Willamette Week, June 17, 2020 - Volume 46, Issue 34 - "Pride Issue 2020"

NEWS: HARDESTY TAKES COMMAND. COURTS: POLICE OUT OF CONTROL. FOOD: YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT?

P. 7

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“IT MADE IT EASIER TO RISK IT FOR THE BISCUIT.” P. 11 WWEEK.COM

VOL 46/34 06.17.2020

"THEY ARE KILLING US. AND Y'ALL MISS A PARADE?" Seven queer black Portlanders speak out on what Pride means to them.

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Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

MICK HANGLAND STILL

FINDINGS

PAGE 12

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 46, ISSUE 34.

A portrait of the Hon. Matthew Deady has been removed from the federal courthouse. 6

Movie Madness has an aisle of films categorized under the title

Jo Ann Hardesty accused Chloe Eudaly of “performative

Capitalism does not translate into American Sign Language. 21

allyship.” 7

The best beer for Father’s Day? Dad Beer, of course. 23

A Portland developer demolished a Victorian home that contained his office. Now he has an empty lot. 9

“Ferocious Fetuses.” 20

Some people are really disgusted by the chip butty sandwich. 24

Investigations of Portland police conduct are not public records. 10

Local actor La’ Tevin Alexander doesn’t want to another slave play. 25

The manager of Union Jacks refuses to attend cultural sensitivity training. 11

Comemadre is a Spanish novel partly about a doctor obsessed with severed heads. 25

The unicorn is the gayest of all mythical creatures. 16

An Oregon park ranger

WW contributor Brianna Wheeler’s father came out at her 12th birthday party. 17

with crossword puzzles and houseplants. 26

ON THE COVER:

quarantines in his cabin

What do you name a restauranttattoo parlor hybrid? Ruby TatTuesdays. 27

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

Artist Jayy Dodd, art direction and photography by Gia Goodrich.

Special thanks to Cool Hand Studio.

Precision Castparts announced Oregon’s largest manufacturing layoff since COVID-19 began.

MASTHEAD EDITOR & PUBLISHER

Mark Zusman

EDITORIAL

News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Matthew Singer Assistant A&C Editor Andi Prewitt Music & Visual Arts Editor Shannon Gormley Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Latisha Jensen, Rachel Monahan, Tess Riski Copy Editor Matt Buckingham

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6/10/20

11:44 AM

DIALOGUE

PLAYING TRIBUTE

Shortly after 7 pm on June 11, Gov. Kate Brown rejected Multnomah County’s application to begin reopening the following day, saying Portland had to wait an additional week amid rising COVID19 cases. WW reported the news on wweek.com.

Here’s what our readers had to say: Charity Fain via Facebook: “I hate it, but it’s the right call. The cases are rising.” @PaulAtkinsonPDX via Twitter: “Epid-emiologists say no. Governor listens to the science and delivers the message. The virus does not care about politics.”

Bryce Butler via wweek.com: “Why is Oregon ranked 49th out of 50 states for rates of virus testing? This is an inexcusable lapse. How can we even contemplate reopening counties with so little crucial information?”

Caleb Everest via Facebook: “Instead of just sitting around for three months, we should have tested everyone and done contact tracing.

That’s what they did in Wuhan and they beat it.

Then when six new cases emerged, they tested almost everyone again…10 million tests in 10 days. That’s how you beat this thing without a vaccine.”

Erin Guest via Facebook: “If everyone would do what they are supposed to, we wouldn’t have a spike again. I see so many people out all over not wearing masks and not social distancing. Why is everyone getting so relaxed on this? Please take it seriously so we can open safely.”

Mo Wark via Facebook: “I’m disgusted that she didn’t make an announcement earlier. So many

Storm Large

Dr. Know

businesses spent money they don’t have bringing employees back to prepare.”

Christoph Elliot via wweek.com: “I find all of the criticism of Brown to be hysterical. People… there is a deadly virus among us. It doesn’t give a hoot about your business, your bank account, your politics or your belief system. It doesn’t care whether you believe in it or not. It’s here and it’s making people sick and dead.”

COUNTY’S NEW HOLIDAY ISN’T FREE

In Latisha Jensen’s article citing the Multnomah County chair’s decision to award all county employees a paid day off for June 19 [“Juneteenth Is Now a Paid Holiday for Multnomah County Workers,” wweek.com, June 12, 2020], she applauds the move but fails to mention the cost to taxpayers for the wages paid to those employees as well as the long-term contribution to their pension account accruals over time.

A noble gesture, gifted without a vote, of sizable cost as if it were as simple as candy on Halloween.

I’m disgusted, as this smells of cronyism in an election year, as does Mayor Wheeler’s gift to city workers for bereavement for George Floyd of a week’s pay.

Who gives these politicians the right to make those costly decisions without a vote of the board or the public?

Incredible.

Ray Ozyjowski Northeast Portland 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

BY MART Y SMITH @martysmithxxx

Air travelers aren’t traveling, commuters aren’t commuting, and skies are smog-free. Has COVID-19 halted climate change? —Mark A.

watch now

orsymphony.org/essential

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Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

The über-villain of 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, the 22nd of the 23 Marvel films (whose combined budget, I can’t help mentioning, exceeds the GDP of Sierra Leone), is Thanos, an omnipotent purple giant who addresses the problem of limited natural resources by wiping out half of all life in the universe, so the other half can live in plenty.

Soon after A :IW’s release, real-world edgelords started pointing out that, actually, this plan would solve a lot of e nv i r o n m e n t a l p r o b l e m s. T h e h a s h t a g #ThanosDidNothingWrong had a moment.

COVID -19 isn’t going to wipe out half of Earth’s population, thank God, but it has wiped out what feels like half of our economy. And sure enough, emissions are down, the rivers run clear, and herds of caribou once again roam the streets of Manhattan.* Was Thanos right?

In a word, no. (And not just because he didn’t wipe the survivors’ memories, even though that would have kept the Avengers from coming back in the next movie to—spoiler alert—save the day.)

Cutting the world’s 2020 population in half gets us to 3.9 billion, which is about how

many people were alive in 1973. You’d think a 1,000-year-old demigod could come up with a plan that bought us more than 47 years.

With the coronavirus, progress is even more fleeting. All of 2020’s pain, suffering and debt is expected to reduce this year’s carbon emissions by 4% to 8% over 2019.

Meanwhile, the benchmark to hold global warming under 1.5°C is a reduction of 7.6% every year this decade. This entire global disruption was just enough to get us to—maybe—hit our carbon targets for one year. And after it’s all over, we’ll go back to our single-occupancy vehicle commutes and our destination weddings like the whole thing never happened.

Still, there’s some hope. Economists note that when (if?) the current crisis passes, governments will be looking for spending programs to stimulate their shattered economies. If they plow that money into things like connectivity improvements and clean energy infrastructure— and not, say, unconditional airline bailouts— COVID -19 might yet display a silver lining.

Green New Deal, anybody? *OK, maybe not.

QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com

MURMURS

PRESENTED BY:

ORTLAND

W W S TA F F

BEST

HISTORIC FIGURES REMOVED: Public tributes to icons whose legacies are stained by slavery and segregation are coming down across Portland—some by force and others by choice.

On June 14, about a dozen protesters tore down a statue of Thomas Jefferson from a pedestal in front on Jefferson High School in North Portland. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one protester who helped topple the statue tells WW it was a considered decision. “There wasn’t rage,” he said. “We were doing this thing that people in charge aren’t doing.” Meanwhile, WW has learned that judges of Oregon’s U.S. District Court quietly removed from the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse a portrait of Oregon’s first federal judge, the Hon. Matthew Deady, who served from 1859 to 1893. Deady presided over the Oregon Constitutional Convention of 1857 and, according to University of Oregon scholars, advocated slavery and excluding blacks and Chinese from the convention. Chief District Judge Marco A. Hernandez declined to comment.

MYSTERY PLANE CIRCLES PROTESTERS: A mysterious plane that might belong to the U.S. Marshals Service circled over Portland protests for three hours on June 13.

The federal agency declined to disclose whether it operates the craft. But the plane’s registered owner, Early Detection Alarm Systems, has been linked to the Marshals Service through documents obtained by BuzzFeed. The plane, a Cessna Caravan, circled the city over 30 times on Saturday, raising concerns about privacy and surveillance of protesters. In a June 10 letter, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden called on the federal Department of Justice to release information about its

tactics to surveil protesters.

“We remain deeply concerned about its potential for surveillance abuse against innocent and vulnerable populations exercising their First Amendment rights,” Wyden and two other senators wrote.

COUNTY NOT TRACKING COVID AT PROTESTS: Multnomah County and the Oregon Health Authority are not systematically tracking how many COVID-19 cases can be traced to more than two weeks of Portland protests against racist policing.

Multnomah County reported last week it knew of fewer than five cases affecting people who attended protests. County health workers learned of those cases as part of their follow-up calls with subjects who tested positive for the virus. The county suggests that anyone with COVID symptoms after attending protests get tested. But the county’s approach contrasts with that of Minneapolis and Seattle, where officials recommend anyone who attends a protest get a COVID-19 test—symptomatic or not.

Fewer than 1 percent of 3,000 people who attended Seattle protests tested positive, KOMO News reported.

PRISONS WON’T USE MALARIAL DRUG: The Oregon Department of Corrections will no longer consider using the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to prevent or treat COVID-19, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency use authorization on June 15. As WW reported in May, ODOC’s top infectious disease doctor had requested the malarial drug as a treatment for COVID-19 of inmates. ODOC spokeswoman Jennifer Black confirms the department will no longer consider the drug’s use as a treatment for COVID-19.

P

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Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

6/8/20 2:58 PM

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BRIAN BROSE

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

5 THINGS TO KNOW

Command and Control As protests against police upend Portland City Hall, Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty is in charge.

BY NIG E L JAQ U I SS

njaquiss@wweek.com

As Portland city leaders scramble to respond to an outpouring of anguish and fury from the city’s black community over police brutality, the new environment is rearranging the power structure at City Hall.

Consider, for example, a frosty email exchange between city officials on June 15 over who should respond to complaints that riot cops were roughing up reporters.

On Monday morning, Oregonian photographer Beth Nakamura tweeted that a cop had “slammed” her with a baton at a weekend protest, the latest in a series of complaints about police mistreatment of the press.

“Reporters, send every complaint to my office,” Wheeler tweeted back. “And we will investigate every one.”

That afternoon, City Auditor Mary Hull Caballero took exception to that response, emailing Wheeler and other commissioners and urging them to let her office’s Independent Police Review do its job and handle complaints from reporters.

“When you solicit people to contact you instead of IPR or promise that you will investigate their complaints, you may be interfering in a case that is underway or introducing the perception that the process is politicized,” Hull Caballero wrote. “Worse yet, if you are taking case information from potential complainants before IPR has the opportunity to conduct an interview, your actions could lead to a case being overturned downstream.”

Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty—not Wheeler— responded via email, copying all commissioners and their chiefs of staff as she came to Wheeler’s defense. “IPR doesn’t have the trust of the community or the police,” Hardesty wrote. “No reason to think it would be any different this time.”

Hull Caballero hit back. “You took an oath to uphold the Charter of the City of Portland and its laws,” she emailed the same day. “If you don’t like them, change them. In the meantime, complainants should be referred to IPR.” The exchange captures an emerging dynamic at City Hall: Mayor Ted Wheeler is the police commissioner, and in charge of the city’s budget, but Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty is at the wheel. And the two have struck an unlikely alliance: one of them a white, mild-mannered timber heir from the West Hills, and the other, a fiery black activist from the city’s outer eastside.

The partnership was on full display in the City Council’s attempt last week to adopt the 2020-21 budget. That went anything but smoothly, with hundreds of people imploring the council in Zoom testimony to cut the Portland Police Bureau’s funding by $50 million, and tens of thousands more making the same demand via email.

In the end, Hardesty, with Wheeer’s support, pushed through amendments removing $15 million from the bureau’s $234 million budget, shutting down three units—the Gun Violence Reduction Team, school resource officers, and TriMet transit cops— she says perpetuate racism, and gutting the Special Emergency Reaction Team, the city’s SWAT unit.

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS: Portland’s uprising against police violence has achieved results in City Hall—where the Police Bureau’s budget is being reduced by $15 million.

Here are five things to know about last week’s budget talks: 1. Power now runs through Hardesty. Wheeler oversees the Police Bureau. In the wake of Portland protests and a national call to defund the police, Wheeler needed dramatic action. He tepidly proposed cutting the police budget by $5 million—a proposal Hardesty tripled. A year ago, when Hardesty introduced budget amendments, “the mayor almost lost his mind,” she recalls. Since then, she says, they’ve met for drinks monthly and worked closely on numerous issues.

2. Protesters will be back for more. Hundreds of people gathered outside City Hall before the vote, demanding more extensive cuts to he police budget. To veteran PPB critics, cutting $15 million seemed like a lot. Hundreds of thousands of people emailed City Hall, many saying they wanted $50 million in cuts. Hardesty says that’s just a number. “You have to be able to make the case for the cuts,” Hardesty says. “You have to show your analysis.

They didn’t have it.”

3. City Hall learned a new term: “performative ally.”

In a dramatic twist, Commissioner Chloe Eudaly voted against adopting the budget, just minutes after she had voted to support Hardesty’s $15 million in cuts. Eudaly shocked onlookers with her reversal, saying the amendments didn’t go far enough. Hardesty quickly issued a harsh appraisal of Eudaly’s vote. “While my colleague can take a principled ‘no’ stance on passing this budget, I as a Black woman cannot,” Hardesty said in a statement. “I do not want to let this detract from the very real steps taken, but it is an important reminder on what performative allyship looks like.” That’s a common term in activist circles, but probably less familiar at City Hall. It refers to a privileged white person who grandstands to support people of color when it’s convenient. Meanwhile, the remark exposes a long-simmering rift between the two most progressive

members of the City Council—one with high stakes as Eudaly seeks to hold on to her seat. (Hardesty endorsed Eudaly in May but says she will not endorse anyone in the November general election.)

4. The police are still a world unto themselves. One of the key tenets of American democracy is that the people with guns, whether they are the U.S. military or law enforcement, report to civilians. But in Portland, defunding the police is so far proving more effective than supervising them. Overshadowed by former Police Chief Jami Resch’s unexpected decision to step down after only six months on the job last week is a remarkable fact: Resch— not Wheeler—selected her successor, Lt. Chuck Lovell.

“He’s the exact right person at the right moment,” Resch told reporters after Wheeler accepted her suggestion that Lovell take her job. “I supported Chief Resch’s decision to step down,” Wheeler tells WW in a statement. “It is the kind of leadership that I expect: humility, wisdom and foresight to know what the community needs. There is no script to follow during this transformational time. Chief Resch followed her instincts, I agreed with them. We have full confidence in Chief Lovell’s leadership.”

5. All eyes are on Daryl Turner. For a decade, Officer Daryl Turner, president of the Portland Police Association, has dictated terms to City Hall: at the bargaining table, in arbitration and at budget time. His members enjoy extraordinary job protections—and protections from transparency. Last week, he responded to proposed cuts in measured terms, urging City Hall not to make cops an “easy scapegoat.” Turner is headed toward the end of his tenure later this year, and the city’s considering a oneyear extension of its existing labor contract with police.

Given the power and pain behind Hardesty and her army of reformers, the easiest thing for Turner personally and City Hall collectively may be to extend the current contract and negotiate the next one with his rookie successor.

Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

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BRIAN BURK

BRIAN BROSE

ONE QUESTION

TRENDING

Source Unknown

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Cases not traced to a source * Tracing info not available

JUNE 1-8 *

250

200

50

0

MAY 25-31

100

JUNE 1-7

150

MAY 18-24

Dan Ryan: “I would have voted in support of the $15 million in cuts to the Portland Police Bureau. Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty and many others have been working with community groups on police reform for years, and last week’s budget vote came directly from that work. Ending the Gun Violence Reduction Team; barring police from enforcing fares on TriMet, which has led to unnecessary and in some cases unlawful arrests; and terminating the school resource officer program are significant steps that should not be diminished.

Loretta Smith: “I believe the redirection of $50 million from the FY 2020-21 Portland Police Bureau Budget is a strong first step towards reimagining our local public safety system. If I were on the Portland City Council right now, we would have the three votes necessary to do just that.

“Having served as a Multnomah County commissioner, I understand what it takes to get three votes to move an amendment, so I understand why Commissioner Hardesty wanted to nail down the reform efforts she knew she had the votes to pass. If we look back to a few weeks ago, the political will was not there to accomplish what she was able to pull off last week. I also understand Commissioner Eudaly’s principled vote in protest of the lack of support for broader cuts that black and brown leaders across our city are calling for. With those things in mind, there is still a lot more work to do either way.

“I believe $50 million is a good first step not just because we need to drastically rethink how we keep our community safe, but also because we are in the middle of a global pandemic where social service programs are being slashed and our community is financially burdened in a way unlike anything we’ve seen since the Great Depression. I would rather be spending our limited resources to ensure that no person or family goes hungry or becomes homeless as a result of COVID-19, not on growing a militarized police force that has historically disproportionately harmed communities of color, especially black and brown men.”

New cases in Multnomah County

MAY 11-17

The two candidates to succeed late City Commissioner Nick Fish, Loretta Smith and Dan Ryan, agree on many things. But this week, Smith, a former two-term Multnomah County commissioner, and Ryan, the former executive director of the educational nonprofit All Hands Raised, diverged on a question that also split the Portland City Council last week: How much to cut the Portland Police Bureau budget.

Last week, commissioners say, they received tens of thousands of emails and heard from hundreds of constituents through public testimony on the police budget.

Many of those people wanted a $50 million cut in the PPB budget. When the council voted on amendments June 11, however, a majority supported $15 million in cuts, while Commissioner Chloe Eudaly supported the larger number, $50 million.

Here’s the question we asked: “Many citizens asked the council to cut the PPB budget by $50 million, yet the council voted 3-1 to make cuts of about $15 million. If you had voted last week as a member of the council, which level of cuts would you have supported—$15 million or $50 million—and why?” NIGEL JAQUISS.

“It is important to remember that this was the first vote on the subject of police reforms, but not the last. I look forward to working with my future colleagues and our community to further reform our police force to fundamentally transform our sworn officers into community guardians, not a militarized force at war with community members.”

MAY 4-10

How Much Should the City Council Cut the Portland Police Budget?

In the week ending June 15, new cases of COVID-19 in Multnomah County nearly doubled from the previous week. That’s part of an upswing in cases in the county, state and a significant portion of states across the country. Portland had been preparing to open June 12, but with hours to go before reaching that promised land, Gov. Kate Brown slammed the door—rejecting the county’s application for at least a week. It’s unclear if the county will reopen this week after the governor chose to impose the one-week pause statewide.

Where are all these cases coming from? The short answer is that public health officials don’t know, for a lot of the cases. Roughly 40 percent of cases haven’t been traced to a previous infection since the beginning of May. The percentage of cases with no defined source—termed “community spread”—has not declined. That means that the county is far from being able to identify all the places where disease is currently and block the further spread of the disease. RACHEL MONAHAN.

Source: Oregon Health Authority

Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

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NEWS J OY B O G DA N

Who Prospers A black real estate developer says the city discriminated against him because of his race.

BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS

njaquiss@wweek.com

Landon Crowell aspired to do something few black Portlanders have done: develop multifamily housing within the city. After five years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, he now has a vanishing dream and a vacant lot— where his office used to be.

“Had I known I was going to get shafted this way,” Crowell says, “I never would have demolished the place.”

Crowell has owned property at Southeast 11th Avenue and Ankeny Street for 16 years. In 2015, he embarked on a project to erect an 18-unit apartment building on his property, which once held a Victorian home.

His odyssey has now reached a conclusion: On April 9, Crowell filed an unfair housing complaint with the federal Housing and Urban Development agency alleging that Prosper Portland, the city of Portland’s economic development arm, discriminated against him because he is black.

“To me, it was implicit bias,” Crowell says. “It was like, ‘Because you are black, we don’t believe this deal will work.’”

Prosper Portland provided WW with a 14-page rebuttal to Crowell’s claim, but because the complaint is under investigation, it offered only limited comment from agency director Kimberly Branam.

“The team worked hard over a number of years to help support the development and to make the project a reality,” Branam says. “We provided direct financial assistance, letters of support, technical assistance and a number of connections to potential capital and other partners. We were disappointed to hear of his decision to step away.”

Crowell’s complaint comes at a time when Portland and cities across the country face fallout from enduring and systemic racism. In Portland, that reckoning may extend beyond the police into other city agencies. While the Portland Police Bureau has long been criticized for policies that adversely affect black citizens, so has the city’s economic development agency.

From the late 1950s through the 1980s, Prosper Portland, then called the Portland Development Commission, spearheaded “urban renewal” in the city’s historically black neighborhoods, razing homes and businesses, and paving the way for widespread gentrification.

Under Branam’s leadership, the agency has set out to correct historical inequities. “We make racial equity the foundation of our community and economic development work,” the agency states on its website. “We hold ourselves accountable to Portland’s communities of color and others our work has negatively impacted. While racial equity is the primary lens to focus our efforts, we understand the connection between racism and other forms of bias that lead to oppression.”

It’s going to take time to prove to critics the agency means what it says.

“In Portland, urban renewal has been a tool that has removed black and brown people from neighborhoods to make them more attractive for white people,” says City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, the first black woman elected to the Portland City Council. “Prosper Portland has a horrible reputation in the community. It cannot say it has advanced equity and black businesses until very recently—after the pandemic started.”

Crowell, 52, who grew up in Portland and graduated from Benson High School, started out in the real estate business at age 18. He says he is very familiar with the

LEFT OUT: Landon Crowell (front left, in suit and hat) with supporters on the land he hoped to develop.

impact Prosper Portland has had on the city. He says his experience shows that while the city talks a good game on equity, its practices remain discriminatory.

“It’s the same thing they’ve been doing to black people in this city for 75 years,” Crowell says. “Nothing has changed.”

Crowell has owned rental properties for decades. In 2015, he began work to convert a property he owns in inner Southeast Portland into an 18-unit apartment building.

The property is located in the Central Eastside Urban Renewal Area, which meant Prosper Portland was in a position to offer development incentives.

Although Prosper rarely involves itself in residential development anymore, having ceded that side of the business to the Portland Housing Bureau, the agency nonetheless gave Crowell a $10,000 technical assistance grant in 2015 and a $93,500 pre-development loan in 2016.

“Prosper Portland made the grant and loan to the Crowells in furtherance of the agency’s goals of racial equity and of increasing minority participation in the real estate market,” the agency said in its written response to Crowell’s HUD complaint.

Crowell hired an architect and proceeded to the city’s Design Review Commission. His lot was challenging—an L-shaped parcel that wrapped around two single-family homes.

After five hearings and Crowell’s expenditure of about $200,000 in professional and legal fees, the Design Review Commission rejected his project, saying it was out of scale and aesthetically out of step with the neighborhood. Crowell appealed to the Portland City Council, which in September 2017 unanimously overturned the design review denial. He was in business, albeit with a project reduced by two apartments to 16 units.

Crowell and a group of fellow black investors put up seed money for the project. Crowell then sought a primary lender for the project and continued to work closely with Prosper for secondary financing, through what he and the agency agree were dozens of face-to-face meetings and the exchange of hundreds of emails.

By last summer, as Portland’s housing shortage worsened, Crowell was confident enough of getting a deal done that he demolished the 1904 Victorian home on the Southeast Ankeny Street property. He had been using the house as an office, but in order to finalize his building permits with the city, he had to knock it down.

What happened next is the basis for his federal complaint.

Crowell says he obtained financing from a primary lender, subject to Prosper Portland lending an additional $2 million. (Crowell and his partners were supposed to bring $190,000; private financing, he says, would raise $5.1 million more.)

Prosper Portland, in its response to the HUD complaint, says it did agree to kick in $2 million—but only if Crowell met specific conditions.

The agency says it told Crowell that his primary lender’s interest rate was too high and that his assumptions about the costs of construction and the rents he could charge were unrealistic. In other words, Prosper said Crowell’s deal didn’t pencil.

“The complainants were consistently advised by Prosper Portland lending staff and the executive director that their development project was not financially sound and that substantial cost-cutting measures were needed to make the project profitable,” Prosper’s response says.

After a series of emails and meetings in late 2019 and early 2020, Crowell says, he came to the conclusion that Prosper simply didn’t want to do business with him.

In its letter, Prosper says that wasn’t true.

“Prosper Portland was consistent and transparent in communicating the underwriting requirements for this gap loan,” the agency wrote. “Complainants’ project failed to receive financing because the project was financially infeasible, not because complainants are persons of color.”

Crowell acknowledges his development was challenging. But he says the traditional role of economic development agencies such as Prosper Portland is to provide gap financing for deals that cannot qualify for entirely private financing. But with very few exceptions, he says, the city of Portland has only been willing to give such financing to white developers and nonprofits, neither of which help people of color build wealth.

“You have to have access to capital, and they have to give you the same opportunity as everybody else,” Crowell says. “There’s never any economic mobility for people of color. That’s why we have riots right now.”

He says city economic development efforts have failed people of color because officials have been unwilling to take the same risks for them that they’ve taken for white businesspeople.

“It’s not just black people,” Crowell adds. “How many Asian developments are there in this city? That’s why you can’t develop in Chinatown. Hispanics, same thing.

Why is that?”

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ALEX WITTWER

NEWS

Bad Reviews I was an investigator of Portland police conduct. Here’s why it doesn’t work.

STICKS AND STONES: The city’s Independent Police Review received 2,300 complaints about officer behavior in one week of protests.

BY AN DR E A DA M E WO O D

The phone lines and email inbox at Portland’s Independent Police Review are jammed.

At an unprecedented volume, Portlanders are reaching out to the civilian oversight agency whose job it is to investigate allegations of police misconduct. Allegations of abuses witnessed over the past few weeks of officers driving their squad cars toward people, firing tear gas at protesters as they ran away, and spray-painting vehicles cops believe are associated with the protesters.

In a slow week, IPR might get a complaint or two a day; recently, those numbers have skyrocketed to hundreds of contacts daily.

When citizens seeking accountability come to IPR to find out the results of a complaint they made, they get a form letter that contains little information about the investigation, besides a “yes” or “no” whether their allegations were sustained.

Why don’t citizens get more? Because, according to state law, no one outside of IPR or the Portland Police Bureau itself will see the full report. Nearly all police misconduct investigations are guaranteed never to see the light of day.

I’m a former newspaper reporter (including at WW), and I covered cops and social justice for most of my career.

When I had the chance in 2017 to work for the city of Portland at IPR as an investigator, I jumped at it to make change from the inside.

But by the time I left the agency last year (on good terms), I’d grown frustrated with the absence of transparency and true accountability.

The system is flawed for two reasons: The first is that the yardstick by which police actions are measured makes it extremely difficult to find fault. The second is that the entire process is enveloped in secrecy.

During my two years, I probably investigated dozens of allegations of police misconduct, and I saw things that horrified me. But as an IPR investigator, my task was to determine whether a cop, accused of a charge like racial bias or improper arrest, did anything to violate police 10

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policy in a way that could lead to discipline.

Investigators, if we want our cases to hold up in court or arbitration, have to show we’re using the standard of rule or law. In the case of PPB, the standard is the bureau’s “directives.”

“Directives provide members with information to act decisively, consistently, and legally,” PPB’s rulebook says.

“When unusual circumstances are encountered, directives help members identify the best course of action to follow.”

But how these directives function often leaves wide latitude for officer behavior. For example, the bureau’s use-of-force directive says an officer can’t strike someone known to be medically fragile with a baton, but if the officer claims not to have seen the cane a man was holding before he pushed him down, he’s going to be let off. Or take the bureau’s truthfulness policy: It requires officers to have “knowingly or willfully” lied to be in violation of bureau directives—but let me say, it’s tough to prove what exactly was going through a cop’s mind if they won’t tell you.

I was often left with no alternative but to exonerate officers whose behavior was reprehensible, just because they acted in a way that the bureau’s training and policy supported. In other words, the conduct, even when reprehensible, often complied with PPB directives.

No matter what my personal beliefs are, I can’t as an investigator just go rogue because I don’t like a particular bureau directive.

But if you were the complainant, you’d never know just how much investigating I did, or why your complaint was not sustained. That expectation of a reasoned response— and an explanation of how the officer’s behavior complied with directives—is the whole point of transparency. It almost never happens.

That’s because you’re not allowed to see the report.

Neither is the press or any member of the public. Even in cases where I could sustain allegations against an officer, the report and discipline were also kept secret.

Oregon Revised Statutes 181.854 keeps all of this information cloistered in Central Precinct and City Hall, with limited exceptions for high public interest cases. State

Sen. Lew Frederick (D -Portland) attempted to get his Democratic colleagues to pass a bill to make investigations public last year; it died in committee.

If you’re angry reading this: good. You should be allowed to read the conclusions investigators reach, and you, and your fellow citizens, should be allowed to use those conclusions to lobby for change. For years, our progressive leaders in the statehouse have chosen secrecy and protecting police unions over transparency and accountability. They now say they will try to atone for that failure in a special session starting June 24.

If Mayor Ted Wheeler and Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty really want to reform how police oversight works, they need to start at the Legislature. Reforms could certainly be made at the level of IPR and its Citizen Review Committee—investigators, for example, aren’t allowed to search the Police Bureau’s database, which holds copies of police reports and evidence. Instead, they must rely on the records department to provide them at their leisure.

But until the public can see exactly where directives are too lax, we’ll never see the kind of change protesters are demanding.

There’s so much wrong with how policing works in America. I understand the sentiment to abolish it entirely.

Barring that, we’ve got a long way to go. Even with the transparency offered by body cameras—which Portland police do not wear—and the increasing availability of video evidence, cops are rarely held accountable for their actions because of ironclad union contracts and friendly arbitrators who routinely overturn firings and other discipline. That must change.

But without transparency, you don’t really know how bad it is. And I can’t tell you, because state law allows agencies to withhold this information.

We all know the power of videos showing police abuse of Black people in this country. But reports are powerful, too. If you could see what I’ve seen, you would be furious.

You should be allowed to see what I’ve seen.

Andrea Damewood now works for Multnomah County, but she speaks only for herself.

J OY B O G DA N

NEWS

Stripper Strike A movement demands better treatment for black dancers.

BY TE SS R I SK I

tess@wweek.com

On June 19, a group of workers plans to picket outside an unlikely location: Union Jacks strip club.

It’s the only club out of nearly 30 Portland establishments that won’t agree to demands to ensure fair treatment of black dancers.

“Who’s gonna cross a strike line of angry-ass strippers?” says Cat Hollis, a dancer who organized the Portland Stripper Strike.

The picket line is a signal that the national movement for racial justice has extended to the quintessentially Portland institution of strip clubs.

More than 100 dancers have issued the following demands to club owners: require cultural sensitivity training on a regular basis for all club staff, owners and management; ensure that black dancers get fair hiring opportunities and desirable shifts; and require owners and managers to participate in listening sessions with black dancers to learn about their experiences working at Portland clubs.

Hollis says the number of dancers with black or brown skin rarely match the demographics in Portland—where people of color make up 23% of the population.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever really seen a club with those [demographic] statistics—and this is key—on a Friday night or Saturday night,” Hollis says.

Hollis, who is black, says managers at some clubs simply refuse to hire dancers of color. Black dancers—if they’re lucky enough to be hired at all—are often given shifts in the middle of a weekday during clubs’ slowest hours, she says.

“Even before auditioning, you need to ask around if that’s a place that hires black people,” says Brianna Cistrunk, who is black and has worked as a dancer in Portland since 2015.

“Almost every single one of the clubs in Portland does not audition black dancers. And even if we do get an audition, we’re given the runaround.”

Cistrunk says that while most clubs allow all dancers to audition, many in Portland—especially high-end clubs—hire mostly white or lightskinned dancers with a “Barbie aesthetic.”

“But there are no black people,” she says.

“When you look at me, you know I’m black. I can’t pass as, ‘Oh, what is she? She looks exotic.’ I can’t do that.”

One of the few Portland strip clubs that catered to a black clientele, Exotica International Club for Men in Northeast Portland, shut its doors in 2015. Its owner, Donna Thames, alleged in a Multnomah County lawsuit in 2016 that the closure resulted from racist enforcement of liquor laws. (City officials required the club to close at midnight for three months after a shooting in the parking lot.) Judge Shelley Russell dismissed the case in August 2018.

The idea of a Portland Stripper Strike started in February, Hollis says, after a male black dancer in Portland died by suicide. But the movement

STRIKEOUT: Portland dancer Cat Hollis is an organizer for the Portland Stripper Strike, which is demanding fair treatment for black dancers.

gained new momentum in the weeks following the killing of George Floyd in May, which set off nationwide protests against police brutality and shined a renewed spotlight on racism both across the country and in Portland.

It is perhaps a sign of the political moment that nearly 30 strip clubs in Portland have agreed to the strike’s terms in the past two weeks. The dancers set a deadline of Friday, June 19—the day most clubs hope to reopen from COVID-19 shutdowns.

“The reason this has never worked before is that we never all came back [to work] at the same time,” Hollis says. “Because technically none of us have jobs right now, it made it a lot easier to risk it for the biscuit.”

One club has refused to comply with the demands: Union Jacks on East Burnside Street.

Cistrunk, who worked for a year at Union Jacks, says the club normally had about 40 dancers per shift. She was one of three who were black.

“That was their quota. They would let [black] people audition, but they wouldn’t hire them.

Because they don’t want to attract the ‘wrong crowd,’” Cistrunk says.

The club’s manager, Ilya Adamidov, did not directly respond to the allegation he hires few black dancers. He told WW he doesn’t support the collective’s demands.

“She doesn’t get to run private businesses,” says Adamidov. Asked for clarification on which woman he was referring to, Adamidov laughed and said, “They can fuck off.” He then hung up the phone.

The Adamidov family has owned Union Jacks since 1997. In 2003, federal prosecutors charged Ilya Adamidov, now 61, for allegedly bribing a government official. A judge in 2005 convicted him of conspiracy and bribery, and he was sentenced to probation.

Shon Boulden who owns Devils Point and Lucky Devil, which gained national fame for starting a food delivery service during the pandemic, acknowledges that he features few black dancers—but says that’s a reflection of the city, and something he’s willing to help change.

“It’s not just us,” Boulden says. “It’s several clubs in Portland. If you start looking at every club in town, you’re going to see a very low population of women of color. But I think it’s time to actively change that.”

Cistrunk remains skeptical about clubs actually following through with their commitments on social media to meet the demands of the Portland Stripper Strike—such as implementing racial equity training and improving hiring practices.

“One thing I’ve learned in the last few weeks is performative allyship. It’s kind of hard to be on the wrong side right now,” Cistrunk says. “They might feel like they need to be cooperating.”

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11

GIA GOODRICH

PRIDE AND PROTEST Seven queer black Portlanders speak out on what Pride means to them.

Pride isn’t canceled. Only the parades are.

Going into June, the time typically reserved for a celebration of LGBTQ+ history and community, it appeared that the month’s usual events—the drag shows, the dance parties—would all be postponed, or at least moved online. But what we’ve seen happening in cities across the United States the past three weeks reflects the roots of the season more than the floats and rainbow-festooned merchandise.

After all, Pride began with an uprising.

On June 28, 1969, in New York, two transgender women of color, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, fought back against police harassment, sparking a week of rioting that ignited the modern gay rights movement.

In the decades since, the month evolved into more of a party than a protest. To be sure, there have been many advances to celebrate, including this week’s landmark Supreme Court decision protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination in employment. Eventually, though, corporations glommed on, attempting to profit from the movement and diluting its radical origins. But in 2020, with anger over the police killings of African Americans pushing millions of citizens into the streets, that spirit of revolution is back—particularly for black members of the LGBTQ community.

That’s why, this year, we reached out to seven queer black Portlanders—from artists to activists to a local civil rights pioneer—and asked them a simple question: What does Pride mean to you?

REVOLUTION IN MOTION: “They are killing us. And y’all miss a parade?” writes Portland artist Jayy Dodd.

SEE ESSAY, PAGE 15.

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GIA GOODRICH

Cameron Whitten and Salomé Chimuku, Co-founders of the Black Resilience Fund The Pride of the present is a far cry from its origins.

In the ’70s, Pride emerged as an opportunity for LGBTQ+ people to resist the status quo. To celebrate every part of who we were. To fight for our lives.

And unlike today, there was no space for police at Pride, because the police were complicit in the violence against our communities.

We’re seriously concerned about the pinkwashing of Pride celebrations around the world, where companies and public agencies spend millions to appear LGBTQ2S+-friendly, but then go missing in action when other marginalized communities are under attack—looking at you, Starbucks.

Once the parades and rainbowbranded merchandise disappears, our Queer, Trans, Black communities are left to fend against the combination of racism and anti-LGBTQ2S+ discrimination in housing, employment, policing, and more.

The experiences of Black LGBTQ2S+ people are only centered when one of us

is killed—and the public outcry always fades before any noticeable change is implemented.

Look no further than Titi Gulley, a houseless Black trans Portlander who was found hanging lifeless from a tree in Rocky Butte Park on Memorial Day last year. If Black trans lives really did matter, Titi would be alive today, with safe and stable housing.

The work for intersectional LGBTQ2S+ justice is not over. Oppression doesn’t disappear when the headlines go away. We’re not done fighting until every single one of us has the ability to not only survive—but thrive.

Earlier this month, we founded the Black Resilience Fund, and it serves as a reminder to the broader LGBTQ2S+ community that our liberation is interconnected.

We must show up together against all forms of injustice if we’re ever going to reach a future where we are all seen, accepted and loved.

So for us, Pride is still about fighting for our lives.

Leila Haile Co-founder of Ori Gallery Pride this year is about continuing the work of our Trans-African elders and the legacy of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot and countless uprisings before Stonewall. They knew, as we know now, that nonviolence only works against an enemy that has a conscience, and that our oppressors have none.

Pride is about the act of revolutionary love, and the justice we seek is an integral part of that love. Dismantling institutions built with the blood of colonized people is the ultimate act of love. All of the anti-bias training on the planet will not get us free—it is up to each one of us to decide how we are going to become the grains of sand that brings the machine of white supremacy to a halt.

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Lillith Sinclair

they can enjoy their comfortable, corporatized version of Pride only because Marsha didn’t have any reservations against throwing a brick at the protectors of white supremacy and capitalism.

But we also need to center the Black LGBTQ+ women and femmes whom we have to thank for so many other wins in this intergenerational movement for Black liberation.

We need to talk about Angela Davis, a revolutionary, Black, lesbian woman, political activist, and author.

For her story in her own words, I encourage people to check out her biography. The documentary 13th, by Ava DuVernay, is also a great entry point into this history and its relevance to the moment we see before us today.

We must talk about the importance of Black queer visionaries. Our stories must be told by us as oppressed people fighting for liberation. It’s why I want people to look up Audre Lorde, a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.”

It is criticial we as a society uplift Queer, Trans, Black, Brown and Indigenous voices now—especially sex workers, disabled peoples, houseless peoples, our youth and our elderly.

For so many of us, I know that Pride 2020 is about necessity. Pride means disarm, defund and abolish the police and prisons immediately, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—followed by the entire imperialist, white supremacist system it’s built on.

Activist

Flawless Shade Drag performer “Pride this year is taking it back to what it was originally all about, and the people who fought for us to be where we are today. Usually, how we celebrate Pride is with parades and festivals, and sometimes we lose sight of what Pride actually means. It means being thankful for what you have, and fighting for what you don’t have. But I’ve seen so much more community now

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than I have at any Pride festival I’ve ever been to. I’m not getting any governmental help or anything because I’m an independent contractor, so I’ve had people donating. And when people give you help, you want to help other people, too. So it’s been that kind of domino effect. And to me, that’s what Pride is all about.” As told to Matthew Singer.

Tori Williams Douglass Anti-racist educator and host of the White Homework podcast “I can’t separate out who I am—I am female, I am black, and I am queer. All those things are embodied. Because of that, I am very torn with the way companies simultaneously monetize Pride and demonize Black Lives Matter. That’s been really hard for me, setting aside COVID and celebrations that would otherwise be happening.

Starbucks is the perfect example: Employees are allowed to wear Pride flair, but you’re not allowed to wear anything that says “Black Lives Mat-

ter” on it. Well, I’m both, and I’m sure there are black queer people who work for Starbucks. What about them? What about their lives? You can’t section people out. I can’t take my queerness and set it aside if that makes you more comfortable, and I can’t take my blackness set it aside if that makes you more comfortable. This is what I wrestle with every year during Pride. I see big companies monetize this but have nothing to say about me staying alive.” As told to Matthew Singer.

SAM GEHRKE

As an Afro-Indigenous, queer, femme, nonbinary sex worker and abolitionist, I personally know this to be true: Black, Brown and Indigenous abolitionists and organizers have been preparing years for this moment.

Pride 2020 is about revolutionary Black queer abolitionists of this generation breaking through the glass ceiling of a white supremacist government to demand Black liberation. We share an understanding that prioritizing Black liberation and de-colonialism means the abolition of not just the police, but the entire imperialist, white-supremacist, colonial, racial capitalist system that protects killer cops.

I see the moment we exist in as an opportunity to learn from some of our most intersectional organizers— those who see not only the need for our fight, but the risks at stake, the care we need and the systems we can create outside of an unfair government that was never made to include us.

As Pride Month continues, I hope we prioritize connecting with and supporting the Black and Brown LGBTQIA2S+ community in Portland. It’s necessary for us to remember to learn from those who came before us, the ones who have been intentionally kept obscured from history by the education system.

This means we need to fight to honor the legacy of the Black, trans sex-working women who we can thank for Pride Month: Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.

I need white allies who feel safe with cops to remember

K.KENDALL

GIA GOODRICH

Kathleen Saadat Activist

Jayy Dodd Artist Because it must be repeated: The Compton’s Cafeteria and Stonewall protests against police brutality are the catalyst of any understanding of TLGBQ+ Pride. At the forefront of resisting the discrimination and systemic harassment of Queer people nationwide were Black Trans and Queer folks. It was Black Trans women. It was Black Butch Lesbians. It was sex workers. It was not corporations and government officials and once-a-year campaigns.

Can Pride be a pro-Black, pro-Trans, pro-sex work, anti-fascist gathering and celebration? I don’t know, but again we are here, commemorating the labor of Black Queer Folk, despite the continued systemic theft and erasure of our lives.

This Pride, I challenge non-Black Queer people to really attend to their investments that kill us. Attend to what parts of Queer culture you can claim without tracing it back to Black people or our radical ways of surviving: language, fashion, references, rhetoric, etc. What have you done for yourselves?

This Pride I challenge straight and cisgender people of all races and ethnicities to attend to the transphobia that resides in their everyday life. Why do you feel entitled to comment about anyone’s body?

Lastly, a litany of names to hold. First, my Black Trans kin killed this year alone: Nina Pop. Monika Diamond.

Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells. Riah Milton. Tony McDade.

Layleen Polanco. And in solidarity with my non-Black Trans kin who have been taken this year alone: Dustin Parker. Neulisa Luciano Ruiz. Yampi Méndez Arocho.

Lexi. Johanna Metzger. Serena. Angelique Velázquez Ramos. Layla Pelaez Sánchez. Penélope Díaz Ramírez, Helle Jae O’Regan.

If things do not radically change, you will not know or see any Trans people of color in your lifetime. They are killing us. And y’all miss a parade?

Kathleen Saadat has spent most of her life fighting.

Since the 1970s, she has fought for marginalized communities in Portland, whether that’s meant for the rights of women, people of color and the LGBTQ community, women’s rights, or against police violence. Born in St. Louis, Saadat says she was drawn to the city because of the relatively high number of gay organizers compared to her hometown. She attended Reed College, graduating in 1974 with a psychology degree. A year later, she helped lead Portland’s first-ever march for gay rights.

Though she continued to do project work and public speaking engagements after retiring in the early 2000s, she’s mostly retreated from view over the past five years. Her last public appearance was last year at the Hollywood Bowl, where she took the stage to sing with Pink Martini—the band backed her on her debut album, Love for Sale, which came out in 2018.

Here, Saadat offers advice to today’s protesters, who she believes are doing a good job.

LATISHA JENSEN. WW: Can you talk about your experience advocating against police violence?

Kathleen Sadaat: I’ve always been outspoken. I was the chair for the Community Oversight Advisory Board. When Kendra James was murdered, I was a part of the group that was raising all kinds of hell about it, including standing up and saying that the district attorney’s office was complicit in making sure that the police officers got off.

What sparked your activism initially?

I think on some level it’s always been there.

When I lived in Nashville, Tenn., back in 1947, I was 7 years old. It was a time when they still had signs on the bus that said, “This section is for colored.” I wouldn’t sit there when I was by myself on my way to school. Someone told my father about it, and my dad asked me, “I heard you won’t sit on the colored section of the bus.

Why?” I said because I don’t think they get to tell us where to sit because we’re colored. He

said to me, “You do what you think is right.”

I think that was pretty courageous for somebody talking to their 7-year-old daughter.

What are your impressions of this current global uprising?

There’s a lot of people who have never seen cruelty and have never seen the kinds of things we saw when Mr. Floyd was murdered. They see it in the abstract. But they’ve been presented with a clear idea of what cruelty can look like. It’s different than watching someone get shot. What you saw was a close-up of a human being killing another human being deliberately. When you talk about lynching or burning, it’s historical in their minds. It’s hard for them to grasp, but here was something in the here and now that they could watch on the TV, and they could hear what was going on in addition to seeing it. I think it struck a chord: “This is what racism really is.”

Do you support the tactics being used by today’s protesters?

It depends on who you’re talking about. I support the demonstrations that are primarily there to teach people, to face their consciousness, to make visible the issue. The tactics used by people who are breaking windows—I’m not interested in that, but I understand them, how somebody could be angry enough to do it. I just don’t think it serves a purpose.

What word of advice would you give to young protesters and activists fighting at the front lines today?

Keep in mind that what they’re doing means a change for all of us, for everyone who lives in this country. They have to have some understanding how broad and how deep that is, and incorporate that into their thinking. The other thing I would say is, check in with some of the older people sometimes and ask questions.

For the older people, don’t assume you know something because this is a different world.

We didn’t grow up in the world that young people live in right now.

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SELF PORTRAITS

Queer artist Terry Blas is drawing his life’s story—and some wicked Pride Swords.

BY DA N IEL B R OMFIELD

SELECT TERRY BLAS ILLUSTRATIONS.

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“I knew that the things I was experiencing were natural, and they weren’t a choice,” he says. “So Terry Blas is a man of many hyphenates.

I checked out mentally from the church at a very His Twitter profile describes him as a “Mexi- young age.” can-American-Ex-Mormon-Queer-Author-IllusStill, he went on a customary mission at age 19, trator.” But even that doesn’t cover all of it. Lately, so as not to “bring shame to the family.” Expecthe can add another credit to the list: swordsmith. ing to be sent to a Spanish-speaking country, he The Portland comics artist forges his blades instead spent two years in the Bronx. He describes with ink rather than fire and metal. But his custom his mission as “going through the motions,” but he Pride Swords, which he sells for about $80 on Twit- was able to improve his Spanish. He describes his ter, represent a fun and defiant way to celebrate time in New York in the short comic Ghetto Swirl, Pride’s history as a protest. Bearing such attributes named after a “street name” he acquired due to his as a “golden ponytail blade” that injects a “poison mixed heritage. into the body of bigots and homophobes,” they “I think it’s very telling that when I finished follow in the great fantasy tradition of blades like my mission,” he says, “I drove straight to L.A. and Stormbringer and Excalibur never went to church again.” that are bound to their wieldAfter a few years in Los Angeles, ers.

Blas moved to Portland in 2006.

“I thought that was such a He’d been into cartoons and great, funny idea to be able to comics since he was a kid, taking march with a sword that would inspiration from Disney movprotect you that was very peries. But he came to Portland, sonal to you,” says Blas. “So I home of publishing houses like made one for myself.”

Oni Press and Helioscope, to Blas’ sword includes a skull, get serious about his art and be a common image in Mexican closer to his family in Idaho. He art, and a blade forged from the studied illustration at Pacific horn of the gayest of all legendNorthwest College of Art, gradary beasts: the unicorn. It’s a uating in 2010, and soon found microcosm of Blas’ art, which is gigs doing covers for licensed strongly informed by his queer Cartoon Network comics like and Mexican American Adventure Time and The identity, where Mexican Amazing World of Gumfolk iconography coexists ball. alongside drag queens, Blas came out to his “ WH E N KIDS rainbows and other sister at age 25, but it brash symbols of gaytook him another five DON ’ T S E E ness. years to tell his parents.

He’s adept at realHe recalls his father askQUEER istic paintings,but he’s ing if he engaged in any made his name with his homosexual behavior CHAR AC TE RS cheery cartoons, many during his mission. He of which feature his replied that he saw The IN STORIE S smiling, goateed avatar.

Lion King on Broadway.

His best-known work is Blas says his parents AN D CARTOON S You Say Latino, a 2015 were more willing to short comic in which he accept his sexuality when TH E M E SSAG E explains the difference they realized a queer between oft-conflated person wasn’t an abstract TH E Y ’ R E G ET TING terms like Hispanic and concept you might learn Latino with easy graphabout in church or on IS THAT TH E Y ics and gentle good a TV comedy but a real humor. human being who could DON ’ T E XIST.” His most recent be a member of their own graphic novel, Hotel family.

Dare, follows a set of “I felt like the best siblings through strange, thing I could do was to supernatural occurrences at their grandmother’s just like live a good life and be happy,” says Blas, hotel in Mexico. Another, Dead Weight, is a “queer who recently moved to a quiet abode in West Linn murder mystery” set at a fat camp. Most of his with his husband, “so that people who are told work is for younger audiences, and he stresses the that queer people are sinning or are bad can see an importance of representation in his art. example through me.”

“When kids don’t see queer characters in stoThat applies to his art as well: If it helps someries and cartoons,” he says, “the message they’re one in America’s straightest, whitest places to see getting is that they don’t exist.” queer people and people of color as more than just concepts, then Blas considers it a job well done.

Blas was born in Northern California and grew Aside from his swords, Blas is mum about most up between Boise, Idaho, and various cities in of the projects he’s working on. He has a graphic Mexico. His father is a white man from Utah, and novel slated for 2021 that he says is about “teenaghis mother is Mexican. Both were Latter-Day ers and senior citizens and a theme park.”

Saints. Though Blas was raised Mormon, he began That’s all he’s willing to divulge. Knowing Blas, to question the religion after “being told in church though, it’s probably about a lot more than that. [being] gay is a sinful lifestyle.” @bromf

CRAIG FLIPY

FAMILY PORTRAIT: (From left) Tom Wheeler, Rainier Wheeler-Philippe, Brianna Wheeler and Emmanuel Sapungan.

HAPPY FATHERS DAY

A WW contributor interviews her dad about coming out, LGBTQ activism and fighting racism in his own family.

BY B RI ANNA WH E ELE R

My dad came out at my 12th birthday party.

He and my mother had not yet officially separated, but my father had been “on the road” with his “traveling salesman” job an awful lot. He arrived to the party late, shoulder to shoulder with a man he introduced to everyone as his partner, Manny.

I took this to mean that my dad had started a new company, and immediately started bragging to all my friends and family about how good at business my dad was.

Days would pass before my mother would decode “partner” for me and I would come to understand that Manny was now a permanent fixture in my life—my stepdad.

Before coming out, my father’s adult years were spent in an interracial marriage, raising two mixedrace daughters, making us more of a minority than we already were. To that point, we were versed in anti-racist activism, and we became similarly entrenched in LGBTQ+ causes after my dad came out. Once he found his new community, my dad quickly became one of its most deeply invested stewards, offering his businesses as LGBTQIA+ community centers/safe spaces, himself as an advocate for the most disenfranchised community members, and funneling his business profits right back into resources like health care and housing.

Thirty years later, my dad remains committed to social justice, though at age 70, in the midst of a global health crisis, he’s having to make some adjustments. At this particularly explosive moment in history, I asked my dad to reflect on what Pride means to him now, and how he’s navigating being an active community member during a pandemic, as well as a stalwart ally to his biracial children.

WW: You grew up in Northeast Portland, in what is now the King Neighborhood, the youngest child of a single mother. What was the

neighborhood like back then?

Tom Wheeler: Well, we were one of the diminishing few white families. That was evidenced by the ratio of black to white at the schools I attended. My first girlfriend was black, most of my friends were black. But this was abhorrent to my stepfather. His appliance store, which catered to the black community, enabled his racially discriminatory behavior.

He began accumulating real estate in our neighborhood, but he would not rent to anyone of color.

And you’ve seen what that behavior results in: The neighborhood began falling into a state of disrepair and abandonment. Rentals went vacant. One of my first entrepreneurial endeavors was raiding abandoned houses for metal to sell to recyclers.

Soon this neighborhood became not the neighborhood in which I grew up, and it was through the actions of my new stepfather and many others like him. We ended up moving to San Diego, Calif., in 1964.

How did your family react to the news that you were engaged to a black woman?

My parents accepted my relationship with your mother with mixed emotions. My stepfather cornered me and tried to convince me against the marriage. He was still extremely bigoted, now as an apartment-building owner in San Diego County.

He still would not rent to anyone of color. I don’t remember my mother making any sort of a negative remark toward or about your mother until our extended family came to visit. I wasn’t allowed to bring Sharon around, and my mother’s reasoning was that Sharon would not be welcomed because she was black.

Eventually, though, my stepfather changed his feeling toward people of color because of his relationship with your mother. For that, among other things, I will always be grateful to her.

You came out in 1990. Did your parents react any better or worse to this announcement, or did someone else corner you and tell you off ?

Oh, there were already a number of gay members of my family. My brother, Terry, is seven years older than me, and he was the first to come out. He did so quietly, in the early 1960s, when he was discharged out of the Air Force. My younger cousin Rob was also gay. My nephew Pete is also gay. Shoot, there may be more that I don’t know about. Somehow, my family has always been very accepting of the

homosexual lifestyle—well, my stepfather might’ve been the exception but he never said anything, he kept those prejudices to himself. I wasn’t surprised at the way that my family accepted my sexuality. I was, however, disappointed with myself, in that I didn’t come out in such a way to your mother’s family. I simply left Sharon to pick up the pieces. I’ve only felt guilty about leaving my straight life behind because of the wreckage your mother was left with.

After your big gay debut, you almost immediately became an LGBTQIA community leader.

What compelled you to seek those positions?

Once I had come out, everything changed for me.

All the possibilities that I dreamed of in my youth I saw becoming realities. Initially, it was rather tough, in that it’s tough to wait until the middle of your life to find yourself. I was an entrepreneur since I was a kid, and I always knew I was going to be in business for myself. I started with buying a tiny restaurant and from there joined a gay community business network. I stuck around long enough to be president, and then it was a no-brainer to become involved with the Pride festivals, join the board of directors at the community center, and use our businesses for HIV and AIDS outreach and service work.

I was on a police oversight committee to combat gay-bashing. And I was on the city council committee to legalize gay marriage. You know, it’s weird you ask, because I never thought of myself as a community leader. I was simply happy to be accepted into a group where I felt comfortable and productive.

Your north star has always been mentorship, community support, and forever adding otherwise disenfranchised queers to your chosen family. How do you navigate those goals in the age of the coronavirus?

I guess I’ve always felt myself a mentor. And yes, I often found myself surrounded by a diverse cabal of hapless and needy gay men. Today, in the time of the pandemic, those endeavors have been altered.

Social media outreach has been something of a comfort, but being gay and alone in a world where it’s not only illegal but punishable by death in some countries is a tough reality to deal with, even when you have people to look up to and reach out to.

What did Pride mean to you when you first came out, and what does it mean now?

Of course, Pride Month and its celebrations have been a very big influence in our lives. It’s more than an opportunity to let down your hair. There is a sense of safety and a community bond found only at a gay celebration like Pride festivals and parades.

You know how many other kids with gay parents you met during Pride festivities? Those moments are just as important.

Today, I see Pride as being a celebration for those young queers to be free and open even for just a couple days. There’s nothing like walking through a crowd and seeing yourself joyfully reflected in so many different ways, especially if you’ve spent your life until that point feeling completely isolated.

Do you have any advice or words of comfort to share with kids who might be stuck isolating with intolerant families or in otherwise homophobic or transphobic environments?

Don’t think this will last forever. Please believe that the rejection, isolation and hurt you feel will in time be replaced with self-confidence and a clearer understanding of the world around us. There are ongoing battles for equality and acceptance, and we have to be true to ourselves to overcome them. Your community exists and is waiting to embrace you.

Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

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STREET

SKATE FOR BLACK LIVES Why march when you can skate? On June 10, Portland skateboarders showed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, skating from the Rose Quarter across the Steel Bridge and over to Tilikum Crossing and back.

Here’s what it looked like.

Photos by Mick Hangland-Skill |

@mick.jpg

Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

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COURTESY OF NAIM HASAN AND PORTLAND PAARKS & RECREATION

STARTERS

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STAY SAFE, STAY INFORMED. WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER. WWEEK.COM

Father’s Day! ‘Ohana

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For the first time, Portland has named a park after a black woman. Verdell Burdine Rutherford Park is the new name of the 8-acre expanse on Southeast 167th Avenue previously known as Lynchview.

Burdine Rutherford and her husband, Otto Rutherford, were leaders of the Oregon chapter of the NAACP. One of their most important achievements was the passage of the Public Accommodations Act, which outlawed discrimination in hotels, hospitals, restaurants and movie theaters on the basis of race, religion or national origin. A community celebration for Burdine Rutherford and the park’s renaming will be held at a date yet to be announced.

MAD WORLD

Movie Madness, one of the best video rental stores left in the country, is now offering curbside pickup. Sure, it’s not the same experience as browsing sections with names like “Killer Pets” and “Ferocious Fetuses” in person, but at least you’ll now have access to over 80,000 titles—more than Amazon, Netflix and Hulu combined. Movie Madness members can select three to six titles from the rental store’s website. Contactless pickup is every Friday and Saturday from noon to 4 pm. Even better? Rental fees of movies made by black filmmakers will be donated to Don’t Shoot PDX.

PORTUGAL THE BAN

Last Wednesday, over 400 citizens testified in favor of defunding the Portland Police Bureau via video conference before the City Council. Among them? Guitarist Erik Howk of chart-topping altrock band Portugal the Man. The musician read a statement on behalf of the band and its charitable organization, the PTM Foundation: “Looking at the future, our resources are better served on our kids than on the intimidation and unwarranted shows of force from those meant to protect and serve the community.” It’s hardly the band’s first political action. They performed at a rally against gun violence at Pioneer Courthouse Square in 2018, and have spent the past few months fighting a book ban in their former hometown of Wasilla, Alaska.

FLAIR FIGHT

Burgerville is reversing its policy against allowing staff to wear apparel expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement—with a caveat. Employees of the Vancouver, Wash.-based fast food chain may now display buttons and other gear supporting the ongoing nationwide protests against the police killings of George Floyd and other African Americans, but the paraphernalia must be produced by Burgerville itself. In a statement, the union says it is “encouraged” by Burgerville’s policy change, but criticized the company for using corporate branding on the apparel, and for the use of the hashtag “AlliesForChange”: “Asking all workers, especially black workers, to self-identify as an ‘ally’ in this moment ignores the ways in which some Burgerville workers are not merely allies, but directly and substantially impacted by police violence in their communities.”

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Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

Summer is officially canceled at some Oregon state parks. While campgrounds across the state continue to slowly reopen, nearly a half-dozen will not welcome back overnight visitors through Labor Day due to plummeting funding and reduced staff levels. Most of the affected parks are along the Southern Oregon Coast. Oregon State Parks and Recreation is automatically canceling reservations and issuing complete refunds.

POK MARKED

Pok Pok, the iconic restaurant that introduced Portland to the cuisine of Northern Thailand when it opened on Southeast Division Street in 2005, is permanently closing nearly all of its locations in the city, save its flagship dining room and Pok Pok Wing in Southeast Portland. In an Instagram post, owner Andy Ricker blamed several factors related to the coronavirus pandemic, and said the move was made “so that the original Pok Pok on Division Street may have a chance of reopening when it is safe and financially tenable to do so.”

SAM GEHRKE

GET INSIDE

WHAT TO DO—AND WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING—WHILE STUCK INSIDE.

Q(UA RA N T I N E) & A

H E AR T H IS

How to Get Into Funk With the musical canon still the province of emotionally constipated white men, much of the great funk of the ’70s has been passed over by the pantheon. Funk is often reduced to a cliché, but it’s as complex and far ranging as any other genre. And for the uninitiated, these albums are every bit as good as anything Pitchfork has rated a 10 lately.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES: Andrew Tolman (left) interprets during a protest at Pioneer Courthouse Square on June 10.

Andrew Tolman,

Beginners: Funk starts with “Cold Sweat,” where James Brown finally cut out the chord changes. But the best funk album is There’s a Riot Goin’ On, Sly and the Family Stone’s drugged, disturbed masterpiece. Larry Graham puts in one of the great bass performances ever seen on a pop album while Sly gurgles and rasps, and together they stave off suffering and dread with lethargy and sad resignation.

American Sign Language Interpreter and Founder of Fingers Crossed Interpreting

Next Steps: Mothership Connection and Maggot Brain are the two Parliament-Funkadelic albums you might’ve heard, but the best Parliament album is Motor Booty Affair—which begins with fish puns and mermaid jokes and ends with George Clinton being escorted backstage by security—and the self-titled Funkadelic is the best approximation of squirming, acid-damaged human guts ever put to record.

WW: Fingers Crossed’s tagline is “Revolutionize the Revolution.” Do you feel the deaf community has been overlooked in activist circles?

Andrew Tolman: Ableism is very prevalent in general in our society.

People forget disability and deafness can intersect with any other identity. When we talk about Black Lives Matter, that means black disabled lives matter and black deaf lives matter. When meetings and workshops and know-your-rights trainings are being held without engaging those communities, we’re just doing the same thing and building a new system excluding a lot of intersections.

Further Out: Funk had few female auteurs, but they account for much of its best music. Betty Davis’ They Say I’m Different represents funk’s shit-kicking hardrock extreme, Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah albums are wreathed in incense. And the Brides of Funkenstein’s Never Buy Texas From a Cowboy is one of the best P-Funk side projects.

Does interpreting for social justice actions require a specific skill set?

A lot of the concepts we’re talking about—like capitalism, imperialism, big jargon words like that in activist circles—don’t have established sign language vocabulary. A lot of the time we’re having to sign around the concept or finger spell it, or work with members of the deaf community to come up with a sign that might be appropriate.

Interpreters have to be able to understand conceptually what they’re talking about and have that be as culturally competent in deaf ASL as we can. Another level of it is vicarious trauma. We interpret for families of people who have been murdered by the police here. We interpret for people who themselves are survivors of police brutality.

Interpreters need to be aware of that before they enter any space like this. It’s going to be heavy, and regardless of how you feel about one issue or another, who you agree with or not, it’s moving through your body and moving through your psyche. I wouldn’t say all interpreters are called to do that, in the same way I wouldn’t say all people belong on the front line.

JUNE 17-23 R EAD THI S

I Will Never See the World Again: The Memoir of an Imprisoned Writer

by Ahmet Altan “Smuggled out of his prison cell by his attorneys, the memoir of this Turkish journalist is a reminder that all around the world, writers are imprisoned in cells not of their own making—and not in response to a microscopic virus—but, rather, to the whims of autocratic rulers. It also provides a terrifying glimpse of what totalitarian control of society can bring about. It’s also a document of hope. Faced by the very real prospect of never being released, never seeing his family, never being free, Altan maintains his dignity, humanity, and sense of humor.

He quotes—without a library or internet connection at his disposal—long passages of prose and full poems.

‘Don’t we live,’ Altan asks, ‘by becoming continuously both a little more deified and a little more submerged in the banalities of humankind.’ It’s great reading for my lucky and utterly comfortable quarantine.” —Pauls Toutonghi, author of Dog Gone (2016)

The Deep End: If you’re ready, dive into Miles Davis’ ’70s work. You’ve heard Bitches Brew, but Dark Magus and In Concert make just about everything else ever recorded by anyone look puny—and they probably wouldn’t exist had his wife, Betty (see above), not introduced him to Sly, Hendrix and all the other cool stuff the kids were listening to at the time. DANIEL BROMFIELD.

What are the challenges of interpreting while on the front lines of a protest?

I want to make sure whatever’s important for me and my safety auditorily that I’m giving that information. I can hear when certain crowd control munitions are being shot, even if it’s not in our direction. I can hear how far away the bang is. I can hear the police giving instructions in general, saying, “This is a peaceful protest” into “please don’t touch the fence” into “this is unlawful.” As an interpreter, I’m listening for that escalation. I’m listening for the way the crowd sounds as things are happening. We’re not only interpreting the words but also the feel of the things going on around us.

It sounds like that puts a lot of responsibility on your back.

It’s pressure that I feel like I chose. Any time I’m in an action that way, I have eyes at every hour—my 6, 3 and 9—and I’m watching comrades and protesters, especially because we have so many new people.

There are so many people who are experiencing this for the first time.

And because the deaf community is experiencing it together, there’s a bond that happens as well. The pressure is not so much completely on me. As we show up more and more, the community is taking that on together.

See the full video interview with Andrew Tolman at wweek.com/ distant-voices.

Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

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GET INSIDE

WHAT TO DO—AND WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING—WHILE STUCK INSIDE.

IN M E M O RI A M

MY Q UAR ANTI NE P R OJ ECT

ORIGINAL PHOTO BY SAM GEHRKE

Remembering the City Hall Plywood Wall

“Outlet is a risograph print shop, community maker space, and the studio of Kate Bingaman-Burt. We host workshops and pop-up events, and we never stop printing. We’re home to an ever-growing zine library, four risographs, a shop full of goodies by local artists, and tons of paper and art supplies.

Outlet stands in solidarity with protests and with our Black community. We believe Black Lives Matter. We believe BIPOC Matter. And we believe print is power. So we are offering our services and resources to the most marginalized and disenfranchised in our community, and have made these posters available for pickup at 2500 NE Sandy Blvd., Suite E, or download at outletpdx.com/blm, all free of charge.” —Leland Vaughan, studio manager

TED TIMMONS

TED TIMMONS

ANIS MOJGANI

J AC K I E B R OW N ( @ J AC K FAC E K I L L A H )

Who could forget where they were the day the plywood wall went up around City Hall?

It was a humid Tuesday in June 2020—June 9, if I recall correctly. A sister to the Portland Police Bureau’s beloved Justice Center fence, the enclosure was meant to protect the building from being graffito-tagged by protesters of police violence. Soon, though, it became clear that those thin wooden boards were not just encircling city property, but also our hearts. Or at least our Twitter feeds.

All wood things, however, must come to an end.

Surely, we will all remember with equal clarity what we were doing the moment it was announced the wall would be removed—particularly given that it was later in the day on June 9, 2020.

“The plywood was intended to protect iconic public buildings and minimize expenses,” said Tom Rinehart, the city of Portland’s chief administrative officer, in a press release. “But we need to put our relationship with the community first. The city of Portland is open for civic engagement—especially now.

We need to hear our community’s demands for racial justice, even when those demands take the form of spray paint.”

The wall is gone now, and we’ve only begun to process a Portland without it. How will we ever recognize the landscape? Will we recognize ourselves?

Goodbye, wall. Or should we say…good-ply? MATTHEW SINGER.

L I LY L I N ( @ L I S C H O I C E )

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Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

FOOD & DRINK TOP 5

BUZZ LIST

Which dad beers to drink on Father’s Day.

3. Ruse Brewing’s Exit Dream If Dad likes ordering a Modelo Negra at the Mexican taqueria, Ruse’s Exit Dream is ideal.

It’s a deliciously fresh palebrown lager that’s a perfect accompaniment for a Sunday carne asada grill session.

4. Heater Allen’s Zwickelbier

1. Baerlic Brewing’s Dad Beer This one does what it says on the tin: “Easy Drinkin’ Beer.” It’s a rewardingly light and malty 16 ounces of American lager, but fresher and with more body than any of the big-brewer macrobeers you’ll find at the store.

2. Wayfinder Beer Number 6 Lager Beer Wayfinder goes a similar route with Number 6—it’s so easydrinking it’s hard to resist draining a 12-ounce can in one go, yet also so clean and crisp that sipping is never a bad idea.

TOP 5

HOT PLATES

Where to order takeout or delivery this week.

Heater Allen’s canned lagers have been consistently good, and dad-pleasers like its Helles and Das Bier Kölsch are always good choices. But that Zwickelbier might just be proof that your favorite deity loves Dad and wants him to be happy. It’s a pale tan lager that drinks lightly but packs a fine balance of malt and hops, just as a good Bambergstyle unfiltered beer should.

5. Occidental Brewing’s Speisekammer Kellerbier Occidental has been steadfastly pushing its range forward, but for something just a little different, Occidental’s Speisekammer Kellerbier offers malty goodness with slightly hazy, deep-golden eye appeal.

The brewery’s Helles and Kölsch are also dad-pleasing winners.

DON SCHEIDT.

the finest birds in the city. And here’s some news that’s sure to make you drop whatever you’re currently eating: They’ve entered the chicken sandwich game. Call for pickup.

3. Yakuza 5411 NE 30th Ave., 503-450-0893, yakuzalounge.com. 4-9 pm daily.

Yakuza’s new bento boxes are not only orderly, with different foods of eye-popping colors neatly compartmentalized, they’re also downright adorable. The assortment of delights is balanced between fried and raw, meaty and light. Delivery

by Caviar.

1. Union Burger 7339 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-744-9745, unionburgerpdx.com. Noon-7 pm Monday-Thursday, noon-8 pm Friday-Saturday, noon-5 pm Sunday.

At John Hunt’s last burger joint, if you kept it simple, you were literally boring. But at the former Stoopid Burger co-owner’s new cart, he’s embraced simplicity, with a menu that includes just three basic items: a hamburger, cheeseburger and veggie burger. Don’t worry, though: You can still get pretty Stoopid with the add-ons. Open for walk-ups.

2. Reel M Inn 2430 SE Division St., 503-2313880, reelminnpdx.com. Noon-8 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

The fried chicken at this tiny, graffiti-stained, incongruously nautical-themed dive is worth fighting for, at least until someone figures out the mad alchemy that’s allowed this place, of all places, to broast

4 Akadi 3601 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-477-7138, akadipdx.com.

Noon-10 pm Tuesday-Sunday.

When Akadi’s young chef and proprietor, Fatou Ouattara, opened her restaurant in 2017, she extended the Ethiopianheavy boulevard’s palate to West Africa. Ouattara’s restaurant vibrantly showcases her native Ivory Coast cuisine with plates like the Goat ($15.95), accompanied by fufu-steamed cassava dough ideal for sopping up savory remnants. Delivery by Caviar.

5. Ken’s Artisan Pizza 304 SE 28th Ave., 503-517-9951, kensartisan.com. 4:30-8 pm Wednesday-Sunday. Orders open at noon.

Ken’s Artisan serves super-thincrust pizzas from an 800-degree Le Panyol wood-fired stone oven. Toppings are minimal, in the best way, and the pizzas are best when piled with arugula.

Call for takeout.

wweek.com/support “Thank you for being a trustworthy local news source in this time of uncertainty.

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Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

23

Stay home.

Take out.

Support Local.

Stay safe and enjoy a summer drink by ordering pick up or delivery from these local establishments.

See more of our recommendations at wweek.com/take-out-stay-home/ sponsored content

FOOD & DRINK TAKE ME OUT

Chips Ahoy To some gourmands, the chip butty is an abomination. For Tommy Klus, it’s an adventure.

BY A N DI PR EWITT

PILOT HOUSE DISTILLING This small craft distillery based in Astoria, Oregon just opened a location on Mississippi Ave. Taste the spirits of the coast: award winning vodkas, gins, whiskies, canned cocktails, agave spirits, absinthe (and hand santizer!). FREE delivery to Portland. pilothousedistilling.com

HOPWORKS URBAN BREWERY You deserve a beer you can feel good about: local, sustainable, and brewed by the PNW’s first B Corp brewery! With the weather warming up, be sure to welcome summer with Hopworks Brewery’s new seasonal Totally Chill Hazy IPA. You can also grab their “Core Four” case and add on “Totally Chill” for just $8.99! Don’t forget Hopworks beer and swag is delivering Wednesday — Saturday each week. Order delivery today. hopworksbeer.com

24

Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

aprewitt@wweek.com

Tommy Klus wasn’t prepared for the puke emojis.

When Eater PDX posted a link to a story on its Facebook page in late May, announcing that the owner of Southeast Portland cocktail bar Scotch Lodge was preparing to reopen its kitchen for a new takeout service called Oui Chippy, it included a photo of a french fry sandwich it planned to serve.

The virtual dog pile began almost immediately.

“It certainly wasn’t meant to be a controversial sandwich by any means,” Klus says. “But there’s some people who just think it looks gross and sounds gross.”

On its face, the chip butty ($6) is an abomination. The U.K. fish-and-chip shop staple consists of two slabs of white bread slathered with butter—aka the “butty”—and jammed with what looks like enough sliced spuds to fill an entire fryer basket. It’s the kind of double-starch stack you would have devoured as a kid while hopped up on Jolt soda and AirHeads. But local sandwich trolls have dubbed the spongy heap of carbs undignified for post-adolescent consumption. As one commenter suggested, it’s a meal fit only for a sauced mob of “soccer hooligans.”

Klus first encountered the butty in 2011, during an internship at a Scottish distillery. At first, he was curious. Then he got excited.

“I love potatoes and fries in general. Put them between two pieces of bread and it sounds bad, but it’s actually really good,” says Klus. “It’s definitely comfort food. And it’s cheap.”

With its bulging brown jumble of fries creating an edible Tetris wall, the chip butty will never win any beauty contests. But the flavors—buttery and salty, with just a hint of sweetness provided by the humble Russet—are addictive and almost soothingly nostalgic for anyone who grew up cramming potato chips into peanut butter sandwiches. Chef de cuisine Tim Artale also infuses the British creation with Asian flavors by using a spread with Vietnamese apple vinegar, as well as an accompanying Worcestershire sauce for dipping that swaps out the traditional anchovies for fish sauce.

“We just wanted something fun and playful,” says Klus. “These have been depressing and scary times. Things have continued to evolve in ways I don’t think any of us could have imagined. That was the spirit behind [Oui Chippy]. Trying to get the team back and do something fun and playful that people can get excited about.”

THE BREAD “ We don’t try to even mess around with baking that in-house,” says chef de cuisine Tim Artale. “ We leave that to the pros.” In this case, he means a Vietnamese bakery in the Foster-Powell neighborhood called An Xuyên. The chip butty is traditionally bound by a white bread, but Oui Chippy decided to give its interpretation a twist by using spongy yet sturdy milk loaves.

THE BUTTER Artale starts with unsalted butter and then seasons it with sea salt, lemon juice for a little kick of acidity, Vietnamese apple vinegar, and white vinegar powder. “Ideally,” he says, “it would kind of be a slightly South Asian riff on a saltand-vinegar potato chip.”

THE FRIES The gold standard potato for the french fry is the Russet, thanks to its perfect combination of starch and moisture. Artale cuts his spuds to 3/8 of an inch before rinsing the external starch off and letting them “hang tight” in cold water for about 12 hours.

The fries g et doubledipped in the fryer, first in low-temperature oil— around 250 degrees—for an initial blanching, and then again, to order, at 360 degrees for a nice crunch.

ORDER: Oui Chippy at Scotch Lodge, 215 SE 9th Ave., Suite 102, 503-208-2039, ouichippy.com. 4-8 pm Wednesday-Saturday. Takeout: See website.

PERFORMANCE

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

HOTSEAT

My Essential Seven:

La’ Tevin Alexander Stories and spirituality are driving passions for Confrontation Theatre’s artistic director.

BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E LL FERGUS O N

La’ Tevin Alexander has a theory about spirituality.

“I do find it odd that the most spiritual people—if you look at historical figures—happen to also be the most confident people,” he says. “If you really know that your god has your best interests at heart and will always look out for you, you do find a way to tell yourself that you’re the greatest. It’s a superpower.”

That power is one of Alexander’s greatest possessions.

His faith and his confidence have helped fuel a career filled with triumphs—including playing his idol, Muhammad Ali, in Oregon Children’s Theatre’s 2018 production of And in This Corner: Cassius Clay and founding Confrontation Theatre, which is devoted to telling stories of the African diaspora.

Alexander sometimes mentally scrutinizes his work midperformance. (“When it happens,” he says, “I am feeling what I’m doing, experiencing what I’m doing and analyzing it as I’m doing it.”) True to introspective form, he looked inward as he discussed seven things that are meaningful to him. He spoke not only about people and places, but about the ideas that have given him the strength to do what he does best: create.

1. God/Faith/Spirituality “I started in the Christian-Baptist church, but as I got older and I started learning more about the world and more about other kinds of faiths and spiritualities, my belief in God expanded and my idea of spirituality expanded. Now I like to say that I follow the principles of [the ancient Egyptian goddess] Ma’at.

2. Family and Friends “I recently have been watching—almost studying—Game of Thrones. I could compare the love and the bond that my family has to the love and bond that House Stark has. We’ve had a couple traumatic events and tragedies. My grandfather lost both his sons in four years, and those were his only boys.

Both were my uncles, my mom’s t w o b r ot h e r s. T h a t w a s something that really, really has shaped our family, along with a couple of other things that happened before my lifetime that sort of pulled the older generations together.”

3. Black/African History (Pre-Transatlantic Slave Trade) “I don’t want to see another slave play.

I don’t want to see another slave movie.

I don’t care to see another Jim Crow movie. As much as I am hurt and mad and want to fight and want to protest and riot, I also want to make love. I also want

to laugh. Being in this country, we have the tendency to disproportionately produce and consume trauma, rather than black joy and any other things that black people do and experience.”

4. Historically Black Colleges and Universities “Andrea Vernae, who was in School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, she’s like my best friend. We both went to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, also known as FAMU, which is an HBCU. That was the place where I was truly exposed to black excellence on another scale. Black academic excellence, black athletic excellence, pharmaceutical excellence, judiciary, business. It was like walking into Wakanda for this first time and being like, ‘Wait, this shit is real?’”

5. Stories/Myths “When I do work [at the Blazers Boys & Girls Club], I usually work in the art department, and we do these things called club meetings. Once things get wrapped up, or if I’m trying to get the attention of the kids, I’ll tell a story. I try to go in all different directions because they love it and we love it and oral history is one of our traditions as black people—sitting down in front of the elder while they tell you about a great person who lived, a traumatic event that happened or a love story that swept the country.”

6. Sports and Games “Basketball is my No. 1 love. Sports are one of those things—like family and sometimes like religion and spirituality—that bring people together. It goes outside of your ethnicity, outside of your nationality, outside of your faith.”

7. “Freedom to be who I wanna be & think how I wanna think.”

“Who is a baby to think that it can grow up and put restrictions on what I want to do and put restrictions on what I want to say? Being a person of faith and spirituality, I believe my soul is no better or worse than your soul.

And because I know that to be true, I’m going to express myself the way I want to.”

BOOKS

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

FIVE ANTI-BEACH READS Comemadre, Roque Larraquy Originally published in Spanish, Comemadre takes one long evening to finish and a few years to process.

The novel is a squeamish, horror-adjacent story stacked on top of another chilling tale. First, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, a medical director becomes infatuated with a French study that tests how long a severed human head can retain its faculties after decapitation. Then, some 100 years later, a lonely artist attempts to transform himself into a sentient work of art.

If it sounds disturbing, it is—but it’s also funny and ambitiously clever, with nods to institutional rebellion scribbled in the margins.

The Man Who Snapped His Fingers, Fariba Hachtroudi Hachtroudi’s English-language debut wastes no pages on the ooze of sentimentality, bringing the reader a sharp political thriller cloaked in the guise of a saccharine love story. In some undefined region of Northern Europe, two survivors of a fictional tyrannical state meet in the unlikeliest of circumstances. One is a former colonel of the reigning “Theological Republic,” tasked with prison-keeping. The other is an infamous prisoner, known for her unwavering resistance to the regime. Hachtroudi’s novella moves at a breakneck pace, exposing her literary skill in sparse, intentional chapters.

Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Ed Tarkington This is the book you were meant to read in the thick of summer, lying out once the UV index hit double digits at some nondescript riverside park. That’s by no means a smart option at the minute, but you can still read the book.

Tarkington’s debut, a love letter to the Southern gothic genre and vinyl records, is just as readable as you hope a coming-of-age story to be. There are disappearing brothers and cult leaders and double murders, all of it calling back to the greats and laying the groundwork for a winning novel about young boys and their reckless, clumsy lives.

Spring, Ali Smith The way Ali Smith pieces together a sentence is not unlike how an artist goes about constructing a mosaic, laying out those small, unassuming shards with the understanding that they will eventually fit into something magnificent. Since 2016, the Scottish author has released seasonoriented installments that 2address “the state of the nation,” the latest of which is Spring. “The air lifts,” Smith writes in one passage. “The air lets you know quite ceremonially that something has changed.” It’s not easy reading in the traditional sense, but it doesn’t take much effort to get lost in the lush, quiet prose.

Clap When You Land, Elizabeth Acevedo Acevedo’s latest novel is a heartbreaking story that won’t break your heart. The free verse poems that guide the narrative are thoughtful and sweet, and Acevedo treats her two teenage protagonists with a radical honesty often absent from the young adult genre. The pair of 16-year-old girls are introduced in the wake of a devastating plane crash, killing the man they both know to be their father. From two disparate worlds—New York City and the Dominican Republic—the sisters begin to navigate unthinkable tragedy and the loss of a figure that neither could know completely.

Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

25

MOVIES SCREENER

G ET YOUR REP S IN

On Pause

While local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. This week, we continue our coverage of acclaimed LGBTQ-centric films in honor of Pride Month.

The local film industry is looking for creative ways to continue its work during the pandemic.

Shakedown (2018) From 2002 to 2004, a Black lesbian strip club called Shakedown thrived in an inconspicuous L.A. building, providing a much-needed sanctuary devoted to women’s pleasure. Documentarian Leilah Weinraub shot over 400 hours of footage (pared down here to 70 minutes) before the LAPD shut down the venue. Criterion Channel, shakedown.film.

The Favourite (2018) Dark comedy king Yorgos Lanthimos directs this All About Eve-esque period piece set in the royal court of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman, in an Oscarwinning role). When a former noblewoman (Emma Stone) arrives seeking employment, she finds herself in a love triangle with the queen’s adviser/furtive mistress (Rachel Weisz), vying for favor and power. Amazon Prime, Google Play, HBO Go/Now, HBO Max, Hulu, Vudu, YouTube.

Happy Together (1997) Directed by the great Wong Kar-wai of In the Mood for Love (2000), this sumptuously intimate and critically acclaimed romance chronicles the turbulent relationship between a gay Hong Kongese couple (Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Leslie Cheung) after they travel to Argentina together. Criterion Channel.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) In Desiree Akhavan’s poignant adaptation of a popular YA novel, a Montanan teenager (Chloë Grace Moretz) is sent to gay conversion therapy camp after getting caught with her secret girlfriend.

Here, she meets new friends Jane (Sasha Lane) and Adam Red Eagle (Forrest Goodluck), and the trio help each other cope with their hellish surroundings. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hulu, Kanopy, Vudu, YouTube.

A Single Man (2009) Colin Firth stars as George Falconer, a recently widowed English professor living in 1962 Los Angeles. After his partner (Matthew Goode) dies in a car accident, George contends with a deep depression resulting from his newly single status, but is buoyed by his best friend (Julianne Moore) and one of his students (Nicholas Hoult). Netflix.

FIND EVEN MORE MOVIE LISTINGS AT

getbusy.wweek.com 26

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

BY S H ANNO N GOR MLEY sgormley@wweek.com

Chad Parker wasn’t planning to spend his spring playing a quarantined park ranger.

The Portland-based producer was set to direct a commercial in Sacramento, Calif., last March. But COVID-19 forced Parker to call off production two days before shooting was scheduled to begin.

“At the end of the day, we’re making commercials,” says Parker. “This isn’t something anyone should die for.”

Nonetheless, remaining out of work for an indefinite period didn’t exactly sound feasible. So Parker began researching solutions proposed by other film professionals.

Most of the information he found ranged from improbable to impossible, like booking an entire hotel where cast and crew could quarantine. A s a n e x p e r i m e n t , Parker decided to self-fund a production that abided by physical distancing guidelines. Created by a bare-bones, 10-member team, “The Homebound Ranger” is a cheeky stay-at-home public ad campaign about an Oregon park ranger adjusting to life indoors. The three approximately 20-second PSAs were made without cast or crew coming within 6 feet of each other. With tongue-incheek twee, Parker plays the ranger who’s quarantined in his cabin, solving crosswords and carefully spritzing houseplants instead of roaming the great outdoors.

In a certain sense, it was a total success. Parker and his team produced a high-quality campaign, developed disinfection procedures for handing off gear, and discovered that clear plastic shields are essential for close-up shots. But “The Homebound Ranger” couldn’t solve one crucial problem: generating more work. Parker hasn’t filmed anything since its completion.

“There are people that are interested,” he says. “But, yeah, it’s a long road. Clients are still very nervous about shooting.”

That problem is by no means limited to filmmakers in advertising.

Oregon’s film industry is multitiered and deeply interconnected. Within the past two decades, the state has grown into somewhat of a destination for filmmakers thanks to its history as a stop-motion animation mecca, nonprofits that invest in

Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 4, 2013 wweek.com

education and production, and organizations like Oregon Film, a state agency that attracts a healthy supply of out-of-town projects. Productions like Hulu’s Shrill and Netflix’s Everything Sucks! film here because of the state’s tax incentives, striking locations and large pool of qualified industry workers. Small-scale, local filmmakers—many of whom make their living in Portland’s ad industry while funding their passion projects through grants—can then access those same resources when the bigger productions have packed up.

But COVID-19 has put all of that at risk.

“The industry is going to be at a standstill, and that can only last for so long before people start leaving, getting other jobs, moving out of state,” says Parker.

“You’re probably going to go wherever the work is.”

Oregon’s film industry is now trying to figure out how to return to work without

While productions the size of “The Homebound Ranger” are now attempting to restart, all of OMPA’s guidelines become exponentially more complicated for longer narrative shows and movies, which take longer to produce and require actors to be in close physical proximity. Chad, a TBS series starring Saturday Night Live’s Nasim Pedrad, was filming in Portland when COVID -19 shut down production in March. Shrill was set to make its third season here this summer, as were two unannounced Netflix shows, according to Oregon Film. None of those productions has confirmed how or when they can resume those plans.

Local filmmakers are struggling, too.

Director Dawn Jones Redstone planned to start filming her first feature about a single mom pursuing her dream of a career in politics this summer. But OMPA estimates that its guidelines will require 30 percent longer production times. Plus, there are the added costs of filling the recommended COVID-19-related positions.

Because of all that, Redstone now doesn’t foresee starting production until Multnomah County enters its second phase of reopening. And even then, there would be challenges.

“I don’t know if I could go back to work tomorrow if they said Phase 2 was happening, because I also don’t have child care for my daughter,” she says. “I would have to earn more than what it would cost.

It gets complicated.”

The pandemic poses a real threat to the higher-budget end of Oregon’s film industry.

But that just means it could severely damage those struggling for institutional recogniCOURTESY OF THE HOMEBOUND RANGER tion.

“I’m worried about indie endangering public health. In May, the filmmakers,” says Redstone. “I don’t know Oregon Media Production Association if the people that are already marginalized released a set of protocols for operations are going to be able to overcome this.” during the pandemic. Those guidelines But despite fear and uncertainty, address everything from training to rec- Redstone sees an opportunity for a better ognize COVID-19 symptoms to regulating future. onset airflow to prevent the spread of “I feel like what’s happening now with respiratory droplets.

Black Lives Matter can’t not be part of that “That task force wants to get people conversation,” she says. “If we’re talking back to work and get them back to work about beginning again, now is the perfect safely,” says Lisa Cicala, OMPA’s executive time to look at what’s happening in the director. “But the other piece of it is mak- world and figure out how the media indusing sure that people know that Oregon is try is going to respond to that.” open and prepared for business.”

MOVIES

IMDB

June 17-23

OUR KEY

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

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK THE KING OF STATEN ISLAND

The King of Staten Island Scott (Pete Davidson) needs help. When we first meet him, he’s driving on a freeway with his eyes closed. The King of Staten Island, directed and co-written by Judd Apatow, is the story of Scott opening his eyes to reality—a big step for the mouthy, insecure, mentally unstable 24-year-old living with his mom (Marisa Tomei) in her Staten Island basement. He dreams of opening a tattoo restaurant (“Ruby Tat-Tuesdays!”), an idea so bone-headed even his stoner friends turn it down. Part of Scott’s arrested development is linked to the death of his firefighter father 17 years earlier. Though his life is a slog, both Davidson’s performance and Apatow’s management of his talent make Scott easy to root for: Davidson, like Scott, lives with his mother and lost his father, also a firefighter, in the World Trade Center attack in 2001. The most touching moments pull from that reality, and Apatow’s improvisational style of directing, although meandering in some past films (Trainwreck, Funny People), does well to reflect Davidson’s loose-jointed way of being. A couple scenes stick out. A low-key argument with a group of firefighters at a Yankees game, his mom’s new boyfriend (Bill Burr) among them, feels painfully honest, while a party montage sees Scott finally letting loose. Mostly, the movie is memorable because of Davidson, who with his boyish smile, buggy eyes and comic timing brings an honesty to a role that stuck with me like a permanent tattoo. He’s a star—and man—in the making. R. ASHER LUBERTO. Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Vudu, Xfinity, YouTube.

ALSO PLAYING 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 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 small-town 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 reanimated-corpse 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 SOLEMPFEIFER. 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 nowdeceased Carrie Fisher and Anthony Bourdain have some of the more memorable stories, the latter’s involving a road trip, shrooms and an almost-dead 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.

Shirley 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.

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 insular-

ity 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 soon-tobe-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 award-winning 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 NeonHulu 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 real-world 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.

Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 4, 2013 wweek.com

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SPOTLIGHT

LISA CONGDON

C O U R T E SY O F S T E P H A N I E C H E FA S P R OJ E C T S

FORM, FOLK, FLORA, FAUNA SOLO EXHIBIT | JUNE 6 – JULY 4 On view at: Stephanie Chefas Projects 305 SE 3rd Ave #202 Portland, OR 97214 Hours: Thursday to Saturday, 1-6pm and by appointment www.stephaniechefas.com info@stephaniechefas.com 503.719.6945

Fine Artist and Illustrator Lisa Congdon is best known for her colorful, graphic drawings, and hand lettering.

She works for clients around the world including Comme des Garcons, Crate and Barrel, Facebook, MoMA, REI, and Harvard University among many others. She is the author of eight books, including the starving-artistmyth-smashing Art Inc: The Essential Guide to Building Your Career as an Artist and her latest book Find Your Artistic voice: the Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic. She was named one of 40 Women Over 40 to Watch in 2015 and she is featured in the 2017 book, 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World. Congdon lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

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Willamette Week JUNE 17, 2020 wweek.com

JONESIN’

Week of JUNE 25

©2020 Rob Brezsny

by Matt Jones

"That's the Joint"--taking a few.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

In addition to being a magnificent storyteller, Aries author Barbara Kingsolver raises chickens at her home. "There are days when I am envious of my hens," she writes, "when I hunger for a purpose as perfect and sure as a single daily egg." Do you ever experience that delightful rush of assurance, Aries? I suspect that you're likely to do so on multiple occasions in the coming weeks. And if you are indeed visited by visions of a perfect and sure purpose, your next task will be to initiate practical action to manifest it in the real world.

When Libras become authoritative enough to wield clout in their own sphere of influence, it's often due to three factors: 1. the attractive force of their empathy; 2. their abilities to listen well and ask good questions, which help enable them to accurately read people's emotional energy; 3. their knack for knowing specific tricks that promote harmony and a common sense of purpose. If you possess any of these talents, dear Libra, the next eight weeks will be a favorable time to employ them with maximum intensity and ingenuity and integrity.

You're primed to acquire and wield more leverage.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) Nobel Prize-winning Taurus physicist Richard Feynman got his undergraduate degree from prestigious MIT and his PhD from prestigious Princeton University. Later he taught at prestigious Caltech. But his approach to education had a maverick quality. "Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent, and original manner possible," he advised his students. I think his strategy will work well for you in the coming weeks, which will be a favorable time to gather valuable information and polish your existing aptitudes.

GEMINI (May 21-June20) You're entering a phase when you'll have the potential to upgrade and fine-tune your relationship with money. In the hope of encouraging that prospect, I offer you the counsel of author Katharine Butler Hathaway. "To me, money is alive," she wrote. "It is almost human. If you treat it with real sympathy and kindness and consideration, it will be a good servant and work hard for you, and stay with you and take care of you." I hope you'll consider cultivating that approach, dear Gemini: expressing benevolence and love toward money, and pledging to be benevolent and loving as you use the money you acquire.

ACROSS 1 Activity that may use multiple dice, for short 4 Friedlander of "30 Rock" 9 Former Soviet spy org.

12 What the snooty put on 14 "Fingers crossed!"

15 "The Matrix Reloaded" role 16 Esoteric bit of pop culture that's mired?

54 Rapper whose hologram appeared at Coachella 56 Improve 61 Abbr. at the bottom of some applications 62 Noodle dish that gears up for skateboarding?

65 Bustle of activity 66 "Layer Cake" actress Sienna

18 Do a sub service?

67 Kirlian photography phenomenon, supposedly

19 Keen observer of surroundings

68 May celebrant

20 Twitch subscription levels, e.g.

22 "Well, _ _ _-di-dah!"

23 Burger topper 26 Concave cooker 29 Ill-mannered guy 31 Decent stand-in 34 Novelist Patchett 35 MLB figures 37 Entertainment awards acronym 38 Use as a bed 40 Carte lead-in 41 Put on _ _ _ 42 "Stay (I Missed You)" singer Lisa

69 Facilitated 70 Tax form ID DOWN 1 Shed tool 2 "Escape (The _ _ _ Colada Song)"

30 Place for paternity testing 32 Backyard buildings popping up now that people have chickens for pets 33 Battling 36 Pharmaceutical founder Lilly 39 One of two presidents with two Ivy League degrees 41 Like an angry cat's back 43 Summer, in France 44 Granola concoction, in some places 47 Falco's request to Amadeus 51 "Hello" singer

3 Bryant Gumbel's brother

53 "Let's Roll" jazz singer James

4 "Friends" spinoff

54 Giants or Titans

5 Bunk-bed choice

55 Backtracking computer command

6 12 of 12, briefly 7 Sch. that's home to the Sun Devils

57 Commentator's page 58 Consequently

8 Racetrack advantage, theoretically

59 Some Mr. Potato Head parts

9 Notes for sopranos that are only so tall?

60 "Knives Out" director Johnson

10 Equipment

63 "Boyz N the Hood" actress Long

43 "Angels and Earthly Creatures" poet Wylie

11 Automated programs

45 Tax preparer busy in Apr. (but later this year)

14 Country/comedy series with Buck Owens

46 Defunct Microsoft encyclopedia made obsolete

by Wikipedia

17 Clergy official

48 "Tic _ _ _ Dough"

24 Roving adventurously

13 Move merchandise

21 Archipelago components

49 Georgia, from 1921 to 1991 (abbr.)

25 Electric guitar pioneer Paul

50 Creature on a slide

26 2008 Pixar film about a robot

52 Word ignored when alphabetizing

28 Protective covering that released Mega Man and Street Fighter?

27 Ring-making material?

©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.

64 Chicago Loop carriers

last week’s answers

CANCER (June 21-July 22) "Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant?"

Author Diane Ackerman asks her readers that question, and now I pose the same inquiry to you— just in time for your Season of Transformation.

"We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors," Ackerman says. I will add that you Cancerians now have the potential to be *exceptional* shape-shifters and magical reinventors. What new amazements might you incorporate into your life? What dazzling twists and twinkles would you like to add to your character? What will the Future You be like?

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) Qabalistic teacher Ann Davies asked, "If you stick your finger in the fire, do you then complain that it is unfair when your finger gets burned? Do you call the fire bad?" I offer you this caution, Leo, because I want to encourage you not to stick your fingers or toes or any other parts of you into the fire during the coming weeks. And I'm happy to inform you that there are better approaches to finding out what's important to learn about the fire. The preferred way is to watch the fire keenly and patiently from a modest distance. If you do so long enough, you'll get all you need.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) In accordance with upcoming astrological portents, I urge you to engage in a vigorous redefinition of the term "miracle." That will open you up to the full range of miraculous phenomena that are potentially available in the coming weeks. For inspiration, read this passage by Faith Baldwin: "Miracles are everyday things. Not only sudden great fortune wafting in on a new wind. They are almost routine, yet miracles just the same. Every time something hard becomes easier; every time you adjust to a situation which, last week, you didn't know existed; every time a kindness falls as softly as the dew; or someone you love who was ill grows better; every time a blessing comes, not with trumpet and fanfare, but silently as night, you have witnessed a miracle."d.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) There is only one kind of erotic intimacy between consenting adults that can truly be called “unnatural”: an act that is physically impossible to perform.

Everything else is potentially vitalizing and holy. No one knows this better than you Scorpios. You're the champions of exotic pleasure; the connoisseurs of blissful marvels; the masters of curious delight and extraordinary exultation. And from an astrological perspective, the coming weeks will be a time when these aspects of your character could be especially vivid. But wait a minute. What about the pandemic?

What about social-distancing? What about being cautious in seeking intimate connection? If anyone can work around these constraints so as to have sexual fun, it's your tribe. Use your imagination!

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) When he was 22 years old, Sagittarian-born Werner Heisenberg received his doctorate in physics and mathematics from a German university—even though he got a grade of C on his final exams. Nine years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics because of his pioneering work on quantum mechanics. What happened in between? One key development: He was mentored by physicists Niels Bohr and Max Born, both of whom also garnered Nobel Prizes. Another factor in his success was his association with other brilliant colleagues working in his field. I hope this story inspires you Sagittarians to be on the lookout for catalytic teachers and colleagues who can expedite your evolution. The planetary omens are favorable for such an eventuality.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) You Capricorns aren't renowned for causing controversy. For the most part you're skillful at managing your reputation and keeping it orderly. But there may soon be a departure from this norm. A bit of a hubbub could arise in regards to the impressions you're making and the effects you're generating. I'm reminded of Capricorn author J. D. Salinger, whose book *Catcher in the Rye* was for a time widely taught in American schools but also widely banned because of its allegedly controversial elements. These days the book is regarded as a beloved classic, and I suspect you will weather your commotion with similar panache.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) Novelist Tom Robbins articulated a vision of what it means to be bold and brave. He said, "Real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness." I'm hoping you will make that formula your keynote in the coming weeks. The time is right for you to summon extra amounts of fortitude, determination, and audacity. What new possibilities are you ready to flesh out in ways that might prod you to revise your beliefs and welcome transformation and expand your awareness?

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) Joan of Arc performed her heroic and magical feats in 1430 and 1431. But she wasn't canonized as a saint until 1920—almost five centuries later. It took a while to garner the full appreciation she deserved. I'm sure you won't have to wait as long to be acknowledged for your good deeds and fine creations, Pisces. In fact, from what I can tell, there'll be a significant honor, enhancement, or reward coming your way sometime in the next four months. Start visualizing what you'd like it to be, and set your intention to claim it.

HOMEWORK: What is the greatest gift you have to offer your fellow humans?

Have you found good ways to give it? Testify: FreeWillAstrology.com Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes

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

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