“Thats's up to you, Google. Chop, chop.” P. 29
WILLAMETTE WEEK'S OREGON BEER AWARDS 5:30 PM THURSDAY, MAY 20 | TICKETS $5 BIT.LY/OBA2021
d n a s i s i r c f o r It was a yea . s r e w e r b n o g e r Or o f e h p o r t s a t . a e c l a t e h t l l e t s r These eight bee PAG E 12
WWEEK.COM
VOL 47/29 05.19.2021
SUBARU OF PORTLAND THE BEST AUTO DEALERSHIP IN 2020!
Here at Subaru of Portland, we strongly believe in the principles of giving back and caring for those in need. These ideals directly tie in to support for our surrounding Portland community, as our team is directly involved in important initiatives, sponsorships, donations and events.
Subaru of Portland is a proud sponsor of The Oregon Humane Society's Doggy Dash, 2020 & 2021 Search: Subaru Doggie Dash 2020 on Youtube.com
Subaru of Portland was able to donate over $50,000 to OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital this year. Search: Subaru of Portland OHSU May 2021 0n Youtube
subaruofportland.com (503) 232-2000 2
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
FINDINGS CHRIS NESSETH
personal injury wrongful death medical malpractice reckless driving
ADVICE BOOTH, PAGE 22
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 47, ISSUE 29 Enchanted Forest postponed its reopening because of threats. 6
Deborah Kafoury and Ted Wheeler are openly feuding over homeless campsites. 8 The police union wants to be allowed to see all body camera footage within 24 hours. 10 Driving 300 miles to Baker City to drink Barley Brown’s beer from the source is considered a pilgrimage by many. 13 Montavilla’s Threshold Brewing started serving mulled beer last fall to help customers stay warm on its outdoor patio. 15 A full day of delivering beer during lockdown brought in only as much money for Von Ebert as a single hour of in-house service preTimbers match. 16 February’s snowfall crushed a
tent in the BeerMongers’ parking lot—and a dozen regulars showed up early to reerect it. 18
A delayed shipment of guava skins from India imperiled Imperial Yeast. 19 The Cold IPA was invented in Portland. 21 A home in Arbor Lodge has a Nut House with an elaborate network of feeders to serve squirrels, crows and stray cats. 23 Esperanza Spalding wants to establish a BIPOC artist sanctuary in North Portland. 24
One of the speakers at this year’s TechfestNW is an Oregon sextech disruptor. 26 A new Vietnamese cafe sells a bright purple latte made with ube root. 28
1022 NW Marshall Street #450 Portland OR | (503) 226-6361 | paulsoncoletti.com
If you want to see a 10-foot mural of James Baldwin, there is briefly a place. 29 New THC just dropped. 31
ON THE COVER:
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
Eight beers that defined the year for Oregon brewers, photo by Wesley Lapointe.
Oregon businesses that allow maskless entry will have to create standards for vaccinated and unvaccinated patrons.
MASTHEAD EDITOR & PUBLISHER
Mark Zusman
EDITORIAL
News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Matthew Singer Assistant A&C Editor Andi Prewitt Music & Visual Arts Editor Shannon Gormley Staff Writers Latisha Jensen, Rachel Monahan, Sophie Peel, Tess Riski Copy Editor Matt Buckingham
WILLAMETTE WEEK IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY CITY OF ROSES MEDIA COMPANY
ART DEPARTMENT
Creative Director Joy Bogdan Art Director Jack Kent Photography Intern Mick Hangland-Skill ADVERTISING
Director of Sales Anna Zusman Account Executives Michael Donhowe Marketing Coordinator Candace Tillery
2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Main line phone: (503) 243-2122 fax: (503) 296-2874 Classifieds phone: (503) 243-2122 fax: (503) 296-2874
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
Give!Guide Director Toni Tringolo TechfestNW Director Shelley Midthun Cultivation Classic Director Steph Barnhart Oregon Beer Awards Director Rachel Coddington Friends of Willamette Week Director Anya Rehon DISTRIBUTION
Circulation Director Spencer Winans Entrepreneur in Residence Jack Phan
OPERATIONS
Accounting Manager Kim Engelke Staff Accountant Shawn Wolf Manager of Information Services Brian Panganiban OUR MISSION
To provide Portlanders with an independent and irreverent understanding of how their worlds work so they can make a difference. Though Willamette Week is free, please take just one copy. Anyone removing papers in bulk from our distribution points will be prosecuted, as they say, to the full extent of the law.
Willamette Week welcomes freelance submissions. Send material to either News Editor or Arts Editor. Manuscripts will be returned if you include a selfaddressed, stamped envelope. To be considered for calendar listings, notice of events must be received in writing by noon Wednesday, two weeks before publication. Questions concerning circulation or subscription inquiries should be directed to Spencer Winans at Willamette Week.
Postmaster: Send all address changes to Willamette Week, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Subscription rates: One year $130, six months $70. Back issues $5 for walk-ins, $8 for mailed requests when available.
Visit our website to make an appointment or shop online 717 SW 10th Ave Portland, OR 97205 503.223.4720 www.maloys.com
Fresh & Juicy
You can now shop online, or book an appointment to visit for fine antique and custom jewelry, or for repair work. We also buy.
Willamette Week is mailed at third-class rates. Association of Alternative Newsmedia. This newspaper is published on recycled newsprint using soy-based ink.
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
3
DIALOGUE
Mon-Sat 10-6pm Sunday 11-5pm Now Open for In-Store Shopping
1433 NE Broadway St Portland • 503 493-0070
In April, Portland police shot and killed Robert Delgado, who was the subject of a 911 call that he was ‘quick-drawing’ a gun. It turned out Delgado had a replica handgun. Delgado’s death is part of a larger pattern: In the past decade, 1 in 4 Portlanders that police have shot were believed to have a weapon but actually had a replica or no weapon at all (“The Gun That Wasn’t There,” WW, May 12, 2021). WW found that Portland public officials have little knowledge about the calls police respond to. Emergency dispatchers, who follow guidelines set by the Portland Police Bureau, don’t know if a reported gun is real or not, and there’s little protocol for follow-up questions. Here’s what our readers had to say: @TystoZarban, via Twitter: “You’re blaming 911 operators for cops shooting harmless people? Keep licking that boot.” Kim Wallis, via wweek.com: “So…the anti-police crowd loves to put the onus on police officers to see whether a weapon is real or fake before taking any action? By the same logic, citizens should check to see if a weapon is real or fake before reporting situations involving one.” @_theminist, via Twitter: “Uh, gee, where on earth could we find the money to get that person some better instructions? Maybe we should stop giving millions of dollars to the dudes that keep beating and murdering people and instead get some training and staff for them, idk just spitballin’ here.” Val--Standing, via wweek.com: “A few thoughts. “First, while 911 operators may sometimes incorrectly handle calls, I don’t think that it is fair to blame them when police—who are themselves supposed to be correctly trained in responding to stressful and ambiguous situations—are too quick to fire their weapons. “Second, it is inexcusable that Portland doesn’t prioritize providing enough homeless shelters, affordable housing solutions and mental health care to its street homeless. And we dare to consider our city ‘progressive’? Finally, it seems obvious that police are overarmed and undertrained in defusing mental health crisis situations. “This established reality needs to change.” Riffless, via week.com: “Cause and effect. The NRA has lobbied for all types of guns to be available to the populace, so the police wind up with similar firepower. It’s the old ‘bringing a knife to a gunfight’ logic. We are all fucked at this point, because shit
Dr. Know
STAY SAFE, STAY INFORMED. WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER. WWEEK.COM 4
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
ain’t changing until we actually regulate what weapons are available to the common (untrained and unlicensed) citizen.” Nicholas Garner, via Facebook: “It is bizarre to me that in a country obsessed with the right to open carry, people are all for police unaccountably shooting to death anyone who appears to be openly carrying a gun. We can see how this is problematic, right? See also: defense of stand-your-ground statutes but no accountability for no-knock raids by police when they shoot an unarmed person in the wrong house.” Powxraccount, via Twitter: “Portland police let Proud Boys and other bigots run around armed and dressed like school shooters and manage not to shoot one.” rainman19, via wweek.com: “Anybody notice all the billboards around Portlandia placed by cities like Spokane advertising GOOD JOBS for sworn officers? That’s because dozens if not hundreds of Portland cops have given notice they want to quit or retire— ANYTHING to get the flock out of Portlandia. “One-sided articles like this bit of agitprop are a big part of that. Thanks, Tess.” Jake McMillian, via Facebook: “Did he even point the fake gun at the officer? The article just says he flipped them off, from 90 feet away. If the officer felt threatened in this situation, then he is certainly not fit to be a cop—even if the gun was real and even if the guy was pointing it.”
CORRECTIONS
Last week’s cover story (“The Gun That Wasn’t There,” WW, May 13, 2021) incorrectly described Shawn Campbell, who authored a report based on faulty data, as a contractor for the Portland Police Bureau. He and the Training Advisory Council are independent advisers, and the Police Bureau does not influence their findings. Last week’s story on vaccination requirements at sporting events (“Shot Clock,” WW, May 13, 3021) wrongly stated that the Seattle Mariners share an owner with the Portland Trail Blazers. The Mariners are owned by Seattle businessman John W. Stanton. WW regrets the errors. 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
Portland has millions to fix the homeless problem, but nobody can agree on what to do. Why not use the funds to pay Portlanders to move out of Oregon? Homeowners and homeless people could be encouraged to take the money and run. —Bret T. As luck would have it, Bret, that program already exists. To take advantage of it, move to a cheaper city. Then just take that extra $1,000 you’re no longer spending on rent every month and put it straight into your pocket as guaranteed income. Andrew Yang, eat your heart out. Unfortunately, even this generous incentive hasn’t found enough takers to make a difference. But if we can’t bribe rich people to leave town, maybe we can at least bribe poor people to, um, stop being poor. In 2018, a Vancouver, B.C., nonprofit gave 50 recently homeless people a one-time lump sum payment of $7,500, plus counseling and support services, basically just to see what would happen. Another 65 subjects got the same support, but no cash. I’ll cut to the chase: Those who got money didn’t blow it all on booze, drugs and scratch-off tickets.
A year later, members of the cash group still had an average of $1,000 in the bank, and in spite of their windfall, they actually spent 39% less on “temptation goods” than the control group. Instead, most of the grant was spent on necessities like food, bills and rent, plus a few big-ticket items like bikes or computers. The cash recipients also found stable housing an average of two months sooner than the control group. This study is only one of many to suggest that direct cash transfers are an effective and efficient means of targeting aid. It’s probably a measure of America’s ambivalence about the welfare state that making poor people less poor by giving them money—money you’ve already set aside to fight poverty—is seen as a radical, bordering on insane idea. I’m not saying the city and county should scrap the whole $150 million homelessness plan in favor of giving each of the 5,000 folks in question their $30,000 share, but it might not be that nuts to give half of them seven or eight grand. Call me crazy, but nothing does a number on poverty like money. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
MURMURS J U S T I N YA U
MAY 1 RALLY IN SALEM
MULTNOMAH COUNTY GOP SPLITS: The Multnomah County Republican Party splintered Monday night after 19 precinct committee persons tried to reelect Stephen Lloyd as chairman in the parking lot of a Gresham church. It’s now unclear who leads the county GOP. The vote came less than two weeks after a faction of the party voted to recall Lloyd, in a meeting guarded by a security team affiliated with the Proud Boys. James Ball was one of the PCPs who voted May 17. He says when he and other supporters of Lloyd showed up to the church, vice chairman Alan Conner and those who ousted Lloyd last week refused to let party member Jane Hays inside the building. Ball and Hays tell WW that affiliates of the Proud Boys once again provided security for the meeting. (Daniel Tooze, the Proud Boy who offered security on May 6, says he was there as a Republican on Monday night but did not provide security. He told WW, “I identify as a Proud Boy whenever I feel like it.”) So Ball and 18 other members commenced the meeting in the church parking lot. After it started drizzling, they moved the meeting to Bumpers Grill & Bar. Meeting minutes provided to WW show that Lloyd’s faction, at Bumpers, voted to try and take over the MCRP website and change the password so the other faction no longer had access. ANTI-VAXX PEDIATRICIAN COULD LOSE LICENSE: The Oregon Medical Board suspended the license of Beaverton pediatrician Paul Thomas on an emergency basis in December, citing his violations of standard medical practice related to vaccines. The suspension remains in place, but now the board is seeking to discipline him on a more permanent basis. On April 22, the board issued a notice of proposed disciplinary action, citing “gross negligence” for “ promotion of an inadequate vaccine schedule, which did not meet the standard of care.” He faces possible revocation of his license and fines of up to $10,000 for each violation. Thomas was the subject of a 2019 WW cover story (“Alt-Vaxx,” March 20, 2019), which profiled him after a local measles outbreak, but his alternative facts on vaccines carry new significance during the COVID-19 pandemic. CITY COUGHS UP CIVIC LIFE REPORT: Portland City Hall will release a long-awaited audit report on workplace culture inside the Office of Community & Civic Life after WW and other media outlets successfully appealed the city’s refusal to show the report to the public. On May 13, Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty announced Suk Rhee was departing as director of the office. The announcement of Rhee’s departure came two days after the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office ordered that the consultant’s report be released. The office has long been riddled by mismanagement, high turnover and employee allegations of a culture of fear. The report was expected to be released shortly after WW went to press. To see what’s inside, visit wweek.com. MAN MISSING SINCE MAY DAY FOUND DEAD: On May 13, Portland police confirmed that the body of Michael Watts, a security guard at LGBTQ clubs and a Freddie Mercury impersonator, had been found. Multnomah County Sheriff’s River Patrol deputies found Watts floating in the Willamette River near the Fremont Bridge and confirmed his identity with his family. Watts disappeared from downtown Portland on the night of May 1. In the weeks that followed, Watts’ friends and family posted fliers around downtown, offering a $10,000 reward for information that could lead to finding him. Watts was known for dancing at Stag PDX and CC Slaughters. The circumstances of his death remain unknown. The Portland Police Bureau says an investigation is ongoing.
Where do you read Willamette Week? #READWW Tag us to be featured
The Port Townsend Film Festival is hiring! Be a part of the fun, film,and festivities as our Executive Director.
FRIENDS OF WILLAMETTE WEEK
FACTS
Job announcement, job description, and application info at applic www.ptfilmfest.com
ARE THE FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE Arm Yourself. Support local, independent journalism. Become a Friend of Willamette Week. wweek.com/support
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
5
POLICY DISPUTE TIMELINE
CHRIS NESSETH
FOUR QUESTIONS FOR
AARON MESH
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
ABOUT FACE: The CDC’s new mask guidance surprised Oregonians.
Mask On, Mask Off SANDWICH ARTISTS: McMenamins is among many Oregon restaurants looking for workers.
Jenny Liu Why can’t Oregon restaurants find workers as they reopen? As the pandemic eases, Portland’s wooden cocktail sheds and social-distancing stickers are being joined by a new sidewalk feature: the help-wanted sign. The sight of kitchens seeking cooks might seem surprising. After all, the Oregon hospitality industry just finished shedding 25 years of job gains, and the governor is swiftly relaxing COVID-19 restrictions. But for several weeks, business owners have been complaining that the labor market is tighter than they were expecting—and restaurants are having particular trouble finding job seekers. “Workforce shortages continue to be cited by restaurant and lodging employers as the number one issue facing their business,” the Oregon Hospitality Foundation noted last week. On May 18, the Oregon Employment Department announced that hiring in May ground to a virtual standstill, with the unemployment rate unchanged at 6%. The lack of job gains was striking, and part of a national trend. Jenny Liu already has a job—she teaches urban studies at Portland State University and is assistant director of the Northwest Economic Research Center. But as an economist advising Gov. Kate Brown, Liu regularly compares notes with fellow experts tracking Oregon’s recovery. WW asked her if she has a theory why people aren’t returning to work. She has several. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. AARON MESH. WW: Why are businesses having such a hard time finding workers? Jenny Liu: You’re still seeing a lot of people really being hesitant about the level of risk that they might put themselves into—specifically more customer-facing types of jobs. Exposing themselves to that kind of risk and potentially contracting the virus and bringing it home to family members who might be more vulnerable or who might not be able to get vaccinated is definitely still causing a lot of uncertainty for a good number of people. Another really key factor is the child care situation. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was recently talking about how more than 4 million women went out of the workforce during the last year because of unexpected 6
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
child care or family care situations. Maybe about half of those women haven’t come back into the workforce— mainly because a lot of children are still not fully back in school. Child care facilities are not open, and disproportionately women are the ones thrust into caregiving positions in their families. It disallows a large portion of our workforce to get back into work. Around 2 million women that are not coming back into the workforce is quite a significant number. And the number of women that haven’t come back in into the workforce here in Oregon is going to be significant as well. The conservative talking point has been that government relief checks were just too large: People are staying home because they’re better compensated not to work. Is that a little true? Is that entirely nonsense? The amount and the duration of a lot of these unemployment benefits were there to help the lowest-earning portion of our population. And I think that is exactly what it’s doing. It’s helping the people who really need to take care of their families and stay out of work for those reasons— not because they are just earning so much that they’re not getting back to work. It also allows for people to look for jobs that might be higher paid and have a better balance in terms of a living wage versus the risks that they’re taking. Is the free market making a $15 minimum wage necessary in order to get someone to take a job? There is definitely an upward push in terms of wages. Businesses are vying for a smaller pool of eligible applicants. And so pushing the wage towards that $15 level is definitely happening a lot faster than we thought it might have. So, yeah, I agree with that. Does a year of remote work change the job market? It definitely triggers a little bit of an industrial sector transition between jobs that can be done at home versus jobs that necessarily require people to be face to face with others. I think that’s also one of the reasons why people are hesitant to get back into some of those service industry jobs. There are some jobs that require personal interface with people who may or may not be wearing masks and may or may not be vaccinated. And that’s why you see some of that increase in wages as well as help-wanted signs outside McMenamins. They’re paying a premium for the risk that people are going to take.
A sudden federal announcement that vaccinated people could take off their masks blindsided Oregon officials, who added to the confusion. May 13 was a notable date in the waning days of the pandemic: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shifted its guidance, abruptly advising everyone who had been vaccinated that they didn’t need to wear a masks except in a few high-risk circumstances. That announcement caught Oregon officials flatfooted. And they’ve passed along their confusion to citizens. “The CDC issued their new guidance for fully vaccinated individuals last week with no advance warning to states,” says Charles Boyle, a spokesman for Gov. Kate Brown. “Since then, the CDC has offered no additional guidance around implementation.” The questions left unanswered: What would happen at the grocery store? At the ballgame? At the bookstore? In the five days since, retailers and their employees have waited anxiously to learn how they are supposed to verify who has received a shot and can enter a business without a face covering. On May 18, Oregon Health Authority said businesses would need to examine vaccination cards or similar proof at the door in order to allow people inside without masks. The governor had previously been reluctant to use verification of vaccination as a pass to freedom, given the inequitable rollout of vaccines. Some states and industries have worked out the logistics already. The NBA uses a private company to verify vaccination status or a negative COVID-19 test result, while New York was the first state to set up a system for people to provide evidence of vaccination. Retail workers now face irate and confused customers. “These last few days have been incredibly stressful with masked customers confronting maskless customers,” says Portland grocery worker Alex Aldridge, “creating a tense working environment that already gave many of us the feeling that we are walking on eggshells every day we come to work.” Brown’s message for businesses and their customers was confusing when it came to when, where and whether masks would no longer be required for the fully vaccinated. Here’s how the mask came off. RACHEL MONAHAN. May 11: More than four months after vaccines first arrived in Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown joined other states in tying the state’s reopening to how many people get vaccinated—70% statewide and 65% for a county. The state warned that masks could stick around as a component of everyday life. The guidance from the CDC at the time was that even vaccinated people should wear
NEWS masks outside in crowds, and inside when not at home. May 13: The CDC changed its position: Masks weren’t necessary for vaccinated people in most settings. Gov. Brown, in a video statement, celebrated the news of the CDC guidance. “The pandemic is coming closer to an end. Starting today, Oregon will be following this guidance, which only applies to fully vaccinated individuals. That means Oregonians who are fully vaccinated no longer need to wear masks or social distance in most public spaces.” She also said that guidance for businesses would be issued in the “coming days.” May 14: Brown sought to clarify, via Twitter: The rules hadn’t officially changed. “Yesterday’s @CDCgov announcement left many unanswered questions for states to sort out,” she wrote. “While @OHAOregon updates guidance, everyone should follow posted mask and physical distancing requirements in businesses this weekend.” May 18: Oregon Health Authority released guidelines that require businesses to ask customers for proof of vaccination if customers and employees aren’t going to wear masks. (It won’t impact how many people can come in.) Some iconic Portland retailers, including Powell’s Books, tell WW they intend to keep a mask requirement at this time. The Salem amusement park Enchanted Forest postponed its summer opening because it received threats for requiring masks.
Campus Visit Multnomah County isn’t sending vaccine clinics to schools. One of the most diverse school districts in Oregon asked Multnomah County this month for a COVID-19 vaccination clinic at its high school—and was rejected. David Douglas School District, which covers much of East Portland, sent 95 students via school bus to the vaccination clinic at the Oregon Convention Center on Friday, May 7, a week before vaccinations became available to kids between the ages of 12 and 15. (Portland Public Schools has also sent buses from its high schools.) But county officials turned down the request for a clinic at David Douglas High School. The opportunity is slipping away for health officials to reach teenagers who aren’t actively seeking a COVID-19 vaccination. Summer break starts in less than four weeks. And vaccination rates among young people remain the lowest of any age bracket. While 65% of Multnomah County residents eligible for the vaccine have received a dose, only 44% of 16- to 19-year-olds have gotten one. Students who attend David Douglas often come from communities of color that health officials struggle to reach with vaccines. Its students speak dozens of different languages, and more than 1 in 5 students in the David Douglas School District are still officially learning English. As Oregon has seen a drop in the number of doses being administered, health officials have tried to smooth the path to finding a shot. Appointments are no longer required at the Convention Center, county clinics and some pharmacies. Another way Oregon could ease access? Send the vaccines to schools with pop-up clinics. WHO HAS IT? Beaverton School District has two vaccine clinics this week. Aloha High School has a clinic on Friday, thanks to Providence hospitals. Anyone 16 or older can get a dose; younger kids can come with a parent or with parental consent. “We were initially contacted by a staff member at Aloha and made aware of the need,” says Providence spokesman Gary Walker. “Only about 20 students had taken a bus ride provided to the Convention Center mass vaccination site, so we realized we had to look for a different approach.”
CLOCKED
Hunzeker Watch We’re still counting how long it takes to find the source of a police leak. 64 DAYS:
That’s the number of days since Officer Brian Hunzeker resigned from his role as president of the Portland Police Association due to what the union described as a “serious, isolated mistake related to the [Portland] Police Bureau’s investigation into the alleged hit-and-run by Commissioner [Jo Ann] Hardesty.” We still don’t know what he did. The mayor’s office says it doesn’t know what he did. Hunzeker is still working patrol in the North Precinct.
75 DAYS:
That’s how long it’s been since the Police Bureau opened an internal affairs investigation into the leaking of information that wrongly implicated Commissioner Hardesty in a March 3 hit-and-run crash. It has released no results of its inquiry.
63 DAYS:
That’s how long it’s been since the city signed a contract to hire an outside investigative firm to probe the leak. TESS RISKI. Walker said the hospital system has held other school clinics, including five in Yamhill County. Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center is holding a clinic at Elmonica Elementary for parents—and any other adult who stops by. WHO WANTS IT? Most notably, David Douglas School District: “We have advocated for hosting a vaccination clinic at David Douglas High School, but it sounds like it’s going to remain at the OCC and in neighborhood stores for now (Walgreens, Safeway, etc.),” says district spokesman Dan McCue. The Portland Association of Teachers has been calling for vaccinations at school for nearly a month, asking for clinics at Roosevelt and McDaniel high schools, among others. Two doctors who are also elected officials, state Rep. Lisa Reynolds (D-Portland) and Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, have voiced support for the idea. “I think it’s all about meeting people where they are physically and emotionally,” says Reynolds. “School is a trusted resource.” WHO DOESN’T WANT IT? Multnomah County public health did not have the resources to provide vaccinations at David Douglas schools, but asked the district to work with hospitals, who are providing vaccines at OCC, says county spokeswoman Kate Yeiser. County health has been running vaccination clinics at accessible sites with a BIPOC and immigrant focus, including for youth. “Schools are very much part of the conversation,” Yeiser says. “But to focus only on the ‘where’ reduces a complex issue; we have a much bigger job to do than deliver vaccines to one site or another. People need to get their questions answered and have a sense of trust in the process.” Portland Public Schools has already sent 325 students via bus to the Oregon Convention Center and has another 185 signed up for this Wednesday. The state’s largest district appears willing to make do with the Convention Center as its destination until health officials offer pop-up clinics. OCC has vaccinated 848 16- and 17-year-olds on “teen” vaccination days, officials say. “We have been in discussions with local and state health authorities about this,” says PPS spokeswoman Karen Werstein. “Of course, we are not a health agency, but we will be ready to support as soon as our health authority partners are.” RACHEL MONAHAN.
BLACK AND WHITE IN OREGON
Who Is a Victim of Violent Crime?
Many Oregon crime victims of color don’t report what happens because they don’t trust police. From shootings to sexual assault, Black people are greatly overrepresented as victims of violent crime—and that’s just crime that gets reported. Portland Police Bureau data shows Black people made up 16.4% of the city’s violent crime victims in 2017. Black Portlanders make up 5.7% of the city’s population. Black people and Native Americans are the only racial groups significantly overrepresented as victims of violent crime. The victimization rate for white people was 66.3%, but they make up 71% of the city’s population. While these numbers show a clear disparity in who becomes a victim of crime, they probably don’t show the full picture. A study last year by the Portland nonprofit Partnership for Safety & Justice surveyed 40 people of color who had survived violent crimes—and found 75% of them did not report the incident because they feared seeking help would lead to further harm. As a consequence, they didn’t get the same opportunity to heal. “I didn’t call the police when my own domestic violence was happening,” said one survey respondent, “because, if you are going through diversion and you have police contact, that can be considered a bench probation violation. If I called the police, instead of listening to me, I felt that the first thing they would see is ‘probation’ rather than what I was actually going through. I don’t want my family separated. I didn’t want my kids to be in the system. And I didn’t want to go to jail for reporting. I just felt like I wouldn’t be heard.” The report also noted a national survey that found only 36% of Black Americans trust their local police very much versus 77% of white Americans who trust law enforcement. Úmi Vera, interim program director at Portland United Against Hate, says people of color infrequently report hate crimes to the police. PUAH received 351 reports of hate crimes last year in Portland metro area. Only 19% of those crimes were also reported to law enforcement. Another reason crimes go underreported, Vera says, is because law enforcement officers are often the alleged perpetrators of crimes themselves. More specifically, 24% of hate incidents reported to Portland United Against Hate last year identified a police officer as the perpetrator. “So here you have folks experiencing racism of all sorts, including hate and hate crimes,” Vera says, “and on top of that, we know law enforcement are also perpetrators of hate.” Although PUAH focuses on hate incidents specifically, it shows how people of color and Black people face an added type of violence in their daily lives. “It has become a legacy of how we’ve survived as communities of color,” Vera says. “As folks of color, we’ve known that we’ve been surviving this kind of hate, and this has been the reality of our lives, but now we get to mobilize and approach elected officials to find solutions for what we’ve been tracking.” Vera says Oregon’s racist history contributes to the violence Black people experience. One distressing legacy of that history: Many survivors interviewed by the Partnership for Safety and Justice saw their pain as something to be expected. “When shit happens to you, it’s like normal,” said one person surveyed last year. “This is what happened to us. This is what happened to our parents. This is what happened to their parents. This is the way shit was set up for us.” LATISHA JENSEN. Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
7
NEWS SAM GEHRKE
Camping Retreat Portland’s mayor asks downtown law firms for help with a plan to relocate people sleeping in front of their offices.
DOWN AND OUT: The mayor’s office is enlisting the support of downtown law firms for a plan to move unhoused people to organized campsites. BY S OPHI E P E E L
L
speel@wweek.com
ast week, managing partners from 25 of Portland’s largest law firms assembled on Zoom to air their grievances about downtown homeless camps to Sam Adams. In reply, he made them a remarkable offer. Adams, the onetime Portland mayor, is now Mayor Ted Wheeler’s czar of homelessness and his liaison to business owners. On May 11, he had a virtual meeting with lawyers, many of whom have offices downtown. In attendance were partners from some of downtown’s biggest firms, including Barran Liebman, Perkins Coie, Schwabe Williamson, and Davis Wright Tremaine, all of which lease thousands of square feet of prime downtown real estate. WW spoke to multiple sources who attended the meeting. One moment stood out to everyone WW spoke with: Adams described the mayor’s plan to create safe camping sites for unhoused people in Portland neighborhoods. And he pledged the city would move homeless campers from downtown sidewalks into these new campsites. Adams tells WW the mayor and City Commissioner Dan Ryan are currently working on a plan to erect safe camping spots all across the city and “understand the urgency of it.” That plan has not been widely broadcast by the mayor’s office. (It’s not listed on the mayor’s website among his plans for restoring downtown.) For good reason: Adams went on to point out that the proposal is not going to be popular with homeowners in the neighborhoods where those sites would open. He told the law partners the mayor would need the vocal backing of their firms and other businesses. Adams’ pitch and the meeting where it occurred display the pressures his boss currently faces. In the same discussion, law partners gave Adams a message to take to Wheeler: Within weeks, their employees will be allowed return to downtown law offices after more than a year of remote work. If the mayor doesn’t start getting tents off the sidewalks by the time employees come back, the firms may well leave downtown as their leases expire. “They were frustrated and angry,” Adams recalls. “They all said: ‘We’re Portlanders, we love this city, we’re compassionate, we’re humane, but unless some order is brought to this disorder, we’ll be looking to change where we’re officed.’ They were very clear.” A number of those in attendance recounted the conversation to WW, and the picture that emerges is one that Wheeler and Adams are hearing increasingly: Portland is days away from receiving the state’s sanction for its office towers to reopen. But many of the employees who fill those buildings are reluctant to return. “He gave a lot of examples of things that are being done— there’s no shortage of things—but what’s the pace?” asks Andrew Schpak, a managing partner at Barran Liebman 8
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
who attended the meeting. “I think it’s fair to say that some of the law firms are frustrated about the state of downtown and don’t necessarily feel like there’s a clear path forward.” Wheeler may face a recall election this fall. The desire to unseat him is expressed most passionately by leftists angered by how he has handled policing and larger social justice issues. But Wheeler’s base is business interests, including those downtown law firms. If they don’t rally behind Wheeler, the mayor could be toast. The frustration may also prove a pivotal moment for the vision of Portland’s downtown as its most important neighborhood. Since the 1970s, what made Portland unique was the idea that its downtown was a gathering place where all citizens could meet—to work, shop and play. Now it’s a place that white-shoe lawyers are hesitant to set foot in. What would be the result of their firms uprooting? “Devastating,” Adams says. “Normally, downtown has upwards of 140,000 office workers, and the bulk of those are missing. To see that scatter outside downtown, you lose that critical economic mass that is absolutely essential to every great city.” Adams tells WW the mayor and Commissioner Ryan are working on plans to erect safe camping sites in every part of the city, including downtown. While Adams declined to say when those sites would be ready for use, he says they’re currently figuring out costs and thinking about potential locations. The idea of the sites: sanctioned lots where people can park their tents and have access to sanitary facilities. While his plan was met with support at the meeting, Adams went on to say the proposal will be controversial and need the outspoken approval of the law firms. That’s partly because in the past, such sites have led to harsh backlash from neighbors adjacent to the sites. It’s also because camping spaces are not a priority in Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury’s proposed budget. Metro voters approved a tax measure last year for homeless services—$53 million of which is allocated to Multnomah County, and which Kafoury proposes to spend mostly on permanent housing rather than temporary shelters. That’s because voters approved the measure believing it would mostly go toward permanent housing, not short-term housing or shelter beds, says Denis Theriault, a spokesman for the Joint Office of Homeless Services. “There’s an unfortunate myth out there about the kind of work voters wanted the Metro measure to fund,” Theriault says. “Housing people not only ends their homelessness, but that work can be done in just as much time, and sometimes less, than building shelters.”
Kafoury calls the mayor’s plan a “back-of-the-napkin sales pitch” and says “they are afraid of being held to account and getting asked some tough but necessary questions [like], will people be forced by police to go to these camps or any other shelter settings they might be looking to create? Which neighborhoods have they identified for these camps? How will people be cared for and kept safe in these camps?” Furthermore, Kafoury adds: “I’d also like to dispel a dangerous myth that some people, including the mayor and others, are spreading right now: that [temporary] shelter is faster, cheaper and that it solves homelessness. This is a demonstrable falsehood. It isn’t faster. It isn’t cheaper [than permanent housing]. And most importantly, it doesn’t help people end their homelessness. [The mayor] should know that a housing voucher is something that pays someone’s rent and can be immediate. It doesn’t take years. And yet, he is promoting this myth as a political tool, which is cynical and dangerous.” Kafoury says the county will use most of its ARPA funds to manage the pandemic. While those who attended the lawyers’ meeting say Adams did not offer any criticism of Kafoury, he told WW in an interview this week that Wheeler is no longer content to wait on Kafoury to share his priorities and says the city has its own funds from the American Rescue Plan—$108 million this spring and another $108 million later this year—that could be partly used to fund safe camping sites. Adams says Wheeler will dip into it if Kafoury won’t budge. “We think it should be something that both governments should participate in through the joint office,” Adams says. “We’re not giving up on any potential funding source at this point, but the mayor and Ryan are very focused on making these improvements.” Adams’ meeting last week makes clear that downtown tenants have run out of patience. So have their landlords.
“Which neighborhoods have they identified for these camps? How will people be cared for and kept safe in these camps?” —Deborah Kafoury Vanessa Sturgeon, president and CEO of TMT Development—which owns Fox Tower, among other downtown properties—says she speaks regularly with Adams on the question of downtown camping. She places the blame on Kafoury and other county officials. Sturgeon says Wheeler “doesn’t have the same sort of influence on that particular issue that people think he does. It’s the county’s responsibility.” However, Wheeler is in an unusually vulnerable position. In July, his critics on the left will begin gathering signatures to recall him. None of those adversaries wants homeless camps swept. But Wheeler’s reelection was backed by business interests that wrote checks to fund his narrow victory. Since November, he has done little to mollify them. If he can’t make headway on removing tents from in front of their buildings, they will likely remain neutral while Wheeler’s political fate hangs in the balance. That’s the subtext of every threat to leave downtown. In a neat symmetry, the next three months are also the period when big law firms will judge whether downtown has changed enough that their workers feel comfortable returning to the office. “There’s a lot of drug dealing and open drug use on the street, and that freaks people out,” Sturgeon says. “People need to see some action in order to feel confident renewing their leases. It needs to happen by September, when most people plan to have business come back to work. It needs to be the focus of the summer.”
IN A CLASS OF THEIR OWN, IN A YEAR LIKE NO OTHER. Congratulations to the 35th Graduating Class of the Oregon Executive MBA in Portland.
Nicholas Robert Anderson, PhD Quidel
Tor L. Berg The Home Depot
Nicholas Elliott Boro Brew Dr. Kombucha
Sean Ryan Brice Dark Horse Comics
Jennifer Lynn Burke
Emily Marie Coutrakis-Sloan Clive Coffee
Julian C. Dunn PagerDuty
Wessam Samir Eltoukhi Digimarc
Sebastian Alejandro Estades IGEL Technology
MBT Marketing
Nicholas Amory Franck
Brandea Geyne Burks Covello
Katharine Lynn Gallagher
Central City Concern
Adrian Cagnoni Pure Storage
Dwayne Andrew Castrillon U.S. Bank
Ryan Joseph Coleman New York Life Investments
Nike
Donald S. Gamiles Argos Scientific, Inc.
Christian Stephane Garelli Nike
Doug Garland Day CPM, an Otak Division
Bob Hestand Neil Kelly Company
Reynolds Alistair Holmes GAF Energy
Kyle Anthony Kaczmarek Kaczmarek Digital Media Group, Inc.
Jillian Kereczman Propeller
William R. Ketrenos Z-Axis Advisory Group, Inc.
Marilyn A. Kun National Animal Interest Alliance/ Homes for Animal Heroes
Kara LaDuke Zucker Nike
Rob Lesniowski Reser’s Fine Foods
Lundquist College of Business—Portland business.uoregon.edu/executive-mba
Jeffrey T. Lindquist TEAM Argonaut
Robert Todd Martinez City of Portland
Renata Ariane Melo Blount International, Inc.
Mary Geneva Miksch Neil Kelly Company
Harry Siegfried Mueller Element Materials Technology
Dirk Muessig Micro Systems Engineering, Inc.
Kasey Ryan Nguyen
Behzad Vafakhah Intel Corporation
Blount International, Inc.
Anya Valentine adidas
Amanda C. Pahlke Advantis Credit Union
Jose A. Perezchica Reser’s Fine Foods
Joseph Mathias Perkins The Boeing Company
Sunny Rose Aurora Project Management LLC
Christi Usha Converse
Tyler Adam Voorhies Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits
Carolyn M. Wagner University of Oregon Athletic Department
Morgan Todd Wear Washington State Department of Labor & Industries
Becky Wethern Nike
We applaud the vision and tenacity of these accomplished professionals as they complete the journey they began in September 2019.
Oregon Executive MBA EO/AA/ADA INSTITUTION COMMITTED TO CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
9
NEWS J U S T I N YA U
Hidden Cameras
Body cameras for Portland cops are on the bargaining table. But don’t expect to see the debate—or the footage. BY TESS RISKI
tess@wweek.com
Five days after a Portland police officer shot and killed Robert Delgado in Lents Park, the cops’ union showed up at an April 21 collective bargaining session armed with a proposal to record officers’ actions with cameras strapped to their uniforms. It appears to be the first time the Portland Police Association has attempted to bargain body-worn camera use into its contract during formal negotiations. That’s tantalizing to city officials: After all, body camera footage has provided decisive evidence in several high-profile police shootings elsewhere in the country, while Portlanders, in just a recent example, still know very little about the decisions that led police to kill Delgado over a month ago. The Portland Police Bureau is the only police department among the 75 largest municipal law enforcement agencies nationwide that doesn’t use body cameras, KGW-TV recently found. Portland is an outlier in another sense. It’s the city’s police union pushing for the cameras—and it’s progressive elected officials who remain skeptical. One possible reason: The fine print of the PPA proposal makes it clear most citizens won’t regularly get to view the camera footage. Guess who will? The Portland Police Association. Through a public records request, WW obtained the detailed body camera proposal submitted by PPA for the city’s review. What the union’s plan suggests: The Police Bureau—not the city—would own the footage. Barring a court order, the only entity with authority to review the body camera footage at will besides official investigators would be the PPA. Within 24 hours of its request, the proposal says, the Police Bureau would have to furnish the union with the footage. On one level, that’s logical: The PPA represents officers accused of wrongdoing and wants access to any relevant evidence. But several observers tell WW the demand is unusual—and beyond the scope of what most cities give their police unions. “If I was the victim, would I get my video within 24 hours? I doubt it,” says Juan Chavez, a Portland civil rights lawyer. “This is like reading every best practices manual and doing the opposite. I get it: This is bargaining. You shoot for the moon and fall far short. But it’s highlighting what they think is in their best interests, and it is not the same as the public interest. It’s against it, frankly.” PPA executive director Daryl Turner did not respond to a request for comment. And that’s only one of several details in the PPA proposal that may become deal breakers for the Portland City Council. Others include letting officers review footage of their actions before preparing reports or testifying “in any forum,” and requiring consent of the officer depicted before releasing footage to the media. But it’s difficult to say how appetizing the union’s plan might be to city commissioners. In a rich irony, the discussion of transparency is happening behind closed doors. 10
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
The City Council met May 18 in executive session to discuss PPA contract negotiations. Citing one of the few exemptions in Oregon’s Public Meetings Law, the city barred media from attending because the discussions regarded labor negotiations. And like Tuesday’s meeting, what happened during the April 21 bargaining session is largely under wraps. Every other session, including the one April 21, is held behind closed doors. Further, commissioners won’t talk about the proposal. Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who has criticized police use of body-worn cameras as a sham for much of her tenure on the City Council, said in a statement this week that she is open to “hearing any proposals in good faith.” In fact, the entire City Council, including Mayor Ted Wheeler, said the City Attorney’s Office advised commissioners not to publicly discuss their opinions on body cameras. All five offices agreed to issue the following joint statement to reporters seeking comment: “The Portland Police Association made a proposal recently that included the issue of Police Body Worn Cameras during bargaining between the City of Portland and the Portland Police Association. The City’s position on body worn cameras will be reserved for the bargaining table and council will have no further comment at this time.” Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch says the mayor and commissioners’ inability to openly discuss their opinions about body cameras could be cause for concern. “That’s kind of a very scary precedent in general, [that] any policy the PPA decides that they want to try to say is mandatory for bargaining, they can just stop public discussion on that topic,” Handelman said. The city’s inability for nearly a decade to equip its officers with body cameras—and its inability to talk about it—is another demonstration of how much police power lies within the union contract. In 2016, the city agreed to a conceptual draft policy with the union on cameras but never formally adopted the policy. It was then further derailed by pandemic-related budget cuts, which sheared 5.6% off of all general fund budgets, including $1.8 million that had been allocated for body-worn cameras in the fiscal 201617 budget. Funding remains an issue. The Police Bureau estimated in its budget policy review last year that it would cost $2.9 million to implement the program and $1.8 million a year to operate it. It also wrote that, should body cameras be adopted, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office might need to increase staffing levels “to respond to the increased volume of video evidence.” On top of that, the PPA has proposed that any officer who agrees to wear a camera would get an automatic 2% pay raise. But it’s not just money that could derail an agreement. WW’s review of the PPA proposal shows the union continues to insist on a provision that doomed body-worn
ON FOOTAGE: Portland cops work for one of the few major American police departments without body-worn cameras.
cameras when they were previously discussed in 2016: letting officers review the footage before testifying to investigators or a grand jury about their use of force. The proposal further states that officers involved in or who witness deadly force, in-custody deaths or “other critical incidents” are allowed to review body camera footage from their own and other officers’ cameras prior to making an official statement or writing a report. “They shall also have the option and reasonable opportunity to view any other body-worn camera recordings from other officers that captured the involved officer’s image or voice during the underlying incident and/or events that are subject to the investigation,” the proposal says. “A viewing will occur in a secure and private location in the presence of the member’s legal representative before their interview and before giving a statement.” The PPA proposal states that “all data, images, video recordings, and metadata captured, recorded, or otherwise produced by the equipment” would be the property of the Portland Police Bureau. “Body-worn camera recordings may be used for media releases and public relations with consent from the officers depicted within the videos,” the proposal says. “If any recorded digital media unreasonably violates a person’s privacy or sense of dignity it should not be publicly released unless disclosure is required by law or by order of the court.” Body camera policies vary across American cities. It appears that few allow the police union such exclusive and immediate access to the footage. Chavez says bureau’s ownership of the footage and the requirement to hand it over within 24 hours to the PPA could allow the union to curate a legal strategy that meshes with whatever was captured on the camera. “They’re looking out for their own,” he says. Jann Carson, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, says allowing officers to view the footage prior to writing a report or testifying could hinder accountability. “The ACLU strongly believes officers should not review footage before making a statement or report,” Carson says. “Body cameras will fail as an accountability and transparency tool if the policy makes it too burdensome for the public to access body camera footage. It will also be important for the public to have access to metadata and other information associated with storage.”
ANGEL OREGON TECH
TECH FEST NW 20 21
May 21, 2021 TECHFESTNW.COM Join us in attending the region’s largest event for innovators, investors, and entrepreneurs. This year's event will focus on redefining entrepreneurship, creating a more inclusive tech economy, and discovering new solutions as Oregon builds back from the pandemic.
TechfestNW is presented in partnership with Oregon Entrepreneurs Network
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
11
WESLEY LAPOINTE
It was a year of crisis and catastrophe for Oregon brewers. These eight beers tell the tale. On the day before Oregon locked down the first time, the Civic Taproom & Bottle Shop in Southwest Portland looked like it had already been closed for a year. During soccer season, the beer-focused bar next to Providence Park would normally be swarming with Timbers and Thorns fans draining pints next to neighborhood regulars with leashed dogs in tow. But on March 15, 2020, as the state braced for the governor’s stay-at-home order, stools sat empty, and the bartender lamented he might be out of a job for a while. It seemed like a preview of a coming brewpocalypse. In the earliest days of COVID19, nobody was sure how big a blow it would deal to Oregon’s nationally renowned craft beer industry. Coming off an already rough year that saw many iconic brands go under, plenty expected the worst: What if the pandemic took out so many breweries Portland could no longer rightly call itself “Beervana”? Within days, however, the industry began to adapt. Breweries that had long been staunchly draft-only turned to canning for the first time (page 13). Companies with no experience doing delivery launched ambitious store-to-door
12
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
drop-offs (page 16). Come winter, brewpubs turned streets into cozy shelters, serving hot mulled drinks inspired by European traditions for extra warmth (page 15). Such success stories exemplify the creativity and determination of Oregon’s beer culture. And with Willamette Week’s annual Oregon Beer Awards happening this week, it’s the perfect time to recognize the hardships these businesses endured so we could all continue to enjoy a thoughtfully made beverage during a highly stressful year. That’s why, in this issue, we’re using eight great beers to show how craft brewing managed to survive its most challenging year yet—from bars and breweries to yeast suppliers (page 19) and the hop farms that had to pick their crops just as historic wildfires ignited across the state (page 18). Even if we couldn’t clink glasses together at last call for much of the past year, Oregon did not lose its connection to locally made beer. In the Pacific Northwest, brewing is much more than just an economic sector—it’s part of what defines us. That’s worth raising a glass to. —Andi Prewitt, Assistant Arts & Culture Editor
Willamette Week’s Oregon Beer Awards 5:30 pm Thursday, May 20 Tickets | $5 bit.ly/OBA2021
WESLEY LAPOINTE
Barley B�own’s Beer Pallet Jack IPA For decades, the destination brewery in Eastern Oregon famously refused to can its beer. Then the pandemic upended its business model. BY A ND I P REWI TT
aprewitt@wweek.com
Tyler Brown had always taken pride in the fact that you would never find his beer in cans. The founder of Barley Brown’s—one of the state’s most decorated breweries located about five hours east of Portland in Baker City—even used that draft-only status as a hook when looking to secure a tap at some of the finest chef-run restaurants across Oregon. “My sales pitch was, ‘You won’t see this beer stacked up warm at the end of the aisle at Fred Meyer,’” Brown says. “You can just be overwhelmed by the number of beers on the shelf. We don’t want to be a brand that gets lost in that shuffle.” That’s not to say Barley Brown’s most devoted followers don’t wish at times they could simply pop the tab of a crisp, piney Pallet Jack IPA at home, even if the 300-mile drive along I-84 required to order straight from the source is considered a beer-nerd pilgrimage. The one and only time the brewery’s beer did wind up in a can—two years ago at Alefort, the beer-themed offshoot of Boise’s Treefort Music Fest—there was so much excitement surrounding the rare occurrence some people actually smuggled their aluminum out of the event like treasure. “It was incredibly popular,” says Brown, “because it was the first time you could get a Barley Brown’s beer in a 16-ounce can.” But when bars and restaurants were prohibited from serving customers on the
premises in March 2020 due to the pandemic, Brown quickly realized he would need to rely on packaging to survive—a model he never really thought he’d need during his two decades in business. Within days of the restrictions taking effect, a disastrous domino effect threatened to crush Barley Brown’s. Distributors canceled their orders, which meant that kegs bound for cities across Oregon—including the brewery’s biggest markets, like Portland, Eugene and Bend—ended up stacked ceiling high in the cooler. Every single tank was also full, leaving Brown with an excess of product and no way to sell it in a timely manner. He then recalled that foray into novelty packaging at Alefort. That particular year, festival organizers hired a mobile canner in an attempt to turn the process into a spectacle. When the operators of Boise River Canning weren’t busy entertaining the audience with their shiny, silver assembly line, filling and fastening, they were meeting the featured brewers, including Brown. So once COVID struck, he jumped at the opportunity to reconnect, knowing other producers would be jostling to get on the company’s schedule, too. “I called them, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s plan some canning right now,’ because like everybody else, they’re worried about running out of cans, lids, everything,” says Brown. “We were able to scramble in less than a week after getting shut down.” The very first batch of cans went up for sale in front of the brewery under a pop-up tent—what Brown and his employees ended up dubbing their “lemonade stand.” Even on a cold, drizzly day in Eastern Oregon, the customers came, wiping out the pallet in a mere five hours. After canning every single drop of beer with that initial run, and distributors eventually returning to pick up those packages to sell in stores, Barley Brown’s took six weeks off from brewing. When it appeared as though the state would emerge from its dormant spring, Brown and his small team
headed back to the brewhouse, hopeful for a busier summer. But what they soon learned was that even though on-premises sales could resume, it didn’t mean they necessarily had. “There were so many places that permanently closed, or had no intention of opening until the restrictions were off, that we didn’t really have a market for draft beer,” Brown says. “We had to keep rolling back, so it was off and on canning beer. Driving us nuts.” The most recent batch of cans rolled off the conveyor belt this March, marking one full year of packaging. Brown suspects they’ve all been snapped up by now, though you may have luck rummaging through the refrigerated cases at overlooked bottle shops. If Brown has his way, those will be the final cans of beer that ever come out of his business. Given the brewery’s size—2,500 barrels a year—he says there’s money in packaging for the canner, the distributor, and the stores, but not him. After riding out an unpredictable year, though, Brown knows better than to make any definitive statements, particularly since the production facility was plumbed for a packaging line eight years ago in case draft sales ever got too competitive. “I’m never going to say never again, because everything is constantly changing,” Brown says. “We built the brewery so we could have one as a worst-case scenario, not thinking that the worst-case scenario would be every bar and restaurant in the county is closed down.” But there are reasons to look forward to the return to the days of draft exclusivity. The swollen COVID caseload is subsiding, vaccines are readily available and open to all, and everyone is eager to drink somewhere besides their living rooms. “We’re still going to shoot for being a brand where you have to get off your sofa and go find a bar or restaurant to drink a beer,” says Brown. “That’s always been the plan, and I think we need to work back toward that. It’ll make us feel a lot more normal.”
GET IT HERE: RESTAURANT: 2190 Main St., Baker City, 541-523-4266, barleybrownsbeer.com. 11 am-8 pm Tuesday-Saturday.
TAPROOM: 2200 Main St., Baker City, 541-523-2337. 2-8 pm daily.
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
13
14
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
WESLEY LAPOINTE
Threshold B�ewing & Blending G�zaniec When cold temperatures made pandemic outdoor drinking unappealing, one Montavilla brewery turned to a traditional Polish mulled beer to lure customers. BY PETE DUNLOP
Navigating the challenges of COVID-19 stressed all local breweries. Those hardships were particularly difficult for newish places like Montavilla’s Threshold, which opened in early 2019 and was still building a following when the pandemic struck. Owners Jarek and Sara Szymanski followed the path paved by others: They constructed a seating area outside the pub. Once that structure was complete in late September, the couple wondered how they would go about filling it. “Most everyone in the industry was kind of freaking out about winter,” Sara Szymanski says. “There was this rush to create outdoor spaces. Then you had to envision people actually sitting out there in December and January.” Fortunately, the past intersected with pandemic as they tossed around ideas to draw in customers. Jarek Szymanski was born and raised in Poland, and Threshold has a small Polish following thanks to that connection, so he decided to tap into his heritage and try making grzaniec (pronounced guh-SHAWN-ee-ets), a traditional winter beverage in his home country. Though he admits he initially wasn’t sure they could pull it off successfully. “I was reluctant to offer this beer,” Jarek Szymanski says. “I worried about the amount of prep time it would take. You can’t make this drink in advance; you have to make them as they’re ordered. That was a significant issue because we’re a small operation. But it proved to be a winner.” Served in a stein and garnished with cinnamon sticks and orange wedges, grzaniec is essentially a mulled beer. At Threshold, the base is its flagship Jens Bailed Grisette, the lightest and least hoppy offering available. The beer is simmered with a host of holiday-evoking spices, including cinnamon, clove, cardamom and orange zest, then back-sweetened with a bit of honey. The result is a fragrant drink that will take the chill off with each sip, even doubling as a hand-warmer. “Grzaniec would be made with a domestic lager in Poland,” Jarek Szymanski explains. “You really just want something that doesn’t have a lot of flavor or bitterness so the spices take over. The closest thing to it here would probably be a mulled cider.” It took the Szymanskis several days to figure out what ingredients worked best, then they spent some additional time picking out the optimum glassware. This is, after all, a festive drink often found at Polish Christmas markets, so presentation is key. After debuting their pandemic experiment at the taproom last November, the reception was warm. “I tend to think the best way to deal with challenges is to embrace them,” says Sara Szymanski. “It’s wintertime and it sucks. How do you make something out of it? That’s how we looked at it and that’s what this beer was about. It was nice to see people enjoying it.” And it looks like the grzaniec may be at least one pivot that will outlast the pandemic. Jarek and Sara expect to bring it back to the menu this fall.
GET IT HERE: 403 SE 79th Ave., 503-477-8789, threshold.beer. 4-8 pm Tuesday-Thursday, 4-9 pm Friday, 3-9 pm Saturday, noon6 pm Sunday.
Pelican B�ewing Kiwanda C�eam Ale The 25-year-old brewery’s first seasonal, and now acclaimed year-round staple, set the tone for decades of growth. BY MATT WASTR A DOWSKI
When Pelican Brewing opened its doors in May 1996, its hometown of Pacific City bore little resemblance to the bustling beach community we all know today. As brewmaster and co-owner Darron Welch tells it, sum-
mer weekends were the only sure thing when it came to tourists dropping by the otherwise sleepy burg. “We’d get busy for a brief summertime window,” he says. But fall, winter and spring? “Boy, it was pretty quiet around here.” Three guaranteed months of business isn’t exactly a number that any owner wants to bet on, particularly in an industry with traditionally tight margins. The first few years were indeed mired in unprofitability, leading Welch to always wonder whether Pelican would survive the next slow season. Twenty-five years and three brewpubs later—with another on the way in Lincoln City—Pelican is as much an Oregon Coast icon as Haystack Rock (which can be seen from the patio at the flagship) or the towering sand dune at Cape Kiwanda (which, incidentally, sits across Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
15
the parking lot from that same restaurant). And while red ink in those early years might have given Welch pause, his beers have since become some of the most celebrated in Oregon. One such triumph was Kiwanda Cream Ale, the brewery’s first summer seasonal, one of its most award-winning beers and an unlikely staple in Pelican’s expansive lineup. Welch’s love affair with cream ales actually predates his time at Pelican. While studying abroad in Germany as a college student, he used the opportunity to also expand his knowledge of the country’s legendary lagers by bicycling from beer hall to beer hall. That experience coupled with Welch’s fascination with pre-Prohibition brewing are what inspired him to develop Kiwanda Cream Ale for Pelican’s opening day.
“I had this historical thread that was an ongoing interest,” he explains. “I had an interest in German-style beers, and I pulled those two things together.” But when it came time to actually nail down that opening-day tap list, Welch found himself outvoted by the other owners. They wanted a wheat beer on draft instead, thinking it would appeal to diners who were uncertain about ordering anything other than the big domestics their palates were accustomed to. Instead, the crisp, golden-hued Kiwanda would debut as a seasonal one month later, and remained as such for two summers. But Welch soon discovered that customers—especially those who weren’t “beer people,” as he puts it— would walk in, peruse the menu and routinely ask for the lightest beer. More often than not, that was Kiwanda Cream Ale. The beer’s sales numbers soon eclipsed that of the wheat ale, Kiwanda replaced the wheat beer as a year-round staple after two summers, and—more than two decades later—it is among Pelican’s best-loved beers. Today, Welch sees Kiwanda’s success as emblematic of what keeps Pelican not just relevant but thriving 25 years on: a wide variety of easy-drinking ales and lagers that taste just as good on the back patio as they do in a geeky craft beer bar. “I always felt like it was our way of demonstrating that light-colored beer didn’t have to be flavorless beers,” he says. “And these days, I think part of the ongoing appeal of Kiwanda is that it has that crisp, aromatic, refreshing character about it. It’s very approachable in that regard, but at the same time, if you want to dive into it and dissect flavors, there’s quite a bit there to unravel.”
GET IT HERE: 33180 Cape Kiwanda Drive, Pacific City, 503-965-7007, pelicanbrewing.com. 10:30 am-10 pm SundayThursday, 10:30 am-11 pm Friday-Saturday. 16
1371 S Hemlock St., Cannon Beach, 503-908-3377. Noon-9 pm daily. 1708 1st St., Tillamook. Noon-6 pm daily.
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
Home delivery became a lifeline for many breweries during last spring’s lockdown. Von Ebert Brewing was one of the first to perfect the system. BY MATT WASTR A DOWSKI
Way back when many of us assumed that vigorous hand-washing was enough to keep COVID at bay, Von Ebert founder Tom S. Cook began noticing that a few of his colleagues were establishing home-delivery services—Baerlic Brewing and Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider among them. At that point, he wondered whether his brewery should do the same. So Cook phoned a friend who worked at Oregon Health & Science University, wanting to hear from an expert what we might be in for. “There was talk about this lasting for two to three weeks,” he says, “and I remember not wanting to start up a delivery service.” Then his friend gave him a grim diagnosis: “Based on historical pandemics, anything less than 18 months will be a medical miracle,” Cook remembers hearing. “My jaw dropped. ‘I thought you were going to say four or five weeks.’” Von Ebert’s next chapter was set: “After that call,” he recounts, “I said, ‘Time for delivery.’” When Gov. Kate Brown ordered all restaurants and bars to halt on-premises consumption last March, Cook was forced to furlough his hourly staff. So a barebones crew quickly got to work setting up the dispatch service—taking photos of the inventory, building a website, figuring out delivery logistics and teaching themselves how to use the online payment system. On April 1—just 15 days after the lockdown—the brewery’s fleet of disco dance light-colored vans branded with its boar mascot hit the streets hauling four-packs of tallboys to a high-strung population stuck at home and ready to find ways to take the edge off. Cook and his remaining staffers were happy to provide some form relief because that also meant the business could stay afloat. “The team was solely focused on ‘How do we keep going?’” Cook says. “‘How do we keep building? How do we survive?’” The service was enough to keep employees busy for up to 10 hours a day—picking orders and creating routes on Google Maps each morning, then making deliveries until dinnertime.
Despite customer enthusiasm surrounding brewery-to-doorstep drops, challenges were numerous. Once, the Von Ebert team accidentally programmed the website in a way that made its most popular beers appear to be extremely limited, or out of stock altogether. Then, in an effort to save money on beer labels, Cook resorted to Avery stickers— the kind you’d slap on an envelope or use as a name tag—in lieu of full-color designs. And even after a full day of delivery, the business was pulling in roughly as much revenue as a single hour of in-house service before a typical Portland Timbers match at the Pearl pub. But small victories were everywhere in those early months. Cook was particularly buoyed by the eager response to Von Ebert’s New American Pils, released just days after the spring lockdown. Even without the buzz normally achieved with draft distribution and butts on barstools, that beer became a hot seller and was the first in the brewery’s series of Pilsners to showcase hops from around the world. Cook also hoped that dosing batches with Citra hops post-boil would distinguish New American from other Pilsners and provide a subtle infusion of citrus flavors. “This idea of folks who like certain aspects of hoppy beer but are willing to dip their toes in the water of craft lager,” he explains, “I think we were able to bridge the gap for them.” Other wins were less obvious to satisfied beer drinkers, but no less important to the fate of Von Ebert. The success of the shuttle service throughout April, May and June allowed Cook to retain staff, and the community support touched him in a way that went beyond dollars and cents. “There was no money going into getting delivery off the ground, other than word of mouth, email blasts and social media,” he says. “That was cool to see that people cared about Von Ebert.” WESLEY LAPOINTE
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AND THREE BREWPUBS LATER—WITH ANOTHER ON THE WAY IN LINCOLN CITY— PELICAN IS AS MUCH AN OREGON COAST ICON AS HAYSTACK ROCK.
Von Ebert B�ewing New American Pils
GET IT HERE: PEARL PUB, 131 NW 13th Ave., 503-820-7721, vonebertbrewing.com. 11:30 am-9 pm Sunday-Thursday, 11:30 am-10 pm Friday-Saturday.
GLENDOVEER PUB, 14021 NE Glisan St., 503-878-8708. 3-9 pm Monday-Tuesday, 11:30 am-9 pm Wednesday-Thursday, 11:30 am-10 pm Friday-Saturday, 11:30 am-8 pm Sunday.
WESLEY LAPOINTE
Block 15 Sticky Hands A beer bar-bottle shop owner has managed to stay open for over 4,200 days straight, despite the pandemic, keeping customers supplied with ultra-fresh beer. BY D O N A L D SC H E I DT
If any locally owned business deserves a perfect attendance award, it would definitely be the BeerMongers. Sean Campbell opened the Southeast Division Street bottle shop and bar in 2009, and since then has kept the business going 365 days a year no matter what. So while holidays or inclement weather may force other publicans to close, Campbell and his employees will always be ready to pour you a pint at the BeerMongers, whether it’s Christmas or there’s a foot of snow on the ground. Naturally, then, he wasn’t about to let the pandemic end his streak of more than 4,200 consecutive days in operation. “We were committed to doing everything we could do to stay safe and open,” Campbell says. “However, it was such a shock that it took a few days to grasp the reality of the situation.” If you walked into the BeerMongers on day one, it would have been easy to doubt the business would ever become an institution in the city’s beer scene. Launching the shop on a shoestring budget, Campbell initially began selling bottles out of a couple of coolers in a bare-bones room. Over the next year, he worked to install a bar and carefully curate a tap list—two important features that encouraged people to hang around rather than grab and go. The next decade saw continued growth: Campbell pumped profits back into the BeerMongers, and by the beginning of 2020, the business had earned a well-deserved reputation as a good beer bar with a dedicated clientele. And then came the pandemic. On St. Patrick’s Day of last year, the BeerMongers was forced to become a bottle shop only. Customers were advised to choose carefully but quickly from the coolers, keep their masks on and adhere to social-distancing protocols. But even with all of those sudden changes, it didn’t take too long to get into a new rhythm. “Our business has always been a hybrid beer store-beer bar, so it wasn’t too difficult to shut down on-premises business,” says Campbell. “We discounted draft beer to go and rearranged the store to get rid of all seating. I think we all just plowed ahead as best as we could. We were amazed at the generosity of our customers who made it worthwhile to be open every day.” CONT. on page 17 Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
17
WESLEY LAPOINTE
TopWire IPA Series Vol. 1 First, the pandemic shuttered brewpubs and slowed hop orders, then wildfires threatened the harvest. But Crosby Hop Farm and its new beer garden are on the rebound in 2021. BY MAT T HEW SIN GER
CONT. from 17
“Early on the morning of Feb. 13, I got a text saying That loyalty meant the shop never had to close completely, but revenue diminished appreciably. How- it was crushed by ice,” says Campbell. “By the time I ever, Campbell does remember that customers came in arrived at 11 am, there were over 15 volunteers tearing droves for certain packaged items, like fresh deliveries the tent down. I was amazed so many people came out in those conditions to help. We of super-hoppy IPAs and rare had survived shutdowns, fires offerings. and now ice with the support “Block 15 Sticky Hands,” of our community. Despite the Campbell says. “Another beer IF THE SOUL that was a savior during COVID frigid conditions, that week in was finally having cans of Pallet February was one of our busiest OF A GOOD BAR weeks of the whole year.” Jack and other Barley Brown’s IS ITS REGULARS, If the soul of a good bar is its beers.” regulars, the BeerMongers is When Campbell finally began THE BEERMONGERS brimming with spirit. Campbell to plan to reopen in-house serIS BRIMMING vice, he had one main thought: still has concerns, but he’s pretty sure his patrons will help him get “I want people to feel well.” He WITH SPIRIT. through just about anything. figured the best way to accom“I am anxious about the plish that was to convert half future,” he says. “Our outdoor of the parking lot into a patio, seating area is temporary, and the moving tables and chairs under a canopy with all sides open to promote air circulation. It landlords have expressed their desire to return it to a parking lot. There are a lot of unknowns, however, the worked, at times better than expected. There were a few snafus, though. That crazy little beer culture is strong in Portland. Our community has snowstorm last February? It took down the tent. Reg- been supportive through all the various changes, and ulars showed up anyway, shoveled the pavement and we know they will be there for the BeerMongers in the erected a new covering in a little over an hour. future.”
GET IT HERE: THE BEERMONGERS, 1125 SE Division St., 503-234-6012, thebeermongers.com. Noon-9 pm Sunday-Tuesday, noon-10 pm Wednesday-Saturday.
msinger@wweek.com
Zak Schroerlucke has two words to describe last year’s hop season: “It sucked.” Granted, Schroerlucke, marketing manager at Crosby Hop Farm in Woodburn, acknowledges it could have been a lot worse. The pandemic had already paralyzed the beer industry it serves, then the entire state caught on fire just as the small harvest window was opening. That yields turned out on par with previous years, and were unaffected by smoke damage, is some kind of small miracle. Still: It sucked. Even before Oregon went up in flames, business at the 120-year-old farm—which supplies Centennial, Strata and Common hops, among other varietals, to 3,000 breweries in the U.S. alone—declined at the onset of COVID-19, as taprooms shuttered nationwide, halting direct-to-consumer sales. And as wildfires encroached on the Willamette Valley last September, turning the skies red and the air unbreathable, it made the already time-sensitive hop-picking process touch and go. “It was scary, for sure,” Schroerlucke says. “We just made an effort to constantly be looking at the fire maps. Employee safety is everything, and we were definitely ready to pull the plug at any moment.” Only now are things beginning to suck a bit less. In just the past few weeks, Schroerlucke says orders have gone from a trickle to a deluge. And in April, the farm reopened TopWire, the onsite beer garden it launched last summer, which sits amid 600 acres of soon to be towering hop bines. It also kicked off a collaborative brewing project with Camas, Wash., brewer Grains of Wrath. Over the summer, the two businesses will produce three different IPAs, using the brewery’s base recipe with rotating hop varieties from Crosby, to showcase how the aromatic cones transform the taste of the beer. The first in the series, which is currently pouring exclusively at TopWire’s and Grains of Wrath’s locations in Portland and Camas, uses Amarillo, Strata and Columbus hops, imbuing the beer with notes of grapefruit and apricot. The aim, Schroerlucke says, is to demystify the crucial role hops play in the brewing process. But it also stands as a tribute to the creativity of the craft beer industry and its perseverance in the face of a challenging year. “It’s easy to look at the last year as being a total downer, but brewers are resilient,” Schroerlucke says. “They adapt, they evolve, and they push through hard times.”
GET IT HERE: 8668 Crosby Road NE, Woodburn, 503-765-1645, topwirehp.com. 11 am-8 pm Thursday, 11 am-9 pm Friday-Saturday, 11 am-8 pm Sunday. 18
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
WESLEY LAPOINTE
pFriem Family Brewers Pilsner From harvesting yeast to advising on production schedules, Imperial Yeast helped brewers like pFriem manage its living product during the pandemic. BY AN D I P R E W I T T
aprewitt@wweek.com
From aluminum to refrigerators, businesses in the brewing industry struggled to get essential equipment after the pandemic disrupted global supply chains in 2020. For Owen Lingley, owner of Imperial Yeast, his critical shipment in the bottleneck was a little more unusual than most: a cargo container filled with guava skins stuck at a port in India. “So yeast need zinc, and finding a soluble source of organic zinc is really difficult. We use guava skins for that. It comes out of India,” he says. “The last time India had a really big [COVID-19] spike, they just shut the country down and nothing went in or out, and so it just sat at a dock for, like, 95 days.” The tropical fruit peel holdup forced Lingley to suspend production of Imperial’s organic yeast nutrient—a wort supplement for brewers that requires the same zinc extract—multiple times last year until the ship finally arrived from overseas. After that incident, Lingley started using air freight and ordering in larger quantities to be safe. Inventory and raw material management was just one of many issues Imperial navigated during the outbreak. The company, which has a lab and a test brewery 1 mile apart from each other in Northeast Portland, had to quickly stagger shifts across all seven days of the week to ensure everyone could space out with a 6-foot buffer. It even shut down completely for about a month when breweries’ demand for yeast plummeted during lockdown. But internal adjustments seem much more manageable compared with the daunting task of meeting the needs of thousands of customers across the county, particularly when you consider what Imperial deals in: “We’re the only part of the brewing industry that provides a living organism,” says Lingley. “One of the first things that we did was look at the health of the yeast and how long they would be shelf stable,” adds Imperial research and development scientist Matt Winans. “Viability is going to be whether cells are alive or dead, and vitality is how healthy the cells are. We found we produce some really good yeast and it stays healthy for a long time.” In general, the single-cell fungus lasts around four months as long as it’s refrigerated properly. But another difficulty arose once states reopened and brewing resumed, only to be followed by another closure a few weeks or months later. Brewers who would typically save their yeast from a single pitch to ferment around 20 vessels might have gotten around to only two before the next mandated freeze. In cases like that, Lingley and his employees were there to advise. Helping brewers draft production timetables became another key job, but so was simply staying in communication to ease nerves. Lingley says that pFriem in Hood River was one of the first businesses to call after stayhome orders were issued to make sure Imperial could keep the yeast coming. “Everybody’s world got really small, and I wanted to make sure that we were there to support when they needed it,” Lingley says, “and get what they wanted to them quickly so that they didn’t have to stress about that part.” “They have always been amazing, and their level of customer service did not falter even a little bit during the pandemic. And it’s part of the reason why 95% of our yeast needs go to Imperial,” says Max Kravitz, pFriem’s quality control manager, who credits the company’s assistance in enabling the brewery to continue to pump out its flagship lager. “The pFriem Pilsner is what sort of defines our brewery. It was really interesting to see pFriem, which dominated in draft and 500-milliliter bottles, to mostly converge into aluminum. It was a lot harder ensuring we had the aluminum supply that we needed than it was finding yeast.”
Another trend Imperial observed was brewers asking for fewer strains. Some pared down orders to focus on canning where on-premises draft sales were limited or barred. In those instances, Lingley says customers would typically request an IPA strain and a lager strain instead of the three or four they once did. Then there were others who hoped to pinpoint just one that could do a lot of heavy lifting. “A lot of people looked at ways to save money,” he says, “so they wanted to find a different strain that could run their whole gamut of beers.” Those frugal practices appear to be coming to an end, however, as more shots go into arms and brewpubs and taprooms are itching to operate at full capacity. The first sign of optimism came early this year when requests for Belgian and German strains—varieties that had been mostly absent from purchase orders for a year—began pouring in.
“We’ve seen taproom strains continue to grow, where people want to have a couple saisons or a wheat or something a little more interesting,” Lingley says. “I think brewers are super excited to get creative again. And we’re excited to see that.”
GET IT HERE: pFRIEM FAMILY BREWERS, 707 Portway Ave., #101, Hood River, 541-321-0490, pfriembeer.com. Noon-7 pm daily.
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
19
4534 SE Belmont St. Portland Or. 97215
Horse Brass Pub Still Open, Still Pouring Indoor/Outdoor Seating
503-232-2202
Dine In or Take out Open Noon Daily
20
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
WESLEY LAPOINTE
Wayfinder Beer O�iginal Cold IPA Kevin Davey has created a new style of IPA that is generating both controversy and good buzz. BY AN D I P R E W I T T
aprewitt@wweek.com
When Wayfinder Beer opened in Portland’s industrial eastside five years ago, brewmaster Kevin Davey knew for certain that he wanted to make two beers: a stellar hazy IPA and a classic, West Coast take on the style, like the kind he used to produce at Firestone Walker in California in the early 2010s. But once Davey nailed down those recipes and the IPAs were on near-continual flow inside the warm, wood-andbrick barroom, he couldn’t help but feel a little limited by his next options. “I’m like, that’s only two IPAs!” Davey laughs. “What else are we going to do? How do we differentiate?” If that sounds like a slightly absurd question from someone who has distinguished himself with a lineup of premium craft lagers using Old World brewing techniques, keep in mind that Davey always intended for Wayfinder to evenly split its focus between IPAs and cold-fermented beverages, such as helles and Pilsner. So in his quest to expand the ale side, Davey invented an entirely new subcategory of beer: the Cold IPA. “Ours is definitely the first. Is it a new style? I think that’s to be announced,” says Davey. “My diplomatic answer would be what we’re calling our Cold IPA is distinctively different than anybody else’s IPA. I think that it becomes its own style when everybody else can replicate the attributes, and when you go to a bar and you see a Cold IPA, you know what you’re going to get. We’re still in the infancy of that.” Right now, consumers may be confused by the term, but the race to duplicate is well underway. Ever since Davey first tapped a batch in 2018—initially named Relapse but now rebranded as the Original Cold IPA— brewers from across the nation and in countries as far as Japan and Poland have been reaching out to learn how to make it on their systems. Davey’s method will look different than most because the Cold IPA was partly inspired by his cold fermentation program. The initial goal was to employ adjunct grains, like corn and rice, similar to the way he incorporated them into a lager using a decoction vessel. The multistep process involves removing a portion of the mash, heating it separately, and then returning it to the primary batch of boiled cereals. By accessing parts of the grain a brewer couldn’t reach without decocting, the result is finished beer with a richer flavor and more robust body. “It’s an old way of making beer before thermometers existed,” Davey explains. “Back in the day, you knew you needed to get the beer through these enzymatic steps, but you really didn’t know why. It was through trial and error, usually cooking. It’s inefficient to cook the whole darn thing, so if you can take a section out and put it back in, you can change the temperature.” After that, Davey puts his house lager yeast to work. The fermentation temperature is much warmer than that for a lager, though, which means the normally lumbering strain provides a much quicker turnaround and doesn’t produce as much sulfur. The Cold IPA is then finished with another German approach called dry-hop kräusening, where a brewer adds a high-fermenting beer to a completed batch that’s still young along with the aromatic cones. Davey says this will carbonate and clean up some off flavors. Despite the complex processes, in your glass, the Cold IPA is deceptively simple and refreshing. If you’ve become accustomed to the flavors of fruit smoothies and marshmallows that dominate some tap lists, the beer’s crisp bitterness is a sharp, wonderful jolt. “What Cold IPA is to me is this showcase,” Davey says. “It’s a blank canvas. It’s incredibly dry. So, really, it’s just like, ‘Hey, do you like these hops? Here they are.’” Naturally, debates continue to rage in online forums
about whether the Cold IPA is actually an “India pale lager,” which Davey will vehemently deny, noting that the style is not dry-hop kräusened, fermented warm or made up of 30% adjunct grains. But then he’ll simply point out that the IPA has always been a beverage undergoing constant evolution, so there’s room for the cold version to exist, too. “IPA has changed so much since the style was really coined when they were talking about beers based on what they sent with the East India Trading Company,” says Davey. “Nobody’s drinking anything that resembles what it used to be. It’s gone through so many iterations. What can’t be an IPA? If I call it an IPA, you know what you’re going to get.”
GET IT HERE: WAYFINDER BEER, 304 SE 2nd Ave., 503-718-2337, wayfinder.beer. Noon-10 pm WednesdaySaturday, noon-8 pm Sunday.
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
21
STREET SHOW US AROUND ARBOR LODGE Photos by Chris Nesseth @chrisnesseth We love walking with our dog to our favorite bar Advice Booth on North Gay Avenue just a few blocks from our house. They have great art all over the place, including a granny flipping you off in the bathroom. We can usually be found on the patio , but it’s the community vibe that keeps us coming back. Laura, co-owner of Advice Booth.
On North Rosa Parks Way and just a short walk from my house is Grindhouse Coffee. I have always called it Sexy Coffee because of all the signs saying so. It’s great people and, of course, great coffee. On this day, Hannah made a latte for me and I enjoyed it on one of their picnic tables.
22
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
STREET
This is the Nut House. This house is dedicated to squirrels, cats and crows. There are lines and feeders going every which way. Every morning they put out feed into the street and a large group (a murder?) of crows arrives to chow down. The neighbors’ roof has more bird poop on it than others. I always wonder how they feel about that.
Every day for almost a year now, a group gathers on North Rosa Parks and Denver Avenue from 12 to 2 to wave signs and protest police brutality.
Arbor Lodge Park is a great place to do many things! My favorite is to sit in the grass and people watch.
My neighborhood is filled with people who go hard on their gardens. This is Vince, whom I’ve seen put countless hours into his. His garden looks amazing and he genuinely loves doing it.
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
23
STARTERS
THE MOST IMPORTANT PORTLAND CULTURE STORIES OF THE WEEK—GRAPHED.
R E A D M O R E A B O U T TH E S E STO R I E S AT WW E E K .CO M .
Sleater-Kinney announces its 10th album, Path of Wellness, the band’s first as a duo…
SAM GEHRKE
RIDICULOUS
…but the first single is just all right.
IS
ES
SE
TH
C
H
ODOT
R
N
Resale ticket prices for the Blazers’ final games of the regular season go through the roof.
The Morrison Bridge lights have been restored after a two-year hiatus.
AWESOME
AWFUL
KEX
OW
EN
CA
R
E
Y
Nordic-themed hotel Kex is reopening in early June.
Portland Center Stage announces a return to live theater.
A 71-year-old hiker goes missing in the Columbia River Gorge for two days. (He is eventually found safe.)
L
IC
KR
CARMEN DANESHMANDI
Most of Oregon’s razor clams are too toxic to harvest.
SERIOUS 24
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
THWEST NOR
Esperanza Spalding is crowdfunding to build a BIPOC artist sanctuary in North Portland.
WI
LD
PR
O
\
F
Are you the best of Portland? nominations now open
bop.wweek.com
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
25
GET INSIDE
WHAT TO DO WHILE YOU’RE STUCK AT HOME THIS WEEK.
WATCH: The Killing of Two Lovers Robert Machoian’s family drama knows it’s freighted with a foreboding title, and violence looms immediately over this story of a freshly separated couple. The longer it takes for that title to come true, the more we nervously rifle through its possible meanings. Even so, The Killing of Two Lovers slips into an inquisitive mode, deeper than pure tension. It is largely a director’s showcase: Known mostly for short documentaries, Machoian concocts an internal universe of rage through sound design full of slamming doors and endless creaking. And the complex, uncut blocking of a key marital squabble against a high-desert horizon blends stark indie filmmaking with Edward Albeeesque theatrical instincts. Streams on Amazon Prime, Cinema 21, Google Play and Vudu.
STREAM: Haley Heynderickx at Laurelthirst Pub
Laurelthirst Pub, Portland’s oldest music venue, is getting ready to welcome back guests for the first time in over a year, and it’s booked one of the city’s favorite folk artists for a livestream that doubles as a reopening fundraiser. It’s been almost three years since Haley Heynderickx released her subtle but resonant debut, I Need to Start a Garden, and she’s mostly kept quiet since her national tour with the Milk Carton Kids was indefinitely postponed last year. If we’re lucky, maybe Heynderickx will debut some new tunes. Regardless, her bittersweet, layered folk will be an ideal match for an empty, intimate venue. 5 pm Thursday, May 20, via GCTV, boxoffice.mandolin.com. $15.
LISTEN: Out of the Blue by “Blue” Gene Tyranny Progressive rock gets a bad rap for being technically dazzling at the expense of true emotion, but you wouldn’t make that mistake after hearing “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s Out of the Blue. Comprising two almost unbearably beautiful pieces (“Living a Double Life,” “Letter from Home”), one bona fide banger (“For David K.”), and one bona fide banger that’s also unbearably beautiful (“Next Time Might Be Your Time”), this 1978 stunner is deeply spiritual, empathetic, and awestruck by the possibilities of where we’re from and where we’re going. Stream on Spotify.
☛ ATTEND: TechfestNW
The pandemic may have postponed the event known as the Oscars of the state’s craft brewing industry, but it couldn’t stop it from happening completely. Organizers of Willamette Week’s Oregon Beer Awards began planning ways to safely execute the double-blind judging process last summer. Eventually, adjudication sessions took place about three months later than normal with COVID safety guidelines in place. And now, finally, we get to learn who takes home the highly coveted medals in 29 beer and 11 industry-voted categories. While there won’t be a rowdy, in-person ceremony this year, the show must go on in virtual form. Ticketholders can watch the winners revealed via Zoom, or you can join one of the many physically distanced watch parties that have been organized across the state. And we’re pretty sure at least one thing won’t change: The participants will be getting increasingly drunk. 5:30 pm Thursday, May 20. Tickets can be purchased on Eventbrite. $5.
26
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
STREAM: Kingsley Album Release Show From the very beginning, Kingsley has rejected easy categorization. A few years ago, the Portland indie-pop singer released two alternate versions of her EP I Am Because I Am—the dance-remix version I Am Because I Dance and the strippeddown, acoustic I Am Because I Feel. Kingsley’s next album, Crying on Holidays, promises to be a midpoint between those two moods. The album’s two glossy lead singles will make ideal crying-on-thedance-floor anthems when clubs reopen. For now, though, they’re just as good for dancing alone in your room. 8 pm Friday, May 21, at twitch.tv/holoceneportland. Free, donations accepted. CATCH UP ON: Rutherford Falls It’s no exaggeration to call Peacock’s acclaimed comedy Rutherford Falls the first mainstream American TV series with multidimensional and distinct Indigenous perspectives—even if the titular town and the tribe at its core are fictional. Coming from the writers and producers of The Good Place and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Rutherford Falls features performances that are winsome and playful across the board: Ed Helms stars alongside writer Jana Schmieding, a member of the Lakota tribe who grew up around Canby and Eugene, as close friends whose relationship is tested by cultural conflict in their small hometown. Helms unsurprisingly excels as an earnest ignoramus, but Schmieding is the true revelation here, playing an excitable try-hard who can’t quite win her own community’s approval. Streams on Peacock.
B R U C E E LY / T R A I L B L A Z E R S
THRESHOLD BREWING
STREAM: Oregon Beer Awards
One of America’s premier cybersecurity reporters, the founder of a Eugene electric vehicle startup, an Oregon sex-tech disruptor, and the founder of a venture fund specifically for Black-founded startups will take the virtual stage for TechfestNW 2021, Portland’s annual gathering of entrepreneurs, innovators and investors. This year’s TFNW conference theme is “Emerge,” with an emphasis on redefining entrepreneurship, creating a more inclusive tech economy, and discovering new solutions as Oregon builds back from the COVID-19 pandemic. As in previous years, TFNW will finish with a pitch competition—but with a big change this year. TFNW is partnering with Oregon Entrepreneurs Network to produce a competition that is providing training to startups—and sending the winning company an angel investment up to $125,000. 9 am-4 pm Friday, May 21. $15 for Oregon Entrepreneurs Network members, $25 for the general public. See techfestnw.com for complete information.
WATCH: Portland Trail Blazers vs. Denver Nuggets in Round 1 of the Western Conference Playoffs So after all…that, the Blazers managed to avoid the play-in tournament and secure a playoff berth for the eighth straight year, the longest such streak in the NBA. (Suck it, The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor!) And who should they be meeting in the first round but the very team they just beat to get there, their old divisional rivals, the Nuggies of Denver. You remember the last time they met in the postseason, right? The four-overtime game? Evan Turner’s middle finger? CJ going bonkers in Game 7 to send the Blazers to the Western Conference finals? Yeah, that series. There will be blood—or at least a good chance of Zach Collins calling Nikola Jokic a “chunky bitch” from the bench. The playoff schedule had not been released at press time, but Game 1 is happening sometime this coming weekend, so clear your schedule now.
STREAM: The Carlalogues See Q&A, next page.
OURTESY OF ARTISTS REP
GET...INSIDE?
Rage of a Clown In The Carlalogues, drag artist Anthony Hudson’s alter ego kidnaps an audience for attention.
SPLIT PERSONALITIES: Anthony Hudson (left) and Carla Rossi.
BY S U Z E T T E SM I T H
Anthony Hudson has always stepped onto the stage wearing the masks of both tragedy and comedy— and if it’s as Carla Rossi, you can bet she stole those masks. Known as Portland’s premier drag clown, Hudson’s alter ego is at once a trickster and a rich white lady from Lake Oswego, and somehow still maintains bits of Hudson the artist, so any performance Hudson writes for her is bound to be layered, highly-referential and hilarious. About 10 minutes after it ends, it might also strike as deeply thought-provoking. Last year, when the world capsized, Hudson’s grand realization of a fully staged production of Looking for Tiger Lily—unpacking his experience of growing up Indigenous and queer while surrounded by images of whiteness and heteronormity— appeared to sink. But thanks to Artists Repertory Theatre’s Mercury Company, Hudson is returning with two new pieces: a radio drama called The Carlalogues and an accompanying recording of Hudson’s monologue, Nobody’s going to fund this. One ticket buys you both. Hudson spoke to WW about the new project, the pandemic and the instruments of torture a drag clown wields to kidnap her audience.
WW: Before we get started, you said you couldn’t talk long because you have to get into drag for Zoom performances. What’s that about? Anthony Hudson: Carla is doing a 10-minute
land acknowledgment at a fundraiser for Five Oaks Museum, in conjunction with their This IS Kalapuyan Land exhibition, curated by Steph Littlebird—who is a Kalapuyan descendant, same as me. Carla will reflect on what she, a white arts administrator, has learned during the racial reckoning of the last year. I haven’t been doing a lot of virtual gigs. I’ve added like five makeup wipes to my stack of Carla faces in the last year. I just don’t get juiced doing a Zoom performance unless it’s something I really love, like working on something that’s tribal based. Otherwise, I’m just kind of not here for it.
Do you mean you don’t want to perform as Carla or you don’t want to perform at all?
It’s just performing in the Zoom format. Carla is a clown and she needs live people to really activate the troll. When I intentionally create something for Zoom, I’m always thinking, “How can we intentionally create a piece about the failings of this medium?”
What can people expect from The Carlalogues?
The premise of Carlalogues is that Carla is sick of the pandemic. She’s stuck in her house—excuse me, her castle in Lake Oswego. She feels ignored. She needs an audience. Zoom won’t work for her. She basically kidnaps all these people out of their homes, in the middle of the night, breaks into a nightclub, and ties them all to chairs. She then performs an entire onewoman show. To facilitate the process, there’s a cattle prod, duct tape and other implements of torture. It’s an absolutely bonkers show.
And it just plays, radio drama style. Is that complete with Foley sounds?
Oh yeah. Our sound designer Rodolfo Ortega went out of this world, running up and down stairs, recording cattle prod sounds. Basically everyone on staff at Artists Rep, at one point or another, duct-taped their mouth shut—and sometimes even their families’ mouths—and recorded themselves jostling in their seats, trying to ask for help. When people buy a ticket to this show, they’ll also get an audio version of Nobody’s going to fund this, which is a more somber reflection on the pandemic.
Did you intend that both pieces would be considered together?
It was a happy accident. Originally, I just pitched Carlalogues. However, Luan Schooler, who I’ve been working with at Artists Rep for years, read Nobody’s going to fund this and immediately asked if I’d be open to recording an audio essay of it. I’m really proud of both pieces, and I think it’s nice to see them next to each other. Carlalogues is what people are more used to having with me. The other is a more vulnerable Anthony piece—more personal, more sad, more bittersweet. It’s a little messed-up manifesto for moving forward, as an artist, in the future. It’s appropriate to offer these two viewpoints on the weird year we’ve all suffered through.
Are either of these pieces related to Looking for Tiger Lily, the full stage production you were meant to perform last year? Yeah, I had so much lined up right before the pandemic hit. There was the play of Tiger Lily. There was a premiere of a new piece about Valerie Solanas at Reed College. Then there was the fifth anniversary of Queer Horror at the Hollywood. All those things were happening in the same month. It reminds me of that
documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. I was so inspired by the scene where she flips through her day planner and shows all the dates that are booked. She says, “This is happiness.” And then she flips forward to the dates that are empty and says, “This is fear. This is horror.” And that has been my modus operandi for a long time: just keeping myself as busy as possible. I got onto 40 airplanes in 2019. So when everything got postponed or canceled, I suddenly had nothing but room to think. Nobody’s going to fund this was me asking myself: Am I in an abusive relationship with my work? Am I in an abusive relationship with institutions and granting cycles? Nobody’s going to fund this is a challenge, to myself, not to perpetuate the cycles of overworking—the idea that the show must go on— because that’s just toxic, when you get down to it.
I mourn that Valerie Solanas piece.
Reed is still committed to making it happen. I told them I would only be able to do it live. I’m also restructuring how I see that shit in my head and my relationship to Valerie. My misanthropy is at an alltime high.
What is amping up your misanthropy more than usual?
The pandemic was—look, I’ve already put the pandemic in past tense.
It’s still going.
It’s still going, and we’re pretending it’s over. It’s ravaging the world. We’re lucky enough to get vaccines, those of us that choose to get them. People are calling it “a moment of pause,” even though there was also an expectation that we didn’t stop working. I don’t want us to miss an opportunity to massively restructure a huge amount of systemic problems in this country—in art, in government, and social justice. But I think our desire to return to normalcy, our desire to just get back to work, will win out. To make the billionaire overlord oppressors richer. I’ve seen a lot of people speaking of change. I’ve seen amazing movements and acts of defiance. I don’t want to see that go away, and I’m afraid it’s going to go away. WATCH: The Carlalogues streams at 7 pm Saturday, May 22. The Carlalogues and Nobody’s going to fund this stream on the Artists Repertory Theatre site starting May 24. See artistsrep.org/performance/the-carlalogues for tickets and streaming information.
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
27
FEATURE
Buzz Worthy
A N A LY L E E
FOOD & DRINK
TOP 5
BUZZ LIST
Where to get drinks this week.
Altabira, and its sweeping views of downtown’s serrated skyline, this is where you’ll want to camp out this summer.
1. Raven’s Manor
4. Rose & Thistle Public House
235 SW 1st Ave., ravensmanorexperience.com. 5-11 pm Wednesday-Monday. Goths, ghost hunters and Halloween geeks: Here is your new hang. Raven’s Manor, a cocktail lounge designed to look like a haunted mansion, is now open in the historic Henry Failing Building, and the 135-year-old brickwork structure appears to be the perfect backdrop for quaffing horror-themed drinks, including straight-up absinthe.
2314 NE Broadway, 503-287-8582, roseandthistlepdx.com. 3-11 pm daily. While the volume level is often set to “boisterous,” this punky Scottish tavern is a classic neighborhood pub at heart, with enough nooks and crannies to hide in. That’s especially true on the sprawling multilevel patio tucked out back, and even more so now, as the bar’s COVID-proofing has spread out tables and even created some semiprivate booths along the perimeter.
2. Tough Luck
5. John’s Marketplace
1771 NE Dekum St., 971-754-4188, toughluckbar.com. 3-11 pm Monday-Friday, noon-11 pm Saturday-Sunday. If there’s a better way to celebrate your vaccination than a burger and a beer at Tough Luck, we’re at a loss to suggest it. This is a perfect place to ease back into public life without feeling mobbed. Order the masterful beer-battered fries, with or without a smothering of melted cheese, via a smartphone-based ordering system, then watch Damian Lillard on high-definition TVs that face the outdoors. We should all be so lucky.
3560 SE Powell Blvd., 503-206-5273, johnsmarketplace.com. 11 am-9 pm daily. Prior to expanding across the Willamette, John’s Marketplace was the craft beer shop of choice for Southwest Portlanders. Upon arrival on Southeast Powell, John’s propped up two beloved foot carts—Jojo and Holy Trinity Barbecue—with a spacious covered patio, some friendly meat-free competition, and a window into a stately bottle shop that offers 15 taps of beer from popular local and regional breweries like Wayfinder, Upright, Bale Breaker and Fremont.
ICED TO SEE YOU: Portland Cà Phê owner Kimberly Dam and her shop’s cà phê sua da (inset).
Portland Cà Phê’s Vietnamese coffee drinks are big on the ’Gram, and they taste as good as they look. BY AN DR E A DA M E WO O D
@adamewood
28
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
™ GO: Portland Cà Phê, 2815 SE Holgate Blvd., 503-841-5787, portlandcaphe.com. 8 am-3 pm daily.
1300 SE Stark St., 503-776-5500, revolutionhall.com/food-drink. 3 pm-close Monday-Thursday, noon-close Friday-Sunday, weather permitting. Even though the expansive deck atop the former Washington High School has been open to the general public since 2017, there are still people who stumble across the space for the first time on a friend’s Instagram account or through word of mouth. For those who miss the inner eastside’s more conspicuous rooftop pillar, the pandemic-shuttered
TOP 5
HOT PLATES Where to get food this week.
1. Jerry’s Pizza
3237 SE Milwaukie Ave., 503-239-9208, instagram.com/jerryspizzapdx. 4-9 pm Monday-Thursday. In just under a year, Jerry Benedetto has gone from tinkering with recipes for Chicago-style tavern pizza in his home kitchen to opening one of Portland fooderati’s most anticipated new restaurants. Now slinging pies inside the Bear Paw Inn in the Brooklyn neighborhood, he offers the stuff of fond Midwestern memories: a thin, crispy crust in square-cut slices, preferably with sausage and hot giardiniera.
2. Sweet Lorraine’s
1331 N Killingsworth St., sweetlorraineslatkes. squarespace.com. 11:30 am-3:30 pm MondayTuesday,noon-8 pm Thursday-Sunday. It’s Hanukkah year-round at Killingsworth Station—or, at least, a reasonable facsimile of the Lower East Side of New York. The cart pod is where Aaron Tomasko and Rachel Brashear are serving voluptuous potato pancakes, as well as knishes, kugel, kasha varnishkes and East Coast sweets. The crispy, pillowy latkes are fried to order and come with the traditional accompaniment of sour cream and applesauce.
3. Momo Master
1533 NE Alberta St. 11 am-9 pm daily. Regulars at Alberta’s Bantu Island pod have an appetizing new option: the Momo Master. To try all of the titular Himalayan dumplings, get the “Plattery,” a sampler of the three styles the cart offers. The veggie dumplings made with Impossible Burger aren’t to be missed—generously packed into chewy dough folded like a fishtail, their sweet curry edge waits to be cut with the bright sesame oil tomato chutney that comes with it.
4. Papi Sal’s
3612 SE 82nd Ave., papisalfoodcart.com. 4-8 pm Wednesday, 1-7 pm Thursday, noon-7 pm Friday, noon-8 pm Saturday, 11 am-7 pm Sunday. Papi Sal’s is the must-try jawn at one of Portland’s biggest, newest food cart jawns. Its signature item? The Jawn. It’s pulled lechon, slow-cooked in sweetish barbecue sauce, with toppings that nod to both Philadelphia’s Italian-style roast pork (sharp provolone, “long hot” peppers) and Puerto Rican cuisine (sofrito mayo, sazón on the long hots, chicharrones). The real star, though, may be the sesame sandwich rolls, which owner John Hatch bakes daily in the truck.
5. Screen Door Pearl
1131 NW Couch St., screendoorrestaurant.com. 9 am-8 pm daily. After a yearlong delay, the first westside location of Southeast Portland brunch staple Screen Door is finally open. In addition to possibly (hopefully) alleviating one of Portland’s most famously packed waitlists, the new, larger kitchen allows for an expanded menu— which includes serving its famous chicken and waffles all day rather than just during brunch and lunch. SAM GEHRKE
Portland Cà Phê opened less than a month ago, but its signature drinks have already managed to become iconic—or at least ubiquitous Instagram fodder. If you follow the Portland food scene, you’ve surely seen what’s already become a signature snap of the Southeast Holgate coffee shop on your socials: a perfect purple ube latte held aloft in front of a wallsized map of Vietnam. It’s a photo-friendly drink, sure. But it’s also as delicious as it looks. Owner Kimberly Dam started roasting Vietnamese robusta beans as a hobby last year, but demand took off. She quickly became the supplier for beloved cart Matta, Mama Dut, and the House of Banh Mi, owned by her mother, Qui Bui. In opening Portland Cà Phê, Dam highlights the versatility of Vietnamese coffee beans, offering well-balanced drinks with cardamom syrup, rose and a cà phê sua da, or Vietnamese iced coffee, that’s just the right amount of sweet and strong. The response to the cafe has been so positive, Dam says she had to hire four more people in the first few weeks to keep up. And then there’s that ube latte. Featuring the subtly sugary, bright purple ube root extract, it’s not nearly as sweet as the grape hue might lead you to think. Same goes for a rose matcha, which hits the right bitter green tea notes, but with a delicate floral finish. My go-to is adding cheese foam to the cà phê sua da. Cheese foam—a blend of whipped cream, cream cheese and a dash
of sea salt—has taken Asia by storm, and Portland Cà Phê is one of a handful of places in Portland to serve it. I like it over iced drinks because it stays thick and aloft at the top, infusing every sip with richness. “Cheese foam is widely popular in Asia and available almost everywhere. It’s not necessarily a new concept to me,” Dam says. “Cold foam is pretty popular nowadays in the States, so I wanted to provide something almost the same but different.” The cafe also sells treats, including coffee cinnamon rolls and handmade pastry pop tarts from Jen’s Bagels and Pastries. But the real excitement lies in the banh mi menu: Portland Cà Phê has now become a low-key second outpost of House of Banh Mi. While the menu is more limited than the Northeast 76th Avenue location, each sandwich is $6 and comes with HOBM’s signature egg butter and generous hand with the pickled carrots and daikon, cucumber, cilantro and jalapeño. The fried onion tofu banh mi is a standout, and the grilled pork pairs perfectly with the baguette’s crispy exterior and soft interior. Dam says she sources her beans from two importers who have struggled to keep up with demand because of COVID supply chain issues, but she hopes more importers will decide to start stocking robusta as well. With the way her “caphe,” as she calls it, has been taking off, the demand is there. “It’s been a blessing,” she says, “and I am grateful.”
TIM SAPUTO
3. Revolution Hall Roof Deck
PERFORMANCE
Editor: Andi Prewitt | Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com P O R T L A N D C E N T E R S TAG E
JONAS ANGELET
JOE KYE
Daren Todd’s James Baldwin mural At the Northwest 10th Avenue back entrance to PCS’s Armory venue stands a new 10-foot-tall mural of James Baldwin, legendary Black writer, activist and LGBTQ icon. It was painted by Daren Todd, who used a giant projection of Baldwin for reference (PCS has released a video that chronicles Todd’s creative process) and is part of an ongoing mural series. Passersby have until July to bask in the beauty of Todd’s imaginative design, which is so vivid that it makes you feel as if you’re seeing Baldwin for the first time.
(Virtual) Stages of Compassion BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E LL FERGUS O N
Community Voices Project The Community Voices Project is a ritual. Each month, PCS invites local artists to share a monologue, a poem, a song or a piece of visual art. Some, like Jasmine Cottrell’s heart-expanding poems “You Are” and “Whirlwind,” are original works, while others unleash new visions of familiar creations. Currently available are Cottrell’s readings, Gerrin Delane Mitchell’s commanding delivery of a monologue from Robert O’Hara’s semi-autobiographical play Bootycandy, and Beth Thompson’s wild performance of Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric,” which includes dancing and delightfully goofy facial expressions that bring witty new meaning to Whitman’s description of “wonderful vigor.”
Now Hear This
Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery. SOMETHING OLD Ras Michael is a member of the Nyabinghi mansion of Rastafari and played a key role in introducing Nyabinghi drumming into reggae. Now in his 70s, he’s still producing music at a prolific clip, and his 27th album, Live by the Spirit, is a late-career highlight. His drums lead the proceedings at a stately pace as female backing vocals drift on a humid breeze. At first, it feels sedate enough to curl up and take a nap inside, but as with all religious music, the lyrics are a little alarming—fornicators and servants of Babylon should not expect to find kind words here. SOMETHING NEW
Portland Center Stage is cultivating radical empathy with free theater and music. During a virtual concert presented by Portland Center Stage, indie string pop violinist Joe Kye takes a break from his zany, zesty sounds to talk about public shaming. “I think that we should work toward some kind of compassionate system, but I don’t know how,” he says. “That’s up to you, Google. Make it happen. Chop, chop.” Compassion and empathy are recurring themes in PCS’s current catalog of free virtual events. In-person theater won’t return to the company’s stage until October, when Frida...A Self Portrait premieres, but its website is currently bursting with brilliant attractions—including concerts, poetry and visual art—that present radical empathy not as a challenge or chore but as a joy and a necessity. Sometimes that means provoking frank conversations about policing, sometimes it means preaching the gospel of self-love, and sometimes it means reminding audiences of the healing power of pure silliness. During a time dominated by trauma, the company is giving us the artistic equivalent of an embrace that enlightens and nurtures on multiple levels. Here are four must-watch PCS events—all of which will leave you feeling either smarter, happier or more hopeful than before.
MUSIC Written by: Daniel Bromfield | @bromf3
Livestream concert featuring Joe Kye and Niema Lightseed One of the highlights of Kye’s calmly showstopping concert is when he sings, “I’ve made mistakes/So have you.” While a lesser artist might have interpreted those words as a guilt trip, Kye uses them to soothe rattled souls. He has the kind of chill yet jovial vibe that makes you feel like everything is going to be OK. The concert is defined by Kye’s inimitable style—he sings and loops sounds to create a quirky and enveloping sonic universe—but it also features a lovely rendition of “The Rainbow Connection.” Kye channels Kermit in a way that feels more like transformation than imitation—listening to him makes you believe anew that something glorious awaits the lovers, the dreamers and you. Until the Flood When Dael Orlandersmith’s one-woman play about the murder of Michael Brown came to PCS in 2019, it struck Portland like a thunderclap. Watching Orlandersmith play characters of multiple ages, genders and races as they reacted to Brown’s death at the hands of Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson was like running through an emotional gauntlet—a gauntlet that left no assumption unchallenged. PCS is now offering a filmed version of Until the Flood by New York’s Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Some audiences may wonder what it’s like to experience it in the wake of Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd, but Orlandersmith’s play, which is based on her interviews with Missourians, is bigger than any single moment in time. Until the Flood is not just about Michael Brown—it’s about all the Michael Browns and all of the people impacted by their deaths. That’s why it was unmissable in 2019 and why it is unmissable today. SEE IT: Links to all of the programming listed are available at pcs.org/watch-now. Free.
If you’ve heard Joseph Shabason, it’s most likely as the lonely saxophone echoing Dan Bejar’s cryptic diatribes on Destroyer’s indie-rock classic Kaputt. On his debut solo album, The Fellowship, Shabason lets his horn vanish behind clouds of vintage synths and distortion, conjuring a beatific atmosphere that reflects the album’s inspiration in his upbringing within an insular Muslim community. It’s the kind of non-denominational prayer the O.G.’s of ambient music—Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Laraaji, and especially Jon Hassell—made their métier. SOMETHING LOCAL Marisa Anderson and William Tyler’s new single “Lost Futures” is out now in advance of the collaborative album of the same name out on Aug. 27. The two— she from Portland, he from Nashville—interlock beautifully on a guitar duet as rustic as an old cabin but modern enough to justify the title’s nod to techno-philosopher Mark Fisher. If you’re unfamiliar with Anderson’s work, check out the wonderful, bluesy vignettes on 2017’s Into the Light. Meanwhile, Tyler’s Behold the Spirit is one of past decade’s most creative folk guitar albums. SOMETHING ASKEW Progressive rock gets a bad rap for being technically dazzling at the expense of true emotion, but you wouldn’t make that mistake after hearing “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s Out of the Blue. Comprising two almost unbearably beautiful pieces (“Living a Double Life,” “Letter from Home”), one bona fide banger (“For David K.”), and one bona fide banger that’s also unbearably beautiful (“Next Time Might Be Your Time”), this 1978 stunner is deeply spiritual, empathetic and awestruck by the possibilities of where we’re from and where we’re going.
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
29
POTLANDER
The Other THC What is delta-8? Here’s an explainer on weed’s next big cannabinoid. BY B R I A N N A W H E E LE R
Chances are you’re already familiar with the contemporary slate of common cannabinoids: THC gets you high, CBD is therapeutic, CBN makes you sleepy and CBG is the mother cannabinoid from which all known cannabinoids are derived. The more we learn about cannabis, the more specialized and unique the cannabinoid database becomes, and now more than ever, cultivators are encouraged to experiment with the genetics of their crops beyond therapeutic or recreational uses. Which brings us to delta-8, or Δ8, the newest of the outlier cannabinoids to become a hot commodity. THC is shorthand for delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which we all recognize as the primary intoxicant in cannabis. But delta-8 is also a tetrahydrocannabinol. And though the two are chemical cousins, their effects on the endocannabinoid system are different enough to require distinct classifications. Delta-8’s effects are milder iterations of those made famous by the more familiar delta-9 THC: Euphoria, contentedness, relief from stress, pain and anxiety, and even dry mouth, bloodshot eyes and munchies are commonly described by enthusiasts. Essentially, delta-8 is a great intro to the most attractive effects of cannabis—an easy way to reacquaint yourself with contemporary herb without getting high out of your mind, and a solid crutch for a varsity-tolerance break. Check out these delta-8 products for yourself and see just how similar, and disparate, two THCs can be.
Plain Jane Delta 8 Cigarettes
Oregon Hemp Flower Moon Rocks
Medford’s Plain Jane has a number of delta-8 products, including gummies, pre-rolls, tinctures and carts, but its cigarettes are probably its most unique alternative product. These are visually indistinguishable from a regular pack of cigarettes, and relatively discreet smokes, the look and feel of which make them a great tool for quitting tobacco and keeping your withdrawals in check via some low-stakes THC action. While Plain Jane’s delta-8 hemp cigarettes can be game changers for low-tolerance consumers and users who like to consume in safe public spaces, Plain Jane’s delta-8 flower is also a notable stash box addition. The nugs are just as dense, sticky, and fragrant as any popular dispensary strain, which makes them extra fun to receive via USPS.
Moon rocks are typically designed for maximum impact with minimum consumption, and that concept extends to Oregon Hemp Flower’s delta-8 versions. Each nug is soaked in delta-8 oil extract and then dusted with CBG isolate and hemp kief. There is a certain novelty to these moon rocks. Consuming one isn’t likely to inspire any deep space astro traveling, but the effects are certainly reminiscent of highs spent on the edge of the universe, which has a certain value unto itself. The complexity of this moon rock’s combined elements is totally manageable for amateur cannabis users, but nuanced enough to be appreciated by high-dose smokers as well. Let’s be frank, if you’ve already got a predilection for moon rocks, a fat hemp nug drenched in delta-8 is probably deserving of your attention as well. Plus, imagine smoking one of these before a PTA meeting and just vibing while everyone else discusses the bake sale.
(3-6% Δ8)
Get it from: plainjane.com
(50% Δ8)
Get it from: oregonhempflower.org
Smokiez Sour Green Apple Gummiez (25 mg Δ8 per serving)
West Coast fave Smokiez has an expansive line of confections, including a pucker-inducing sour apple delta-8 gummy. These candies are made with a delta8 distillate, resulting in a candy that is free from any skunky suggestion of potent cannabis. Instead, users describe a mild edible experience that’s far more manageable than those of even the lowest-dose dispensary counter edibles. Users also report several therapeutic uses for these gummies, not limited to anti-anxiety, anti-nausea, and even mild pain relief. For consumers already using CBD therapeutically, integrating a daily delta-8 gummy could provide additional value to an established plant-wellness routine, while keeping your vibes notably euphoric and/or mellow. But, seriously, who needs an invitation to eat miracle medicine?
Get it from: AmericannaRx, 8654 NE Sandy Blvd., 971-254-4581, americannarx.com.
TKO Delta 8 Infused Blunt (9.9% Δ8)
Even when a tolerance withers, the appetite for a slow-burning, earthy-smelling, sweet-flavored blunt is hard to shake. For seasoned stoners, the impact of a blunt is irreplaceable. No pre-roll, vape, or edible can replace the deep, engulfing high of the all-time classic, but TKO’s infused delta-8 variety walks the line between mellow psychotropic headscape and heady contentment with toothsome ease. Brands like TKO are moving perceptions of hemp and cannabis back toward their common center, offering hemp flowers as finely cultivated as any of Oregon’s other top-shelf cannabis products. As the line blurs between recreational and therapeutic cannabis, products like TKOs will continue to stand out for offering both therapeutic efficacy as well as the mildest of trippy vibes.
Get it from: Tetra Cannabis, 4011 SE Belmont St., 503-206-7559, tetrapdx.com. 30
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
FLASHBACK
THIS WEEK IN 1987
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
31
Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com R U T H E R F O R D FA L L S
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. As May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we’ve rounded up five illuminating documentary and narrative features made by AAPI filmmakers that skillfully highlight significant issues in their respective communities.
American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs (2013) Grace Lee Boggs was a writer, civil rights activist, feminist and one of the most important figures of the Asian American sociopolitical movement. Her astonishing and long life, which includes over 75 years of radical leftist activism, is exquisitely documented here by filmmaker Grace Lee (no relation). Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, PBS, Vudu, YouTube. IMDB
FUNNY LADY: Jana Schmieding plays Reagan, a member of the fictional Minishonka nation, in one of Peacock’s newest sitcoms.
An American Tale
Former Oregonian Jana Schmieding is the breakout star on the new Indigenous-led comedy Rutherford Falls. BY C H A N C E S O L E M - P F EI FER
@chance_s_p
32
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
SEE IT: Rutherford Falls streams on Peacock.
This black-and-white drama centers on a pair of Korean American brothers who help run their father’s shoe store in central L.A., as well as their unlikely friendship with an 11-year-old Black girl. Set on the first day of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the film deftly examines the strained, complicated relationship between Korean and Black communities. Amazon Prime, Hoopla, Kanopy, Roku, Tubi, Vudu.
Seadrift (2019) Along the Gulf Coast in 1979, a Vietnamese fisherman shot and killed a white crabber in an act of self-defense. With racial tensions in Texas already high due to an influx of Vietnamese refugees, this event was the catalyst for an eruption of hate crimes perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan. Directed by Tim Tsai, this 68-minute documentary tells a vital and little-known story. Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Kanopy.
Lingua Franca (2019) Up-and-coming triple threat Isabel Sandoval writes, directs and stars in her feature debut—a warmly intimate drama about Olivia, an undocumented Filipina trans woman (Sandoval) working as a caregiver for Olga, an elderly woman in Brooklyn. Brimming with empathy and compassion for its subjects, Lingua Franca shines a light on the harsh realities of marginalized American immigrants. Netflix. SUNDANCE
All autumn leaves and red brick, the town of Rutherford Falls is an idealized but embattled Northeastern backdrop for the new Peacock original comedy series bearing the same name. Also fictional are the Minishonka, the Indigenous nation adjacent to the town. Invented tribal people aside, Rutherford Falls star and staff writer Jana Schmieding still feels the dynamics of her Oregon youth resonating throughout the new show, created by Ed Helms, Sierra Teller Ornelas and Mike Schur. The similarities exist in how the show’s townsfolk interact with the Minishonka—what Schmieding calls a “blissful liberalism” that can translate to “a safe version of erasure and racism.” That dynamic smacks of her experiences growing up in and around Canby and Eugene and how white Oregonians related to her Lakota family and larger Native community. “I grew up around a lot of people who were very well meaning in their approach to diversity or what have you,” Schmieding says. “But if it’s just not convenient, it’s frowned upon.” Audiences will perceive that same strain in the heartfelt sitcom’s central relationship. Nathan Rutherford (Helms) supports best friend Reagan Wells (Schmieding) and her Minishonka cultural center in theory, yet always seems to prioritize celebrating and preserving his own family’s colonial history when it counts. Schmieding is quick to remind viewers that Rutherford Falls is a comedy from The Good Place and Brooklyn Nine-Nine writers and producers, not a scathing political disquisition. And the performances are winsome and playful across the board: Helms as an earnest ignoramus, Schmieding as an excitable try-hard who can’t quite win her own community’s approval, and Michael Greyeyes, who toggles brilliantly between knowing irony and genuine daunting, as casino boss Terry Thomas. Still, the cultural milestones reached by Rutherford Falls are momentous. It’s no exaggeration to call the show the first mainstream American TV series with multidimensional and distinct Indigenous perspectives, and Schmieding’s own career arc can testify. After 11 years of live comedy in New York and three more in Los Angeles
searching for anyone to read her writing samples, she nearly quit show business altogether. “I felt I had given it my best and was ready to pack it up and go move back in with my parents,” she says. “I just was like, ‘I’ll go to Oregon and mellow out and see if I can… work at a bar?’” That’s when Rutherford Falls showrunner Sierra Teller Ornelas, who is Navajo, phoned to offer Schmieding her first staff writer position. Elated, Schmieding still had no inkling she’d be starring as well. That opportunity grew out of the writers’ room and chemistry with Helms. “I was nervous,” Schmieding says of her screen test for Reagan. “But I was also with Ed, who’s my colleague. Which is so weird to say! Ed Helms is my colleague. Still I can’t quite get over it.” Rutherford Falls also needed to invent an Indigenous tribe that registered as convincingly Northeastern but didn’t infringe on any real history. Schmieding says the totality of five different Native experiences—Lakota, Dakota, Mohawk, Navajo, Paiute—immediately accelerated the narrative past Native Studies 101 and the explication burden that often accompanies being the lone Indigenous writer on a project. “Although we are 540 different sovereign nations, languages and identities, we have all had a similar experience with colonialism,” Schmieding says. “We came in with a common language and experience and were able to just bring our different points of view.” With Rutherford Falls largely acclaimed and one of the first high-profile Peacock originals, it now seems unlikely Schmieding will explore early retirement in Oregon. Even so, she often looks toward the Pacific Northwest to credit her parents (who’ve already watched the series four times) and grandparents—all of them educators—with inspiring and honing her skills to fight Native erasure. “They always were very adamant about making sure we knew how to talk about our identity and championing Native history and the contemporary Native experience in our own lives,” says Schmieding. “In some ways, that has with it a special kind of pressure, but I have found a way to work that into all my creative work.”
Gook (2017)
Minding the Gap (2018) In this highly acclaimed and Oscar-nominated documentary, Bing Liu filmed himself and his friends over the course of 12 years as they bonded over a rabid passion for skateboarding in Rockford, Ill. The trio copes with family issues, but at the local skatepark, all of that melts away. An essential comingof-age tale about racial identity, generational trauma and the perils of modern masculinity. Hulu.
MOVIES SUNDANCE
TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
The Killing of Two Lovers Robert Machoian’s family drama knows it’s freighted with a foreboding title, and violence looms immediately over this story of a freshly separated couple. The longer it takes for that title to come true, the more we nervously rifle through its possible meanings. Even so, The Killing of Two Lovers slips into an inquisitive mode, deeper than pure tension. We witness father and Western Utah day laborer David (Clayne Crawford) make genuine and misguided efforts to resist the deadbeat-dad status that his moving out and family visiting hours suggest. While some of the supporting acting verges on stilted (given the film’s overall earthiness), The Killing of Two Lovers is largely a director’s showcase. Known mostly for short documentaries, Machoian concocts an internal universe of David’s rage through sound design full of slamming doors and endless creaking. And the complex, uncut blocking of a key marital squabble against a high-desert horizon blends stark indie filmmaking with Edward Albee-esque theatrical instincts. The particular shape of this failing marriage confronts the characters’ expectations as much as the audience’s. It’s easy (perhaps sickeningly preferable) to believe David is living out a filmed murder ballad, or elegy for faded youth and manhood. The reality is both simpler and more complicated than all that country poetry. Realities always are. R. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. Amazon Prime, Cinema 21, Google Play, Vudu.
Queen Marie
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. : THIS MOVIE IS A STEAMING PILE.
ALSO PLAYING RK/RKAY
Mahboob is a fictional character, but that doesn’t stop him from making real-life mayhem in this cheeky comedy from Indian filmmaker Rajat Kapoor. Kapoor stars as RK, a somber visionary who directs himself in a film about Mahboob, a mustachioed romantic who is murdered in a forest. Rather than face his morbid fate, Mahboob hails a taxi that inexplicably transports him out of the film and into RK’s life, where he pleads for his creator to spare him. RK/RKAY could have been a Truman Showstyle meditation on faith and free will, but Kapoor is more interested in asking witty questions. How do you report a fictitious person missing to the police? How do you return him to your imagination? What do you do when his diabolical nemesis (Ranvir Shorey) follows him into the real world with a lethal grudge? The answers that the film offers are delightfully clever and deliciously bizarre. Kapoor seems to be meditating on what happens when a director is drawn too deeply into his art, but allegorical baggage never weighs down the film. He keeps the mood playful, setting the stage for a magnificently wacky ending that suggests the only thing stranger than cinema is life. NR. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Virtual Cinema.
Our Towns When journalists Deborah and James Fallows conclude their new HBO documentary in Bend, the Central Oregon hub is held up as a beacon, having reinvented itself into a year-round tourist destination after weathering the 1980s timber crash. Evolving municipal identity runs through all eight profiles in Our Towns, based on the Fallowses’ 2018 book of the same name. While the film’s many drone-captured sweeps of marshes, highways and farmland are simultaneously majestic and too polished, the most useful takeaway from Our Towns is a psychological prophecy. The Fallowses note that although Americans are routinely intransigent when it comes to their national politics, they often believe their communities’ outlooks to be different. And with enough of that exceptionalism, cities can actually become positively idiosyncratic. California’s Inland Empire boxing gyms double as chess clubs. West Virginia public radio stations leap to the national stage. Small-town Maine newspapers stay robust against all odds. If Our Towns has a major shortfall, it too often employs industrial narratives as a crutch for town health and identity. Today’s innovations are framed as victories for locales like Bend, but the exit of the previous industry only shows how fickle and exploitative commercial definitions can be. Luckily, though, the guiding principle here is classic, unassuming human interest—may it never decline, crash or outsource. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. HBO, HBO Max.
Queen Marie of Romania once wondered, “What can a woman do in a modern war?” In the wake of World War I, she showed what a woman could achieve in the aftermath of that conflict when she journeyed to Paris and unleashed her political prowess on the Treaty of Versailles, which led to Romania doubling in size. It didn’t hurt that the British-born monarch bedazzled the press—a talent that is captured perfectly by Roxana Lupu, the star of Queen Marie of Romania, an elegantly entertaining biopic directed by Alexis Sweet Cahill. Marie spends the film subtly outsmarting bloviators like Woodrow Wilson (Patrick Drury), but she has both the cleverness of a Jane Austen heroine and the steeliness of Ripley or Sarah Connor. When the domineering Lupu declares, “I am Queen Victoria’s granddaughter. Never forget that,” her voice crackles with the fervor of belief. Like many movies about pompous Europeans chatting in lovingly decorated rooms, Queen Marie of Romania can be claustrophobic, but Lupu keeps the film from becoming dry or drab. Whether you’re obsessed or repulsed by royalty, her performance will leave you in awe of the power of the crown when it is wielded by the right woman. NR. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. On Demand.
The Columnist “Never read the comments.” That is the golden rule of online content creation. And yet, when your job requires any sort of internet presence, it’s nearly impossible to avoid. Femke Boot (Katja Herbers) is a columnist for a popular Dutch magazine. Because her articles tend to focus on women and/or politics, Femke is constantly being harassed with vile Twitter replies and death threats—all perpetrated by men. This is an all too common problem for women who
dare to post their opinions online, and Femke is justifiably fed up. So, when the police won’t do anything, she takes matters into her own hands by going on a killing spree. This is where the catharsis is supposed to kick in. And it does, somewhat, but there is a vital nuance missing. What the male writers and director of this icy thriller gloss over is that we don’t necessarily purely want revenge on these bullies. While retaliation is always cinematic and awesome, women really just want to be seen as people, not faceless vessels for others to project their own insecurities onto. As a result, the end product feels flattened and surface level, its innovative and relevant premise held back from reaching its full potential. Still cool to see bigots get wrecked, though. NR. MIA VICINO. Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube.
Spiral The newest chapter in the Book of Saw stars Chris Rock (who also executive produces) as Zeke, a cynical detective on the hunt for the infamous Jigsaw killer. Though the original Jigsaw has been dead for years, a copycat who exclusively targets and tortures dirty cops has sprung up in his place. It gets personal when Zeke’s father (Samuel L. Jackson) goes missing, and he finds himself at the center of the new Jigsaw’s twisted game. Discussing the politics of a Saw movie feels counterproductive (I wanna talk traps!), but when the villain uses a pig puppet to literally say, “I want to reform the police,” one’s hand is forced. Spiral seems to have a noble goal of exposing the force’s corruption and brutality, and in the first half, it even succeeds. But as the plot unravels, so does the movie’s political statement, leading to a disaster of an ending that’s obscenely disturbing—and not even in the gleefully gory way that the franchise admittedly tends to nail. If the traps were more memora-
ble, maybe they could atone, but aside from the agonizing opening scene involving a man’s tongue and a railway train, they’re lacking in the clever creativity that made the series a cultural mainstay. That’s not to say I won’t watch the inevitable sequel, though. R. MIA VICINO. Bridgeport, Cascade, Cedar Hills, Cornelius, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, Vancouver Mall.
What Lies West Although centered on two very different more-than-girls, notyet-women paired by fate for a late-summer escapade of unexpected resonance, What Lies West never quite feels like a coming-ofage flick. That’s probably because none of the characters, young or old, ever do. The world of overburdened, emotionally stunted burnouts unwilling or unable to grow up should’ve rightly fueled a scathing satire. Nicolette (Nicolette Kaye Ellis), a floundering recent theater grad-turned-hopeful social media influencer, certainly veers cartoonish, as does the helicoptering yoga mom (Anna Peterson) who hires Nicolette to babysit her misanthropic 16-yearold daughter Chloe (Chloe Moore) for reasons impossible to take seriously. The young women manage to bond and embark on a 40-mile hike across Sonoma County—a sloppily planned trudge undertaken by clumsy amateurs with a vague purpose and poor direction. Despite all that, some adventures ensue. As much as the film trembles before the suffocating oppression of parental fears, this is the safest possible telling of an absolutely meaningless tale. Writer-director Jessica Ellis’ debut is formulaic and panders to its only conceivable audience: the ever-growing throngs of nascent auteurs inspired by the idea that anyone can make movies, which is What Lies West surely proves. NR. JAY HORTON. Amazon Prime, Google Play, On Demand.
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
33
ART N’ COMICS!
JACK KENT’S
Jack draws exactly what he sees n’ hears from the streets. IG @sketchypeoplepdx | kentcomics.com
ARE YOU AN ARTIST? Be a Willamette Week featured artist! Any art style is welcome! Let’s share your art! Contact us at art@wweek.com. 34
Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
JONESIN’
Week of May 27
©2021 Rob Brezsny
by Matt Jones
"That Tracks"--and yeah, it's a bit of a stretch.
ARIES (March 21-April 19)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)
"Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than silence," declares an Arab proverb. That's a high standard to aspire to. Even at our very best, when we're soaring with articulate vitality, it's hard to be more beautiful than silence for more than, say, 50 percent of the time. But here's a nice surprise: You could exceed that benchmark during the next three weeks. You're primed to be extra expressive and interesting. When you speak, you could be more beautiful than silence as much as 80 percent of the time.
Libran author Antonio Tabucchi described the frame of mind I recommend for you in the coming days. I hope you'll be eager to embrace his far-reaching empathy. Like him, I trust you will expand your capacity to regard the whole world as your home. Here's Tabucchi's declaration: "Like a blazing comet, I’ve traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear. I’ve been a man, a woman, an old person, a little girl, I’ve been the crowds on the grand boulevards of the capital cities of the West, I’ve been the serene Buddha of the East. I’ve been the sun and the moon."
TAURUS (April 20-May 20) Here's the definition of an emotional support animal: "a companion animal that provides therapeutic benefit to a person with a mental or psychiatric disability." I don't mean to be flippant, but I think every one of us has at least one mental or psychiatric disability that would benefit from the company of an emotional support animal. If you were ever going to acquire such an ally, the coming weeks would be prime time to do so. I encourage you to also seek out other kinds of help and guidance and stimulation that you'd benefit from having. It's the resource-gathering phase of your cycle. (PS: Cesar Chavez said: "You are never strong enough that you don't need help.")
GEMINI (May 21-June20)
ACROSS 1 Deceptive maneuver 6 Wine bar choice 9 Bolivia's constitutional capital 14 Singer Lennox 15 Zamboni surface 16 Thees and _ _ _ 17 *Oldest of the five original MTV VJs, and host of the KISS "unmasking" special 19 Gridiron kicks 20 "Next one's on me" 21 "Bali _ _ _" ("South Pacific" song) 22 A long time 24 "Pericles, Prince of _ _ _" 26 Angry Birds box that goes boom 28 *American Samoa village which is home to the territory's only movie theater 31 Until this moment 33 "Monty Python and the Holy _ _ _" 35 "Robin Hood: _ _ _ in Tights" 36 Elephant-snatching bird of myth 38 Amazed acronym in chats 39 News station
54 *1997 Hanson charttopper
27 USC athletes
56 Word before cow or horse
30 Printer fluid
58 Prison film weapon 59 "We Have the Meats" advertiser 61 Big flightless bird
29 Not so much 32 Over the _ _ _ 34 _ _ _ Darya (central Asian river)
63 Carbon compound suffix
37 "It looks like you're writing a letter" Microsoft helper
64 Harmon of "Rizzoli & Isles"
39 How-to presentations
66 *Program you might use in a smartphone emulator (otherwise, they'd run on their own)
40 Quick haircut
69 "_ _ _ say more?"
43 '70s-'80s "Club" mentioned in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"
70 Get the picture 71 Missile monitoring gp. 72 Air Force student 73 Possessed 74 Final Oldsmobile model DOWN 1 Tex-Mex offering 2 Takes pleasure in 3 Harm 4 "Boyz N the Hood" actress Long 5 Silicon Valley industry, briefly 6 Ascendant 7 "Foucault's Pendulum" author Umberto
41 Rooted (through) 42 Dermal opening
44 Tim _ _ _ (Australian cookie) 48 "Whatever happens, happens" 49 Leaked slowly 51 "_ _ _ here!" ("Poltergeist" catchphrase) 52 Musical ineptitude 53 Be extra, with "it" 55 Wedding cake figurine, maybe 57 Fuse box unit 60 Broad band? 62 Arm bone 64 Mandela's former org.
8 Prohibit
65 Org. for teachers
9 Twin city to Minneapolis
67 Shepherd's pie bit
44 T as in testing?
10 _ _ _ Peak, Kilimanjaro's highest point (and Swahili for "freedom")
68 ISP your grandparents might still use
45 "Hazy" beer variety
11 Buyer and user
46 Installation in a bar, maybe
12 Wagon wheel groove
40 Track and field athletes during the Tokyo Olympics (and a hint to the starred theme answers)
47 Line up a cornhole bag 48 Goes around 50 Game with numbered balls
13 Curvy letter 18 "Call Me _ _ _" (Mayim Bialik sitcom) 23 Puzzling riddle
last week’s answers
A blogger named Valentine Cassius reports, "A tiny old woman came into the deli where I work and ordered a 'wonderful turkey sandwich.' When asked what she wanted on the sandwich other than turkey, she said 'all of your most wonderful toppings.'" Here's my response to that: The tiny old woman's approach usually isn't very effective. It's almost always preferable to be very specific in knowing what you want and asking for it. But given the current astrological omens, I'll make an exception for you in the next three weeks. I think you should be like the tiny old woman: Ask life, fate, people, spirits, and gods to bring you all of their most wonderful toppings.
CANCER (June 21-July 22) "I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held," testifies Cancerian novelist Erin Morgenstern. "Tired of trying to control what cannot be controlled." Here's good news for her and all Cancerians. You have cosmic permission to surrender—to no longer try to hold things together that can't be held or try to control what can't be controlled. Maybe in a few weeks you will have gained so much relaxed new wisdom that you'll be inspired to make fresh attempts at holding together and controlling. But that's not for you to worry and wonder about right now. Your assignment is to nurture your psychological and spiritual health by letting go.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) Philosopher Georges Bataille wrote, "The lesson of *Wuthering Heights*, of Greek tragedy and, ultimately, of all religions, is that there is an instinctive tendency towards divine intoxication which the rational world of calculation cannot bear. This tendency is the opposite of Good. Good is based on common interest, which entails consideration of the future." I'm going to dissent from Bataille's view. I agree that we all have an instinctive longing for divine intoxication, but I believe that the rational world needs us to periodically fulfill our longing for divine intoxication. In fact, the rational world grows stale and begins to decay without these interludes. So the truth is that divine intoxication is crucial for the common good. I'm telling you this, Leo, because I think the coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to claim a healthy dose of divine intoxication.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Virgo actor Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982) won the most prestigious awards possible for her work in films, TV, and theater: Oscars, Emmys, and a Tony. She was intelligent, talented, and beautiful. Life was a challenge when she was growing up, though. She testified, "I was the shyest human ever invented, but I had a lion inside me that wouldn’t shut up." If you have a sleeping lion inside you, Virgo, I expect it to wake up soon. And if your inner lion is already wide awake and you have a decent relationship with it, I suspect it may soon begin to come into its fuller glory.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) Author James Frey writes, "I used to think I was tough, but then I realized I wasn’t. I was fragile and I wore thick armor. And I hurt people so they couldn’t hurt me. And I thought that was what being tough was, but it isn’t." I agree with Frey. The behavior he describes has nothing to do with being tough. So what does? That's important for you to think about, because the coming weeks will be an excellent time to be tough in the best senses of the word. Here are my definitions: Being tough means never letting people disrespect you or abuse you, even as you cultivate empathy for how wounded everyone is. Being tough means loving yourself with such unconditional grace that you never act unkind out of a neurotic need to over-defend yourself. Being tough means being a compassionate truth-teller.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Fragile intensity or intense fragility? Ferocious gentleness or gentle ferocity? Vulnerable strength or strong vulnerability? I suspect these will be some of the paradoxical themes with which you'll be delicately wrestling in the coming days. Other possibilities: sensitive audacity or audacious sensitivity; fluidic fire or fiery fluidity; crazy wisdom or wise craziness; penetrating softness or soft penetration; shaky poise or poised shakiness. My advice is to regard rich complexities like these as blessings, not confusions or inconveniences.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) Birds that live in cities have come up with an ingenious adaptation. They use humans' abandoned cigarette butts to build their nests. Somehow they discovered that nicotine is an insectide that dispels pests like fleas, lice, and mites. Given your current astrological aspects, I'm guessing you could make metaphorically comparable adjustments in your own life. Are there ways you could use scraps and discards to your benefit?
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) A blogger named Raven testifies, "My heart is a toddler throwing a tantrum in a store and my brain is the parent who continues to shop." I'm pleased to inform you, Aquarius, that your heart will NOT act like that toddler in the coming weeks. In fact, I believe your heart will be like a sage elder with growing wisdom in the arts intimacy and tenderness. In my vision of your life, your heart will guide you better than maybe it ever has. Now here's a message to your brain: Listen to your heart!
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) The Voyager 1 space probe, launched by NASA in 1977, is now more than 14 billion miles from Earth. In contrast, the farthest humans have ever penetrated into the ground is 7.62 miles. It's the Kola Superdeep Borehole in northwest Russia. Metaphorically speaking, these facts provide an evocative metaphor for the following truth: Most humans feel more confident and expansive about exploring the outer world than their inner realms. But I hope that in the coming weeks you will buck that trend, as you break all previous records for curious and luxurious exploration into your deepest psychic depths.
HOMEWORK: What image or symbol represents the fulfillment of your noble desires? FreeWillAstrology.com
25 Chilling Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes
©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.
freewillastrology.com The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at
1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700 Willamette Week MAY 19, 2021 wweek.com
35
CLASSIFIEDS
Where do you read Willamette Week?
TO PLACE AN AD, CONTACT:
MICHAEL DONHOWE
503-243-2122 mdonhowe@wweek.com CASH for INSTRUMENTS
Tradeupmusic.com SE 503-236-8800 NE 503-335-8800
Steve Greenberg Tree Service
Pruning and removals, stump grinding, 24-hour emergency service. Licensed/Insured. CCB#67024. Free estimates: 503-284-2077
TRADEUPMUSIC.COM
Buying, selling, instruments of every shape and size. Open 11am-7pm every day. 4701 SE Division & 1834 NE Alberta.
Drive New Cars
M-F Day/Swing Ft/Pt North Portland Men and Women 360-718-7443
Complete Yard Service Senior Discounts We do it all! Trimming, hedges & shrubs, pruning, bark dust, gutter cleaning, yard debris pickup & weeding, blackberries and ivy removal, staining, pressure washing & water sealing 503-235-0491 or 503-853-0480
MANAGEMENT: adidas America, Inc. seeks Sr Manager, Strategic Project Management to work in Portland, Oregon. Dvlp, supprt & manage key strategic initiatives, prjcts; prgrms from planning to executn across the US org. Degree & commensurate exp req’d. Apply online at https://jobs.adidas-group.com.
STAY SAFE, STAY INFORMED. WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER.
50316 Columbia River Hwy. 30 Scappoose
#READWW
Only 15 miles from NW Portland
Live Music Schedule
Tag us to be featured
Wed May 19 Chuck Warda 630pm Thur May 20 Lynn Conover and Dave Reisch 630pm Fri May 21 Lynn Conover and Gravel 630pm Sat May 22 Turtle VanDemarr, Dave Reisch, Lynn Conover 630pm Sun May 23 Bob Dylan Birthday Party 630pm 1pm McCarthy Creek w Special Guests 630pm 6 to 9pm Rich Landar, Scott Gillan, Justin John, Ron Ricco 630pm Wed May 26 Annette Lowman Trio 630pm Thur May 27 Amy Bleu 630pm Fri May 28 Christine Yvette & Crescendo 630pm Sat May 29 Freddy Trujillo Band 630pm Sun May 30 Bob Soper Irish Music 3 - 530pm McCarthy Creek 6 - 9pm Wed June 2 Petty Cash 630pm Thur June 3 John Lowell Mitchell w Lynn Conover 630pm Fri June 4 Quick and Easy Boys 630pm Sat June 5 Campfire Boys 630pm Sun June 6 McCarthy Creek 5pm Wed June 8 Little Sue Weaver w Marilee Hord 630pm
Call for Tickets! 503-830-4681 Wed - Sat start 6:30pm Sun 5pm - All Shows Are Outside
Sunlan Lighting For all your lightbulb fixtures & parts
WWEEK.COM
3901 N Mississippi Ave | 503.281.0453 Essential Business Hours | 9:00 to 5:30 Monday - Friday | 11:00 to 4:00 Saturday Sunlan cartoons by Kay Newell “The Lightbulb Lady” Facebook / Twitter Instagram / Google
sunlanlighting.com