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DIALOGUE
FINDINGS
SUZETTE SMITH
Last December, Beaverton-based track star Shelby Houlihan’s Olympic dreams came to an sudden end when she tested positive for nandrolone, an anabolic steroid. Houlihan claims she’s never taken performance-enhancing drugs, and that the failed drug test was the result of a pig stomach burrito she ate from a Beaverton food cart. According to the World Anti-Doping Agency, pig organs can contain trace amounts of nandrolone—enough for the steroid to show up on drug tests. Houlihan hasn’t named the food cart that served the alleged burrito, so WW set out to find it (“Eating on the Run,” July 7, 2021). We found three food carts that fit Houlihan’s description, and taste-tested a burrito at each one. Here’s what our readers had to say: RECALL IN THE PARK, PAGE 8
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 47, ISSUE 37 Don’t send your 80-year-old mother-in-law to the Pendleton Round-Up. 6 If you are sent to seg, prison officials will not refund your cooling towel. 7 One of the biggest donors to the Wheeler recall runs a screenprinting company—thus the hoodies. 8 The police union can veto ideas to replace police officers with unarmed crisis teams. 9 The pavement in Lents was hot enough last month to slow cook a pot roast . 11 Perhaps Portland should replace neighborhood associations with climate associations. 14 Andre 3000 is hanging out
Portland still loves Bastille Day. 17 A good taco salad is hard to find in Portland. 18 Parts and Service is a biker bar where patrons will gladly talk to newcomers about dogs. 19 The frontwoman of Henry Cow sounds like “a Roald Dahl headmistress.” 23 The top-selling canna-beverage in Washington is Major’s Volcanic Orange Mango. 24 You can watch all 37 Shakespeare plays performed by three people
in less than two hours this month. 23
A Portland animation studio won an award at Cannes for its updated take on The Oregon Trail game. 26
at Portland open mics—while carrying a double-barrel flute. 16
ON THE COVER:
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
Urban climate change researcher Dr. Vivek Shandas, photo by Chris Nesseth.
Shelby Houlihan says a burrito ended her Olympic career. We set out to find it.
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Todd Morgan, via Facebook: “You have to now eat it and do a steroid test to see if it shows up. C’mon, reporter, you can’t have a headline like that without following through. If it shows up on yours, too, she may have a case.” Jacob Samples, via Facebook: “In all seriousness, the Olympic committee needs to get their heads out of their elite asses and ease up on these situations/ allow an appeals process. A burrito? Seriously!?” JT, via wweek.com: “This whole story (the runner’s story, not the article) is such BS. I am a big fan of pig and cow innards in Mexican food, and there is no way that a person could mistake carne asada with buche. Apples and oranges.” Pete Bunke, via Facebook: “Burritos are the new poppyseed muffins.” Dubious, via wweek.com: “Finish the investigation—get five people to eat the burrito, get yourselves tested, and then write an update to the story.”
Dr. Know
@trevinoraymond8, via Twitter: “As an Olympian, I’m surprised this is part of her diet. Did she like the burrito?” Lea Belton, via Facebook: “No one gives a fuck about this burrito. The real question is when are we gonna stop disqualifying athletes based on bullshit like weed?” Dan Anderson, via Facebook: “My entire life could be described as a quest for a performance-enhancing burrito.”
NOT ALL FRIDGES LEAK
I appreciate your article warning us all about the dangers of HFCs [Dr. Know, WW, July 7, 2021]. However, as an individual who works in the HVAC industry, I take issue with some of your facts. The HVAC system is a closed loop; the only reason it emits refrigerant is if it develops a leak or someone tampers with it. You should tell the whole story before trying to convince people that these units just normally “emit” HFCs. Still, I would love it if we could find an excellent, non-environmentally degrading alternative to what we have. Gary Stoltenburg Dr. Know responds: You’re right that, under ideal conditions, the refrigerant stays in the system until it’s removed by a qualified technician. That said, in our less than ideal real world, fully 60% of HFC production is used to replace refrigerant that has either leaked away slowly or been rapidly vented into the great beyond by idiots like me, as I described in my column. It’s estimated that half of all HFCs ever produced have already been vented into the atmosphere, humanity’s best intentions notwithstanding. 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
Is there any protocol for naming stuff after public figures? I like the new bike bridge over I-84, and Earl Blumenauer seems like a good guy. But what if he goes schmuck in the future? Shouldn’t we wait until people tip over before memorializing them? —Michael F. So far our region has been pretty lucky on the naming front. Bruising as our scandals have been, at least they never included the added headache of figuring out what to do about the Robert W. Packwood Secluded Scenic Parking Area or the Neil Goldschmidt Home for Troubled Girls. Rep. Blumenauer seems like a pretty safe choice for a guy who’s still alive—he’s not exactly known as a rake, and at 72 one assumes his prime schmucking days are largely behind him. In any case, it’s not like choosing a dead honoree guarantees that no skeletons will tumble out of their closet at the estate sale—just ask the Vatican’s Order of St. Gregory the Great, also known as the folks who made British media personality (and posthumously exposed serial pedophile) Jimmy Savile a Knight Commander. New public works projects are usually named as part of the planning process, which includes a committee specifically charged with choosing a name. High-profile projects often try to whip up enthu-
siasm by getting the public involved in the naming process (Tilikum Crossing, the MAX), while less flashy ones may choose to honor an official, living or dead, who long championed the project (Vera Katz Esplanade, Darlene Hooley Pedestrian Bridge.) Then again, sometimes it’s just random! Terry Schrunk was mayor of Portland from 1957 to 1973, presiding over (among other things) a fairly brutal crackdown on gay and lesbian gathering spots in the mid-1960s. (At one point, Schrunk demanded that then- Gov. Mark Hatfield revoke the liquor licenses of all suspected gay bars—a plea that Hatfield ignored.) You may say 1964 was a different time, but according to multiple sources (including U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy), Schrunk also took bribes from the mob, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t cool even at the height of Beatlemania. Anyway, Schrunk died in 1975, shortly after the completion of a then-unnamed public plaza on Southwest Madison Street. Lucky timing! You can guess what happened next. But hey, it could be worse: At least we’re not stuck with New York’s honest-to-God Donald J. Trump State Park. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
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Need something to do? Got a special event to share? Check out wweek.com/calendar to find out what’s happening around town.
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THE FIRE THIS TIME: The Bootleg Fire in Southern Oregon is now the largest in the United States, exploding to 316 square miles—twice the size of Portland. Visit wweek.com to read reports on the ground from our correspondent.
SCHOOL DISTRICT WILL STOP USING HISTORY BOOK THAT ALARMED PARENTS: Portland Public Schools says it will no longer use a set of history books in its classrooms after a parent complained and WW reported on the books’ racist portrayals of Black people and Native Americans. Danielle Blake, parent of a then-fifth grader at Capitol Hill Elementary, first complained about A History of US to her daughter’s teacher in 2019. WW first reported on her concerns earlier this spring (“Missing History,” March 3, 2021). This month, a district administrator told Blake that a committee recommended the books no longer be used in PPS classrooms, and that all school principals be informed of that recommendation. “The text contains historical inaccuracies, which may cause harm to students of color in particular,” Isaac Cardona said in his summary of the committee’s finding. Blake says the decision took far too much time and effort to obtain, but she’s happy with the outcome. “Most significant to me in the reasons stated for their findings is the fact that they…acknowledge the harm it does, particularly to educators and students of color,” Blake says. “They are taking a risk by openly acknowledging this, and I see it as a meaningful step.” A district spokesman says PPS will suggest to teachers supplemental texts better suited to middle-schoolers. COUNTY GIVES $100 TO NEWLY VACCINATED: This past weekend, Multnomah County began offering $100 to people who received a first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as $50 for a second dose. For a single dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the county will provide $150. The incentive appears to be among the first in which an Oregon government has given cash bonuses to people who get vaccinated. It also comes after the Oregon Health Authority offered $100 grocery cards at the Oregon Convention Center mass vaccination clinic beginning last month and at other local clinics for weeks, organizers said. At two vaccine clinics in East Portland, which organizers said vaccinated more than 50 people apiece this weekend, visitors didn’t always know they’d receive a free gift card—so their decision to get vaccinated wasn’t always tied to the money. But the gift cards are intended to get recipients to spread the word to neighbors. “There are many reasons that people who are eligible have not yet been vaccinated,” says county spokesperson
Kate Yeiser. “For some, those reasons include financial barriers. We want to remove as many barriers as we can.” DOJ REPORT SLAMS PORTLAND RIOT SQUAD TRAINING: A draft of a new report evaluating the Portland Police Bureau’s compliance with a 2012 settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice criticizes training of the Rapid Response Team, a division of about 50 officers who volunteered to police racial justice protests and who resigned en masse in mid-June, effectively disbanding the unit. The report, compiled by the law firm Rosenbaum & Associates LLP, says the Police Bureau typically trains RRT members twice a year, but an initial training scheduled for the first quarter of 2021 was canceled after the DOJ and community monitors raised questions about the Police Bureau’s lesson plans for the now-defunct riot squad. “We expressed concern that the training focused largely on how to perform certain force-related tasks (e.g., how to use a baton, or particular munitions), with little or no attention to why or when such force would be appropriate,” the report says. “Realizing the RRT lesson plans were deficient, PPB canceled the training.” The report further criticizes a training held in March, saying, “RRT members did not seem to take the training seriously” and one of the officers who attended admitted to “multitasking.” PRO-CHOICE GROUP LOSES NATIONAL BACKING: The state’s leading advocates for reproductive rights have been dropped by their national umbrella organization. On June 13, NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon executive director Christel Allen sent donors an email announcing a major restructuring. “NARAL Pro-Choice America’s board of directors voted to fully nationalize the organization, by eliminating all 11 independent state affiliate organizations, including NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon—a major change in the 50-year structure of the organization,” Allen wrote. “We are disappointed by this decision, especially as it was made without our input and against our recommendation.” Allen pledged that the Oregon nonprofit would continue its work. She tells WW that the board and staff “have several major decisions to make at our upcoming board meeting in August,” including whether to fully disaffiliate from the national group and whether to change its name.
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6/29/21 1:14 PM
WESLEY LAPOINTE
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
SEVEN QUESTIONS ABOUT
The Delta Variant
Graven: In Vermont, they have a very high vaccination rate, much higher than ours, and the case rate that was similar to ours. Their COVID cases are going down, down, down. It doesn’t look like there’s going to be any waves there. Oregon has seen slow but steady decline. Are we going to go back up or are we going to hang tight for a while? The Delta variant’s probably going to be the biggest factor.
How much more likely is the Delta variant to spread than other variants? Graven: For every person infected, they infect seven others. The original virus is about three—and seven is more than twice as transmissible.
Is the Delta variant more likely to cause worse outcomes? Graven: It’s kind of been an open question if it’s a more severe disease once you do get it. I don’t have that built into my model. The hospitalization rate for COVID in Oregon has not gone down, which you might not expect if you’re vaccinating all your high-risk people. But there’s plenty of high-risk people out there. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: Oregon leaders celebrated the state’s reopening June 30 in Providence Park.
Is the pandemic over—at least for highly vaccinated communities in Portland? BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N
r monahan@wweek.com
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Willamette Week JULY 14, 2021 wweek.com
Dr. William Messer: It’s not over is the short answer to that question. If you vaccinate 70% of three and a half million people, the population of Oregon roughly, you’re still looking at over a million susceptible individuals out there. That’s plenty of people to sustain ongoing transmission of this virus. Dr. Peter Graven: For large groups of people in Oregon, it effectively is going to become not much of an issue for them. Am I going to say it’s over? No, but it’s not going to be the same kind of issue.
Should a vaccinated person care that the pandemic isn’t over for some people? Dr. Renee Edwards: As long as there remain large parts of the world that do not have access to vaccine, there will be significant risk for the development of variants that may slip through the immunity barrier that we enjoy in Oregon and in the U.S. with our current vaccination. So while our restrictions have been eased and our case numbers down, the pandemic is certainly not over. Messer: If you’re vaccinated and hanging out with a lot of other vaccinated people, you really don’t need to worry so much about this next surge, but remember that the protection from your vaccine is really a probabilistic thing. So Moderna, for example, is 95% protective against the first strain. So that means you have a 1 in 20 chance of getting infected every time you’re exposed to the virus.
Graven: Being indoors with others without a mask. Those are the ones where you get it. Your dining situation turned out to be a higher predictor of things. Other large events indoors, grocery stores: If you don’t have your mask on and you’re in close quarters with other people for an extended period of time, that’s been the name of the game the whole time. It’ll be about small clusters of unvaccinated people being indoors.
Are there essentially going to be no-go zones in Oregon for people who want to be low risk, even if they’re vaccinated? Messer: If you were at risk, particularly if you are elderly, I would be very cautious. [One] stark example: I don’t want to pick on the Pendleton Round-Up, but that is in a part of the state that has a very low vaccination rate. If the Pendleton Round-Up were fully open, I would never let my 80-year-old mother-in-law go to the Pendleton Round-Up. She’s been vaccinated, but she’s older. The vaccine elicits weaker immunity in that population. And if you’re going to go into a crowded setting where a vaccine uptake is about 30% overall and might be a lot lower in the younger crowd that goes to the roundup, I think I would be very hesitant to expose someone to that setting. CHRIS NESSETH
For some Portlanders, the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t felt so far away since February 2020. For others, a lurking fear persists—the possibility of a coronavirus variant so severe it overwhelms vaccinations. Who’s right? WW asked three experts at Oregon Health & Science University whether the pandemic was over in this state, and what threat the Delta variant poses to Oregonians. Currently, a mere 5% of COVID-19 cases in Oregon are of the Delta variant. In Oregon, which has seen 7 in 10 adults take at least a first dose of the vaccines, cases have been declining since the late-April surge. Oregon ranks 12th in the nation for fully vaccinated residents. But taking into account immunity by contracting COVID-19 or getting vaccinated, Oregon isn’t looking as good. Plenty of Oregonians never got sick or vaccinated—so they’re still ripe for infection. “We didn’t have a lot of previous infection; that makes it so that we’re more close to the middle,” says Dr. Peter Graven of OHSU, who has provided the state’s leading models for predicting the course of the disease and sat for an interview with WW this week. That means Oregon is further behind than other, less vaccinated states in its efforts to reach herd immunity, the point at which the disease is no longer likely to spread. “Where we are now is that COVID is largely a preventable disease for those who have access to vaccine,” says Dr. Renee Edwards, OHSU’s chief medical officer, who responded to questions via email. WW also interviewed Dr. William Messer, a virologist, epidemiologist and associate professor at OHSU and PSU who worked on two of the vaccine trials for Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. Here’s where they say we stand.
WW: Is the pandemic over?
What behaviors could still drive increases in cases?
Is there going to be another surge? Edwards: There is risk for Oregon in those areas where vaccination rates remain low—99% of the hospitalized and severe cases of COVID, some of which lead to death, are occurring in unvaccinated Oregonians. We will continue to see spikes in unvaccinated populations, especially as the more infectious and significant variants increase in Oregon, but these will be much smaller and more local spikes as opposed to the statewide spikes we previously experienced. Our greatest vulnerability lies in our unvaccinated population.
ANSWERED BY MY T-SHIRT: That’s one way to know who’s vaccinated.
NEWS CHRIS NESSETH
LEAH NASH
OBJECT
CLOCKED
HELTER SWELTER: Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem is not equipped with central air conditioning, DOC says.
Cooling Towels An Oregon prison sold inmates $18 towels to stay cool after record temperatures. Last month, the Oregon Department of Corrections offered men in state custody a way to “keep it cool” during the historically hot summer: $18 towels. WHAT: Ergodyne “Chill-Its,” 13-by-29-inch evaporative cooling towels. WHERE: Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem. WW obtained a copy of an order form distributed to inmates at OSCI, where about 860 are incarcerated and DOC spokeswoman Jennifer Black says “only a couple of worksites” have air conditioning, including a DMV call center and some administrative areas. The form made an enticing offer: “Recreation Department Presents: Keep It Cool Towels. $18.00 ea.—Limit 2. Available to All Incentive Levels.… Deadline: July 11th. No Exceptions.…No refund if you go to Seg.” PRICE: OSCI says it bought the towels for $9.35 each, then sold them for $18 to adults in custody. Black confirms the sale of cooling towels was a fundraiser for the prison’s recreation department and that proceeds from the almost 100% markup would go toward new sports equipment for people incarcerated at OSCI: “The money will be used to purchase additional equipment for [adults in custody],” she said. “Examples include: basketballs, exercise equipment, etc.” Inmates footed the bill by signing a fund transfer from their prison accounts, according to the form: “I understand that in signing this inmate trust account withdrawal request, I have consented to the withdrawal of funds from my account by the Oregon Department of Corrections.” WHEN: The deadline to submit an order was Sunday, July 11—less than two weeks after a blistering heat wave during which two other Salem-area state prisons did not have central air conditioning, as WW previously reported.
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENTS: Portland police cuff a Black Lives Matter protester in 2020.
WHY: It’s unclear whether the sale of cooling towels was related to the heat wave that baked the state in late June. Temperatures that peaked at around 116 in the Central Willamette Valley prompted complaints from a prison rights group alleging shoddy air conditioning, insufficient supplies of ice, and scant access to drinking fountains. Attorney Steve Gorham says his longtime client was among the OSCI inmates who received the towel order form. He noted the timing of the towel sale, which concluded about two weeks after many Salem-area prisoners endured the record-breaking heat wave without air conditioning. “I’m shocked, really,” Gorham says. “Obviously, it’s a good marketing tool, but you’re talking about people who are stuck in the penitentiary. They should be giving [the towels] away rather than charging them double just to make money.” Black says DOC administrators and staff have been working around the clock to adapt, like other state agencies, to hot weather conditions, but the department is “constrained by existing infrastructure and resources.” “DOC is proud of the ways in which employees and [adults in custody] have worked together to prioritize health and safety during the recent heat wave,” she adds, “from obtaining additional supplies of ice to educating one another on the signs and symptoms of heat-related illness.”
Hunzeker Watch Four months into a police leak investigation, still no answers.
120 DAYS:
That’s how long ago 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 has been on paid administrative leave since May 27.
131 DAYS:
That’s how long it’s been since the Police Bureau opened an internal affairs investigation into the leak of information that wrongly implicated Commissioner Hardesty in a March 3 hit-and-run crash. It has released no results of its inquiry.
119 DAYS:
That’s how long it’s been since the city signed a contract with an outside investigative firm to probe the leak.
HOW MANY: The prison received orders for approximately 125 cooling towels. “The fundraiser ended on July 11,” Black says, “so many towels have not been delivered yet.” TESS RISKI. Willamette Week JULY 14, 2021 wweek.com
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NEWS SUZETTE SMITH
The volunteers had their own motivations. It was Ian’s first time collecting signatures for any campaign, ever, but the process was slightly hindered by his left arm hanging in a sling—the result of a Onewheel electric skateboard accident. “I landed my first curb but promptly hit a pothole, and it got squirrely,” he explained. He did not want to disclose his last name. His employers were letting him work from home, and they’d feel differently if they saw him out collecting signatures. Ian’s reasons for dragging his broken arm out of the house to go signature gathering? He thinks the city has been mishandling houseless people, and he hates all the trash on the streets. Gathering signatures doesn’t require much more than standing in the shade of the booth and smiling at passersby. With his unbroken hand, Ian waved at four women in tennis apparel. They kept walking. Other volunteers filtered through the Sabin and Irvington neighborhoods, knocking on doors and asking residents along the relatively affluent streets to support Wheeler’s ouster. “It’s very stressful how people are filling out these forms,” Kendall Womack said as she returned and dropped off a sheet. If signatories leave off “Portland, OR” and only write their ZIP code, the signature can be thrown out. Womack and another canvasser knocked on doors for three hours. They collected only seven signatures. “I got the impression that people thought we were liberals and that this is a liberal issue,” Womack said. “Someone told us, ‘I’m not interested in having a Marxist socialist society.’”
Recall and Response
The bid to boot Mayor Ted Wheeler began in a leafy park. GREENIES: Total Recall PDX set up tents in Irving Park, collecting signatures to recall Mayor Wheeler. BY S U ZE T T E SM I T H
D
suzette@wweek.com
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SUZETTE SMITH
ressed for tennis, Kaileigh Valentine was strolling through Northeast Portland’s Irving Park on a sunny Saturday afternoon when a man called to her from atop a hill. “Recall Ted Wheeler?” he asked hopefully. Valentine casually backhanded the request away with a smile. “I need to do more research!” She wasn’t bluffing. She does actually want to do more research about Mayor Wheeler, it turns out. “I didn’t vote for him,” Valentine tells WW. “I don’t like how he handled the heat wave. I just want to look into it a little more before I sign.” Valentine has 85 days left to decide. Her encounter with the organizers of Total Recall PDX was among the first in what’s likely to become the defining scene of the Portland summer: citizens deciding whether to add their John Hancock to a petition to boot Wheeler from City Hall. Petitioners, nominally led by George Middle School library employee Melissa Blount but mostly organized by a progressive lawyer named Alan Kessler, have until Sept. 29 to collect 48,000 signatures. Wheeler is the third consecutive Portland mayor to face a recall campaign. The most recent effort, seven years ago, sought to unseat then-Mayor Charlie Hales, but the recall campaign everyone remembers is the attempt to recall Sam Adams in 2010, after revelations of his sexual encounters with a legislative intern. Both finished thousands of signatures shy of the requirement. This time, petitioners believe they will succeed. They point to the city’s housing crisis, Wheeler’s need to loan himself $150,000 to secure reelection last year, and his occasionally adversarial encounters with constituents. The campaign declined to say how many signatures it gathered in its opening weekend, but reports it has $27,312 on hand. “We currently have 100-plus volunteers petitioning,” says campaign manager Audrey Caines, “with additional people printing their own forms and collecting signatures from friends and family, and three paid petitioners.” The pay for a petitioner starts at $16 an hour. The signatures would merely place the measure on a ballot, allowing voters to decide whether Wheeler should be recalled. If Portlanders vote to recall the mayor, the city will hold a special election within 90 days so voters can pick a new one. Wheeler says he’s not worried. “It’s not something that’s taking a lot of my time or my energy,” he told WW last month. “No elected official worth their salt isn’t being threatened with a recall.” Starting at 1 pm, volunteers with Total Recall PDX began setting up shop at the south end of Irving Park. Shaded beneath green canopies, it would be easy to lose the campaign’s tents in the park trees if it weren’t for
the fluorescent green nature of their swag—the same dayglo hue often associated with the Seattle Seahawks. Their hoodies, tank tops, and sun visors, glowing like beacons, drew potential signers to the top of the hill. You would expect the curious, but almost everyone who approached knew the score. Most had heard about it on social media. One woman jogged up the hill with her dog, singing, “Yes, please! Yes, please!” Another man sauntered up thinking it was a concession stand. He was trying to buy water but ended up buying an empty Recall Ted Wheeler merch squeeze bottle to fill at a water fountain. He didn’t sign and seemed to have no idea who Ted Wheeler was—as he was a tourist from out of town. Only Portland residents can sign the petition. They can’t sign online, but they can print out a signature form and mail it in. It’s generally agreed virtually no one will do this. Hoping to help with that, Ryan Ottomano and Meghan Thornburg took three petition forms with them—the same number of yard signs they had bought—to collect signatures from friends. “I can’t think of a successful thing Ted Wheeler has done,” Ottomano said. “Homelessness is so much worse than it was three or four years ago.” “He declared a state of emergency for the Derek Chauvin verdict but not the heat wave!” Thornburg said, incredulous. Others, like Megan Foy, criticized the mayor’s response to the summer 2020 protests. “We were in Peninsula Park when they gassed the neighborhood,” she said. “It was disgraceful.”
PLEDGE: Signers tried to fit their whole address onto the form’s economical line.
GET THAT INK: Ryan Ottomano took forms as well as yard signs, hoping to spread word of the campaign.
Another woman who opened the door to them admonished, “This is a terrible time. I have jam on the stove!” When she found out they were trying to recall the mayor, she shooed them from her porch. “She was not a supporter,” Womack said. “If he’s not the mayor, who would be mayor?” was a common question at the green tents. “We don’t need a mayor,” said volunteer Shelly Hill. “The city commissioners can separate his duties until the special election. The commissioners vote on everything anyway.” Hill owns Nightowl Custom Apparel, a Northeast Portland screen-printing shop that is among the campaign’s five largest donors (thus the T-shirts and hoodies). Her explanation is correct but incomplete. If the recall campaign gets 48,000 valid signatures, the voters of the city are presented with a choice: keep Wheeler or send him home. If the city recalls him, a new batch of candidates can seek the office at the next election in 2022. Valentine, who came to Irving Park for a pickleball tournament, had no idea people were trying to recall Wheeler at all. She follows politics enough to know that California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom is also currently facing recall, but she wanted to know what would happen should Total Recall PDX succeed. “I didn’t want him to be mayor,” Valentine says. “But before I sign my name, I need to know what happens next.”
CHRIS NESSETH
NEWS
GATEKEEPER: The police union denied a request for unarmed crisis management teams to respond to private residences.
House Calls
A Portland program to reduce armed police responses is blocked from expanding—again. BY TE SS R I S K I
At first glance, granting PSR’s request might look like a win-win, helping both a young program trying to gain traction and police officers who complain of being overworked. PSR is striving to increase its call volume: In June, the team responded to 64 calls—down about 29% from 90 calls in May and on pace with the 63 calls it responded to in April. And more calls for PSR could also provide relief for Portland police officers who have lamented since last summer that they are exhausted from staffing shortages, more than 100 nights of protests, and what the rank and file describe as a lack of support from City Hall, police brass and the Multnomah County district attorney. Daryl Turner, executive director of the PPA, says the police union is aware of a desire among Portlanders for law enforcement and social services to work in tandem, but he cautioned against a “piecemeal” approach. “Portlanders have sent a clear message that they want both robust policing and social services to work together to meet the community’s needs,” Turner tells WW. “The city must come up with a comprehensive plan to achieve this goal. A piecemeal approach like the city wants to take is counterproductive and will fail from its inception.” It’s impossible to say what the City Council thinks of the idea: This week, the mayor and two city commissioners, including Hardesty, issued a blanket refusal to discuss any matter that might fall within ongoing police contract negotiations. Mapps, whose office oversees the Bureau of Emergency Communications, which fields 911 and non-emergency calls, says the city is capable, from a technological standpoint, of fulfilling PSR’s request. “BOEC currently has the capability to dispatch Portland Street Response to indoor residences,” says spokesman Adam Lyons. “It would be a matter of adjusting protocols for dispatch and the city would need to keep an eye on any capacity issues that may arise.”
tess@wweek.com
CHRIS NESSETH
For the second time in two months, Portland leaders have blocked a request to expand a groundbreaking program designed to reduce interactions between armed police officers and people experiencing homelessness or mental health crises. The 5-month-old program, called Portland Street Response, offers an alternative to dispatching armed officers to certain types of mental health crisis calls. Instead, emergency dispatchers can send a two-member crisis team: one paramedic and one licensed mental health crisis therapist. But the program has limits: Portland Street Response can only respond to calls within the Lents neighborhood, and it can only assist people who are either located outdoors or inside a “publicly accessible space,” such as a store, public lobby or business. This spring, PSR and its elected champion, City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, asked for $3.6 million in ongoing funds to expand the program citywide. Commissioner Carmen Rubio joined Hardesty, voting aye. The majority of the Portland City Council—Mayor Ted Wheeler and Commissioners Mingus Mapps and Dan Ryan—rejected the idea when it came up May 13. Now WW has learned PSR tried again last month to widen its parameters. On June 23, PSR leadership submitted to the city a request to respond to calls located inside private residences, defined as “any non-publicly accessible space.” PSR spokesperson Caryn Brooks tells WW that about a week later, on July 1, chief deputy city attorney Heidi Brown alerted program staff that a longtime critic of PSR had denied the request: the Portland Police Association, the union that represents officers of the Portland Police Bureau. PSR needed the union’s approval because its teams would be taking calls typically handled by sworn police officers—and a deal reached last summer says the union retains bargaining rights over the program’s expansion. In other words, PPA can reject encroachments by PSR onto its turf. The PPA’s denial means that, for now, Portland Street Response cannot be dispatched on calls to private residences like a house, hotel room or any other “nonpublicly accessible space,” including many shelter settings. Brooks remains optimistic: “The PPA recently rejected this request, but we believe we can come to a resolution that will allow us to pick more dispatches off of PPB’s large call volume, which is something PPB has asked for and is also one of the goals of PSR.”
The bureau says it is also prepared: “BOEC is ready to make this happen, pending approval for this specific expansion of the pilot,” says spokesman Dan Douthit. Phone operators at BOEC often determine whether to send armed police officers or Portland Street Response to calls emanating from Lents. In order for PSR to be dispatched, a situation must meet one of four criteria: A person is outside and possibly intoxicated or experiencing a mental health crisis, a person is “outside and down” who hasn’t been checked on, a person is outside yelling, or a person needs referral services but doesn’t have access to a phone. If a call meets one of those criteria, it must then check off all of five requirements: There are no weapons seen, the person is not suicidal, the person is not in or obstructing traffic, the person is not violent toward others (that is, “physically combative, threatening violence, assaulting,” according to BOEC) , and the person is not inside a private residence. Portland Street Response argues, nearly six months into the pilot, that the program feels prepared to handle calls inside hotel rooms and homes, in addition to parks and other outdoor or public settings. “We see a benefit to the community members to be able to respond to them in homes,” Brooks says. “We also understand the police have their perspective of what is potentially risky about entering a residence. We’re going to work with them to try to understand those things.” PSR also wants to increase its call volume from its peak in May of 90 calls per month. “By opening up residences, that would increase our call volume to be able to assist more people and take calls away from police and fire that are low acuity,” Brooks says, adding that the expansion to private residences is “something we want to try to experiment with to see how that goes.” It also bears mentioning that the PPA has, since 2019, represented BOEC employees. BOEC and the PPA both deny that the union representation has created a conflict. PSR itself also says there is no evidence of foot-dragging; in fact, the program audited its calls in early July after the dip from 90 calls in May to 64 in June. “We pulled the call details and audited them to make sure BOEC wasn’t missing opportunities to dispatch PSR,” Brooks says. “The audit verified that all calls were being dispatched to us based on the criteria currently set.” But the turf battle between the police union and Portland Street Response remains somewhat mysterious, thanks in part to the thorny rules that surround collective bargaining between the Portland Police Association and the city. Chief deputy city attorney Brown declined to disclose the manner in which discussions took place last month between her office and the PPA regarding a possible expansion of PSR, or whether the police union raised substantive concerns about safety or other labor issues that might arise should PSR respond to private residences. Brown’s reason for no comment echoed that of city commissioners and the mayor: ongoing contract negotiations. Mediation between the parties is slated for July 28, according to a spokeswoman from Oregon’s Employment Relations Board.
TAKEOFF: In February, Portland Street Response launched its pilot program in Lents. Willamette Week JULY 14, 2021 wweek.com
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THE HOTTEST PLACE IN PORTLAND by sophie peel photos by chris nesseth
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Dr. Vivek Shandas says where you live could decide whether you survive a roasting city.
D
uring Portland’s record-breaking heat wave, the pavement at the intersection of Southeast Woodstock Boulevard and 92nd Avenue registered 180 degrees. That’s hot enough to slow cook a pot roast. On June 28, Dr. Vivek Shandas drove his Toyota Prius across the city. He and his 11-year-old son, Suhail, used a thermal camera to measure the temperature in neighborhoods from the Pearl District to Gresham. No place was hotter than that intersection, next to a Planet Fitness in Lents Town Center. At about 4 pm, the temperature in the air was 124 degrees. That was 9 degrees hotter than the city’s average, and 25 degrees higher than what Shandas measured in Northwest Portland. And the sidewalk was superheated to 180 degrees. Walking on it barefoot would give you third-degree burns. Shandas felt a blast of blistering air as soon as he opened the Prius door. “The first thing I felt was my eyes were burning, like my sockets,” Shandas says. “My skin was on fire. It just feels like you’re melting.” Shandas isn’t engaged in an eccentric hobby. A Portland State University professor who studies climate change and how to address its implications, he understands that certain neighborhoods have the ingredients for lethal heat that other neighborhoods do not. Principally: few trees and lots of concrete. And, as Shandas points out, at this intersection, 10 miles east of downtown, the pavement runs three lanes wide. A large parking lot with dark asphalt borders the road. A cluster of tall, dark buildings blocks any breeze. And looming over the scene is more asphalt: the eight lanes of the Interstate 205 overpass. The dry, brown grass looks like the high plains, broken only by a handful of spindly trees topped with little tufts of green. When the “heat dome” descended on Portland two weeks ago, these elements turned neighborhoods like Lents and Foster-Powell into an oven. Four ZIP codes east of 42nd Avenue, lined by major arterial roads or interstate highways, had four deaths apiece. That’s the second-highest number in the city, exceeded only by downtown. These four ZIP codes accounted for nearly a quarter of Portland’s heat deaths. That comes as no surprise to Shandas: He’s been warning Portland about just how severe these hot areas of the city are for a decade.
the burden of climate change does not fall equally. Instead, it has killed people living without air conditioning, amid vast swaths of concrete, and with few trees to provide shade. We also know most of them were found alone, indicating that social isolation was a primary factor in their deaths.
“To see folks that have died? We had so much evidence to show this was a likely outcome,” Shandas says. “Without direct mitigation of these places that are often 15, 20 degrees hotter, we’re going to continue seeing people die.”
T
he 71 people killed by extreme heat in Multnomah County last month were arguably Portland’s first deaths from climate change. They were also victims of one of the largest natural disasters in civic history. In three days, more people died in Multnomah County than were killed by COVID-19 in nine days at the height of the pandemic. The heat killed more people than the Vanport Flood (15 people), a 2014 landslide that wiped out Oso, Wash. (41 people), or the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens (57 people). Portland’s heat deaths—54 of them officially confirmed as hyperthermia—haven’t had a similar impact on the public imagination. They were all but invisible. People died in their own homes, and county and state medical examiners declined to release the names or addresses of the deceased. The victims died anonymously, their circumstances a secret. Yet make no mistake: They were victims of a natural disaster, and their deaths were hastened by where they lived, as surely as if they had stood in the eruption path of a volcano.
SCORCHED: Shandas shows a thermal picture of the hottest intersection in Portland.
Shandas points out that the burden of climate change does not fall equally. Instead, it has killed people living without air conditioning, amid vast swaths of concrete, and with few trees to provide shade. We also know most of them were found alone, indicating that social isolation was a primary factor in their deaths. And the next time the mercury rises, these neighborhoods will become death traps again. “Now we’re seeing this East Portland perfect storm coming together,” Shandas says. “The way we’ve gone about building our city and the design of the roads, the buildings, the amount of green space—that combined with people who often don’t have easy ways to cool off, that comes together to increase the likelihood of deaths.”
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DARK SURFACE: Tall, dark buildings loom over the Lents Town Center.
EXPOSED: A man waits at the bus stop at Lents Town Center.
HOT SPOT: Shandas’ map showing the hottest areas of Portland during the evening. The inset shows ZIP code 97266, where Shandas found the hottest temperatures in Portland.
S
handas predicted three years ago what Lents would feel like in an extreme heat wave. In a 2018 study he co-authored at Portland State University, he warned that those with underlying health issues and low-income and homeless people were at greatest risk of having their safety compromised by these heat islands. And he pinpointed the places at greatest risk: neighborhoods in East Portland along arterial highways and I-205. “Nonwhite, minimally educated, or poor English speakers, as well as those living in affordable housing, experience higher temperatures than their wealthy, white, educated, English-speaking counterparts,” the study concluded. Why are Lents, Hazelwood and Parkrose so at the mercy of the thermometer? Three factors. First, the materials they are built from. Dark buildings made of metal, brick and other dense materials absorb the heat. Cars whizzing along roads emit fumes and more heat. Highways and parking lots trap and absorb the sun’s heat and then re-emit it slowly over time. Tom Armstong, a supervising planner for the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, says East Portland was developed after World War II under zoning that was “more auto oriented than inner Portland.” The second factor of heat islands is breeze—or the lack of it. At this Lents intersection, where the freeway stands above the four-lane road and five-story, mixed-use buildings are clustered together, the air stagnates. “With the big buildings stuck together,” Shandas says, “there’s no way for the air to move around and create that cooling current that you tend to find in wealthier, leafier neighborhoods.” Third, trees. They offer shade, drastically reducing temperatures under their cover, and greenery pulls up water from the ground and expels it into the air.
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“Nonwhite, minimally educated, or poor English speakers, as well as those living in affordable housing, experience higher temperatures than their wealthy, white, educated, English-speaking counterparts,” the study concluded.
And the tree canopy disparity in Portland is stark. West of the Willamette River, 46% of the city has a tree canopy. East of the river, where 80% of Portlanders live, 20% is canopied. “One of the defining natural features in East Portland were the Douglas fir groves,” Armstrong says. “And when development happened, that’s what came down. That urban form contributes a lot to the heat island we’re seeing out there.” Shandas wrote his first report—warning about urban heat islands and whom they might hurt—in 2009. In a series of reports, he warned that through neglect, local governments were in essence creating neighborhoods that could kill. He doesn’t feel local officials took it seriously enough. “Our climate system is intimate with our infrastructure systems,” Shandas says, “yet decision-making bodies don’t treat it as such.” In 2017, Multnomah County released its five-year plan for reducing natural hazards. It acknowledged that extreme heat events were becoming more common—Portland had just seen 105-degree highs the
previous summer—and that heat islands increased those risks. It also defined heat islands as its top climate concern in its 2013 climate change preparation plan, and acknowledged the various factors that made certain areas more vulnerable. But it offered no plan for how to tailor response efforts to different neighborhoods. Instead, the county affirmed its support for the city’s long-term climate goals and pledged to keep discussing what to do. The county has a standard operating procedure for severe weather, but it’s a general blueprint that’s modeled after federal and state forms, says Chris Voss, director of the county’s Emergency Management Department. It urges its nonprofit partners to check in with their elderly and disabled clients on hot days. Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury says the county has been following Shandas’ work and adding heat islands to its emergency response plans. “In the short term, the county has prioritized the distribution of box fans to populations most likely to live without air conditioning in heat islands, and heat islands are a consideration in the location of cooling centers,” Kafoury tells WW in a statement. “But mitigating urban heat islands is a long-term task that requires collaboration.”
In a series of reports, he warned that through neglect, local governments were in essence creating neighborhoods that could kill.
BRENDA
TINDER BOX: The trailer Eugene Anderson died in at the Flavel RV Park.
W
hen the heat descended on Lents, it was overwhelming. A bakery owner, Michelle Vernier, said the outdoors felt like an oven. Michael Ta, who owns the Lents 1 Stop Market, closed early all three days during the heat wave—even with air conditioning, it was too hot to continue business. “Oh, man, it felt like the air was burning,” Ta says. “I go down to California and Nevada a lot, and I like the heat, but not that hot.” In the days before the heat wave arrived, county officials raced to identify places where people might die from overheating. They assembled a list of 67 apartment buildings and called big community development corporations with multiple buildings. Staff cold-called the managers with an urgent message: Your residents are incredibly vulnerable. Please do what you can to keep them alive. That didn’t always work. More than 12 residents of low-income housing told WW they never received a knock on the door. “They did nothing to inform or prepare residents,” says Kelly Ralph, who lives in Peaceful Villa, a Home Forward complex for older tenants, most with disabilities, in the Richmond neighborhood—part of a ZIP code that saw four deaths. “They could have left the air-conditioned community room open as a cooling center. They could have offered bottles of water. They did absolutely nothing.” While the limited data released by county and state officials about heat deaths doesn’t offer a full portrait of what killed people, it’s clear that living in a heat island wasn’t a death sentence. Thousands of Lents residents lived to tell tales about the sweatiest day of their lives. Instead, the way Portland is designed left vulnerable people hoping their thin protections would be enough: insulation, a box fan, a window-mounted air conditioning unit. Those who died simply experienced a little bad luck. The day before Eugene Anderson died, his AC broke. Anderson lived in a trailer in the Flavel RV Park, in the same ZIP code as Portland’s hottest intersection—14 blocks away.
Shandas imagines a solution tailored to the places suffering the most. The next time a heat wave strikes, he says, a squad of neighbors should be knocking on the doors of people like Anderson. His long, white Allegro Bay trailer is sandwiched between two others, with no shade, fully exposed to the sun by noon. It’s a hunk of metal, plastic sheathing and rubber tires. Shandas takes one look at Anderson’s home and declares it a tinder box. Anderson, a man of few words and little movement, walked like it hurt, neighbors said. He drove his RV to the grocery store, and then would carefully back it into its parking space on top of gravel and concrete. Sandy Botkins, a resident whose trailer is parked about 200 feet from Anderson’s, says these trailers fail to keep out both heat and cold. “This is like a tin can,” she says. “If I didn’t have an AC here, I could be melting even if it’s cool outside,” Botkins says. “We get sun morning, afternoon and evening. And these things get hot. You’ve only got skin, a quarter inch of air, and inside wall. And there’s no insulation in the ceiling.” Shandas imagines a solution tailored to the places suffering the most. The next time a heat wave strikes, he says, a squad of neighbors should be knocking on the doors of people like Anderson. “I love these plans,” Shandas says, “because they could really resonate with Portland and its long history of neighborhoods.” He calls it a climate association.
A woman named Brenda lived on the fourth floor of the Peter Paulson Apartments, a low-income building near the Portland Art Museum downtown. She died sometime in the night June 29. Brenda had gray hair but dyed it red. She was overweight, used a seated scooter and loved to zoom around on it—sometimes too fast, says her neighbor down the hall, Christina Leino. None of her neighbors knew her last name. The Peter Paulson is exactly the type of living environment
the county warned about prior to the heat wave: high-rise buildings housing old people without AC. The downtown building is bordered by the freeway and other high-rises. The five floors are made of red brick and concrete. A few sparse trees come up to the second floor, providing minimal shade. “They don’t give a darn,” says one of Brenda’s neighbors, Rick Thompson, who said no one ever knocked on his door to check on him.
STEVEN GREENFIELD Greenfield was a disabled veteran. He lived in Apartment 29 at Peaceful Villa, a Home Forward complex for older tenants, most with disabilities, in the Richmond neighborhood. On the Monday afternoon five days after he was found dead, two identical notes hung from the doorknob to his apartment: “Sorry we missed you!” Greenfield’s phone-prayer group at All Saints Catholic Parish suspected something was wrong when he didn’t phone in for prayer. He was found dead in his apartment June 30. AC isn’t installed in the lowincome units. Residents have to purchase their own. During the heat wave, they say, the air-
conditioned common space was closed. Home Forward confirms the common space wasn’t open, but declined to say why. Executive director Michael Buonoco told reporters July 7 that Home Forward conducted no outreach at the building, despite the fact it’s a senior complex. Neighbors remembered Greenfield as a classic car buff. One said she and Greenfield came outside just before midnight Friday to start their cars and make sure they were still running right before the height of the heat wave. Greenfield’s car radio was playing ’70s rock as he toggled the key.
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Cooked What’s it like to die from the heat?
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handas is not shy about ideas for easing the burden of heat in East Portland. He thinks we should insert more gardens and trees into new developments. “There are design options where you can almost surgically insert green space,” he says. City code does currently mandate trees for new developments. Those requirements were written in 2015. And the city also charges developers for cutting down trees: For every inch in diameter for trees over 20 inches wide, developers have to hand over $450. For a medium-sized, 20-inchthick tree, that’s about $9,000. But heavy industrial developments are exempt from the tree code, even though they border some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. And in 2016, the Portland City Council passed an exemption for affordable housing developers to forgo paying the tree-whacking fee. “The rationale for that was, at what point does the housing not become affordable?” says Ken Ray, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Development Services, of the exemption crafted by late Commissioner Nick Fish. “At some point, the developers are going to say, ‘This doesn’t pencil.’” But that means people living in low-income apartments don’t benefit from the same rules requiring shade. That outrages Shandas: “It creates a real inequity just in and of itself: Lower-income communities don’t get the privilege of green spaces.” While trees are growing, Shandas has another simple fix to keep buildings cooler: Paint the rooftops white. “Let’s bounce the heat back,” Shandas says. “We have bureaus that are able to institute different codes and standards to enable lighter-colored surfaces and surfaces that deflect the heat better.” Portland City Hall will have a hard time saying it doesn’t have money to address such challenges—it’s sitting in the Portland Clean Energy Fund, a tax on the city’s biggest retailers that voters passed in 2018. So far, it has raised $115 million and distributed $8 million in grants. This fall, $64 million more will go out the door. It’s not clear how much of that money will go to directly retrofit housing to be more climate resilient. Sam Baraso, the fund’s program manager, says 17 of the organizations receiving money are embarking on energy-efficiency projects and 11 are focusing on planting greenery or regenerative farming, or planning to do one of those two things.
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WARNED: Shandas has been telling Portland for a decade that heat islands could turn deadly.
people living in low-income apartments don’t benefit from the same rules requiring shade. That outrages Shandas: “It creates a real inequity just in and of itself: Lower-income communities don’t get the privilege of green spaces.”
Shandas says he’s encouraged PCEF to use most of its funds for creating climate-prepared buildings. “I think it’s a direct means by which we safeguard from the heat. It’s like nothing else in the country—we can get ahead of the rising temperatures really quickly,” Shandas says. “It’s hard to say whether it’s enough. I generally think it’s never enough.” City Commissioner Carmen Rubio agrees with Shandas: Portland isn’t moving fast enough to cool its hottest neighborhoods. She says city leaders “must be aggressive, accelerated and nimble to disrupt climate change, and to decrease heat inequities in East Portland specifically. For me, this is not a ‘nice to have.’ It’s about saving lives.”
It’s hard to know what the final hours were like for the 71 people who succumbed to heat in Multnomah County. That’s because dying from overheating, like so many fatal experiences, is a little different for each person. Emergency room physician Dr. Mary Carroll Lee, who works at Salem Health, describes the three stages of hyperthermia— that is, death from heat—as a fluid spectrum. Typically, our bodies successfully fight to keep our internal temperature from rising to meet the outside temperature. The mechanism is simple: We sweat. But at some point, Lee says, “our thermostat goes haywire and becomes maladaptive”—like a broken fan. The first stage of hyperthermia begins when sweating can no longer keep our bodies at a manageable temperature. From there, we enter heat cramps. We stop sweating, our bodies starts to swell, and our muscles start to seize. It’s uncomfortable, but we don’t feel like we’re dying. Next comes heat exhaustion: We start to feel lethargic and perhaps cycle in and out of alertness. We might be alert but not know the year or time. And last comes heat stroke: We’re cycling in and out of consciousness, and there’s often an altered mental state. At this point, some people are no longer aware they’re in pain or discomfort. The cells in our vital organs start to swell; they burst and die. “It’s like cooking an egg. It cooks and changes permanently,” Lee says. The actual death is often caused by a heart attack or organ failure. Lee says she’s heard that people might even be filled with euphoria near the end stages of hyperthermia, like those who experience hypothermia—a loss of body heat. For some, this process happens quickly— sometimes within two or three hours. That’s part of what makes it so lethal: You can go from feeling bothered by the heat to dead in 90 minutes. Lee worked in the hospital during the heat wave, and saw many elderly people come in and just say they were tired and didn’t know why. “They just said, ‘I just don’t feel well,’’’ she recalls. “‘Well, yeah. You’re 103 degrees.’ It sneaks up on them.” Hospitals had to work swiftly to save the people who made it to their emergency rooms but were already suffering from heat exhaustion or heat stroke. Several emergency departments across Oregon filled body bags with ice and stuck people in them who needed to cool down. At Salem Health, staff filled up a kiddie pool with cold water from a hose and put it in the ambulance bay, just in case someone needed to get dunked. SOPHIE PEEL.
STREET OUT & ABOUT Who we found downtown and at the Portland International Raceway Rose Cup. Photos by Chris Nesseth On Instagram: @chrisnesseth
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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 .
W W S TA F F
RIDICULOUS
SVEN MANDEL
A seven-person brawl outside a beer festival at McMenamins Edgefield leaves two sheriff’s deputies injured.
E M I LY J O A N G R E E N E
RACHELLE HACMAC
Andre 3000 of OutKast is in Portland shooting the new Kelly Reichardt movie—and apparently hanging out at local open mics.
Tasty is back…in Lake Oswego.
Two national experts declare Portland “the best pizza city in America.”
H
R
NE
SS
ETH
AWFUL
O R E G O N PA R K S F O R E V E R
AWESOME
C
IS
Four Oregon craft beverage producers are raising money to plant trees in forests damaged by the 2020 wildfires.
Gov. Kate Brown issues an executive order for state agencies to conserve water.
METRO
PAT R I C K H A N E Y
A new music venue is (finally) opening in the former Greek Cusina building downtown.
WESLEY LAPOINTE
Multnomah Falls institutes a timed-reservation system this summer to cut down on crowd congestion.
SERIOUS
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Willamette Week JULY 14, 2021 wweek.com
A Portland man drowns in the Sandy River near Oxbow Regional Park—the second drowning in two weeks.
Luca Luca (Jacob Tremblay) is a sea monster, but there’s nothing monstrous about him. That’s the premise of this buoyant adventure from Pixar Animation, a studio that specializes in telling profoundly human stories about nonhuman characters, from the tormented toys in the Toy Story films to the lovestruck robots in WALL-E. Like those movies, Luca is an allegory for kids. The ideal audience for the film will be interested in both the hints that Luca is gay and the kinetic pleasures of the plot, which include Luca and his best friend, Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), teaming up with a valorous human girl (Emma Berman) for a bicycle race. There is a winner, but the real winners are the young moviegoers who will learn that Luca respects and cares about them enough to challenge them while also delivering a good time. Streams on Disney+. Jessica Hopper in Conversation with Ann Friedman Jessica Hopper was already in the running for America’s best music journalist before releasing The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic in 2015, but seeing all her work in one place confirmed it—and the new reissue doubles down. Quite literally, the second edition has nearly twice the page count, with new material, an introduction by writer-comedian Samantha Irby, and a fresh afterword Hopper describes as a “therapeutic document and/or fanzine about Fugazi, rape culture, and what it means to be from the Midwest.” She’ll discuss it tonight with podcaster Ann Friedman. 5 pm Wednesday, July 14. See powells.com/events for registration information.
Bastille Day at Stem Wine Bar Maybe it was the long-standing presence of Brasserie Montmartre in the heart of downtown, or perhaps Portlanders are secret Francophiles, but for some reason, we’ve always been a city that celebrates Bastille Day. Last year, most of the traditional festivities were canceled due to COVID, but now that we’re freshly vaccinated, it’s time to dust off your beret, pop the Champagne and take up chain-smoking cigarettes for 24 hours. To make up for lost time in 2020, Stem Wine Bar is giving you the opportunity to party like you’re in Paris for three whole days. On Wednesday, July 14, try a guided tasting of whites, rosés, reds and sparkling wines from across France, then return this weekend for more flight specials paired with decadent macarons on the cobblestone patio. The live accordionist should make you feel as if you’ve been transported to the Champs-Élysées. Stem Wine Bar, 3920 N Mississippi Ave., 503-477-7164, stemwinebarpdx.com. Bastille Day tasting takes place 5-7 pm Wednesday, July 14. $50. Meet Me in Paris Weekend runs 3-11 pm Friday and noon-11 pm Saturday, July 16-17. Liv Warfield Zidell Yards doesn’t have a roof, but if it did, Liv Warfield would blow it into the stratosphere. As one of Portland’s true vocal powerhouses, the R&B slayer’s voice speaks for itself—but as far as superstar co-signs go, there’s none better to have on your résumé than Prince. After coming across a video of Warfield crushing the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” the Purple One recruited her into the New Power Generation, and executive produced her 2014 album, The Unexpected. He’s gone now, of course, but Warfield more than stands on her own—and her rock-’n’-soul live show gives off heavy Tina Turner vibes. Best check the Ross Island Bridge for structural damage afterward, just to be safe. The Lot at Zidell Yards, 3030 S Moody Ave., thelotatzidellyards.com. 7:30 pm Wednesday, July 14. $50-$75 per person. All tickets sold in 2-, 4- and 6-seat pods.
41st Annual Cathedral Park Jazz Festival Following its first virtual year in 2020, Cathedral Park Jazz Festival will once again host in-person sets in its namesake park under the St. Johns Bridge. Over the course of three days, it will host over a dozen jazz, blues and soul acts, including Oregon Music Hall of Famer Lloyd Jones, electro-jazz duo Korgy & Bass, and a tribute to Chick Corea, who died in February. As always, the outdoor festival is free. But this year, there will be regulated entry. Masks will be required while waiting to enter the event, and social distancing within the grounds is encouraged. Cathedral Park, North Edison Street and Pittsburg Avenue. Friday-Sunday, July 16-18. Free. See jazzoregon.org for complete schedule.
Mississippi Studios Welcome Back Open House Concerts were thought to be the last thing that would return post-pandemic, but even though there’s been some semblance of live music happening in Portland over the past few months, it still hasn’t felt entirely “back to normal” yet. That perhaps won’t happen until the clubs fully reopen—but Mississippi Studios is close. The venue’s concert calendar doesn’t really get going again until August, but consider this sneak peek a toe dip back into the regular routine. The first part of the night, featuring sets by Wonderly and May Arden and the screening of a new short film by comics artists the Pander Brothers, is free, while the after-party, with a performance by experimental improvisers THMPR, costs $10. Wow, after-parties. Remember those? Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., mississippistudios.com. 6-8 pm Saturday, July 17. Free. After party starts at 9 pm. $10. 21+.
Cinema Unbound Open-Air Cinema presents Clueless “As if!” This loose, modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma stars Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz, a rich and stylish teen who becomes determined to make over the “tragically unhip” new girl at school (Brittany Murphy). Paul Rudd co-stars as Cher’s ex-stepbrother and love interest. Note the “ex” and the “step” before totally buggin’! Lloyd Center Rooftop Cinema, 2201 Lloyd Center. 8:45 pm Sunday, July 18. $20. See nwfilm.org/film-series/cinema-unbound-summer-movies-open-air-experiences for tickets. JASON QUIGLEY
Lewi Longmire and the Left Coast Roasters Live music is slowly returning to Portland. That now includes the city’s oldest music venue. After a perilous year, the Laurelthirst Pub is back and holding free shows every day of the week. This Thursday, you can catch local stalwart and pub co-owner Lewi Longmire on the stage that he’s been stewarding behind shuttered doors for the past year. Even before the pandemic, the Americana venue has long provided a sense of homey comfort for musicians and regulars—after all, there’s always plenty of overlap between those two crowds. If you want to rock out to some country-inflected guitar while getting emotional about how much you missed live music, this show is for you. Laurelthirst Pub, 2958 NE Glisan St., laurelthirst.com. 6 pm Thursday, July 15. Free. 21+.
PA R A M O U N T P I C T U R E S
= IN PERSON = VIRTUAL EVENT PIXAR DISNEY
GET BUSY
STUFF TO DO IN PORTLAND THIS WEEK, INDOORS AND OUT.
Portland Cello Project’s Extreme Cello Summer Dance Party Extravaganza If nothing else, the Portland Cello Project has done more to showcase the versatility of their titular instrument over the past 15 years than any other classical ensemble, ably covering everyone from Britney Spears to Kanye West to Pantera—and with their annual summertime dance jam, they’ve proven you can start a party with it as well. Admittedly, though, to really get the place jumping, you can’t come armed with cellos alone. Here, the string ensemble will also be joined by several well-traveled session musicians, including trumpeter Farnell Newton and drummer Tyrone Hendrix, and singers Saaeda Wright, JANE and Steven Bak, to run through a set of pop hits from the ’60s through today. The Lot at Zidell Yards, 3030 S Moody Ave., thelotatzidellyards.com. 7:30 pm Sunday, July 18. $50-$75 per person. All tickets sold in 2-, 4- and 6-seat pods. Willamette Week JULY 14, 2021 wweek.com
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FEATURE
Green Acres
SAM GEHRKE
FOOD & DRINK
Summertime is salad time. Here are eight of the best in Portland. BY AN DR E A DA M E WO O D
@adamewood
Listen, I know: Salads? For summer? How groundbreaking. But sometimes the cliché exists for a reason. It’s hot, and the idea of a potato dumpling hitting your tum-tum while it’s triple digits sounds painful. (Unless you’re me, and then it’s always dumpling season.) Salad seems simple, but there are a lot of critical elements to hit. A good salad needs just the right blend of crunch, fat, acid, salt and even umami, plus protein if you’re trying to make it a meal. For that reason, I often like to leave serious salad making to the pros. In Portland, a town so flush with veggies, there are plenty of options, but these are some of the best. Insalata Nostrana (Nostrana) The OG cult classic salad in Portland, chef Cathy Whims’ Caesar-esque salad is a study in both flavor and texture. Bitter radicchio—soaked in ice water for two hours to blunt the sharpness—is doused in a creamy anchovy and garlic dressing and given ample crumbles of rosemary sage croutons and a heavy sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. It’s always on the menu and always a must-order, along with whatever other goodies are on special—and the classic Negroni to start. 1401 SE Morrison St., Suite 101, 503-2342427, nostrana.com. The Colossal Cobb (Garden Monsters) When I think of a big, satisfying salad, this is immediately where my mind goes. This classic take on a Cobb salad has it all: romaine lettuce, roma tomatoes, black olives, blue cheese crumbles, free-range chopped egg and croutons, topped with a tangy avocado ranch dressing. You can add bacon or grilled tofu, but the balance of carbs, protein and fats already in this bowl means it’s not necessary. Get it delivered or pick it up at one of Garden Monsters’ three carts—on Southeast Division or Northeast Alberta or in the BG Food Cartel in Beaverton—and know that you have a power lunch on your hands. Multiple locations, gardenmonsters.net. Goi Bap Cai (Xinh Xinh Vietnamese Bistro) Tucked inside a small strip of businesses on Southeast Morrison, Xinh Xinh is best known for its banh mi and soups, but the real ones know that the move is the crunchy salad. On my first day of work, my then-boss ordered this salad and, wanting to belong, so did I. A love affair was born. Served with a slightly sweetened fish sauce dressing, I find myself slurping down the grated cabbage, onion and carrots, to which I always add strips of charred and salty grilled pork. Peanuts add even more crunch, while basil adds depth. It is an epic salad. 970 SE Morrison St., 971229-1492, xinhxinhbistro.com.
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Willamette Week JULY 14, 2021 wweek.com
CHICKEN OF THE SEA: Flying Fish’s tuna nicoise salad.
XL Iceberg Salad with Fried Chicken Thigh (Yonder) God bless this salad. There’s not a trace of austerity and rabbit-foodishness when it comes to cool, crisp iceberg lettuce, amply dressed with a ramp ranch and the bite of pickled red onion slices and tossed with housemade sourdough croutons and sumac-toasted pecans. It’s a fantastic side on its own, but if you’re looking for a “light” meal at Yonder, adding a dusted fried chicken thigh to this concoction for just $5 more is the way to go. Few are brave enough to add fried chicken to a salad, and for this, chef-owner Maya Lovelace should get a key to the city. 4636 NE 42nd Ave., 503-444-7947, yonderpdx.com. Butter Lettuce (St. Jack/La Moule) I’m not sure there was ever a time when this bright little salad wasn’t on the menu at St. Jack. If there were such a time, it was poorer for it. This stack of mild and soft butter lettuce leaves nestles layers of buttery avocado, radish, croutons and French fines herbes, topped with a zippy Dijon vinaigrette. It is deceptively simple, but that’s where its perfection lies. There is very little menu overlap between St. Jack on Northwest 23rd and its sister restaurant La Moule on Southeast Clinton, but you know chef Aaron Barnett had to put this salad tower of power on both menus. Multiple locations, stjackpdx.com and lamoulepdx.com. Tuna Nicoise (Flying Fish Co.) This is the real Portland twist on the ladies-who-lunch classic. At $19, it’s the most expensive salad on this list, but it’s packed with quality ingredients that make the price tag worth it. Flying Fish starts with an ample layer of local Mizuna Gardens wild greens, upon which it places tender poached Oregon Coast albacore, Moroccan black olives,
blanched and halved green beans, the softest of boiled eggs, baby yukon golds, with radish, pickled red onion, basil and red wine vinaigrette. When you’re done, you can almost feel the vitamins, fiber and fish oil hit your bloodstream. 3004 E Burnside St., 971-806-6747, flyingfishpdx.com. Whatever’s Seasonal on the Menu (Farmer and Beast) No, this isn’t a particular salad, but that’s not the point. It’s that this cart in Northwest Portland—famed for its smash burger—is also so good at its produce game that Oregonian critic Michael Russell once wrote that a salad he ate there stopped him cold. Hard agree. Recently, it was a watermelon panzanella, the sweet juicy watermelon and toasty bread cubes set off by sliced cucumber, fresh mozzarella, cilantro, mint, basil, with a peanut crunch and a perfectly acidic and umami fish sauce-lime vinaigrette. The salad is always changing, but the satisfaction won’t. 1845 NW 23rd Place, 971-319-0656, farmer-and-the-beast.square.site. Taco Salad (Taqueria Portland) A good taco salad is a thing of beauty, and surprisingly hard to find. Perhaps the addition of a burrito’s worth of fillings and lettuce to a deep fried tortilla shell has become terminally uncool, but it’s a consistent craving of mine. Luckily, Taqueria Portland has come through with a solid entry for under $10. I like the grilled chicken, served over rice, beans, onions, cilantro, tomatoes, sour cream, guacamole and Monterey jack and Cotija cheeses. Unlike some taco salads that only sprinkle lettuce on like a condiment, this one had enough shredded lettuce and cabbage to give it a whiff of health as I broke off pieces of my deep fried bowl and jammed it all in my mouth. 820 SE 8th Ave, 503232-7000.
FOOD & DRINK BRIAN BROSE
BAR REVIEW
TOP 5
BUZZ LIST
Where to drink this week.
1. Good Luck Charm
203 SE Grand Ave., facebook.com/goodluckcharmpdx. 4 pm-2:30 am Tuesday-Thursday, 4-10 pm Friday-Monday. Formerly the Elvis Room, formerly East End, Good Luck Charm is the same old bar under new management, with all the same Elvis Room stuff on the walls—including that enormous, mesmerizing painting of a bored-looking, longhair cat. New menu, new drinks, who dis? Good Luck Charm’s basement has a powerful chill and a secondary, subterranean bar that opens on weekends or “when it gets busy.”
2. Migration Rooftop at Canvas
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3. Holy Goat Social Club
1501 NE Fremont St., 503-282-0956, holygoatpdx.com. 2-10 pm Monday-Saturday. It’d be inaccurate to describe Holy Goat as a “new” bar. Longtime residents of the Sabin neighborhood will remember the tiny watering hole as Daddy Mojo’s, and though its undergone a change in ownership and name, the rebrand mostly amounts to an aesthetic upgrade rather than a full-scale remodel. Regulars will still find what they’re looking for: a drink menu consisting of stiff takes on old classics, soul music on the stereo, and soul food in the kitchen.
TOP 5
HOT PLATES Where to eat this week.
1. Tasty
4055 Mercantile Drive, Suite 180, 503-305-5298, tastylakeoswego.com. 5-10 pm Thursday-Friday, 9 am-2 pm Saturday-Sunday. The Tasty brand lives again. The latest iteration of Tasty opened early this month in Lake Oswego’s new Mercato Grove development, helmed by two Toro Bravo alumni. If you ever treated yourself to a steak dinner at Tasty n Alder, or took a culinary trip around the globe with shared plates at Tasty n Sons, you’ll be reminded of those experiences at the new suburban location. The menu features large cuts of protein, including a smoked paprika pork coppa and a grilled cowboy steak, as well as Europeaninspired bites, like Catalan-style shrimp and the always-popular patatas bravas.
Arguably the pod’s biggest breakout success is Dirty Lettuce. The Mississippi transplant serves up seitan versions of down-home favorites like barbecue ribs and fried chicken with a rotating array of classic Southern sides.
4. ¡Chayo!
3601 SE Division St. 11:30 am-2 pm lunch, 4:30-8 pm dinner Thursday-Saturday, 11:30 am-6 pm Sunday. When he dreamed of opening a loncheria in 2018, David Lizaola imagined serving classic Jaliscan lonches on lime- and beer-enriched birote. When he couldn’t find birote in Portland, he pivoted to ciabatta—and while it may not be traditional, it’s still damn good. In the Hot Oli, Lizaola gives his pork loin an adobado treatment by massaging the cuts with a blend of guajillo pepper, herbs, alliums and warming spices. It’s a perfect sandwich.
5. Jojo
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A 3582 SE Powell Blvd., 971331-4284, jojopdx. com. 11 am-9 pm daily. Jojo’s signature Southern fried chicken sandwich was a classic the second the inaugural batch came out of the fryer two years ago: equal parts crispy and juicy; topped with vinegary coleslaw and a not so secret sauce of ketchup and Duke’s Mayo; big enough to bulge the eyes without forcing you to unhinge your jaw. A brick-and-mortar is coming to the Pearl in summer proper, but for now, you can get it from a sky-blue cart tucked in the back of a parking lot next to John’s Marketplace. Few trips are as essential.
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At Shady Pines, 5240 NE 42nd Ave. Noon-8 pm Thursday-Sunday. An all-vegan food cart hub in Portland seems like a no-brainer, and the popularity of Shady Pines confirms it: Even on late afternoons in the middle of the week, there’s usually a constant flow of people picking up hearty vegan meals.
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3. Dirty Lettuce
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600 SE 146th Ave., tacoslaplaza.com. 10:30 am-7 pm Wednesday-Friday, 9:30 am-7 pm Saturday, 9:30 am-5 pm Sunday. The birria boom has hit Portland, and the persistent traffic jam outside Birrieria La Plaza signals that it’s the chosen one at the moment. Birria is a rich and aromatic consomme that’s used in every step of production at this bright red food truck. Tacos, quesadillas and tostadas are all familiar offerings that gain a new (and messy) dimension of juicy flavor when dipped in the deep red birria. Load up as many as you’d like à la carte, or go for the Plato La Plaza (includes a mulita) if you’d like to sort out which item pairs best with the broth.
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2. Birrieria La Plaza
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Grill, 2940 NE Alberta St., partsandservicepdx.com. 3 pm-midnight MondayFriday, 11 am-midnight Saturday-Sunday.
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™ DRINK: Parts & Service Bar and
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Things are pretty manly at Parts & Service Bar and Grill. The Michelada is made with Next Level’s Bad Hombre beer. The Man-Mosa—a pint glass of Cava sparkling wine and orange juice—contains a full shot of vodka. During a recent visit, two TVs on the wall played the original Point Break with closed captioning, half-regarded by a chummy group wearing jean vests and Vans. Presumably, what brings someone to Parts & Service is a love of motorcycles, which form both the theme and décor, from the logo to the classic hog on display in the center of the room. But one need not know about choppers or hogs to fit in. This is a friendly biker bar, and the regulars are down to talk dogs, photography, even a little light politics. If it’s not the bikes bringing you in, then it must be the smoked brisket. The bar’s chef, Sage Houser, used to work the smoker at Portland’s nationally recognized Texas barbecue cart Matt’s BBQ. That means Parts & Service could be your secret meat connection for the times when Matt’s line stretches for blocks down North Mississippi. Houser’s brisket certainly stands on its own, though. It’s somehow both fatty and smooth—and deeply juicy. Wrapped in a corn tortilla and lightly dusted with house red and green sauce, the taste is a little piece of beef heaven.
The pulled pork is also a delicious, salty mouthful, if a bit difficult to distinguish from the brisket. By Sunday, the smoked portobellos were sold out. Bar staff on hand said most of the weekend smoking occurs on Thursday, so a visit earlier in the weekend might land some earthy caps. But they did have fried cauliflower wings for the indulgent vegan. At $5 a taco, Parts & Service is charging finer prices than expected. It makes sense for the smoked fare, but the cocktails—while perfectly serviceable—had a hard time living up to their $10 price tag. There’s not even any vegetables or pickles in the bloody mary. Instead, the garnish is a double citrus of lime and lemon, which just feels curiously wrong. But the pour is as robust as the big salt flakes around the glass’s rim. On a revisit, beer is probably the direction to follow. At the moment, the Parts & Service floor plan is too open to feel like a secretive dive. Rather, the bar comes off as a friendly, if expensive, neighborhood hang. There’s even a sign, home-printed but laminated, affixed outside: “Dear valued customers,” it reads. “As a courtesy to our neighbors, please refrain from revving, burnouts or speeding.”
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suzette@wweek.com
235 SW 1st Ave., ravensmanorexperience.com. 5-11 pm Wednesday-Monday. Creatures of the night, be forewarned: Portland’s newest goth bar isn’t all that goth. Sure, there are spooky sights in view as soon as you enter Raven’s Manor, from creepy dolls to dusty grimoires. But don’t go expecting the westside version of the Lovecraft. Instead, think Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. Important note: The Grave Water is hands down the best drink. Its rose water, though fragrant, is perfectly balanced with elderflower liqueur and vodka.
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BY S U Z E T T E S M I T H
5. Raven’s Manor
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At Northeast Alberta’s friendly biker bar Parts & Service, you come for the smoked brisket and stay for the motorcycles.
303 SW 12th Ave., mcmenamins.com/crystal-hotel/als-den. 3-11 pm Monday-Friday, noon-midnight Saturday, noon-11 pm Sunday. This concert venue, in the basement of the McMenamins Crystal Hotel, has been home to intimate comedy and music shows. There’s no programming on the board yet, but they’ll still let you downstairs. You can even bring your kids and make them sit with you until 8 pm—at which time you must send your children elsewhere.
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Gentle Vroom
1750 SW Yamhill St., 503-939-4164, migrationbrewing.com. 1-9 pm daily. This outpost of Northeast Glisan Street mainstay Migration Brewing is the peak realization of the rooftop bar. A 180-degree view takes in downtown, the West Hills and the Alphabet District. The panorama stretches all the way to the St. Johns Bridge and Mount St. Helens. After a round, it’s easy to understand why people keep moving to Portland: Above the din and discord, this city seems like paradise.
4. Al’s Den
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Editor: Andi Prewitt | Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com CASEY CAMPBELL PHOTOGRAPHY
PERFORMANCE
MUSIC Written by: Daniel Bromfield | @bromf3
Now Hear This
Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery. SOMETHING OLD
MASTERS OF DISGUISE: Jacquelle Davis, Janelle Rae and Sammy Rat Rios take on all 37 Shakespeare plays.
What Silliness Through Yonder Window Breaks? The Bard gets brilliantly buffoonish in Bag & Baggage’s The Complete Works of William Shakespeare *(Abridged), **[Revised]. BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E LL FERGUS O N
There is a scene in Bag & Baggage’s outdoor production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare *(Abridged) **[Revised] where actors Jacquelle Davis, Janelle Rae and Sammy Rat Rios perform what is best described as a musical autopsy of Othello’s life. “Othello listened to other fellas/And that’s the thing that made him jealous,” they sing. The lyrics are so hilarious that it takes you a moment to realize that Davis, Rae and Rios are harmonizing perfectly. Their singing is a reminder that great feats of goofiness exist on the border between chaos and discipline. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare dances on that border with grace, deftly telling a story that serves up everything from a battle featuring tin foil swords to a ballgame of kings where a sportscaster cries, “Lear is disqualified and he is not happy about it!” Under the direction of Bag & Baggage artistic director Cassie Greer, the play becomes a Shakespeare sendup alive with both cheekiness and affection, affirming that satire, like imitation, can be a sincere form of flattery. The original Complete Works of William Shakespeare premiered in 1987 written by the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield. The play has been substantially updated by Bag & Baggage, but the concept remains the same—in less than two hours, three actors blaze through all 37 of the Bard’s plays, turning tragedy into farce and making farce even more farcical. After an uproarious introduction that confuses Shakespeare with Hitler and Juan Perón, The Complete Works plunges into the plays—and not just unimpeachable masterpieces like Macbeth, but the so-called problem plays like Troilus and Cressida. The performers reenact them speedily (and, in the case of Hamlet, backwards) and revel in gleefully inappropriate revisions, like inserting the aggressively perky Natasha Bedingfield song “Pocketful of Sunshine” into Romeo and Juliet. Spoofy plays like The Complete Works of William Shakespeare risk falling prey to the facile quality of the worst Saturday Night Live skits and the lamest Monty
Python gags. Bag & Baggage’s production is able to nimbly dodge that fate because its performers aren’t just funny— they are ready and willing to forsake straightforward comedy in favor of euphoric lunacy. For Davis and Rae, that means committing to seriousness in the midst of silliness. To play Ophelia and other Shakespearean heroines, Rae flaunts a hideously puffy blond wig as if it were the epitome of style, while Davis stays laughably stone-faced even as she utters entertainingly out-of-place lines like, “Hamlet is being a prick!” Rios leaps in a different and equally delightful direction. She’s the biggest goofball of the bunch, a wonderfully kinetic comedian who indulges in the joys of sheer weirdness. The funniest moment in The Complete Works might be when she plays Friar Lawrence as a cloaked creep who flails his legs from side to side and speaks in a sinister voice that inspires another character to compare Lawrence to Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars. As The Complete Works of William Shakespeare enters its final scenes, it begins to drag. A protracted bit of audience participation doesn’t add much fizz to the jokes, and while the play’s repeated reenactments of Hamlet are clever, they arrive at the exact moment when the play cries out for a snappy climax instead of continuous encores. Yet an excess of fun is a beautiful problem to have. Like Bag & Baggage’s recent musical Aurelie the Bold, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is an implicit acknowledgement that regular theatergoers have probably seen enough plays that are either literally or metaphorically about COVID-19. That’s why this production isn’t just theater—it’s a public service. As we reckon with both the trauma of the pandemic and of readapting to “normal” life, we are going to need more plays like it. To quote Juliet, “And joy comes well in such a needy time.” SEE IT: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare *(Abridged) **[Revised] takes place at Shute Park, 750 SE 8th Ave., Hillsboro, on July 14-15; Tom Hughes Civic Center Plaza, 150 E Main St., Hillsboro, on July 17-18; and Hidden Creek Community Center, 5100 NE Hidden Creek Drive, Hillsboro, on July 22-25. 7:30 pm. Free.
Fifty years after their debut, cult L.A. band Sparks—scowling bandleader Ron Mael, his coquettish brother Russell, a revolving cast of goons—is finally on the cusp of ubiquity, with their Adam Driverstarring movie musical Annette coming on the heels of fawning Edgar Wright documentary The Sparks Brothers. Get a head start with 1974’s Kimono My House, as close to a definitive album as can be found in their zigzagging career. But their best album is 1979’s No. 1 in Heaven, a disco monster that makes the afterlife seem as scary as the guy who runs it. SOMETHING NEW DIY kids love Parannoul, and it’s easy to see why. The anonymous Korean emo-shoegaze-mathrock project’s second album, To See the Next Part of the Dream, adopts the unrealistically filtered yet emotionally roiling aesthetic of teen drama and soap opera, and even if you don’t speak a word of Korean, it’s easy to glean the album’s theme: human despondency in a beautiful world. It’s rare to find a rock record that goes this far out of its way to be gorgeous. It’s got the best album cover of the year, too. SOMETHING LOCAL Portland harpist-producer Sage Fisher, aka Dolphin Midwives, makes the leap to a more pop format on her new fulllength, Body of Water. Her knack for sound design carries over from her earlier, more abstract work, but this time around there are low, insistent beats and pitch-shifted vocals that whoop and holler like circling witches. Portland has been the home of some of the best recent New Age albums—including by Fisher’s labelmate, Crystal Quartez—and Body of Water is a fine addition to the canon. SOMETHING ASKEW It’s surprising Henry Cow isn’t more beloved given that their twin values of leftism and musical complexity also define the latter-day math rock scene. But then again, this is hair-raising stuff— an Anglo-German collective fronted by a woman named Dagmar who, with the voice of a Roald Dahl headmistress, sounds absolutely delighted shrieking about the horrors of capitalism over thick brambles of guitar and percussion. 1975’s In Praise of Learning is one of the best, gnarliest prog rock albums ever.
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POTLANDER
Stay Highdrated
Six weed-infused beverages to keep you chill this summer, in more ways than one. BY B R I A N N A WH EELE R
Since this is the prototype for summer now, it’s good to get a refresher on the several ways stoners can stay stoned to the bone when it’s too hot to inhale anything other than ambient air. When hydration and overheating are the primary concerns, ice-filled beaker bongs, frozen edibles and oily mouthfuls of tincture will only get you so far. Triple digits bearing down on your air-unconditioned home require more than just an alternative to the usual smoked-up dissociation,They require cold, therapeutically beneficial, hydrating drinks that offer that necessary smoked-up dissociation on the side. Personally, we spent our heat dome weekend hiding in our basement and sipping an assortment of canna beverages, and though each of these dranks would be an attractive addition to most Northwest summer stoner activities, they served us especially well during the hottest Portland weekend of our lives. Here’s our breakdown:
Magic Number’s Passion Fruit Seltzer
Mellow Vibes’ Strawberry Kiwi Mojo
Delta 9 Pink Lemonade
This lightly flavored seltzer water has a deep LaCroix vibe that makes it super-drinkable in the summer heat. There is a slight grassy aftertaste that is far more pronounced at room temp, so serving the drink over ice rather than straight from the fridge is a definite pro tip. The sheer variety of flavors of Magic Number’s seltzers also made them a favorite for mocktails. A splash of prickly pear juice and a pinch of salt transformed the seltzer into a delicious, fizzy gatorade that cooled and refreshed us before couching us in a cushy cannabis complacency, One 25 mg can made dealing with the heat almost tolerable, but note: The syrupy effects we experienced were likely influenced by how zapped we were by the heat. We took a can to the river once the temps calmed and found the high was far brighter and more elastic when our atmosphere was 20 degrees cooler.
When a more measured dosing hand is needed for a diverse group of stoners, Mellow Vibes’ Mojo might be the wet bar solution you’re looking for. Each 1-ounce bottle of concentrated elixir contains six 40 mg servings—the bottle totaling a heroic 250 mg each of CBD and THC. One or two drops of this simple syrup stand-in can transform a cup of club soda into a party in a glass. But for those serious about hydrating with cannabis, I suggest adding the syrup to a brewed iced tea mixture as it cools. Mojo’s flavor crosses corner-store candy sweetness with gassy diesel, and that fusion can make a basic Lipton brew taste like a pretentious bistro ice tea. But whether added to tea or soda or taken straight (oof ), we found this high fuzzy in the head and fizzy in the body, which was the enlightenment we needed after 12 hours of sweating in our seats.
Lemonade is the ultimate summer beverage after flat ice water, but when facing Armageddon temps, a lemonade with 50 mg of cannabis might be even more appropriate. Delta 9’s 7.5-ounce can of Pink Lemonade is exactly that. Made with full-spectrum, water-soluble cannabis oil, this Pink Lemonade features robust, multidimensional highs that arrive quickly and hang around for a quite a while, all while satisfying the innate summer need for lemon water. It’s not carbonated but makes a pleasant addition to club soda and, when diluted with ice water still maintains a tart sweetness. Teetotalers, be advised: Though this beverage feels infinitely drinkable, the effects are absolutely swoon-worthy, so don’t go swapping cans of Miller for cans of Delta 9. Instead, ditch the hops altogether and spread one full-dose can over several glasses of ice water.
Get it from: Mind Rite, 1780 NW Marshall St., 503-477-4430, mindritepdx.com.
Get it from: Deanz Greenz, all locations, deanzgreenz.com.
Get it from: Oregrown, 111 NE 12th Ave., 503-477-6898, oregrown.com.
Major’s Volcanic Orange Mango
Vitonic’s Strange Brew Unsweet Ice Tea
Select Oil Lemon Lime Squeeze
A more indulgent take on the canna beverage is Major’s Volcanic Orange Mango, which has the mouthfeel of juice box fruit punch, but also packs a very mature, botanical aftertaste that emerges from the throat with a satisfyingly bitter smack. Until recently this drink was sold exclusively in Washington, where it was the top-selling canna-beverage in the Evergreen State. A few gulps in, it was easy to understand the beverage’s statewide appeal. Alone, this juice satisfies a very specific craving for sugary-sweet refreshment, but when mixed with a flavorless seltzer or cut with flat ice water, the sweetness breaks out into something more multidimensional than a basic juice blend. There are suggestions of peppery terpenes, complex layers of citrus, and grassy herbs, all of which lend well to either mixing or chugging on its own. Major’s drinks are all formulated with a water-soluble dosage that can activate in a little as 10 minutes, which we highly recommend when both a cold drink and stiff high are the priority.
Though best known for its cartoonish grenade bottles of cannabis tonics, Vitonic recently launched Strange Brew teas that feel a bit more suited to the Northwest’s new deathly hot summer climate. Strange Brew is a straightforward, cannabis-infused ice tea. At its core, it’s a perfectly serviceable organic brew with an even, grassy aftertaste that balances well with the familiar earthy flavors of brewed black tea without turning skunky. It is both refreshing and stimulating in the precise way classic ice tea should be, with the added bonus of a 50 mg high. For those who are not so much interested in flavor experimentation as they are in chilling out while getting high, Vitonic might be the product to get you through our next dome event. Pro tip: In the cooler months, you can heat your Strange Brew for a literal high tea.
Another wet bar addition for lower-stakes consumption is Select’s Squeeze. These palm-size squirt bottles deliver 5 mg of flavored THC concentrate per squeeze and apply nano tech to produce a water-soluble cannabis infusion that absorbs in a fraction of the time of a traditional edible. With Select’s squeezable oils, users can build effects, similar to how one might puff a joint until reaching a max high, rather than chugging down a single serving and waiting to see where it takes them. Plus, users can really flex their mixologist muscles by exploring how Select pairs with different base beverages. We squirted doses into watermelon agua fresca, tangerine club soda, and hibiscus sun tea and enjoyed each variation, but we feel assured that less adventurous sippers can squirt this in their McSprite and feel just as satisfied.
Get it from: Gräs, 621 SE 7th Ave., 503-208-2365, grasdispensary.com.
Get it from: Weedland, 4027 N Interstate Ave., 541-904-0000.
Get it from: Chalice Farms, all locations, chalicefarms.com. 24
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Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com
8-Bit Is Enough
As TBS sitcom Miracle Workers heads down the Oregon Trail, WW celebrates the iconic game’s 50 years behind the oxcart. BY JAY H O RTO N
@hortland
For a video game whose unshakable grip on the American consciousness stems in part from the deaths of so very many virtual participants in such memorably strange ways, The Oregon Trail itself may well live forever. It’s been 50 years since Carleton College senior Don Rawitsch asked his Minnesota roomies for help coding a teleprinter-based interactive strategy program in an age before computer monitors. Desperate for time to finish the research module on 19th century Western expansion, Rawitsch intended this first iteration of The Oregon Trail to distract the junior high history class he was going to be student-teaching. The resulting game, for better or worse, effectively spawned the modern conception of edutainment and, more mysteriously, an unsinkable franchise continually cementing its position among tech-loving kids of all ages to become a cultural touchstone. Thoroughly embracing the game despite its Midwestern origins and deadly implications, Oregonians never tire of boosting The Oregon Trail’s ever-burgeoning legacy. Signature tropes borrowed from the original decorate the routes of popular road rallies and marathons around the trail’s terminus. In 2018, the Trail Blazers tweaked a simulation of the classic graphics and choose-your-ownadventure format to announce their upcoming season. In 2012, the Willamette Heritage Center won an Outstanding Educator Award by staging a live re-creation of the computer program in which Nerf weapon-toting teams hunted antler-wearing collegiates and competed to dig the perfect 26
Willamette Week JULY 14, 2021 wweek.com
SEE IT: Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail broadcasts at 10:30 pm on Tuesdays on TBS.
Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel about a theme park filled with cloned dinosaurs going (predictably) awry was (predictably) a hit. Throw in Sam Neill as a grumpy paleontologist who learns to love kids, Jeff Goldblum as a smarmy hot-shot chaos theorist, and Laura Dern as a paleobotanist with a heart of gold, and you’ve got a megahit. The Bridge Lot at OMSI, July 15.
Repo Man (1984) In this sci-fi satire of the Reagan era, Emilio Estevez stars as a down-on-his-luck punk rocker recruited for a job by a weathered repo man (Harry Dean Stanton). When the two are assigned to track down a Chevy Malibu, their mission becomes…otherworldly, to say the least. Clinton, July 16.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) WA R N E R B R O S
WESTWORLD: Daniel Radcliffe plays a reverend on the Oregon Trail in Season 3 of Miracle Workers.
grave. Among the countless online games parodying the still instantly recognizable visual aesthetic, Travel Oregon: The Game is probably the most successful variation, developed by Portland animation studio Hinge for Wieden + Kennedy’s 2017 Travel Oregon campaign. “We tried to represent the beauty of Oregon within the realm of the original,” says Roland Gauthier, Hinge’s executive producer. “Our artists emulated the look and style and color palette. We just made it funnier and more culturally relevant for what people think of Oregonians—you know, health-conscious and outdoors-focused. Instead of dying from dysentery, you’d overdose on kombucha.” While Hinge’s updated Oregon Trail would garner raves throughout the industry—including a Silver Award at the Cannes Lions Festival—the consumer response was even more dramatic. “People were recording themselves on social media and posting screenshots of their exploits,” Gauthier says. “There was a huge following throughout the U.S. and even internationally, which was pretty funny. We’d targeted Oregonians and didn’t expect so much attention from outside the state. You had people playing what’s essentially a commercial for over an hour. That’s kind of crazy.” Growing up in France, Gauthier was only dimly aware of the historic trail when his studio took on the assignment, but he’d seen his 12-year-old daughter playing the game and noted the affection with which his creative team approached the assignment. “There’s nostalgia to games you played as a child and also cultural mythos,” says Gauthier. “People literally wear shirts with phrases like ‘You have died of dysentery.’ It’s permeated whole generations of adults now. It was really the first—and potentially only—game you were allowed to play at school.” This must be the driving force behind The Oregon Trail’s deathless charms, and perhaps reason enough to make the characters in the latest batch of Miracle Workers episodes members of an 1844 wagon train. Following past seasons set in heaven and medieval Europe, respectively, the self-described anthology series offers scattershot takes on the sacred and profane in wildly different environments. As with earlier runs, the effectiveness of the show depends almost wholly upon individual viewers’ fondness for stars Daniel Radcliffe, now playing a proselytizing minister, and Steve Buscemi as a gun-toting reprobate, though early scenes suggest this milieu hasn’t the same whiff of epic absurdity, ennobling pratfalls and crap gags. From what we’ve seen, the new season avoids directly referencing The Oregon Trail. Former co-executive producer Simon Rich expressly forbade Miracle Workers’ writers from reading the novel and short story that inspired the series’ first and second seasons, and this apparent evasion of the origin material seems to be a method to avoid evoking cheesy nostalgia. Of course, the series may pretend to be based on actual events, but, as with the Titanic or Pocahontas or any other historical blip casting an outsized shadow over the national consciousness, such distinctions seem especially specious. Put plainly, everything the average American knows of the Oregon Trail comes from The Oregon Trail. And that’s not too much. Some berries are poisonous. Hand-eye coordination and organizational mania help but hardly guarantee success. Do not depend on members of your traveling party because they will soon fade away. Death is almost certain and usually embarrassing. Dysentery is a kind term for bloody diarrhea. Nobody can ford every river. In essence, we learn that life is nasty, brutish and maddeningly random, with no reward for eluding innumerable dangers along an epic trudge beyond safe passage to hostile territory and the chance to start anew. Bleak, to be sure, though this may best explain the game’s continuing sway across generations.
Jurassic Park (1993) UNIVERSAL
TBS
screener
MOVIES
GET YO UR REPS I N
Regarded as one of the most influential sci-fi films of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece centers on the discovery of a mysterious obelisk, the existential journey to understand its meaning and origin, and a devious AI named HAL. Oh, how we’ve missed the Hollywood Theatre’s 70 mm print! Hollywood, July 17-18.
Clueless (1995) “As if!” This loose, modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma stars Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz, a rich and stylish teen who becomes determined to make over the “tragically unhip” new girl at school (Brittany Murphy). Paul Rudd co-stars as Cher’s ex-step-brother and love interest. Note the “ex” and the “step” before totally buggin’! Lloyd Center Rooftop Cinema, July 18.
Metropolis (1927) A film school staple, Fritz Lang’s silent sci-fi epic was essentially the blueprint for the entire genre. Set in a dystopian future, factory workers are oppressed by their wealthy industrialist bosses. It’s up to Freder, son of the city master, and Maria, a saintly young woman, to spark a revolution—“the mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart!” Clinton, July 19.
ALSO PLAYING: Also Playing: The Bridge Lot at OMSI: The Big Lebowski (1998), July 16. Clinton: 3 Days in Quiberon (2018), July 14. Solaris (1972), July 15. Astro Boy (2009), July 15. Warning From Space (1956), July 16. The Iron Giant (1999), July 17. Ghost in the Shell (1996), July 17. The Lawnmower Man (1992), July 20. Hollywood: Tenet (2020), July 16-18. Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood (2019), July 19-21. Lloyd Center Rooftop Cinema: House Party (1990), July 17.
MOVIES The New Bauhaus
You probably don’t know the name László Moholy-Nagy. You wouldn’t be familiar with his paintings, and the Hungarianborn artist’s experimentalist photography and kinetic sculptures ended up more influential than iconic. Odds are, you’ve never even heard of the school for industrial design he founded, or the boundary-shattering curriculum he installed, but the subsequent creations of his students (Dove’s ergonomic soap bar, James Bond’s trippily louche credit sequences, the Playboy bunny logo, the honey bear) would help shape 20th century iconography and aesthetics. This 2019 documentary by Alysa Nahmias, director behind award-winning 2011 Cuban art school paean Unfinished Spaces, follows MoholyNagy from a teaching post at Weimar-era Germany’s legendary Bauhaus through his efforts to re-create the modernist mecca’s ideals within a corporate-sponsored Chicago institute. A brisk, engaging portrait of a restless polymath and beloved educator, The New Bauhaus provides a textured overview of a fascinating life that takes pains to illuminate the subject’s interdisciplinary flights of fancy. Nevertheless, with so much packed into the 89-minute running time, uninitiated audiences hoping to learn more about, say, the artist’s aborted dalliances with cinema (devising special effects for an H.G. Wells collaboration) or the military (disguising Lake Michigan from enemy bombers) may grow frustrated by the sheer breadth of digressions zipped past, however chicly. Form follows function, to be sure, but less isn’t always more. NR. JAY HORTON. Apple TV, Google Play, Vimeo.
Summer of Soul
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
The Boss Baby: Family Business
The Boss Baby was about a talking baby in a business suit and a conspiracy to create the world’s cutest puppy. Improbable as it may seem, the story of The Boss Baby: Family Business is even more bizarre. DreamWorks Animation may have adapted it from a children’s book, but the innocent days when the studio chronicled the exploits of a gassy, lovelorn ogre are over. Family Business reintroduces the Templeton brothers (voiced by James Marsden and Alec Baldwin), who are de-aged by the enigmatic cabal known as Baby Corp. so they can spy on Dr. Armstrong (Jeff Goldblum), a baby prodigy plotting to usurp the reign of parents worldwide. “Unfortunately, the world isn’t ready for a baby in a position of power—yet,” Armstrong drawls. Goldblum revels in the role so palpably that you practically see his sly smirk projected across the screen. He knows the movie is ridiculous, and so does director Tom McGrath, who loads the plot with hallucinogenic reveries, like musical notes inexplicably floating through the cosmos. Far out! Some parents may worry Family Business is priming their kids to light a joint and a lava lamp, but moviegoers of all ages should enjoy basking in the film’s sheer strangeness. PG. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cinema 99, City Center, Classic Mill Plain, Cornelius, Division, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, Lloyd Center, Peacock, Pioneer Place, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Vancouver Mall, Vancouver Plaza, Wilsonville.
L Á S Z L Ó M O H O LY - N A G Y
TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
F9 Vin Diesel is a lovably goofy badass, but he isn’t the hero of the Fast & Furious franchise. That honor belongs to Justin Lin, the hot-shot director who solidified the series’ brand: deranged automotive action and devotion to the belief that if all of humanity could barbecue with Diesel, the world would know peace. Lin keeps the faith in F9, a sequel that satisfies despite signs of wear and tear that have multiplied during the franchise’s 20-year reign at the multiplexes. Dom Toretto (Diesel) returns to battle his grouchy brother Jakob (John Cena), a rogue government agent hunting for a MacGuffin best described as a fancy soccer ball with apocalyptic potential. The action isn’t so clever or coherent as the merry mayhem Lin unleashed on Tokyo and Rio in previous Fast & Furious films, but the sweet camaraderie between Dom and his loyal cronies (including Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson and Christopher Bridges) endures. Best of all, F9 brings back Han (Sung Kang), an avatar of superhuman coolness who was apparently killed in an exploding Mazda several movies ago. When someone wonders how Han survived, he politely tells them to shut the fuck up and live in the moment. That’s good advice for anyone who goes to see F9. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinema 99, City Center, Classic Mill Plain, Cornelius, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Division, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Regal Movies On TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Vancouver Mall, Vancouver Plaza.
Someone who attended the Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of free concerts held in Mount Morris Park in the summer of 1969, referred to it as “the ultimate Black barbecue.” That’s as good a description as any considering the celebratory vibe created by organizer Tony Lawrence and the more than two dozen artists—Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone, Moms Mabley and former Temptation David Ruffin, among them—who performed at the event. Despite the estimated 300,000 attendees, the festival has been all but ignored in the wake of Woodstock, which went down weeks later. Questlove, founder of hip-hop ensemble the Roots, is jogging the world’s collective cultural memory with his directorial debut, Summer of Soul. Built from a wealth of footage captured at the Harlem Cultural Festival for a New York television station, this documentary perfectly contextualizes the event by weaving in news clips from the time and contemporary interviews with attendees and performers. But the true draw is seeing the kings and queens of R&B, funk, jazz and gospel, all of them at the peak of their considerable careers. They poured every ounce of themselves into their performances that summer and will be blowing minds anew thanks to this fantastic film. PG-13. ROBERT HAM. Cinema 21, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Hollywood, Hulu, Vancouver Mall.
Black Widow Scarlett Johansson plays a Marvel superhero in Black Widow, but she’s fiercer by far in spandex-free films like Lost in Translation and Marriage Story. She doesn’t seem to get a kick out of being an action star, and Black Widow isn’t much of an action movie—it exists mostly to fill the narrative gap between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, two similarly mediocre Marvel films. Black Widow unites Natasha Romanoff (Johansson) with her punkish sister, Yelena (Florence
Pugh). They want to annihilate the Red Room—the Russian brainwashing program that tried to turn them into soulless assassins—but they can’t succeed without the help of Melina and Alexei (Rachel Weisz and David Harbour), the sinister agents who once posed as their parents during an undercover operation. Director Cate Shortland’s poor pacing strips the story of suspense, but the most troubling thing about Black Widow is its eagerness to forgive Melina and Alexei, who condemned Natasha and Yelena to become child soldiers. Black Widow may be a feminist film, but its brand is diet feminism for moviegoers who thought the complete overthrow of the patriarchy in Mad Max: Fury Road was overkill. Maybe that’s why Johansson looks bored—she knows Black Widow isn’t worth believing in. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bagdad, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Disney+, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, Movies on TV, St. Johns Theater & Pub, St. Johns Twin Cinemas, Studio One, Tigard.
Summertime Carlos López Estrada’s spoken-word musical and ode to grassroots Los Angeles arrives right on time for this season of rediscovering our cities in existentially hungry, all-day bursts. Seek truth in good company and open air, advises Summertime. With dashes of Short Cuts and Do the Right Thing, plus a deep thumbprint from Estrada’s 2018 debut, Blindspotting, Summertime loosely trails more than 20 Angelenos across one surreal day, idealizing L.A. not toward perfection but for its streetlevel beauty and collectivism. The servers, cashiers, limo drivers and aspiring rappers (played by real-life L.A. poets) lift each other’s underestimated spirits much the way Estrada’s warm, dappled visuals suggest a golden hour that lasts half the day. In a word, though, the slam-poetry interludes are jarring.
For these exhalations, Summertime practically freezes while one ensemble character (whom we scarcely know) pours the contents of their soul into the lap of another who has no choice but to listen, stunned by this impromptu performer. There’s no disputing the artistry, just whether the grand experiment actually works—whether full-throated, showstopping acts of testimony cohere within an otherwise casual, often charming summer stroll. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Fox Tower.
The Tomorrow War Hollywood has fully embraced the genre of Big Budget, Doomsday, Alien movies chasing the tail of Independence Day ever since it came out 25 years ago. The formula is a basic mix of plug-in big-ticket actors with CGI monsters and “clever” world-building. In this vein, we have The Tomorrow War, directed by Chris McKay. The film delivers on the adrenaline-pumping action and impending danger around every corner on par with every other film of this ilk. Perhaps too on par. The Tomorrow War plays out like an alien action movie mixtape as it shamelessly steals from every film in its genre, from Aliens to Starship Troopers. If you find you enjoy these films’ predictable but fun structure, then this movie should adequately satisfy and entertain. But if you’re looking for any semblance of depth and character study, you’ll probably be left feeling frustrated by the emptiness in this bloated display of unending clichés and “Oh, my God” moments (not the good kind). Chris Pratt may not have been the best choice to carry the emotional weight the script asks for as his co-stars act circles around him in every dramatic scene. If you cast Pratt, then let him run with the sardonic humor the film is begging for and his onscreen persona delivers so well. But please don’t ask him to actually act. PG-13. RAY GILL JR. Amazon Prime.
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SPOTLIGHT ARTISTS STEPHEN COHEN
JOEY DEHNERT
Stephen is a performing, recording, visual artist and writer. “Mr. Bells” will be included in his upcoming book of short stories, poems, lyrics, and visual art, “Baggy Red Pants and Other Stories”.
Joey Dehnert is a Portland based multimedia artist with a focus on illustration. His perpetual project is called the Fug Fam. It’s a crude, thoughtful, and hopefully funny look at our world through the lens of the Fug Fam multiverse.
You can see more of Stephen’s art at www.3handstephen.com/art
You can find more of Fug Fam at fugfam.net or the instagram handle @fugfam69.
COMiCS!
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Be a Willamette Week featured artist! Any art style is welcome! Let’s share your art! Contact us at art@wweek.com.
Willamette Week JULY 14, 2021 wweek.com
Cut ‘em out! Tell yer friends! LOL!
COMiCS! JACK KENT’S
Jack draws exactly what he sees n’ hears from the streets. IG @sketchypeoplepdx kentcomics.com
Join me! Sketchy People book release! This Saturday at CULT. (1204 NW Glisan) 1pm to sketchy.
Willamette Week JULY 14, 2021 wweek.com
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Need something to do? Got a special event to share? Check out
wweek.com/calendar to find out what’s happening around town.
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Willamette Week JULY 14, 2021 wweek.com
JONESIN’
Week of July 22
©2021 Rob Brezsny
by Matt Jones
"Go Get 'Em"--actually, this is my first rodeo.
ARIES (March 21-April 19)
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)
Author Valerie Andrews reminds us that as children, we all had the "magical capacity to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unselfconsciously to the soughing of the trees." Oh, how I would love you to be able to recover even a fraction of those talents in the coming days. My reading of the current astrological potentials tells me that your chances of doing so are much better than usual. Your ability to connect with the eternal child and wise animal within you is at a peak.
Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus wrote, "Great feelings bring with them their own universe"— which he said may either be degraded or splendid, selfish or generous. I love that he allowed for the possibility that great feelings could be positive and noble. So many renowned thinkers focus on negative and ignoble states of mind. In accordance with current astrological potentials, Libra, your task is to cultivate feelings that are splendid and generous. These sentiments should exalt you, uplift you, and empower you to spread transformative benevolence to those whose lives you touch.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20)
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)
Taurus singer Barbara Streisand has a shopping mall built below her large home. Its purpose isn't to sell consumer goods to strangers but rather to stash her precious belongings and show them off when friends come over. Among the storefronts are an antique store, doll shop, costume shop, and candy store. The coming weeks would be an excellent time for you to start building a shopping mall beneath your home, too, Taurus. If that's too expensive or complicated, here are alternatives: 1. Revitalize your appreciation for your treasured possessions. 2. Acquire a new treasured possession or two that will inspire you to love your life even more than you already do. 3. Reacquaint yourself with the spiritual powers that your treasured possessions arouse in you.
GEMINI (May 21-June20)
ACROSS
60 Ray gun sound
30 "Thatcherites" singer Billy
1 11th graders' exam (abbr.)
62 Came up short
5 "Now, _ _ _ from our sponsor"
64 "_ _ _ just not, please?"
32 "... can't believe _ _ _ the whole thing!"
10 Hill's high point
67 Protester's forum
14 "It's _ _ _ Quiet" (Bjork remake) 15 Doritos flavor 16 Any of the three "Survivor" motto words
65 "_ _ _ please the court ..." 70 Wine valley 71 Spanish footballer Sergio
33 Tiniest speck 34 "SNL" cast member Chris 35 Lake on four states and a province
72 Miners' quarries
36 Component of some church instruments
73 Acceptability, for short
38 First show
17 Place to make a vinyl purchase
74 Painter Gustav who often used gold leaf
41 Grain storage tower
19 He'll give you a ride, on "The Simpsons"
75 Rodeo item that I can't seem to properly get around the theme answers
20 Muse for Keats 21 Norse pantheon chief
43 Govt. auction auto, perhaps 46 "Finding Dory" fish 48 It may be called
DOWN
51 Edit considerably
1 Read carefully (over)
53 One who talks the talk
2 "The Jungle Book" tiger _ _ _ Khan
55 Tibet's neighbor
3 Music licensing org.
58 Win all the games
4 Greet with a honk
59 Brief
31 Cherry _ _ _ (Ben & Jerry's offering)
5 "What next?"
60 Most of a penny's makeup
6 Existed
61 From a long way
34 "Can't Fight This Feeling" band _ _ _ Speedwagon
7 Eight, in El Salvador
63 Singer Lovato who announced their new pronouns in 2021
23 Oedipus _ _ _ 24 "Scarface" director Brian 27 Mushroom with white buds 29 Second side in a game, perhaps
37 A little above the pitch 39 Drum kit cymbal stand 40 Stumbles 42 "... the bombs bursting _ _ _" 44 _ _ _ speak (as it were) 45 Start a meal 47 Shoelace tip 49 "Shiny Happy People" group 50 Casino worker 52 Camera that gets strapped on 54 Name, in Latin 56 Vacationing traveler
8 Half a state name 9 Olympic athlete's violation 10 Guac ingredient, casually 11 Scent after the first rain in a while 12 Mononymic Art Deco designer 13 Microsoft system launched in 2001 18 Acting jobs 22 "The Daily Show" host Trevor 25 Half a Hawaiian fish?
57 Opening notes
66 Lincoln's son 68 Chow down, slangily 69 Amphibious WWII vessel
last week’s answers
The Dalai Lama says there are core similarities between science and Buddhism. Both keep searching for ever-more complete versions of the truth. Both employ firsthand observation and experimentation to do that noble work. If they find new information that contradicts previously held versions of the truth, both are willing to discard them. Now that you Geminis are entering the Deep Questioning Phase of your astrological cycle, I'd love you to make generous use of the Buddhist/Scientific approach. More complete versions of the truth will be available in abundance in the coming weeks—if you're alert for them.
CANCER (June 21-July 22) Cancerian artist Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1656) achieved the impossible: She became a supremely skilled and renowned painter in an era when women had virtually no opportunities to become artists. Many aspects of her work distinguished her from other painters. For example, she depicted women as having strong, agile hands and arms. In Artemisia's world, the power of women's wrists, forearms, and fingers signifies their ability to put their mark upon the world, to accomplish strenuous practical tasks with grace and flair. If I were going to paint images of you in the coming weeks, I would also portray you as having strong, agile hands and arms. I suspect you'll have potent agency to get things done—to adeptly manipulate the material world to serve your ideals. (Thoughts about Artemisia's hands come from art historian Mary D. Garrard.)
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) "Once upon a time": That's your phrase of power these days. What do I mean by that? I'm suggesting that you will strengthen your problem-solving abilities by engaging in playful pretending for the sheer fun of it. I'm predicting that you will boost your confidence by dreaming up amusing magical stories in which you endure heroic tests and achieve epic feats. And I'm proposing that you will fine-tune your ability to accomplish practical feats if you regard your robust imagination as crucial to your success.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Virgo singer-songwriter Fiona Apple says she's not religious. On the other hand, she regularly kneels on the ground and announces to whatever great power might be listening, “Thank you for my problems, and I send my love everywhere.” She's sincere. She regards her sadness and her challenges as being equally important to her happiness and success. The difficulties teach her what she didn't even realize she needed to know, and make her appreciate the good times more intensely. I suggest you borrow from her approach right now.
"How can you hold on to something that won’t hold still?" asked Scorpio poet Benjamin Fondane. In general, you Scorpios have more talent than every other sign of the zodiac at doing just that: corralling wiggly, slippery things and making them work for you. And I expect this skill will be especially in play for you during the coming weeks. Your grasp on the elusive assets won't ever be perfect, but it will be sufficiently effective to accomplish small wonders.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Sagittarian Calvin Trillin is a witty writer with a good imagination and a flair for inventive language. But back in school, he confesses, "Math was always my bad subject. I couldn't convince my teachers that many of my answers were meant ironically." You Sagittarians are authorized by the cosmic powers-that-be to borrow your style and attitude from Trillin in the coming weeks. So you shouldn't be fixated on mathematical precision and fastidious logic; your task is not to be conceptually impeccable and scrupulously sensible. Rather, you have a license to be extra lyrical and lush and rhapsodic and humorous and irrepressible.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) In 2011, an eBay seller produced a 19th-century photo that he said proved Capricorn actor Nicholas Cage is a time-traveling vampire. Although the character in the image did indeed resemble the Oscar-winning star, he rejected the theory, and emphatically declared that he is not a time-traveling vampire. Maybe that all sounds absurd, but I must tell you that you may soon have to deal with people's equally inaccurate and off-kilter theories about you. My advice: Don't take it personally. Simply correct others' misimpressions and rely solely on yourself for definitive ideas about who you are.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) I've assembled excerpts of love poems for your inspiration. Why? Because you're entering the Intensified Intimacy Phase of your astrological cycle. Consider using the following riffs as inspiration when you interact with loved ones. 1. "I profess the religion of love; it's the belief, the faith I keep." 2. "Holding your hand, I can hear your bones singing into mine and feel the moon as it rolls through you." 3. "Raw light spills from your eyes, utterly naked, awakening an intoxicating shimmer of adventure." 4. "I ask you please to speak to me forever." (Poem fragments are from Ibn 'Arabi, Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, Herman Hesse, Sara Eliza Johnson, Alejandra Pizarnik.)
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) An Australian witch named Michelle Clinton praises the joys of a "moon garden." It features flowers and plants that reveal their full beauty after dark. Among the flowers that bloom at night are evening primrose, angel's trumpet, and Dutchman's pipe cactus. As for the flowers whose aromas are most potent after the sun sets: night-blooming jasmine, garden heliotrope, and honeysuckle. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you will have resemblances to a moon garden in the near future, Pisces. Be alert for opportunities to glow and grow in the dark. (More: tinyurl.com/LunarGarden)
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