NEWS
What if Sex Work Wasn't a Crime? P. 9
"I FOUND MYSELF UNDER CREAT URES T HAT CHEWED ON ME.” P. 29 WWEEK.COM
VOL 47/15 02.10.2021
BUSINESS
Plywood Problems at Pioneer Place. P. 11 WILLAMETTE WEEK
Food
Dine Like Dame. P. 26
PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
#12. Because Paul Knauls is STILL the mayor. P. 17
l l i t S o t s n d o n s a l a t e r R o P 24 ove L
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
FINDINGS M O T O YA N A K A M U R A / M U LT N O M A H C O U N T Y
Shop. Eat. Drink. Local.
THE NO. 2 REASON TO STILL LOVE PORTLAND, PAGE 13
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 47, ISSUE 15 Police have been called to Commissioner Dan Ryan’s house four times since October. 5
Olympian Jesse Owens briefly owned an all-Black Portland baseball team in the 1940s. 19
Just 35% of Oregon prison staff had been vaccinated when the state stopped counting. 7
They stuffed Rojo the Therapy Llama. 20
Learning a second language via Zoom is unpleasant. 8 Oregon could become the first state in the nation to erase its prostitution laws. 9 Installing roll-down security gates on Pioneer Place requires a design review. 11 Portland is the worst city for car theft in the country, but only 23rd in rat population. 14 Chuck D loves Dame and CJ. 17
America’s oldest tofu manufacturer is tucked behind Slammer Tavern. 16
ON THE COVER: Honorary Northeast Portland Mayor Paul Knauls, photo by Joseph Blake Jr.
The Wall of Moms was in a Super Bowl ad. 22 Lake Oswego also has a park built atop a defunct volcano. 25 Hassan Whiteside’s personal chef stayed in Portland after the
Blazers declined to re-sign the center. 26
Of course there’s a company in Portland making chocolate bars with ’shroom extract. 27 Out-of-work Cirque du Soleil performers found temporary employment portraying sea life in a Portlander’s short film. 29
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK: A 70-year-old Toledo city councilor picked a fight with Timber Unity.
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DIALOGUE Last week, WW examined a brouhaha in a typically quiet place: a city council meeting in the tiny Lincoln County town of Toledo, where residents from all over Oregon gave testimony on whether Timber Unity enables right-wing extremists (“Timber Army,” Feb. 3, 2021). A conservative group that hosts rallies in support of loggers and truckers, Timber Unity has been subject to intense scrutiny since its spokeswoman Angelita Sanchez attended the U.S. Capitol insurrection. Experts on extremism say that Timber Unity attracts white supremacists and paramilitary groups. Timber Unity leaders say they condemn white supremacy and the group is nonpartisan. Here’s what our readers have to say: Lance Cummins via wweek.com: “‘Like any other organization, you can always get a turd in a punch bowl. You can’t kick ’em all out. It’s just the way it is,’ [Toledo City Councilor Betty] Kamikawa said during the meeting.’ Not true. You can and should kick them all out. Police your Facebook page. It isn’t that hard to do.” @russtofferson via Twitter: “That’s the scary thing; on the surface it seems innocuous and has broad appeal to rural conservatives, but for those seeking to recruit and radicalize for the culture war, it’s a gold mine. And no one in the group appears motivated to do anything to thwart the extreme element.” arichf via wweek.com: “I signed up for the Facebook page of Timber Unity because I work in forestry. By the time they blocked me, I had learned the following: (1) Nobody on that page knows rat-fuck about trees, (2) they are filled with rage at the governor, ‘city people’ and anyone who does not see
Dr. Know
As of 2019, Michael Miller, CEO of Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette, was making just over $900,000 in annual compensation. You might say that sounds like a lot to run an outfit most people associate with broken curling irons and stuffed animals that smell like baby spit, but in fairness to Miller, he himself is not broken, and he probably smells at least as good as Jeff Merkley. In fact, Miller has kind of been killing it for decades. Since he took the helm in 1986, revenues have increased thirtyfold, making GICW and its 2,800 employees No. 1 among the nation’s 160 regional Goodwill chains in both donations and revenue. Is this the result of genuine managerial genius, or is it just a case of somebody having the stones to charge you $12 for a used T-shirt that sold at Target brand new for $9.99? Who’s to say? Either way, it probably didn’t hurt that 1986 was a good year for a Portland-area retail chain to institute Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
Stacey H via wweek.com: “Too bad Toledo and other small towns have spent so much time and energy doing what is failing instead of looking forward for projects that could create jobs and growth for the future. It’s a shame that the people suffering from generational downward mobility choose to continue the exact same path and blaming others instead of finding upward mobility in any other way at all.” Mark Kuestner via Facebook: “I’ve met some reasonable people wearing Timber Unity clothing items. They don’t seem to realize the ‘movement’ is funded and supported by wealthy conservatives.” Brian Richards via Facebook: “Typical leftist demonizing everyone that doesn’t think as them… that’s why we are divided. Timber families are now terrorists and racist, according to them.” Ashanti Hall via Facebook: “If you allow racists to say racist things on your platform, your platform is racist. Especially with Facebook groups. It’s really easy to set up keywords that alert mods to racism. Then you can choose to give those people a warning or kick them out of the group.” 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
I try to avoid donating my old stuff to Goodwill—their CEO makes way too much money, and people who are really poor and/or without homes probably can’t afford Goodwill prices. Is there another way for me to pass things on to those in need? —Sarah R.
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the wisdom of Donald Trump, (3) they are heavily armed. The rich people who fund these outfits ought to be held accountable. They are deliberately whipping up the human tendency toward xenophobia, all in pursuit of keeping their taxes low.”
a policy of buying the real estate its stores were sitting on instead of renting it—GICW’s assets are now valued at well over $400 million. The board of directors clearly wants to keep the good news coming, and they’re willing to pay for it. Their statement about the fact that their CEO makes twice as much as the bosses of comparable nonprofits talks of “retaining outstanding leaders.” In other words, they don’t want Miller—the Damian Lillard of used George Foreman grills—getting lured away by those slimeballs at Goodwill Industries of Boise-Spokane. All that said, Sarah, none of this solves your problem of what to do with your crap if you want to make sure it finds its way into the hands of the neediest. There are a number of worthwhile organizations that will take your donations, but Transition Projects (tprojects.org) leaps to mind, since its office at 665 NW Hoyt St. accepts donations around the clock, seven days a week. There are a few caveats: Clothing should be in good condition, appropriate for the season, clean and ready to wear. They also accept linens, hygiene products and other useful household items. George Foreman grills accepted by prior arrangement only. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
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POLICE CALLED TO RYAN’S HOME FOUR TIMES SINCE OCTOBER: Portland police have been dispatched to City Commissioner Dan Ryan’s home at least four times since October, according to public records obtained by WW. The incidents surrounded Ryan’s Nov. 5 vote against cutting the Portland Police Bureau’s budget by $18 million. The first dispatch occurred Oct. 28, when protesters arrived at the commissioner’s home one week prior to the vote. On Nov. 1, police responded to a report of “vandalism” there, records say. Then, on Nov. 5, the day of the vote, police were called to an incident labeled as “arson” and another described as an open investigation. (It is unclear whether the two Nov. 5 calls stemmed from the same incident.) The most recent dispatch occurred Jan. 10, according to records. “To date, there have been no suspects located or arrested in cases associated with the crimes (vandalism or otherwise) at the commissioner’s home,” says Portland police spokesman Lt. Greg Pashley. Ryan’s office confirmed to WW that police had been called to his home multiple times, but it is unclear whether the calls were made by Ryan or neighbors. “Over the past few months, there were circumstances in which the police were called to Commissioner Ryan’s home,” his spokeswoman Gwen Thompson said. “Commissioner Ryan is focused on our city’s most pressing issues—protecting our unsheltered neighbors from the coming winter storm…and working with his colleagues to build a community safety system that works for everyone.” VANDALS HIT JADE DISTRICT: Asian-owned businesses along Southeast 82nd Avenue are cleaning up after a wave of smashed windows. In the last week of January, 13 businesses in East Portland, centered in the Jade District along Southeast 82nd, were vandalized and had windows broken. At least nine of the businesses were Asian-owned, according to the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon. The vandalized businesses include My Brother’s Crawfish, Hanoi Kitchen, Utopia Restaurant and Lounge, and Buddy’s Lounge. Duncan Hwang, associate director of APANO, says there’s no direct evidence the vandalism was motivated by racism—but the high number of Asian-owned businesses hit by vandals suggests a connection. “East Portland’s BIPOC- and immigrant-owned businesses are already facing incredible challenges due to the pandemic,”
Hwang says. “Having to make repairs is an unnecessary challenge making their livelihoods more difficult.” BROWN RELAXES COVID RESTRICTIONS: On Friday, Feb. 12, indoor dining returns to Portland before most schools are expected to begin only limited reopenings. The change comes as Multnomah County and surrounding metro counties had fewer than 200 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in the previous two weeks. Restaurants can host 25% of their usual capacity (up to a maximum of 50 people). “Reopening schools is not a light switch that can be turned off and on at a moment’s notice, but the local processes to return students to classrooms are happening right now and have been for several weeks,” says Charles Boyle, spokesman for Gov. Kate Brown. Health officials in the Portland area urged people to continue to practice caution: “The metro region is still in the high-risk category, which means the virus is still circulating widely in our communities,” said Washington County health officer Dr. Christina Baumann in a statement. “Until more people are vaccinated, we must continue to practice safety measures to protect our most vulnerable residents.” Gyms and entertainment venues can begin to open as well. Nursing homes may allow visitors.
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BAR MOVES TO BOOST PROTECTIONS: Two years ago, WW reported how former personal injury attorney Lori Deveny allegedly stole millions of dollars from her clients by cashing their settlement checks from insurers (“Game Over,” Jan. 16, 2019). Now the Oregon State Bar has requested legislation that would require insurers to notify beneficiaries in writing when they send checks for $5,000 or more. Senate Bill 180 is currently parked at the Senate Judiciary Committee and is not scheduled for a hearing. Also in response to the Deveny scandal, the Oregon State Bar Board of Governors will consider Feb. 12 whether to raise the cap on the amount victims of dishonest lawyers can claim from the bar’s client security fund—from $50,000 to $100,000. Portland lawyer Sean Riddell, who represents a client from whom Deveny allegedly stole a six-figure settlement, says it’s appropriate for insurers to communicate directly with beneficiaries. “The more transparency and notice the better,” Riddell says. “And if anyone in the insurance industry says it adds a burden— it doesn’t.” Deveny is set for criminal trial in Multnomah County Circuit Court in July. HERNANDEZ FACES EXPULSION VOTE: After four days of hearings, including testimony by women who alleged state Rep. Diego Hernandez (D-East Portland) harassed them, the House Conduct Committee voted unanimously Feb. 5 to expel Hernandez for 18 violations of House rules prohibiting harassment and creating a hostile workplace. Numerous Democratic groups, including some that represent people of color, called on Hernandez to resign, as did Gov. Kate Brown, State Treasurer Tobias Read, and the Democratic leaders of both the House and the Senate. Hernandez’s attorney, Kevin Lafky, told WW the proceedings against his client were unfair because Conduct Committee members did not get to see all the evidence he had submitted. “The conduct he’s been accused of does not merit the loss of his seat,” Lafky adds. No Oregon legislator has ever been expelled by a vote of his peers, so the process is new, but officials tentatively expect a floor vote Feb. 16.
Ringling Brothers circus arrives, first time in town Elegant high society wedding of KK Cutter’s daughter, Laura Merchant Frank Bruno murdered by local Black Hand mafia Earliest car arrives in Spokane Falls, scares horses
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45% That’s the percentage of Oregon prison staff expected to refuse a COVID-19 vaccine. Oregon Department of Corrections staff are responsible for all but one COVID-19 outbreak in state prisons, according to the department’s infectious disease doctor. But only 55% of prison staff will elect to get the vaccine, the state estimates. “Almost every outbreak in the ODOC facilities has been caused by staff members bringing the virus into the prison before they were symptomatic,” said Joe Bugher, the department’s assistant director for health services, in a Jan. 27 declaration in a federal lawsuit. “With limited supplies available, the state of Oregon determined that the most effective means of slowing transmission through the use of vaccines was to administer vaccines to staff as quickly as possible.” But in the same declaration, Bugher conceded the difficulty of convincing prison staff to get vaccinated. The state estimates that “up to 55% of staff would accept the vaccine,” Bugher said. “The national average for acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine is around this number.” The national acceptance rate is closer to 61%, according to a December 2020 study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. (That same study found that vaccine acceptance rates varied based on political ideology: 44% for Republicans, and 77% for Democrats.) Beyond that, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top-ranking infectious disease doctor, told The New York Times in December that herd immunity could be achieved when about 90% of the population was vaccinated. Other state and city agencies have surpassed vaccinating the majority of employees. Portland Fire & Rescue says 80% of its sworn staff has been vaccinated. The Portland Police Bureau says, as of Feb. 9, it has vaccinated 62% of sworn staff. Oregon Health & Science University has vaccinated at least 70% of its staff and students so far. If past is prologue, the Department of Corrections might have an uphill battle achieving similar rates. For months, the agency struggled to enforce mask-wearing among its approximately 4,600 employees, with most resistance from corrections officers. Dr. Daniel Dewsnup, the department’s infectious disease physician, said in a November deposition, filed in federal court in January, that in late spring and early summer he witnessed fewer than 10% of prison staffers wearing masks. In July, after months of mask-flouting among
GOOD EXAMPLE: Portland Fire Chief Sara Boone led her bureau to a high rate of vaccination.
staff, DOC deputy director Heidi Steward sent out a memo demanding mask use. Questioned during the deposition, Dewsnup speculated as to why staff resists wearing masks. “I don’t know: COVID rebellion, confusion, politicization, orneriness,” Dewsnup said. “I don’t think it was a lack of education, but lack of acceptance of education. There are still large parts of Eastern Oregon and—well, everywhere, really…50 percent of the population may believe that masking is part of a conspiracy. I can’t explain that rationally.” Dewsnup echoed the same statistic as Bugher: All but one COVID-19 infection in Oregon prisons can be traced back to employees. “The only way to get COVID into the institution is [to] have it come in through a staff member. With the exception of one, that’s been the way that each of these outbreaks have started since April,” Dewsnup said. “Everything has been staff-to-staff transmission and eventually staff-to-[inmate] transmission.” The agency “strongly encourages” but does not require COVID-19 vaccines. And it’s no longer tracking who gets them. The most recently publicized vaccination rates for DOC staff hover around 35%, but the agency stopped keeping track of vaccinations among staff after the department switched from vaccinating employees in house to sending them to pharmacies at Safeway, according to spokeswoman Jennifer Black. “With Safeway now overseeing the process, DOC is no longer tracking or reporting staff vaccination numbers,” Black said. “DOC does not require staff to report that they have received the vaccine as this would be considered a violation of HIPAA guidelines.” (Black added that the numbers might eventually become available through the Oregon Health Authority.) In the meantime, COVID rates in the state’s prisons have continued to climb. Since the pandemic began, over 3,400 inmates—about a quarter of the state’s total adult prison population—have tested positive for the virus. Forty-two have died. Separately, more than 800 staff have tested positive. Dewsnup noted that in some prisons, like Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution (458 total cases), Snake River Correctional Institution (487 cases) and the Oregon State Penitentiary (385 cases), the rates of COVID are so high that the prisons might acquire resistance through sheer exposure to the virus. “Yeah, I think EOCI, Snake River and OSP all have very high rates,” Dewsnup said. “They’re almost reaching herd immunity.” TESS RISKI. Rachel Monahan contributed reporting to this story.
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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
FREE FOR ALL: Lawmakers consider how to charge for highways.
House Bill 3055 The Legislature’s transportation leaders want to put the brakes on congestion pricing and hit the gas on tolling. CHIEF SPONSORS: Sen. Lee Beyer (D-Springfield), Rep. Susan McClain (D-Hillsboro) WHAT IT WOULD DO: House Bill 2017, passed four years ago, pushed the Oregon Department of Transportation toward congestion pricing on I-5 and I-205. The goal was to charge motorist variable prices to use the highways, reducing peak-hour travel, and spend the proceeds on alternative forms of transportation. In other words, congestion pricing charges more money during rush hours, discouraging drivers from hitting the freeway when it’s clogged. This bill, which would also make numerous unrelated transportation policy changes, proposes to replace congestion pricing with tolling, which charges motorists a fixed fee and dedicates the revenue to improving the highways where tolls are charged. WHO SUPPORTS IT? Leaders of the Legislature’s transportation committees and the Oregon Transportation Commission. Metro-area lawmakers have introduced separate legislation that would restrict the use of funds raised from tolling I-205 to projects expanding it. One Democrat, state Rep. Mark Meek (D-Oregon City), signed onto that bill. WHO OPPOSES IT? The city of Portland, Metro, Multnomah County, TriMet and nonprofits such as 1000 Friends of Oregon, the Oregon Environmental Council and Business for a Better Portland oppose switching from congestion pricing to tolling. WHY IT MATTERS: The bill would effectively gut the state’s plan to reduce the number of cars on Portland-area interstate highways. In testimony at a Feb. 9 hearing, Sara Wright of the Oregon Environmental Council emphasized the difference between congestion pricing and tolling: One seeks to reduce the number of vehicles on highways; the other seeks to maximize revenue, which means maximizing traffic. “We need congestion pricing that pays for multimodal corridor investments,” Wright testified. “If the toll program’s priority is to pay for freeway bonds, the program cannot be designed to effectively reduce congestion.” NIGEL JAQUISS. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
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NEWS BLACK AND WHITE IN OREGON
MICK HANGLAND-SKILL
CHRIS NESSETH
VOICES
OPEN UP: Portland parents rallied last week for in-person classes to resume.
Samantha Vembu A parent describes the misery of Zoom school—and calls for it to end.
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
A VEMBU TH
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“First off: I’m not a white, wealthy person of power. I am biracial. My son has my exact same skin color, and I’ve adopted outside of my race. As a person of color, I’m really offended by what they’re saying. How dare they take my voice? That is for me to decide. Where do they get off filling in the voice of people of color? I do not appreciate them putting words in my mouth and trying to say that it’s for the betterment of my child. Don’t I get to make a choice about my children? “My daughter is 4. She will need [English as a second
M
Samantha Vembu is tired of the debate over reopening schools being framed by people who can’t see her 5-yearold son’s frustration. For weeks, Gov. Kate Brown has been trying to nudge Oregon teachers back into classrooms, in part by moving them to the front of the COVID-19 vaccination line. As WW reported last week, that’s not moving the needle at Portland Public Schools and other large districts, because the Oregon Education Association and other teachers’ unions are resisting a return to in-person instruction. Some teachers argue that resuming classes would spread the virus to their families and their students’ grandparents. They say a hasty reopening this spring would only cause greater harm for the most vulnerable kids of color. Vembu says those teachers have no idea what harm is already being done. Her kids, who are 4 and 5 and attend the Beaverton School District, are miserable in distance learning, she says. And they’re among the lucky ones: the children who aren’t left in front of a screen while parents work frontline jobs, who aren’t being abused, who haven’t dropped off the school district’s radar entirely. Frustrated that parents don’t have a powerful political lobby—like the ones that kept restaurants open and schools closed—Vembu is forming one. She joined ED300, a parent campaign declaring that 300 days away from school is enough. In a recent interview, WW presented her with the allegation teachers have levied: that the clamor to reopen schools is coming from white, wealthy parents. Here’s how she responded. AARON MESH.
language]. ESL is now being taught on a screen. Have you ever tried to learn a foreign language on a screen? It does not go well. Kindergarten is not going well. But when it’s not going well, the screen gets turned off and the teacher does not get to see that. When my son is frustrated and then he wants to hit his head on the wall, we turn the screen off. You know, yesterday the school had a psychologist or the school counselor on—he hung up on him because he didn’t want to play zoo or whatever it was. There are a lot of things that teachers do not see. “And it’s up to the school district to give me the education that my children need and to give them the safe place they can be. And I think the bigger question that we have to ask here is not necessarily about the union but who the school districts are trying to serve. Are they being an employer or are they taking care of students? Because if they’re being an employer, let’s be honest: Be an employer, come out with a different product. But right now, children’s education is the product that they’re in the business of manufacturing. SA And that is the product that I am not receiving. “Every time I’m on Zoom with my son, his kindergarten teacher is amazing, but he doesn’t learn it through the screen. It’s not physical. They need hands-on instruction. They need tactical input in order to learn. And that’s one of those things that happens as children’s brains develop between being a baby and being a teenager. Adults don’t have to touch things. Children do. You can’t touch a Zoom screen. “When he’s learning to spell words, he has to move the little letters with his finger. That’s not the same as touching a magnetic letter. He gets an assignment, I have to sit there next to him and figure out how to make it something that he can physically touch so he can understand it. And then I have to take a picture of it. And it sometimes takes me 10 minutes to turn in one assignment that in class would have taken him five minutes to do. That is from my time. “And I probably spend two hours a day having arguments with him about getting his work done. That does not make him feel good. That makes me feel horrible as a parent. And I’m sitting here wondering why it is that I have to do this. My husband is a family doctor. We have read the studies from Europe. And I think Switzerland or Sweden, they didn’t shut down at all. There are studies and studies that show this can be done safely. And so I’m wondering why it is that the teachers’ union is in charge of judging what is safe for my child. Why am I not talking about that with my school?”
HOLD THE LINE: People facing hardship can dial 211.
Who Calls for Help?
A disproportionate number of 211 calls in Multnomah County come from Black people. Anyone facing hardship in the U.S. can dial 211 to get connected to community resources, whether they need to find a meal or get help paying their electric bill. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased this necessity for a lot of people. But 211 data shows that Black people in Multnomah County are dialing 211 much more frequently than others. From January 2020 to January 2021, a total of 16,112 calls to 211 were made by Black people—more than all other nonwhite racial demographics combined. White people in Multnomah County called the help line 18,796 times. But the county is 79% white alone. Black people make up only about 6% of the county’s population. Cara Kangas, director of partnerships for 211info, says the need has been so high during the pandemic that 211info had to nearly double the number of full-time employees and couldn’t meet the need in the same way it could before. Before 2020, the 211 line could mostly meet all community needs by directing callers to the appropriate resources. Now the need is overwhelming. (While there were significantly fewer total calls to 211 in 2019, Black people actually made more calls than white people, 3,964 compared with 3,678.) “We know that Black, Indigenous and communities of color face a lot of disparities in accessing resources and trusting where to find information,” Kangas says. “Oregon has a very crappy history when it comes to treatment of Black, Indigenous and communities of color. And as an agency we have equity just embedded into all of our programs.” Although the 211 line has seen a substantial increase in calls statewide, Kangas says there is a clear disparity among those who make those calls. The 211 line offers an alternative, she says, to calling a 911 system that has not always been friendly to Black people and other people of color. “We’ve seen an increase of calls from people in crisis. They don’t want to call 911 because it’s not safe,” Kangas says. “Police are not safe for communities of color, so they call 211. We want to figure out: How can we best triage this person in crisis without calling 911? If someone doesn’t want us to call 911, we honor that.” LATISHA JENSEN.
NEWS
JACK KENT
The Newest Profession An East Coast advocacy group is using Oregon as a testing ground for decriminalizing sex work.
BY S U SA N E L I Z A B E T H S H EPARD
T
o Mariah Grant, Oregon looks like the kind of place that could let somebody sell sex without fear of arrest. She has good reason to think so. Oregonians have repeatedly taken bold steps to allow business practices that most states consider crimes. This state was among the first to take cannabis possession off the criminal books, then create a legal market for weed. And last fall, with Ballot Measure 110, voters made Oregon the first state in the nation to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of all drugs, including heroin and methamphetamine. Grant thinks the next item that should be erased from Oregon’s criminal statutes is full-service sex work—that is, the state’s prostitution laws. “We saw the success of Measure 110 last year to decriminalize personal use of drugs, and felt that Oregon was ready for this,” Grant tells WW. “They understand that criminalizing sex workers is not going to protect anybody’s human rights, and it’s the state to make history by decriminalizing sex work fully.” Grant is advocacy director for the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, a New York City-based law clinic founded in 2001 to provide legal services to trafficking victims and sex workers facing criminal charges. For years, the group has sought to decriminalize sex work. In Oregon, Grant has a willing lawmaker and a wealthy patron. So she’s heading west, hoping Oregon will become the first state to decriminalize sex work statewide. Last week, state Rep. Rob Nosse (D-Portland) filed a bill at the request of the Sex Workers Project. House Bill 3088 would invalidate the state’s prostitution statutes, decriminalizing those engaged in selling sex, their customers, and third parties. Nosse introduced his bill understanding it makes Oregon a test case. “We seem to do really well at passing these libertarianesque things,” he says. “We were one of the first to legalize recreational marijuana; now you’ve got Ballot Measure 110 that just passed. So if you’ve got an idea you want to germinate, particularly in that space, maybe this is a good place to do it.” Grant, who’s originally from Eugene, says Oregon’s progressive atmosphere makes it a prime candidate for SWP’s first policy efforts outside of the New York area. Similar bills have been filed in New York and a handful of other Northeastern states in the past few years. None has passed. The legal sex industry already operates more freely in Oregon that anywhere else, thanks to the state’s inclusion of sexualized expression in its free speech protections as
well as its relative lack of an organized religious conservative lobby. (A 2017 Gallup poll found 48% of Oregonians aren’t religious, one of the highest figures in the nation.) HB 3088 would implement what advocates call “full decriminalization.” It removes penalties for selling sex, paying for it, and facilitating it as a third party. It would not be legalization, as it exists in parts of Nevada, where another specific set of laws regulate selling sex. Laws against compelling prostitution or coercing someone to do sex work would remain on the books, as would the state’s human trafficking statutes concerning use of force, fraud or coercion, and laws making a trafficking offense of any instance involving a minor. Even with those caveats, it’s a bold proposal. More often, state legislators have introduced partial decriminalization, sometimes called the “Nordic model,” in which selling sex is not a crime but paying for it is. Sex worker advocates have long opposed the Nordic model, which they call harmful. “If our clients are criminalized, how will we work?” asks SWP communications director Zola Bruce. “And the people who are targeted are usually black, people who are Latinx, are people of color, and are not rich white clients. That’s something we have to really look at when it comes to racial profiling and the challenges that we’re dealing with when it comes to policing.” And decriminalizing sex work has gained momentum as a social and racial justice reform. Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt’s campaign platform said he would avoid the “pointless incarceration of those voluntarily engaged in sex work.” Fauna, a Portland-area activist with local decriminalization advocates DecrimOR and harm-reduction sex worker outreach group Stroll PDX, says there are clear disparities in who actually gets charged with prostitution in Oregon. “The vast majority [are] women of color, Black women, trans women, people who are already marginalized and easy targets,” she says. “It’s not higher-end white sex workers who have more safety networks.” The Sex Workers Project is gearing up for an all-out public relations campaign, which it calls DecrimwORk. Grant says that includes state-level efforts around “decriminalizing, destigmatizing and decarcerating sex workers in the state.” And if the strategy works here? “We’re looking at that being our model,” Grant says, “as we would succeed in decriminalizing sex work in Oregon and then expand that into other states.”
At least one Oregon man is enthusiastic enough to fund the plan. Last fall, SWP received a $1.2 million gift from an anonymous donor. WW has learned that donor is philanthropist Aaron Boonshoft, a Portland resident and son of wealthy Ohio commodities trader Oscar Boonshoft. Aaron Boonshoft is not a household name in Oregon, and while records show he made some political contributions in the early 2000s, he is not known locally as a political donor. But public records from his 2019 divorce settlement offer a glimpse into his fortune: His ex-wife received tens of millions, including dozens of parcels of real estate. Boonshoft declined to comment through a spokesperson: “Mr. Boonshoft wants the focus to be on this important cause and the community of people who deserve rights as workers, as citizens and humans.” Passing a law doesn’t typically require a million dollars. SWP’s war chest and its hiring of longtime ballot measure consultant Ted Blaszak suggest the project is prepared to decriminalize sex work via the same method Oregon struck weed and meth from the criminal code: the ballot box. Grant says that’s something SWP will consider if Nosse’s bill doesn’t pass. “It’s a matter of not putting all our eggs in one basket,” she says. “We don’t want to limit ourselves by focusing just on the Oregon Legislature or a ballot initiative—we wanted to keep both options open. We also see a legislative effort as an opportunity to talk with Oregonians about the topic as we encourage folks to call their representatives asking them to support the bill.” The Oregon District Attorneys Association says it hasn’t reviewed HB 3088 yet. The Oregon Department of Justice says it hasn’t taken a position. The next step for the bill is getting a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Clackamas). Bynum did not respond to a request for comment. Grant and Bruce, the advocates, say they expect opposition to come from police and traditional opponents of sex work, who confuse sex trafficking and consensual sex work. (Such opposition could emerge from Vancouver, Wash.based Shared Hope International, an evangelical antitrafficking organization that has lobbied for harsher penalties for the customers of Oregon sex workers.) “Historically in the U.S., we’ve seen opposition from people who have a misunderstanding of human trafficking and sex work and conflate the two,” says Grant. “And we want to be really clear that human trafficking exists within any labor sector—including the sex trades—and that sex work itself is not synonymous with exploitation.”
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WE WEAR MASKS TOGETHER TO STAY STRONG TOGETHER Make a plan to stay safe.
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NEWS BRIAN BURK
The Gatekeepers
Pioneer Place wants to install new security gates. City approval could take up to 103 days. SHINING LIKE A DIAMOND: A downtown MAX train passes the boarded-up entry of Pioneer Place. BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS
njaquiss@wweek.com
The first sign that Portland’s economy is rebounding from a year of paralysis will come when downtown stores strip off their plywood facings. That transformation could take just a few hours. But to erect largely invisible roll-down security gates at the city’s premier shopping center? That, WW has learned, could take 103 days. One of last summer’s indelible images was of masked looters emptying out the Louis Vuitton luxury leather goods store in Pioneer Place, the swanky 317,000-squarefoot downtown mall, which includes Tiffany’s, the Apple Store and H&M among its 61 tenants. For now, Portland’s highest-end retailers are hidden behind sheets of plywood and particle board. The temporary protection is adorned by murals featuring provocative messages like “Abolish ICE,” a look more Banksy than Beverly Hills. Brookfield Properties, the Manhattan-based owner of the mall, decided late last year that as the city moves toward reopening, it wanted to provide more permanent security for the people and property in its stores by installing roll-up gates for its exterior doors. Brookfield drew up a design for the gates. But that puts the company’s project under the jurisdiction of the Portland Bureau of Development Services, the city’s notoriously slow-moving permitting agency, which is the steward of Oregon’s land use laws and Portland’s process-rich brand of government. On Jan. 28, Brookfield applied to the city for permission to install roll-down security doors at each of Pioneer Place’s seven entrances. Cost: $542,000. In its application, Brookfield noted that some other Portland property owners have taken similar measures without asking permission. “It is our understanding rolling steel security doors have been installed unapproved at other properties in downtown Portland,” the company’s architect wrote. BDS officials were unmoved. Pioneer Place, at 700 SW 5th Ave., falls in what the city calls a “design overlay zone.”
That and other factors triggered an automatic trip to the Design Review Commission. “Because these security gates would change the exterior appearance of a building located downtown and in a design overlay zone, and based on the valuation of the project provided by applicant, the proposed addition of those gates would need to go through a Type III land use review,” says BDS spokesman Ken Ray. After Brookfield submitted its permit application Jan. 28, Ray says bureau officials have 21 days to review the application for sufficiency. When BDS says the application is complete—many are not on the first try—a public hearing in front of the Design Review Commission must happen within 51 days. Should the commission reject the changes, Brookfield can appeal to the City Council. That adds another three weeks, bringing the possible length of approval for the gates to 103 days—early May, in other words. That timeline irks major downtown property owners, who are already disconsolate about customers disappearing during COVID-19, leaving their storefronts to be used for target practice. “It is self-evident that a security gate shouldn’t trigger a 100-plus-day land use review, particularly during this period of crisis,” says Vanessa Sturgeon, CEO of TMT Development, which owns Fox Tower and Park Avenue West, among other buildings. Jim Mark, CEO of the Melvin Mark Companies, another major downtown property owner, supports the city’s design review process, which he says preserves the aesthetics of downtown. But like Sturgeon, he’d like to see the city speed up approval so that retailers feel comfortable and the plywood can come down. “I believe in design review, but extreme times require extreme measures,” Mark says. Peter Finley Fry, a planning consultant who has shepherded numerous projects through the city’s permitting process, says the rules are a function of state law and don’t allow for much flexibility. He says over the past two decades, his experience has been that design review can take even longer than the city’s timeline because ques-
tions from city staff and the commission stop the clock for resolution. “If I were involved, I might suggest the applicant just go ahead and build it,” Fry says. “To be honest, people regularly do that outside of downtown.” Ray, the BDS spokesman, agrees there’s not a lot of flexibility. “If the owner were not making changes to the exterior of the building, if the project was of a lower valuation [below $481,300], or if the applicant were adding security gates inside the building, it would not trigger this type of land use review,” Ray says. Fry notes that in rare cases, the council can ram through land use decisions under emergency ordinances. Sturgeon and others hope BDS Commissioner Dan Ryan will do just that. “This is actually a great opportunity for the city to demonstrate to brick-and-mortar retailers, employers and visitors that they are willing to prioritize what is necessary to get downtown on a path to recovery,” Sturgeon says. “Dan Ryan’s office was recently made aware of this issue, and I have every confidence that he will approach it with the common sense with which he approaches everything in his purview.” Mark Bond, an aide to Ryan, says the commissioner’s staff met with Brookfield last week and is researching next steps, although Bond notes that Ryan wants to be sure Brookfield doesn’t get special treatment just because of its size and location. “We are consulting the City Attorney’s Office to determine what potential options are and don’t have enough information yet to determine that,” Bond says. The city’s largest business lobby group, however, says fast-tracking Brookfield’s application should be a no-brainer. “Simple things like rolling gates are normal building amenities in larger cities for safety and functionality,” says Andrew Hoan, CEO of the Portland Business Alliance. “Getting issues like this resolved quickly is critical to helping Portland inch back towards a new normal and safely on the road to reopening.” Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
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24 Reasons to Still Love Portland It’s hard to love Portland right now. Even as we publish our annual valentine to the city, that fact is not lost on us. Complaining that things were better 20 years ago, five years ago, two months ago is a long-standing local pastime. But after a year trapped inside, grousing has turned to doomsaying, and doomsaying is curdling into anger. Windows are getting smashed nightly. Businesses are closing left and right. Developers are fleeing, and articles in national magazines are proclaiming the city is in its death throes. Sure, many places in America are dealing with similar issues, as leaders are forced to choose between public health and the economy. But in Portland, tensions are particularly high: When the mayor is out here pepper-spraying constituents, you know we’re reaching a boiling point.
Consider this, though: If you’re reading this right now, something has kept you here. Maybe it’s the half-century-old diner that, so far, has withstood the pandemic and still gives regulars a stool to grumble from (page 16). Maybe it’s our plentiful greenspaces which, over the past year, have become the only safe places for us to get out and see one another (page 18). Or maybe it’s because we’re constantly unearthing pieces of our history—and, in some cases, bringing them back to life (page 19). Even in relatively brighter times, this issue has served as a reminder of the things that keep us tethered to this place. In a year of incredible loss, it feels even more important to pause and take stock of what remains, like the country’s oldest tofu manufacturer, still handcrafting its product after 111 years (page 16). Or the honor-
ary mayor of Northeast Portland, who remains a presence in the community at age 90 (page 17). We haven’t yet lost our sense of generosity (page 13) nor our weirdness: After all, this is a town that loved a llama so much it’s now been stuffed and put on display in perpetuity (page 20). None of that, of course, discounts our very real and numerous problems. You’re not imagining things: It’s rough out there. But as former mayoral candidate Sarah Iannarone points out, we have been, in the past, a city of bold solutions (page 12). And after a decade of buying into our own hype, the rising chorus of angst is pushing us back toward being that city once again—and that, in itself, is a reason to still love Portland. —Matthew Singer, Arts & Culture Editor
1. Because we’re NOT Portlandia anymore... If you heed the current wave of concern about Portland, we’re in a death spiral. Our once international darling and beacon of civic excellence has devolved into an ungovernable anarchist jurisdiction. I’m not buying it. This year’s protests were more symptom than cause, as our city grappled with its racist history alongside other systemic problems, like an affordable housing shortage and the raging wildfires of a swiftly warming planet. And despite the tragic loss of so many beloved small businesses due to COVID-19, Portland’s economy is likely to bounce back relatively quickly. In a meeting last week, I warned the out-of-state manager of a major project: “Heads up, Portland’s a little cranky right now.” For the foreseeable future, it’s likely our elected officials are going to anger more people than they satisfy day to day regardless of the solutions they put forward. In other words, Portland may remain—on the surface and in media narratives—more ungovernable zone of chaos than civic beacon. Is that so bad, though? Maybe getting kicked out of the spotlight as a Green City darling and shot back into it as a city grappling with conflict is going to be good for us. Like a married couple who stopped arguing years ago, some high-volume rage could serve us better than low-key complacency. 12
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In the latter part of the 20th century, Portland had a reputation for experimentation and innovation. The goal was a better future for our people. Our community-led 1988 Central City Plan was a dreamy sketchbook of fantastical city building that included an outdoor marketplace at the Morrison bridgehead and a water taxi on the Willamette River. Not long after, Mayor Vera Katz would float concepts like decommissioning Interstate 5 through the central city and capping I-405—ideas that are scoffed at when I mention them today. We are at our best when we tap into our principles to achieve more for our people. What if today’s rage helps move us toward cultural shifts and expands our thinking about the tomorrow that is possible? What if embracing—rather than tear-gassing—our renegade spirit could bolster our global reputation and help ensure our service sector rebounds quickly through travel and tourism? We will never reclaim our brand until we refocus our efforts on what people are experiencing each day. When we can’t be smug anymore, when we can’t hide behind admirable aspirations, we’re going to have to do the hard work of figuring out who we really are—and what we want to be. SARAH IANNARONE.
CHRIS NESSETH
M O T O YA N A K A M U R A / M U LT N O M A H C O U N T Y
Portland Free Fridge Grand opening of Experience Oregon and Statehood Day Celebration at the Oregon Historical Society in 2018
2. Because the Oregon Historical Society is ST ILL anti-racist... When a group of rioters shattered the front windows of the Oregon Historical Society on Oct. 14, as part of an “Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage,” among the loudest voices expressing “revulsion” at the vandalism was the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. To understand why the tribe felt protective of the museum, it helps to know a little history. In 2019, the historical society debuted an ambitious, immersive exhibit called Experience Oregon. That journey through state history was developed in collaboration with nine tribes that call Oregon home. “They all had the same request,” recalls Kerry Tymchuk, executive director of OHS. “‘We know we’re at the beginning of the exhibit, because we were here first. But we’re still here.’ We made the pledge, and we upheld it, that we would return again and again to the story of the Native Americans.” In a moment when Americans are warring over whose names and visages are honored, Tymchuk and OHS are keenly aware that presenting history is a political act. Their solution isn’t erasure but exposure. A visitor to Experience Oregon would notice that tribes are as present at the exhibit’s end as its beginning. That visitor would also notice a white hood behind glass—an
artifact of Oregon’s longtime status as a haven for the Ku Klux Klan. It’s striking, the degree to which OHS is emphasizing the ugliest parts of Oregon’s heritage and presenting them as repulsive. The winter 2019 issue of its quarterly magazine was a study of white supremacy and violence across the state. It’s the single most popular issue the society has produced—OHS just ordered another 500 copies and is making all the articles free online. Not everyone is comfortable with this approach. Some complained. A handful of people ended their memberships. “There were people who came through [Experience Oregon] and said, ‘This made me feel guilty for being a white man,’” Tymchuk recalls. His reply? “It’s everyone’s duty to understand history. Our job is to tell the truth. We’re not the tourism bureau.” The museum’s response to broken windows reflected that attitude. Once the plywood was installed, OHS commissioned artist Tristan Irving to paint images of noteworthy Oregonians of color. Those portraits will become part of the museum’s permanent exhibition—making the vandalism of 2020 another piece of history that OHS documents. AARON MESH.
3. Because, almost a year later, Sen. Michael Dembrow is ST ILL sending a daily coronavirus newsletter to his constituents...
a closely contested seat, it would make more sense for him to spend so much time digesting state and national reports and distilling them for his peeps. But Dembrow is none of the above. The 69-year-old retired Portland Community College English and film professor does not aspire to higher office. Nor are there remotely conceivable circumstances in which he could lose one of the most reliably Democratic seats in the Legislature. So why does he do it? Logan Gilles, Dembrow’s policy adviser since 2009, says his boss has always loved the constituent service part of his job, having hosted more than 100 coffees since first winning election in 2008. And while he’s known in Salem for his work on education and the environment, Dembrow has repeatedly sponsored universal health care legislation. But as long as the pandemic continues, he plans to keep plugging away. “He—and we—hoped we would have long ago exhausted the need for daily email,” Gilles says. “But that hasn’t happened—and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.” NIGEL JAQUISS.
Lots of ambitious politicians ply constituents with never-ending fundraising emails, penned by consultants. State Sen. Michael Dembrow (D-Southeast Portland) is different. Almost every night since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Dembrow has banged away at his keyboard, cranking out updates for his constituents. His email marathon began March 16, and since then Dembrow has pressed send on hundreds of daily updates, including on weekends, relaxing only rarely. (Records show him slacking on July 4, Thanksgiving and Christmas.) The missives include graphs, charts, links and personal thoughts. “The number of newly reported tests really soared today,” he wrote Dec. 4, when the state reported a record 2,176 cases. “It may be that increased testing is catching a greater number of the cases that were otherwise going undetected. If so, that’s a good thing.” If Dembrow were a doctor, an ambitious young politician seeking to climb the ladder, or the holder of
4. Because we’re ST ILL looking out for each other... In a year when a terrifyingly large number of people struggled to get by, Portlanders decided to step up. People donated and distributed tents, warm clothes and respirators to filter out tear gas and wildfire smoke. Food pantries sprung up around the city, and citizens formed nonprofits, coalitions and ad hoc networks to get supplies to people who needed them most. Previously existing groups expanded their reach, or simply proved how valuable they already were. There’s obviously a lot more to be done to meet the basic needs of people living in this city. But at least Portlanders aren’t waiting around for someone else to do the work. Here are just a few ways Portlanders have been working to take care of each other: Portland Free Fridge pdxfreefridge.com At over two-dozen refrigerators stationed around the city, neighbors can stock what they can afford to give away or take what they need, from home-cooked meals to pantry staples and even toiletries. Snack Bloc instagram.com/snackblocpdx Initially founded to distribute food and supplies at protests, Snack Bloc now does everything from tent drives to activist movie nights. But it still hands out free food, too. Equitable Giving Circle equitablegivingcircle.org Along with giving out plants and care packages to Black Portlanders, Equitable Giving Circle has a free community-supported agriculture program for BIPOC families. It’s funded in part by CSA shares from BIPOC-owned farms that Equitable Giving Circle sells. Fires Igniting the Spirit instagram.com/fires_igniting_the_spirit After tirelessly providing supplies to Native tribes affected by last fall’s wildfires, Fires Igniting the Spirit, founded by Jason Umutuch of the Confederated Tribes of Warms Springs, recently started a food box delivery program for Indigenous families. Urban Gleaners urbangleaners.org Urban Gleaners holds free food markets several days a week and in multiple locations around the city. The organization gets its food from individual donors as well as Portland restaurants—which means the meals and ingredients up for grabs often come from local culinary institutions like Han Oak and Olympia Provisions. SHANNON GORMLEY. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
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BRIAN BURK
No. 12 Best City for Gamers (WalletHub, June 2020) No. 10 City With the Smallest Apartments (RENTCafe.com, April 2020)
north
PDX
northeast
cully dy
san
parkrose
northwest I-84 downtown southeast tabor
hwy. 26
BEAVERTON
powell / 26
I-5
hillsdale SELLWOOD multnomah lake oswego
I-84
hazelwood fairview rockwood
I-205
lents
GRESHAM pleasant valley
. 26 hw y
No. 16 Fittest City (ACSM American Fitness Index, Aug. 2020)
st. johns kenton
mlk jr.
No. 18 Worst City for Package Theft (Bid-on-Equipment.com, Dec. 2020)
forest park
. 30
No. 23 City With the Most Rats (Orkin, Oct. 2020)
linnton
hwy. 217
5. Because we’re ST ILL No. 1 in semi-factual superlatives...
In 2020, Multnomah County Library patrons broke a record. More than 4 million e-books and audiobooks were checked out from the county library last year, the highest digital circulation the system has ever seen. Even though libraries around the globe saw spikes in checkouts during the pandemic, Portland still stood out—Multnomah County had one of the 10 largest digital circulations worldwide, according to the company behind library app Libby. And in Portland, it often feels as if the library loves us back. Over the summer, the library announced it was forever doing away with late fees and cleared all existing fines. Coming a few days into protests against racism and police brutality,
amid conversations about investing in communities rather than punitive justice, the timing felt especially meaningful. It didn’t seem coincidental, either. A press release announced that ending fines was “just one way the library is taking immediate action.” Clearly, social justice was on the minds of library patrons, too. Layla F. Saad’s Me and White Supremacy was the overall top-circulating digital title, and How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi made it into the top two for both e-book and audiobook checkouts. But to paraphrase writers like Saida Grundy, antiracist reading is just reading if it’s not followed by action. In a sense, that’s another thing Portlanders can learn from our library—while we’re working toward bigger change, there are plenty of everyday things we can fix. SHANNON GORMLEY.
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6. Because we ST ILL love the library...
8. Because the beer scene is ST ILL expanding... After a year when most everybody feared Portland’s acclaimed beer industry would crumble under the burden of COVID-19 restrictions and below-normal sales, perhaps the last thing you would expect to happen next is a growth spurt. Rather than retract, however, a robust number of metro-area breweries plan to open second and third locations in 2021—the most ambitious of them is scheduled to launch spinoffs 4, 5 and 6 all before we enter another calendar year. A sudden, multiple-countywide expansion? Now that’s what you call a damn miracle. ANDI PREWITT. Breakside Brewery Year founded: 2010 Breakside Winebeergo at Collective Oregon Eateries, 3612 SE 82nd Ave. Estimated opening date: Late winter to early spring
No. 9 Best Place to Live in the U.S. (U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 2020)
Breakside Beaverton Beer Garden, Southwest Angel Avenue between Farmington Road and 1st Street. Estimated opening date: June
No. 8 Best City for Christmas (WalletHub, Dec. 2020)
Breakside Lake Oswego at the Windward Apartments, A Avenue and 1st Street. Estimated opening date: TBD
No. 6 Best City for Singles (MoneyWise.com, Dec. 2020)
Loyal Legion Year founded: 2015
No. 6 Best City for Coffee Lovers (ApartmentGuide.com, July 2020)
Loyal Legion Old Town Beaverton, 4500 SW Watson Ave. Estimated opening date: July 4 MadCow Brewing Year founded: 2017
No. 4 Best City for Beer Drinkers (SmartAsset, Dec. 2020)
MadCow Tap Room, 686 NW Eastman Parkway, Gresham. Estimated opening date: Early spring
No. 3 Most Cookie-Crazed State (TopAgency.com, Dec. 2020) No. 3 Most Generous U.S. City (LawnStarter, Dec. 2020) No. 1 Worst City for Car Theft (AutoinsuranceEZ, Jan. 2021) No. 1 Most Popular City for Thai Food in America (Chef’s Pencil, Feb. 2020) No. 1 Best City for Dogs (Top10.com, Oct. 2020) No. 1 Most Popular City for Vegans (Chef’s Pencil, Jan. 2021) No. 1 Best City for Semi-Factual Superlatives (Willamette Week, Feb. 2020)
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Migration Brewing Year founded: 2010
7. Because we ST ILL have Mary’s Club, at least on the internet... Even as Portland rapidly changed over the decades, you could always count on consistency at Mary’s Club. While the pandemic has upended all traditions—the strip club’s cursive marquee has temporarily gone dark— performers at the nearly 70-year-old institution have kept the show going virtually, practically since the very first shutdown last spring. Making the leap to online content may have seemed the least likely COVID pivot for Mary’s, which isn’t exactly known for technical innovation. The space itself appears frozen in time, with a scene that’s more 1950s stag party at an Elks lodge than 21st century strip bar. But both dancers and customers have transitioned easily to a stream-
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
ing format. Every Sunday, via Mary’s Instagram account or by email, viewers can purchase access to the show, which typically features a rotating cast of seven who all broadcast from their homes, and a couple of the bartenders even exchange banter in a chat room. Working outside their typical venue has posed its own challenges—after all, not every dancer has a pole in her living room. But forced relocation allows the performers to think beyond the cramped dais and get creative with routines. “We’ve had oil baths, we’ve had shower shows, we’ve had dancers rolling around on beds of roses,” says performer and virtual show co-producer Rocket Queen. “Mary’s Club is full of dancers who are just true entertainers and really love their job and love being onstage. We all miss it a lot. This is a fun, creative outlet.” ANDI PREWITT.
Migration in the former Hopworks Pub and Beergarden space, 3947 N Williams Ave. Estimated opening date: March Stickmen Brewing Year opened: 2013 Stickmen Cedar Mill, Northwest 118th Avenue and Cedar Falls Drive. Estimated opening date: Fall Upright Brewing Year founded: 2009 Upright in the former Stingray Cafe space, 240 N Broadway. Estimated opening date: Late winter Upright satellite taproom, 7151 NE Prescott St. Estimated opening date: TBD Von Ebert Brewing Year founded: 2018 11800 NW Cedar Falls Drive, Suite 110. Estimated opening date: TBD, but the boar’s head is already mounted. 10111 NE Cascades Parkway. Estimated opening date: TBD
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Metropolitan Community Church. COURTESY OF STEEPLEBREWING
Renderings of Steeplejack Brewing.
Like so many beloved Portland buildings that have been lost to redevelopment, the 111-year-old Metropolitan Community Church appeared to be destined for the backhoe. A developer had placed a bid on the property at Northeast Broadway and 24th Avenue, which, if accepted, would have replaced the Craftsman period house of worship with yet another multistory condo. Then a pair of old college buddies came calling. Brody Day and his business partner, Dustin Harder, had been looking for a place to start their own brewery. When they saw the church listed online, they knew they’d found the location—and the building found an unlikely savior. “When we found out it was going to be demolished,” Day says, “we thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve got to do something.’” After months of meetings with the church’s pastor, Day and Harder were given the congregation’s “blessing,” so to speak, and the sale was completed in April 2019. Now, this summer, the pair is opening Steeplejack Brewing, a brewpub that doesn’t quite look like any other in town. Wood from the pews is being recycled into handsome tables, barstools and taster trays. Guests will also be treated to a rare glimpse inside the bell tower as soon as they walk inside. Day and Harder opened up the 65-foot column and will install uplighting to call attention to the architecture. The feature is what ultimately inspired the brewery’s name: a steeplejack, which refers to the person who bravely maintains the tallest pinnacles by ascending to their tops. For Day, the fact that the steeple will continue to stand in the neighborhood sums up the entire project. “While the mission is very different, the impact brewpubs and the church have on the community is the same,” he says, “in the sense of being gathering places, places of authentic connection and comfort.” ANDI PREWITT. MICK HANGLAND-SKILL
10. Because we still have Fuller’s... Jimmy Mak’s. Pearl Bakery. Byways Cafe. Henry’s Tavern. Even pre-pandemic, the condo-happy Pearl District had a tendency to chew up and spit out businesses both old and less old. And every time another went away, I would think, “Please don’t let them come for Fuller’s.” First opened in Northeast Portland in 1947, Fuller’s Coffee Shop has occupied the corner of Northwest 9th Avenue and Davis Street since 1960. It’s one of the last restaurants my wife went to in early 2020, and a place we always took our friends and relatives from out of town. It’s not a brunch restaurant, third-wave coffee shop or dive bar serving allday breakfast. It’s a diner. An actual diner diner. At a time when “Old Portland” often just means “before Salt & Straw opened,” Fuller’s feels exactly as it has for 50 years: an echo of a city where the “Brewery Blocks” were actually a 16
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brewery, and you came to the building at 10th and Burnside to buy cars instead of books. Of course, its usual mix of working-class regulars, business-lunchers, savvy tourists and the young and hungover can’t currently congregate on vinyl stools around the restaurant’s U-shaped counter. But at least they can still get a $4.95 hamburger or “Fuller’s SOS”—that’s “shit on a shingle,” American military slang for mystery meat sauce on toast—for takeout or delivery. The longtime family business—founded by Jack Fuller, then run by his son, John Fuller, and now part of the Urban Restaurant Group, which owns Brix Tavern and Urban Fondue—also opened what seems an obviously scalable spinoff: Fuller’s Burger Shack at Cascade Station. Normally, this might be a good reason to wonder if the original Fuller’s can remain the same. But right now, it’s enough just to remain. JASON COHEN.
CHRIS NESSETH
9. Because we’re ST ILL turning old buildings into awesome new bars...
11. Because America’s oldest tofu manufacturer is ST ILL in business, and still making tofu by hand... Six days a week, Jason Ogata wakes up at 3 am and heads to the factory floor of Ota Tofu, America’s oldest operating tofu maker. The early call time is the result of the manufacturing process. The tofu is handmade in the Japanese tradition—hand-stirred, hand-pressed, hand-cut—and uses nigari, a salt derived from seawater. The process is time consuming and laborious. But the finished product is too good to mess with. “I like to refer to it like bread,” says Ogata, 34. “If you have bread made the exact same day, it’s much better than something mass produced.” Ota Tofu opened in 1911 in Northwest Portland, later moving to the eastside—its black-and-white sign can now be seen behind the rowdy array of Christmas lights enveloping the Slammer Tavern. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Japanese population in America grew tenfold. Tofu was not yet a dining staple in the states, but the Ota family (originally spelled Ohta) saw a chance to feed the growing community a staple from back home. Word of mouth within the Asian American community and Portland’s early embrace of the health food craze has kept the company in business for 110 years. Ogata took over as owner two years ago and says he feels the pressure to preserve the company’s legacy. But he also has big plans for it, too. In the past year, Ogata has focused on promoting Ota’s social media presence and brand awareness, landing features on national outlets like Eater and National Public Radio. He also created a website—something the business did not have before. Overall, Ogata wants to share his love for the tofu he grew up eating as a kid. So far, he’s been successful: When the pandemic hit, many restaurants that once carried Ota Tofu closed, but retail sales in upscale grocery stores like New Seasons have started to soar. “I want to increase the exposure of tofu among the general public. I want people to incorporate it into weekly meals,” he says. “I think we can even grow to other geographical cities and expand our market. We just have to survive COVID first.” MEIRA MEGAN GEBEL.
JOSEPH BLAKE JR.
In his 90 years of life, Paul Knauls never even considered running for public office. That didn’t stop him from getting elected anyway. He didn’t have much say in the matter. About 20 years ago, the head of the African American Chamber of Commerce came into his barbershop in the King neighborhood and declared him “the Mayor of Northeast Portland.” Knauls resisted, but the name stuck. “Pretty soon the news media had it and the television people had it,” he says with a hearty laugh. “I just tell them all, ‘I guess I am your mayor, because you didn’t vote me in, so you can’t vote me out!’” It’s a title he first earned in the 1960s. Back then, Knauls, who came to Portland via Arkansas, owned several businesses on and around North Williams Avenue, then the heart of Black nightlife in the city. His most famous enterprise was the Cotton Club, a jazz bar named after the famous nightspot in New York. It earned national recognition in its own right, hosting the likes of Etta James, Big Mama Thornton and Sammy Davis Jr. By the 1970s, the construction of the I-5 freeway shuttered just about every business in the area and displaced
13. Because Diego Chara is ST ILL here, and still earning yellow cards...
the neighborhood. But Knauls maintained his statesman status: In 1991, he and his wife, Geneva, opened Geneva’s Shear Perfection, a beauty salon that itself became a hub for the African American community. On the wall hung framed photos of Knauls posing with a litany of 20th century figures, from Michael Jordan to Muhammad Ali. Geneva’s closed last year, in part because of the pandemic, but also because Knauls felt it was simply time. (Geneva died in 2014.) But his constituents haven’t forgotten him: When he turned 90 last month, the nonprofit World Arts Foundation streamed a live storytelling event, featuring friends, employees and admirers. Knauls watched at home with his son, Paul Jr. These days, Knauls adheres to health guidelines and mostly stays inside. It’s tough: Up until a year ago, he still went out three nights a week to see live music. But he still manages to get out some: He puts on two masks and walks around Lloyd Center an hour each day. Sometimes, he’ll get in the car and go to a big box store, mostly just to get out of the house. And he still gets recognized. “This one guy, I said, ‘Can you help me put my groceries in my car please?’ He said, ‘Mr. Knauls, I haven’t seen you for years! You’re still driving?’” Knauls lets out another big laugh: “I told him, ‘Well, not after 4:30, because it gets dark!’” MATTHEW SINGER.
C R A I G M I TC H E L L DY E R / P O R T L A N D T I M B E R S
It only took 10 seasons for Major League Soccer to officially recognize what Portland Timbers fans have always known: Diego Chará is the greatest. At 34, an age when most professional soccer players are in decline, the defensive midfielder finally made the “Best XI,” the MLS equivalent to the All-NBA Team. It was an overdue honor for the Colombian OG, who made his Timbers debut in the sixth game of the team’s inaugural MLS season in 2011. He’s the league’s all-time leader in career games started, at 279. Another category he stands at the top of? Yellow cards—the cautions players receive when they commit a foul that maybe goes too far. He’s got 87, more than any other Timber in history. Opposing fans might call him dirty—in 2019, he was ejected from a game for flicking an opponent’s ear—but walking that line between intimidation and outright aggression is part of what makes him so great. His personal highlight reel would include a lot of guys who didn’t make a pass or score a goal, who lost the ball because they knew all too well that he was coming. It would also include a lot of frustrated and defeated opposing players lying flat on the turf or grass, sometimes in real pain, sometimes in fake pain, at which point, the camera finds Chará either sporting his trademark giant grin or with both hands out in the universal “who me?” gesture. Whoever sculpts his statue outside Providence Park will have to choose between the two. JASON COHEN.
COURTESY OF SPIT SLAM
12. Because Paul Knauls is ST ILL the mayor...
14. Because Chuck D ST ILL believes in the Blazers... Game, they say, recognizes game—and, as the author of the song “He Got Game,” rapper Chuck D is more qualified to speak on the subject than most. So believe him when he tweets: “Yo @trailblazers @ Dame_Lillard @CJMcCollum are like Green Hornet and Kato of the @nba #assassins.” Although he’s famously from New York, the legendary Public Enemy frontman might be the biggest Blazers booster outside Portland (Charles Barkley’s yearly bandwagoning notwithstanding). He’s been voicing his support for years, mostly on social media. He’s referred to Damian Lillard as “the most lethal player” in the NBA. When the Blazers improbably advanced to the Western Conference finals in 2019, he picked them to upset the dynastic Warriors. (It’s the thought that counts, not the accuracy.) And he was advocating for Carmelo Anthony to sign with Portland long before he actually did. “[I]t was a no brainer move,” he wrote after the fact. He’s been vociferous enough in his admiration that some began to wonder if he’d forsaken his forever-dysfunctional hometown team. “I’m a @nyknicks fan but admire the franchise the team and that dynamic backcourt of @Dame_Lillard @CJMcCollum,” he tweeted. He added, “I always had good fanatic folk support in the city and state.” With three-fifths of the starting lineup hobbled, the Blazers are currently fighting to stay in the playoff picture. But as the man himself might say: It takes millions of injuries to hold them back. That’s a freebie, Chuck. MATTHEW SINGER. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
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For the past nine months, the Oregon Symphony has been without revenue. After canceling all 2020 concerts last spring, the symphony announced in November it wouldn’t hold in-person events until at least 2021. At the time, symphony president and CEO Scott Showalter told WW that the arts institution was “almost certain” to lose millions of dollars. But instead of going dark, the struggling organization has shelled out more and more content—all for free. Over the summer, the symphony debuted Essential Sounds, a series of short, virtual concerts dedicated to frontline workers. It released recordings of past concerts, weekly short videos of symphony musicians, and children’s storybook readings soundtracked by violinists, tuba players and oboists. The symphony is far from the only Portland arts organization that’s been giving away free content during the pandemic. Chamber Music Northwest pivoted its annual summer festival to a free online format. Not long after that, the group took inspiration from the MasterClass trend and posted a series of virtual classes on violin, clarinet and flute, each taught by one of the ensemble’s esteemed musicians. Third Angle Music has been debuting new works by local composers that are meant to be listened to on walks around specific parts of the city. Artists Repertory Theatre has offered some audio plays for free or by donation. Portland Playhouse released a series of new works created and performed by company apprentices. Portland Art Museum has been posting virtual tours of its exhibits on YouTube. Fertile Ground, Portland’s most expansive theater festival, still happened this year, streaming for free on YouTube and Facebook over the course of 11 days. Fine arts have a reputation for being inaccessible. But by lowering the barrier of payment, even during this time of financial hardship, proves that what drives even Portland’s biggest arts institutions is the desire to share what they love. SHANNON GORMLEY.
MICK HANGLAND-SKILL
15. Because Portland arts organizations are ST ILL putting out free programming...
Irving Park
Irving Park
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Elliott Smith JOHN MACARTHUR
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Portland’s parks have long been a source of civic pride. But during the pandemic, the city’s greenspaces have felt even more essential—they’ve become public forums, neighborhood waterholes, gymnasiums, even nightclubs. They are one of the few places where Saturday night still feels like Saturday night. On balmy weekends, at basically any open field, you can find groups of friends lounging on blankets and sipping tallboys, sharing picnics or blasting Saweetie at a socially distant birthday party. Throughout the year, protesters gathered at parks from Peninsula down to Woodstock to listen to speakers, distribute zines and give out free food. After the presidential election was called for Joe Biden, Laurelhurst Park turned into a giant party, complete with champagne, burning Trump flags and at least one bagpiper. Even now that the winter weather is keeping more people indoors, you can still regularly find crowded basketball courts, busy dog parks and cyclists decked out in LED lights convening for night rides. On a recent gray Wednesday, Irving Park hosted slackliners in the afternoon. After dark, a group of kids in hoodies blasted music and practiced dance moves at a COVID-safe distance. We probably didn’t need a pandemic to remind us that easy access to plentiful public greenspaces is a major reason many of us choose to call this city home. But during a year of isolation, parks have been an oasis of joy—a venue for moments of connection and celebration that don’t come at the expense of others. SHANNON GORMLEY.
18. ...and play bocce in them...
16. Because Portland’s most important indie label is ST ILL putting out records 30 years later... When Slim Moon founded Kill Rock Stars back in 1991, he knew it was the job he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He’s surprised it actually happened. “It feels great for it to still exist,” says Moon, 53. As the label arrives at its 30th anniversary, KRS has a lot to celebrate beyond its mere survival. Over three decades, the label—which Moon started after dropping out of high school in Seattle and moving to Olympia, Wash., and has been based in Portland since 2007—has helped define the sound of Pacific Northwest indie rock. It released the first records by now-foundational artists like Elliott Smith, Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, and later the Decemberists, Gossip and Horse Feathers, all while managing to withstand the rise of both Napster and Spotify. Moon’s insistence on handshake-only contracts has allowed his blue-chip acts to move on and have their KRS releases reissued by other, bigger labels. But as it turns out, there’s still plenty in the archives to spotlight. Among other planned anniversary releases, KRS will be repressing all the albums Elliott Smith recorded for the label, as well as reissuing three legendary compilations from the ’90s—Kill Rock Stars, Stars Kill Rock and Rock Stars Kill—featuring rare tracks by Nirvana, Rancid and Melvins. But KRS isn’t just leaning on its past. Earlier this month, the label released the fantastic debut album by Israeli post-punk artist Tamar Aphek and a collection of misshapen pop tunes by Texas band Tele Novella. “We’re always going to market the label as a curator, even though it’s not as easy to do that as it was in the ’90s,” Moon says. “I’m very much an enthusiast and still excited about new things and new possibilities.” ROBERT HAM.
17. Because we can ST ILL party in the parks...
Portland is really good at taking Old World things and riffing on them: bike polo, Norwegian meatballs in a wrap, cello interpretations of Radiohead. Here’s another one: extreme night bocce. In Italy, the game is played on flat, crushed-rock courts with wooden boundaries to keep the balls from rolling out of the piazza and under your Fiat. In Portland, my friends and I play it in parks at night with LED-lit balls, and anything goes. You can toss the pallino, the little white ball that you’re trying to get nearest with the larger balls, wherever the hell you want. Our favorite place to play is in Cathedral Park. We start at the Urban German Wursthaus—not Italian, but a former Axis power, so it’s fine. It has COVID-safe outdoor seating under an awning, schnitzel to die for, and lots of exceptional beer. After that, we cross the railroad tracks and go into the park. It’s best on a rainy night when the towers of the St. Johns Bridge reach high into the low clouds dropping in from Forest Park. The first few tosses of the pallino usually go on the grass. But soon, someone throws the damn thing overhand into the raspberry brambles, or toward the Willamette, where it can run all the way down the beach and into the dioxin-laced water. (A word of advice: A light-up bocce set costs about $100, so if it’s not your set, don’t be a total jackass.) The pallino glows white. The larger balls are lit in color, and it’s delightful to watch them fly through the air, leaving—if you’ve eaten enough gummies—streaks of yellow, red, blue, and green. It’s like going to The Dark Side of the Moon at the planetarium, only you get exercise. ANTHONY EFFINGER.
19. Because Newberry Road is still the best road to train for the Tour de France...
Night bocce at Cathedral Park
Cyclists like to suffer. They like to climb the steepest hills they can find, maybe channeling Eddy Merckx, the Belgian rider who won a record 11 Grand Tours. On Newberry Road, which starts at Highway 30 just past Linnton, you can get your Merckx on
during your lunch break—his name is even painted on the pavement. Newberry is short, sweet and steep. It’s 2 miles long with great views of the valley and a maximum grade of 15.5%. That’s one of the steepest in Portland: Mont Ventoux, a fabled feature of the Tour de France, tops out at 12%, although the Ventoux climb is 13.3 miles long. For me, Newberry is the crux of a 26-mile loop from Northeast Portland, across the St. Johns Bridge, north along 30, up Newberry and down Germantown Road. Turning off 30 and onto Newberry is like changing the channel from pro wrestling to Downton Abbey. Everything suddenly quiet as you leave the semi trucks and Ford F-450s behind. I can do this route in about two hours. It was at its peak for about two years after a landslide closed Newberry to cars, and a friend used his car to push the concrete barricades apart just enough so we could get through without dismounting. Even now, though, there isn’t much traffic, and there are far fewer dudes in garish, crotch-hugging spandex than on the zoo climbs. Merckx didn’t wear that crap. He wore wool. ANTHONY EFFINGER.
single game during the 2020 season. “But as we started to dig into it,” says Miller, “we decided, ‘Let’s create an identity and pay tribute to that team.’” Information on the original Rosebuds is scarce. Press coverage was rare, and none of the original Rosebuds moved on to the majors. Leading up to the new Rosebuds’ first game on June 21, Miller and Neyer are continuing to dig for more historical records. But Miller finds a lot of inspiration in the fact that the team, and the WCNBA itself, could exist at all, even if for a brief flash of time. “When you start to think about the challenges of putting on a normal baseball game,” he says, “the fact that they actually pulled this off when they did is incredible.” ROBERT HAM. CRAIG WINSLOW
20. Because we’re ST ILL unearthing pieces of our history, like the first known recording of Allen Ginsberg reading “Howl”... In 2007, author John Suiter was digging through the archives at Reed College’s Hauser Memorial Library when he uncovered a rare treasure: a reel-to-reel tape of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg giving a public reading at the school on Valentine’s Day 1956. It turned out to be more than just a neat obscurity. As part of the performance, Ginsberg, then 29, performs the first part of his now canonical epic poem “Howl”—a full month before what was thought to be the poem’s first recorded reading, at Berkeley’s Town Hall Theater in March 1956. The discovery made some minor waves in the press at the time. Otherwise, the tape has collected dust in the Reed archives. That is about to change. In April, the reissue label Omnivore Recordings is set to release the full recording on vinyl and CD and digitally. How the audio finally came to wide release is the result of some fortuitous circumstances. In 2019, Reed hired as its new president Dr. Audrey Bilger, an educator and academic married to Omnivore’s founder, Cheryl Pawelski. Sometime after moving to Portland, the two attended a women’s rugby match and Pawelski struck up a conversation with Greg MacNaughton, the education outreach coordinator at Reed’s Cooley Gallery, and inquired about old tapes. “He said, ‘You know, there are recordings of Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg,’” Pawelski says, “and my ears immediately perked up.” Allen Ginsberg at Reed College: The First Recorded Reading of Howl & Other Poems captures a much more sedate version of Ginsberg. At the start of “Howl,” he wades into his lines cautiously and slowly ratchets up the intensity and passion as he goes. It’s a startlingly intimate recording—you can hear Ginsberg shuffling his papers as he works his way through a selection of his writings, including equally powerful poems like “A Supermarket in California” and “A Dream Record.” What is missing is the rest of “Howl.” He launches into the first few lines of the second section before begging off: “I don’t really feel like reading anymore,” he says. “I haven’t got any kind of steam.” Even with that abbreviated moment, though, the effect is stunning—particularly given its historical significance. “Hearing Ginsberg read these captivating, wonderful words,” Pawelski says, “it goes beyond just poetry or literature. It becomes a living, breathing thing.” ROBERT HAM.
22. ...and the city’s faded “ghost signs”
Vaughn Street Park, 1946
21. ...and the Portland Rosebuds baseball team... Seven decades ago, Portland baseball fans piled into the long-since-demolished Vaughn Street Park for what would turn out to be a fleeting experience: a contest between two teams made up entirely of Black players. In 1946, entrepreneur Abe Saperstein teamed with Jesse Owens—the famed Olympian who won four gold medals in track and field at the 1936 Berlin games in front of a fuming Adolf Hitler—to create the West Coast Negro Baseball Association, one of a handful of leagues across the U.S. to give Black players a chance to show off their skills while the majors were still segregated. It put six teams on the field in California and the Northwest, including the Portland Rosebuds, a squad that included Negro League vets Bob Bissant and Alphonse Dunn. Owens owned the team and performed running exhibitions between doubleheaders. Despite having the imprimatur of a world-famous athlete, the league lasted only three months. The Rosebuds ended with a 7-8 record. Seven-five years later, the Portland Rosebuds are coming back. The team is one of two new squads being added to the Wild West League, created last year by the owners of the Lents-based collegiate wood bat club the Portland Pickles to keep live baseball happening during the pandemic. Co-owner Alan Miller learned of the original Rosebuds a few years ago through Rob Neyer, a baseball historian and commissioner of the West Coast League. The plan, at first, was to have the Pickles play as the Rosebuds for a
Craig Winslow is a Portland designer who moonlights as a ghost hunter. Only, the spirits he’s chasing are definitely real—and they exist in plain sight. Before the introduction of large-scale vinyl printing in the 1960s, advertisements were often painted on the sides of brick buildings. Some featured big brands like Coca-Cola, others promoted local businesses that are no longer around. Today, they’re called “ghost signs,” and many are still there today—a bit faded and becoming more so by the day. “It’s something you don’t see until someone points it out to you, and then that’s all you can see,” says Winslow, 32. “They’re hidden so often right on streets you walk around all the time.” Winslow has spent the past six years preserving over three dozen of these signs in Portland and aeound the globe. He does so through a process called projection mapping: stitching together high-resolution photos of the ghost sign in Adobe Photoshop and then tracing by hand to reveal the ad’s lettering and details. An animation of the faded ad can then be projected onto the wall where it made its debut. Winslow’s ghost sign installations used to be one-time, on-location experiences. But next month he plans to launch an app called Light Capsule that uses augmented reality to give users a chance to see these old ads revived to their original glory right on their smartphones. “Imagine you’re walking in downtown Portland, and you get a notification that you’re nearby one of these signs,” Winslow says. “You open the app, aim your phone up at it, and your phone then becomes a lens into the past.” Cataloging and digitally restoring ghost signs is a passion project for Winslow, and so far he’s resurrected advertisements for Portland clothier Sam Moy & Co., an Overland Cars dealership, and Dillen Rogers Jeweler & Optician. What drives him is knowing that one day ghost signs won’t just be faded, they’ll be indiscernible. There is currently no method to physically preserve them, and most historical societies don’t keep records of advertisements. “Some of these are about to be lost and can’t be re-created,” he says. “It’s exciting to feel like I’m able to bring back some of these lost stories.” MEIRA MEGAN GEBEL. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
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COURTESY OF LAIKA
Laika's Missing Link
23. Because we’re ST ILL a hub for stop-motion animation... If you associate stop-motion animation primarily with Jack Skellington or the California Raisins, make room for new references. There’s a puppet boom underway in Portland, compounding the city’s storied history in the stop-motion style, which owes largely to Will Vinton’s pioneering Claymation work. (He’s the guy responsible for the dancing raisins.) Three separate stop-motion films are in local production: two for Netflix via separate studios and a still-TBA project from Laika Studios. The spate in stop-motion—a method that photographs ever so slightly adjusted models one frame at a time—may be an anomaly, but it’s not a coincidence. Alex Bulkley, owner of the animation studio ShadowMachine and a producer on Guillermo del Toro’s forthcoming Pinocchio remake, cites a “snowball effect” creating Portland’s epicentral status. Before ShadowMachine (BoJack Horseman, Tuca & Bertie) opened its Northwest Portland studio in 2015,
24. Because Rojo is ST ILL with us...
Stuffed Rojo
Portland has a hard time letting go. From the cat cafe that closed and then revived to the former mayor working for the current mayor, the city clings to its past so tight it rarely ever becomes the past. And in the case of Rojo, Portland’s favorite therapy llama, we’ll never have to say goodbye—thanks to a skilled taxidermist and hundreds of generous fans on GoFundMe. The late, lamented camelid, who died in November 2019 at the old age of 17, will soon have his stuffed body on display at the Washington State School for the Blind in Vancouver. And yes, he will be wearing his signature top hat and bow tie. After becoming a certified therapy llama in 2007, Rojo visited more than 1,500 adult care centers, special needs groups and schools, and attended hundreds of events around town. The School for the Blind was one of his frequent stops. He’d usually be accompanied by Smoky, another llama from the nonprofit Mtn Peaks Therapy Llamas & Alpacas. “They’d stand like statues and the kids would touch them from the top of their heads to the tips of their toes,” said Lori Gregory, Rojo’s former owner and handler. “It gave them a special experience because llamas
Bulkley noticed animators routinely departing Los Angeles for Portland at the end of completed projects. Eventually, he thought, “Tap the source.” Across town in Milwaukie, a team directed by legendary animator Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) is working on Wendell & Wild, the tale of two demon brothers voiced and co-written by Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key. The Netflix film marks Selick’s first directorial effort since 2009’s Coraline, also the debut film from Laika. For its part, despite struggling through layoffs last August, the Hillsboro studio’s filmography, including ParaNorman, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link, has yet to miss on award nominations and critical acclaim. Beloved for its expressiveness and tactility, stop-motion animation will reach young audiences en masse via Netflix this year. For that reason, Bulkley says the medium is “bound to grow.” He’s also confident Portland will remain a global hub. “From my high-altitude perspective,” he says, “there’s a lot more coming.” CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER.
are so soft and tactile.” The school’s campus is home to the Tactile Museum of Natural History’s permanent display, also called the “sensory safari,” a museum filled with taxidermied animals that incorporates the sense of touch, Braille, large print and audio to create an environment where visually impaired students can experience different animals. Gregory brought Rojo into the room on a visit to the school and joked that’s where Rojo could end up. “I thought that would be so cool if, God forbid anything happened to Rojo, he could come here and help people understand what llamas are like,” she says. In Rojo’s final days, Gregory started a GoFundMe campaign and within two days raised $13,000 to cover Rojo’s end-of-life care and taxidermy, which alone was set to cost up to $7,000. Gregory says it was difficult to find a taxidermist since none had any experience with llamas. She finally found one who worked with 10 other people to measure and shape Rojo’s body, using taxidermy forms for antelopes and other deer as a starting point. The stuffing was completed at the end of January. He’ll likely take his position at the school within the next week. “This isn’t anything to do with trying to idolize him,” says Gregory. “He did so much in his life and he’s going to do so much more.” SOPHIA JUNE.
24 Reasons to Still Love Portland 20
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STREET
SOME OF THE LIGHTS Photos by Sam Gehrke @samgehrkephotography
Scenes from the Winter Light (non)Festival.
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T H E MOST I MP ORTANT T H I N G S TH AT H A PPE N E D I N P ORT L AND C U LT U RE TH I S WE E K , G R A PH E D . M O T O YA N A K A M U R A / M U LT N O M A H C O U N T Y
Livestream Interview Release Date: 2/26 w/ Terry Currier! Pre-order an 2/12 5pm PST autographed CD on our Facebook! NOW!
ALEX WITTWER
Curtis Salgado Interview + New Album
STARTERS
RIDICULOUS
It may or may not be snowing in Portland by the time you read this. Oregon Zoo’s Stumptown Fil agrees with Punxsutawney Phil: six more weeks of winter.
The Wall of Moms appears briefly in a Super Bowl ad for a new YouTube documentary.
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…only for Super Bowl Sunday.
Fort Vancouver has already canceled its annual fireworks show, which is known as the largest west of the Mississippi.
Ndamukong Suh: Super Bowl champ!
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A restaurant relief package, based on a bill originally introduced by Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, passes in the U.S. Senate.
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Bailey’s Taproom closes for good.
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Reel M Inn reopens…
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GET INSIDE
WHAT TO DO WHILE YOU’RE STUCK AT HOME THIS WEEK.
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WATCH: Judas and the Black Messiah Onetime comedic director Shaka King chronicles the galvanizing hope and conspiratorial murder of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) in 1969. The trailer is electrifying, and Kaluuya and co-star LaKeith Stanfield are clearly in the prime of their hopefully boundless careers. Also on HBO Max in 2021: every single Warner Bros. movie, but also maybe not Dune anymore? We’ll see. Premieres Friday, Feb 12, on HBO Max.
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STREAM: Catalyst Quartet Chamber Music Northwest’s next concert features music all from the past century. Cleveland’s Catalyst Quartet will play through a constantly shifting song cycle by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and two takes on the spiritual “Calvary,” including one by Florence Price, the first Black woman to have a work she composed played by a major American symphony. With works that challenge classical music’s Eurocentric canon and take inspiration from spirituals, the bill is a great introduction to some of America’s most influential Black composers. Stream on cmnw. com. 7 pm Saturday, Feb. 13. $20.
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STREAM: Tell Me! A Love Letter to Portland If staying in for Valentine’s Day seems like, well, what you’ve been doing every night for the past year, Holocene brings the club to your home. The venue’s Valentine’s Day livestream will feature sets from beloved funk and R&B DJs Deena Bee and Lamar Leroy, while Snack Bloc leader and model Masyn Wade dole out romantic advice. Wade will also read viewer-submitted dedications so you can feel the citywide love, even if you’re just sitting on your couch. Stream on twitch.tv/holoceneportland. 4 pm Sunday, Feb. 14. MYSTI KREWE OF NIMBUS
WATCH: Blue Valentine Celebrate the bliss and agony of love and romance this Valentine’s Day—but mostly the agony, by queuing up Blue Valentine. Years ago, Dean (Ryan Gosling) used to sing and play ukulele, while Cindy (Michelle Williams) happily danced in the street. Now, they’re married, they have a daughter, and they’re drunk in a motel room screaming at each other. This melancholy character study probes a relationship on the rocks as the couple reminisce about how resilient their love used to be. Streaming on Amazon Prime, HBO Max, iTunes and multiple other platforms.
DO: Hike the Banks-Vernonia State Trail This 20-mile path connecting two small Oregon towns at the very base of the Coast Range foothills is better known for attracting cyclists than pedestrians. But zipping along at 10 mph means you don’t really get to observe all of the scenic wonders the trail has to offer, so it’s worth leaving your bike at home and tackling shorter segments as a hiker. An easy starting point is in Vernonia, where you’ll find entry to a former rail line that used to haul both passengers and lumber at the end of Weed Avenue behind the local food pantry. From there, head south, following Beaver Creek through a range of landscapes, including wide-open meadows and stands of tall firs, skinny alders and sprawling oaks. There’s an eerie abandoned baseball field now being swallowed by overgrown grass, windmills, an aging wooden trestle, and big, weathered barns. But the highlight is the menagerie of farm animals, including sheep that leap and buck as well as a sweet cow that will come to the fence for head scratches. Trailheads open 7 am-9 pm daily.
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WATCH: Sixes After distributor mismanagement effectively caused Sixes to disappear from screens for years, the 2006 film is now finally streamable on Amazon Prime. Shot in Southern Oregon by local director Ray Nomoto Robison, this arresting noir thriller was among the first all-digital features, exploiting the still-primitive format’s flattened perspective and warped imagery for maximum claustrophobic effect. Inspired by reality TV shows like Survivor and Fear Factor as well as the wild world of online gambling in the aughts, Sixes is basically Russian roulette with six desperate people. Contestants are found through a suicide hotline and brought in to risk their lives for the chance of winning massive amounts of money. Stream on Amazon Prime.
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STREAM: Rebecca Carroll in conversation with Desus Nice In her new memoir, Surviving the White Gaze, writer Rebecca Carroll recounts a youth spent in search of herself. Adopted by loving, hippie-dippy artist parents, she was the only Black person in the small New Hampshire town where she was raised. Meeting her white birth mother deeply complicated her sense of identity and sent her down a path toward finding her Blackness, with many bumps along the way. She’ll be chatting here with Desus Nice, the ascendant comedian, podcaster and co-host of Showtime’s Desus & Mero, whose interview style takes “conversational” to a whole other level and often brings out the realest version of whoever’s sitting across from him. 7 pm Thursday, Feb. 11. See powells.com to register.
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HEAR: Fievel Is Glauque’s God’s Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess Fievel Is Glauque is just a little less eccentric than its name. Singer Ma Clement and multi-instrumentalist Zach Phillips sound like Getz/Gilberto if they had recorded in a junkyard. The louche sounds of classic bossa nova are there on their debut album, God’s Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess, but the drums sound strangely crude, and the songs are all about a minute and a half long, crammed into a 20-track epic that features over 30 musicians in addition to the core duo. Stream on Spotify. 24
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DO: Fat Tuesday Last year, Mardi Gras got in just under the wire before the world went on the fritz—although in retrospect, it might have been the country’s first unwitting superspreader event. For 2021, the Mysti Krewe of Nimbus, a group of Big Easy expats dedicated to keeping the traditions of their home state alive in Portland, are making much-needed adjustments to their annual Fat Tuesday celebration. Instead of parading down North Mississippi Avenue, the crew is creating a sort of “parade in reverse,” with members dressing up their houses and encouraging drive-by gawking. (A map will be available on their website.) But there’s still going to be in-person celebrations, spread out downtown to keep revelers from converging in one place. Regardless, make sure to mask up—but then, it’s Mardi Gras, so you were probably doing that anyway. Tuesday, Feb. 16. See portlandmardigras.com for more information.
GET OUTSIDE
MICHELLE HARRIS
HIKE OF THE WEEK
Suburban Sprawl Climb up a million-year-old shield volcano at Nansen Summit Park, Lake Oswego’s version of Mount Tabor.
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BY M I C H E L L E H A R RI S
iking a planned community in Lake Oswego might sound about as thrilling as watching paint dry while walking on a low-impact treadmill. But the suburb’s Mountain Park neighborhood is hiding an entire trail system worth exploring. Dubbed “Nature’s Neighborhood,” Mountain Park is the largest planned community in Oregon and was designed in such a way that the area’s natural environment would be preserved as much as possible during development, which includes miles of walking trails. It’s the brainchild of landscape designer Carl Halvorson, who, in the 1960s, envisioned a suburban utopia with recreational facilities, greenways, open spaces, public art and natural areas. (He also had plans to build a Europeanstyle shopping center that never got off the ground.) The idea was to limit the need for sidewalks and take pedestrians and cyclists off the roadway. What we have today is the Mountain Park trail system, which is owned and maintained by the Mountain Park Homeowners
Nansen Summit Trail Distance: 4.5 miles Difficulty: Moderate Drive time from Portland: 15 minutes Directions: From Interstate 5 south, take exit 293 and keep right at the fork, following signs for Haines Street. Turn right onto Southwest 68th Avenue and drive 200 feet before turning a slight right onto Southwest Atlanta Street. After about a half-mile, turn another right onto Southwest Lesser Road and drive another half-mile before turning right onto Westlake Drive. Drive another half-mile before turning left onto Melrose Street. Westlake Park will be on your right. Right before you pass the Lake Oswego fire station, you’ll see a turnoff on your right that takes you to the parking lot.
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SEWER SHARK: Mountain Park has several steel drainage tunnels built into its trail system to keep pedestrians safe from busy street crossings.
Association. The quiet trails weave through parks, wooded areas and drainage channels. Also? It happens to be built on an extinct volcano. Mount Sylvania is part of the Boring Volcanic Field, and a hike up to Nansen Summit Park is definitely a workout—the park sits at almost 1,000 feet. By comparison, Mount Tabor—Portland’s own extinct volcano nestled in the middle of a residential neighborhood—maxes out at 636 feet. While there are a number of places you can choose to begin your hike, Westlake Park is your best bet since it has a public restroom, which you will not find elsewhere along the trail. (You can also start at McNary Park if you aren’t up for a trek.) There are green signs marked with a nondescript “PATH” posted throughout the Mountain Park trail system. One of the coolest features about the hike are the walking trail tunnels. One of the coolest features about the hike are the walking trail tunnels, many of which are steel drainage tunnels with futuristic lighting out of a comic book. Many of the tunnels were built into the trail system to keep pedestrians safe from busy street crossings. You’ll feel a steady climb as you continue on up. As you start getting close to the summit, you’ll see lots of luxury homes and some ’80s-era McMansions. Once you reach the top, there really isn’t much to the park itself, just a large grassy patch, a couple benches, and a weather station. But the view of the Tualatin River Valley and the West Hills instantly justifies the trip, especially if you plan for sunset. On a clear day you can even see Mount Hood. It’s a nice spot to take a rest or even a picnic break before heading back down the loop. Between the forests, greenspaces, and walking tunnels woven throughout the hike, you’ll get a sense of Halvorson’s effort to integrate nature as much as possible into the neighborhood, which all in all makes for a pleasant, pedestrian-friendly urban hike. Don’t knock the ’burbs until you’ve tried them.
I CAN SEE FOR MILES: The view from Nansen Summit Park.
Melrose St.
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CHEF LEX GRANT
Eat Like Dame
COURTSEY OF
FEATURE
COURTESY OF KILLA KITCHEN
FOOD & DRINK
Melo Mood STACK ATTACK: Kiara Hardy came to Portland as a chef for Hassan Whiteside. He left, she stayed.
When the Blazers are away, their private chefs are making their favorite dishes available to the public. BY E L I Z A R OT H ST E I N
@saltynectar
When the Blazers hit the road, their private chefs get to take a break—sort of. At home in Portland, they might cook for players’ families or respond to an ad hoc text advising their client against ordering the clam chowder from a room service menu in Utah. Though never fully off duty, away games provide those chefs a unique opportunity: For a few nights a month, they can cook whatever they want. That is what prompted two NBA private chefs to start the Away Game Dinner Series. In February, chefs Kenny James, the man who feeds Damian Lillard and Rodney Hood, and Kiara “Killa” Hardy, former private chef for Hassan Whiteside, are offering athlete-grade grub to regular folks when the team is on the road. “Blazer fans are insane,” Hardy says. “They are absolutely in love with their players, and sometimes that means they become starstruck by us and what we do.” For fans who fall into this bucket—and any who simply need a good meal while they watch basketball—the Away Game Dinner Series is a dream come true. James and Hardy collaborate to create one entree per away game, which they reveal on their Instagram pages the day before. For $25 per entree, the high-protein NBA dining experience can be yours. Simply DM and Venmo Hardy to hold your spot, and pick up from Capitol Bar on Northeast Broadway an hour ahead of tipoff the next day. “It started with us not being able to flex that culinary muscle as much as we’d like to,” James shares. “[The meals are] a mix of player favorites, and a mix of our own inspiration.” When the Blazers played the Bucks on Feb. 1, James and Hardy whipped up the favorite dish of Kay’la Hanson, Damian Lillard’s fiancée, who recently gave birth to twins: cedar-planked salmon atop shrimp alfredo. When a short-handed team improbably ended the Philadelphia 76ers winning streak on Feb. 4, Hardy and James made their take on the Cheesecake Factory’s Cajun Jambalaya Pasta—it reportedly tasted like a saucy meat lover’s pizza. James and Hardy are both classically trained chefs. James is Lillard’s cousin, so when Lillard’s success on the 26
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court coincided with James’ graduation from French culinary training, James was a clear choice for the job. Now, James makes the edible dreams of Lillard and Hood come true, while occasionally having to veto an unhealthy TikTok food trend when requested. After graduating culinary school in Fort Lauderdale, Hardy built her brand in Florida as a private chef, cooking for the likes of Hillary Clinton, former Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum and many pro athletes who will remain anonymous per nondisclosure agreements. Hardy knows well the intimacy and pressure that comes with such high-profile, highly personal engagements. “It’s a challenge, but it’s fun and rewarding,” Hardy says. “When you see a client performing their best— whether they’re a doctor, an athlete, a musician or a politician—you take that and say, ‘Hey, some of that’s me!’” Hardy moved to Portland when Hassan Whiteside was traded in July 2019, and though he moved on to Sacramento, Hardy and her partner decided to stay in Portland. “We got that feeling that Portland had a community that we could join,” Hardy says. Indeed, she’s remained connected to, and has even strengthened, the tight-knit Blazers family. Since Hardy’s arrival, avid Blazer fans have become used to her “Sunday Dinner” posts on social media, showing members of the team dining together. Now, with the Away Game Dinner Series, fans can get a taste. The Away Game Series will run for the road games in February, with the exception of the Valentine’s Day matchup against the Dallas Mavericks. This series isn’t Hardy’s only venture–she also runs the kitchen at Capitol and manufactures her Kitchen Killa French Fry Seasoning–and she’ll be taking a break to host an aphrodisiac “Bae Day” dinner. As for March and beyond, the series is dependent on demand. “If people like it, we’ll keep it rolling,” James says. “We’ll have it as long as they’ll have us.” EAT: The Away Game Dinner Series runs through the end of February. Direct message Kenny James on Instagram (@chefkennyjames) with your name, phone number and number of entrees the night before each away game, and specify delivery or pick up. $25 per entree.
Chef Lex Grant is Carmelo Anthony’s personal chef —and starting this week, she’ll be cooking for you, too. When chef Alexia Grant left the NBA bubble in Orlando, Fla., last summer, she received desperate messages from the players still inside, hoping she would reconsider. “It got to a point where I felt very guilty when it was time for me to leave. These guys were texting me, like, ‘So this is really your last day? What are you going to do?’” says Grant, one of a handful of chefs allowed onto the Disney campus to cook for the athletes. “I was like, ‘I’m going to go back to work.’” Work, for Grant, means acting as the personal chef to one of the league’s elite: Carmelo Anthony. A New Jersey native with an extensive résumé, she linked up with Anthony five years ago, when he played for the New York Knicks, and followed him as struggled to find a home late in his career, bouncing from Oklahoma City to Houston and then, finally, Portland—and from there into the bubble, where she provided homecooked meals with ingredients imported from Brooklyn and Jamaica, until the Blazers were eliminated in the first round. With Anthony agreeing to stay in Portland for another season, that means Grant is staying, too. And starting this week, regular people will get a taste of what some of the world’s greatest athletes have been enjoying: In February, she’s launching a pop-up at River Pig Saloon in the Pearl, where she’ll serve Caribbean cuisine learned from her childhood spent in the kitchen with her Jamaican grandmother. She’s calling it Miss Winnie’s Kitchen—indeed after her grandmother. The first installment launches Thursday, Feb. 11, with an inaugural menu of jerk chicken, curry shrimp and stewed pumpkin. But the food is only one part of the experience. “When you come to pick up your food, you’ll be hearing all types of roots rock reggae,” she says. “I have different incense I’ll be burning so that you catch the vibe—the smells and essences of Jamaica.” MATTHEW SINGER. EAT: Miss Winnie’s Kitchen is at River Pig Saloon, 529 NW 13th Ave., on Thursday, Feb. 11. Preorder online at cheflexgrant.com.
FOOD & DRINK C O U R T E S Y O F V E H I C L E C H O C O L AT E S
FEATURE
TOP 5
BUZZ LIST
Where to get drinks this week, one way or another.
1. Wedgehead
3728 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-477-7637, wedgeheadpdx. com. 4-10 pm Wednesday-Sunday. Surrounded by pinball tables, KaCee Solis-Robertson swizzles and shakes double-batch cocktails behind the bar at Wedgehead. Hers are the self-described “freakishly small hands” seen clutching rosary beads on the logo of her new canned cocktail brand, Little Hands Stiff Drinks. The Sleep Witch, a tart, neon fuchsia-colored drink, features local Dogwood Distilling vodka infused with Washington-based Tea Hunter’s Blue Valentine lemon-ginger tea, while the Cha Cha is made with homemade vegan horchata.
5. GlüBar
2006 NE Alberta St., 503-954-2021, imperialbottleshop.com/glubar. 4-10 pm Wednesday-Friday, noon-10 pm Saturday-Sunday. Inspired by the outdoor Christmas markets in Northern and Western Europe, Imperial Bottle Shop & Taproom’s new curbside pop-up makes patio drinking in the dead of winter not only feasible but downright jolly. The lineup of mulled drinks changes about once a week, but whatever options are available, always spring for something that can be set on fire. And hey, it might snow this week! WESLEY LAPOINTE
2. Giant Squid
colada king and owner of this colorful, recently opened cocktail bar. But a piece of his vibrant spirit survives in the drinks that made him famous, like the smoky-sweet Oaxaca Forever. Named after the home state of Climaco’s father, it has a subtle wood smoke that wafts in the background like a bonfire on the sand, joined by a swell of grapefruit that crashes against a dash of warming cinnamon.
At La Moule, 2500 SE Clinton St., 971-339-2822, lamoulepdx.com. 6 and 8:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 13. Release the kraken! Note: In this case, kraken means natural wines. For this socially distanced patio pop-up, St. Jack chef Aaron Barnett teams with Cooper’s Hall sommelier Joel Gunderson for a fourcourse French dinner highlighted by expert wine pairings. It might not be on Valentine’s Day, but your date surely won’t notice the difference.
3. Paydirt
2724 NE Pacific St., 503-908-3217, paydirtbar.com. 4-9 pm Wednesday-Saturday. The to-go version of Paydirt’s House Old Fashioned— Old Taylor bourbon with bitters and sugar, plus an orange twist and “fancy cherry”—is made to order and funneled into 4-ounce brown glass bottles. It also comes with an added bonus in order to satisfy state liquor regulations: a cheese sandwich—literally a slice of American cheese between two pieces of white bread.
4. Tropicale
Mushrooms and chocolate—together…at last? BY KAT R I N A Y E N TC H
HOT PLATES Where to get food on Valentine’s Day.
1. Bullard
813 SW Alder St., 503-222-1670, bullardpdx.com. Chef Doug Adams’ meat palace knows that Valentine’s Day shouldn’t just be limited to a single meal. Yes, dinner is the most important, and it has three protein-heavy options to choose from, plus dessert. But there’s also a brunch box that includes a smoked salmon quiche, slices of pork belly, danishes and tea from Smith.
2. Quaintrelle
3936 N Mississippi Ave., 503-200-5787, quaintrelle.com. If you’re desperate for some semblance of a date night, this seasonal fine-dining staple has a six-course tasting menu available in a heated covered tent, studded with oysters, scallops, beets and beef filet, and topped off with custard and cake.
3. Paley’s Place
1204 NW 21st Ave., 503-243-2403, paleysplace.net. Chef Vitaly Paley has converted the Russian tea tradition previously available in person at the Heathman Hotel into a take-home, do-it-yourself experience. Choose a tin of loose-leaf teas for two or four and add sweet and savory items, including mushroom hand-pies, sour cream cake, and openfaced sandwiches on black rye.
5. Pacific Crust
2703 NE Alberta St., 503-719-5010, pacificcrustpizzaco.com. C’mon, you know you love a heart-shaped pizza. At this newish Northwest-themed pizzeria, the aortic thin-crust pies aren’t just cut special for the day: The Flaming Heart Pizza is topped with smoked chicken, chiles and garlic chili, while the Sweetheart Pizza is laden with sweet peppers, roasted corn, roasted onions, and black pepper honey. JASMINE GOODWIN
Mushrooms are a staple of Pacific Northwest culture. It’s not uncommon to get invited to a mushroom foraging date in the Tillamook forest, or to see them incorporated into the program of a natural medicine clinic. But adding them to chocolate is something else. Vehicle Chocolates is a Portland-born pandemic project, combining 1,500 mg of mushroom extract with high-quality cacao for a wellness-oriented chocolate bar. It was started by friends and team members Alissa Friedman, Dave Gurley and Matt Milletto, who, during the onset of COVID-19, found themselves experiencing some level of stress on their primary careers. With extra time on their hands, they took advantage of their combined backgrounds in wellness and coffee sourcing, along with a shared passion for mushrooms. The business launched last summer and currently has five flavors on the market, all of which incorporate a blend of chaga, red reishi, cordyceps and lion’s mane mushrooms. (A line of coffee just launched last week as well.) Although mushroom foraging is huge in the region, some inconsistencies in quality still make it hard to source them for chocolate here, says Milletto, who also owns Water Avenue Coffee.
For that reason, Vehicle’s mushroom blend comes from the renowned Real Mushrooms, which sources its zero-grain, USDA organic blend from China—producer of 85% of the world’s mushrooms. Mushrooms have a stacked list of benefits, and are rich with antioxidants, proteins and fiber. Vehicle adds additional health-charged ingredients, including bee pollen, turmeric and dandelion extract. But if Vehicle is a wellness-forward project, then why add chocolate? “Chocolate is already being mixed with CBD or CBN. It is already a vehicle for health,” says Gurley. “We’re trying to take the entire health-conscious idea of dark chocolate as something that people know in small amounts has health benefits.” You might think a mushroom-infused chocolate would taste like dirt. But these bars are filled with 66% cacao, with a flavor more akin to European-style chocolate. Vehicle Chocolates in particular add only 4 grams of sugar to every full bar. “Mushrooms and chocolate are both sacred and ancient foods on this planet,” says Friedman. “We wanted the chocolate to be as good for your body as it is for your taste buds.”
TOP 5
THOMAS TEAL
Sweet ’Shrooms
2337 NE Glisan St., 503-894-9484, tropicale.co. Noon9:30 pm Wednesday-Sunday. The Portland food world was leveled last month by the passing of Alfredo Climaco, Portland’s piña
4. Kachka
960 SE 11th Ave., 503-235-0059, kachkapdx.com. America’s premier Russian restaurant has put together a $100 meal box for two that includes a radicchio salad, mushroom tartare, decadent seafood machanka and a caramel and chocolate tart. There are also à la carte options, including a heart-shaped Herring in a Fur Coat.
BUY IT: Vehicles Chocolates are available at New Seasons and vehiclechocolates.com.
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POTLANDER
Love Stoned A Valentine’s Day gift guide for lovers and cannabis lovers alike. BY BRIANNA WHEELER
St. Valentine was definitely a stoner. His hippy-dippy Christian ministry preached love over everything, he was known for writing the softest soft-boi poetry, he even performed many illicit marriages between Christian soldiers…allegedly. And even though it has, over time, become the horniest of holidays, his martyrdom was initially celebrated as a feast. Honestly, what’s stonier than an all-inclusive food orgy? Hallmark-ification of the holiday aside, St. Valentine’s Day is truly, deeply, madly rooted in simple, unadulterated love for self, family and community. Whether you’re spoiling yourself, your bffs, or the receiver(s) of your amorous desire(s), consider these thoughtful VD gifts while you smoke these heart-tickling strains, and let’s all make St. Valentine proud.
For the S elf-Partnered and Loving It: Oshihana Sex Oil + Forbidden Fruit Don’t mistake Oshihana’s CBD-CBG blend Sex Oil for a slippery coital lubricant—this is denser, stickier and more absorbent than silicone or water-based lubricants. Just don’t mistake it for an all-purpose sex lube: Its consistency is appropriate for female self-pleasure since the cannabinoid blend ostensibly heightens feminine genital sensitivity. What it lacks as a bang-butter it more than makes up for with poontang stimulation. Oshihana.com. Forbidden Fruit is a Cherry Pie-Tangie hybrid that users overwhelmingly describe as velvety, sedative, sensual in its effects. This cultivar has a funky tropical fruit perfume and a candy-sweet inhale. Expect purplish buds with bright golden filaments. Get it from: Gram Central Station, 6430 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-284-6714.
For the Magickal Herbalist: Barbari Valentine Bouquet + Gushers This year, Barbari put together a charming Valentine box featuring 7 grams of strain-specific hemp flower, one of its three herbal smoking blends, a limited-edition enamel badge, and a cutie-patootie love poem card. Each of its signature herbal blends has been assigned a different
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hemp cultivar to maximize the potency of both the herbal blend and the hemp flower. For those who enthusiastically puff botanicals, this is a thoughtful and practical V-Day gift. Barbari.com. Gushers is an indica-forward hybrid of Gelato #41 and Triangle Kush that users report as zippy and euphoric at the onset, eventually melting into a relaxed, romantic, couch- or bed-bound buzz. Expect a sweet, fruity inhale and a grassy, bright exhale. Get it from: Mongoose Cannabis Co., 3123 SE Belmont St., 541-933-8032, mongoosecannabis.com.
For the Cozy Cuddler: Greater Goods Strawberry Hot Chocolate Bombs + Trophy Wife Valentine gifts that honor spiritual connections over sensual predilections are crucial to a well-rounded VD experience. Stock up on a few of these strawberry hot chocolate bombs, attach them to drugstore (or handmade) Valentines, and show your pals just how dedicated you are with their midwinter coziness. Hellogreater.com. Trophy Wife combines the genetics of therapeutic strains Cherry Wine and The Wife to produce a sativa-leaning, high-CBD, hybrid cultivar with a distinct cherry-cheese perfume. Users report effects that include stress and pain relief, elevated moods, and a general easing of social anxiety. Get it from: The Canna Shoppe, 6316 NE Halsey St., 503-660-5209, the-canna-shoppe.business.site.
For Some Serious Sensuality: Sacred Herb Medicinals Cannabis Massage Oil + Truffle Butter For the partnerships that made it through 2020 with their attraction intact, gifting your honey (or honeys) with a sensual medicated massage can be a nice way to say, “Thank you for coexisting with me through this bullshit year.” Sacred Herbs Medicinals Massage Oil is made with full-spectrum cannabis extract and designed for relaxation and relief. But with a little chemistry and imagination, it can also be a steamy way to kick off a sensual holiday date night. Sacredherbmedicinals.com. Truffle Butter is a cross between Chocolate Kush and Gelato whose genetics read as a balanced hybrid, even
though users overwhelmingly report deeply sedative, voluptuous, libido-enhancing highs. Expect sweet notes of burnt caramel and tropical fruit in the nose and a grassy, floral exhale. Get it from: Greenery Cannabis Delivery, getgreenery.com.
For the Evergreen Hopeless Romantic: Canna Style Pink Heart Water Pipe + Squirt Some of us wear pink on red and accessorize with hearts and roses all year long. For us, the Western Valentine aesthetic is too charming to relegate to one day exclusively. I can tell you firsthand that dreamy, romantical stoner types are sure to squeal over this pink, heart-shaped mini-bong from the popular, woman-owned Canna Style brand. Pro tip: Slide a red rose inside for some extra festiveness. Shopcannastyle.com. Squirt is a super-peppy sativa hybrid bred from a cross of Tangie and Blueberry Muffin. Users report energetic, chatty, focused highs great for daytime daydreaming. Expect a tangy, citrusy inhale and dense purple and green buds. Get it from: Gnome Grown, 5012 NE 28th Ave., 971-346-2098, gnomegrownorganics.com.
Treat Yo’ Self: Oracle Wellness Co. Self-Love Gold Ring + Pink Panties Oracle Wellness is popular for its plant-based remedies, but its swag is also highly covetable. This 18k gold-plated self love ring is an adjustable, gender-neutral testament to the spirit of St. Valentine, for whom no power was greater than the power of love. And in the words of modern-day saint RuPaul, “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love someone else?” oraclewellnessco.com. Pink Panties is a cross of Burmese and Florida Kush strains that users herald for its functional sedation, pain and anxiety relief, and a benign euphoria. Don’t be fooled by its lower THC percentage: Even at 15% to 17% THC, this cultivar mostly ushers its users into horizontal positions. What happens next, however, is up to the users. Get it from: Shaman Cannabis, 11134 NE Halsey St., 503-451-0460.
PERFORMANCE
Editor: Andi Prewitt | Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com W I N T E R I N A N TA R C T I C A
MUSIC Written by: Daniel
Bromfield
| @bromf3
Now Hear This
Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery. SOMETHING OLD If you vaguely know The KLF as the ’90s British rave duo who burned a million pounds and then deleted their back catalog, you might be interested to know they’re slowly making their way onto streaming platforms. The singles collection Solid State Logik 1 mostly serves to illuminate how inexplicable some of the stuff that’s big in Europe is (Google “The Kelly Family’’ for more on that), but Come Down Dawn is one of the most intriguing products of the early ’90s period when ambient music catered to saucer-eyed ravers.
UNDER THE SEA: Cirque du Soleil performers portray sea life in a new short film about Antarctica.
North Goes South Director Paul North makes South Pole movie magic in Winter in Antarctica. BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E LL FE RGUS O N
Paul North wants you to know that Antarctica’s fate could be decided by krill. “Something either eats them or eats something that does,” he says. “There’s iron in whale feces, and krill use that to build themselves, to grow, which then feeds the whales, which then continues the iron in the feces to continue the cycle. And that’s just one example of how krill do their thing.” Inspired by the krill decline—in 2016, Scientific American reported that populations of adult Antarctic krill had decreased by 70 to 80 percent in some areas—and the ravages of climate change, North decided to direct Winter in Antarctica, a short film about the southernmost continent starring out-of-work Cirque du Soleil performers. It’s a fundraiser for his educational nonprofit Meet the Ocean— and a visceral fusion of footage from Antarctica, dancing filmed in Las Vegas, and psychedelic costumes designed by Wrara Plesoiu. North is also a playwright, a polar diver and the host of a podcast, also named Meet the Ocean. He spoke to WW about conceiving and creating Winter in Antarctica—and why COVID-19 hasn’t stopped him from fighting to raise awareness of the need for marine protected areas. “We do not have the capacity to measure [Antarctica], and thus we assume its bounty,” he says. “We assume it’s forever. And that’s just not true.” WW: Is it fair to say that diving is an experience that takes you out of yourself ? Paul North: I think the problem is that our narrative [in conservation] tends to highlight the rock-star creatures— the things that are large or have large eyes that we can associate with, make an emotional connection to. But how do you make an emotional connection to a crustacean? What I needed to do to sort of settle a score in my own mind was be like, “OK, I might be the only polar-diving playwright. This pandemic has opened this weird window of opportunity, and I’m going to walk through it.” Knowing the possibility of our timeline, I set these
clear parameters, almost like it was a play. We begin at a water column and then we are off to the bottom of the ocean, which is known as the benthos. Then we’re at the surface and Act 3 is essentially krill worship—to key into the [audience’s] mind that this is the hero of our story. When was all of the Antarctic footage shot? That was filmed over the course of about two years. A majority of the underwater stuff was filmed by me. Specifically, to hunt down the krill footage, that was the hardest part—and that, for me, is the most intense part of the film. That is where we land the punch, when the trapeze artist is doing all that she does, and we blend it so it becomes a visual painting of krill and humanity. Obviously, you have a huge theater background, but this must have been a different kind of experience for you. I had no part in the costumes or the choreography. That was all trust. Wrara picked me up when I went to Vegas and immediately brought me to the performance gym where everyone practices and rehearses. And obviously, there was a lot of emotional processing. I think I cried the most ever in the last two months. That’s because it’s beautiful, and when you’re making things, you have to be vulnerable. Do you worry that in the midst of the pandemic, there’s not as much focus on the environment as there should be? Every second of every day. And what I have seen—what I have found myself in front of and underneath the creatures that have chewed on me—it all wraps up into the story of our planet for me. I’ve spent thousands of hours underwater watching animals be animals, watching humans not recognize the value of most things. I think about pursuing another career where I would have secure income…or I can go to bed at night knowing that I’ve introduced the world to krill in a way that no one else could.
SOMETHING NEW Fievel Is Glauque is just a little less eccentric than its name. Singer Ma Clement and multi-instrumentalist Zach Phillips sound like Getz/Gilberto if they had recorded in a junkyard. The louche sounds of classic bossa nova are there on their debut album God’s Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess, but the drums sound strangely crude, and the songs are all about a minute and a half long, crammed into a 20-track epic that features over 30 musicians in addition to the core duo.
SOMETHING LOCAL It’s almost unbelievable that I’ve Seen All I Need to See is the first new album from The Body in three years, maybe because of their constant stream of collaborations, maybe because 2018 doesn’t feel like three years ago. But the Portland metal noiseniks’ newest album is one of their leanest and best. The divisions between guitar and electronic noise are even more tenuous, and the vocals sound more than ever like Pharoah Sanders’ tea-kettle saxophone screeching on John Coltrane’s last recordings.
SOMETHING ASKEW Speaking of which, John Coltrane’s penultimate performance at the Olatunji Center of African Culture in New York in 1967 can be heard on The Olatunji Concert, and it’s a knockout in every sense of the word. This is about as free as jazz gets. It’s remarkable to think that The Sound of Music showtune “My Favorite Things,” which takes up more than half of the hourlong CD, was only eight years old during this performance. That’s like someone deconstructing “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”
SEE IT: Winter in Antarctica streams at winterinantarctica.com. $15. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
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WHO WILL TAKE HOME THE CROWN?
VOTING NOW OPEN! pets.wweek.com 30
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com
GET YO UR REPS I N R AY N O M O T O R O B I S O N
SCREENER
MOVIES
While local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. For Valentine’s Day, we’re celebrating the bliss and agony of love and romance…but mostly the agony. Unfortunately, that makes for the best art!
Blue Valentine (2010) Years ago, Dean (Ryan Gosling) used to sing and play ukulele, while Cindy (Michelle Williams) happily danced in the street. Now, they’re married, they have a daughter, and they’re drunk in a motel room screaming at each other. This melancholy character study probes a relationship on the rocks as the couple reminisce about how resilient their love used to be. Amazon Prime, Google Play, HBO Max, IMDb TV, iTunes, Pluto TV, Tubi, Vudu, YouTube.
SMOKE SIGNALS: Grace Thorsen is seen here as Candy in the 2006 film Sixes, which was shot in the Rogue Valley.
At Sixes and Sevens
Director Ray Nomoto Robison looks back on his fiercely independent filmmaking career now that his 2006 noir thriller is finally streaming. @hortland
Despite graduating film school in 1978, Ray Nomoto Robison never thought about making movies until he began teaching cinema more than two decades later. The now award-winning director had for years used his education to produce ads for television, but never a full-blown feature. That all changed once he returned to the classroom. “Around 2000,” he recalls, “I was hired part-time at Southern Oregon University for video production classes, and what really clicked was seeing my students come in so excited to show me things that they’d been shooting over the weekend just out of love. By then, I had all this gear from freelancing and thought: ‘Oh my goodness! I went to film school to make films, not TV commercials. I’m going to start making my own movies.’ And so I did.” Robison should rightly be best remembered for his 2006 sophomore project Sixes—an arresting noir thriller shot in the Rogue Valley that’s newly streamable on Amazon Prime after distributor mismanagement effectively caused it to disappear from screens for years. The film was among the first all-digital features, exploiting the still-primitive format’s flattened perspective and warped imagery for maximum claustrophobic effect. Now that Sixes is once again available to view 15 years after its debut, WW caught up with Robison to discuss how he lost and regained rights to the film, what inspired the plot and how he managed to sell his first feature on eBay. WW: How did the idea for Sixes come about? Ray Nomoto Robison: Essentially, 16, 17 years ago, when I wrote it, there was a lot going on with reality TV shows like Survivor and Fear Factor and the online gambling industry. Sixes was a blend of those two entities—basically, Russian roulette with six desperate people. Contestants are found through a suicide hotline and brought in to risk their lives for the chance of winning massive amounts of money. Did the film make it into many festivals? They were small festivals, not like Sundance or Tribeca. The idea of distributors waiting for you after a screening isn’t true, but there were a couple offers. We went with this new Arizona-based company that seemed very passionate about the film. They took it to Cannes, in fact, but went belly up shortly after.
In this essential arthouse romance by French New Wave auteur Alain Resnais and novelist-screenwriter Marguerite Duras, a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a steamy affair while she’s in Hiroshima shooting an anti-war film. Together, the pair reflect on their past traumas and the horror of forgetting. Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube.
Sixes was screened at Cannes? Well, it wasn’t an official selection. Cannes is surrounded by all these other events. The distributor rented out a side theater so potential buyers could come see. They were up and coming, had connections—or so it seemed to me—but they couldn’t figure out the financials and folded very rapidly. After they went bankrupt, the rights were lost for two or three years before I was finally able to communicate with them. At which point you retrieved the rights? They officially handed them back to me, but it was no longer new. So, I had an old movie and no idea what to do with something that had already become sort of outdated. Sixes was a very, very early digital film made back when the format was just switching to high definition. Fortunately, I intended for an old kind of black-and-white Twilight Zone look. I think the film still plays very well because it was never designed to be slick. Was Sixes your first feature? Actually, no. After I got the bug from my students, I made a feature that was, honestly, pretty bad. Die Before I Wake was my first effort at doing something without a budget—I spent about $6,000—and it really didn’t go anywhere. The acting was not great, and back in 2000, festivals wouldn’t accept anything shot digitally unless transferred to film, which I could not afford to do. I tried to get distributors to pick it up, but no one would. So, kind of at the end of my rope, I got to thinking: This site called eBay had just come out promising anyone could sell anything. I put the movie on eBay and pretty much sold all the rights to a small-time distributor on the East Coast. They picked it up for the minimum bid, which was $3,000, and I thought: “That’s half. I might as well take it.” They put out some DVDs, but it really was a bad movie. How would you sum up your career so far? For me, bottom line, I love the process. There really wasn’t ever any money. I self-financed and made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I have to admit I enjoyed myself. Filmmaking is my passion. My art. That’s why I started and why I’ll always continue. SEE IT: Sixes streams on Amazon Prime.
FOCUS/KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
BY JAY H O RTO N
Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)
Brokeback Mountain (2005) Ang Lee’s should-be Best Picture Oscar winner stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, two cowboys who fall in love while spending the summer of 1963 rustling sheep in the Wyoming mountains. As the years go by, the pair continue to pine for each other despite their respective marriages: “I wish I knew how to quit you.” Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube.
Moulin Rouge! (2001) This frenzied jukebox musical melodrama from polarizing visionary Baz Luhrmann is set at the eponymous Parisian cabaret, where playwright Christian (Ewan McGregor) and beautiful courtesan Satine (Nicole Kidman) begin a doomed romance. Twenty years after the film’s release, “Elephant Love Medley” remains a certified bop. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube.
Holiday (1938) The inimitable Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn headline George Cukor’s screwball rom-com about a cartwheeling free spirit (Grant) whose plans to take a long holiday are spoiled when he learns his fiancée’s wealthy father expects him to work at his bank. Enjoy the only nontragic love story on this list! Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel. Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
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NETFLIX
MOVIES TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
Malcolm & Marie Malcolm (John David Washington) makes movies, Marie (Zendaya) is his lover/muse and they make mincemeat of each other in this slick anti-romance directed by Sam Levinson. Last summer, Levinson filmed Washington and Zendaya raging at each other inside a glass-walled house in Carmel, Calif., betting their charisma would infuse its sterile interior with life. That wager bloomed into Malcolm & Marie, which begins with the couple returning home after the premiere of Malcolm’s new movie about addiction. The audience was enraptured, but Malcolm failed to thank Marie in a speech (his film is partly based on her life). She retaliates with scorching mind games that torment and delight her pompous paramour, making you wonder whether their relationship is a toxic mess or an idyllic union between two people who crave conflict. Levinson lets the camera dance through Malcolm and Marie’s home, capturing their tantrums with gloriously vivid black-and-white cinematography. He goes heavy on style and light on soulfulness, but who cares? The pleasure of watching godly thespians play characters who make war over everything from film to cigarettes to mac ’n’ cheese is too savory to ignore. Levinson will never stand as tall as the cinematic giants he namechecks (Malcolm is a big William Wyler fan), but he has made a beautiful-looking movie about two very entertaining assholes. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Netflix.
OUR KEY
: T H I S M O V I E I S E XC E L L E N T, O N E O F T H E B E S T O F T H E Y E A R. : T H I S M O V I E I S G O O D. W E R E C O M M E N D YO U WATC H I T. : T H I S M O V I E I S E N T E R TA I N I N G B U T F L AW E D. : T H I S M O V I E I S A P I E C E O F S H I T.
ALSO PLAYING The White Tiger In the nastiest scene in The White Tiger, several roosters are decapitated. “The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above,” says Balram (Adarsh Gourav). “Yet they do not rebel. The very same thing is done with human beings in this country.” That may be true, but Balram—a poor man from a village in India—is determined to fly the coop. The White Tiger is the story of how he becomes a driver for a cruel and callow businessman (Rajkummar Rao) and eventually transcends poverty and notoriety to become a princely entrepreneur. Director Ramin Bahrani (who adapted the film from Aravind Adiga’s 2008 novel) has named Goodfellas as an inspiration, which might explain The White Tiger’s cynical edge. This is not a Slumdog Millionaire-style saga of instant wealth—it’s a brutal tale of a man who decides the best weapon against India’s caste system is a broken bottle slashed across the right throat at the right time. Near the film’s end, Balram declares that his face could be the face of any man in India, which sounds like an understatement. The White Tiger is a reminder that the world is filled with men like Balram— brilliant, exploited and ripe to be seduced by the gospel of greed. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON.
Netflix.
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Jasper Mall Demonized by generations of filmmakers as the physical manifestation of predatory commercialism and fad-chasing consumerist vapidity, the American mall, with its newfound obsolescence, calls for a more complicated analysis. Should we cheer the extinction of a Main Street-devouring invasive species or mourn the loss of any communal hub? Jasper Mall’s elegiac portrait of its titular shopping center’s steep decline evades easy answers. By withholding any historical details or regional context, we’re forced to walk the small-town Alabama mall alongside the unhurried pace of locals getting their exercise inside the vaguely alien architecture of its long corridors. No matter how artful their shot compositions, documentarians Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb (Lost Weekend; County Fair, Texas) hardly shy away from moments worthy of trending reality TV, but they never lean into the easy joke or sacrifice empathy for spectacle. Our de facto tour guide Mike, the mall’s security guard, facility manager and maintenance man, only reveals his Joe Exotic-esque backstory as a former private zookeeper in Australia at the film’s midpoint. When the Jewelry Doctor plugs in his electric guitar to drum up business for his struggling retail sales and repair shop, the riffs echoing through the empty concourse feel more joyous than desperate. It’s a scene that highlights Jasper Mall’s ability to showcase all that is valiantly ridiculous about the fight to keep the shopping center open in a tone that is both warm and dignified. NR. JAY HORTON. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Pluto TV, Vudu, YouTube.
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 10, 2021 wweek.com
Promising Young Woman Carey Mulligan often delivers her best work in unexpected places: snooping quietly through a BBC detective series, overlooked in a Paul Dano family drama, ripping Llewyn Davis a new one. But Promising Young Woman, the debut feature from Killing Eve scribe Emerald Fennell, feels designed to showcase Mulligan. She plays Cassie, a mysteriously reclusive barista who exposes men’s sex crimes by night. Across from a cast typically connoting standup dudes (Bo Burnham, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Sam Richardson, Max Greenfield, Adam Brody), Cassie knowingly awaits their heel turns, and Mulligan is as malleable as this tone-shifting movie, seemingly flicking the light in her eyes on and off at will. Distracting though the leaps from gonzo thriller to credible rom-com to edgy character study may be, the ambition of Promising Young Woman is impressive. Perhaps Fennell’s shrewdest move is suggesting the film’s bad men are actually too guilty to let these more earnest genres take hold of her film. So, thriller it is. And a riveting one throughout, even if the film’s taste for neatness and resolution cleaves off a full exploration of Cassie’s catharsis and damage. A distinctly #MeToo film, Promising Young Woman knows well (to the point of icy mockery) the tricks men use to justify predatory behavior. And in Mulligan, you couldn’t ask for a better actor to grind this ax. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. On Demand.
True Mothers After struggling with fertility issues, Satoko now lives a peaceful life with her devoted husband, Kiyokazu, and their 6-year-old adopted son, Asato. One day, Asato’s birth mother Hikari appears, claiming she wants her baby back. But Satoko and Kiyokazu don’t recognize her as the shy teen-
ager they met six years ago. Are they the victims of a scam? A sick joke? This is where the nonlinear story switches, jumping back in time to document 14-year-old Hikari’s pregnancy and her stay at Baby Baton, a plenary adoption center in Hiroshima. Japan’s Academy Awards submission for Best International Feature is an effectively suspenseful drama, luring viewers into the tangled mystery of Hikari’s identity. Naomi Kawase, who made history at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival as the youngest-ever winner of the prestigious Caméra d’Or, wrote, directed and edited the film. Her vision is cleareyed and precise, extracting veritable emotion from each breathtaking landscape shot and poignant performance—even if the result is a bit bloated at 140 minutes long. Much like Japan’s excellent 2018 submission Shoplifters, True Mothers is a wistful ode to the infinite forms that family can take, a cogent assertion that there is no one-size-fits-all definition of motherhood. NR. MIA VICINO. Virtual Cinema.
You Will Die at Twenty The first image of You Will Die at Twenty is that of a dead, decomposing camel, splayed in the Sudanese desert. Its carcass serves as a ghastly portent of our protagonist Muzamil’s assumed fate: As a baby, the village shaman prophesied that he would die at the tender age of 20. Now, Muzamil is 19 and the threat of imminent death looms over his head like a fog, affecting his behavior, life choices and relationships. The only person who doesn’t treat him like a pariah is an eccentric old man on the outskirts of the village, and through him, Muzamil learns that oppressive religion and fate are both escapable. Shot on location in the village where director Amjad Abu Alala’s parents are from, this existential coming-of-age drama is the first Sudanese film ever submitted to the Academy Awards for Best
International Feature—it’s also only the eighth Sudanese film ever made, as the country hasn’t had a cinema industry since Omar al-Bashir’s military coup in 1989. Considering these parameters, and the fact that the Sudanese Revolution began during filming (the picture is dedicated to the movement’s victims), Alala’s groundbreaking feature-length debut is even more impressive. NR. MIA VICINO. Virtual Cinema.
The Queen of Black Magic Of all the wonderfully nonsensical horror premises, “Let’s vacation in the haunted orphanage where Dad grew up” is a particularly silly one on its face. This Shudder original from Indonesian horror luminary Kimo Stamboel (Headshot) reimagines 1981’s The Queen of Black Magic as more about class betrayal than its predecessor’s elaborate folklore. And for about half the runtime, the visiting family’s audacity, disguised as ignorance, toward the impoverished orphanage stewards sows interesting seeds. There’s a relative innocence to their bourgeois vanity: cute kids, luxury cars, well-fitted shirts, a few too many wishes for the internet to work in the jungle. Plus, the genuine sweetness of child actor Muzakki Ramdhan (as little brother Haqi) infuses the orphanage specter’s revenge with some genuine terror. Somehow, though, The Queen of Black Magic willfully eludes its core themes of culpability on the part of father Hanif (Ario Bayu) by adding dizzying heaps of third-act plot. While Stamboel’s visions of voodoo hell are occasionally arresting, his film is too wary of its own questions about families’ protective instincts being shrouded in self-interest. Sympathy for the devil spills into sympathy for pretty much everybody, and the half-measure bloodbath proves more interested in showing guts than having them. NR. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. Shudder.
FLASHBACK
THIS WEEK IN 1991
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ART N’ COMICS!
JACK KENT’S
Jack draws exactly what he sees n’ hears from the streets.
IG @sketchypeoplepdx
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JONESIN’
Week of Week of February 18
©2021 Rob Brezsny
by Matt Jones
"True/False Test"--either way, it's correct.
ARIES (March 21-April 19)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)
Atheists like to confront religious people with accusations like this: "If God is so good, why does he allow suffering in the world?" Their simplistic, childish idea of God as some sort of Moral Policeman is ignorant of the lush range of ruminations about the Divine as offered down through the ages by poets, novelists, philosophers, and theologians. For example, poet Stéphane Mallarmé wrote, "Spirit cares for nothing except universal musicality." He suggested that the Supreme Intelligence is an artist making music and telling stories. And as you know, music and stories include all human adventures, not just the happy stuff. I bring these thoughts to your attention, Aries, because the coming weeks will be a favorable time to honor and celebrate the marvelously rich stories of your own life—and to feel gratitude for the full range of experience with which they have blessed you. PS: Now is also a favorable phase to rethink and reconfigure your answers to the Big Questions.
It's not a good time for you to be obsessed with vague abstractions, fear-based fantasies, and imaginary possibilities. But it is a favorable phase to rise up in behalf of intimate, practical changes. At least for now, I also want to advise you not to be angry and militant about big, complicated issues that you have little power to affect. On the other hand, I encourage you to get inspired and aggressive about injustices you can truly help fix and erroneous approaches you can correct and close-at-hand dilemmas for which you can summon constructive solutions.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20) Blogger Rachel C. Lewis confides, "I love being horribly straightforward. I love sending reckless text messages and telling people I love them and telling people they are absolutely magical humans and I cannot believe they really exist. I love saying, 'Kiss me harder,' and 'You're a good person,' and, 'You brighten my day.'" What would your unique version of Lewis's forthrightness be like, Taurus? What brazen praise would you offer? What declarations of affection and care would you unleash? What naked confessions might you reveal? The coming days will be a favorable time to explore these possibilities.
GEMINI (May 21-June20)
ACROSS
54 Internet connection device
28 Kyoto garment
1 A name by any other name? 6 _ _ _-pitch softball
57 "Heads up!" (or advice to crossword speed-solvers)
9 Gradually withdraw
60 A fire sign
32 _ _ _ Lingus (carrier based in Dublin)
13 Country singer Griffith
61 "Yikes!"
14 Place first
62 High-ranking
15 Titular "Pinhead" of comics
63 "Edward Scissorhands" star
16 Short, effective set for a stand-up comedian 18 Pissed
22 Cosecant, for one 27 "Citizen Kane" studio 29 Grant temporary use of 30 "Frozen" princess 31 Raphael's weapon, in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"
33 Techno offshoot big in the 1990s 35 Ryerson who shows up (again!) during repeat viewings of "Groundhog Day" 37 Traffic noise
CANCER (June 21-July 22)
4 Really wish you could
48 The Lightning Seeds lead singer Broudie
You're on the verge of breakthroughs. You're ready to explore frontiers, at least in your imagination. You're brave enough to go further and try harder than you've been able to before. With that in mind, here's a highly apropos idea from Cancerian novelist Tom Robbins. He writes, "If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic." (I might use the word "coax" or "nudge" instead of "force" in Robbins' statement.)
5 Instrument that can play quarter tones
49 Wanda of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)
6 Refrain for a "sweet chariot"
52 Mass movement of viewers to another Twitch stream
64 Ham sandwich bread 65 Like some bathwater
38 How some flat, green insects are described
DOWN
44 Oldest ever U.S. expresident
1 Colony resident
45 It's still a good idea to get a shot for it
19 Gain again, as trust 20 Former Quebecois premier _ _ _ Levesque
31 Blood flow facilitator
It's a good time to become more of who you are by engaging with more of what you are not. Get in the mood for this heroic exercise by studying the following rant by Gemini poet Adam Zagajewski (who writes in Polish), translated by Gemini poet Clare Cavanaugh: "Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition, read the dry, sardonic remarks of cynical philosophers. Read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can't yet understand, because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are."
2 Dragon's den 3 "Picnic" playwright
47 Pet food brand
36 Midwestern NBA follower, maybe
8 Margin in a close game, maybe
54 Magazine with a final print issue in 2018
39 Japanese period for over 250 years (headquartered in what is now Tokyo)
9 Bugs
55 Mineral-rich source
10 Green-minded org.
56 Quick swim
In her story "Homelanding," Margaret Atwood writes, "Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes. Take me to your fingers." I'd love you to express requests like that. It's a favorable time for you to delve deeper into the mysteries of people you care about. You will generate healing and blessings by cultivating reverent curiosity and smart empathy and crafty intimacy. Find out more about your best allies!
11 Fitting
58 "Pay attention!"
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)
41 Suffix for trick
12 Bill who appears in the 2021 Amazon movie "Bliss"
59 Scottish mystery writer Josephine
42 Leakes of reality TV
15 Much of a penny
43 Final Four initials
17 Part of some three-day weekends, for short
You're about to reach the end of your phase of correction and adjustment. To mark this momentous transition, and to honor your everincreasing ability to negotiate with your demons, I offer you the following inspirational proclamation by poet Jeannette Napolitano: "I don't want to look back in five years' time and think, 'We could have been magnificent, but I was afraid.' In five years, I want to tell of how fear tried to cheat me out of the best thing in life, and I didn't let it."
32 Molecule unit 34 Held for possible sale, maybe
40 Oboe, for one
45 Post-apocalyptic zombie series, to fans 46 Tank dwellers that need a lot of care 50 "Cinderella Man" antagonist 51 Feature of some interesting stories
7 Letters for the 2020 Super Bowl
21 Belgian salad green 23 Artery along the thigh 24 "Be back _ _ _" 25 2020 Pixar movie
53 Air France assets, once
last week’s answers
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) "The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes," declared author André Gide. As a writer myself, I will testify to the truth of that formulation. But what about those of you who aren't poets and novelists and essayists? Here's how I would alter Gide's statement to fit you: "The most beautiful things are those that rapture prompts and reason refines." Or maybe this: "The most beautiful things are those that experimentation finds and reason uses." Or how about this one: "The most beautiful things are those that wildness generates and reason enhances." Any and all of those dynamics will be treasures for you in the coming weeks.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) The poet Nayyirah Waheed has some advice I want you to hear. She writes, "Be easy. Take your time. You are coming home to yourself." I will add that from my astrological perspective, the coming weeks will indeed be a time for you to relax more deeply into yourself— to welcome yourself fully into your unique destiny; to forgive yourself for what you imagine are your flaws; to not wish you were someone else pursuing a different path; to be at peace and in harmony with the exact life you have.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) "The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things," wrote author G. K. Chesterton. He was exaggerating for dramatic effect when he said that, as he often did. The more nuanced truth is that one of the central aims of education is to learn things, and another very worthy aim is to unlearn things. I believe you are currently in a phase when you should put an emphasis on unlearning things that are irrelevant and meaningless and obstructive. This will be excellent preparation for your next phase, which will be learning a lot of useful and vitalizing new things.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) ultimately became one of the 20th century's most renowned composers. But his career had a rough start. *Symphony No. 1*, his first major work, was panned by critics, sending him into a four-year depression. Eventually he recovered. His next major composition, *Piano Concerto No. 2*, was well-received. I don't anticipate that your rookie offerings or new work will get the kind of terrible reviews that Rachmaninoff's did. But at least initially, there may be no great reviews, and possibly even indifference. Keep the faith, my dear. Don't falter in carrying out your vision of the future. The rewards will come in due time.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) Ancient Greek playwright Euripides was popular and influential—and remains so to this day, 2,400 years later. But there's a curiously boring aspect in five of his plays, *Andromache*, *Alcestis*, *Helen*, *Medea*, and *The Bacchae*. They all have the same exact ending: six lines, spoken by a chorus, that basically say the gods are unpredictable. Was Euripides lazy? Trying too hard to drive home the point? Or were the endings added later by an editor? Scholars disagree. The main reason I'm bringing this to your attention is to encourage you to avoid similar behavior. I think it's very important that the stories you're living right now have different endings than all the stories of your past.
HOMEWORK: Listen to and download my music for free. https://soundcloud.com/sacreduproar
26 Au pair 27 Oakland athlete
©2021 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.
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Polarization is at an all-time high, and people won't talk with each other. Productive dialogue is the only way through the major problems we face. Are you having a hard time speaking constructively about important issues with someone in your life? The documentary, When in Doubt, is looking for a pair of subjects who are struggling in their relationship due to an ideological disagreement. Our goal is to facilitate a few constructive conversations, on camera, to show that it's possible to keep a relationship intact despite political or religious differences. Both subjects will get a free copy of the book How to Have Impossible Conversations, and be coached by one of the authors on how to improve their communication. If you'd like to be considered for the film, please go to our website, click Share Your Story and then Apply to fill out the form. You can also see a teaser and learn more about the film. WEBSITE: whenindoubtfilm.com
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By Nigel Jaquiss | Page 13
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