Willamette Week, July, 8 2020 - Volume 46, Issue 37 - "Best New Band 2020"

WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY

“I’M GETTING GASSED IN MY OWN HOME.” P. 8

BEST NEW BAND 10 ARTISTS

PORTLAND

LOCAL MUSIC INSIDERS SAY YOU'VE GOT TO HEAR. PAGE 10

WWEEK.COM

VOL 46/37 07.08.2020

+

MAITA PAGE 11

MUSIC'S ROLE IN THE PROTESTS: 4 SCENE LEADERS SPEAK OUT PAGE 16

PORTLAND’S MOST IMPORTANT STORIES SENT DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX

SUBSCRIBE NOW WWEEK.COM/NEWSLETTERS 2

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

FINDINGS JOSEPH BLAKE JR

GET DAILY UPDATES ON HOW CORONAVIRUS IS AFFECTING PORTLAND

NOW OPEN! 21 rooms of the finest American made furniture, lighting, rugs and country decor.

CUSTOM SHAKER FURNITURE | ANTIQUE AMERICAN FURNITURE | BRAIDED RUGS UP TO 18FT WEATHERVANES | AMERICAN MADE CANDLES | MORE!

CATHEDRAL PARK, PAGE 19

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 46, ISSUE 37.

More than half the city employees who took bereavement leave to mourn Black people killed by police work for the Portland Police Bureau. 5 Protesters set a statue of a pioneer family on fire. 6

A laid-off Portland chef rented a carpet cleaner to remove tear gas residue from his house. 8 Nearly 1 in 12 COVID-related complaints to Oregon OSHA are about grocery stores. 9 The only performances rapper Raquel Divar has given over the past few months have been at antiICE rallies. 12 One of this year’s Best New Band winners politely requests WW disband as a company. 18 Pitchfork once referred to Mo Troper’s music as “snot-nosed pwnage.” 18

ON THE COVER:

In ending late fees, Multnomah County Library canceled the debt of 70,000 library members. 21 Comedian Corina Lucas is preparing to move to Mexico by flirting on Oaxacan Twitter. 22 A local puppeteer is helping Guillermo del Toro realize his dream project. 22 Kachka’s latest incarnation serves jalapeño poppers, bright-blue cocktails and dumplings that resemble Totino’s Pizza Rolls. 23 For stoners, July 10 is Dab Day because “710” looks like “OIL” upside down. 25 Not even acclaimed director Kelly Reichardt can escape Portland traffic. 26

WWEEK.COM/NEWSLETTERS

8203 SE 13th Portland, OR 97202 503.235.5115 aheart1@comcast.net

Incarcerated youth in Woodburn created a green screen out of old refrigerator boxes to make a break-dancing film. 27

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

2020 Best New Band Maita, photo

by Aaron Wessling.

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Thurs-Sat: 11am - 4:30pm Sunday: 12-4pm

An Oregon child care center has at least 20 COVID19 cases, eight of them kids.

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

WILLAMETTE WEEK IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY CITY OF ROSES MEDIA COMPANY

ART DEPARTMENT

Creative Director Joy Bogdan Senior Production Designer Jack Kent Illustration Intern Paola De La Cruz Photography Intern Mick Hangland-Skill ADVERTISING

Director of Sales Anna Zusman Account Executives Michael Donhowe, Justin Eulalio Thomas Marketing Coordinator Candace Tillery

2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210.

Main line phone: (503) 243-2122 fax: (503) 296-2874 Classifieds phone: (503) 243-2122 fax: (503) 296-2874

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

Give!Guide Director Toni Tringolo TechfestNW Director Shelley Midthun Cultivation Classic Director Steph Barnhart Oregon Beer Awards Director Rachel Coddington Friends of Willamette Week Director Anya Rehon DISTRIBUTION

Circulation Director Spencer Winans Entrepreneur in Residence Jack Phan

OPERATIONS

Accounting Manager Kim Engelke Staff Accountant Shawn Wolf Manager of Information Services Brian Panganiban OUR MISSION

To provide Portlanders with an independent and irreverent understanding of how their worlds work so they can make a difference.

Though Willamette Week is free, please take just one copy.

Anyone removing papers in bulk from our distribution points will be prosecuted, as they say, to the full extent of the law.

Willamette Week welcomes freelance submissions.

Send material to either News Editor or Arts Editor.

Manuscripts will be returned if you include a selfaddressed, stamped envelope. To be considered for calendar listings, notice of events must be received in writing by noon Wednesday, two weeks before publication.

Questions concerning circulation or subscription inquiries should be directed to Spencer Winans at Willamette Week.

Postmaster: Send all address changes to Willamette Week, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210.

Subscription rates: One year $130, six months $70. Back issues $5 for walk-ins, $8 for mailed requests when available.

Visit our website to make an appointment

Ray of sunshine

717 SW 10th Ave Portland, OR 97205 503.223.4720 www.maloys.com

Maloy’s is now OPEN BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. Book online to shop our collection of fine antique jewelry, or for custom or repair work. We also buy.

Willamette Week is mailed at third-class rates.

Association of Alternative Newsmedia.

This newspaper is published on recycled newsprint using soy-based ink.

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

3

DIALOGUE Last week, Sandy Mayor Stan Pulliam took to Facebook to decry state restrictions on large gatherings.

Pulliam claimed that the Oregon Health Authority threatened the city of Sandy with legal action June 30 if it did not cancel its annual fireworks display.

“Our Governor and her power-hungry bureaucracy have bullied our citizens out of being able to celebrate Independence Day,” Pulliam wrote in the four-paragraph Facebook post. “Come together as communities in the way our founding fathers did and have the discussions about whether we will allow this tyrannical Governor to stop our personal freedoms.” OHA denied directing the city to cancel its fireworks display. WW reported the spat on wweek.com. Here’s what our readers had to say: Riffless via wweek.com: “I’d say it’s childish behavior to cry about not getting to see a fireworks display, but that would be insulting to children.

Grow up, Stan, there’s a pandemic going on.”

Ariel Gummer via Facebook: “Wish I could blame the governor for the fireworks in Hermiston being canceled, but we’re going ahead with our city fireworks display. Umatilla County has an infection rate of 1 in 150 people. What could possibly go wrong?”

Evan Tait via Facebook: “Oh no, how dare she try to do her best to protect her citizens. How inconvenient that you have to cancel a firework show because a global goddamn pandemic is happening.

The injustice of it all.”

Dr. Know

Shannon Deems via Facebook: “It’s astonishing how many are confused by the constitutional right to assemble and where fireworks (don’t) fit into that.”

Scrappymutt via wweek.com: “If it wasn’t for all the grandstanding about liberty and tyranny, I would support the mayor of Sandy. You can see fireworks from a mile away. This is something we should be able to pull off while being socially distant. Just make people stay with their cars or whatever.”

Jim Andersen via Facebook: “I’m not a fan of Governor Brown, but she gets blamed for way too many things that are really just common sense given today’s virus environment.”

Brenda Brown via Facebook: “Lol…Drive-in-type fireworks are happening all over. Guy doesn’t think outside the box.” @PdxDanean via Twitter: “Thoughts and prayers to the Sandy snowflake. But mah fireworks!”

TK via wweek.com: “Judging by the unprecedented amount of mortars going off last night, doesn’t seem like people missed out. All the stimulus checks and unemployment bennies just went up in smoke… ’merica!”

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

My local tire store has an official-looking sign on the wall that says something like “This is an unreinforced masonry building, which may be unsafe in an earthquake.” Do we really need yet another thing we can’t control to worry about right now? —Shaky Shaky, I’ve got good news for you: Terrifying signs like the one you’re describing are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

Not because the buildings that display such signs are being repaired, mind you—you’re just as likely to get brained by a cinder block in one of them as you ever were—but because the city has agreed to stop making building owners display them.

In June 2018, the Portland City Council passed an ordinance requiring all unreinforced masonry, or URM, buildings to be seismically retrofitted by 2038. In the meantime, building owners were legislatively enjoined to scare the bejesus out of their customers by posting ominous signs like the one you saw.

There were a couple of problems with this.

For starters, a federal judge found that the signs violated building owners’ First Amendment rights. The court held that government is allowed to compel speech when it provides specific safety instructions, like a sign that says “In case of fire, break glass.” But the URM placards didn’t tell viewers to do anything in particular. Legally, they were the equivalent of a sign that says “In case of fire, you’re fucked.”

Also, while the law in its majestic egalitarianism applied to all building owners equally, in practice the burden fell (as burdens are wont to do) disproportionately on those least able to afford it.

After all, if Nike finds one of its buildings seismically deficient, it can simply replace it with a new structure built out of gleaming, steel-reinforced hundred-dollar bills. But if a small business (or, say, a historically African American church) owns a URM building that needs a few million dollars’ worth of upgrades, it’s a major existential threat—and the city wasn’t offering any help with the construction costs.

Seeing the writing on the unreinforced masonry wall, the City Council reversed itself last October, repealing both the retrofitting mandate and the placard requirement and boldly referring the stillunsolved problem of URM structures to a committee. That’ll show ’em.

QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com 4

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

Celebrate the CelebrateGrateful the Dead Grateful Dead

y r a y s r r a e s r v i e n v i n n A n h A tth Out July 10 0 5 0 5 Avaliable on Out July 10 Avaliable on •3 CD •3 - CD Deluxe Deluxe Edition Edition •3 Limited Edition •3 - Limited Edition Picture Picture Disc Disc MusicMillennium.com MusicMillennium.com

Vinyl, Vinyl, CD’s, CD’s, DVD’s, DVD’s, & & More!

More!

MUSIC (503)-231-8926

MILLENNIUM nd E. Burnside Since 1969 At the corner of 32nd

Celebrate the Grateful Dead Amadora

- Leather Upper - Lightweight - Padded Insole - Non-Marking Outsole

1433 NE Broadway St Portland • 503.493.0070 Tues-Sat 11-4pm OPEN BY APPOINTMENT

Is It Open?

WW's list of local business openings, updated daily.

Get on the list at : wweek.com/isitopen

N AT H A N H O WA R D

MURMURS

YOUNG AMERICANS: Protesters light fireworks in the streets of downtown Portland on July 4.

PROVENANCE HOTELS GOT FEDERAL LOAN: On July 6, the Trump administration bowed to pressure and released the names of businesses that received loans of $150,000 or more under the federal Paycheck Protection Program. Among the Oregon names that stood out: Provenance Hotels, the chain founded by Portland hotelier Gordon Sondland, former U.S. ambassador to the European Union. Provenance qualified for a loan of $9 million. The Portland Business Journal first reported on the loan. The data on Provenance states zero jobs would be saved by the money, so the federal government would not forgive the loan. (Disclosure: WW also received PPP funding this year.) Trump fired Sondland from his ambassadorship after the hotelier’s star turn as a witness during last year’s impeachment trial.

The hotel industry has struggled in the face of a pandemic that has diminished the public appetite for travel. The company has 13 hotels, including the Heathman, the Dossier and Hotel Lucia in Portland. The company ddeclined to comment.

TIMBERS GOALIE SUES DOCTORS: Former Portland Timbers goalkeeper Jacob Gleeson filed a $10 million lawsuit July 6, alleging a botched surgery on a broken leg ended his career. Gleeson’s lawsuit, filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court, alleges medical malpractice by Oregon Outpatient Surgery Center and Oregon Sports Medicine Associates, also known as Sports Medicine Oregon. On Aug. 15, 2018, Gleeson underwent surgery to fix bilateral stress fractures to his tibia, according to the complaint. Gleeson alleges surgical devices inserted in his body were not properly sterilized before the procedure, leading to bone infection and necrosis. The hospital then failed to remove the infected metal implants during another procedure the next month.

Gleeson says he currently—and perhaps permanently—suffers from “pain, discomfort, disability, disfigurement, scarring, anxiety, depression and panic attacks, and a reduced capacity to pursue his professional soccer career.” A representative for Sports Medicine Oregon, which employs doctors named in the lawsuit, did not respond to

WW’s request for comment before press deadline.

The lawsuit, against some of the most respected sports doctors in Oregon, echoes Portland Trail Blazers legend Bill Walton suing team doctors after he suffered a broken foot in 1978.

PORTLAND POLICE TAKE BEREAVEMENT LEAVE: More than half of the city of Portland employees who’ve taken advantage of a new city bereavement leave policy—meant to provide “time to grieve and reflect” on the police killings of Black people—are members of the Portland Police Bureau. Mayor Ted Wheeler announced the policy June 8. “We hear and understand that many of our employees, especially our BIPOC employees, are deeply impacted by these recent events and are hurting,” Wheeler wrote. “I want to give our employees space to grieve and reflect: 40 hours of bereavement leave as allowed under [city rules].” Since then, a total of 249 Police Bureau employees have taken bereavement leave, according to figures WW obtained through a public records request and first reported July 2.

In all, 483 city employees have taken advantage of it. The city’s Human Resources Bureau says it does not know the ethnicity or gender of the employees who have taken leave and expressed no opinion as to whether the leave was being used as Wheeler hoped.

OREGON COVID CASE RATE SPIKED IN JUNE: Oregon crossed the threshold of 10,000 COVID-19 cases last weekend, as the pandemic gained steam in rural counties. The number of new cases of COVID-19 per week in Oregon has increased fivefold in the past month. In the week ending July 5, Oregon reported 2,117 new cases. A month ago, the weekly total was 413 cases. Only a fraction of that increase can be directly traced to more testing. The number of tests has increased significantly, to be sure—but not anywhere close to as much as case numbers have increased. The number of tests is up 94%, from 20,539 in the week ending June 5 to 39,914 in the week ending July 5. That’s a big jump, but nowhere near the 400 percent increase in new infections.

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

5

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

This Is 40

MAY 29

What have six weeks of protests wrought?

N AT H A N H O WA R D

FRI

Protests against police brutality begin in Portland following the killing of George Floyd. The evening starts with a peaceful vigil for Floyd in Northeast Portland. But later in the night, protesters travel downtown. Some people break into and set fire to the Multnomah County Justice Center. After police declare a riot and deploy tear gas, rioters loot commercial buildings, including the Apple Store and Louis Vuitton.

JUNE 02 TUE

CANDID CAMERA: A legal observer films an arrest in downtown Portland on July 4.

BY TE SS R I S K I

tess@wweek.com

When people gather in downtown Portland on July 8—as they have for the 39 previous nights—the protests against racism and police brutality will become the city’s longest-running demonstration in at least two decades.

The 40 nights of protest eclipse the 39-day takeover of Lownsdale and Chapman squares by the Occupy movement for economic justice in 2011. The same downtown parks are now the staging ground for a demand to dismantle Portland’s police force after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Nine years ago, Occupiers served bowls of chili at the foot of a statue depicting a pioneer family, called The Promised Land. On the Fourth of July in 2020, protesters charred that statue in a bonfire. Some demonstrators argue the statue glorifies white settlers who stole the land from Indigenous people.

Are these protests building a new world, or merely destroying an old one?

That’s a question that has increasingly divided Portlanders—protesters, police and politicians—for the past six weeks.

“When I hear about something being burned down, that is an act that has always been used against Black people,” longtime civil rights leader Ron Herndon said June 26.

“They burnt down our businesses, our churches and our schools. That is a tactic that has been used to destroy Black people, not help Black people.”

Yet these nightly marches and confrontations with police have upended certainties about what can be accomplished in Oregon politics through protests. The Portland City Council shrank the police budget by $15 million. The police chief stepped down so a Black deputy could take her place. The Oregon Legislature passed criminal justice reforms that had been shoved aside for years.

It can be easy to lose track of those achievements in the nightly tumult.

So WW looked back over the past six weeks to review significant moments, both on the streets and in terms of policy, that have reshaped this city.

STREET EVENT POLICY CHANGE

6

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

04 THUR

05 FRI

06 SAT

Thousands of protesters hold a “die-in” on the Burnside Bridge, where they lie flat and in silence for more than eight minutes—the length of time Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on George Floyd’s neck before he died. They demand the defunding of the Portland Police Bureau.

Mayor Ted Wheeler announces he has ousted all school resource officers from the three school districts in the city: Portland Public Schools and the David Douglas and Parkrose districts. PPS Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero is instrumental in removing the SROs from his district.

10 WED

16 TUE

17 WED

25 THUR

26 FRI

PPB deploys a long-range acoustic device, or LRAD, a sonic weapon that emits a deafening sound to disperse protesters. Wheeler bans the use of sonic weapons.

Wheeler implements restrictions on the use of tear gas by Portland police but stops short of banning it outright. He says police may only use gas if “there is a serious and immediate threat to life safety, and there is no other viable alternative for dispersal.” His restriction follows a federal lawsuit filed by the Black activist group Don’t Shoot PDX.

30 TUE

MON

Portland Police Chief Jami Resch steps down from her post after six months on the job and cedes command to Lt. Chuck Lovell, a Black man and longtime Portland police officer. “He’s the exact right person at the exact right moment,” Resch says of Lovell.

Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill announces his early retirement in the wake of protests against police brutality.

Reform-minded DA-Elect Mike Schmidt will take office five months earlier than planned, on Aug. 1.

By a 3-1 vote, the Portland City Council approves $15 million in cuts to PPB’s budget. The lone “no” vote is Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who calls for even greater cuts to the police budget.

Hundreds of protesters barricade PPB’s North Precinct in an hourslong standoff. Police deploy crowd control munitions like tear gas and rubber bullets. The next day, city leaders, including Wheeler and longtime civil rights activist Ron Herndon, condemn the destruction caused by some protesters.

The Oregon Legislature, in step with the People of Color Caucus, passes a package of criminal justice reform bills that includes restrictions on chokeholds and a statewide online database for officer misconduct. One bill prohibits the use of tear gas to disperse crowds, except in situations that constitute a riot.

Protesters surround Portland Police Association headquarters. For the first time since protests began May 29, the bureau declares the protest a riot and deploys tear gas near North Lombard Street.

JULY

02 THUR

08

Organizers gather in the federal plaza across the street from City Hall and demand $50 million in cuts to the Portland police budget.

Federal agencies, including the U.S. Marshals Service, the Federal Protective Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Homeland Security Investigations, are deployed to Portland protests.

Oregon Public Broadcasting reports federal agents made arrests. Multnomah County Jail records reviewed by WW show the U.S. Marshals Service arrested at least nine protesters over the July 4 weekend.

BLACK AND WHITE IN OREGON

Who Can Afford to Live in Portland Average Black families cannot afford a two-bedroom rental in any of this city’s neighborhoods.

The uprising in the streets of Portland this summer has served as an urgent reminder: Oregon has a history of throwing up barriers for Black people that has created an unbroken cycle of oppression. Many of the state’s racist policies, whether they still stand or not, have had lasting effects.

Black citizens make up about 6% of Oregon’s population, but they continue to be overrepresented by many measures of human suffering, including illness, poverty and criminal prosecution. Life in Portland for Black and white people is overwhelmingly different. In the coming weeks, WW will explore these contrasting realities—the inequities that have molded the Black experience in this city and state. This week, we begin with housing.

The median income for a white household in Portland is $65,945, while the average Black family makes less than half that amount, $29,864 a year, according to a December 2019 report by the Portland Housing Bureau.

The result: There is no neighborhood in this city where the average Black family can afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment, according to the Housing Bureau. Meanwhile, the average white family can afford to rent such an apartment in more than half of Portland’s neighborhoods.

Affordable housing in Portland is defined as housing that costs 30 percent or less of household income, not including utilities.

Not only do Black Portlanders have insufficient annual income to afford a two-bedroom unit, the average Black family can’t afford to rent in almost every neighborhood.

The only neighborhood where the median Black household can afford rent for a studio apartment is Raleigh Hills, deep in Southwest Portland. LATISHA JENSEN. Average White Household 2-Bedroom Affordability YES NO

Average Black Household 2-Bedroom Affordability YES NO

BALLOTS

Taking Measure Here’s what Oregon voters will decide in November.

FUNGUS AMONG US: Oregon voters will decide this November whether to legalize psilocybin therapy, which uses the psychoactive compound in hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Four measures are likely to appear on the ballots of all Oregonians this November.

July 2 was the deadline to turn in voter signatures for measures on the November ballot. Two initiative petitions appear to have sufficient signatures to qualify, and another two were referred to voters by the Oregon Legislature.

Here are the four issues voters should expect to weigh.

The measures won’t have numbers until they’re officially approved by the Oregon secretary of state this month.

RACHEL MONAHAN. House Bill 2270: Increase the tobacco tax What would it do? Add a $2-a-pack tax on cigarettes and establish the state’s first tax on nicotine vaping products.

Road to the ballot: By legislative referral. House Bill 2270, passed in 2019, included a compromise that allowed voters a say in whether to increase taxes on cigarettes.

Campaign: Oregonians for a Smoke Free Tomorrow have raised $12 million.

Opponents: Tobacco companies are expected to spend big.

In 2007, tobacco companies spent $12 million to defeat an Oregon tobacco tax increase. In California in 2016, they outspent proponents more than 2 to 1 but still lost.

Senate Joint Referral 18: Limit campaign finance What would it do? Amend the Oregon Constitution to allow limits on campaign contributions and expenditures.

Oregon is one of only five states with no such limits. An Oregon Supreme Court ruling in April began chipping away at the constitutional protection of unlimited campaign spending. This measure would allow statewide requirements for disclosures and restrictions on spending.

Road to the ballot: The Oregon Legislature referred Senate Joint Resolution 18 in 2019.

Campaign: Supporters have raised $38,000, including $10,000 from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Opponents: Libertarians have opposed campaign spending limits passed in Portland and Multnomah County in

advance of the constitutional change. Ironically, supporters of unlimited campaign spending have not mounted a well-funded campaign in recent years.

Initiative Petition 34: Legalize psilocybin therapy What would it do? Make Oregon the first state to legalize the manufacture and use of psilocybin, the psychoactive component in hallucinogenic mushrooms, at licensed therapeutic clinics. The Oregon Health Authority would have two years to set up a licensing program.

Road to the ballot: Signature gathering. It’s not yet certified to appear on the ballot, but the campaign spent more than $1 million as it gathered signatures in the midst of the pandemic.

Campaign: It’s currently running a $70,000 debt from gathering signatures. But its supporters have deep pockets: Backers received $800,000 from Washington, D.C., political action committee New Approach, whose largest donors are the mental health-focused van Ameringen Foundation in New York and Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap, a longtime supporter of drug legalization.

Opponents: Medical professionals say the science of psilocybin research is not well enough established to sanction.

Initiative Petition 44: Decriminalize drug possession What would it do? Reduce possession of small quantities of narcotics from a misdemeanor to a violation—the equivalent of a parking ticket. Oregon would be the first state in the nation to do this.

Road to the ballot: Signature gathering. It’s not yet certified, but the campaign has spent $2 million as part of qualifying.

Campaign: It’s raised $1.6 million from Drug Policy Action, a political action arm of the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit to legalize cannabis and end the drug war.

Opponents: The Oregon Education Association has raised objections that the measure would redirect cannabis tax revenue from schools to drug treatment programs.

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

7

NEWS MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

Gaslit

When police deploy tear gas on protesters, it leaks into the homes of Portlanders.

BY TE SS R I S K I

tess@wweek.com

Michael Kapski wanted a little fresh air with dinner.

Kapski, 37, is a chef who was laid off from Clyde Common during the COVID -19 pandemic. On June 30, he cooked himself a meal of chicken vindaloo, chana masala and home-baked naan. He then retired to the upstairs bedroom of his home in the Arbor Lodge neighborhood and turned on John Oliver. It was a warm evening, so he decided to let the breeze in.

“I thought, I’ll leave the windows open, it’ll be lovely.

Big mistake,” Kapski says. “Suddenly my eyes started burning. My lungs were seizing up.

“I put two and two together: Oh my gosh, I’m getting gassed in my own home.”

Four blocks away, on North Lombard Street, Portland police had deployed a chemical agent called CS gas against a crowd of protesters who had marched to the police union’s headquarters and barricaded the road with dumpsters. The gas drifted east, into Kapski’s house.

Kapski spent much of the next day scrubbing his home clean. He used soap and water to scrub every surface and rented a carpet cleaning machine for his couch and bed.

“It was frightening in the moment,” Kapski says, “and now it’s just infuriating that I have to do this because the Portland Police Bureau wanted to make a point.”

Since nightly protests began in Portland on May 29, the bureau has deployed tear gas at least 10 of the last 40 nights—despite a federal judge granting a restraining order on the chemical agent through July 24 except in lifethreatening circumstances, and the Oregon Legislature passing a bill that nominally restricted its use.

8

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

space of tear gas is limited, she says, and how it penetrates household materials like fabric versus PURPLE HAZE: Michael Kapski says his neighbor recalls wood and the long-term health effects of CS partear gas so thick June 30 “it looked like fog.” ticles imbedded in a living space are also unclear.

“No one is instructing us how to relay to the Public opinion is bitterly divided over whether police public how to detox their house after exposure,” Randolph are justified in aggressively scattering crowds of young says. “It’s a huge concern.” people who are protesting the racist structures on which Dawn Redlich can relate. the criminal justice system was built but have sometimes She was watching Designated Survivor on Netflix in her damaged property. studio in Old Town on May 30 when she heard a commoBut when the cops use gas, it’s not just protesters tion outside. She stood up to look out her window, and she who gasp and choke. It’s a weapon that can harm anyone saw a crowd of protesters marching down Northwest 3rd unlucky enough to live nearby.

Avenue. “All of the sudden, I hear all the bangs,” Redlich Kapski is one of at least a dozen Portlanders who say says. they’ve been inadvertently tear gassed in their own homes Shortly thereafter, she noticed what felt like an intense or apartments in the last several weeks. Some have filed “pepperiness” in the air. Her throat burned and her eyes legal claims against the Police Bureau, seeking financial started to water. Redlich’s pets were also affected: Her dog, compensation for their discontent (Kapski has not). Those Prisilla, and her cat, Sachi, sneezed for most of the night, who spoke to WW described fear, frustration and helplessRedlich says. ness.

She also pointed out that many unhoused people sleep In an email to WW, the Portland Police Bureau in her neighborhood, and they are particularly vulnerable declined to respond to questions about tear gas leaking to the gas, which she says police seemed to spray indisinto Portlanders’ homes. A spokeswoman said residents criminately. who think they’ve experienced tear gas in their homes “[I’m] irritated,” Redlich says. “Irritated that the police should contact the city’s Independent Police Review have no regard for anybody’s well-being. There’s a handful board and file a complaint. of people that need to be crowd-controlled, the few that “Our use-of-force and crowd management directives are trying to cause trouble. It’s at the expense of many.” provide the framework for these actions,” bureau spokesRedlich has taken legal action against the city. Her woman Lt. Kristina Jones said. attorney, civil rights lawyer Michael Fuller, sent a letter to Lawyers say the gassing of people in their homes— the city attorney threatening to file a tort claim if the city while inadvertent—may still constitute negligence, batdidn’t agree to a settlement within 30 days. tery and a nuisance. And scientists who study the effects Redlich is one of Fuller’s five clients threatening legal of CS gas say the chemical agent can wreak havoc on the action specifically for tear gas wafting into their homes. respiratory system, and that harm is only exacerbated “It’s harming the type of people they’re claiming to when gas enters a confined space, like a home, and gets protect,” Fuller says. “I don’t see how tear gas is an effecabsorbed into porous materials like bedding and carpet. tive or reasonable way of arresting the people that are “It’s a chemical that’s potent enough to penetrate allegedly attacking the officers. It seems like overkill. If window glass,” says Dr. Anita Randolph, a researcher at this was a war zone, it would likely be a violation of the Oregon Health & Science University who published a Geneva Convention.” paper last month about the effects of CS gas on the human Kapski, the North Portland chef, says he hasn’t decided body, especially amid a pandemic that attacks people’s whether he’ll take legal action. For now, he remains frusrespiratory systems. “It’s really rare that I do some type of trated at what police did to his neighborhood. research that makes me gasp.”

“It’s houses and families as far as the eye can see. For Randolph says a single canister of tear gas can spread them to just use a chemical weapon in a residential neigh400 meters, or a quarter mile. borhood, there’s no excuse for that,” Kapski says. “I was When the chemical enters a person’s home, Randolph less than a bystander. I wasn’t even standing by. I was in says, it’s important to clean it up so it doesn’t cause illness. my home.”

But research on how to properly decontaminate an indoor

WESLEY LAPOINTE

NEWS

Sneeze Guard State records show Oregon grocery stores are reluctant to enter the culture war over face masks.

BY AA R O N M E S H

amesh@wweek.com

Since mid-March, more than 5,400 Oregonians have complained to state regulators about workplace safety amid the COVID-19 pandemic, records show. At least 449 of those complaints—nearly 1 in 12—are about grocery stores. The concerns range from people standing too close together to cashiers working while sick.

Increasingly, those complaints center on one allegation: grocery chains not making their customers wear masks, as required by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown.

Kathleen McLaughlin filed one. On July 1, the 61-yearold Portlander called Oregon Occupational Safety and Health, aka Oregon OSHA, to report the Stadium Fred Meyer in Northwest Portland wasn’t enforcing mask rules.

McLaughlin, 61, was making a run for avocados and a frozen pizza that morning, when she spotted two customers bare-faced. She asked a Fred Meyer manager if he was going to enforce Gov. Brown’s requirement that Oregonians wear masks in all indoor public spaces. She says he declined, citing violent confrontations that have ensued across the nation when grocery workers tried to make shoppers don face coverings.

She then called Oregon OSHA—and WW. “If not everybody is wearing the masks, then we’re all screwed,” McLaughlin says. “I see these crazy people on the internet, refusing to wear masks—the Karens of the world. I’m so frustrated.”

On June 17, Gov. Brown announced an order requir-

Jeffery Temple tells WW, “we support the local ordinance and are making every reasonable effort to encourage compliance. We also enforce the ordinance through door signage and in-store radio as well as the ongoing execution of additional protection measures like floor decals and protective partitions at every check lane to further promote physical distancing.”

The chain faces the same political landscape as other businesses—one in which the nation’s president and rightwing media outlets disparage the COVID-19 threat as overblown and masks as a sign of weakness. That’s sparked a culture war over mask-wearing, even as health experts say donning a face covering is the single best precaution to prevent spread of the disease.

Portland grocery employees say customers regularly refuse to wear masks.

At Whole Foods Market in the Pearl District, seven employees walked out June 3, saying the store was failing to strictly enforce safety protocols, including the requirement to wear masks.

SERVICE WITH A SMILE: A Fred Meyer in Northeast Portland, shown in “It falls to the lowest-level March, before health officials declared masks best practice. and worst-paid people to be confrontational in enforcing ing masks in all stores and restaurants in the state’s most them. It’s so tiresome,” says Alexander Collias, a cashier populous counties. On July 1, she expanded the order among the Whole Foods employees who walked out on statewide. Days earlier, she announced that Oregon OSHA Friday. “My personal goal with it was to get the store would enforce the rule. As COVID-19 cases continued to management to have to work on a register. It’s an anxietyrise going into the Fourth of July weekend, the governor provoking experience.”

Whole Foods, owned by Amazon, tells WW that worker pledged to send inspectors to ensure businesses complied.

State records show nowhere is that enforcement more safety remains its top priority. “We request that all customers wear masks while shopping in our stores,” a represought after than in grocery stores.

A database of OSHA complaints provided to WW via a sentative said, “and provide face masks at the entrance.”

National experts say big grocery chains have repeatedpublic records request shows grocery stores are a nexus of Oregonians’ COVID frustrations—as many as a dozen peo- ly declined to mandate masks unless government makes ple a day kvetch to the government about them, with most them—because the culture war seems like a bigger safety risk than an outbreak. In dozens of high-profile incidents of the ire directed at Fred Meyer, Safeway and Walmart.

“The store is packed with customers,” says the log of a across the country, shoppers have responded with rage June 26 complaint about a Walmart in Salem. “Almost half when asked to put on a mask; a Dollar Tree security guard of the customers are not wearing [a] mask, face shield, or in Michigan was reportedly shot and killed in a maskrelated dispute this May. face covering.”

“It’s very common in retail to instruct employees not to The most common target of complaints against grotry to stop or chase shoplifters in order to avoid an unneccers? Fred Meyer.

On one level, that’s hardly surprising: It’s the largest essary risk of violence, and many retailers have applied grocery chain in the state. Yet repeatedly, customers lev- the same theory to masks,” J. Craig Shearman, a spokeseled the same allegation against the store: Employees told man for the National Retail Federation, told CQ Roll Call shoppers who complained about the lack of mask enforce- this week.

Dan Clay, president of United Food and Commercial ment that their bosses had instructed them not to enforce Workers Local 555, says that matches what he’s seeing at the mask policy.

“Numerous customers in the store are not wearing Oregon stores.

“The major grocers aren’t enforcing the mask policies,” masks, and store associates stated that they are not being told to enforce mask wearing,” says a June 26 complaint Clay says. “They don’t have people at the door checking about the Fred Meyer store in Milwaukie. Another, from for masks. Practically speaking, if somebody doesn’t wear the Tualatin store, on the same day: “The store man- a mask, the response is to just ignore it. That’s getting ager stated that Fred Meyer is not enforcing the mask rule pretty old for essential employees who come face to face with this on a daily basis.” because their 6-foot distancing policy is effective.”

That leaves enforcing the rule to Oregon OSHA. A note Oregon OSHA confirms it’s currently investigating complaints against the chain, owned by Ohio-based gro- in the agency complaint log shows an inspector asked Fred Meyer on June 24 to provide the state with its plan cery giant Kroger.

Fred Meyer’s corporate office did not directly respond for mask enforcement in seven Oregon counties.

McLaughlin says she won’t return to Fred Meyer to to WW’s questions whether it would refuse service to patrons who didn’t wear masks. Instead, the company said find out. “I’m just disgusted with them,” she says. “I told the manager, I shop at Trader Joe’s most of the time. They Fred Meyer would “request” all customers wear masks.

“In locations where masks are mandated,” spokesman have two people at the door checking for masks.”

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

9

AARON WESSLING

BEST NEW BAND 10 Portland Artists Local Music

Insiders Say You’ve Got to Hear.

10

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

We admit: It’s a strange time to put out a Best New Band issue.

No one has been to a concert in months, and the streets are filled with protesters. Even in Portland, where music is among our greatest resources, taking the time to rave about the hottest psych-pop and experimental electronic acts right now feels a bit… awkward, if not trivial.

But the truth is, music is not separate from this current moment. In some cases, it’s on the front lines.

That’s especially true in Portland. Over the past month, local musicians have contributed to the uprising against racism and police brutality in many different ways. Superstar rapper Aminé bought out an entire food cart to provide free meals to Black Portlanders, while Eric Howk of Portugal the Man testified for the group before the City Council in favor of defunding the police.

Almost every night, you can find someone you’d normally see onstage at a club giving speeches or performing at rallies, leading chants during protests or simply lending numbers to the crowd.

Each year for our Best New Band poll, we send out hundreds of ballots to music experts, insiders and enthusiasts, asking them to vote for the artists they think Portlanders need to hear. And every year, we have no idea what we’ll get back.

This year, as most years, the results reveal a community that’s constantly evolving, and impossible to pigeonhole. Some of the acts you’ll read about are creating chaos with analog synths (page 17) and making introverted hip-hop ideal for the age of

quarantine. Others are using their platforms to contribute to social change, whether it’s by rapping at anti-ICE rallies (12) or releasing wall-ofsound electronica to benefit the Black Resilience Fund (13).

But this issue isn’t just about acknowledging the strengths of our city’s vibrant music culture—it’s also about reckoning with where we need to grow. That’s especially important this year. So we’ve also reached out to Black leaders in the Portland music scene (16) and asked: What is music’s role in this pivotal historical moment?

Clearly, we all still have a lot of work to do.

But as daunting as effecting real change can seem, in the words of this year’s first-place winner, singer-songwriter Maria Maita-Keppler (11), this is also a time of possibility in Portland: “It is evolving into a different place, and we have to be a part of this evolution to make sure that we can make it better.”

—Shannon Gormley, WW Music Editor

SOUNDS LIKE: Mitski covering introspective indie-folk ballads of 2005.

BY M O L LY M ACG I L B E RT

A few years ago, Maria Maita-Keppeler found herself in the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. Her dreams of working as a visual artist in the city had been dashed by the cost of living them.

“I just started thinking about the brevity of a city and a place,” Maita-Keppeler says. “Wherever you are, whatever city you’re in, for most of us, we don’t really have any ownership over it. They just kind of change and you kind of have to say goodbye.”

Since returning to Portland, MaitaKeppeler has channeled her childhood dreams of becoming an artist and a writer into her indie-rock band, Maita. The singer-songwriter’s music creates permanent places for fleeting feelings, and its resonance seems to lie in how mercurial the songs are: Maita-Keppeler’s songwriting is fragile and folky, but her sound is rooted in rock, with unexpected moments of toughness and eruptions of fiery energy.

Maita’s debut LP, Best Wishes, was released in May by Kill Rock Stars, the Pacific Northwest indie imprint best known for releasing the likes of SleaterKinney and Elliott Smith. In the months leading up to the album’s release, it seemed Maita-Keppeler was destined for a breakout. Without an album out, she’d already accumulated buzz from outlets like Billboard and National Public Radio and booked a European tour.

Then, the pandemic hit. Maita-Keppeler and her band canceled their tour a week before they were scheduled to play in Germany, putting them out more than $5,000 in expenses and about $8,000 in earnings. The initial April 3 release date was pushed back until mid-May, and instead of playing a long-scheduled gig at Mississippi Studios, Maita ended up playing their hometown album release show on a Facebook livestream.

So it’s perhaps fitting that Best Wishes sounds as willful as it does wistful.

“I’m very drawn to writing [folk] ballads,” Maita-Keppeler says. “But I’m also very drawn to a heavier, more cathartic, energetic, burst-of-emotion kind of sound.”

To record Best Wishes, Maita-Keppeler met up with bassist Nevada Sowle and drummer Cooper Trail in the tiny, cow-centric town of Enterprise, Ore. The band rehearsed the songs one day and recorded them the next. The whirlwind of the record’s creation seems fitting, since the album itself is about impermanence.

“Most songs I write come from a very singular place, a moment in time and space where I felt a certain set of emotions that I may not feel all the time,” she says. “These emotions can be overwhelmingly ugly or sad or angry, but they don’t exist forever. Music has always been a way for me to capture [those feelings], and in some ways, to return to [them] whenever I want.”

These days, Maita-Keppeler is feeling the weight of an anticipatory nostalgia, the knowledge that where she is now

will be a memory soon enough. With the Best Wishes tour canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she has been thinking about her role in the current wave of change. While distancing at the Sou’wester Lodge, a vintage trailer park in Long Beach, Wash., she has been thinking about how Portland is evolving faster than ever and how she wants to evolve with it as an artist.

Songwriting is Maita-Keppeler’s way of navigating that ever-changing landscape. The nostalgia she felt in the San Francisco MOMA, for example, became the lyrics for Best Wishes’ closing track, “Best Wishes, XO, Hugs and Kisses, Goodbye.”

“Your city is dead and my city is dying,” she sings. “It’s all fair I guess, it never really was mine/Home always changes, it’s the nature of life/All I have is my body for a place, for a time.”

“Here is a place driven by small businesses that are facing mass closures,” Maita-Keppeler says about Portland.

“Here is a city that houses a rich music scene that is about to lose all of its venues, with no safe day for concerts in sight.

Here is a city where many of us are coming to terms with our own racism and the ways that we have failed the Black community. It is evolving into a different place, and we have to be a part of this evolution to make sure that we can make it better.”

BEST NEW BAND

1

MAITA

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

11

BEST NEW BAND

RAQUEL DIVAR

SOUNDS LIKE: The hardest-slapping, pro-community support banger you’ve ever heard.

BY S HA N N O N G O R M L E Y

sgormley@wweek.com

In the midst of an unprecedented pandemic and international uprising against racism and police brutality, Raquel Divar has never felt so optimistic.

“I’m fucking living for this shit. Let’s fucking change the world,” she says about the protests. “We’re all in the streets, saying what we think. As much as everything is sad surrounding the reason we’re doing it, I think it’s positive momentum towards the right direction.”

Like many up-and-coming Portland musicians, Divar had big plans for her career in 2020 before the pandemic hit. The Portland rapper—who unleashes brazen bars over smouldering, bass-heavy beats—was angling to release her debut album this summer. She was going to open for CocoRosie on the avant-pop duo’s national tour and play Shambala, the biggest electronic music festival in Canada, which has now been moved online.

“Those are the two biggest opportunities I’ve ever had musically in my life,” says Divar.

But what she’s been doing instead isn’t exactly a disappointment. She’s still working on her debut album, tentatively titled Flight Class, but the only crowds she’s rapped in front of over the past few months have been at abolish ICE rallies.

“The ICE ones are the only ones I can rap at because I’m not Black, so I’m here representing for Brown pride,” she says. “I think everyone is going to be protesting all summer. I want to be there, I want to focus my energy towards that.”

Divar came up in the Bay Area club scene, where she’d often rap over bombastic dubstep beats. When she moved to Portland seven years ago, she was worried her sound was too electronic for the hip-hop crowd, and too hip-hop 12

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

for the electronic crowd.

“I would have to win them over with either the beats or the raps,” she says of her early career. “If I was in a hip-hop setting, I would have to play the right songs in the right order to get them to understand the beats.”

That’s changed in recent years, thanks in part to the rise of a long list of women rappers who favor futuristic beats, from the hard-hitting club of Rico Nasty and Leikeli47 to the warped trap of City Girls and Saweetie. Divar credits Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy, in particular, for mainstreaming electronic-influenced hip-hop production.

“I feel like people just see a badass female rapping and are like, ‘Cool, this is dope,’” she says. “As opposed to being like, ‘I don’t know about these weird beats.’”

But credit is also due to how Divar has honed her craft and sharpened her sound. Over the course of two EPs and a slew of singles, her flow has become more heated and focused. Released in 2018, Divar’s most recent EP, The Reign, is full of spacey, metallic club tracks and sharpshooting verses. But the four singles she’s released in the past year are perhaps a better indication of where her sound is going. On songs like “Big Shit” and “Renegade,” her delivery is both breakneck and elastic, and so dynamic it’s a beat unto itself. With a whomping industrial beat supplied by Portland producers Jvnitor, her single “Cherry” is basically two minutes of straight bars.

Besides, Divar says she felt backed by the Portland hip-hop scene long before club and trap took over mainstream hip-hop. The months she spent working on the music video for “Cherry” were particularly affirming: What began as a storyboard Divar developed alone in her bedroom became one of her biggest, most collaborative projects yet.

After local producer Lydia Buesseler reached out to Divar, the project snowballed into a professional-scale shoot while remaining essentially DIY. Berlin-based director Ash O’Neil and Portland-via-Mexico cinematographer

AARON WESSLING

2

Adolfo Cantú-Villarreal signed on. The production enlisted a motorcyclist to ride around Divar in an empty parking lot, along with mask-clad dancers, a drone operator and a stylist to pull together the dozen-plus deep red outfits, which starkly contrast the gray backdrop of a middle school in deep Southeast Portland.

“It was just really dope to see what we can do ourselves as a grassroots community,” says Divar. “I understand I’m the focal point of this song or whatever, but it was really a community project where we all came together and put our talents out there so everybody could see it.”

In that sense, spending the summer protesting—and taking part in a movement that aims, in part, to replace punitive justice with systems of mutual aid—isn’t exactly a diversion from her work as a musician, even if it means putting the release of Flight Class on hold until fall.

The first protest where Divar rapped was a march and rally organized by the People Versus ICE PDX held at the end of June. Divar marched at the front, and when the crowd arrived at the U.S. Immigration Courthouse downtown, she was the first to take the stage, where she led chants and spit 16-bars. The verse was written specifically for the protest, and included the lines: “We don’t want no bloodshed, we just wanna function/But if you pushin’, we gon’ push back.”

Before she performed, Divar asked the crowd to raise their fists in solidarity.

“Coming back to the community aspect of the music video and the protests,” she says, “each of us as an individual is powerful and all of us together are powerful as a community and as a movement. I think it’s really important right now for everybody to recognize the power of their voice, the power of their actions, and the power we all have together.”

BEST NEW BAND

3

AARON WESSLING

METHODS BODY

SOUNDS LIKE: An alien language you need to practice a lot to learn how to speak.

BY DANI E L BROMFIELD

When John Niekrasz met Luke Wyland in 2007, a mutual friend introduced him: “Dark twin, meet your light twin.”

They’ve been best friends ever since.

“There are a few people in my life I feel this immediate, deep, almost psychic bond with,” says Wyland. “This is something that goes beyond words.”

The two Portlanders, who perform together as Methods Body, have personalities that seem to fit neatly into the darkversus-light trope: Niekrasz is dark-bearded and loquacious, while Wyland is blond, bespectacled and soft-spoken. But as Methods Body, their music is one roiling, shifting mass.

On their self-titled debut album, which came out last May, Niekrasz’s drums take up nearly as much space in the mix as Wyland’s keyboards. Amid the dense wall of sound they create, it’s hard to tell how many musicians are playing or even what instruments are being used.

“Depending on the day, your mood, you can get different things from it,” says Wyland. “It’s our relationship in real time, with the audience and the music as the mediator.”

Save for an occasional snippet of spoken word, there are no vocals in their music. But words are a shared obsession for both musicians. Niekrasz uses a self-devised system of “syllabic notation” to translate the cadences of speech into complex drum patterns. And multi-instrumentalist Wyland composes with microtonal scales that more closely approximate the wonky, broken, bent notes that come out of our mouths as we speak.

“The speech part of my brain doesn’t always work when it comes down into the actual mechanism,” says Wyland, who was born with a stutter, as he draws an imaginary line from his cranium to his mouth. “And now that I accept that and love that and actually see what it’s given me, I’m grateful.”

The two musicians have so much in common that they indeed seem to have a sort of mind meld going at times. But they’re also strong-willed personalities with different pedigrees and comfort zones. Niekrasz generally considers himself a “performer and improviser” more than a studio musician. Wyland, who’s recorded four albums with local experimental band AU, is more at home in the studio.

“To come together with like two strong leadership voices, we both had to compromise in new ways we weren’t comfortable with,” says Niekrasz. “I learned a ton about recording. Luke has all these skills I don’t have that I’m really grateful for. It took a long time, but it felt right.”

Much of the recording took place on a piece of property Wyland bought on a hill overlooking the Sandy River about 25 miles east of Portland.

“It put us more in tune with the natural rhythms of nature,” says Wyland. “John and I, our frequencies are very high, and the energy out [there] is the opposite. We fed off that.”

Methods Body comprises two compositions, split into nine tracks for convenience on digital platforms.

The first, “Quiet,” is all burly drums and droning synths.

The second, “Claimed Events,” is made of skittering rimshots and simmering electronics.

The contrast between these two tracks reflects a duality inherent in the band’s writing and recording process: the meticulous studio band that spent untold hours recording two pieces, and the caged lion that is Methods Body live. The group had planned tours all over the globe, including with tape-loop maestro William Basinski and Brooklyn art-rock veterans Oneida. These were, needless to say, canceled.

“I’m feeling a little existential about what we should be doing right now,” says Wyland.

One answer has been to release music for charity. Methods Body considers their work “music that wants change,” and that’s as true of its constantly shifting structure as its optimism: If Wyland can turn his stutter into confident, heavy rock, why shouldn’t anyone with a voice be able to speak up?

As such, they’re appearing on a compilation from their label, New Amsterdam, benefiting nonprofits the Okra Project and Vocal-NY. They’ve also released a remix of “Quiet Pt. 3” by Deerhoof’s John Dieterich to benefit the Black Resilience Fund.

But Niekrasz and Wyland agree that until shows happen, a significant side of their work will be unknown to the public.

“We’re performers, that’s actually our medium,” says Niekrasz. “That idea of community coming together is so important.”

Still, as hard as it is to hear “Quiet” and not imagine how strong it would come on in a club, it’s just as hard to hear this shifting, roiling, moving, methodical, corporeal music and argue their hard work in the studio didn’t pay off.

Besides, says Niekrasz: “Just being able to produce good work with someone and be growing is a gift for me.”

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

13

4

SOFT KILL

14

SOUNDS LIKE: What a world-worn, leatherclad DJ might spin at a 1982 prom.

BY M O LLY M ACGILB ERT

The phrase “soft kill” doesn’t exactly have feel-good connotations—its various associations include military missiles and chemtrail conspiracy theories.

But when frontman Tobias Grave decided to name his band Soft Kill, he had something much more lighthearted in mind.

“I always wanted to write pop songs,” he says.

Still, Soft Kill’s doom pop doesn’t claim to offer any straightforward resolution to its subject matter.

Instead, true to Grave’s own experience, it dives into darkness and illuminates moments of catharsis hiding in the shadows.

Nearly a decade ago, immediately following the release of their well-received 2011 debut, An Open Door, Soft Kill screeched to a halt. At the band’s genesis, Grave was battling addiction to crystal meth and heroin.

“When I took a break,” he says, “it was kind of imperative for my own personal survival.”

Grave kept working on demos while he was working on recovery, and despite Soft Kill’s intentionally “ignorable” name, the band managed to develop an online fan base. After a three-year hiatus, Soft Kill reemerged in 2014 with drummer Maxamillion Avila, keyboardist and bassist Owen Glendower, and guitarist Conrad Vollmer.

The band’s music embodies the paradox of its name. Layered over moody yet hopeful shoegaze

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

sounds and carried through Grave’s rumbling vocals, the introspective lyrics meld gloom with tenderness.

Through his songwriting, Grave grapples with the fragility of life by laying bare such personal traumas as addiction and loss.

This April, Soft Kill released Premium Drifter, an album of demos that didn’t make the cut for their upcoming fourth LP, Dead Kids, R.I.P. City. The title is a morbid spoof on Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city album and Portland’s “Rip City” nickname. Despite the tongue-in-cheek origins of its name, the album grapples with the city’s opioid crisis and pays heavy-hearted homage to the people the band’s members have known who have died battling drug addiction in the streets.

“I’m battling drugs and getting time clean, and it’s affecting how I view the world and my relationships,” says Grave. “But [I also have] the survivor’s guilt mentality of, like, ‘Why did I survive, and all of these people that I hold in such high regard—as artists and otherwise—didn’t?’”

That doesn’t mean the album is entirely a downer, though. “[Soft Kill’s sound] used to be very minimal and cold,” says Grave. “[It] has become a little more complex, a lot more triumphant-sounding at times.”

AARON WESSLING

BEST NEW BAND

AARON WESSLING

BEST NEW BAND SOUNDS LIKE: A lucid dream world where bright, active

colors battle with every inner demon that’s ever kept you up at night.

BY C E RVANTÉ P O P E

Bryson Cone really wants people to know that none of this is should be about him.

“I know [the poll] is a tradition, but it just feels like white artists should be stepping aside and Black voices should be stepping forward,” says Cone. “This is a critical moment, culturally.”

He’s not wrong. And to be fair, he and the rest of the Bryson Cone band—Bambi Browning on bass and vocals, Hannah Billie on drums and Ben Steinmetz on guitar and synths—is more than grateful for these praises and palms. But they also understand the power of a platform many Black artists aren’t afforded to speak or even stand on.

Instead of focusing on their output as a band, Cone wants the focus to shift to the artists, musicians and overall movement that allowed them to make the music they do in the first place. Without Black people and their creative expression used to cope with endless racism and adversity, Cone and his band wouldn’t be who or where they are today—after all, Cone’s music is self-described as “if the Cure covered a Sade song.”

Cone isn’t just waxing wokeness here—a mere run-through of the latest Bryson Cone record, Magnetism, shows the ways in which he and the rest of the band have listened and learned from many of the Black artists who have come before them.

“Pastel jazz goth” is a fitting description of their productions

5

as emotive horns carry rhythm throughout the record, with slinky synths and hushed, bated vocals that hark back to the dramatics of old school R&B (especially on “Devotion,” “Desire” and “Nothing”).

Even where unexpected, Black influence peeks around walls of gothy moodiness and lyrical sentiments—Cone has made a sound very much his own, though it comes from a familiar recipe. At face value, it may seem like it’s just about the music, but recognizing society’s debt to Black culture is inherently political.

“Stevie Wonder is my biggest songwriter influence of all time, and as a band, we’re influenced by a lot of disco,” he says.

“I can’t have influences like that and not say something about what’s going on. If you’re watching, it should have an effect on you.”

On a local level, Cone shouts out Hornet Leg, Ripley Snell and Crème Brûlée, though he urges supporting the Black community in every possible facet.

“Please go to protests,” he says. “Donate money, sign petitions, research privilege, listen to Black voices, and make sure to support local BIPOC music!”

BRYSON CONE

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

15

WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

KayelaJ Rapper, 2019 Best New Band runner-up, and former creative director for the Numberz FM SAM GHERKE

Four Portland music community leaders speak on the scene’s role during the protests.

Mic Crenshaw Rapper, activist and founding member of Anti-Racist Action

Amid the international uprising against racism and police brutality, many of us are looking to our communities to see what we can do better—and how we can keep this momentum going. So we asked leaders in the Portland music scene who have been advocating for change long before the current uprising to answer the question: What is the Portland music scene’s role in this current moment? Here’s what they had to say:

RENE LOPEZ

DJ Klyph Podcast host, radio DJ and founder of Mic Check

Music is an important part of any movement toward change. Songs like “We Shall Overcome” were associated with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, “Fight the Power” was a rallying cry in the ’90s, and “Alright” has been a song of inspiration in the last decade.

In this current climate as we struggle for voices to be heard and continue to plead for recognition that the senseless killing of Black men and women by those in positions of power must be stopped, this same need for expression through music exists. To encourage and empower those on the front lines, to educate those who lack awareness and understanding and to provide a respite from the daily toil of the battle at hand.

The Portland hip-hop scene has for years provided a soundtrack for the struggle, and continues to produce artists who use their platforms to provide content that invites us all to lean into the art and carry the message to the masses. But their music also asks the hard questions, testing to see if we are really steadying ourselves for the long road ahead or simply following a social trend. Like the song “Resist” on the Lifesavas album Spirit in Stone calling us out on our claims to want to fight for change, asking, “Are you an actor or an activist?”

Recognizing these local artists who’ve been gifted with the ability to present these messages through music, especially at a time when we are unable to gather publicly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is of great value to the culture.

Let us encourage these creators to continue to create art that reflects the moment. To make music that will be a rallying cry for this generation and the next. To spread a message of love to those in pain and community for those in isolation. To seek balance between art, education and entertainment, standing on what’s right and true.

Portland has been on display for the world to see with iconic photos of like-minded individuals making a stance against injustice. Let’s continue to create and celebrate the soundtrack to the movement.

16

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

The Portland music scene’s job during this pandemic and racial climate is to do what it should have been doing all along: striving for more inclusivity, and pushing POC, female, queer and trans voices to the forefront.

Although venues aren’t open at the moment, they still have platforms and connections, such as their websites, social media pages and contact lists, which they can utilize to promote artists and encourage support and donations for these artists. The livestream I did recently was a perfect example. They did all of those things. They booked talent, such as myself, who represented causes and social issues they wanted to show solidarity with, they promoted me fiercely, and they encouraged their followers to donate.

However, it’s not what these venues, publications, radio personalities or any other musical entities do during the pandemic but what they continue to do after. I’ve wanted to perform at that venue for a while now. So doing that virtually was great, but I can’t help but think, will I ever get the chance to perform in their actual venue or hear from them again? Social justice shouldn’t be something that’s trendy, popular or something utilized to save face, but something genuine and indefinite. Will this inclusivity and solidarity continue long after George Floyd’s or Breonna Taylor’s names are no longer mentioned on social media?

It’s not only up to “gatekeepers,” such as publications, venues, radio personalities, but also to musical artists to continue speaking about past and current injustices done against Black people. We have to keep using our platforms and music to speak up. Music isn’t always about having fun and turning up—although that too can be therapeutic for Black people— but sometimes can be used to talk about real things. It’s up to music lovers to hold these artists accountable as well. We all have a responsibility, no matter how small of a role, and no matter what we do, it should be genuine and indefinite, not something used to seem conscious for clout.

Even me. I’ve become a lot more vocal on my social media about injustices towards Black people. Although I’ve always done so in my music, I realized I was playing it a little too safe on my platform branding-wise. However, people do look up to me and engage with my social media content. Even if I’m not “acting,” who’s to say I won’t incite ideas to encourage that next person to plan a protest or donate. That is more important than any racist troll or Karen who decides to express their unwanted opinions on my page. Sparking the right kind of ideas to incite the change we want to see in the world is more important than anything, and we can do that with music.

As individuals, artists, musicians, I think it’s important that we know and understand that we have an essential role to play. That role involves reflection, healing, communication, vulnerability, strength and honesty.

Those of us who are clear about our purpose and path need to be strengthening bridges with those of us who are also operating with clarity and reaching out to those looking for clarity.

We need to be creating community among ourselves as a microcosmic reflection of what is needed and possible in broader communities.

Those of us who aren’t clear on our purpose might want to be looking at social movements against oppression and for human rights and justice the world over, past and current, and examining the roles that art, culture and music specifically have played. Listen to, read about and consume music from the folk and community-oriented cultural expressions, to the underground and superstars: Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Fela Kuti, Dead Prez, Joan Baez, Paul Robeson, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Aretha Franklin, Sinead O’ Connor, Public Enemy, Rage Against the Machine.

Let their voices and examples be a guide to the power and vision we should aspire to.

We can change the world, we should, we have to.

What music was banging during past struggles for civil rights and Black liberation? What music was banging during the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and globally?

How has music inspired you in the past? What music do you listen to that shifts your mood from hopeless to optimistic? I want to be asking what I can do as an artist to create music that can actually shift and transform energy.

We must create music that can heal, educate, inspire, uplift and liberate. If I’m having a block or feel particularly uninspired, I want to utilize my time, thoughts and energy to uplift those in my community who are very clearly accomplishing that work through their art. The career path-oriented musician gets conditioned to be narcissistic in their drive to be successful in capitalism. As my good friend and fellow Emcee C3 the Guru says, now is a time to reinforce empathy, community, solidarity and unity over the self-centered aspects of our aspirational commitments.

I’ve seen powerful pictures of some graffiti saying, “George Floyd, you changed the World.” Let us channel and reinforce that change.

COURTESY OF FRIENDS OF NOISE

spaghettified in an analog nebula.

Portland’s music scene’s role in the current moment is to do the work to dismantle the systems of white supremacy within the regional music ecosystem. It’s just that simple.

There are too many talented artists, bookers, producers, etc., who are Black, Indigenous and other people of color who are sidelined and overlooked because they don’t fit the image or taste of a Eurocentric perspective. There are too few—if any, in some cases—BIPOC venue owners, talent buyers, promoters, etc., who are in a position to facilitate equitable representation within our music ecosystem.

Here are three strategies that those in power can do now to help dismantle white supremacy when it comes to our music scene: Center Black and Brown voices, share your privilege and work to reconcile and heal past harms.

My nonprofit Friends of Noise is focused on doing this work for the youth of our community. We center BIPOC voices by consistently reaching out to and creating opportunities for Black and Brown youth. The majority of our shows are multigenre so that our audiences are multiracial. Last year, we helped a group of young men produce a festival on the condition that I could book half the bands. I selected Black, Middle Eastern and trans artists for the bill.

The young men acknowledged that if not for my intervention, the entire bill would have been filled with white teenage boys.

We share our privilege by loaning equipment, expertise and our connections with our community of youth with an emphasis on youth of color. Whether it’s looking for a venue or navigating a permit process, we share what we’ve learned, who we know and what we have. We recently partnered with Morpheus Youth Project to give incarcerated young men space on our XRAY.fm radio show to share their voices, music and poetry.

We work every day to reconcile and heal past harms by understanding the limitations and hurdles that white supremacy and othering imposes not only on BIPOC but also youth who are differently abled and our LGTBQ+ friends. We dedicate resources to these youth musicians and sound techs, and teach production skills so they can play, run sound and produce our shows, and gain the experience they will need to navigate a more inclusive music ecosystem that welcomes their contributions and talents.

If we can do this work, so can you.

In 2017, Noa Ver and Zach D’Agostino were both solo electronic artists. Then, one fateful night in March, they were both scheduled to perform at a house show that became overbooked.

“I have a dorky circuit tattoo and so does Zach,” Ver says. “We sparked a conversation at some show about our dorky habits, and that’s how it started.”

Instead of playing their planned solo sets, the pair decided to team up and play gibbering vocals and improvised noise.

Three years later, that spontaneous collaboration has grown into two biting EPs and Bidet Dreaming, an album that Sea Moss released last year. In Ver’s words, Sea Moss’ music is “mostly nonsense.” But that doesn’t do justice to the complex circuitry that creates their chaotic music. Using a swarm of homemade feedback oscillators and drum synthesizers, the duo constructs music that both needles your nerve endings and makes you want to dance. It’s warped, glitchy and very, very noisy.

Live, the two play face to face: D’Agostino behind a drum set with a cowbell fastened to the cymbals, and Ver stationed at a table covered with wires and analog circuitry, which she calls her “critters.” Vers sings

MARCUS MCCAULEY SOUNDS LIKE: Anderson Paak if he went into self-isolation years before it was mandated by the state.

It didn’t take Marcus McCauley’s career long to gather steam—nor did it take long to stall out.

As a high school junior with a single mixtape to his name, the North Portland-raised rapper, singer and multi-instrumentalist scored the kind of gigs most artists work years to land, opening for Kid Ink and Meek Mill and even going on a short tour with the late Nipsey Hussle.

But then the investor funding his crew took a bath on a badly organized music festival. The comedown was swift.

“Being a kid like that, we were on a high,” M c C a u l e y s a y s . “ We thought we were next.

Everything didn’t happen the way we wanted it to.”

Things may not have gone the way he planned, but in retrospect, it was what he needed. If his trajectory had continued upward, he might have kept on rapping about imaginary hook-ups, and never stopped long enough to figure out what he actually wanted to say.

No One Cares, the 26-year-old’s debut album, is the result of the ensuing years of artistic soul-searching,

while pressing a contact mic to the vibrations in her throat, creating the urgent, drill-like voice that wails to the rhythms.

Whenever they can, Sea Moss plays on the venue floor instead of the stage, surrounding themselves with the moshing crowd. Sometimes, a vigilante audien ce m em ber will take it upon themselves to protect the band’s gear from being knocked over, a gesture that the band appreciates but which isn’t wholly necessary.

“If our shit gets knocked over in the middle of a set,” says Ver, “it means we’re doing a good job.”

Recently, Sea Moss has focused on using their platform as a tool for political advocacy. Before lockdown, they played a benefit show for mayoral candidate Teressa Raiford, and have been spending time campaigning on social media for Portlanders to write in Raiford’s name on the ballot in November.

“A lot of us haven’t been doing the things that we can be doing to change things,” D’Agostino says. “But I just wanna work towards changing that, personally, and I hope that other people want to as well.”

JORDAN MONTERO.

6

COURTESY OF BANDCAMP

SEA MOSS SOUNDS LIKE: Starting your dial-up while getting

and sounds like it—quietly soulful, it’s the product of someone who’s clearly spent a good deal of time alone with his thoughts, and who’s come to the conclusion that being alone is his preferred way of being.

It’s also his preferred way of working. He produced No One Cares entirely on his own, making each beat from scratch, without samples. And other than brief cameos by his Produce Organics crewmates Donte Thomas and Fontaine, he’s the lone voice, too. It lends the record a striking level of intimacy—on “Fuck Work,” you can practically hear the verses popping into McCauley’s head as he walked through the cold to the McMenamins where he used to tend bar.

But being a dedicated introvert doesn’t mean McCauley won’t ham it up on occasion—see the “Grown” video, where he dons a poofy wig and shiny shirt and lifts dance moves from ’90s R&B videos.

No matter what he’s doing, McCauley’s guiding principle is to always do him. He wants others to follow his example.

“I’ve had it with the fake shit in the world—the Instagram model behavior,” he says. “I strive to tell the truth, and I strive to encourage people to tell the truth about themselves.” MATTHEW SINGER.

7

@RECLUSIVE.JPG

André Middleton Executive director, Friends of Noise

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

17

Spoon Benders began with a lie.

Katy Black met AJ Herald, Spoon Benders’ future drummer, at a coffee shop where Black worked at the time. “I wanted to hang out with her because I thought she was really cool,” says Black. “So I lied and told her that I knew how to play guitar.”

Eventua l l y, w i t h help from Herald—a jazz drummer from Los Angeles—Black not only learned how to play the guitar, she also became a frontwoman and songwriter.

After meeting Buffy Pastor and Phoebe Grieves, Black and Herald started making snarling, swaggering punk as Spoon Benders.

The band released their first album, Dura Mater, in May, exactly one year after the quartet played their first show. The album pulls from Herald and Black’s love of blues and punk classics like Howlin’ Wolf, the Pleasure Seekers and the Stooges, but is

➑ ➒➓

MOPE GROOVES SOUNDS LIKE: Hard-won joy

celebrated through jagged guitars and starry xylophone interludes.

Last summer, Mope Grooves released their sophomore album, Desire. It’s driving, percussive music in the vein of the Raincoats, but it’s also imbued with whimsy and a sincere sense of beauty.

The band declined to be interviewed for a profile, issuing the following statement:

MO TROPER SOUNDS LIKE: The Beatles and the

Decemberists having a jam session in the Pacific Northwest.

Mo Troper was just halfway through a tour when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

In March, the Portland singer-songwriter’s West Coast jaunt in support of Natural Beauty, his third album, was cut short. Then, his Midwest and East Coast shows were postponed as the pandemic wiped out live music for the foreseeable future.

But the 28-year-old isn’t the least bit bitter about having to put the promotion for his latest release indefinitely on hold.

“With COVID, and the protests, there are much more important things going on,” he says. “It just doesn’t feel like the right time to be promoting [anyway].”

Natural Beauty marks a departure from Troper’s 2016 debut album, Beloved, which Pitchfork gave a tepid review that he remains grateful for, despite the reviewer’s jab at his “snot-nosed pwnage.”

Troper’s latest record swaps angsty adolescent tropes with quirky, love-specked optimism. Steeped in punchy power-pop hooks, dissonant harmonies and tinges of ’60s orchestral rock, Natural Beauty is something of an ode to the music of Troper’s teenage years, including the White

18

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

“Abolition will not be successful until the Willamette Week is either commandeered by Black and Indigenous revolutionaries or dissolved along with all the monuments, rituals and institutions that reproduce white civic life.

Their editorial mishandling of sexual assault cases, support for technocrats, and prevaricating on anti-fascism is unforgivable. Disband now.”

➑ ➒➓ COURTESY OF BANDCAMP

Sioux became best friends and neuroscience enthusiasts.

also heavily influenced by garage and psych.

Herald and Black also share an interest in neuroscience, which inspired the name of the album. Latin for “tough mother,” dura mater is the leathery outer layer that helps protect the brain inside the skull.

“I dug the idea of a bunch of scientists and doctors naming something in our body ‘dura mater’ and having it translated ‘tough mother,’” says Herald. “That’s sassy and punk in itself, like this outer layer is a tough motherfucker.”

It’s also particularly applicable to Dura Mater’s lyrical content, which sees Black fully unrestricted.

Black spent her life mainly as a partner of musicians, so Spoon Benders is her first time in the spotlight.

“All of these songs were my first songs I’ve ever written in my life, so they’re like a collection of everything,” says Black. “Playing music wasn’t available to me, so this was me empowering myself to do that.”

CERVANTÉ POPE. COURTESY OF @SPOONBENDERSBAND

SPOON BENDERS SOUNDS LIKE: Iggy Pop and Siouxsie

➑ ➒➓

Album, his favorite Beatles record, and fellow Portland indie band Dear Nora.

Troper played most of the instruments on the album himself, and penned a majority of the 12 tracks after returning to Portland from a yearlong stint living in L.A. “If there’s a theme for the album,” he says, “it’s getting back in touch with my Portland roots.”

Though he certainly wasn’t expecting to be this rooted to his Portland home, Troper has an almost Zen-like attitude about the fact that he may never get to resume his postponed Natural Beauty tour.

“I don’t know if anyone would be excited about a tour to support a record that’s a year old,” he says. “I almost have enough songs for an LP, so I may try to bang that out in the next few months for a new album and eventually tour for that one.”

LAUREN KERSHNER.

STREET PORTLAND PAINT TO PROTEST As police and demonstrators spent the holiday weekend clashing in downtown Portland, a different kind of protest took place in Cathedral Park in St. Johns, this one involving art, music and spoken word. Here’s what it looked like.

Photos by Joseph Blake Jr. @pdxwulf_

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

19

STREET

20

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

T H E M OST I M PO RTA N T T H I N G S T HAT H A P P E N E D I N P O R T L A N D C U LT U R E T H I S WE E K , FR O M BE ST TO WO RST .

COURTESY OF THROUGH DARCELLE’S EYES

STARTERS

DARCELLE, AKA WALTER COLE

FEE, FINE, NO? FUN!

After suspending late fees during the pandemic, the Multnomah County Library has decided to make the change permanent: Portlanders will no longer be charged for returning books late, effective immediately. In addition, all existing fines have been cleared—a total of $730,185 from more than 70,000 library members, 2,000 of whose accounts were blocked due to fines in excess of $50. “The practice of assessing punitive fines for late returns has locked people out, many of whom are already facing hardships,” Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury said in a statement. There will still be due dates, and the library will continue to charge replacement costs. If a book has not been returned 49 days after the due date, the patron will be billed for its replacement.

DRAG CITY

On the last day of Pride month, Congressman Earl Blumenauer joined a push to add Darcelle XV to the National Register of Historic Places. Founded in 1967, two years before the Stonewall riots kick-started the modern gay rights movement, Darcelle XV is Portland’s oldest drag club, and home to the longest-running drag show on the West Coast. Adding to the Old Town venue’s historical significance is the fact that it’s operated by 89-year-old Walter Cole, otherwise known as drag legend Darcelle, who was dubbed the World’s Oldest Drag Queen in 2016

by Guinness World Records. Last week, the State Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation unanimously agreed to nominate Darcelle XV for the national register. It’s the first time the committee has nominated a site specifically for its place in LGBTQ+ history. “Walter Cole persevered through discrimination during the 1970s and kept the club active for over 50 years,” Blumenauer wrote. Placement on the national register protects sites from development and qualifies business owners for tax provisions and federal preservation grants. The National Park Service will announce which sites are added to the register in November.

STREAMING MUSIC

The longest-running free jazz festival west of the Mississippi will continue this year, only without fans and out of view of the St. Johns Bridge. The 40th annual Cathedral Park Jazz Festival will stream live on Twitch from a remote location July 17-19. The lineup will feature local legends like soul singer Saeeda Wright and Portland-via-Louisiana group Steve Kerin and the Bayou Boyz, but the venue will not be open to the public.

GRAND REOPENING, GRAND RECLOSING

Only two weeks after Gov. Kate Brown allowed bars and restaurants in Multnomah County to reopen, Lucky Labrador Brewing announced it would temporarily reclose its four brewpubs, fearing Fourth of July weekend crowds might cause a further spike in positive COVID-19 tests.

“It was a gut check,” says co-owner Gary Geist. “When this first happened back in March, we shut down a couple days before the governor shut everybody down. I’ve got the same sort of feeling.” Geist says that while he’s put numerous precautions in place at his bars, which are known for their dog-friendly patios, what he’s seen at other establishments in town has “freaked me out.” He says he plans to reevaluate in two weeks and decide then whether to remain closed or reopen depending on whether cases rise or decline.

TORO TROUBLE

One of Portland’s most successful restaurant groups is in limbo. One week after founder John Gorham divested from Toro Bravo Inc., the restaurant group representing several iconic Portland dining destinations, The Oregonian reported the company would dissolve and four of the group’s properties would shutter permanently: famed Spanish tapas restaurant Toro Bravo, brunch spots Tasty n Alder and Tasty N Daughters, and event space Plaza del Toro. But Renee Gorham, who took over Toro Bravo Inc. in the wake of her husband’s departure, describes a more uncertain future. She has chosen to suspend service at those locations, including takeout and delivery, and lay off much of the staff. But she says she hasn’t decided whether the closures will be for good. The news comes after John Gorham—long one of Portland’s most high-profile chefs—announced he would be divesting from the restaurant group amid furor over a string of incendiary Facebook posts he wrote accusing a transgender woman of color of vandalizing catering vans. Renee Gorham says she is seeking counsel on what steps to take next.

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

21

GET...OUTSIDE?

WHAT TO DO—AND WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING—AS PORTLAND REOPENS.

JULY 8-14 K AT Y S T R U T Z

MY QUARANTINE PROJECT

Q(UARANTINE)&A

ABBY GORDON

Corina Lucas, Comedian

WW: You’ve got some news.

Corina Lucas: I’m moving to Mexico, baby!

You’re going for good?

We’re going to spend at least three months in Mexico and get a feel for how the world looks and, if it’s a little more clear, go to Cuba. But three months at a time.

What convinced you it was time to go?

A whim. Just trying to accept what fate throws at me. I was planning on staying here. A friend asked if I wanted to go to Mexico, and I said, “Yeah.” That was two weeks ago. My health care is gone now. I have a few months of hormones stocked up. I’m terrified of what will happen when the estrogen runs out, but that’s future Corina’s problem.

Do you speak any Spanish?

I’ve been flirting on Oaxacan Twitter. Apparently you laugh with j’s instead of h’s. I took Spanish for years in high school. I capped at conversational, I never got fluent. So I’m looking forward to locking that in.

What are you going to miss about Portland?

I’m going to miss the waterfront. The Tanker was cool—they just shut down. I’m going to miss playing Big Buck Hunter with my friends.

What’s the future of comedy after all this?

Bleak. They do have Zoom shows. Someone offered to do one, and I was like, I haven’t written in a while, and it sounds like a nightmare to do a Zoom show, so I haven’t done any. But it’s not looking good. Comedy is going to be dead for a while. Even if bars reopen and people find venues to perform at, people aren’t going to want to go because they’re going to die. Or they shouldn’t want to go, at least.

Is there funny stuff about this yet?

Some people are killing it on Facebook. I haven’t found it. Every so often, I pull out a Google doc and odd a thought to it. Maybe one day I’ll go back to it, but I’m kind of happy to have a break. A lot of people are hurting without standup, but I’m thriving. My self-worth was so tied into standup that it was just unhealthy for me, and I was thinking I needed to step for a while, and then coronavirus happened. So sorry—I created the virus.

See the full video interview with Corina Lucas at wweek.com/distant-voices.

22

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

Katy Strutz’s Puppets In the small, curious world of humanoid art, there is a technical difference between a doll and a puppet.

A doll is crafted for still images. A puppet can perform.

This is the world Katy Strutz lives in, both the living, breathing artist and the sculpted puppet she has created in her own image. Days after graduating from art school in Rhode Island, Strutz moved to Portland for an internship in Laika’s puppet department, where she stayed for over two years before leaving to pursue her own projects and work with other studios.

Today, she works remotely as a character sculptor on Guillermo del Toro’s Pinnochio, a brutalist interpretation of the fable the director has called a lifelong passion project, and moonlights as an independent artist, creating shrunken versions of the characters in her own life.

“Taking a photo of somebody is so different from making a portrait by hand,” Strutz says. “It’s the indescribable thing where when you meet somebody, their face looks so different to you than when you’ve known them for years. You watch them move and there are things that you remember, things that stand out.”

From sketching out the character design to finishing the surface details, the puppet-making process can easily take a few months, or a year in the studio environment. For Strutz, the precision is part of the appeal—putting fibers into a pot

READ THIS

and dyeing them to an exact hair color, trying to find the miniature version of the texture of their favorite sweater.

In the past few years, Strutz has grown a sizable following on social media from her personal projects, which include portraits of family members, celebrities and three-dimensional collaborations with illustrator friends. In February, fashion darling Iris Apfel reposted Strutz’s stop-motion clip of her puppet likeness to some 250,000 views on Instagram.

Strutz reasons that this has something to do with the “cult of individuality” that we live in—a kaleidoscopic world of curated Instagram feeds and intricate bitmojis.

“It makes you feel like a protagonist, or something beyond yourself,” she says. “To be recognizable enough to be an avatar—there’s an excitement and a comfort in that.”

These days, Strutz is enough of a main character on her feed that her own puppet—wearing curly red hair and a rotating wardrobe of bespoke outfits—elicits a similar response to her celebrity puppets.

“I’ll have people that I know in real life, or people who have seen my Instagram before they meet me in real life, and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, you look just like your puppet!’” she says. “They recognize me because they recognize the puppet.” SCOUT BROBST. See more of Katy Strutz’s puppets at instagram.com/ katystrutz.

In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe “It’s a brilliant meditation on Black lives and how they bear the weight— historical, political and literal—of anti-Black violence and white supremacy. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, In the Wake stitches threads from film, literature, art, critical theory, news media, and Sharpe’s own family history into a stunning blend of scholarship and lyric essay.

From 18th century slave ships to 21st century refugee boats, from the Middle Passage to stop-and-frisk policing, Sharpe traces ‘the paradoxes of blackness within and after the legacies of slavery’s denial of Black humanity.’ This book would be important and necessary at any time, but its gutting illuminations feel especially relevant in our current moment. Sharpe invites the reader to consider ‘a connection between the lungs and the weather: the supposedly transformative properties of breathing free air— that which throws off the mantle of slavery—and the transformative properties of being “free” to breathe fresh air. These discourses run through freedom narratives habitually. But who,’ she asks, ‘has access to freedom?

Who can breathe free?’” —Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks (2018)

Patio Party Kachka Alfresca brings the country’s best Russian food into the open—with a Midwestern twist.

BY JO R DA N M I C H E L M AN

@suitcasewine

Call it the law of unintended consequences. Going into a new building can be a nightmare for restaurateurs, who are often tasked with building an audience and conjuring ambience in a place where none existed before. But it can also make for unexpected opportunities.

In 2018, Kachka—Bonnie and Israel Morales’ all-world love letter to 20th century Soviet cuisine, widely hailed as one of the best Russian restaurants in America—moved from its original home on Southeast Grand Avenue to the Goat Blocks development on Southeast 11th Avenue between Belmont and Taylor Streets. Their new home directly abutted a sprawling, inaccessible parking lot—a vacant asphalt canvas chef Bonnie Morales describes as “chronically underused.”

Then the coronavirus hit, transforming every restaurant owner and chef in America into a Macgyver-esque problem solver. The Moraleses were able to lean on their newly opened deli concept, Kachka Lavka, to keep diners happy through spring, offering deli meats and pickles, Russian pantry staples, frozen pelmeni dumplings, and even a loving takeaway Passover Seder dinner delivery. But behind the scenes, a plot had been hatched.

“I kept reading studies about the relative safety of being outdoors,” says Bonnie Morales, “and more and more, it

THE DOUGH Morales learned the craft of khachapurimaking during a 2019 sojourn to the nation of Georgia. “It’s water and flour and yeast and dairy,” she says, “but really it’s about the method. The shaping is really special, that eye shape you get in the end result is all about technique.” The end result is soft, pliable, and easily pulled apart, yet capable of holding its own shape and form, almost like a calzone. To finish, Morales brushes the khachapuri with Calabrian chile oil. “It’s not very authentic, but it gives a nice amount of heat,” she says.

THE EGG A single, gorgeous fried egg tops the khachapuri, and upon delivery you will be instructed to mix it with your fork into the spinach dip. From there, rip off a little piece of the outer bread ring, dip into the middle, sip your drink—maybe a Russian lager or some bison grass vodka—and nod your head to the ’80s Moscow club beats. Joyously repeat.

seemed like we were a long ways away from anyone being comfortable inside.”

A deal was struck with the owners of the lot, offering Kachka a new template for dinner service in the time of COVID-19. Now in its second full week of service, Kachka Alfresca is a pop-up in the truest sense of the term, created in a time of great pressure and adaptation, built for the strange reality of summer 2020. It may have been largely improvised, but that makes it so utterly of its time and place in this shared moment that it feels like a vital addition to the food landscape.

It is outdoors only, with 20-some cabana-styled tables sprawled across a parking lot rooftop above Southeast Portland. Social distance is maintained at all times: Customers bus their own tables; food is ordered food by phone, either online or by dialing a hotline; and the restroom key is affixed to a bottle of hand sanitizer. Every detail has been thought through for minimal contact and maximum distance, while still allowing patrons to enjoy a modicum of the traditional restaurant experience.

It’s pretty weird at first, ordering and paying by phone at a restaurant. It’s almost like an extension of our bleak new all-Postmates-everything reality. But by the time you place the order for your second round of drinks, it begins to feel surprisingly natural. And when the drinks and food are this good, it’s worth enduring a bit of dystopia to be part of it.

If you know and love Kachka, there are many old favorites on offer at Kachka Alfresca. Yes, you can drink the restaurant’s famous horseradish vodka. Yes, you can order a bowl of pelmeni ($14) with Russian sour cream and thinly diced herbs. But the pop-up has allowed Bonnie Morales to dive into another vein of nostalgia, one informed by her childhood watching her Soviet émigré parents run a 1990s bistro in the Chicago suburbs.

“I felt like it would be weird to literally just take Kachka and put it outside in this service model,” she says. “This was a good opportunity to do something totally different and wacky.”

Which is how you arrive at dishes like a Jalapeno Popper Chicken Kiev ($20), or a bowl of vareniki dumplings resembling Totino’s Pizza Rolls ($14), or panko bread crumb crab cakes ($12) that look straight out of a rerun of Friends. There are smoked potato skins dressed up like a Reuben sandwich ($10). There is a Soviet Cobb salad in a lavash shell bowl ($12), which shows up looking like an executive boardroom taco salad got lost behind the Iron Curtain.

And there are glorious holiday drinks to go with it all: Moscow mule slushies, guava-tinis, Baltic mai tais, and a glowing blue Hawaii riff that evokes radioactive societal collapse, but in a delicious way ($9-$12).

It doesn’t all necessarily make sense, for the record— the Sex on Beaches and Cobb salads and pulsing Russodisco soundtrack combine to form a sort of trans-Siberian TGI Friday’s—but it is damn fun, and makes for an utterly satisfying night out that is both socially distanced and epidemiologically sound.

“Right now, there is this feeling of free fall and unknown,” Bonnie Morales says, “and we want to provide a place of comfort. It’s a bad idea to always forget what’s going on around us, but once in a while you need to take a break and have comfort. Hopefully, we can have something like that.”

The best dish on the new menu—and the most deeply, intrinsically comforting—is Morales’ riff on the Georgian khachapuri ($17). This dish is fundamental to the cuisine of Georgia, the food-and-drink wonderland whose contested border flanks modern Russia to the southwest.

Essentially, it’s a bread bowl, traditionally filled with feta and sulguni, a kind of Georgian cheese.

At Kachka Alfresca, she’s mashing up the khachapuri with a totally different tradition: American spinach and artichoke dip, à la Ruby Tuesday’s. The end result is dippable, dunkable and tearable, and also visually stunning— it’s a must-order.

C A R LY D I A Z

FEATURE

FOOD & DRINK

THE FILLING It’s a riff on the spinach and artichoke dip your mom would know and love, made with cream cheese, sulguni, frozen spinach and prepared artichoke. “Normally, I would never work with a product like frozen spinach,” Morales says, “not that there’s anything inherently wrong with it. For chefs, it’s more like an ego thing.” To build a dip inspired by the Sysco trucks of ’90s bistro yore, Morales is leaning on suburban tradition, albeit fused with fresh, handmade dough by way of Tbilisi. “It’s time to set ego aside,” she says, “and find a happy balance.”

GO: Kachka Alfresca, 960 SE 11th Ave., 503-235-0059, kachkapdx.com/alfresca. 3-10 pm daily.

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

23

FOOD & DRINK

J O H N VA L L S

1014 SW Harvey Milk St., 503-228-3333, clydecommon.com. 4-8 pm Wednesday-Saturday. Takeout and delivery only.

Clyde Common, as we know it, is over. The restaurant that in many ways transformed the Portland food scene when it opened in 2007 is being forced to drastically reimagine how it operates in the wake of COVID-19. The ultimate idea is to pivot to a tavern format, but for now, owner Nate Tilden has shifted to a takeaway concept he’s calling “Common Market,” which means bringing home some of the classic dishes every Portlander has been required to experience at least once over the past decade, including its burger and squid ink fideos, plus new items like hanger steak stroganoff and a radicchio salad in a sherry vinaigrette.

3. Oui Chippy at Scotch Lodge

TONARI’S ONIGIRAZU

1. Tonari 2838 SE Belmont St., tonaripdx.com. 4-6:30 pm Wednesday-Sunday. Takeout only.

At Ryan and Elena Roadhouse’s new restaurant, Tonari, the intricate details stack up to form a singular tableau. The drastically remodeled former Accanto space—next door to the couple’s seven-time James Beard Award-nominated omakase experience Nodoguro—is a visual delight from top to bottom. Pity it’s not open for dine-in yet, but they are doing takeout, offering a broad range of options, from a subtly perfect smoked mackerel Caesar salad to beautifully arranged teishoku sets—a composed bento with sides, rice and choice of simple main protein.

5. Pix-O-Matic 2225 E Burnside St., 971-271-7166, pixpatisserie.com/pixomatic.

Open 24 hours.

Yes, it’s a vending machine. But don’t think of it as just a retrochic update on the machines you used to grab an apple from in college, although that’s partly the inspiration. Owner Cheryl Wakerhauser fills her machine daily with the items that have made Pix Pâtisserie an after-dinner destination for two decades: decadent pies, rich mousses, truffle cakes, crème brûlées and those famous macarons. But it’s not just sweets bringing out the crowds. The rotating “pop-up” slot is where the real treats reside.

A few weeks ago, she revived classic Portland Sichuan palace Lucky Strike. And beginning July 16, the machine hosts vegan meals from Meals for Heels, the nationally lauded food delivery service typically dedicated to feeding Portland’s sex workers.

M AT T S I N G E R

2. Common Market

HOT PLATES Where to eat this week.

215 SE 9th Ave., Suite 102, 503-208-2039, ouichippy.com. 4-8 pm Wednesday-Saturday.

In retrospect, leading with the chip butty may not have been the best move. The french fry sandwich is one of the highlights of Scotch Lodge’s fish-and-chips pop-up, but it’s not what you might call “a looker”: two slabs of white bread slathered with butter and jammed with what looks like enough sliced spuds to fill an entire fryer basket. But the flavors—buttery and salty, with just a hint of sweetness provided by the humble Russet—are addictive. For those who just can’t get over the idea, though, there are plenty of other choices on Oui Chippy’s menu, including flaky and low-ABV cocktails available in vacuum-sealed to-go bags.

4. Frog & Snail 3553 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-736-9381, frogandsnail.com.

What was cozy French bistro Chez Machin when quarantine started is now Frog & Snail, a casual creperie with a menu that caters to the health-conscious and gluten-free. Fans of dessert crepes can indulge in the Classic, with Nutella, fresh banana and graham cracker crumble, while those who prefer savory options can try the BBQ and Grilled Cheese. But the highlight is the German, a buckwheat crepe stuffed with potatoes au gratin, caramelized onion jam, crispy bacon and scallions, topped with a healthy serving of homemade crème fraîche.

THE PIX-O-MATIC

ABBY GORDON

TOP 5

BUZZ LIST Where to drink outside this week.

1. The Old Gold 2105 N Killingsworth St., 503-894-8937, drinkinoregon. com. 3-10 pm Monday-Friday, noon-10 pm SaturdaySunday.

The flagship of ex-Mercury staffer Ezra Ace Caraeff ’s ever-expanding bar empire, the Old Gold rests its focus squarely on the immense library of international whiskeys behind the bar, but even if it were serving nothing but swill, its handsome patio would still get a ton of use throughout the warm months. Reopening for Phase 1, Caraeff is taking full advantage of the outdoor seating while expanding into the neighboring lot. He also rigged a mobile ordering system where patrons use their phones to request a finger of Buffalo Trace or a Tillamook grilled cheese. It’s going to be a strange outdoor drinking season, to be sure, but the pleasures of this Overlook favorite remain more or less intact.

We’ll worry about the rain later.

2. Palomar 959 SE Division St., No. 100, 971-266-8276, barpalomar. com. 4-10 pm Wednesday-Saturday. By reservation only.

A reflection of owner Ricky Gomez’s Cuban American heritage and his hometown of New Orleans, Palomar doesn’t look like many other Portland bars, nor does it taste like one. The interior could be a set from HBO’s Ballers, and the drink menu is just as colorful, full of piña coladas, daiquiris and all things slushy and beachy—plus Cuban diner staples like bistec ($16), lechon asado ($14) and a Cuban sandwich ($10) topped with matchstick fries. In other words, it was already a great summer bar, and now that it’s moved operations to its roof deck overlooking Division Street, it might 24

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

PALOMAR

just be perfect. Well, nearly perfect—reservations are required to maintain social distancing. But once you get a spot up there, it’s hard to leave.

3. Migration Brewing 2828 NE Glisan St., 503-206-5221, migrationbrewing. com.

11 am-10 pm Monday-Sunday.

In the Before Times, Migration Brewing’s converted radiator garage pub was a reliable place to find neighbors congregating after work, watching the basketball game or reminiscing about family vacations. And even in Phase 1, a pint and a massive plate of nachos remain a great idea, especially in the summer when you can bask on the sun-drenched front patio. Beers range from sweet and tart—like the seasonal Son of a Peach, a delicate aged fruit beer—to rich and hazy.

4. Shine Distillery & Grill 4232 N Williams Ave., 503-384-2585, shinedistillerygrill. com. 3-9 pm Sunday-Thursday, 3-10 pm Friday-Saturday.

It was probably only a matter of time before Williams Avenue got a shiny new two-story bar that looks teleported from the Pearl. While most distilleries are bou-

tique affairs relegated to minimal storefronts or corners of industrial spaces, the menu and ambience at Shine give brewpubs like Breakside and 10 Barrel a run for their money. The focus is on liquor, and the bar churns out some fantastic cocktails. Owner Jon Poteet spent quarantine bottling hand cleaner made from his distillery’s high-proof byproduct, and now that Multnomah County has reopened, he’s making the bar’s roof deck for safe drinking under the summer sun.

5. Five & Dime 6535 SE Foster Road, 5anddimepdx.com. 3 pm-2 am daily.

While you won’t find shelves stocked with cheap talcum powder and undergarments, the year-old bar along the Foster-Powell corridor reflects the prices and spirit of a 20th century trinket emporium. The room intermingles sophistication with subversion, mixing jade shelving stocked with leather-bound books with a neon ombré portrait of Rasheed Wallace. Of course, for now, you’ll ideally want to take advantage of the outdoor seating, and luckily, the bar has appropriate drinks, including frozen daiquiris and cold, well-balanced cocktails. The kitchen is closed for the time being, but there’s pizza available from Atlas next door.

POTLANDER

Dab on ’Em Tips on how to best celebrate the other great stoner holiday.

BY BRIA N N A W H E E L E R

Stoners are great at inventing holidays.

We don’t typically need a special reason to get high, so when we come up with one, it’s a doozy. Take, for instance, Dab Day. If you look at the number 710 upside down, it appears to spell OIL. For that reason, on July 10, the cannabis industry celebrates Oil Day—or, as it is more colloquially known, Dab Day. When we’re at the stage in this unfolding revolution where we are reestablishing national holidays, this level of nontoxic absurdity makes me hope at least a few stoners get a seat at the table.

The roots of Oil Day are vague. Its emergence in 2012 predates recreational legalization, but only by a few years, and its ambiguous origins make Dab Day feel like just another pothead holiday invented for the sake of stoned whimsy.

But I argue that ascribing Dab Day to whimsy alone sells the day’s value short.

Since recreational cannabis laws allowed for such significant advancement in extraction tech, Dab Day is more than just a general celebration of cannabis oils or dabs.

It’s a day to consider all of the ingenuity, innovation and infinite possibilities within the cannabis industry, as well as a reminder to continue to fight for nationwide cannabis clemency and expungement so that those criminalized by the War on Drugs have lucrative, fulfilling and scientifically radical career opportunities awaiting their reentry.

And maybe Dab Day is also about graduating from blowing blunt smoke behind closed doors to discreetly sipping a dab pen while pushing a cart full of CBD supplements through the toilet paper aisle of Costco.

For those unfamiliar with dabs, they can come off as complicated and dangerously intoxicating—and if the introduction involves a handheld torch, perhaps a little too visually reminiscent of smoking a different kind of substance. So, on this relatively new weed holiday, Willamette Week reached out to Susie Marshal, owner of Vibeztiva Pop-Up Dab Bar, to demystify the practice for novices, including parents, and offer some professional tips for achieving the perfect dab.

WW: For the uninitiated, what are the benefits of dabbing as opposed to smoking?

Susie Marshall: The real question is, what are the benefits of low-temp vaporization as opposed to high-Temp combustion. Low-temp vaporization gets you the most cannabinoids from the flower or concentrate and produces vapor. That vapor is free from the byproducts like the ash and resin of the plant material. Those are the compounds that are harsh on your lungs.

Low-temp vaporization has the same fast-acting effects as higher-temp combustion. It’s such a good alternative for people who choose not to burn.

What are some common mistakes made by novice dabbers?

Overheating the material. People who are new to dabbing often are cannabis smokers and are used to the hot air that high-temp combustion generates. There is an association between the high temp and being high, but that does not have to be the case.

Is there a foolproof formula for achieving and maintaining the correct temperature with a handheld torch?

No. I don’t use a torch.

What is your torch alternative of choice?

The best alternative to torch heating is an electronic nail.

Those will allow you to set the desired temperature and will provide a consistent heating result. It is the difference between cooking over an open fire and cooking in an oven, and there are plenty of portable and desktop or plug-in models of electronic nails.

[for dabs]. I prefer a titanium nail with a ceramic dish connected to a bong with cool water. Quartz nails are nice for low temperatures—they preserve the terpenes. If you are looking to do larger or multiple dabs then titanium and ceramic both hold the temperature well. If you want something indestructible then go with titanium.

Violent coughing is a common characteristic of dabs, but I’ve never coughed after using any of Vibeztiva’s stations. What’s the secret?

High-quality concentrates, low temperatures, water filtration, cooling tubes and over 11 years of cannabis vaporization research. Cannabis flower smokes at 460 degrees, but dabbing doesn’t have to be like smoking. Remember, 420 is a good temperature.

What items should be on newbie dabbers’ shopping list when they go to the head shop to choose their first oil rig?

Ditch the external heating element entirely and go with an e-rig. If money is no object, go with a PuffCo Peak, but otherwise, the $90 PuffCo Plus is a fraction of the cost and features a ceramic heater, a built-in dab tool, and a familiar pen style.

How do you plan to spend Dab Day this year?

Utilizing the Vibeztiva rental equipment to enjoy Pennywise 1-to-1 THC-CBD rosin from Grasse/Green Choice Farms—and taking a well-deserved break from being a new mom.

MORE: Find more information on Vibeztiva’s pop-up dab bars at vibeztiva.com.

How can users achieve a perfect dab?

Well, it generally depends on your preference, but a good rule of thumb is to start at 320 degrees and slowly increase the temperature to find the best flavor and quality for your device. Always keeping in mind that since cannabis combustion happens at 460 degrees, 420 is a good temperature Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

25

MOVIES

Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com Have a movie screening you’d like to submit to our Get Busy calendar?

Go to wweek.com/submitevents for instructions.

WSJ

SCREENER

G ET YOUR REP S I N While local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. This week, we’re highlighting some of the best book-tofilm adaptations in honor of the recent premiere of one of the best—though admittedly few—2020 releases, Shirley.

Shirley (2020) Josephine Decker’s dreamy semi-biographical drama centers on a young couple (Odessa Young and Logan Lerman) who lodge with reclusive horror author Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss) and her professor husband (Michael Stuhlbarg). What follows is a psychosexual examination of the fine lines between muses, lovers and friends. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hulu, YouTube.

The Hours (2002) Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman star as three women from different time periods who are deeply affected by Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway: Streep as a 21st century bisexual whose close friend is dying of AIDS, Moore as a pregnant ’50s housewife trapped in an unhappy marriage, and Kidman as Woolf herself, writing the highly influential feminist text. Amazon Prime, Crackle, Google Play, iTunes, Kanopy, Tubi, Vudu, YouTube.

SACRED COW: Evie the cow stars as the titular animal in the Oregon Territory, sharing top billing with John Magaro.

Milking It

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

With the captivating Western First Cow, Kelly Reichardt mines Oregon once again for its landscape.

Sofia Coppola’s ethereal coming-of-age tragedy, adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 novel, mythologizes the nymphish Lisbon sisters (Kirsten Dunst included) through the eyes of neighborhood boys. When the youngest Lisbon dies by suicide, the girls’ strict parents isolate them in their home, creating an irresistible air of mystery. Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Kanopy, Pluto TV, Vudu, YouTube.

BY C H ANC E SOLEM-PFEIFER

Annihilation (2018) After an enigmatic alien lifeform creates an ever-growing zone that mutates the DNA of anything that enters, biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) enters with three goals in mind: to research the Shimmer, to stop it and to rescue her missing husband (Oscar Isaac). Directed by sci-fi prodigy Alex Garland and adapted from Jeff VanderMeer’s popular Southern Reach book trilogy. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube.

IMDB

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

The great Lynne Ramsay directs this unforgettable psychological thriller adapted from Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel, centering on a mother (Tilda Swinton) who must grapple with the evil lurking in her dangerous son (Ezra Miller), as well as the horrific crime he committed. Amazon Prime, Crackle, Google Play, Hulu, iTunes, Kanopy, Tubi, Vudu, YouTube.

26

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

@chance_s_p

Midway through Kelly Reichardt’s new Western, First Cow, its two main characters wage the eternal Oregon debate.

King Lu (Orion Lee) takes stock of the 1820s Umpqua River region, all dewy and wild, and sees newness. For him, that equals economic promise: Specifically, he’ll steal milk from the Territory’s first cow to use as the key ingredient for his proto-doughnut business. “History hasn’t come here yet,” King Lu urges his partner Cookie (John Magaro). The baker, on the other hand, takes a laconic, long view. The Northwest appears old to him, as ancient as the mushrooms he hunts for grub.

It might then seem a relevant question for Reichardt—who’s made several of this century’s best Oregon-set films—whether she’s felt the ever-evolving friction between promise and preservation while living here part time and shooting five features in the state. But it’s no contest in the mind of the 56-year-old American master.

Ugly modernity won.

“Really? Now, in Portland, you have to plan around traffic. I don’t buy your premise,” says Reichardt, whose new film comes to Video on Demand on July 10 after COVID-19 blocked its theatrical run in March. “I drive around and see all the clear cuts. Some of the forests we shot Old Joy [2006] in aren’t even there. Sorry to be such a downer.”

It’s probably too romantic a question.

If not quite downers, Kelly Reichardt movies slice to the bottom rungs on Maslow’s

hierarchy of needs with little sentiment.

Wendy and Lucy (2008) snapshots a woman living out of her car in North Portland. Meek’s Cutoff (2010) follows a party of starving settlers across Eastern Oregon. And the protagonists of Certain Women (2016) and Old Joy desperately seek human lifelines to avoid tumbling into self-defeat utterly alone.

While its central friendship is tender and its budget slightly bigger (Reichardt’s first outing with producer-distributor A24), First Cow honors the director’s standards of hushed grit. It’s a Western about the people Westerns are historically never about: a Chinese immigrant on the run and the meek cook of a trapping party. Without each other and their baking gambit, they’d both very likely be dead. The audience picking up on those stakes owes much to the film’s fastidious re-creation of the nearly 200-year-old Fort Umpqua.

“The props department had a field day,” Reichardt says, crediting the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde’s Chachalu Museum for guidance in depicting traditional artifacts like cedar capes, dentalia shells and a polenta-style acorn dish mixed in river sand.

Attention to such details is more than just due diligence. Reichardt’s films consistently hinge on how labor occupies days, minds and hands. For that reason, “patient” is one of the most common descriptors of her work. So long as that’s not code for “boring”—First Cow is one of the most tactile and engrossing movies of 2020—it’s a fit.

“[My films] do have their own natural rhythm,” Reichardt says. “Certainly, time is experienced differently [in 1820]. It’s more that everything has gotten so fast. It feels like something not to buy into, this idea of never letting a thought last longer than three seconds. I feel resistant to it, but it’s also just my natural pace.”

It’s a cadence she shares with Jonathan Raymond, the Portland author and screenwriter with whom she’s now collaborated five times. First Cow is adapted rather loosely from his 2004 novel, The Half-Life, tackling less than half the book and inventing the all-important cow for this parable of early American capitalism.

Reichardt’s trademark pacing also stems from her editing all her own work, a rarity in this era. Fittingly enough, that self-editing began from simple resource scarcity.

“I didn’t have any money when I finished shooting [River of Grass],” says Reichardt, recalling her 1994 debut. “Now [editing] informs how I want to shoot. It’s very nice after the community effort with the crew to be back in a quiet and dark room, like, ‘OK this is the actual film I shot, and this is the film I’m making.’”

Or maybe the acclaimed director edits for the same reasons her characters cook and sweep and carve: “It’s not good to get too far from keeping your hands on something.”

SEE IT: First Cow streams on all digital platforms starting July 10.

Freedom Through Film TOJO ANDRIANARIVO

Nearly two dozen incarcerated male youth are sharing their new works online, from a break-dancing short to sketch comedy.

ACTION: A student takes control of the camera during a filmmaking workshop at MacLaren in January 2020.

BY C H A N C E SO L E M - P FE I FER

@chance_s_p

Even on video, the wall color at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility tells a tale. The wash of charcoal, blue and white might intend to inspire tranquility, but it comes off as clinical, imposing. Remember exactly where these walls start, the color palette seems to say.

The antidotal shade, it turns out, is green. During the past two years, a cooperative of Portland nonprofits has led filmmaking workshops at the Woodburn facility for male youth. The project, now dubbed Echo Productions, yielded several films, including one particularly ambitious break-dancing short made possible through DIY green screen. The MacLaren students improvised a half-prism out of paint, tape and refrigerator boxes that were high enough to envelop a breaker’s body but wide enough to digitally imagine new dance floors. In Phoenix Rising, we see four incarcerated break dancers move from forest to tropical beach to astral plane. The implication is unmistakable as the environments evolve: for the duration of this dreamscape, they are free.

With its streaming premiere July 9, followed by an RSVP-only Q&A with the incarcerated filmmakers, the 40-minute compilation of their work is a deliberate balance of performing arts documentary, squirrely sketch comedy and poetic arthouse montage. The mood shifts aren’t just for their own sake. The audience is simultaneously confronted with the physical and psychological walls of incarcerated life while encouraged to see their hosts simply as goofs, hobbyists, aspiring professionals and people.

“These guys are really funny,” says Jeff Oliver, an Echo Productions instructor and Open Signal’s programs facilitator. “I think comedy is truth as much as drama is truth. I knew it would balance itself out if [we] gave them a chance to just be real.”

Portland nonprofits Open Signal and Morpheus Youth Project—both seeking to empower underserved communities through media production—spearheaded the classroom at MacLaren, while the nonprofit Hope Partnership built the bridge for outside arts curriculum at MacLaren in the first place. The nearly two dozen students range in age from their late teens to early 20s, serving sentences that are a couple of years long to multiple decades. Their crimes were often serious, says Morpheus Youth Project executive director Carlos Chavez, but he’s quick to note both the ages at which the offenses were committed and the pre-existing trauma he’s observed across multiple incarcerated populations, which hampers critical neurological development.

MYP’s arts programming aims to directly combat those psychological struggles, and adaptability in instruction proved critical during the Echo Productions workshops.

Chavez had earned the trust of the MacLaren students; Oliver’s standup comedy background helped him hold the floor for production demos; and Open Signal director of new realities Taylor Neitzke gravitated toward animation and experimentation one-on-ones with quieter students.

“Engagement is totally different,” Chavez says of the MacLaren classroom. “[Normally] you have a classroom with one class clown who ultimately gets removed from the classroom. In our classroom at MacLaren, everyone is

that kid.”

Neitzke says no matter how powerful or novel the media tools, building genuine relationships was the bedrock of the films premiering this month. With those interpersonal connections now established, the future of the collaboration could involve more immersive video technology, she predicts, making their cardboard green screen only the beginning.

“It’s powerful to be able to leave your current situation when you’re incarcerated and build your own world,” Neitzke says. “No matter what, we’ll continue to have a presence [at MacLaren].”

Perhaps the most topical piece of Echo Productions media didn’t actually make the final compilation, simply because they ran out of time to finish it. Chavez describes an interview project in which the MacLaren students speak directly to an outside world feeling numbed or sapped by COVID-19 lockdowns.

“Instead of complaining—and they’re in the best position to have complaints—they offered some advice to those struggling with isolation on the outside. To me, that showed the deep compassion these young people have for other people.”

SEE IT: The Echo Productions Watch Party and Q&A take place Thursday, July 9. 6 pm for the films, 7 pm for the Q&A. The films stream on Open Signal’s social media platforms.

RSVP at opensignalpdx.org for a Zoom link and login information to the Q&A. Free.

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

27

F I L M T H R E AT. C O M

MOVIES

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.

MANCHILD: THE SCHEA COTTON STORY

: 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

Manchild: The Schea Cotton Story In 1995, Schea Cotton was the country’s top-ranked high school basketball player. The hoop dreams were high and his vertical was higher.

Cotton, whose publicity matched that of later stars, like LeBron James and Jason Kidd, was such an explosive athlete you couldn’t help but wonder if he ate gunpowder before each game. At 15 and 16, he was packing arenas, signing autographs and appearing in Sports Illustrated features. Then the moment was gone. The NBA draft passed him by in 2000, as did his competitors, like Baron Davis, Paul Pierce and Tyson Chandler. How could a top prospect in his sport drop off the map so quickly? That’s the cautionary tale spun by Manchild: The Schea Cotton Story, a brisk, troubling documentary that doesn’t over-dribble. In less than 90 minutes, Manchild tells Cotton’s story through interviews and archival footage of the 6-foot-6 player dominating the court. “He was LeBron James before LeBron James,” says former Celtic Paul Pierce. The only way to stop him was off the court. The documentary doesn’t shy away from detailing the media’s perverse role in hyping kids at an early age and the NCAA’s corruption, which derailed Cotton from playing Division I basketball. But Eric Herbert’s directorial debut, which premiered at the L.A. Film Festival in 2016, and released on streaming services this summer, is more than a “what could have been” narrative. It’s a rewarding reminder of how athletes who are considered “failures” can still rebound off the court. NR. ASHER LUBERTO. Amazon Prime, Google Play.

ALSO PLAYING All I Can Say

Profound intimacy runs throughout Shannon Hoon’s home video archive-turned-documentary, but it’s not due to footage of the late Blind Melon singer’s newborn baby, or laying down the “No Rain” vocal track or spying on Neil Young through an air vent. It’s democratized time that creates the closeness. Hoon playfully but obsessively recorded his life between 1990 and 1995—a span in which he evolved from an Indiana ne’er-do-well to alt-rock icon to Icarian tragedy. The catalog unfurls into a timeline of elation, failure and boredom that most Hollywood editors would dice into a 45-second touring montage. Even more meaningful, the audience can feel how time sped up for Hoon himself. Through Rolling Stone covers and rehab stints, he recorded his life almost daily with the intention of watching the tapes back later for clarity. While this doc will obviously carry deeper meaning for Blind Melon fans, any viewers will appreciate the snapshot of the era, which doubles as a glimpse of how the diary method changes the diary. Any approximation of All I Can Say in 2020 would directly or indirectly nod to the fans. In a trip back to 1992, though, we can experience the thrilling and ugly disembodiment of being truly uninvited. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. allicansay.oscilloscope.net.

28

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

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

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.

Magnetic In our current hunkered-down state, a documentary about extreme sports in picturesque settings is an extremely welcome premise. Thank you, Netflix, then, for giving us the cinematic equivalent of a trip around the globe by recently adding Magnetic to your lineup. Directed by Thierry Donard, the little-seen 2018 gem opens with shots of what look like the biggest waves on the planet. In Portugal, 100-foot swells loom over silhouetted bystanders watching from a cliff, a tiny dot on a surfboard charges down the face at killer speeds. Yew! The doc then cuts back and forth between seven other extreme sports, in seven rad locations. From skiing the Alps to windsurfing in Ireland to speed flying in New Zealand, Magnetic captures some of the bravest athletes navigating captivating scenery in ways that would seem impossible were it not captured on film. Those looking to learn about the whys and hows of these sports will be disappointed— the faces of waves and mountains are more memorable than human ones.

But Donard wisely centers his movie on the sensory experience of watching his characters do incredible things.

The world is their playground, Donard seems to say. It could be ours too if we put down our phones, got off the couch and explored. NR. 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 insularity veers decidedly Lynchian while the restless camerawork and supra-distinct regionalism-stuffed dialogue smacks of early Coen brothers. Alas, though Andrew Patterson’s cinematic debut remains uniformly gorgeous, a wispy narrative can’t quite sustain that initial tone of white-knuckled suspense as a genre-busting rabbit hole that turns into a Cloverfield-ish mystery box. But the lingering dread of the unseen and unknowable perseveres nonetheless.

For a feature effectively premiering via the Amazon age of ubiquity, The Vast of Night thrusts suspicions squarely upon our supposed mastery of instantaneous communication and wrings fear from a moment of static. PG-13.

JAY HORTON. Amazon Prime.

The High Note Maggie Sherwood (Dakota Johnson) has hit a wall in her job as a personal assistant. After several years of mindless errands for her boss/ hero, superstar Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross, daughter of Motown singer Diana Ross), Maggie can no longer repress her aspirations to become a music producer. But backlash from Davis’ manager (Ice Cube) and the intimidating statistic that just 2.1% 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 smooth-talking 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.

My First and Last Film There’s no reason you should know 60-something Milwaukeean Tracey Thomas. In fact, the Everywoman hook of her video interview project is that you don’t. My First and Last Film deals in snapshots of life circa age 60 as Thomas chats with her friends about late-life creativity, retirement and death. This half of the film is charmingly unpretentious, like a formless and casual imitation of Michael Apted’s Up series. But fairly quickly, Thomas’ world becomes more intensely self-conscious when her boyfriend-cinematographer dies. Through the film’s middle, the otherwise puckish Tracey seems unsure how to finish certain sentences, much less a documentary. It’s a testament to the fledgling director’s desire to forge personal meaning that she did.

Still, any national or international audience is left with questions about the broader value of amateur autobiography. According to Thomas’ own goals, My First and Last Film was never built for scrutiny from the outside world, which makes full-on criticism tricky.

In the end, it’s difficult to recommend the doc in the same way it’s tough to champion a random stranger’s blog or Instagram account. Peeking at an unfamiliar life can be a very worthwhile empathy exercise. Anything longer than a peek, though, is why documentarians exist. NR. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. cstpdx.com.

THIS WEEK IN '98

WHERE WERE YOU?

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

29

SPOTLIGHT

ANNETTE RIPPLINGER

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

by JACK KENT

Annette is a plein-air watercolorist who can be found painting on location. She also paints an array of portraits. From pets to people, cars to houses.

“Nothing can match the joy of painting a beautiful NW landscape on a sunny summer day.”

ART ON DISPLAY

Blondie’s Hair Salon on 1225 SW Alder Open Thursday, Friday, & Saturday from 7:00 AM - noon See more of her work at: watercolorsbyannette.com

Jack draws exactly what he sees n’ hears from the streets.

Buy an original Sketchy People drawing and help keep Portland weird, and fed! Jack is donating all proceeds to Meals on Wheels! E-mail or DM Jack to help fight hunger.

IG @sketchypeoplepdx | sketchypeoplepdx@gmail.com kentcomics.com

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

30

Willamette Week JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

JONESIN’

Week of JULY 16

©2020 Rob Brezsny

by Matt Jones

"Sugar Free"--let's do away with that sugary suffix

ARIES (March 21-April 19) "If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time," wrote Aries educator and activist Dorothy Height.

This approach worked well during her 98 years on the planet. Her pioneering advocacy for African American women generated a number of practical improvements in their employment opportunities and civil rights. In accordance with the current astrological omens, Aries, I highly recommend her guiding principle for your use.

You now have the power to ripen the time, even if no one else believes the time is ripe.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) "Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous 'I don't know.'" A wise and talented woman said that: Nobel Prize-winning poet Wisława Szymborska.

According to my analysis of the astrological omens, it's excellent advice for you to embrace during the coming weeks. You're close to finding and accessing a mother lode of inspiration, and one of the best ways to ensure that happens in an optimal way is to make "I don't know" your mantra. In other words, be cheerfully devoted to shedding your certainties. Lose your attachment to the beliefs and theories you tend to overly rely on. Make yourself as empty and clear and spacious as you possibly can.

GEMINI (May 21-June20)

ACROSS

60 Voting rights org.

25 Sparse

1 Movie in a case, e.g.

62 Certain book page size

28 Dos times dos times dos

4 $, at a currency exchange

30 Piece of cake

13 Sign up for

63 Good publicity for characters like Grimace, Amethyst, and Twilight Sparkle?

15 "Insecure" star Issa

66 Late WWE wrestler Dusty

36 Day-_ _ _

16 Wear

67 Charlemagne's domain, briefly

37 Stunned

68 "It must have been something _ _ _"

40 Vegetable part that can be served in a salad (as opposed to a gumbo)

7 Web traffic goal

17 Boss of all mischievous sprites?

19 Singer Grande 20 Jazz singer Laine 21 How a typesetter turns a president into a resident?

23 "What's this now?"

24 Nebraska's largest city 26 Cross-country hauler

69 "_ _ _ Rides Again" (classic western) 70 "Then what?"

71 Vulpine critter DOWN

27 Reduce in rank

1 Turntablists, familiarly

29 "Miracle Workers" network

2 Receipt 3 One with a mission

32 Racket

4 Geller who claims to be telepathic

33 Fanged movie creature, for short 34 Largest country bordering the Mediterranean

5 "The Metamorphosis" character Gregor 6 Profundity

38 Expensive version of an East Asian board game?

7 Coffeehouse order

41 Narrowest possible election margin

9 Harvard and Princeton, e.g.

42 Neighbor of Tex. 45 NHL division 48 Numerical prefix 49 The last world capital, alphabetically 51 Dove sounds 53 Roster listing

8 Innocent fun 10 Came to a close 11 Video game company with a famous cheat code 12 Fasten securely, perhaps 14 "Born," in some announcements 18 Ginseng or ginger, e.g.

56 YouTube interrupters

22 Like video games for the 13-19 set

57 Removing the word before "and behold"?

23 Like almost all primes

©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.

31 Papal topic 35 Devoted

39 Doc for head colds

43 Paved the way for 44 Sit-up targets 45 International agreement 46 "Well said" 47 State gambling games 50 High-priority notation 52 City, in Germany 54 A as in "Aristotle" 55 Lament 58 Bon _ _ _ ("Holocene" band) 59 Prone to butting in 61 151, in Roman numerals 64 Color meaning "stop" internationally 65 Dinosaur in the "Toy Story" movies

last week’s answers

Gemini-born author Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) was a world traveler who wrote in several different genres, ranging from lesbian fiction to essays on boxing to plays that used poetic language. She was experimental and empirical and experiential. On one occasion, she voluntarily submitted to the force-feeding endured by hunger-striking suffragists so she could write about what it was like to be tortured. Another fun fact about Djuna: Every morning, she did up her hair and put her make-up on, then climbed into bed and wrote for many hours. In the coming weeks, Gemini, I recommend you draw inspiration from every aspect of her life—except the torture part, of course. The coming weeks will be a fine time to be versatile, exploratory, and committed to expressing yourself purely in whatever ways make you comfortably excited.

CANCER (June 21-July 22) As a Cancerian, you have a natural propensity to study and understand what author Margaret Atwood describes as "echoes and emptiness and shadow." I believe this aspect of your repertoire will be especially active and available to you in the coming weeks. For best results, regard your attunement to these echoes and emptiness and shadow as an asset, even a precious talent. Use it to discern what's missing or lost but could be recovered. Invoke it to help you navigate your way through murky or confusing situations. Call on it to help you see important things that are invisible to others.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)

your left eyebrow? It could well have been a smooth riverbed pebble before deciding to call you home. You are rock and wave and the peeling bark of trees, you are ladybirds and the smell of a garden after the rain."

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) It's a favorable time to celebrate the fantastic privilege of being alive. Are you willing to believe that? Will you cooperate with my intention to nudge you in the direction of elation and exaltation? Are you open to the possibility that miracles and epiphanies may be at hand for you personally? To help get yourself in the proper mood, read this passage by Libran author Diane Ackerman: "The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sunstruck hills every day."

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) '"Deciding to remember, and what to remember, is how we decide who we are," writes poet Robert Pinsky.

That's useful counsel for you right now, Scorpio. You're entering a phase when you can substantially reframe your life story so that it serves you better. And one of the smartest ways to do that is to take an inventory of the memories you want to emphasize versus the memories you'd like to minimize. Another good trick is to reinterpret challenging past events so that you can focus on how they strengthened you and mobilized your determination to be true to yourself.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) "A person must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur," wrote Sagittarian author and activist Jean Genet. "And dreaming is nursed in darkness."

According to my analysis of your astrological omens, this is an apt description of what has been unfolding for you, Sagittarius—and will continue to play out for you in the next two weeks. If you're aligned with cosmic rhythms, you have been nursing your dreams in darkness—exploring and cultivating and learning from the raw creative energy that is simmering and ripening in your inner depths. Keep doing this important work, even if there are not yet any productive results.

Eventually, it will enable you to "act with grandeur," as Genet said.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) Poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau said, "There are truths that one can only say after having won the right to say them." In my estimation, you have recently earned the right to express a fresh batch of scintillating and useful truths. Please do us all a favor and unveil them—preferably with both candor and tact. In behalf of everyone who will benefit from your insights, I'm sending you congratulations for the work you've had to do on yourself so as to win them.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

"Time can turn a scab into a beauty mark," said actor and screenwriter Nia Vardalos. That's a rousingly poetic speculation—and more metaphorically true than literally. But I suspect that if it ever might have a useful and meaningful application to an actual human struggle, it will be yours in the coming months. In my view, you are in fact capable of harnessing the magic necessary to transform a wound into a lovely asset. Be bold and imaginative as you carry out this seemingly improbable feat—which is actually not improbable.

"After you make a fool of yourself a few hundred times, you learn what works," testifies musician and singer Gwen Stefani. In my own life, I've had to make a fool of myself more than a few hundred times to learn what works. My number is closer to a thousand—and I'm still adding new examples on a regular basis. In the coming weeks, Capricorn, I highly recommend that you try what has served me and Gwen Stefani so well.

You're entering a phase when your foolishness will generate especially useful lessons. Being innocent and wildly open-minded will also be very useful.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20)

Would you like to boost your mental and physical health in the coming weeks? Try this: Immerse yourself in the understanding that you're interconnected with everything in the world. Tell yourself stories about how the atoms that compose your body have previously been part of many other things. This isn't just a poetic metaphor; it's scientific fact. Now study this passage by science writer Ella Frances Sanders: "The carbon inside you could have existed in any number of creatures or natural disasters before finding you. That particular atom residing somewhere above

"It is better to err on the side of daring than the side of caution," wrote author and futurist Alvin Toffler. While I hesitate to declare that idea to be absolutely and always true, I do recommend it to you in the coming weeks. Given the fact that you have recently been expanding possibilities and cultivating breakthroughs, I'd love to see you keep on pushing forward until you climax your momentum. To boost your courage, try to think of a crazy cry of exhilaration you might exclaim as you make your leaps, like "YAHOO!" or 'HELL YES!" or HERE I COME!"

HOMEWORK: What's the best change you've experienced since the beginning of the pandemic? FreeWillAstrology.com Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes

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

1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700 Willamette Week Classifieds JULY 8, 2020 wweek.com

31

CLASSIFIEDS TO PLACE AN AD, CONTACT:

MICHAEL DONHOWE

503-243-2122 mdonhowe@wweek.com CASH for INSTRUMENTS

Tradeupmusic.com, SW 503-452-8800 SE - 503-236-8800 NE - 503-335-8800

Steve Greenberg Tree Service Pruning and removals, stump grinding. 24-hour emergency service.

Licensed/Insured. CCB#67024.

Free estimates. 503-284-2077

Complete Yard Service Senior Discounts We do it all! Trimming, hedges & shrubs, pruning, bark dust, gutter cleaning, leaf cleanup & weeding, blackberries and ivy removal, staining, pressure washing & water sealing 503-235-0491 or 503-853-0480

Sunlan Lighting For all your lightbulb fixtures & parts 3901 N Mississippi Ave 503.281.0453

Essential Business Hours

9:00 to 5:30 Monday thru Friday, 11:00 to 4:00 Saturday

Need Patrol and Stationary Security Officers Now Hiring bonus. Start $14/hour, one week vacation, sick leave, paid training Harbor Security 503-262-5538 EOE

TRADEUPMUSIC.COM Buying, selling, instruments of every shape and size.

Open 11am-7pm every day.

4701 SE Division & 1834 NE Alberta.

Do you have questions about sex?

Send your query to askshebop@sheboptheshop.com Select answers will be addressed in Ask She Bop’s next advice column

Divorce, Custody & Family Law Mediation

Don't let the pandemic get in the way. Reach agreements now. Online/ Zoom mediation is a great option while courts are unavailable to resolve most disputes. Our thoughtful and efficient process guides families to equitable, lasting agreements that help you save money. Determine your own fair results. Maintain Privacy.

Create resolution. We look forward to working with you. david@mediate.com 503-517-8135

I used to think of myself as someone who liked being alone more than most.

100+ days alone in my humble Portland abode has changed that. I miss human interaction. Human touch. There have been benefits to the solitude. I've gotten into a rhythm with my biking, hiking, running, have finished a few books, connections and cooking. Some days I've felt simplicity and ease, others a loss.

Losses. While I've enjoyed the peace of cooking alone, I'd like to be plating for two with an honest, kind, stand-up gentleman. He could be older or younger than my 41 years.

There is little that I need and I have a lot to give.

I'm conventionally attractive, healthy, light skin, long hair, no tattoos or surgical enhancements. Direct, east coast energy. Summer is here and dining establishments are open. I'll put on a pretty dress when you take me on a date! ladyseeksgentleman1961@gmail.com

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Drive New Cars!

Get paid weekly North Portland M-F day positions open part & full time men & women 18 yrs up must drive stick shift immediate openings call 360-718-7443

GET DAILY UPDATES GET DAILY ON HOW UPDATES CORONAVIRUS An old fashioned ad for GET DAILY ON HOW anIS oldAFFECTING fashioned girl: UPDATES CORONAVIRUS PORTLAND ON HOW IS AFFECTING CORONAVIRUS PORTLAND IS AFFECTING PORTLAND

WWEEK.COM/NEWSLETTERS

Sunlan cartoons by Kay Newell "The Lightbulb Lady" Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Google

www.sunlanlighting.com

SURF SUP SKATE GORGE PERFORMANCE 7400 SW Macadam, Portland visit gorgeperformance.com M-F 10-8, Sat 10-7 Closed Sun

BOARD RIDING SINCE 1983

SUBSCRIBE NOW WWEEK.COM/NEWSLETTERS

SUBSCRIBE NOW WWEEK.COM/NEWSLETTERS

Great Deals. Every Day. All 4 Floyd’s Locations!

9240 N. Whitaker | 801 NE Broadway | 5944 NE Sandy | 5217 SE 28th

5 8

$ $ .33 GRAMS 1/8THS CONCENTRATE of

Open Daily 9am- 9:55pm 21+ Recreational

| 18+ Medical

FloydsFineCannabis.com While supplies last. Some restrictions may apply. Tax not included.

Keep marijuana out of the reach of children. Do not operate a vehicle or machine under the influence of marijuana.

Is It Open?

WW's list of local business openings, updated daily.

Get on the list at : wweek.com/isitopen