NEWS: Cop Badmouths the DA. P. 8 OU T DOORS: Oregon's Epic New Hiking Trail. P. 20 BARS: Beer and Boozy Ice Cream. P. 21
"ET T U, BROOKLYN?" P. 19
YOU’RE DRIVING TOO DAMN
FAST A new report shows it’s not texting, drunken drivers, teenagers or jaywalkers causing Portland’s epidemic of pedestrian deaths. It’s speed. By Nigel Jaquiss and Latisha Jensen Page 10
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STRAWBERRY MOUNTAIN, PAGE 20
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 47, ISSUE 20 Oregon health officials say they can administer almost 50,000 vaccine doses a day. 6
Oregon’s new, epic hiking trail passes through the deepest river canyon in the country. 20
Republican lawmakers miss having lobbyists in the Capitol. 7
During Prohibition, speakeasies were called “blind pigs.” 21
“We are living in hell,” says one Lents resident. 8
A new bar serves a takeout cocktail that requires customers to infuse the booze with palo santo smoke.
Over three years, 81% of Portland pedestrian fatalities occurred at locations where the speed limit was 30 mph or higher. 11 Men were at the wheel for nearly three-quarters of those deaths. 13
Two people killed were walking home from the same 7-Eleven. 15 Federal officials reinstalled the fence around the downtown courthouse only three days after taking it down. 18
ON THE COVER: "ET T U, BROOKLYN ?" P. 19
Speed kills, illustration by Joy Bogdan.
NEWS: Cops Badmouth the DA. P. 8 OU T DOORS: Oregon's Epic New Hiking Trail. P. 20 BARS: Beer and Boozy Ice Cream. P. 21
YOU’RE DRIVING TOO DAMN
22
Ghostface Killah’s Supreme Clientele is the Trout Mask Replica of rap. 26 There really is such a thing as “podcaster voice.” 26
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK: Oregon may have enough vaccines for all willing adults by April 21.
FAST A new report shows it’s not texting, drunken drivers, teenagers or jaywalkers causing Portland’s epidemic of pedestrian deaths. It’s speed. By Nigel Jaquiss| Page 10
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Last week, City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty was falsely accused of hit-and-run. On March 3, a woman whose car was rear-ended called 911 and told Portland police—incorrectly—that she recognized the driver as Hardesty. The next day, details of the dispatch report were shared by the conservative Coalition to Save Portland and then picked up by The Oregonian. Hardesty was promptly cleared by the Portland Police Bureau—the woman suspected of the hit-and-run lives in Vancouver, Wash., and bears a superficial resemblance to Hardesty. But the central question remains: Who leaked information about the investigation to the Coalition to Save Portland, a pro-police group with financial ties to the Police Bureau? Gabriel Johnson, the group’s founder, claims the information was sent to him by someone in the bureau, and Mayor Ted Wheeler has launched an investigation into the leak. Here’s what our readers had to say: ReasonableSkeptic, via wweek.com: “This is obviously an attempt by the police to discredit Hardesty. An investigation should reveal who was involved and how far up it went. Whoever leaked the information should be prosecuted and their names made public. If you think this isn’t about race, or about Hardesty trying to reform the police, you’re being dishonest with yourself.” @mlucan1, via Twitter: “Country’s Whitest City Finds New & Horrible Ways to Continually Embarrass Itself.” @SarasCrazyLife via Twitter: “The police did something unethical and possibly illegal to get back at someone? Surely the high quality of officers we have would NEVER do such a thing!”
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R.O.W.L.F., via wweek.com: “Well, that’s it, folks. The police are on the case! And we all know how effective the police are at regulating themselves. I foresee a quick and transparent resolution with no problems!” Robert C. Kenneth, via email: “It’s equally disturbing to see yet another investigation (this time spearheaded by the mayor) into this type of distraction, while the city is all but paralyzed by record violent crime and decimated budgets—all on the heels of costly court settlements related to police abuse and DOJ noncompliance.…I can only imagine the low morale among those sworn PPB officers (of integrity and humanity), who joined the force out of a sense of service to the communities where they live.” Death From Above, via wweek.com: “What are the consequences for [editor] Therese Bottomly and The Oregonian? They aren’t victims of misinformation, they were protagonists in this. They amplified unverified reports and, when they were wrong, didn’t explain why. Just whitewashed their initial coverage.” Julia Ghoulia, via Facebook: “How was the driver’s claim that it was Hardesty even taken seriously in the first place?!? Through a rear view mirror and two panes of glass, it could’ve been practically anybody who fits a (VERY) vague description of the Commissioner. That’s just shameful all around.” Lisa Downing, via Facebook: “Not a fan of Hardesty. But this information should not have been released until it was confirmed. Not cool of the woman to wrongfully accuse the wrong person.” 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
As a Blazers fan, I’m excited for the return of injured center Jusuf Nurkić. But I’m also nervous—we haven’t exactly had great luck keeping our big men healthy over the years. What is it about playing in Portland that makes it so dangerous for 7-footers? —Frail Blazer I’m not saying the Blazers are cursed, Frail. Still, we fans could be forgiven for wondering, in our darkest moments, exactly which vengeful fairy godmother we forgot to invite to the 1977 NBA championship victory party. The Blazers’ woes began in 1978, when star center Bill Walton suffered a broken foot midway through the season—the first in a series of injuries that would plague him for the rest of his career. Sam Bowie, at 7-foot-1, was selected by Portland with the second overall pick in the 1984 NBA draft. (Michael Jordan was picked third.) Healthy his rookie year, Bowie would miss 184 games over the next three seasons before being traded in 1989. The deepest wound (some say it’s still bleeding today) is, of course, Greg Oden, first overall pick of the 2007 draft. He missed his entire first season due to injury, had a sort of normal second season, and then played in just 21 games over the next
three seasons. The situation was so bad satirical newsmagazine The Onion did a story in 2010 called “Careless Blazers Goofing Around With Basketball Shatter Greg Oden Into Thousand Pieces.” That’s pretty brutal. So on that fateful day in 2019, when Nurkić’s leg folded like Barack Obama at a budget standoff, the grisly injury was accompanied by a sinking feeling of déjà vu. Surely none have suffered like we’ve suffered? Well, maybe—but when you look into it, others have suffered. Ever heard of Gheorghe Muresan, Brad Daugherty or Aleksandar Radojević? Me neither, because they were promising big men (for the Nets, Cavs and Raptors, respectively) who never had much of an impact due to injury. The Blazers’ luck may be worse than average, but it’s not beyond the pale. It’s just that other teams’ disappointments don’t register the way your own do. That’s why people in Cleveland have never heard of Sam Bowie. (Granted, they have heard of Greg Oden, but come on—that shit was bananas.) QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
MURMURS ALEX WITTWER
SUPPORT
LOCAL
TIERRA DEL MAR
SENATOR SUBLEASES OFFICE FROM LOBBYIST: State Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward (D-Portland) has subleased Portland office space from Gary Oxley, a lobbyist whose big business clients include Altria/Philip Morris, Apple, Amazon, Fred Meyer and the health care giant McKesson Corp. Steiner Howard is one of Salem’s most powerful figures by dint of her position as co-chair of the budget-writing Joint Ways and Means Committee. A family physician and faculty member at Oregon Health & Science University, she’s also one of the state’s leading anti-tobacco voices and sponsored a 2017 law that raised the age at which Oregonians could buy tobacco to 21. So her position and politics make the sublease all the more surprising. Steiner Hayward asked the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for approval, noting she was paying market rent and would not grant Oxley or his staff special access. The Ethics Commission OK’d the deal. Steiner Hayward says the office space in the Medical Dental Building on Southwest 11th Avenue, owned by the Eastern Western Corp., is “a convenience, nothing more, nothing less” while the Capitol is closed during the pandemic. “It was important to me to be above board about this,” Steiner Hayward says. “That’s why I got the opinion from the Ethics Commission. If they had concerns, they would have said so.” POLICE UNION PRESIDENT RESIGNS AMID HARDESTY FALLOUT: The Portland Police Association abruptly announced the resignation of president Brian Hunzeker on Tuesday afternoon. The union said in a press release that Hunzeker, who had been in the role for less than six months, resigned due to a “serious, isolated mistake related to the [Portland] Police Bureau’s investigation into the alleged hit-and-run by Commissioner [Jo Ann] Hardesty.” The announcement follows the release of a 23-page police report March 12 that cleared up some of the confusion around a flurry of news stories March 4 that initially—and wrongly—identified Hardesty as the driver in a minor March 3 hit-and-run in East Portland. The report showed that after an initial 911 report identified Hardesty as the perpetrator, Officer Ken Le added what he thought was Hardesty’s license plate to the report. That detail was then leaked to the press. It is unclear what mistake, exactly, caused Hunzeker’s resignation. Questions still loom about who within the bureau leaked the report to the media as well as far-right groups. The Portland Police Bureau said in a statement Tuesday that Hunzeker is
still an employee of the bureau and that he “will receive an assignment within the bureau to be determined.” OREGON PRISONS REPORT RECORD-LOW COVID CASES: After months of outbreaks and 42 COVID-related deaths of inmates, the Oregon Department of Corrections reported its lowest count of active cases since the pandemic began. During a March 15 meeting before the Oregon House Subcommittee on COVID-19, DOC director Colette Peters said there are now 19 active cases among inmates—a major decline from a peak of more than 730—and nine active cases among staff. That decline follows a Feb. 2 order by a federal judge mandating that the state offer vaccines to all Oregon inmates “as soon as possible.” During the Tuesday hearing, DOC’s chief medical director Dr. Warren Roberts said every inmate who wanted a vaccine has now had at least the first dose. As of March 15, Roberts said, 9,156 of DOC’s approximately 13,000 inmates have received their first dose, and 1,256 have received the second dose. “We will not stop until we have eradicated COVID-19 from our institutions,” Roberts said.
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FACEBOOK CABLE SAGA EXTENDED: Facebook’s tortured efforts to land a trans-Pacific telecommunications cable ran smack into a state-imposed permit deadline this month. The deadline came amid the cacophonous banging of a pneumatic hammer removing drilling pipe that extended from the Tillamook County hamlet of Tierra del Mar half a mile under the ocean, where Facebook’s contractor will punch a hole in the seafloor to connect the cable to land and the company’s central Oregon server farms. But drilling mishaps prevented completion of the work, and Facebook asked the state March 4 for a year’s extension on its permit. The state agreed, infuriating Tierra del Mar residents who are not mollified by a series of grants and contributions Facebook has made to local organizations. Lynnae Ruttledge, leader of opposition to the project, which brought industrial drilling to her sleepy beachside neighborhood, says Facebook never gave residents any warning it was seeking the March 26, 2022, extension. Ruttledge terms the extension “a new level of outrageousness.” The company says the noisy work is done and what remains is lot restoration and pulling the cable through the now-installed undersea conduit to shore.
Willamette Week MARCH 17, 2021 wweek.com
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D AV E K I L L I A N
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
TRENDING
WHAT REPUBLICANS WANT
Reopening Day This time, Oregon Republicans aren’t walking out. They want the public to walk back in. Across the state, Oregonians are worrying about when to return to their offices. Among the most eager: Republican lawmakers, who want the state Capitol open for in-person meetings.
THE SITUATION: Democrats, who control the lead-
Lining Up Shots COVID-19 vaccines are still in short supply in Oregon. That may change over the next six weeks. BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N
r monahan@wweek.com
Despite early stumbles in the logistics of COVID-19 vaccine distribution, Oregon health officials say the state is ready, willing and able to double the rate of shots going into Oregonians’ arms. Currently, about 24,000 vaccinations a day are being given in Oregon. The Oregon Health Authority says it would increase that pace by distributing doses to local public health authorities, hospitals and pharmacies in March and April. That plan matters because Oregon expects to start receiving vaccine doses at a far greater rate than it has so far this year. Whether the state can rapidly deliver that supply into arms—without the spectacular snafus that plagued Oregon’s distribution to seniors—will determine when most adults get shots and when some semblance of normal life resumes. As WW first reported last week, the Oregon Health Authority projects it could have doses for 70% of the adult population by April 21, if vaccine manufacturers keep to their promised schedule. That matches the timeline of President Joe Biden, who has called on states to make everyone eligible for a vaccine by May 1. But Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has so far declined to do so, instead taking a wait-and-see approach. Nor has she moved up the dates of eligibility for people younger than 65, including those with specific health conditions, farmworkers and manufacturing workers, who all become eligible March 29. State health officials say that isn’t because of any jitters over its ability to distribute a huge glut of shots. Instead, OHA says it is prepared to distribute whatever the feds provide. “We are still on track to meet the projected April goal of receiving enough prime doses of the vaccines to vaccinate 70% of adults,” says OHA spokesman Jonathan Modie. “We’ve been clear we want to advance our timelines, and we can move them up, if we receive enough doses from the federal government.” 6
Willamette Week MARCH 17, 2021 wweek.com
MAKE MINE A DOUBLE: Oregon COVID19 vaccinations began in January.
WHEN
The date the Oregon Health Authority expects prime doses of COVID-19 vaccine to arrive in Oregon.
Prime Dose Forcast at Month End 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5
THE DEMAND: Legislators are already working in
their Capitol offices. What Republicans want is for the public to be allowed in the building, too. (Practically speaking, that also means lobbyists, who are currently not allowed in.) That’s part of a wider call by conservatives to reopen the state’s schools and economy more rapidly. On March 9, the GOP’s Senate caucus released a statement calling for to come up with a plan to open the Capitol by April 21. “If herd immunity isn’t the benchmark for giving Oregonians full access to their democracy, I don’t know what is,” says Senate Republican Leader Fred Girod (R-Lyons). “I am calling on the presiding officers to develop a plan to reopen the Capitol by April 21.”
THE JUSTIFICATION: By April 21, the Oregon
1.0 0.5 0.0
ership of both chambers of the Legislature, developed a plan at the beginning of the year with Republican input for reopening the Capitol. Their plan called for reopening to the public once Marion County’s COVID case counts dropped. “The Capitol shall remain open only to authorized personnel when Marion County remains in extreme, high or moderate risk,” reads the Capitol Operations Safety Plan. Marion County is currently at high risk. Adds Danny Moran, spokesman for House Speaker Tina Kotek: “Members of the public would be traveling to Marion County from all over the state, so state health officials have also recommended that we need to consider the risk levels statewide as a factor for expanding access too.”
FEB -21
MAR -21
March 15: 865,800 Oregonians have had at least a first dose.
APR -21
3.49 million, the number of Oregonians over 16
MAY -21 2.4 million, 70% of adult Oregonians
WHERE
Oregon’s plan to double the doses currently being distributed would give the following places this many doses each week. Mass vaccination sites
48,900
Other hospitals and health systems
89,180
Retail pharmacies
33,000
Federally qualified health centers
9,000
Other clinics
50,000
Local public health authorities
90,400
TOTAL
320,480
Source: Oregon Health Authority
Health Authority projects it will have enough doses for 70% of the adult population. But 70% of the entire population (not just adults) is projected to need immunity to COVID-19 to prevent another virus spike—and kids under age 16 can’t get the vaccines yet. So OHA estimates that 90% of everyone over 16 needs to get the shot (or have natural immunity from contracting the virus) in order to achieve herd immunity. Republicans say they just want a firm schedule. “We said, ‘Have a plan by 4/21’—there is a difference and there is a big difference,” says Dru Draper, spokesman for the Senate Republicans. “We assume there will be consultation with experts that will incorporate the data.” Among the data Republicans mention: low case counts among children, who can’t yet be vaccinated. “For our purposes, if that means no school field trips in the state Capitol for a while, then that is fine and probably wise,” Draper adds.
THE TACTIC: It appears they’re engaged in a work
slowdown. House Republicans have refused to forgo the reading of bills, lengthening the time required for floor sessions. Democrats have scheduled a 7 pm floor session to accommodate that. Though the GOP hasn’t made an explicit connection between the slowdown and the call to reopen the Capitol, House Minority Leader Christine Drazan (R-Canby) called the remote session “grossly inadequate” in a floor speech explaining the call for bill readings. “We are not here to facilitate the ease of the passage of someone else’s agenda that harms my community and my state long term,” she added. RACHEL MONAHAN.
NEWS
Tax Axed
WESLEY LAPOINTE
RESULTS
BLACK AND WHITE IN OREGON
Who’s Still Going to the Hospital With COVID? The virus is still hospitalizing people of color at a greater clip as they are vaccinated more slowly.
DUMPED: Owens-Brockway objected to new Portland carbon fees.
City Hall will start over on its controversial plan to reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality. Portland City Commissioner Carmen Rubio will revamp a controversial proposal to create two new fees on carbon emissions, after WW reported the plan was likely to shutter the only glass recycling plant in the state. “The goal of reducing carbon emissions in the city is very much alive,” says Rubio, who oversees the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. “The shape of the strategies is what we are discussing now.”
WHAT HAPPENED: Rubio, who took office in
January, inherited the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability—and its signature policy initiatives, two new fees on carbon emissions. In November, before Rubio took office, the bureau introduced the tax proposals and originally hoped to rush them through the lame-duck City Council while it still included two commissioners, Amanda Fritz and Chloe Eudaly, who were finishing their terms and wouldn’t have to deal with public rancor. BPS proposed two new taxes: a per-ton charge on any company that produced 2,500 or more tons of carbon annually, and a tax of $15,000 to $40,000 on about 80 companies that hold state emissions permits. Portland set its sights on becoming the first city in the U.S. to levy a tax on greenhouse gas emissions. The city’s analysis showed the two taxes would have raised about $11 million a year—with a third of that money coming from just two companies: the Owens-Brockway glass plant in Cully (paying $1.02 million a year) and Evraz Steel in North Portland ($2.72 million). The quick march of the taxes didn’t work. In January, Rubio and Mayor Ted Wheeler hit the pause button. At the time, BPS officials told WW they hoped to bring the taxes back to the council in early March. But Rubio personally communicated with more than 20 stakeholders and concluded the policy needed substantial reworking. “How I like to work is really listening to learn,” Rubio says. “I have failed enough times to know that if you engage first and listen and learn, it will make something better in the end.”
WHY IT HAPPENED: One potential fallout of the tax proposals Rubio heard about was the threat to Oregon’s Bottle Bill.
In January, based on 1,300 pages of city emails, WW reported that city bureaucrats had put the taxes together with little analysis of their effects, without consulting the companies that would pay, and without regard for unintended consequences (“Glass Houses,” WW, Jan. 27, 2021). Among the companies kept in the dark: Owens-Brockway, the only glass recycler in Oregon, which melts down the equivalent of 440,000 beer bottles a day. But the plant is struggling as beer- and winemakers turn to alternative packaging. It laid off about half its employees in 2019 and now faced the prospect of more than $1 million a year in new taxes. The Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative, which manages the Bottle Bill, says it gave Owens-Brockway a $500,000 subsidy last year to help keep the plant operating and avert one consequence of its closure: The cooperative would have to truck tens of millions of bottles out of state or throw them in a dump. Rubio says she also heard about what the taxes could cost in jobs. Evraz, the biggest would-be carbon taxpayer, imports giant steel slabs and rolls them into steel sheet for manufacturers and fabrication shops across the Northwest. Evraz took the tax seriously enough that the company commissioned a public opinion poll in January to test messages for defeating it. A key question: “Given that carbon emissions don’t recognize boundaries, where should emission reduction policies be implemented?” Only 7% of respondents said “locally.” Evraz and others told WW they objected to what they saw as a revenue-raising measure disguised as environmental policy. “We are pleased to hear reports the city may no longer be pursuing this flawed proposal,” says Evraz spokesman Patrick Waldron. “Rejecting and no longer pursuing this city carbon tax is the right decision.”
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: Rubio says BPS, with the help of a wide range of stakeholders, will craft a policy over the next few months that prioritizes reducing emissions and improving air quality—rather than simply raising money. “We’ll figure how to achieve the goals first, then we’ll figure out how to pay for it,” she says. “We need to lead with the why and the what, and then we talk about the how.” Jules Bailey, chief stewardship officer for the recycling cooperative, says he’s relieved Rubio is taking a fresh look and keeping the Bottle Bill in mind. “I have been incredibly impressed about how Commissioner Rubio has been engaged in personally reaching out to stakeholders,” Bailey says. “She’s looking for a path forward that will work for critics and advocates alike and that reduces carbon emissions.” NIGEL JAQUISS.
It’s been a year since COVID-19 descended. But one thing hasn’t changed: The pandemic is still having a disproportionate effect on Black people and other people of color in Oregon. The most recent Oregon Health Authority weekly report shows that since the pandemic began, Black, Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities have had higher COVID -19 hospitalization rates than all other racial groups. That is, if they contract the virus, they are more likely to get sick enough to require a stay in the hospital. Duncan Hwang, associate director of the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, says it’s due to institutional racism that’s even more challenging to address during the chaos of a pandemic. “I’m not surprised the disparities still exist—we have unsolved racism in public health,” Hwang says. “I don’t think we’re doing enough to address disparities. It’s a major national issue as well.” As WW reported last week (“Low on the Food Chain,” March 10, 2021), the state’s vaccine distribution priorities haven’t successfully addressed the disparities. Even as COVID-19 vaccines are distributed to tens of thousands of Oregonians per day, shots don’t appear to be reaching the populations most at risk—and white Oregonians are still vaccinated at a higher rate. White people have received 72% of all vaccine doses administered; no other racial group exceeds 4%. “When you’re 65 and older in our community, it’s difficult to get in queue for those who don’t speak English,” Hwang says. “If you do get lucky enough to get a spot, you have to figure out how to get there for both shots. And when you get there, is somebody going to speak your language? These are all major barriers and I think that explains why there’s disparities in vaccinations.” LATISHA JENSEN.
SEVERE CASES
Since the pandemic began, 1,409 Pacific Islanders have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 1 in 10 landed in the hospital for it. Here’s the percentage of each racial group that required hospitalization after testing positive for the virus.
PACIFIC ISLANDER 10.6% AMERICAN INDIAN/ ALASKAN NATIVE 7.9% BLACK 7.2% WHITE 6.9% ASIAN 6.4% HISPANIC 4.3% Source: Oregon Health Authority
Willamette Week MARCH 17, 2021 wweek.com
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NEWS
SAM GEHRKE
About Schmidt
A precinct commander for the Portland Police Bureau suggested residents should vote out the district attorney for being soft on crime. VIDEO STILL
CMDR. ERICA HURLEY
BY TE SS R I S K I
tess@wweek.com
A Portland police commander was captured on video at a neighborhood meeting in January telling Southeast Portland residents, if they wanted to reduce crime, they should vote the Multnomah County district attorney out of office. East Precinct Commander Erica Hurley wore her full uniform—including badge and gun—to a Jan. 14 meeting of an anti-crime neighborhood group in Lents. She attended the event during work hours on behalf of the Portland Police Bureau, says bureau spokesman Lt. Greg Pashley. Hurley told Lents residents the police’s ability to make arrests for drug possession was hamstrung by Oregon voters decriminalizing drugs last November. She suggested that if residents wanted to see more arrests for drug-related offenses, they would need to unseat Mike Schmidt, the reform-minded district attorney elected last spring. “So the drug activity that you see, I can do nothing about,” Hurley said. “I can’t arrest them. I can’t send them to jail. I can’t do anything. I can’t control that. Who controls that is you, because, when the DA’s office asks what you want done, you need to send emails to the district attorney and phone calls to the district attorney. When the vote comes up again—because, the reality is, he won the vote with over 70% of the people—you have to vote no, right? And you have to vote.” Hurley appeared to conflate Schmidt’s election last May—when he received 76% percent of the vote—with the passage of Ballot Measure 110 in November, which decriminalized possession of small amounts of some hard drugs. As the meeting went on, she again criticized Schmidt for being soft on crime. “Part of it is the DA’s office that is failing to prosecute some of these cases, like the riots,” Hurley said. “When you come out publicly and say, ‘I will not prosecute anybody who does property damage, who does minor crimes,’ why wouldn’t you come and do that in the city of Portland? If you go to Washington County, they’re going to prosecute you. If you go to Clackamas County, you might not see outside of jail for a week.” Video of Hurley’s remarks was posted to YouTube by the Lents Neighborhood Livability Association, the group she visited. A police commander openly politicking against the county’s top prosecutor is nearly unheard of. It also might violate Police Bureau policy. Bureau Directive 313.20 prohibits officers from using their “official authority or influence”—for example, wearing their uniform or using their official title—while engaging in political activity, which it defines as activity “directed toward supporting or opposing federal, state, or local measures, candidates, recalls, political committees, or petitions.” 8
Willamette Week MARCH 17, 2021 wweek.com
EASTBOUND AND DOWN: A squad car near Mall 205 in Southeast Portland.
J. Ashlee Albies, a Portland civil rights lawyer, reviewed a portion of the Lents meeting footage. She says city policies and state laws relating to political activity are in place so public employees don’t create the impression that they are speaking on behalf of the city. “A uniform is, you are literally cloaked in the authority of the state or of the city,” says Albies. “Those statements are deeply concerning, and they sound very much like she is encouraging people to vote against the district attorney when he comes up for election.” Hurley, a 26-year veteran of the bureau who oversees one of the city’s three police precincts, declined comment through a spokesman. The bureau says it has reviewed the video, but declined to say whether it had triggered an internal affairs complaint. “Members can express themselves at meetings commensurate with their rank, experience, assignment and scope of work,” says spokesman Pashley, “and should adhere to bureau directives.” Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office declined comment. Schmidt, for his part, offered an olive branch. “District Attorney Mike Schmidt continues to prioritize building and maintaining relationships with members of law enforcement even when their opinions may differ,” said his spokesman, Brent Weisberg, who reviewed portions of the video. Hurley’s remarks reflect widespread police frustration with cuts made to the bureau’s budget during last summer’s protests—leaving them overworked and understaffed—and what they view as a permissive civic attitude toward increasing crime. Much of that ire is directed toward Schmidt, who won office pledging progressive reforms to the criminal justice system. In August, Schmidt said he would only prosecute protesters who were violent or deliberately damaged property. In December, he voiced support for Measure 110, the drug decriminalization measure. It’s not unusual for police officers to meet with neighborhood associations—who share similar frustrations. But the Lents Neighborhood Livability Association isn’t a typical neighborhood group. It’s a splinter organization— not to be confused with the Lents Neighborhood Association, formed in 1999 and officially recognized by the city of Portland. Instead, the livability association formed in October 2017, corporate filings show. It’s explicitly more pro-police and less sympathetic to homeless people than the official neighborhood association. Around Christmas in 2017, the group gained notoriety after circulating a poem that riffed on “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” replacing lyrics like “12 drummers drumming” with “12 tweakers tweaking.” (Reached by phone, the association declined to comment
for this story. “Willamette Week has already blackened our name as it is, so I really have no comment at all,” said a woman who didn’t identify herself and then hung up.) The appearance of police brass before such a group would in itself be noteworthy. (But it’s not uncommon: Cops as high-ranking as Deputy Chief Chris Davis and former Portland Police Association president Daryl Turner have visited the group’s meetings.) The conversation Hurley had with about two dozen attendees was even more remarkable, both as a window into the shared grievances of police and residents as well as the rift it shows between police and elected officials. Several residents described to Hurley a sense of alarm about homeless campers. “We are living in hell. They have absolutely taken us and we are prisoners in our homes,” said a man named Todd. “I feel so sorry for you guys. But, for us, it’s really—it’s too much. It’s intolerable. I’m scared.” Another man named Ruben described a homeless person carrying a knife he said was the size of a machete. “Yeah. Most of them have weapons,” Hurley responded. Hurley spoke to the group for more than 70 minutes. She encouraged the neighbors to demand more money for Portland police, and warned if they didn’t, the next thing the City Council might cut are the Neighborhood Response Teams, which typically police homeless encampments and other “crime, nuisance and livability issues,” according to the bureau’s website. “But I’m going to tell you right now that if you all do not ask from the mayor’s office for us to keep [NRT officers], it will be the first thing gone,” Hurley said. “If they don’t hear from you, I’m the only one fighting for it. And not that I don’t matter, but I don’t matter, right?... Downtown has to hear from you. It has to be a single voice. It has to be enough voices that they don’t continue to take the money away from the Portland Police Bureau.” Hurley added she had faith in “new City Council members” to help with Lents neighbors’ concerns. She said the Portland Bureau of Transportation, previously helmed by Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, had a new commissioner. (PBOT is relevant because one of the association’s main concerns is homeless people living in vehicles.) “On that note, [PBOT] is run by a new City Council member,” Hurley said, adding she believed the new PBOT commissioner was Mingus Mapps. A few neighbors corrected her: The Transportation Bureau is now led by Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, they said. “I think it’s Hardesty, which screws you to the wall because she’s not going to do a thing about it,” a neighbor offscreen said. Hurley appeared to chuckle at the comment. “It’s your voice,” Hurley said. “If you are loud enough, she will have to listen or she won’t get reelected.”
NEWS BETH CONYERS, PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS
WELCOME BACK: Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero visited Sitton Elementary this month.
Hotseat: Guadalupe Guerrero Portland Public Schools’ superintendent talks about the return to classrooms. BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N
rmonahan@wweek.com
On March 12, 2020, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown closed public schools to protect Oregonians from a novel coronavirus. The closure was supposed to last two weeks. One year later, on March 15, Portland Public Schools announced a tentative deal with its teachers’ union to bring kids back to classrooms, beginning with kindergarten students on April 1. The decision to close public schools marked the beginning of COVID times. Few people last year would have predicted that more than half a million Americans would die in the intervening 12 months—or that it would be 12 months before most kids were back in school. The reopening doesn’t mark the end of the pandemic. But it is a notable step in the direction of a new normal. Next month, all students will have the chance to return to class for a couple of hours four days a week. Overseeing that gradual return to school buildings in the state’s largest district is Portland Public Schools Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero. He took the helm of the district in 2017, shortly after a scandal over lead in drinking fountains, and steered PPS into a comparatively placid era. At least until COVID-19 delivered the biggest shock to the public education system in living memory. Ever since Gov. Brown announced that teachers would receive priority for the COVID-19 vaccine, Guerrero has been at the center of a bitter debate over whether it was safe to return to classroom instruction. He has largely kept his own counsel, even as parents and teachers exchanged harsh accusations. But with a deal reached on Monday, he agreed to sit down with WW for a conversation. We asked Guerrero to talk about what he’s learned in the past year, and why it’s critical to get kids back to class. WW: In some ways, the biggest question in the state was whether Portland Public Schools would manage to reopen. That seems to be on track? Guadalupe Guerrero: Yeah, well, we never doubted it. We were the first to say, “Something’s going on here,” a year and three days ago. Sitting here in my office, several of us thinking, “This isn’t looking good” and “Let’s make sure
we’re not putting anybody in peril with their health.” Fast forward to this year. We’ve tried to act with safety and responsibility. We’ve listened to the health experts. Of course, we’re not substituting for public health or the Oregon Health Authority. And we try to observe those guidelines that the Department of Education puts out. Why bring kids back now? One of the things that keeps me up at night is, we know that economic times have been difficult. Society has been under stress. We have students out there for whom there may be neglect. There may be abuse. There may be situations that normally we would be tracking, monitoring and working with families to support them. It’s probably no surprise that reporting [of abuse] is down in the state. It’s likely not because there’s less situations of that going on. So that’s one reason. The other is just good old instruction that can happen face to face and the benefits of a public schooling. When you talk about older students, you go out to a field right now and you see them practicing athletics. How many emails I’ve gotten recently from parents, saying: “Oh my God, the change has happened almost overnight. My kid was depressed, was disengaged, wasn’t into school. And they’ve started practice.” And I think the words they used were that “happiness has returned to my child.” How confident are you that students aren’t going to get their families sick when school buildings open up again? What do I know? I’m a paraprofessional in a suit. So I have to rely on public health authorities, our health advisory team, the Department of Education. And call me conservative, but we’ve tried to be safe and prudent about the steps that we take. I hope that the community doesn’t perceive that I’m gambling with our children’s, families’ or communities’ health. Suddenly, everybody’s an epidemiologist, right? But I know that I have particular guidance that I have to observe. And so that’s how we’ve had our conversations about when is the right time to proceed.
It shouldn’t be a huge surprise to people that the largest school district in the densest county in the metro area might not be the first one to reopen. We weren’t twiddling our thumbs. We were focused on still maintaining the continuity of learning and supporting our teachers. So will you commit to releasing the remaining data on school building ventilation? I know that analysis is ongoing. I don’t think there’s any state secrets here. Now, of course, people gotta give us a little grace. We’re not dealing with brand-new buildings, you know, across the city. We’ve changed filters, we’ve changed our routines and ventilation, and you’ve heard about the air purifiers. Everything we can possibly do. If there was any sort of risk or danger, I would be the last person to knowingly put a student or an employee at risk in a facility that isn’t safe for teaching and learning. What worked during the pandemic? So, a year ago, we were not a district that was maximizing the power of technology as a way to interact and connect. [In some cases,] this pandemic has strengthened teacher-student relationships. You would think that they would be farther apart, but there’s countless anecdotes of how actually the opposite has happened, in that you’re getting this window into the students’ daily life and household. And it isn’t just teachers that are learning something from that process. Our parents are walking by the kitchen table and seeing what their kids are doing. They’re seeing the activities that our educators are engaging them with. That’s powerful. What’s one thing the district did that you would never want to do again? I don’t want to punish myself for making the best decisions I could make given the information and what we understood about all of this. We’ve put in a solid 12 to 14 hours a day for the last year trying to be careful. Look, I’m not a perfect leader. We’re not a perfect school district, but I think we’ve done our best to be responsible. Willamette Week MARCH 17, 2021 wweek.com
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YOU’RE DRIVING TOO DAMN FAST
DANGEROUS BY DESIGN: The intersection of Southeast 122nd Avenue and Stark Street.
A new report shows it’s not texting, drunken drivers, teenagers or jaywalkers causing Portland’s epidemic of pedestrian deaths. It’s speed. BY N IGEL JAQU ISS
njaquiss@wweek.com
Where Southeast 122nd Avenue meets Stark Street, the skyline blazes with working-class commerce. Pawn Central Jewelry and Loan. Astro Gas and Discount Cigs. Victorico’s Mexican Food Drive-Thru. The intersection is where two of the city’s most dangerous streets meet. Stark and 122nd each saw three pedestrian deaths from 2017 to 2019. On a recent crisp spring afternoon, a car screeched to a stop as a man traversed Stark, far from any crosswalk. Minutes later, an elderly pedestrian leaning on his cane barely made it across Stark before the light changed. East of 82nd Avenue, it’s open season on pedestrians— and those more likely to die are Black, disabled, homeless, or over 65. East Portlanders dodge traffic along streets that lack sidewalks, and are injured or killed trying to cross streets that are too wide and packed with vehicles going too fast. 10
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On the streets of East Portland, people die horribly and unfairly. More than $120 million of city investment hasn’t changed that fact. Now the responsibility falls to City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty. Over the past year, Hardesty lobbied Mayor Ted Wheeler to give her command of the Portland Police Bureau, which Hardesty, the first Black woman to serve on the Portland City Council, believes engages in biased policing. The mayor said no. Instead, in January, Wheeler assigned Hardesty the Portland Bureau of Transportation. Hardesty brings a different perspective to the role than previous transportation commissioners. She’s lived east of 82nd Avenue for 15 years, including four at Southeast 166th Place near Stark Street. “As a pedestrian, I’ve had many close calls,” Hardesty says. “People use Stark Street like a freeway. You truly have to take your life into your hands to cross it.”
Hardesty now has the opportunity to tackle a systemic inequality that disproportionately injures and kills people much like her: Black Portlanders who walk along the streets east of 82nd Avenue. And with some bold choices, it may be fixable. That’s the takeaway from an exhaustive examination of 48 pedestrian deaths on Portland streets in 2017-19 conducted over the past two years by Oregon Walks. The nonprofit shared thousands of pages of documents with WW never before disclosed, including police reports, crash analyses and PBOT data. The records reveal an alarming, sometimes counterintuitive picture of a wildly inequitable system. The geographic and racial disparities are fed by three structural problems: The streets in East Portland are too wide, streetlights are inadequate and, most importantly, drivers go too fast. Those are not dangers everyone in the city faces. Of the 48 pedestrians killed in Portland from 2017 through 2019, 41 of them died east of the Willamette River and half of them east of 82nd Avenue. During that time, there wasn’t a single pedestrian death in Northwest Portland, and there were only three in Southwest Portland. City officials know they have a problem. It’s worse in some other cities—Portland’s pedestrian fatality rate is a little higher than the national average but lower than that in peer cities such as Denver and Austin—but the numbers are rising everywhere: Pedestrian deaths nationally reached their highest total since 1988 last year. In 2016, the City Council passed a policy called Vision Zero, which included a goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2025. The bureau has sunk more than $120 million into Vision Zero so far and will spend another $65 million this year. PBOT can point to some successes: It has lowered the speed limit on most residential streets and invested in new lighting, crosswalks and barriers against dangerous left turns.
On the streets of East Portland, people die horribly and unfairly. More than $120 million of city investment hasn’t changed that fact.
But the bureau is, in fact, further from reaching its goal than ever. The 54 traffic deaths on Portland streets last year are the highest since 1996. Dana Dickman, PBOT’s traffic safety section manager and Vision Zero lead, says people need to be patient. “In Vision Zero cities where they’ve gotten down to one or two deaths a year,” she says, “it’s taken a generation of investment.” But Scott Kocher, an Oregon Walks board member who pulled together the group’s research, says Vision Zero is underachieving because PBOT is too cautious. He says the agency fears conflict and has not aggressively sought to lower speed limits on more dangerous roads or deployed traffic-calming devices and new lighting that would make streets safer. “They’ve got a lot tools they aren’t using,” Kocher says. In the following pages, we look at three changes Portland could make now, if Hardesty decides to act forcefully. And we look at the lives and deaths of three people in East Portland for whom change will come too late. Drivers are going too fast. City Hall is moving too slow. And Kocher hopes Hardesty will inject some urgency. “Speed is the root of all evil and PBOT knows that,” Kocher says. “But they’ve taken an incremental approach—you could even say glacial.”
SPEED On July 24, 2019, a little before 2 am, Jamie St. Louis, a 22-year-old Black woman, died trying to cross Northeast Halsey Street near 142nd Avenue. The spot where she died is, simply put, dangerous: It has no sidewalks, 142nd is five lanes wide, and the streets are poorly lit in a corridor where there’s nothing to slow traffic for eight-tenths of a mile in either direction. Speed killed St. Louis. A Portland police investigator determined the driver, Richard Weberg, 26, was traveling in a Buick sedan at 50 mph—10 miles over the speed limit—when he struck St. Louis. The first responding officer detected no pulse or breathing, and an American Medical Response paramedic declared her dead on the scene. After determining Weberg’s line of sight and how long it would have taken him to stop, investigators said if he’d been going 40 mph “Weberg would have been able to perceive, react and stop in time to avoid this collision.” (Weberg was charged in January 2021 with criminally negligent homicide.) One of the biggest safety achievements of Vision Zero came in January 2018, when PBOT dropped the speed limit on all residential streets to 20 mph. A 2020 Portland State University study found the new 20 mph signage led to a big drop in motorists going significantly over the speed limit on residential streets—including a nearly 50% drop in drivers going faster than 35. The author of the study, PSU civil engineering professor Chris Monsere, says the result surprised
him—although recent studies in Boston and London produced similar findings. “For vulnerable road users, speeds have a huge impact on the severity of the outcome,” Monsere says. Federal research shows that “a pedestrian struck by a person driving 40 mph is eight times more likely to die than a pedestrian struck at 20 mph.” And higher speeds extend stopping distance, so more crashes occur. Oregon Walks wants the city to ratchet down speeds on the larger collector and arterial streets where most crashes happen. “The biggest single change PBOT can make is to take the speed limit to 20 across the board,” says the group’s executive director, Ashton Simpson. Oregon Walks found that 81% of pedestrian fatalities occurred at locations where the speed limit was 30 mph or greater at the time of the crash—and in most of those locations, the city could seek a lower limit (see “The Power of Slowing Down,” page 15). One way to slow traffic: place computerized speed cameras at high-speed crash locations around the city. PBOT has deployed eight so far, and its own research mirrors national findings, showing such cameras are highly effective at slowing traffic. So why not deploy more of them? In June 2019, the City Council appropriated $15 million to buy more cameras. Almost two years later, PBOT has yet to pull the trigger. WW pressed the bureau and its commissioners repeatedly and unsuccessfully for an explanation. “It’s been moving at a snail’s pace,” Hardesty acknowledges. “I’m trying to get it expedited.”
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STREET WIDTH
A STREET TOO WIDE: 40% of pedestrian fatalities occurred on five-lane streets.
Part of the reason drivers speed on larger streets, such as outer Stark, Halsey and Division, is that they are straight and wide. That combination is dangerous for pedestrians. Oregon Walks found that three-quarters of the deaths in 2017-19 occurred on streets 50 feet or wider. On July 23, 2018, at 9:15 pm, James Deery, 69, tried to cross Southeast Division Street near 158th Avenue. Records show the street is 75 feet wide there, the equivalent of six lanes. (The average residential street in Portland is 36 feet wide.) Deery used a walker for mobility. He made it to the middle of Division, where a 2014 Toyota Venza SUV hit Deery at 30 mph. Deery died a month later at Oregon Health & Science University hospital. SUVs and pickup trucks dominate the streets nationally and in Portland. They are heavier than sedans but also typically have higher, flatter front surfaces, so when they collide with pedestrians, they hit torsos instead of legs, doing far more internal damage. SUVs and pickups accounted for 54% of Portland traffic fatalities in 2017-19.
Simpson says PBOT can reduce the danger from such vehicles with “street diets,” the term traffic engineers use to describe various ways of narrowing and calming wide, straight streets with few intersections and crosswalks. On Southeast Stark, for example, the stretch between César E. Chávez Boulevard and 82nd Avenue is an obstacle course of speed bumps, traffic islands and crosswalks, with a 25 mph speed limit. East of 82nd, the street doubles in width. It goes mostly dead straight and completely flat and has a rarely observed 30 mph limit. On many close-in streets, PBOT inserts planters, speed bumps, bioswales and other calming devices. These are less common in East Portland. “It goes back to traffic engineering,” Simpson says. “There has to be something to slow down traffic.” PBOT has reengineered some trouble spots, but its task is politically fraught. “People think the street reorganizations will leave them stuck in traffic,” says bureau spokesman Dylan Rivera.
LIGHTING On May 5, 2017, at 4:31 am, Ted Jones, 45, tried to cross Southeast 82nd Avenue westbound from the Del Rancho Motel, where he was staying. A hit-and-run driver killed him and kept going. Contrary to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration guidelines, there was no streetlight on the east side of 82nd, where the Del Rancho is. Most fatal pedestrian crashes that Oregon Walks examined—79%—occurred at night, and poor lighting appeared to be a factor about 60% of the time. The group found Black pedestrians in Portland die at three times the rate of white Portlanders—and all eight Black pedestrians killed in 2017-19 died at night. Lighting is a fixable problem. In Detroit, the city’s financial woes decimated street lighting in the past decade. In 2014, the city recorded 24 pedestrian deaths in “dark, unlit areas,” according to the Detroit Greenways Coalition, but after a blitz of new LED lighting, such deaths declined to one by 2017. Dickman says installing lights on both sides of streets in high-crash corridors is a top priority for PBOT—and will cost $20 million. People drive fast because they’re rushing to work, school or other important appointments. Uber, Lyft, Amazon and food delivery drivers get paid for punctuality. Meanwhile, vehicles grow larger and the Portland Police Bureau pays less attention to traffic safety—Chief Chuck Lovell recently assigned the whole traffic division to patrol duty. All those forces will make East Portland’s streets more dangerous, unless PBOT works proactively against them. “Where these fatalities are taking place are places of great inequities,” Simpson says. “Ultimately, these communities are going to be impacted by these traumatic events until we put in the necessary investments.”
DARKNESS FALLS: Many East Portland streets lack lighting on both sides, a safety standard. 12
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The group found Black pedestrians in Portland die at three times the rate of white Portlanders—and all eight Black pedestrians killed in 2017-19 died at night. Hardesty acknowledges the city must do more. “In East Portland, we haven’t spent the money needed to keep people safe,” she says. Kocher says PBOT can make big changes without spending a lot of money: dropping speed limits and deploying speed bumps, traffic-calming devices and pedestrian safety islands. He says the question is whether the bureau will stand up to drivers who don’t want to slow down. “Historically, PBOT leadership is well intentioned but not willing to take the heat,” Kocher says. Hardesty says she’s ready. “I am fine with standing up to the pressure,” she says. “I know it’s coming.” She says in her neighborhood— Gateway— residents quickly got used to changes PBOT made to Northeast Halsey Street a couple of years ago. “Halsey is half the size it used to be,” Hardesty says. “People lost their minds when that happened. They said, ‘My life will never be the same.’ PBOT dropped the speed limit from 40 to 20, and nobody even talks about it now.”
JAMES ARSWELD MCCREE Isaac McCree was sitting on his back porch one night after work when he heard tires screech in the distance. That turned out to be the sound of his father being killed in a hitand-run. The last words McCree, 27, exchanged with his father were “I love you” before going to work the night shift at a nearby Fred Meyer store. “At least I have that closure,” McCree says. On Feb. 2, 2019, a wet and cold evening, just a few minutes after midnight, 58-yearold James McCree was heading home from a night out with friends. He was an eight-minute walk from his home when he stepped into the intersection of Southeast 130th Avenue and Division Street—and was struck by a car whose driver fled the scene. The two-year study of pedestrian deaths by Oregon Walks shows that 79% of fatal crashes happened at night. Those odds grow worse for people with dark skin or disabilities. James McCree was a Black man walking East Portland’s poorly lit streets who was also legally blind. The speed limit is 30 mph at the intersection where he died. The McCrees say it seems everyone drives at least 10 mph faster than that. And Isaac McCree says the street lighting along outer Division is so bad he often doesn’t feel safe driving. “Why are there only street lights on one side of the street?” Isaac questions. “Not only that, those streetlights half the time are not even bright enough to see anything from them.” That night, James McCree made sure to wear a lightly colored jacket and carry a reflective red and white cane before he left for the night—but that didn’t make him safer. McCree was partially blind as a result of surgery to remove a brain tumor he had when he was a young boy, but it never stopped him from living his life to the fullest. He played basketball and was a huge Blazers fan, he’d sing and dance, and he took wood workshop classes. In the late ’80s, he attended a woodshop course for the visually impaired in Arkansas, which is where he met Priscilla, who is also blind, and they got married in 1993. “He was a good man,” Priscilla McCree says. More than 100 people attended his funeral—mostly faces unfamiliar to Isaac McCree: “They didn’t even have enough chairs for everyone who showed up.” McCree says he and his father were just starting to develop a deeper bond in the past few years, and they were planning to go to Vegas. Most nights, when McCree got home from work around 11:30, his father would be up waiting to hang out. “It would always be an uplifting feeling. I’d pull up and see my dad standing out there on the porch. We’d crack open a beer in the back and sit there for hours chatting.” McCree says. “When I got home [the night he died], I thought he was already in bed asleep. Now that he’s gone, it’s a surreal feeling.” LATISHA JENSEN.
CROSSROADS: Ashton Simpson became Oregon Walks’ executive director in December.
Collision Course Seven facts about Portland pedestrian deaths that might surprise you. MISSING LIGHTS: Isaac McCree holds a photo of himself and James McCree near Southeast Division and 130th, where his father was killed. Lack of streetlights was in part to blame.
When Scott Kocher and Ashton Simpson of Oregon Walks started looking at three years of Portland traffic deaths, they also found themselves busting myths about why pedestrians die in the street. Kocher and Simpson acknowledge they are not traffic engineers or statisticians and there may be gaps in the data they collected. Yet counterintuitive findings in their report only serve to strengthen the case for lowering speeds and increasing street lighting. NIGEL JAQUISS. 1. Although young males are notoriously bad drivers, only one of the 48 pedestrians killed in 2017 to 2019 in Portland died because of a vehicle operated by a teenager. 2. Few of the drivers—just 9% —were determined by police to be legally intoxicated at the time of the collisions. 3. Although traffic safety experts warn of the dangers of distracted driving, Oregon Walks didn’t find evidence of it—not a single one of the 48 fatalities pointed to phone use or other distractions. (That may be a data issue. In many cases, police checked for evidence of cellphone use, but reports indicated they sometimes did not, so it’s possible drivers were texting but not caught.)
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN: Isaac McCree says his father always supported his passions growing up.
4. Jaywalking is dangerous, but bad driving is a far bigger problem. Oregon Walks found that 73% of pedestrians killed were hit while crossing legally at a crosswalk, either marked or unmarked. 5. Distracted walkers are largely a myth. Oregon Walks didn’t find a single death that could be attributed to a pedestrian’s cellphone use. 6. Oregonians are bad drivers, at least by one key measure. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Oregon deaths per mile traveled are 23% above the national average and 65% higher than in Washington state. 7. When it comes to driving, men and women are not equal: Nearly three-quarters of the fatal pedestrian crashes in 2017-19 occurred while men were at the wheel. “We have a higher rate of fatalities because we don’t make good decisions,” Simpson says.
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YELENA V. LOUKAS
YOUNGER DAYS: 34-year-old Yelena Loukas embraces one of her nieces. When she moved from Russia to the U.S., she left her own family behind but would spend time with her husband’s relatives.
Yelena Loukas stopped by 7-Eleven on Feb. 1, 2018, to pick up a beer. She never got to drink it. Loukas, 53, was leaving the convenience store at Southeast 148th Avenue and Stark Street at around 12:30 am, when she and her red four-wheel walker were hit by a white Nissan in the crosswalk. The cashier told officers Loukas was a nightly customer. She was returning to her apartment—which is nearly visible from the intersection—when she was struck by the speeding Nissan running a red light. Officers ended up arresting David Sanders, who had been seen driving a similar car. He was charged with a hit-and-run, among dozens of other charges—it’s unclear if those charges stemmed from Loukas’ death. Loukas was born and raised in Russia and graduated from a Moscow university with a degree in psychiatry. She moved to the United States with her husband, Brad, in the late ’90s. In Portland, the couple opened a Russian-English interpreting service. Brad Loukas died of a heart attack a few years ago. Yelena Loukas suffered from chronic back pain and had undergone multiple surgeries. Her back never improved, so she had to use the walker. Her brother-in-law, Dave Loukas, says she was a fun and caring person. She enjoyed reading and was a night owl, he recalls. She would sometimes stay up all night buried in a book. Loukas says what happened to her was “vehicular manslaughter,” and he blames the city. “She was a real nice person, willing to help others—she did not deserve to die this way. If the city spent more time and researched this, there would be less crosswalk murders,” Loukas says. “The city needs to light the intersections better, provide cameras so they can catch the murderers, and post signs well in advance of the crosswalk.” According to police reports, it appears the driver had no intention of slowing down for the crosswalk or a red light. Witnesses estimated he was going between 60 and 100 mph— well over the 30 mph limit. Her nephew Devon Loukas says he used to live near Southeast Stark Street, adding that the street needs more sidewalks, better lighting and clearer road directions, which he finds confusing. “I’ve seen a lot of people almost get hit,” Loukas says. “I try to avoid being a pedestrian when I’m over there. The city should have done something about this years ago—yet it still is happening.” LATISHA JENSEN.
FLASHBACKS: Yelena’s family remembers her as a kind person who was fun to be around at family get-togethers. She loved to read and would often stay up all night with a book.
Killed While Walking Pedestrian deaths (in orange) have increased steadily in Portland over the past decade (top), despite large investments by the city to improve safety. Nationally, pedestrian deaths last year reached their highest level since 1988. Compared to peer cities, Portland is in the middle for pedestrian deaths per capita (bottom) and slightly above the national average of 2.52 per 100,000.
TRAFFIC DEATH AND INJURY TO PEDESTRIANS IN PORTLAND
Source: Portland Bureau of Transportation
PEDESTRIAN FATALITIES PER 100,000 POPULATION
Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
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DARNELL JOSEPH JOLLY Darnell Jolly planned to propose to his longtime girlfriend, Sharen Johnson. But she didn’t know that until after he was killed. She found the engagement ring while going through his clothes. “He was the best man I ever knew,” Johnson says. Jolly, 64, was hit by driver William Leptich at around 6:30 pm on Oct. 26, 2018, at the poorly lit intersection of Southeast 146th Avenue and Stark Street. It was raining and dark. Jolly, a Black man, was slowly crossing the 65-footwide street at an unmarked crosswalk. He couldn’t bend his knees because of football injuries sustained years before. Leptich, also 64, was intoxicated above the legal limit when he hit Jolly at about 35 mph with a 2009 Ford F-150 pickup truck. The speed limit was 30. Jolly was transported to Oregon Health & Science University, where he died two days later. He had been heading home from the 7-Eleven just two blocks from the apartment he shared with Johnson. “It’s been really hard without him,” Johnson says. “Pedestrians don’t have a chance in this town.” Johnson uses a wheelchair herself and says it’s a struggle getting around in Portland, especially on Stark Street. “Cars do not stop, it’s the craziest thing,” she says. “I’ll be A MATTER OF TIME: Darnell Jolly and Yelena Loukas halfway across the were both heading home from this 7-Eleven when they were hit and killed seven months apart at about street and people just don’t stop—it’s the same time of night. Both were elderly with mobility issues—sometimes a death sentence the scary.” farther east one travels. Before Jolly died, he would always open doors for Johnson. “He knew how to treat a lady,” she says. Johnson and Jolly were inseparable ever since they first met at a downtown warming shelter in 2013. They were both unhoused at the time and were proud when they finally moved into their apartment at 146th and Stark, where Johnson still lives today. Jolly loved to play dominoes at Dawson Park with his friends. In fact, that was how he spent the last few hours of his life. He was also neighbors with Yelena Loukas—both were killed in pedestrian collisions the same year just a block apart from one another. Both were older, disabled and walked slowly—almost a death sentence in East Portland. The 30 mph speed limit posted on Stark where Jolly was hit had been lowered in previous years from 40 mph. Johnson blames reckless drivers and the hazardous infrastructure that enables them. She thinks police look the other way: “There’s no enforcement, there’s nothing.” And she wishes city officials would come out to East Portland and ask residents what they think needs to be improved. “This street is horrible. They just fly out here like crazy. To get a crosswalk or speed bump, why can’t they do that for us?” Johnson asks. “It’s so upsetting to be in a wheelchair in this town. You’re just invisible.” LATISHA JENSEN.
DEADLY INTERSECTION: Southeast Stark is one of Portland’s most dangerous streets. The intersection at 146th spans 65 feet directly next to a residential neighborhood where commutes are essential.
The Power of Slowing Down In Oregon, as is true across the country, the state Department of Transportation controls speed limits on all city streets. In 2017, a new law passed allowing Portland to lower speeds on local service— i.e., residential— streets, which account for about 70% of city thoroughfares. The City Council then dropped the speed limit to 20 mph on those streets in January 2018—but not on most of the collector and arterial streets where the majority of pedestrian fatalities occur. Traffic safety section manager Dana Dickman of the Portland Bureau of Transportation says a bill pending before the Oregon Legislature would cede decision making
on larger, more dangerous streets, called collectors and arterials, from the state to the city—but even then, PBOT would have to conduct a safety study first. However, Scott Kocher of the nonprofit Oregon Walks says PBOT can already lower speeds by seeking what’s called a “speed zone order” from ODOT. Although Kocher says the city has been reluctant to do so, he’s not aware of the department ever refusing such a request from Portland. “Bottom line: We have the ability to do it without blaming the Legislature,” Kocher adds. He offers as proof the fact that PBOT has already lowered speeds in Northwest Portland, dropping the limit to 20 mph on busy streets such as Glisan at his urging. Meanwhile, PBOT Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty says she’s ready to move aggressively in East Portland: “We’re going to bring the speed limits down.” NIGEL JAQUISS. Willamette Week MARCH 17, 2021 wweek.com
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STREET Show Us Around: Beaumont-Wilshire Photographer Brian Burk takes us on a tour of his neighborhood. On Instagram: @bpburk
Taqueria Los Pepitos Locos Pizza Jerk, formerly Magoo’s Bar and Grill
Northeast 42nd Avenue and Prescott Street, Octobe Eisenhower, who was running for reelection against A
Aaron Peterson, owner of 42nd Ave Fish and Chips
Like much of the city, Beaumont has seen a lot of development in recent years, but some of the older features are still visible if you know where to look.
Caribbean Spice, a small grocery carrying ingredients from across the African diaspora. Catherine, the owner’s daughter, works the register while studying (she’s a first-year med student at Oregon Health & Science University).
As a fan of midcentury modern architecture, I love the houses around Fernhill Park. At the bus stop at 42nd and Alberta, a marker memorializes the location where Eddie “The Weatherman” Morgan was murdered in 1994. The case remains unsolved. 16
Willamette Week MARCH 17, 2021 wweek.com
STREET Spare Room Restaurant & Lounge, one of my favorite neighborhood hangouts.
Nearby is Cat Six Cycles, my preferred bike shop. Right before the pandemic hit, the shop completed repairs after a driver crashed through its storefront.
Oakshire Beer Hall
Cully resident Isaac Miller explains what he loves about living here: “It’s the only place in Portland where I can leave a wood pile like this in my front yard and no one will say a thing,” he says, watching his chickens.
er 1956, during a campaign stop by President Adlai Stevenson. Right, the same view today.
Cully Farm Store Alkebulan “Al” Moroski and his mother, Kim Moroski, making coleslaw inside Dash, a tiny rentable prep kitchen housed in a cramped cinder block building. The Moroskis, recent transplants from Mississippi, own Dirty Lettuce in the Shady Pines vegan food cart pod.
Tow-away zone
Murals on the public restroom in Fernhill Park. They were painted a few years ago by Beaumont Middle School students, led by a woman I went to high school with, art teacher Lindsay King.
John Vance’s Jackie Robinson mural celebrates the Brooklyn Dodger and the avenue that shares his jersey number. Willamette Week MARCH 17, 2021 wweek.com
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Music Millennium Recommends
STARTERS
T H E MOST I MP ORTANT PO RTLA N D C U LTU R E STO R I E S O F T H E W E E K— GRAP H E D.
RIDICULOUS Federal officials finally take down the fence surrounding the courthouse downtown…
…then put it back up again three days later after protesters immediately vandalized the building. The Last Blockbuster, the documentary about the video rental chain’s sole remaining store in Bend, Ore., is now on Netflix—the streaming service that helped kill video rental stores.
ALEX WITTWER
Steve Earle & The Dukes J.T. Out 3.19 CD - $10.99 Available on RED LP
THE LAST BLOCKBUSTER
Steve Earle, pays tribute to his son by recording an album of songs written by Justin titled, J.T. The album consists of ten Justin Townes Earle songs and one song written by Mr. Earle shortly after Justin's passing.
AARON WESSLING
Pylon Pylon Box Out 3.26
CD Box Set - $74.99 A comprehensive look at the band that features their studio albums Gyrate and Chomp, both of which have been remastered from their original tapes, the 11-song collection Extra which includes rarities and 5 previously unreleased studio & live recordings, as well as Razz Tape, Pylon's first-ever recording: a 13-song unreleased session.
AWESOME
CD - $10.99 LP - $17.99
C
MM
ON
NOTHER BEL S A IE
VE
R
Clinton Street Theater resumes weekly public screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
AWFUL
Sara Watkins Under The Pepper Tree Out 3.26
W
IK
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Downtown jazz club The Jack London Revue is reopening. S O F I E M U R R AY
With the nostalgic and gentle new album Under the Pepper Tree, Sara Watkins offers a comforting record for those moments as daily rhythms fade into nightly rituals – and when a child’s imagination comes to life.
Bike Gallery, one of Portland’s oldest bike retailers, has officially rebranded after being bought out by the national chain Trek Bicycles.
ANONYMOUS
STAY SAFE, STAY INFORMED. WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER. WWEEK.COM
Portland reissue label Omnivore Recordings wins a Grammy for its 2019 compilation of songs performed by Mr. Rogers.
SERIOUS 18
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Someone vandalizes the York statue in Mount Tabor.
GET INSIDE
WHAT TO DO WHILE YOU’RE STUCK AT HOME THIS WEEK.
IMDB
LISTEN: Moods & Dances 2021 by RVDS This album is like Mother Earth’s Plantasia on steroids—play it for your orchids and they might start fighting each other. While most ambient synth music aims for state-of-the-art home-catalog comfiness, this stuff suggests danger and adventure, and once the German musician gets a crew of buddies to shout the title of “Planet Dragon’’ with increasing enthusiasm, it’s clear that this music can do anything and go anywhere. This is a must-listen for anyone who loves the pit-pat of old drum machines and the squeak of vintage synths. Stream on Spotify.
☛
SEE: Myles de Bastion In 2014, Portland musician Myles de Bastion founded CymaSpace, which strives to make concerts more accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences through the likes of lighting matched to sonic frequencies. Even without in-person concerts, though, de Bastion has kept busy this past year, producing a virtual CymaSpace show and completing a virtual programming fellowship with Epic Games. His online new-media art show for Open Signal promises to be just as inventive. 5 pm Friday, March 19. opensignalpdx.org. Free. I M A G E C O U R T E S Y O F T H E A R T I S T A N D S A P A R C O N T E M P O R A R Y.
DO: Kilbeggan March Cocktails to Go and Virtual Toast Last year, pretty much every St. Patrick’s Day festivity was scrapped because of the pandemic—from the always-popular Shamrock Run to Kells’ slightly less athletic beer festival. While COVID-19 has forced those large events to cancel yet again, there will be more celebrating this time around, even if things look a little more subdued than normal. Kilbeggan, Ireland’s oldest licensed distillery, is encouraging you to take the party to the living room by purchasing its to-go cocktail and Irish coffee totes from participating bars like Alberta Street Pub and Besaws. On March 17, the company will hold a live, online toast. But if you can’t get blitzed on a weekday, there’s good news: The kits are scheduled to be available through the end of March—just in time for the stimulus money to arrive. Hey, those $1,400 checks aren’t going to spend themselves! Kits are available through March 31. Find participating bars at kilbegganwhiskey.com/TheKilbegganMarch.
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WATCH: Sophie Jones “I always take from my life in some way,” explains Sophie Jones director Jessie Barr, and that philosophy extends from the themes of her projects to co-creators. With her Oregon-shot feature debut, the writer-director-producer collaborated with her younger cousin Jessica Barr, who also stars as the titular heroine. The film allowed the two to explore a shared experience: suffering the loss of a parent as an adolescent. Sophie Jones is an absorbing portrait of a teenage girl’s benumbed maturation following her mother’s death that drifts through the stages of grief with tenderness, dark humor and an assured grace. The movie debuted at last year’s prestigious Deauville American Film Festival, and was then picked up for distribution by Oscilloscope Laboratories. It premiered this month via video on demand as well as special virtual screenings hosted by selected theaters—including Portland’s Hollywood. Streams on demand.
MARLA AUFMUTH/TED
WATCH: In Bruges This year, celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with some acclaimed Irish cinema, like this pitch-black gangster comedy from acclaimed playwright-filmmaker Martin McDonagh. Irish heartthrob Colin Farrell stars as Ray, a guilt-ridden hit man who’s forced to go into hiding in Bruges, Belgium, after a contract killing goes tragically wrong. Fellow Irishman Brendan Gleeson co-stars as Ray’s mentor, and Ralph Fiennes steals the show as their wrathful boss. Streams on Amazon Prime, Peacock and other services.
STREAM: Pink Noise VI at Holocene Almost every year, Portland new media artist Sarah Turner hosts Pink Noise, a trance-inducing showcase of femme visual and sound artists. Though it’ll be a bummer not to be able to explore the show’s art installations in three dimensions, the fact that this year’s edition will take place online is kind of fitting. Pink Noise has assembled some of the city’s most singular artists who work with digital media. Plus, the theme of this year’s self-described “witchual glitchual ritual” is “fantasy embodiment,” which sounds exactly like what we all need right now. 7 pm Saturday, March 20. holocene.com. Tickets start at $5.
STACEY ABRAMS
STREAM: South by Southwest If SXSW is still on your live music bucket list but you’ve never been able to make the trek down to Texas, 2021 is your year. For the first virtual SXSW, organizers have pared down the lineup and set lengths for the music part of the festival, have upped their film programming, and are offering a diverse lineup of talks by everyone from Willie Nelson to Stacey Abrams and N.K. Jemisin. And since it’s all online, tickets are...well, still, like, $300. But if you somehow have a bunch of extra cash to spare, you can take part in one of the most unique iterations of the festival yet—it’ll certainly be the only one free of lines. Sxsw.com. Through March 20. $325.
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SEE: Unquiet Objects Disjecta’s upcoming mixed-media exhibit is a meditation on cultural objects that have been removed from their original context, whether because of colonialism, forced migration or even digital technology. The show will display work by an extensive and exciting list of artists, including Iranian new-media artist Morehshin Allahyari and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art artistic director Kristan Kennedy. Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., disjecta.org. Through May 2.
WATCH: Blazers vs. Nets Et tu, Brooklyn? At one point, the Nets were effectively Blazers East, having rehomed several cult-favorite Portland castoffs. Now, all those lovable role players are gone, and the team with the laziest name in basketball is the NBA’s newest Evil Empire. About the only thing standing between them and a championship is Kevin Durant’s Achilles flaring up and/or James Harden and Kyrie Irving having a falling out over fluoridating the team’s water supply or something. But none of that, of course, matters much to Damian Lillard. Sure, he hasn’t had a lot of success toppling title contenders in the playoffs, but the dude loves a challenge: Remember when he dropped 48 on the eventual-champ Lakers in the Kobe memorial game last year? If this still injury-riddled Blazers team pulls off the win here, might as well just raise the banner now. Do it for Crabbe, Shabazz and Big Ed! 7 pm Tuesday, March 23, on NBC Sports Northwest. Willamette Week MARCH 17, 2021 wweek.com
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R E N E E PAT R I C K
GET OUTSIDE Trail Blazer
Renee Patrick has hiked the country’s most iconic long-distance trails. Now, she’s pioneered Oregon’s newest epic route.
ELKHORN CREST
On a cold October morning in the Elkhorn Mountains, Renee Patrick woke up to a problem. Patrick had already been hiking in Eastern Oregon for weeks, pioneering the new, 566-mile Blue Mountains Trail. She was expecting temperatures to drop below freezing as she slept. But when she woke up and went to get water from nearby Black Lake, she found something she had never seen in her 10,000-plus miles of thru-hiking experience: The entire lake had frozen solid overnight. “What had been a full body of water the night before was completely solid ice,” says Patrick. “I had never experienced a freeze like that, so fast and so deep.” Thankfully, Patrick had some water in an insulated canteen. And the frost eventually gave way to a clear, mild afternoon of hiking that netted views stretching almost 200 miles from the Strawberry Mountain Range to the Eagle Cap Wilderness in the Wallowas. A resident of Bend, Ore., Patrick has completed just about every iconic long-distance American hiking trail, including the “triple crown”: the Appalachian, Pacific Crest and the Continental Divide trails. In recent years, she pioneered the 750-mile Oregon Desert Trail, and remains the ODT program coordinator for the Oregon Natural Desert Association. Now, she’s also the first person to solo thruhike Oregon’s newest epic hiking route. Located in Northeast Oregon, the Blue Mountains Trail connects some of the state’s most jaw-dropping scenery, from the meandering John Day River to the alpine lakes of the Eagle Cap Wildness and the rugged Hells Canyon, the deepest river gorge in the country. WW talked to Patrick about the challenges of pioneering a trail that’s hundreds of miles long, climbing in and out of steep canyons, and her favorite secret hiking spots.
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You’ve thru-hiked some of the most iconic hikes in the country. How does the Blue Mountains Trail compare, in difficulty and reward? It has a lot of elevation gain, so in that regard it’s as difficult. In one of the sections, you’re hiking along the rim of Hells Canyon, and Hells Canyon is deeper than the Grand Canyon. It’s the deepest river canyon in the country. There’s one option to go down to the Snake River, and when you go down that means you have to go [back] up. Just dropping in and out of these river canyons—it’s rugged. So the elevation gain was on par with a lot of other long-distance trails, like the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail. And I would say it has as much beauty as the other long-distance trails. There are granite mountain ranges, old-growth forests, free-flowing rivers that don’t have dams on them, high alpine areas, mountain goats, bears, cougars—it’s an amazing, wild place. Are there any recommendations you’d have for the less-advanced backpacker? A great place to start would be the Elkhorn Crest Trail. This is a 22-, 23-mile trail that people already know about. It’s right outside the town of Baker City and the ski area at Anthony Lake. It’s a ridge trail, so you’re up high. That’s where I saw mountain goats. It’s well marked, and there are places you can camp. [And then to] the Strawberry Crest, right outside the town of John Day, there’s another trail that goes along the spine of the mountains. Strawberry Mountain is over 9,000 feet, and it drops down into Strawberry Lake, and there’s this beautiful waterfall. If you want the most reward for the effort, [hike] the crest of the Strawberry Mountains to the crest of the Elkhorn Mountains. You’ve spent a lot of time exploring the more remote parts of Oregon. Do you have any favorite secret spots you’d be willing to share? A place I’ve really enjoyed is the Fremont-Winema
National Forest, almost to the border of California. This is really a transition zone between the desert and the forest. There’s an incredible geological feature called Abert Rim, which is one of the largest fault-block mountains in the country. There are hot springs—there’s actually a geyser in Lakeview. That transition zone is really interesting because you get the reward of the views, but you get the shade, and there’s a lot of places in the desert without much shade. So you have water, you have trees, but you have desert feeling and views over the Fremont.
RENEE PATRICK
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WA Pendleton
HELLS CANYON Enterprise Joseph
I-84
La Grande BLUE MOUNTAINS
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WW: What were the most challenging moments on the Blue Mountain Trail? Renee Patrick: Being one of the first people out there, I was really working to ground truth it, working with the organization that’s pioneering the route, the Greater Hells Canyon Council. Last year, their trail coordinator had a line on the map, and the goal was to see, is it hikeable? We knew there would be some issues. There’s some cross-country sections
to link together trails, and we’re trying to find the right alignment. What I hiked isn’t necessarily what the official route will be. There’s still a few areas where we’re trying to find what will give the hiker the best experience. Some of that is dropping down into these deep canyons, there are patches of poison ivy. Luckily, I got away without any great outbreaks. There were four of us who completed the trail last fall. They weren’t so lucky.
WALLOWA MOUNTAINS
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sgormley@wweek.com
SNA KE R
BY S HA N N O N G O R M L E Y
Baker City John Day
ID
FOOD & DRINK
Year of the Ox Whatever ails you, Blind Ox has the cure—whether it’s beer, Mexicajun food or boozy liquid nitrogen ice cream. BY AN D I P R E W I T T
Divvying up the building means that Blind Ox has a unique array of painkillers almost anyone could appreciate following a tense year. Need to lick your way into a sweet, blissful oblivion? There’s whipped-to-order ice cream blasted with liquid nitrogen. Want to spend the afternoon knocked out on the couch? One of Nacheaux’s fried-and-smothered odes to both Mexican and Cajun cooking will induce a nap. And if you simply need a beer to take the edge off, there is also a well-curated, 20-deep tap list. For West, moving to the taphouse last November meant he could finally start selling his boozed-spiked ice cream—his intention from the get-go after opening as a cart in 2012. The buzz you might catch from a scoop of mint chocolate chip sounds pretty enthralling, but that’s really only half the fun. West is one of two Portland-area vendors using liquid nitrogen to mold ingredients into a solid, edible ball. The gas liquefies when cooled to extremely low temperatures—at Blind Ox, that’s 321 degrees below zero. So when a shot of nitrogen is applied to the metal bowl containing the fixings for an item like the Blind Unicorn (cream, vodka, cupcake syrup and rainbow sprinkles), the mixture flash freezes. The result is a velvety Funfetti ice cream layer cake with a squeeze of strawberry. The texture is what matters most to West. “It doesn’t have an opportunity to develop large ice crystals, so it makes a super-smooth, creamy ice cream because it’s not fluffed up with air,” he says. “And that’s about as fresh as you can get—ice cream made right in front of you.” The process also means that West doesn’t need to add any emulsifiers, such as egg, to hold the ice cream together. And while mouthfeel and a streamlined ingredient list are both beneficial, as with all things related to molecular gastronomy, the presentation is what’s really meant to wow. Sitting in front of shelves of flavored syrups and bins of crumbled cookies and candy bars is a cryogenic canister, which looks as if it would be more at home in a lab than an ice cream parlor. A spigot extending from the container releases the liquid nitrogen, and once that happens, smoke begins to billow, completely obscuring the bowl at first. Then, when West starts churning, white vapor continues to pour over the rim and across the bar. For a moment, you might imagine you’re in a Cold Stone that’s experimenting with dry ice for special effect. But just as quickly as the cloud appeared, the tendrils are gone. All that remains is a perfectly formed sphere, ready to pop into a dish or atop a cone. Think of it as the classic baking soda volcano science experiment, only you can eat the eruption. Devouring a hyper-cold dessert in Portland’s typically chilly spring temperatures might be a tough sell, especially if you’re sticking to patio seating. That’s where Nacheaux comes in. From its corner of the taproom, now painted a vibrant teal to match the signature cart, chef Anthony Brown is catapulting your typical burrito, quesadilla and taco over the top by stuffing them with Cajun staples, including fried chicken, catfish and shrimp battered in cornmeal. On a recent weekend visit, the carnitas chilaquiles were the standout: some red beans here, shreds of bright CHRIS NESSET
FEATURE
aprewitt@wweek.com
For many in the restaurant industry, the food hall concept has been a lifeline during the pandemic. A couple of street barricades and tables placed 6 feet apart on a carless road surrounded by pubs, pizzerias and sushi shops created an open-air cafeteria in at least one neighborhood last year. Pushing the boundaries of the model even further, the ChefStable restaurant group launched a virtual iteration, giving customers the ability to order a variety of cuisines from the same outlet all at once. Now, Portland’s Beaumont-Wilshire neighborhood is home to a micro version. After sitting empty since 2018, when Alameda Brewing called it quits, three different businesses have revived the old bar at 4765 NE Fremont St.: Blind Ox Taphouse, Mix ’n’ Match Creamery, and Nacheaux. The latter two are former food carts graduating from their pods to a brick-and-mortar, while all three are housed under the Blind Ox name—a nod to Prohibition-era speakeasies, which were sometimes called “blind pigs” or “blind tigers.” It’s an arrangement that would not have been possible without COVID-19. “Originally, the landlords had wanted to rent the whole building,” says Eric West, co-owner of Blind Ox and Mix ’n’ Match. “The pandemic provided an opportunity to work out a creative lease. We were able to come to them and say, ‘Hey, we just want to rent a portion of this space.’ And that’s what allowed it to turn into a food hall.”
purple cabbage there, and soft scrambled eggs acting as a midmorning mood boost. Blind Ox also has a simple slate of paninis. The hefty slabs of Olympia Provisions pork that arrive ensnared in provolone in one version look as if they’ve been shaved off of a giant holiday ham. But whatever you end up ordering, it’s likely to comfort. “I think everyone’s craving a sense of normalcy again,” West says, “and foods that make you feel good—beer, ice cream—you know, things that make you feel better.” PATIO SPECS Number of tables: Five Distance between tables: 6 feet Safety measures: Floor markers inside indicate 6 feet of distance; hand sanitizer pumps at the bar; mask wearing is enforced; large open windows and doors promote air circulation, weather permitting. Peak hours: 5-7 pm GO: Blind Ox Taphouse, 4765 NE Fremont St., 503-841-5092, blindoxpdx.com. Noon-9 pm MondayThursday, noon-10 pm Friday, 10 am-10 pm Saturday, 10 am-9 pm Sunday.
MYTH MAKING: How a Blind Unicorn is born (above). The finished product alongside a ham and cheese panini (below).
Willamette Week MARCH 17, 2021 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK CHRIS NESSETH
DRINK MOBILE
TOP 5
BUZZ LIST
Where to get drinks this week, one way or another.
1. Paddy’s
960 SE 11th Ave., 503-235-0059, kachkapdx.com. Market 9 am-6 pm daily, restaurant 5-8 pm daily. If you’ve finished all of your pandemic jigsaw puzzles, Kachka’s Baba Sima Tonic is a drink that’s also an activity. First, you pour the brandy into a heatproof vessel. Then, balance a spoon across the top, put down the sugar cube, and hit it with the rum, while also spilling some into the glass. Break out your lighter and—settle down, Beavis—FIRE! FIRE! The blue flame dances high above the spoon, caramelizing the sugar. If we get another winter storm, or you’ve somehow managed to catch a cold despite all the mask-wearing, it’s definitely what you want. D AV I D H A L P E R N
65 SW Yamhill St., 503-224-5626, paddys.com. 4-11 pm Wednesday-Saturday. Get ready for the green beer to flow: Portland’s oldest Irish pub is back open. Known for its handsome mahogany bar so tall that servers need a ladder to reach the top shelves, Paddy’s is moving forward with its St. Patrick’s Day fundraiser, and while it will have many of its typical attractions— dancers, pipers and yellow beer dyed green, plus plenty of Guinness—the number of attendees will be capped by limited ticket sales.
4. Kachka
2. Bit House Collective
KNOWN QUANTITY: Known Associates Social Club owner Joe Frade (top) and the in-house version of the Excommunicado.
727 SE Grand Ave., 503-954-3913, bithousesaloon.com. 4-11 pm Tuesday-Saturday, 2-9 pm Sunday. Pandan is the little leaf that could. At the new Bit House Collective, the tropical Southeast Asian flavoring is being stirred into the inventive cocktails by Natasha Mesa, formerly of acclaimed cocktail bar Deadshot. When ordering takeaway, go with Mesa’s twist on an old fashioned: the Padam, Pandan, Pandan O.F. ($11), a stiff little elixir in a square bottle with cork top. Made with vodka, bourbon, pandan, blueberry, galangal root and bitters, the green of the pandan is beat out by the violet blueberry, but the flavor is still very much there.
3. Hammer & Stitch
2377 NW Wilson St., 971-254-8982, hsbrew.co. Noon-6 pm Wednesday-Thursday and Sunday, noon-8 pm Friday-Saturday. A visit to the Hammer & Stitch taproom will remind you of an earlier era of craft beer, when breweries often popped up on the industrial fringes, and tracking them down felt like a scavenger hunt. The brewery’s motto is “Keep it simple, stupid,” but “simple” does not equates to dull. The lager stands out for its bracing minimalism—each straw-yellow sip is light, crisp and offers a quick burst of bubbles.
TOP 5
Drink the burn. As spring arrives and herd immunity no longer seems like a far-off dream, it’s time for an energy cleanse. Known Associates Social Club, a new bar, restaurant and, someday, music venue across from Loyal Legion on Southeast Alder, has got your chakras covered. Back open for just under a month after a short initial opening in fall 2020, co-owner and bartender Joe Frade is slowly rolling out a new menu of food and drink, including inventive Vietnamese-Mexican fusion he’s calling—wait for it—“phozole”: a rich bowl of rice noodles with hominy and hunks of stewed beef plus bean sprouts and radish sprinkled on top. It works. The bar also takes the same creative approach to a set of cocktails to go. The Excommunicado ($15) is a take on an old fashioned via Central America: a stiff blend of Batanga Tequila Reposado, Presidente brandy, Cocchi Americano, Licor 43 and xocolatl mole bitters. Frade takes full advantage of the takeout format by lovingly tying a stick of fragrant palo santo to the glass bottle. It’s not just a gimmick: The cocktail comes with instructions to burn the stick until it has an ember and then put the tip in the bottle, infusing the glass and drink with notes of sweet pine. The flavor really does stay and also heightens the spirits. And when you’re done, you still have plenty left to light over your abalone shell full of rose quartz and amethyst. Bless. ANDREA DAMEWOOD.
Where to get food this week.
1. Toki
580 SW 12th Ave., 503-312-3037, tokipdx.com. Dinner served 4-8 pm Wednesday-Sunday, brunch 11 am-3 pm Friday-Sunday. At the moment, Toki is for all intents and purposes Han Oak, with a menu that includes both greatest hits and revised versions of old favorites. But there’s also food that chef Peter Cho was not inclined to cook much in the past, including bibimbap and a steamed bao burger, maybe the world’s first reheating-friendly cheeseburger. The star item, though, is the Gim-bap Supreme, which takes its inspiration from both Taco Bell and the TikTok “wrap” trend, in which a tortilla is partially cut into four quadrants, topped with four different ingredients, folded into layers and griddled.
5128 N Albina Ave., 503-282-2934, redfoxpdx.com. 3-11 pm daily. The Red Fox’s entire food and drink menu consists of fewer than 10 items. That’s one way of reading this tucked-away, no-frills joint. Another way is to call it what it is—a genuine neighborhood treasure adored by all who know of its existence. The Red Fox is the very definition of “local”: It’s a small spot featuring cozy outside tables, cool music and a precious, low-key vibe.
4. Langbaan
6 SE 28th Ave., 971-344-2564, langbaanpdx.com. 3-9 pm Wednesday-Sunday. Once the most inaccessible restaurant in Portland—you had to make reservations months in advance—Langbaan has gone the takeout route, pivoting to Thai drinking snacks and noodle soup, including a hearty beef noodle curry topped with grilled short rib. The beef perches above thick egg noodles like a ship adrift on the tastiest ocean, and you will wind up very full if you try and eat it all in one go. Which, you know, go for it—YOLO and all that stuff. MICK HANGLAND-SKILL
Known Associates Social Club’s Excommunicado
HOT PLATES
5. The Red Fox
2. Noodle Gang
Order via instagram.com/chuckdanger. Just like his other industry comrades, Isaac Ocejo found himself reeling when his job at Jackknife evaporated and his catering business with his wife also dried up. Ocejo got to thinking about the year he spent working at dearly departed Wafu, learning ramen at the hip of sous chef Jane Hashimawari. When the owners of Jackknife offered the use of their kitchen, he jumped in, making chewy wheat noodles by hand, curing his own pork belly and building out the tare, or flavor base, all himself. Bowls run $20 for pickup, or he’ll deliver for an extra $5.
3. Poppyseed
1331 N Killingsworth St., 503-489-7449, poppyseedpnw.com. Noon-8 pm Thursday-Sunday. What kind of food cart serves a duck country pâté with roasted hazelnuts, cranberries and parsnip purée, and also a grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich? The kind of food cart started by a trained pastry chef and a Le Pigeon alum. Poppyseed makes fancyish, local and seasonal food that’s both takeout-friendly and affordable. The leading player on the menu is brisket, which has been available both as a sandwich or as an entree with a Parmesan potato cake and vegetables.
5. Chamorro Chicken
Order through Instagram @ramon.cooks. With stints at Le Pigeon, Crown Paella, and Beaker and Flask, Ramon Navarro has a Portland kitchen pedigree. But it was quarantine-driven stagnation that brought out the inspiration to make Guamanian-style Chamorro barbecue chicken. Navarro takes orders on his Instagram, @ramon.cooks, for pickup on Sundays and Mondays. Your $20 gets you half a barbecued chicken juicy enough to do Cardi B proud, a mound of spiced red rice, and a side of finadene, cucumber and onions in a soy and vinegar sauce that perfectly complements the rich, smoky bird.
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PERFORMANCE
Editor: Andi Prewitt | Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com PROTOCOL
MUSIC
Written by: Daniel Bromfield | @bromf3
Now Hear This
Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery. SOMETHING OLD
BEAM ME UP: Members of the Protocol creative team during a post-show Q&A at the launch party, where sci-fi-inspired costumes were optional.
Space Odysseys Two new podcasts shake up local theater by looking beyond our planet and inside the vast expanse of the human mind. BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E L L FERGUS O N
“I’ve had to learn a new voice for myself,” Brianna Barrett says at the start of her new podcast, True Love and Other Noncommunicable Diseases. “But my podcast voice is like—I can’t do it now.” It’s an entertainingly self-effacing beginning, but it’s misleading. Not only does Barrett have an effortless podcast voice—smooth, calm, controlled—but True Love is a great podcast and a moving meditation on her journey as a filmmaker and cancer survivor. Some podcasts created during the pandemic have a “What the hell else am I going to do with my time?” vibe. That’s not the case with True Love or Phil Johnson’s Protocol, both of which have been released by Portland-area theater companies and are at once topical and universal. They may seem light years apart (True Love is memoir and Protocol is science fiction), but each offers revelatory reflections on life in isolation that resonate beyond COVID-19. Johnson is a seasoned podcaster—he and Clifton Holznagel interview Portland theater personalities on their podcast Radical Listening—but Protocol is unique because it fuses audio storytelling with Afrofuturism, and the first episode was written entirely by writers of color. The podcast follows the crew of the spaceship Elegua IV, voyagers who are transporting a group of humans and embryos as they search for a new habitable solar system. Protocol, presented by Portland Center Stage, is filled with references to iconic sci-fi films. The cast includes Tyharra Cozier as DALS, an artificial intelligence that seems only slightly more trustworthy than HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the claustrophobia-inducing terror of the first episode evokes the Alien series. BRIANNA BARRETT
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The deeper Protocol gazes into the void, the more it looks toward Earth. “My heart rate has increased, I can barely breathe without coughing,” says scientist Jonic Ibarra (Victor Mack). “It’s against protocol to self-diagnose, but the ship medic can’t be trusted. None of them can be trusted.” The same brand of paranoia and fear that infected humanity during the pandemic rules Elegua IV, a vessel that can seem to offer both protection and imprisonment. While Protocol spotlights an ensemble, True Love beckons us into the soul of its star. The podcast, released by Hillsboro’s Bag & Baggage, is based on Barrett’s one-woman show of the same name, but it isn’t a rehash. She includes newly recorded thoughts about her battle with cancer and clips of other performances of the show, turning the podcast into a conversation between multiple Barretts. Barrett 2021 sounds haunted by her pre-pandemic life. “I was never good at living in the moment—and never brave enough to ask or answer deep, intimate questions unless I had my camera on and I was being recorded,” she tells us, sounding unlike the person who once regaled a live audience with a cheeky anecdote about filming students making out when she was in high school. “Some people just learn by having a really creepy hobby,” she jokes. Just like Protocol is about more than outer space, True Love concerns more than just Barrett’s life. The laughter of past audiences seems to echo through the podcast, making you excruciatingly hungry for communal entertainment and aware of what’s been absent during the past year. Listening to Barrett, you think, “She gets it. She gets what the world has been through.” That’s partly because she was a survivor before the pandemic, but also because she’s an immensely perceptive and compassionate artist. Unfinished business looms over the first episodes of Protocol and True Love. Johnson leaves us wondering what will happen to the crew of Elegua IV, and Barrett tantalizes us by glancing toward the uncertain future that lies beyond the pandemic. “It’s hard not to find yourself asking, ‘What do I want on the other end?’” she says. It can be a challenging question to contemplate, but by guiding us toward understanding, Johnson and Barrett are helping us answer it. SEE IT: Episodes of Protocol stream at pcs.org/protocol. Episodes of True Love and Other Noncommunicable Diseases stream at bagnbaggage.org/category/kbnb. Free.
Max Romeo’s War Ina Babylon (1976) is one of the angriest protest albums ever made, but the singer scarcely raises his voice: He just sounds like he’s in disbelief that oppressive systems like race and class are even allowed to exist. On “Uptown Babies Don’t Cry,” he carefully explains poverty as if he’s speaking to someone who’s never heard of it before. On “Norman,” he castigates a playboy gambler for not giving away any of his winnings. This is reggae at its bleakest, cut somewhat by Romeo’s pop smarts and the warm, psychedelic backing of Lee Perry’s Upsetters.
SOMETHING NEW RVDS’s Moods & Dances 2021 is like Mother Earth’s Plantasia on steroids—play it for your orchids and they might start fighting each other. While most ambient synth music aims for state-of-theart home-catalog comfiness, this stuff suggests danger and adventure, and once the musician gets a crew of buddies to shout the title of “Planet Dragon’’ with increasing enthusiasm, it’s clear that this music can do anything and go anywhere. This is a must-listen for anyone who loves the pit-pat of old drum machines and the squeak of vintage synths.
SOMETHING LOCAL Prolific Portland “cosmic noise” artist Pulse Emitter’s first album of 2021 dates back to an unfinished vinyl project from 13 years earlier. But the artist born Daryl Groetsch is keen to emphasize that the four long tracks on Voids are not “scraps.” Indeed, this is some of the most bracing music in his catalog, its long metallic tones as reminiscent of classic cosmic-horror soundtracks like Alien as the unforgiving void of space itself. If you want to blow yourself out of an airlock from the comfort of your headphones, look no further.
SOMETHING ASKEW Ghostface Killah’s Supreme Clientele (2000) is the Trout Mask Replica of rap— the work by which difficulty, impenetrability and the rewards of repeat listening are measured in its genre. Scrawled on paper sans beats during a trip to Benin, the bars alternate between cool threats and impenetrable modernist word thickets so deftly you might not even notice when one transitions into the other. It’s one of the rare albums that would be just as good as a coffee-table book, though reading this stuff on paper would clarify zilch.
POTLANDER
The Greenest Day Combat your St. Patrick’s Day hangover with these weed strains. BY BRIA N N A W H E E L E R
I’m not going to say the patron saint of Ireland was into weed, but it certainly wouldn’t tarnish his legacy, or your potential hangover, to assume that to be true. The Catholic feast of St. Patrick lands between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, right in the middle of Lent. Historically, it was one whole day wherein Lenten restrictions were lifted, specifically in regards to drinking, smoking and general life-affirming merriment. There’s no reason to think Ol’ Saint Pat wouldn’t have balanced the boozy mirth of his namesake holiday with a restorative stoney vibe. Weed’s association with St. Patrick’s Day could even be perceived in the iconography of the Saint holding a shamrock, or bouquet of botanicals, argued to represent the regenerative powers of nature rather than the holy trinity. This St. Paddy’s day, double down on that general life affirming merriment and connection to nature by scooping up one of these strains to either soothe a hangover or replace celebratory booze altogether. Because if besotted leprechauns can be head canon, getting blazed on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow can be to.
Nightmare Cookies by Pistil Point
Despite this cultivar’s hybrid genetics, Nightmare Cookies’ effects are reportedly heavily relaxing with a strong couch-lock potential. Bred from White Nightmare and GSC, this strain’s onset is euphoric and buzzy but quickly plateaus into a deeply sedative, syrupy body high. Users also report powerful anxiety and pain relief that gives way to epic munchies. If a big, greasy brunch delivery followed by a powerful weed nap is part of your recovery regimen, Nightmare Cookies, despite the name, might be the perfect cultivar to facilitate a full restoration What to expect: Piney, nutty perfume; a sweet, earthy exhale; and a THC-CBD ratio of approximately 20 to 1. Get it from: Weed Land, 4027 N Interstate Ave., 541-904-0000.
Grapefruit Diesel by Pilot Farms
The super-bright, cirtusy aroma of Grapefruit Diesel suggests—and delivers—an invigorating, clarifying high. Users suggest this strain does a better job of clearing away cognitive cobwebs than a cup of coffee right from the onset, with effects that blossom into sparkling creativity and mild, elastic energy. Grapefruit Diesel is also reportedly super-efficient at tempering bouts of anxiety and depression, which typically arrive part and parcel with even the most temperate of hangovers. What to expect: A strong citrus nose that overpowers a delicate diesel stink and a sugar-sweet, slightly gassy exhale. Get it from: Electric Lettuce, 214 NW Couch St., 971-302-7032, electriclettuce.com.
Black Mamba Pull and Snap by Dab Factory
Her intimidating name seems to imply a strain powerful enough to paralyze, but the majority of users describe Black Mamba as anything but incapacitating. Reported effects overwhelmingly describe the strain as deeply stoney yet gently refreshing in the head and body. The strain’s genealogy, a cross of Granddaddy Purp and Domina, seems to compel users to curl up with a book or settle into a cinematic epic, which, depending on the state of your hangover, could be just the mellow medication you need to shake off last night’s debaucheries. What to expect: A spicy skunky aroma, a berry sweet exhale, and at least 20% THC. Get it from: Deanz Greenz, 10415 NE Sandy Blvd., 971-255-0758, deanzgreenz.com
Platinum Garlic Cookies by LOWD
LOWD’s cross of GMO Cookies and Platinum GSC has resulted in a mostly balanced hybrid, albeit with a few pronounced indica effects, namely deep cerebral relaxation and a chilled-out physical euphoria. LOWD’s popularity is due in part to skilled, top-shelf cultivation methods and unique hybrids like Platinum Garlic Cookies, whose skunky terp profile is loud enough to alert any stoner in a half-mile radius of your excellent taste in cannabis. For St Paddy’s use, Platinum Garlic Cookies is a choice strain for quelling morning-after anxieties and setting up users for some superior post-bender selfcare. What to expect: The funkiest, skunkiest, perfume and a confusingly delicious savory-sweet and gassy exhale. Get it from: Gnome Grown, 5012 NE 28th Ave., 971-346-2098, gnomegrownorganics.com.
Sherbadough by Magic Hour
Bred from a cross of Sherbet and Do-Si-Dos, this hybrid’s genetics are decidedly indica-leaning. Users describe the strain as having a distinct Sunday Morning vibe, which is to say, it’s effects are so deeply calming and breezily blissful that consecutive full bowls should probably be reserved for a day free from heavy responsibilities. As Sherbadough’s high develops, it reportedly folds users into a cashmere-soft, creative euphoria. These nuanced effects can be fuel for a restorative day of super-low-stakes creativity, or users can lean all the way into the slow psychedelic indica vibe and bliss out with some video games before falling asleep under a tree, weather permitting. What to expect: A piney, skunky nose and a peppery exhale. Get it from: Green Box Delivery, pdxgreenbox.com.
Sunshine Daydream Live Resin by Dr. Jolly’s
More than just a euphoric onset and warm, cushiony plateau, Sunshine Daydream is a powerful anti-nausea strain. Like other high-THC strains (Sunshine Daydream typically tops out over 17%) users can expect an ecstatic swoon that evaporates into a gentle, softening, whole body relief, essentially offering a high that is equal parts therapeutic and psychotropic. If your festive celebrations with St. Patrick got a bit out of hand and you’re now feeling a little more than seasick, Sunshine Daydream could potentially quiet that nagging queasiness. What to expect: A perfume of diesel and tart fruit, and a sweet berry exhale. Get it from: Mongoose Cannabis, 3123 SE Belmont St., 541-933-8032, mongoosecannabis.com. Willamette Week MARCH 17, 2021 wweek.com
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Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com R O G E R E B E R T. C O M
screener
MOVIES
GET YO UR REPS I N While local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. For St. Patrick’s Day, we’re celebrating some of the most acclaimed Irish cinema—from mainstream Colin Farrell vehicles to indie gems hidden at the end of the rainbow.
In Bruges (2008)
GROWING PAINS: Jessica Barr (right) plays Sophie Jones, a teenager coping with the death of her mother.
Sophie’s Chase
Grief and adolescence collide in locally filmed Sophie Jones, an authentic portrait of mourning while coming of age. BY JAY H O RTO N
@hortland
“I always take from my life in some way,” explains Sophie Jones director Jessie Barr, and that philosophy extends from the themes of her projects to co-creators. Om City, the acclaimed webcom she made with husband Tom O’Brien, drew from the couple’s experience running a yoga studio. She tapped a best friend from college to star in the award-winning short Too Long at the Fair that’s currently being developed as a series. And with Oregon-shot Sophie Jones, Barr collaborated with her younger cousin, Jessica Barr, who also stars as the titular heroine. The film allowed them to explore a shared experience: suffering the loss of a parent as an adolescent. The result is an absorbing portrait of a teenage girl’s benumbed maturation following her mother’s death that drifts through the stages of grief with tenderness, dark humor and an assured grace. The movie debuted at last year’s prestigious Deauville American Film Festival and was then picked up for distribution by Oscilloscope Laboratories. Following its premiere this month via video on demand as well as virtual screenings hosted by selected theaters—including Portland’s Hollywood—WW spoke with Jessie Barr about her feature debut.
What happened after you read that initial draft? We started writing it together and worked very hard talking through what the character was feeling. It’s definitely a film about grief and girlhood and growing up. Since the loss came at a time when all those things were happening at once, there’s a lot of seeking and exploration. You’re searching for who you are and throwing yourself up against things and seeing what makes relationships feel right, what personae make sense. We really dug into our vulnerabilities, attempting to share that honesty through the film, and I’m very proud of the truthfulness she brought to her work. We shot it in her actual childhood home. Did you know she could act? I’d seen a couple clips, but knew she had inner depths and a very watchable quality. It was less about performance than accessing truthfulness. We needed to work on her vulner28
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What about the rest of the cast? Since she’d never really acted before, I wanted to make her as comfortable as possible by building off of actual relationships. I found a lot of the younger actors by incorporating people she already knew into the film. “Claire” is played by an actual friend of hers named Claire. Were there problems depending on so many nonactors? I don’t really like that term. They’re all acting in the film— even Jessica’s playing a version of herself. So much of what we did was about creating a safe space for them to improvise and feel comfortable riffing off of each other. It all had to happen so quickly in terms of production timing and location availability, but it was really important to me that I got to know who the cast was as people. I tried to make things as naturalistic as possible and have them understand how we could use the imaginary circumstances without feeling like they had to deliver a certain reaction for a certain line.
Hunger (2008) Acclaimed director Steve McQueen’s feature debut is a harrowing historical drama chronicling the 1981 Irish hunger strike and no-wash protest carried out by prisoners in Northern Ireland and led by Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender). The 17-minute long take of a conversation between Sands and a priest (Liam Cunningham) about the morality of hunger striking is an unforgettable acting master class. Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Criterion Channel, iTunes, Sling TV, Tubi.
A Date for Mad Mary (2016) After being released from a short stint in prison, a young woman named “Mad” Mary (Seána Kerslake) returns to her hometown of Drogheda, Ireland, where she’s now so alienated from her former community she struggles to find a plus-one to bring to her best friend’s wedding. Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Google Play, Roku, Tubi, Vudu, YouTube.
Sing Street (2016) In 1980s Dublin, a teenage boy (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is transferred to a new school, where he starts a rock band to impress the girl he has a crush on (Lucy Boynton). This feel-good musical’s stellar soundtrack is loaded with bop after bop, particularly the band’s catchy original song, “Drive It Like You Stole It.” Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Google Play, iTunes, Pluto TV, Tubi, Vudu, YouTube. SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
WW: So, the film began with your cousin, Jessica Barr? Jessie Barr: So, yeah, my cousin and I were both named after our great-grandmother Jessica Primrose Barr. She was 20 when she sent me an early draft of the script, and I was so moved. It was inspired by her experience losing her mom. We both lost a parent when we were 16, so it’s a very personal story.
ability, but because I am an actor and really love working with actors, I believed we’d be able to get to a place where she could share that onscreen. It was definitely a risk, but because of our shared history and experience, there was also a lot of trust.
In this pitch-black gangster comedy from acclaimed playwright-filmmaker Martin McDonagh, Irish heartthrob Colin Farrell stars as Ray, a guilt-ridden hit man who’s forced to go into hiding in Bruges, Belgium, after a contract killing goes tragically wrong. Fellow Irishman Brendan Gleeson co-stars as Ray’s mentor, and Ralph Fiennes steals the show as their wrathful boss. Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Google Play, iTunes, Peacock, Vudu, YouTube.
The film was shot in Portland, but was it set here? You avoid the usual locations, and everything’s so bright. It’s funny. A lot of the Oregon films have mist or rain—think, like, the Twilight movies—so I thought it’d be interesting to see a different side of the environment. You might think a story about grief has to be rainy and dark, but the really sunny scenes added a nice juxtaposition while dealing with the heavy subject matter. Also, we shot in the summertime, and the city happened to be very hot. You just have to embrace what’s happening. That was the mantra of this film. Was it difficult to revisit the death of your parent? I never talked about losing my dad until I made this film, so there was an opportunity to be the person I needed when I was younger and transform pain and suffering into something beautiful and hopeful—sharing our stories, our hearts, our truths with other people. It’s not a documentary, not a re-creation, but something else. And, like all films, it becomes larger than any one person, which I find so beautiful. It becomes something that belongs to everybody. SEE IT: Sophie Jones streams on demand.
Breakfast on Pluto (2005) Cillian Murphy stars as Patricia “Kitten” Braden, a trans woman coming of age in 1970s Northern Ireland. Fed up with her hometown’s misunderstanding of her gender, Kitten heads to London in search of community as well as her long-lost mother. Though it’s a bummer that the trans protagonist is played by a cis actor, the character is still handled with a grace and respect rarely afforded in 2005. Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Google Play, iTunes, Pluto TV, Roku, Tubi, Vudu, YouTube.
MOVIES TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
The Father
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 Nomadland Filmmaker Chloé Zhao’s work has always sought to uplift voices that have been pushed to the margins. Her previous features, The Rider (2017) and Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015), both focused on Native American reservation culture, and she now sets her sights on documenting the lives of older Americans who travel in campers across the country in search of employment. The result is an awe-inspiring, dexterous hybrid of impromptu documentary and scripted drama, of nature and nurture, of ethos and pathos. Nomadland is anchored by multi-Oscar winner Frances McDormand, here playing Fern, a widow who lost her job at a gypsum plant in Empire, Nev., two years after the Great Recession officially came to an end. With nothing left to lose, Fern decides to sell her belongings, buy a van and hit the road in search of work. Along the way, she meets a litany of real-life nomads, most playing semi-fictionalized versions of themselves. These characters ground the film in a sober reality, reminding us it’s possible to live and thrive in a community outside of traditional society. Though the story is technically manipulated for narrative purposes, it never once feels manipulative, emotionally or otherwise. It feels human. It is human. And it’s the best film of the year. R. MIA VICINO. Hulu, Living Room.
Supernova Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci playing a loving couple on an RV trip in the English countryside is exactly as tender and intimate as it sounds. Their palpable chemistry is bolstered by Firth’s frosty naturalism and Tucci’s balmy theatricality; good thing, too, because this romantic drama’s scant plot is almost completely dependent on the casting of actors up to the task. The tale itself is one that’s (tragically) familiar: A long-term relationship is tested by early onset dementia. However, writer-director Harry Macqueen finds room to break new ground by making the couple in question gay. An overabundance of art has been made that revolves around LGBTQ suffering, though it’s usually derived from homophobia. While that’s most certainly a worthy topic to explore, sometimes it’s refreshing to see gay people allowed to have other conflicts, too. Here, the characters’ sexuality is almost never an issue—their family is openly supportive of their relationship. Instead, the tension revolves around regular, old-fashioned trauma. The couple is given space to deal with their own very real crises without the simultaneous weight of bigotry crushing them. While Supernova’s melodrama would have doubtlessly been more compelling as a stage play, at least its meaningful story is much more publicly accessible in film form. R. MIA VICINO. On Demand.
Land Robin Wright is a force of nature. After directing herself in 10 episodes of House of Cards, in which she played President Claire Underwood, she has stepped
behind (and in front of) the camera again for her directorial feature debut. Land follows Edee (Wright), a bereaved woman cut from the same cloth as Cheryl Strayed of Wild (2014), as she struggles to cope with an unthinkable tragedy. Convinced that her mourning has made her incapable of human connection, she moves off the grid and into a tiny, unfurnished cabin in the isolated Wyoming mountains. Here, she attempts to hunt and provide for herself, but the environmental conditions prove to be so grueling she more often than not ends up catatonic with grief on the frigid wooden floor. Then, a savior in the form of a handsome hunter (Demián Bichir) arrives. Along with teaching Edee wilderness survival skills, he slowly coaxes her to open up—an emotional survival skill. While the dialogue is minimal and the characters somewhat sparsely sketched out, the film’s most notable beauty is embedded in Bobby Bukowski’s breathtaking landscape cinematography: The crisp snow and pristine mountains cleanse both Edee and the viewer like a glass of ice-cold water. Ultimately, this garden-variety story is rejuvenating and purifying, if a bit bland. PG-13. MIA VICINO. Liberty, Living Room, On Demand.
Boogie The debut film directed by Fresh Off the Boat creator (and then disowner) Eddie Huang follows a Chinese American basketball star, Boogie (newcomer Taylor Takahashi), who’s shooting for a college scholarship. Replete with sports drama clichés—a needlessly dickish crosstown rival (played by late rapper Pop Smoke), parental pressures, a befuddled coach preaching teamwork, a blooming romance bigger than sports— it’s the finer strokes that still merit Boogie a watch. Not just a vessel of his parents’ professional dreams, Boogie is the evolution of their specific cultural expressions; he’s portrayed as the product of a marriage (Dragon + Dog = Snake on
SEAN GLEASON/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
The play-to-film transition often lacks formal ingenuity. Regardless of quality, you know the type: static cameras, actors gnawing on scenery, wordy dialogue carrying protracted scenes. But French playwright Florian Zeller adapting his acclaimed dementia drama to cinema has the opposite effect. The Father either eludes or busts multiple movie norms of perspective, setting and unreliable narrators, and then cinches into a harrowing but not exploitative puzzle box. As the dementia-ridden Anthony, 83-years-young Anthony Hopkins resists the pleas of his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman) to accept an in-home caretaker and grant the family some freedom. That’s as much plot as can be said for certain, as scenes loop, rooms mutate in almost imperceptible ways, and basic facts aren’t what they were five minutes ago. Robbed of truth but not his showy, sparring personality, Anthony isn’t an unexpected character from Hopkins, but the performance is a gauntlet and his best in 10 years. Unfortunately, The Father doesn’t offer Colman anywhere near the same material, but it does allow the audience to see things from her perspective, as well as Anthony’s. You’re fighting for understanding one moment, sure you’ve got it the next, rebuffed just after that, and then mercifully, fittingly ready to give in. PG-13. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. AMC Dine-In Progress Ridge 13, AMC Vancouver Mall 23, Bagdad, Century 16 Eastport Plaza, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Liberty, Living Room.
the Chinese zodiac chart) destined to distress the son. Making sense of that legacy—explaining both this movie’s swagger and genuinely foul mood—is more important than Boogie learning a pat American lesson about claiming his own path. To his credit, Takahashi can genuinely ball, though he looks about 12 years too old for high school and routinely falls flat in emotional scenes. It’s Taylour Paige (star of the forthcoming Zola) as Boogie’s beloved and Perry Yung as his ne’er-do-well father who shoulder the humanity. Ultimately, if most every other variation on these hoop dreams has been told, Boogie at least deserves the court time. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. AMC Dine-In Progress Ridge 13, AMC Vancouver Mall 23, Century 16 Eastport Plaza, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Living Room.
Playing With Power: The Nintendo Story There are surely tales yet to be told about the 19th century playing card company destined to conquer the uncharted realms of digital home entertainment, but Crackle’s new five-part docuseries, Playing With Power: The Nintendo Story, never quite levels up. Sean Astin’s narration leans hard into the wellworn clichés of business school triumph to recount company highs and lows that are all gravely intoned amid a flurry of headlines absent any larger economic context. And the dawn of each decade triggers a pointless nostalgia package for anyone except perhaps the most hardcore Nintendo fans. Neckbearded arcade historians overexplain the importance of each gaming milestone while professional nerd icons (Alison Haislip, Wil Wheaton) overshare personal reveries—two-bit sound bites celebrating 8-bit soundscapes on endless replay. Admittedly, given how much of Nintendo’s rise seems at first arbitrary and then inevitable, there’s something sort of sweet about the corporate overlords’ des-
perate efforts to invent a creation myth steeped in the daft whimsy of their de facto mascot. Whether or not the barrel-dodging antics of a plucky Italian plumber truly represented a leap forward in narrative gameplay, the all too human irreverence at the heart of Donkey Kong still charms, but writer-director Jeremy Snead gleaned the wrong lessons nonetheless. While audiences will helplessly ascribe emotional resonance to the flimsiest of plot points, nobody roots for the monkey. NR. JAY HORTON. Crackle.
Cherry After grossing nearly $3 billion with Avengers: Endgame, directors Joe and Anthony Russo have cashed perhaps the blankest check in Hollywood history on a chaotic Tom Holland-led depiction of America’s deepest wounds as pure home-blockbuster fodder. It’s a revealing choice from all-time successful studio workmen now operating without a forgiving intellectual property net. Adapted from Nico Walker’s 2018 novel, Cherry is an overlong, cynical saga of war, PTSD and addiction, despite its masquerading as a tome for the Bush years and ensuing opioid crisis. Chief among its downfalls is Holland’s inability to express the soul of the unnamed soldier who appears in nearly every frame for two hours and 20 minutes. Sure, Holland sweats out his character’s heroin withdrawals with commitment and talks a witty game (waxing about the U.S. Army’s “proliferate confidence” in Iraq). But all his character’s agony and lost innocence remain superficial on a young actor too self-consciously trying to graduate from Spider-Man. And the Russo brothers’ swings at bravura filmmaking (muscular zooms, aspect-ratio changes, etc.) serve only to keep the viewer sensorially hooked to an empty vessel, reminding you that war is hell, drugs are bad and camera tricks are, as always, pretty sweet. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Apple TV+.
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JONESIN’
Week of March 25
©2021 Rob Brezsny
by Matt Jones
"Not Quite!"--looks can be deceiving.
ARIES (March 21-April 19)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)
In the novel *House of Leaves*, the hero Johnny Truant describes his friend Lude as wanting "more money, better parties, and prettier girls." But Johnny wants something different. What is it? He says, "I’m not even sure what to call it except I know it feels roomy and it’s drenched in sunlight and it’s weightless and I know it’s not cheap." In my opinion, that declaration is far too imprecise! He'll never get what he wants until he gets clearer about it. But his fantasy is a good start. It shows that he knows what the fulfillment of his yearning feels like. I suggest you get inspired by Johnny Truant's approximation to conjure up one of your own. Gaze ahead a few years, and see if you can imagine what your best possible future feels like. Then describe it to yourself as precisely as possible.
Is there anything more gratifying than being listened to, understood, and seen for who you really are? I urge you to seek out that pleasure in abundance during the coming weeks. My reading of the astrological omens tells me you need the nurturing jolt that will come from being received and appreciated with extra potency. I hope you have allies who can provide that for you. If you don't, search for allies who can. And in the meantime, consider engaging the services of a skillful psychotherapist or life coach or some other professional listener.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20) How distraught I was when I discovered that one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda, was an admirer of the murderous dictator Joseph Stalin. It broke my heart to know I could never again read his tender, lyrical poetry with unconditional appreciation. But that's life: Some of our heroes and teachers disappoint us, and then it's healthy to re-evaluate our relationships with them. Or maybe our own maturation leads us to realize that once-nurturing influences are no longer nurturing. I recommend that sometime soon, you take a personal inventory with these thoughts in mind. I suspect there may be new sources of inspiration headed your way. Get ready for them.
GEMINI (May 21-June20)
ACROSS 1 Texting format 4 Iran's leader, once 8 Counts with margins of error 13 Deviation in a rocket's course 14 Prefix meaning "end" 15 Prove to be successful
60 _ _ _-Bissau (African country)
29 Morning beverages, informally
Self-help author Steve Maraboli has useful advice for you to consider in the coming weeks. I hope you'll meditate on what he says and take decisive action. He writes, "Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t." To get started, Gemini, make a list of three things you do have power over and three things you wish you did but don't have power over.
61 Actor shown in "One does not simply ..." memes
30 Rude sound from a spectator
CANCER (June 21-July 22)
63 Nod, e.g.
31 Invoice add-on
64 "At Last" singer James
32 Samuel Barber's "_ _ _ for Strings"
65 Tree on Connecticut's quarter 66 Negatives from Nijinsky
33 Clean out completely, as a building
67 Holder of many a merit badge
34 "Selma" director DuVernay
68 Toots and the Maytals genre
35 Ran into
19 D&D enemy
36 Cautionary beginning?
20 Grass cutter that might use a battery
DOWN
40 Place for a nursery rhyme trio
16 Winter road clearer 18 Purport
22 Feeling of guilt 23 Used up 24 The "A" in PTA, for short 25 Test that might be "open" 27 Composer _ _ _ Carlo Menotti
1 Early online admin 2 Genre for "One-Punch Man" 3 Given an oath, with "in" 4 Longtime NASCAR sponsor 5 Assists, as with entering a tall pickup truck
43 Garfield, for one 44 Gardening headwear
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)
45 Fridge ornament
To create your horoscope, I've borrowed ideas from Leo-born author Cassiano Ricardo. He speaks of a longing "for all that is tall like pine trees, and all that is long like rivers, and all that is purple like dusk." I think yearnings like those will be healthy and wise for you to cultivate in the coming weeks. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you need expansive influences that stretch your imagination and push you beyond your limitations. You will benefit from meditations and experiences that inspire you to outgrow overly small expectations.
47 Hammond B-3, notably 48 Pretty dang bad
6 Knocked for _ _ _
49 False front
7 "This Is _ _ _ Do It" (Montell Jordan hit)
51 Deceptive ploys
37 First name in fabric stores
8 It's good for at least a few dates
38 Made a pit
54 Cookies with a recent Lady Gaga-themed variety
9 Checked out for a bit
39 Fu Mingxia, for one
55 "Wicked Game" singer Chris
41 Boston team, for short
10 Chain that merged with AMC Theatres
42 Group in Santa Fe or Sacramento
11 Equipment used in Winter Olympics
45 "Switched-On Bach" synthesizer
12 Back of a yacht
29 Acquire a second time 34 Mountain Dew energy drink
46 "Mr. Robot" network 47 "Quantum of Solace" actress Kurylenko 50 Rice wine used in Japanese cooking 53 Hard work 57 Serious symptom of a cold, maybe 59 Quadruped up in the sky?
15 Title ender of a 1974 film that distinguishes it from an earlier Best Picture Oscar winner 17 Photographer William who depicts Weimaraners with human hands 21 Keep occupied 26 Old detergent brand that used to sponsor radio shows 28 Lake Titicaca's locale
©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.
While he was alive, Cancerian author Franz Kafka burned 90% of everything he wrote. In a note to a friend before he died, he gave instructions to burn all the writing he would leave behind. Luckily, his friend disobeyed, and that's why today we can read Kafka's last three novels and a lot more of his stuff. Was his attitude toward his creations caused by the self-doubt that so many of us Cancerians are shadowed by? Was he, like a lot of us Crabs, excessively shy about sharing personal details from his life? In accordance with astrological omens, I urge you to at least temporarily transcend any Kafka-like tendencies you have. It's time to shine brightly and boldly as you summon your full powers of self-expression.
52 "_ _ _ Kick Out of You"
56 Sri _ _ _ 58 "... three French _ _ _ ..." 62 "Yeah, probably not"
last week’s answers
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Virgo actor and director Jean-Louis Barrault (1910– 1994) aspired to "wake up a virgin each morning." He wanted "to feel hungry for life," as if he had been reborn once again. In order to encourage that constant renewal, he regarded going to sleep every night as "a small death." I recommend his approach to you during the coming weeks. In my astrological opinion, the cosmic rhythms will be conspiring to regularly renew your desires: to render them pure, clean, raw, and strong. Cooperate with those cosmic rhythms!
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) "Blobs, spots, specks, smudges, cracks, defects, mistakes, accidents, exceptions, and irregularities are the windows to other worlds," writes author Bob Miller. I would add that all those things, along with related phenomena like fissures, blemishes, stains, scars, blotches, muck, smears, dents, and imperfections, are often windows to very interesting parts of this seemingly regular old ordinary world—parts that might remain closed off from us without the help of those blobs and defects. I suggest you take full advantage of the opportunities they bring your way in the coming weeks.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Innovative psychologist Carl Jung had a nuanced understanding of the energies at work in our deep psyche. He said our unconscious minds are "not only dark but also light; not only bestial, semi-human, and demonic, but also superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, 'divine.'" I bring this to your attention, Sagittarius, because now is a favorable time to get better acquainted with and more appreciative of your unconscious mind. For best results, you must not judge it for being so paradoxical. Don't be annoyed that it's so unruly and non-rational. Have fun with its fertility and playfulness and weirdness.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) The fantasy drama *Game of Thrones* appeared on TVs all over the world. But the audience that watched it in China got cheated out of a lot of essential action. Government censorship deleted many scenes that featured nudity and sex, fighting and violence, and appearances by dragons, which play a starring role in the story. As you can imagine, Chinese viewers had trouble following some of the plot points. Telling you about this, Capricorn, is my way of nudging you to make sure you don't miss any of the developments going on in your own personal drama. Some may be hidden, as in China's version of *Game of Thrones*. Others might be subtle or disguised or underestimated. Make it your crusade to know about *everything*.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) "Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind," wrote author Rudyard Kipling. Yes, they are. I agree. They change minds, rouse passions, build identities, incite social change, inspire irrationality, and create worlds. This is always true, but it will be especially important for you to keep in mind during the coming weeks. The ways you use language will be key to your health and success. The language that you hear and read will also be key to your health and success. For best results, summon extra creativity and craftsmanship as you express yourself. Cultivate extra discernment as you choose what you absorb.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) Piscean linguist Anna Wierzbicka says the Russian expression *Dusha naraspashku* means "unbuttoned soul." She continues, "The implication is that it is good, indeed wonderful, if a person’s 'soul,' which is the seat of emotions, is flung open in a spontaneous, generous, expansive, impetuous gesture, expressing full trust in other people and an innocent readiness for communion with them.” I wouldn't recommend that you keep your soul unbuttoned 24/7/365, but in the coming weeks, I hope you'll allocate more time than usual to keeping it unbuttoned.
HOMEWORK: Send ideas for April Fool pranks that fulfill the following prescription: "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Truthrooster@gmail.com
Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes
freewillastrology.com The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at
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Buying, selling, instruments of every shape and size. Open 11am-7pm every day. 4701 SE Division & 1834 NE Alberta.
WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
“YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU’RE KILLING YOUR BRAIN.”
TRADEUPMUSIC.COM
NEWS: BLOODSHED ON THE SIDEWALK. FOOD: PIZZA! AT THE STREET DISCO. MOVIES: MARCHING WITH JOHN LEWIS.
“WE’D SPRAY AND VACUUM, BUT NOTHING’S PERFECT.’’ P. 28
Pruning and removals, stump grinding, 24-hour emergency service. Licensed/Insured. CCB#67024. Free estimates: 503-284-2077
3-19 Lynn Conover & Dave Reisch 3-20 Dumpster Joe 3-21 McCarthy Creek 3-24 Annette Lowman 3-25 Jeff Rymes 3-26 Michael Hurley and the Croakers 3-27 Turtle Vandeemar, Dave Reisch, Lynn Conover 3-28 McCarthy Creek 3-31 Raeann Phillips 4-1 John Lowell Mitchell 4-2 Quick and Easy Boys 4-3 Campfire Boys 4-4 McCarthy Creek 4-7 Petty Cash 4-8 Dark Star String Band 4-9 Blue Flags Black Grass 4-10 Turtle's Guitar Mafia 5-1 Todd Sheaffer of Railroad Earth
SERVING THREE LOCATIONS | OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK
P. 26
Steve Greenberg Tree Service
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“YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU’RE KILLING YOUR BRAIN.”
We do it all! Trimming, hedges & shrubs, pruning, bark dust, gutter cleaning, leaf cleanup & weeding, blackberries and ivy removal, staining, pressure washing & water sealing 503-235-0491 or 503-853-0480
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P. 23
Live Music Schedule
WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
INTO JAMMED JAMMED
NEWS: OREGON IS ON FIRE.
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VOL 46/42 08.12.2020
“DO I WANT TO DROP DEAD NEXT WEEK? NOT REALLY.” P. 29
Complete Yard Service Senior Discounts
Only 15 miles from NW Portland
THE MAGIC IS IN MEL’S HOLE. page 22
BROTHERS CANNABIS SELLWOODTHE GAS 1639 SE FLAVEL ST, PORTLAND WWEEK.COM
Tradeupmusic.com SE 503-236-8800 NE 503-335-8800
NEWS
FEDS VS. A FIRESTARTER. page 9
OUTDOORS
CANNABIS: WHAT WE LOST IN THE FIRES. P. 25
WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
Page 10
Portland,NOTOR / Est. Since 2010 TED
“TIRED OF WHITE SUPREMACY? WELCOME TO THE CLUB.” P. 21
Page 12
“GOOD THING CLIMATE CHANGE IS A HOAX LIKE COVID.” P. 4
In 2020, everyone is struggling with mental health. Here’s our guide to finding peace.
SHE’S
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Now more than ever, we’re grateful to Damian Lillard.
“IT'S A CATFIGHT, MAN. THE FUR WILL FLY.” P. 52
THE MAGIC IS IN MEL’S HOLE. page 22
Mark Zuckerberg is despoiling a tiny coastal village and Oregon’s natural treasures. The state invited him. 13
COPS: TRUMP'S POLICE OCCUPY DOWNTOWN. NEWS: REMEMBER TERESSA RAIFORD’S NAME. P. 9 NEWS: AN ELECTION? THIS ECONOMY? RESTAURANTS: WHO’LLIN STOP THE RAIN? P. 21
“SHOCKINGLY, STILL SINGLE WAY TOO P. BORED.” P. 21 “MY TASTE BUDS AREAND WRECKED.” 22
GRIEF
OUTDOORS
“IT'S A CATFIGHT, MAN. THE FUR WILL FLY.” P. 52 “I WANTED THEM TO SEE WHAT THEY'RE SHOOTING AT.” P. 20
PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
NEWS
FEDS VS. A FIRESTARTER. page 9
“GOOD THING CLIMATE CHANGE IS A HOAX LIKE COVID.” P. 4
GOOD
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VOL 46/43 08.19.2020
“I WANTED THEMSUPREMACY? TO SEE WHAT THEY'RE SHOOTING 20 “TIRED OF WHITE WELCOME TOAT.” THEP. CLUB.” P. 21
WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
WWEEK.COM
“WE’D SPRAY AND VACUUM, BUT NOTHING’S PERFECT.’’ P. 28
50316 Columbia River Hwy. 30 Scappoose
“MY TASTE BUDS ARE 22 P. 28 “WE’D SPRAY AND VACUUM, BUTWRECKED.” NOTHING’S P. PERFECT.’’
503-243-2122 mdonhowe@wweek.com
NEWS: REMEMBER TERESSA RAIFORD’S NAME. P. 9 RESTAURANTS: WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN? P. 21 CANNABIS: WHAT WE LOST IN THE FIRES. P. 25
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MICHAEL DONHOWE
CASH for INSTRUMENTS
ROP DEAD NEXT WEEK? NOT REALLY.” P. 29
TO PLACE AN AD, CONTACT:
ISSUES ALWAYS AVAILABLE ONLIN E
DROP DEAD NEXT WEEK? NOT REALLY.” P. 29
CLASSIFIEDS
NEVER NEVER MISS ANMISS AN NEVER MISS ISSUE ISSUE RESPECT RESPECT AN ISSUE
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MAITA PAGE 11
MUSIC'S ROLE IN THE PROTESTS: 4 SCENE LEADERS SPEAK OUT PAGE 16
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PORTLAND’S NEWS
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