerly known as Green Hop.
DIVERSIFY PORTLAND
diversifyportland.com What began as a hashtag has evolved into a social development, event planning, and educational service focused on fostering community growth and
@vanguard_media_online Founded by Tiffany Watkins, aka Lady Canna, Vanguard is an online magazine that serves to promote women creatives, entrepreneurs and innovators in the cannabis industry. @womenweedwifi Cannabis news, reviews and education resources from black women, including artist spotlights, poetry, community support and—when the public health crisis abates—events. Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
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PERFORMANCE
Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com
BOOKS
Written by: Scout Brobst / Contact: sbrobst@wweek.com
HOTSEAT
ALETA AND AARON ROSS
Family Programming What does a talk show host do in lockdown with Mom? If you’re Aaron Ross, you invite her onto the program. BY JAY H O RTO N
@hortland
After 11 years of parading his weekly talk show around Portland and Los Angeles nightclub stages under both his own moniker and past nom de chat Ed Forman, Aaron Ross wasn’t about to let a global pandemic kill his momentum. The day after COVID19 shuttered Southern California, Ross recorded his St. Patrick’s Day romp alone inside a hotel room before boarding a plane back to Portland, where he intended to webcast some solo version of Who’s the Ross? from the safe confines of the family homestead. But a funny thing happened en route to his first livestream. When limited options for guests forced Ross to interview his mom, Aleta Ross, those first few shows, his rapport with the English-born, Hollywood-bred former actress worked so well she became his co-host and arguably the breakout star of their burgeoning Facebook hit. So far, the quarantine version of the program has attracted thousands of fans and a star-studded array of virtual pop-ins from the worlds of music (Seattle hip-hop duo Shabazz Palaces), sports (UCLA basketball legend and former Blazer Tracy Murray) and entertainment (Reno 911!’s Carlos Alazraqui). As the mother-son duo began preparing their Fourth of July Spectacular, WW sat down with Portland’s first family of talk. WW: How did this all start? Aaron Ross: As soon as L.A. shut down, I decided the best move was to be with family and do my weekly talk show from home. So, I’m shooting from the living room, but Mom wouldn’t leave the couch. The first two webisodes we did, Mom was my guest by pure necessity, but we immediately recognized this was a real kick. Then we started to dive into the Zoom world and see who we could get on. Mom shines because I think it’s so disarming to the guests that they feel really comfortable and gravitate toward talking to her. Luckily, she has a Hollywood background. What would we have seen her in? Aleta Ross: I’m dating myself now. I’ll be 75 this August, can you believe it? The first was My Three Sons. I played the girlfriend of the middle boy. I also played a mail-order bride in [’60s TV series] Laredo. There were Chrysler Theatre movies with Dina Merrill and Cliff Robertson. Lots of ditzy parts. I was an ingenue. 26
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And I understand you had a role in the original Batman series? Aaron: Everyone loves British henchwoman Daisy. Aleta: There were three episodes called “The Londinium Larcenies.” I’m the girl with long red hair who says, “Oh, Robin. You do bend my mind.” Now you know why I gave up acting. What’s the house like nowadays? Aaron: The living room’s basically been turned into a full-time studio. We’re stepping around cameras and lights in order to watch television, but it’s been our lifeblood. Instead of going crazy with cabin fever, we’ve got comedy fever! Is anyone else there? Aleta: My husband does all the tech. We really couldn’t do the show without him. Aaron: The real truth is that it’s a three-person operation. Her husband’s running the cameras, the sound, the lights. He has a background in live venue sound and learned the other parts, from live editing to putting in graphics, all trial by fire over the past few months. It’s been a learning curve for the whole family. Like we say, funny business is our family business, and it’s booming! Families have talked about how quarantine has brought them closer together. Not all of them started talk shows… Aaron: That’s sort of the brilliance of running into a global pandemic that forces people to go home. It’s all kinda built off the fact that we sheltered in place and just wanted something to do—like everyone else, right? You continue your passion, your mother becomes your co-host, and the meaning of your title sorta multiplies. Mom and I have always had a wonderful relationship. She’s a best friend and sort of mirror to me. I’ve had so very much in common with her, and I just feel blessed. Getting to do something professional with her now, we both feel such a sense of joy and truly forget what’s essentially going on when we’re writing, rehearsing and performing the show. At the same time, we also know that we’re giving so much back to the audience because they get to escape into that same sort of pleasure. SEE IT: Who’s the Ross? streams at 8:30 pm Tuesday, June 16, and Sundays starting June 21 at Facebook.com/ AaronRossBoss.
Nine Books by Black Authors You Should Be Reading Right Now A History of Flamboyance, Justin Phillip Reed Justin Phillip Reed’s poetry collection is, in essence, about seeing and being seen. The poems are at once rough and tender, mincing no words in their expression of what it means to be black and gay in the morass of South Carolina.
The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
Brit Bennett’s latest novel, set in 1970s Louisiana, centers on identical twins Desiree and Stella, women whose understanding of race and identity pixelates as Desiree remains in the Jim Crow South and Stella flees to California, “passing” for white. Bennett works through the complexity of self-performance with thoughtful, well-paced vignettes.
Zone One, Colson Whitehead
Before he won a Pulitzer Prize, Colson Whitehead wrote of feral zombies in post-apocalyptic Manhattan. In Zone One, a pandemic has flung the world into viral chaos, leaving survivors to fend for themselves. It’s a gory and cathartic release from this particular health crisis.
Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo Girl, Woman, Other sprawls across 12 central characters in modern England, each grappling with the country’s colonial legacy and the intersections of race, age and class.
Friday Black, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s writing seems underscored by an alarm signal. Placed in a dystopian near-future, the stories collected in Friday Black explore black identity in writing that is richly imaginative and wholly original.
You Should See Me in a Crown, Leah Johnson
Teenager Liz Lighty is aching to leave her small town and attend college, and the scholarship awarded to prom king and queen is her last resort. Leah Johnson’s debut young adult novel is about the head rush of young love and the lopsided favor of high school.
Lakewood, Megan Giddings
Lakewood is a fast, sharp dissection of the dynamics of one working-class black family. Lena, tasked with taking care of her disabled mother, participates in a high-paying research study, but she quickly realizes the program is far more sinister than she could have known.
So We Can Glow, Leesa Cross-Smith
Leesa Cross- Smith’s latest collection of stories is tied together by frenzied, technicolor love, the type that has you sneaking out of your house to meet your boyfriend by the train tracks and watching Winona Ryder movies on a loop.
Avery Colt Is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar, Ron A. Austin
In funny, raw prose, author Ron A. Austin takes his childhood in North St. Louis and shapes it into a glossy narrative in the way only a first-rate storyteller can.
MOVIES
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Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com
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 centers on Black LGBTQ films in solidarity and recognition of the intersection of Pride Month and the Black Lives Matter movement.
I Am Not Your Negro (2016) Adapted from legendary novelist James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, this powerful documentary explores his perspective on American history, which is tethered to memories of friends Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X—all activists who were assassinated. Though the film somewhat glosses over his gay identity, it remains an invaluable resource. Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Kanopy, Vudu, YouTube.
Tangerine (2015) Shot entirely on an iPhone 5S, this slice-oflife dramedy from Sean Baker follows SinDee, a Black transgender sex worker (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), as she discovers that her boyfriend-pimp (James Ransone) cheated on her while she was in jail. Along with her best friend (Mya Taylor), Sin-Dee combs the streets of L.A. on Christmas Eve to find and confront him. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hulu, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube.
The Watermelon Woman (1996) Cheryl Dunye’s groundbreaking romantic dramedy, the first feature in history directed by an out Black lesbian, centers on a video store worker (Dunye, playing a version of herself) as she aims to make a documentary about a Black actress from the ’30s and ’40s, credited only as “The Watermelon Woman.” Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, Google Play, Sling TV, Vudu, YouTube.
Rafiki (2018) Initially banned in Kenya for its positive portrayal of lesbianism, Wanuri Kahiu’s love story focuses on the friendship and romance between two young women living in Nairobi. The pair struggles to display their affection, since homosexuality is illegal in Kenya, but the revolutionary film ultimately offers hope and possibilities for change. Amazon Prime, Kanopy.
Hearts Beat Loud (2018) When a white father (Nick Offerman) urges his mixed-race daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) to play music with him before she moves to the West Coast for college, their makeshift band turns out to be a viral success. Sam’s music centers on her girlfriend, Rose (Sasha Lane), and the genuine tenderness between the two is portrayed wonderfully. Google Play, Hulu, Kanopy, Vudu, YouTube.
Sickness Within
SAFE (1995)
Todd Haynes’ Safe is the perfect allegory for diseases old and new. BY CH ANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER
@chance_s_p
Three months ago, for obvious reasons, the movie world briefly obsessed over Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion. Numerous outlets reported how the 2011 docu-realist thriller became a video on demand hit and the ideal cinematic document for a pandemic’s terrifying first crescendo. But now it’s June. It feels like five years have passed, and no COVID -19 chart, study or test has curbed America’s other endemic diseases. If anything, they’ve intertwined. A virus erroneously dubbed “the great equalizer” has been found to disproportionately affect and kill Black Americans due to societal disadvantages. Far more jarringly, police violence against Black Americans didn’t slow down even during a pandemic, as the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery transformed a world in lockdown into one filled with mass protests. The pandemic’s third month demands a different kind of film about sickness. Enter Todd Haynes’ Safe, where quarantine is a privilege and a mysterious malady’s most devastating symptom is the inability to see one’s own place in the disease’s creation. Haynes, one of Portland’s most notable filmmakers, wasn’t yet a Portlander when he made Safe in 1995. Coming off his 1991 feature debut, Poison, the burgeoning New York auteur was clearly interested in contagions both medical and metaphorical, and had gathered enough
cachet to attract a soon-to-be movie star in Julianne Moore. Safe chronicles the deterioration of a San Fernando Valley homemaker named Carol White (not nearly as charming as Haynes’ next Carol). Suffering panic attacks, rashes and seizures, Carol develops what she believes to be “environmental illness,” or a heightened allergic state to chemicals ranging from freeway exhaust to cologne. Though the film is set in 1987, Carol’s declining health drives her to all manner of recognizable 2020 activities. She masks up, distances from others and eventually flees the city entirely, spending the movie’s last act in a Southwestern desert commune. Voted the best film of the ’90s in a Village Voice poll, Safe finds its greatest strength in skewering suburban fear and malaise while never short-selling the staggering pain of Moore’s performance. Carol is both beneficiary and victim of her wealthy, white bubble that turns into a literal white bubble of isolation by the film’s end. While she lives quite comfortably in a gated mansion on her husband’s real estate fortune, her near-lethal condition is also perpetually underestimated and disbelieved by loved ones and doctors alike. Twenty-five years after its release, viewers can choose a litany of avenues in interpreting the social critique of Safe. Certainly, white privilege and fragility leap to the foreground right now. For God’s sake, the protagonist’s name is Carol
White, and her chosen tonic (before giving up dairy) is a pint glass of milk. It’s tough to say whether she’s more horrified by black couches or her stepson’s fearmongering school report on Los Angeles gangs creeping toward her precious suburb. There’s even a conspicuous police interaction when Carol wanders her front lawn in a midnight stupor, but never mind, the officer just wants to make sure she’s all right. As much as hair spray, she’s allergic to the mass production of an exclusionary American ideal she hoped would keep her, well, safe. Perhaps the most remarkable facet of Safe in 2020 is how unsentimental it is toward self-care or therapy as a solution to Carol’s illness. Once she retreats to the New Mexico commune, a nuanced but revealing counseling scene depicts the pressure Carol faces to simply blame her condition on an absence of self-love. But it’s mere minutes before Haynes closes his film by illustrating the emptiness of navel-gazing. “I love you,” Carol recites to a mirror inside her quarantine hut in a tone so feeble it’s almost a question. We can immediately imagine a movie after the movie: If Carol’s hermetically sealed igloo is still too close to real life for her sinuses and skin to clear up, she could escape to the North Pole next, or maybe the moon. She has the resources to continue fleeing the social contract and endless hours to plumb an empty soul. It’s a tragicomic masterstroke that she won’t connect those two dots. Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
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June 10-16
MOVIES OUR KEY
: T H I S M O V I E I S E X C 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.
TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
: 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.
Shirley
: 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.
When it comes to holding an audience hostage, there’s no better actress than Elisabeth Moss. As writer Shirley Jackson, the actress owns this drama by playing the type of tortured heroine that helped her rise to prominence (The Handmaid’s Tale, Her Smell). The film, based on Susan Scarf Merrell’s novel of the same name, imagines the life of the literary figure and her husband, famed critic and liberal arts professor Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg), in 1960s Vermont. They’re soon joined by Fred (Logan Lerman), who’s hired as Stanley’s campus assistant, and his newly pregnant wife, Rose (Odessa Young). The young couple plan to temporarily stay with Jackson and Hyman while they search for a place of their own but find themselves lingering much longer than they’d prefer. At first, things seem normal. Fred becomes increasingly busy with academic life, while Rose forms a dubious connection with Jackson as she works as their housekeeper. But following the success of her short story “The Lottery,” Jackson becomes increasingly stressed while penning her next novel. Like the characters she famously wrote about years later in works like The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Jackson’s stress morphs into hysteria. The film reflects that madness with disorienting camerawork and perversely enjoyable dream sequences. Director Josephine Decker proves she’s a specialist when it comes to shifting genres, as Shirley jumps from horror to domestic drama to gothic fairy tale with ease, giving Moss the chance to do a bit of everything, and the audience an opportunity to see Jackson’s menacing style of storytelling come to life on film. R. ASHER LUBERTO. Amazon Prime, Google Play.
IMDB
: T H I S M O V I E I S A P I E C E O F S H I T.
SHIRLEY
ALSO PLAYING Arkansas If you know Clark Duke only as the bespectacled fourth wheel of the Hot Tub Time Machine movies, you might not assume he has a Southern noir in his bag, much less one with the crime-movie literacy of Donnie Brasco and a Flaming Lips soundtrack. Duke’s directorial debut, a Lionsgate release redirected to VOD this month, fields a stacked cast of Arkansas drug runners: Liam Hemsworth and Duke as our two flunky protagonists, and Vince Vaughn, John Malkovich, Vivica A. Fox and Michael K. Williams as compelling higher-ups. And what this adaptation of John Brandon’s 2009 novel lacks in production value—shot with the overly digital flimsiness of so many streaming originals—it more than makes up for with well-tuned dialogue and acting that embraces a Southern gentility right up until it’s bashing those good manners over the head. Replacing the near-gothic seriousness of a True Detective is the loony banality of drug-smuggler movie nights, sweaty man buns, fireworks emporiums and Vaughn spending probably half the movie’s budget on flamboyant Western button-downs. Despite an epic structure that jumps through time, Arkansas remains light on its feet and successfully normalizes criminal life by presenting the same unreliable co-workers, thankless chores, and finite shelf lives of any other profession. R. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. Amazon Prime, iTunes, On Demand.
Blood Quantum For as long as one side’s been the horde and the other survivors, the zombie narrative has been ripe for moral and political bite, critiquing slavery, consumerism, global warming and more. Now, for an urgent indigenous people’s take on the genre, writer-director Jeff Barnaby (Rhymes
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for Young Ghouls) brings the zombie outbreak to a fictionalized version of his place of origin: the Mi’gmaq reserve in Quebec. On its face, Blood Quantum is a capably directed smalltown bloodbath, and a fitting entry in the horror film library. There’s a katana in the mix and an upstanding police officer, and the acting ranges from serviceable to apocalyptically ominous on the parts of Kiowa Gordon (The Red Road) and Gary Farmer (Dead Man). Mostly, it’s the point of view that elevates Blood Quantum, bringing something new to the reanimatedcorpse thriller. Without much explicit commentary, Barnaby’s film asks how a community under centuries of duress can confront a new threat that resembles old perils: diseased blankets, broken bargains and poisoned natural resources. “I’m not leaving this land again,” proclaims a Mi’gmaq defender during a pivotal stand. You won’t know whether to pump your fist or dry your eyes. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Amazon Prime, Shudder.
Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics Most people agree you don’t have to take acid to find out what it’s like—countless song lyrics, at least one adventurous friend, or even Google will tell you all you need to know. Donick Cary’s Netflix doc uses a treasure trove of celebrities to go into more detail, allowing the subjects to spin funny anecdotes about how cool, singular and harmless LSD trips really are. Although Have a Good Trip aims for lighthearted entertainment rather than presenting a scientific thesis, you walk away feeling like it might be safe to give it a try—or give it a second go. As stars like A$AP Rocky, David Cross and Ben Stiller describe themselves tripping balls, revue-style reenactments and ’60s album cover-inspired animation play on the screen. The now-deceased Carrie Fisher and Anthony Bourdain have some of the more memorable stories, the latter’s involving a road trip, shrooms and an almost-dead
Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
stripper. Nick Offerman serves as host, wearing a lab coat while explaining, “Don’t get me wrong, drugs can be dangerous. But they can also be hilarious.” A couple slow sections aside, Cary’s directorial debut passes the acid test with flying colors. TV-MA. ASHER LUBERTO. Netflix.
The Vast of Night Much as the pandemic has wrought havoc on distribution schemes, few films have ever been so perfectly pitched for both drive-in showings and isolated streamings as The Vast of Night. It opens on a Friday night in 1950s Cayuga, New Mexico, where seemingly everyone in the small fictional town is headed to the high school gym to cheer on the basketball team. Except for sciencey bobby soxer Fay (Sierra McCormick), who discovers an odd electronic burbling on the local telephone switchboard and enlists radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz’s take on a swaggering A/V club alpha) to hunt down its origins. This is a period piece, but for all the painstakingly curated Cold War-era trappings, there’s more than a whiff of the ’80s indie auteur heyday. The heightened strangeness of a pulsing insularity veers decidedly Lynchian while the restless camerawork and supra-distinct regionalism-stuffed dialogue smacks of early Coen brothers. Alas, though Andrew Patterson’s cinematic debut remains uniformly gorgeous, a wispy narrative can’t quite sustain that initial tone of white-knuckled suspense as a genre-busting rabbit hole that turns into a Cloverfield-ish mystery box. But the lingering dread of the unseen and unknowable perseveres nonetheless. For a feature effectively premiering via the Amazon age of ubiquity, The Vast of Night thrusts suspicions squarely upon our supposed mastery of instantaneous communication and wrings fear from a moment of static. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Amazon Prime.
The High Note Maggie Sherwood (Dakota Johnson) has hit a wall in her job as a personal assistant. After several years
of mindless errands for her boss/ hero, superstar Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross, daughter of Motown singer Diana Ross), Maggie can no longer repress her aspirations to become a music producer. But backlash from Davis’ manager (Ice Cube) and the intimidating statistic that just 2.1 percent of music producers are women threaten to dash her dreams. What anchors the film is the romance between Maggie and her client David (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). Johnson expertly blurs the line between confident and terrified, while Harrison’s smoothtalking musician harbors a sweetly nervous side, alchemizing some lovely chemistry. Though bogged down by clichéd dialogue and a wonky twist, Flora Greeson’s script deserves credit for being one of the few stories about the music industry told from a strictly female perspective. This is familiar territory for director Nisha Ganatra, who also helmed 2019’s Late Night, a comedy about being the sole woman of color in a writers’ room. The High Note follows in those footsteps: It’s harmless and well-intentioned, and relies on the talent of its leads to carry the plot. PG-13. MIA VICINO. On Demand.
The Lovebirds At one point in The Lovebirds, Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani) comments on the dramatic misadventures he’s suddenly found himself in with soonto-be-ex-girlfriend Leilani (Issa Rae): “This is like The Amazing Race, but with dead people.” And that’s essentially what you get from this film. Nanjiani and director Michael Showalter last paired up in the awardwinning The Big Sick, and though the talented Showalter has two dream leads in Rae and Nanjiani, The Lovebirds never elevates itself beyond “this is fine” territory. The plot involves Jibran and Leilani getting thrown into a convoluted conspiracy mere moments after agreeing to break up, sending them on the run from both the law and a mysterious killer played by Paul Sparks (Waco, House of Cards). While the desire to sit back and let Nanjiani and Rae
shine is perfectly understandable, The Lovebirds consists of little more than throwing its highly talented stars into increasingly ridiculous situations and letting them riff on said ridiculousness. This results in some funny moments, but overall The Lovebirds is another average—if somewhat charming—entry in the ever-growing content receptacle that is the Netflix library. R. DONOVAN FARLEY. Netflix.
Spaceship Earth Somewhere around the time eight kinda-sorta scientists run out of oxygen in their own biosphere, you’re likely to get frustrated that this Neon-Hulu documentary doesn’t allow its utterly unique story to be more interesting. The petri dish certainly swims with fascinating variables, as a caravan of Bay Area thespians turns into mechanical geniuses, sailing entrepreneurs and ’90s news staples as they seal themselves in an Arizona biome for two years. They were after something grand but confused: scientific breakthrough without proper data, radical environmentalism funded by an oil fortune, and a sense of community without any realworld outreach. The troupe’s 16 mm footage spanning the ’60s through the ’90s is certainly a marvel in its own right, but the great sin of Matt Wolf’s documentary is that it puts no effort into clearing up a story obfuscated by ideals with no names and missions with no goals. It’s not as though the doc needs to find the biospherists guilty of cultish behavior to be worthwhile, but the amount of pseudo-scientific or vaguely inspirational hooey the film lets slide without clarification or exploration flatly defeats the purpose. “There’s all this stuff, and what’s gonna happen?” Biosphere 2 botanist Linda Leigh defines the group’s “alternative” approach to science. That pretty much sums up Spaceship Earth’s approach, too. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hulu, YouTube.
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SPOTLIGHT COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Featured artist: Jeremy Okai Davis
Metering
JEREMY OKAI DAVIS is a visual artist originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, currently residing in Portland, Oregon. His practice is influenced by popular culture, race relations, design, and portraiture. Each new body of work is a vehicle for exploring the qualities and flexibility of paint. His work has been included in exhibitions regionally and nationally, including Portland State’s White Gallery; Disjecta; The Studio Museum of Harlem in New York; Portland, Maine’s Able Baker Contemporary, and elsewhere. His work is permanently collected by Oregon State University, Oregon University’s Allen Hall & The Studio Museum. He is represented locally by Elizabeth Leach Gallery.
Brother II
Be a Willamette Week featured artist! Contact us at art@wweek.com Ornette
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Willamette Week JUNE 10, 2020 wweek.com
JONESIN’
Week of JUNE 18
©2020 Rob Brezsny
by Matt Jones
"Reed All About It"--at least one famous Reed.
ARIES (March 21-April 19) My Aries friend Lavinia told me, "The fight I'm enjoying most lately is my fight to resist the compulsion to fight." I invite you to consider adopting that attitude for the foreseeable future. Now and then, you Rams do seem to thrive on conflict, or at least use it to achieve worthy deeds—but the coming weeks will not be one of those times. I think you're due for a phase of sweet harmony. The more you cultivate unity and peace and consensus, the healthier you'll be. Do you dare act like a truce-maker, an agreement-broker, and a connoisseur of rapport?
TAURUS (April 20-May 20) "The answers you get depend upon the questions you ask," wrote physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn. That's always true, of course, but it's especially true for you right now. I recommend that you devote substantial amounts of your earthy intelligence to the task of formulating the three most important questions for you to hold at the forefront of your awareness during the rest of 2020. If you do, I suspect you will ultimately receive answers that are useful, interesting, and transformative.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) Scorpio poet Marianne Moore's poem "O To Be a Dragon," begins with the fantasy, "If I, like Solomon, could have my wish . . ." What comes next? Does Moore declare her desire to be the best poet ever? To be friends with smart, interesting, creative people? To be admired and gossiped about for wearing a tricorn hat and black cape as she walked around Greenwich Village near her home? Nope. None of the above. Her wish: "O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven—of silk-worm size or immense; at times invisible. Felicitous phenomenon!" In accordance with astrological omens, I invite you to be inspired by Moore in the coming weeks. Make extravagant wishes for lavish and amusing powers, blessings, and fantastic possibilities.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)
GEMINI (May 21-June20)
ACROSS
intense care and involvement, and you will benefit substantially from redirecting your fine intelligence in more rewarding directions. To empower your efforts, study these inspirational quotes: "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." —philosopher Simone Weil. "Attention is the natural prayer of the soul." —philosopher Nicolas Malebranche.
"A finished person is a boring person," writes author Anna Quindlan. I agree! Luckily, you are quite unfinished, and thus not at all boring—especially these days. More than ever before, you seem willing to treat yourself as an art project that's worthy of your creative ingenuity—as a work-in-progress that's open to new influences and fresh teachings. That's why I say your unfinishedness is a sign of good health and vitality. It's delightful and inspiring. You're willing to acknowledge that you've got a lot to learn and more to grow. In fact, you celebrate that fact; you exult in it; you regard it as a key part of your ever-evolving identity.
"Poems, like dreams, are a sort of royal road to the unconscious," writes author Erica Jong. "They tell you what your secret self cannot express." I invite you to expand that formula so it's exactly suitable for you in the coming weeks. My sense is that you are being called to travel the royal road to your unconscious mind so as to discover what your secret self has been unable or unwilling to express. Poems and dreams might do the trick for you, but so might other activities. For example: sexual encounters between you and a person you respect and love; or an intense night of listening to music that cracks open the portal to the royal road. Any others? What will work best for you?
60 Actor Fulcher of "The Mighty Boosh"
37 Options for cereal, sandwiches, etc.
CANCER (June 21-July 22)
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
62 USPS driver's assignment
38 The "R" of RBG
7 Org. advocating pet adoption
63 Spoken sign from the rafters?
39 Arches National Park locale
11 CIO merger partner
66 "We _ _ _ Never Ever Getting Back Together"
41 Gin flavoring fruit
"To hell with pleasure that’s haunted by fear," wrote Cancerian author Jean de La Fontaine. I'll make that one of my prayers for you in the coming weeks. It's a realistic goal you can achieve and install as a permanent improvement in your life. While you're at it, work on the following prayers, as well: 1. To hell with bliss that's haunted by guilt. 2. To hell with joy that's haunted by worry. 3. To hell with breakthroughs that are haunted by debts to the past. 4. To hell with uplifts that are haunted by other people's pessimism.
"We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart." Capricorn hero Martin Luther King, Jr. said that, and now I'm conveying it to you. In my astrological opinion, his formula is a strategy that will lead you to success in the coming weeks. It'll empower you to remain fully open and receptive to the fresh opportunities flowing your way, while at the same time you'll remain properly skeptical about certain flimflams and delusions that may superficially resemble those fresh opportunities.
1 How karaoke singing might go
14 Singer Watkins (aka T-Boz) of TLC
67 Like some lattes
42 Dog created by Dashiell Hammett
68 Verdi opera based on a Shakespeare play
47 Glitzy estate
17 Someone who just likes the sky levels in the Mario series?
69 Area full of used cars
51 Aesop fable's lesson
70 Canadians' last letters
52 Opening
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
19 Car grille protector
71 Walk like a duck
53 Hard rain
DOWN
54 Enjoyed a meal
21 Auckland Zoo animals
1 How most aspirin is sold, for short
56 Had discomfort
22 It may cause inflation
2 PC document 3 One way to stop a bike
61 Barnacle's spot
23 Shows pride 25 Work-at-home wear
4 First name in Notre Dame football
Experiment #1: As you take a walk in nature, sing your five favorite songs from beginning to end, allowing yourself to fully feel all the emotions those tunes arouse in you. Experiment #2: Before you go to sleep on each of the next eleven nights, ask your dreams to bring you stories like those told by the legendary Scheherazade, whose tales were so beautiful and engaging that they healed and improved the lives of all those who heard them. Experiment #3: Gaze into the mirror and make three promises about the gratifying future you will create for yourself during the next 12 months.
"If it makes you nervous—you're doing it right," says the daring musician and actor Donald Glover. Personally, I don't think that's true in all situations. I've found that on some occasions, my nervousness stems from not being fully authentic or being less than completely honest. But I do think Glover's formula fully applies to your efforts in the coming weeks, Aquarius. I hope you will try new things that will be important to your future, and/or work to master crucial skills you have not yet mastered. And if you're nervous as you carry out those heroic feats, I believe it means you're doing them right.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20)
Vincent van Gogh's painting *The Starry Night* is one of the world's most treasured paintings. It has had a prominent place in New York's Museum of Modern Art since 1941. If it ever came up for sale it would probably fetch over $100 million. But soon after he created this great masterpiece, van Gogh himself called it a "failure." He felt the stars he'd made were too big and abstract. I wonder if you're engaging in a comparable underestimation of your own. Are there elements of your life that are actually pretty good, but you're not giving them the credit and appreciation they deserve? Now's a good time to reconsider and re-evaluate.
Piscean author Patricia Hampl understands a lot about the epic tasks of trying to know oneself and be oneself. She has written two memoirs, and some of her other writing draws from her personal experiences, as well. And yet she confesses, "Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste." She suggest that it's often easier to be someone you're not; to adopt the ways of other people as your own; to imitate what you admire rather than doing the hard work of finding out the truth about yourself. That's the bad news, Pisces. The good news is that this year has been and will continue to be a very favorable time to ripen into the acquired taste of being yourself. Take advantage of this ripening opportunity in the coming weeks!
15 Early TV host Jack 16 Sprawl
20 Rock suffix, in NYC
27 Machine that inspired separate rewinding machines
5 Make beloved
29 Aussie hoppers
6 "You betcha"
31 Disk memory acronym
7 A lot of it is filtered
32 Ishmael's captain
8 Settle a bill
34 "Simpsons" character who was on Homer's bowling team
9 Salad with romaine lettuce 10 Part of ETA
36 "The Unity of India" author
12 Terra _ _ _ (solid ground)
40 Accepts emergency funds? 43 Fire off some letters?
24 Beside the point
46 Dandyish dresser 48 Minor bones to pick
26 "Both Sides Now" songwriter Mitchell
50 "I finally got it!"
27 Brewery fixtures
58 In _ _ _ of (rather than)
64 Sudoku section 65 "Unknown" surname
18 Country completely surrounded by South Africa
45 _ _ _ Cat (pet food brand)
57 None other than
63 Ending for some commerce URLs
13 Balletic maneuvers
22 Creator/star/director Adlon of FX's "Better Things"
55 2022 World Cup host country
59 Bread heels, really
11 Wedding souvenir
44 Alternative to watercolors
51 Interpret inaccurately
49 Geologist's layers
28 Mate from Manchester, e.g. 30 Kimmel's onetime game show cohost 33 Proverbial place for bats 35 Like some references
©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 #JNZ990.
last week’s answers
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) Now is a favorable time to make adjustments in how you allocate your attention—to re-evaluate what you choose to focus on. Why? Because some people, issues, situations, and experiences may not be worthy of your
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