Willamette Week, July 21, 2021 - Volume 47, Issue 37 - "Best of Portland 2021"

2021 READERS’ POLL WINNERS, P. 26 PRESENTED BY

"NO NIGHT DJ. SOMETIMES DAY DJS." P. 40

WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY

POLITICS: GOVERNOR NICHOLAS KRISTOF? P. 5

WILDFIRES: PORTLAND’S CREW ENTERS INFERNO. P. 9

ROAD TRIP: OREGON’S DESTINATION REST STOPS. P. 39

BESTOF PORTLAND

BEST FLOCK:

THINK PINK FLAMINGOS PAGE 18

WWEEK.COM

VOL 47/38 07.21.2021

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FINDINGS J U S T I N YA U

Partnered to help with community clean up & hunger

BOOTLEG FIRE, PAGE 9

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 47, ISSUE 38 Fresh-cut noble firs nearly doubled in price over five Christmases. 6 An Instagram post of a flaming camper van gets 350 likes within 20 minutes. 8 Plumes of smoke from the Bootleg Fire rise above the cruising altitude of most commercial airliners. 9 There’s a guy in Portland whose legal name is Jesus Christ—and he rolls around town on a crucifixshaped skateboard. 11

Arby’s has the meats. Cabel Sasser has their signs. 20

If Arya Stark were a wine, she’d be a riesling. 21 Baristas, beware: Jarvis the Robot is coming for your job. 22 Thunderpants underwear is wedgie-proof. 23

Bend has the last Blockbuster.

Portland has a Free Blockbuster.

23 White Owl Social Club is no longer for the bros. 40

A former weed dealer started Portland’s first cannabis-themed magic show. 11

Sun God Medicinals’ THC Hypnos Sleep Herbal Blunt has the flavor profile of casserole. 45

A feral peacock roams the streets of Creston-Kenilworth. 12

Jake Whiston created the eerie score for his new short film by smacking butter knives against wine bottles. 47

Portland is home to 3,600 rain gardens. 14

ON THE COVER:

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

Think Pink Flamingos, photo by Chris Nesseth.

A mass shooting killed an 18-year-old woman near downtown Portland food carts.

MASTHEAD EDITOR & PUBLISHER

Mark Zusman

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Rekindle the

PDX

LOVE. Welcome Back Music & Events Downtown/ Inner Eastside

DIALOGUE During the recent record-shattering heat wave, some parts of Portland were hotter than others.

“Heat islands”—areas with few trees and lots of concrete—can experience temperatures more than 20 degrees higher than greener neighborhoods. In Portland, many of those areas are concentrated in East Portland along Interstate 205 and other arterial highways (“The Hottest Place in Portland,” WW, July 14, 2021). Dr. Vivek Shandas, a Portland State University professor who studies climate change, has been warning about the danger that heat islands pose to Portlanders for a decade. The heat wave killed 71 people in Multnomah County, and nearly a quarter of those deaths occurred in ZIP codes that Shandas had previously identified as high-risk heat islands. Here’s what our readers had to say: Cassandra D Ross, via Facebook: “They really need to require some kind of air conditioning in these disabled and low-income apartments. Many of these elders and disabled people can’t afford expensive window units. Our infrastructure is wholly unprepared for this, but we need to adjust quickly.

Or see more and more heat- or fire-related deaths every year.”

Dubious, via wweek.com: “These hyperthermia stories imply the landlords had responsibility for their tenants’ health. It would have been compassionate if they’d checked on tenants, but are they actually responsible? What are the legal obligations of landlords running low-income housing?”

Janet Bean, via Facebook: “‘Residents have to provide their own air conditioning.’ Are political leaders aware that, even if it were financially possible, there were NO AC units available for sale anywhere?”

Jeff Roth, via wweek.com: “Three days of a freak heat event and people want to completely redesign the whole city over it. I live near that intersection, it was 90 inside my house with four portables running. I would certainly like more green space in my neighborhood instead of empty lots used for illegal

Dr. Know

More deets at HereForPortland.com/welcomeback

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dumping and porta-potties all over the place. A little perspective, though, people; Phoenix is like that for six to seven months of the year where the LOW is in the 90s. We get it for a handful of days a year (and never before like we just had), so I don’t know if we need to start painting everyone’s roof white just yet. And no, not everyone in Phoenix has AC, many people get by with swamp coolers alone.” @serialjohhny, via Twitter: “Or, you know, just buy everyone an air conditioner. Problem solved.” @D_Neal70, via Twitter: “When you’re disabled, and it’s really hot out, it zaps your energy and you can barely make it out of bed. I know this firsthand, I am on assisted oxygen for scarred lungs from blood clots. When I have to go out in 80-plus-degree temps, it sometimes takes me two days to recover in bed.”

Malika Edden Hill, via Facebook: “It feels like we have to stop the passive notifications and actually meet people where they are at. We need to provide transportation and engage people rather than relying on things like call centers.”

Madeline Criswell, via Facebook: “I live in an RV, but am lucky enough to live on someone’s property with one side of my RV in the shade. Even then I still had to cover my windows with tinfoil and have two air conditioners going at the same time on each side of my 30-footer for it to stay at a ‘cool’ 85 degrees all day. I can’t imagine the pain and misery these people died in without any of those necessities. This was entirely preventable, and blood is on the hands of those in charge who could have helped. Anyone who pooh-poohs the idea of helping vulnerable people survive a heat wave in any way they can is the definition of evil and lacking empathy.”

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

If the unvaccinated tend to be conservatives who live in Trump-supporting counties and red states, what’s wrong with their giving COVID-19 to each other? How can Republicans making each other sick be a bad thing? —Walking Amongst the Living Dead I’m all for waving the bloody flag of partisanship, Walking, but let’s be honest: Republicans don’t have a monopoly on ignorance. (A commanding market share, sure, but not a monopoly.) We all know a yoga instructor/aromatherapist who votes for Democrats (at least in years when Jill Stein is otherwise engaged) but who still thinks Jenny McCarthy deserves a Nobel Prize for vaccine research.

But while I reject your premise that it’s only Republicans who are refusing the vaccine, I’m willing to put partisanship aside when it comes to the greater good of culling the science-denying herd.

A plague that only kills stupid people? What’s the catch?

Well, it turns out there are several, which is why nine counties in California recently reinstituted mask mandates for the stated purpose of protecting the unvaccinated. The biggest of these catches is probably the fact that public health officials have

this thing about not letting any people die—even the ones who are obviously huge jerks. (Whatever.)

However, there’s another, more sympathetic cohort: cancer patients, the immunosuppressed, people with certain allergies, and children under 12 (plus a few folks who just haven’t been able to make their jab happen quite yet.) These Americans are unvaccinated through no fault of their own, so you can understand why we might mask back up to protect them.

That said, let’s not oversell it. This whole notour-fault group (minus the kids) is estimated at just 2% to 3% of the population. And while it’s true that the kids have greater numbers, unvaccinated kids are actually less susceptible to severe COVID than fully vaccinated adults, accounting for just 0.2% of deaths. (Vaccinated adults come in at 0.8%.)

Finally, California’s endgame for these restrictions is not exactly clear: COVID isn’t going anywhere. The anti-vaxxers aren’t getting vaccinated anytime soon. So if nothing changes, does the mandate just keep going…forever? “Serves ’em right” may not be a real infectious disease policy, but I can’t really judge you for thinking it should be.

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

MURMURS K R I S T O F F A M I LY

HOMECOMING: Nicholas Kristof, at right, returned to Yamhill County to write a book about his childhood friend Clayton Green.

JOURNALIST FOR GOVERNOR? New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is considering a run for Oregon governor, WW reported June 18. That news was met with state and national incredulity, and Kristof wouldn’t say when he’d moved back to his childhood home in Yamhill County. But the county elections clerk tells WW that Kristof has been registered to vote as a Democrat since December 2020. That lends credibility to the idea that Kristof, who also took a leave of absence last month from the paper, has for months been laying the groundwork for a run. On Sunday, he told WW that friends were trying to recruit him. “I have friends trying to convince me that here in Oregon, we need new leadership from outside the broken political system,” he told WW. “I’m honestly interested in what my fellow Oregonians have to say about that.” Kristof could face significant competition in the Democratic primary, since it’s only the second time in more than two decades that the governor’s race won’t include an incumbent or former governor.

FAST FOOD WORKERS REPORT DANGEROUS HEAT CONDITIONS: Portland-area fast food and restaurant workers reported dangerous workplace temperatures during last month’s historic, deadly heat wave, according to complaints filed with Oregon Occupational Safety & Health, obtained by WW through a public records request. Of approximately 40 Portland-area complaints alleging excessive heat, 14 were filed by food service workers, including three employees at McDonald’s and two at Chipotle Mexican Grill. “No air conditioner during this extreme heat and still having all the staff work. It has [gone] up to 125 degrees inside the building, potentially exposing employees to heat stress,” one employee at the McDonald’s in St. Johns reported. An employee at the Applebee’s on Northeast Halsey Street filed a complaint alleging the restaurant reached 108 degrees because the air conditioning broke: “The employer refuses to close and fix the air conditioning,” the employee said. “Employees had to use ice and cool rags to stay cool. This type of weather is not fit for employees to work.” A worker at the Claim Jumper in Tualatin alleged employees had been using the walk-in refrigerator to cool off from indoor temperatures above 90 degrees, but that “the manager locked the door to keep employees from using the only one way that was available for them to cool off.” None of the restaurants responded to requests for comment.

Visit our website to make an appointment or shop online 717 SW 10th Ave Portland, OR 97205 503.223.4720 www.maloys.com

Hey you two, get a ring!

You can now shop online, or book an appointment to visit for fine antique and custom jewelry, or for repair work. We also buy.

HOUSING LEADER MULLS RUN FOR COUNTY CHAIR: Shannon Singleton, an adviser to Gov. Kate Brown and former executive director of the homeless services nonprofit JOIN, is weighing a run for Multnomah County chair, multiple sources tell WW. That’s notable in part because the county oversees homeless services, and Singleton would bring years of leadership to bear. She served on the executive committees that passed affordable housing bond measures in 2016 and 2018. “I have made no decision,” Singleton tells WW. Current Chair Deborah Kafoury is serving her last of two terms and is among those believed to be weighing a run for governor.

TREE PLANTERS FIND SOME FUNDING: The tree-planting group Friends of Trees will get partial funding from the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services for the upcoming planting season. Earlier this month, the group told WW it was stuck in limbo waiting to hear whether it would get interim funding for planting season, which extends through the spring (the contract ends in December). But the group told WW on July 21 it is meeting with BES this week to iron out a deal: “It is our understanding that they intend to fund us at roughly half of the amount we have received previously in the form of stop-gap support to ensure community tree planting continues this fall through spring,” said executive director Yashar Vasef, who adds that “nothing has been signed in ink yet.” BES spokesperson Diane Dulken says the extended contract will apply to tree planting on private property only. The back-and-forth matters because Friends of Trees has focused its tree-planting efforts since 2008 in deep Southeast Portland, where there’s far less tree cover than on the west side of the Willamette River.

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WESLEY LAPOINTE

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

FINDINGS

Judge Hernandez, who summarized Taylor’s testimony.

Taylor further testified that protesters carrying the banner June 30 were slowing police efforts to move the crowd.

“Because of these circumstances, Officer Taylor attempted to take the banner from the protesters,” Hernandez wrote. “Officer Taylor testified that at this moment he suspected that the protester was trying to retain the banner to use it as a weapon.”

Ultimately, however, Hernandez ruled that Taylor’s munition deployment that night did not comply with the Police Bureau’s Use of Force Directive 1010. Taylor’s actions that night had effectively put the city in violation of a temporary restraining order the court issued on June 26, 2020.

“The incident occurred while it was still light out, and video shows that the long PVC banner was flimsy,” Hernandez wrote. He added that Taylor had “ample opportunity” that night to see the banner was not, in fact, a shield and did not conceal weapons.

“At most,” Hernandez wrote, “the record shows that the individual who was refusing to let go of their sign was engaged in passive resistance.”

CHRISTMAS IN JULY

Banner Beware

FREE SPEECH: Black Lives Matter protesters march along Southeast Belmont Street.

The price of an Oregon Christmas tree nearly doubled in five years.

An internal probe finds that a Portland police officer who regarded a “flimsy” banner as a weapon acted within policy when he fired projectiles at a protester.

BY TE SS R I S K I

tess@wweek.com

Are protest banners weapons? Sometimes, according to the Portland Police Bureau.

A recent investigation by PPB’s internal affairs unit, reviewed by the city’s Independent Police Review, determined that Officer Brent Taylor did not violate bureau directives when he shot five rounds of projectiles at a protester’s legs last June.

The main reason investigators say Taylor acted within policy? Because he believed a banner that protesters carried might conceal or be used as a weapon.

“In the moments prior to deploying his [weapon], Officer Taylor observed protesters utilizing a large banner as what he believed to be a shield,” East Precinct Commander Erica Hurley concluded. “He had concerns the banner could conceal weapons and be used as a weapon.”

The banner was printed with the slogan: “Abolish the PPB.” THE DOCUMENT The City Auditor’s Office sent a letter June 7 to Lester Wrecksie, a protester whom Taylor shot in the legs with a projectile launcher during the protest. The letter, obtained exclusively by WW, offers an unusual level of insight into internal affairs investigations, which are typically kept out of public view.

Taylor fired the projectiles at a June 30, 2020, demonstration outside Portland Police Association headquarters.

Video from the incident shows police and protesters, including Wrecksie, engaged in a brief tug of war over a white banner, which promptly falls apart when police yank on the white PVC piping that held it together. Within seconds, the video shows, Taylor fired projectiles at Wrecksie, who was wearing roller skates.

Wrecksie filed a tort claim notice with the city the following December, which prompted the internal affairs and IPR investigations.

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Fir Sale

The June 7 letter cited a June 4 memo from internal affairs in which Hurley found that Wrecksie’s complaint against Taylor was “not sustained.” She added that Wrecksie was inadvertently caught in a crossfire between Taylor and several other protesters, and that when police later arrested Wrecksie that same night, “he did not make any complaints of injury or pain.”

IPR deputy director Dana Walton-Macaulay and Lt. Scott Konczal of the IA unit signed off on the letter. Walton-Macaulay wrote that Assistant Chief Michael Leasure and acting Capt. Chris Gjovik also reviewed the incident: “In this case they all agreed with Commander Hurley’s findings.”

THE OFFICER Taylor, a seven-year veteran of the now-dissolved Rapid Response Team, was a fixture at last summer’s protests. He garnered criticism in activist circles after protesters posted videos of him using what they described as excessive force.

In a March 16, 2021, filing, U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez ordered Taylor removed from crowd management duty pending the investigations. The Police Bureau says Taylor has not returned to crowd management duties.

Taylor did not respond to a request for comment.

THE POLICY DEBATE While the two agencies that review allegations of officer misconduct found Taylor acted within policy directives, a federal judge disagreed.

Taylor previously made a similar defense of his actions in an earlier federal lawsuit stemming from the Police Bureau’s use of force during protests. In that case, filed in June 2020 by Don’t Shoot PDX, Taylor testified that banners and other protest signs “can be draped across plywood shields reinforced with nails and PVC pipes containing screws or concrete, which could be used as weapons to impale an officer,” according to a November order filed by

Climate change stole Christmas.

That’s one takeaway from a July 13 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that reveals one result of Oregon’s increasingly hot summers: more expensive Christmas trees.

Oregon produces the most Christmas trees in the nation. For years, tree growers along the Cascade Range have warned that a seedling shortage, wildfires and dry summers are strangling their harvest.

The USDA report, which compares holiday tree sales in 2015 to those in 2020, confirms that complaint: In five years, the acreage growing Christmas trees dropped 24%, and the total number of trees sold fell 27%.

So tree growers trudged home as penniless as Bob Cratchit? Hardly. They merely increased the price of each tree. In fact, by nearly doubling the average price, from $17.90 to $31.06, Christmas tree purveyors saw gross sales increase 26%, to a healthy $107 million.

Some of those evergreens rose in price faster than others, the USDA report reveals. Every tree just needs a little love, Charlie Brown’s friends told him. But a noble fir?

That requires 38 American dollars. AARON MESH.

AVERAGE OREGON PRICE PER TREE 2015 VS. 2020 DOUGLAS FIR

$12.82

$21.05

NOBLE FIR

$20.98

$38.68

GRAND FIR

$16.27

$31.21

NORDMANN/TURKISH FIR

$18.47

$36.05

DOUGLAS FIR

$17.90

$31.06

Sources: National Agricultural Statistics Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

NEWS MAPPED

Rest Stops Portland identified 75 possible sites for safe sleeping. We visited five of them.

On July 16, City Commissioner Dan Ryan released a list of 75 possible properties where Portland officials might erect “safe rest sites” where unhoused people could camp tucked away off the streets. Ryan asked all city bureaus that own land to identify lots in all six quadrants of the city that might be viable for such sites.

As might be expected from such a grab bag, the options vary widely—and Ryan’s office pledges it will swiftly eliminate many of the ideas from consideration. “Some of these properties will not be suitable for Safe Rest Villages, and we are still connecting with jurisdictional partners to identify additional properties that may be more ideal,” spokesperson Margaux Weeke said. “[Our] top considerations are square footage, utility hookups, access to transit, environmental impact, and duration of availability.”

Removing sites won’t be difficult. What stands out most from the list—second, perhaps, only to the lack of locations in upscale inner eastside neighborhoods—is how few of these sites, in their current state, seem like they could be transformed into safe rest sites by the end of the year. They may be tomorrow’s Band-Aid for the housing crisis, but what they are today is reason for pause. We visited five of those locations in North Portland, each of which shares the drawbacks of multiple other locales.

KENTON COMMUNITY GARDEN

This is, quite literally, a mileslong strip of land sandwiched between residential homes on one side and the busy North Columbia Boulevard on the other, at the industrial edge of the city. The strip is grassy underfoot and dotted with clusters of trees. A few tents are already tucked underneath the groves. A walking path meanders through the center of the roughly 50-foot wide strip. The city has identified three separate stretches of the strip that could be potential sites. It’s also placed over a major sewage line, so it’s owned by the Bureau of Environmental Services.

SWAN ISLAND PUMP STATION

GRAVEL LOT AT NORTH MISSISSIPPI AVENUE AND KNOTT STREET

A partially overgrown gravel lot in the Eliot neighborhood, it’s one of about 10 gravel lots or parking lots on the list.

Trees and shrubbery encroach on the gravel parking lot on one side. It’s a mere hundred feet away from crisscrossing Interstate 5, I-405 and Highway 30 overpasses and echoes with the roar of cars whooshing by. A few car campers are already staked out on the lot, and one grassy portion is covered with purple sweet pea flowers. It measures 13,500 square feet and is surrounded by apartments, businesses and industrial buildings. It, too, is owned by the Bureau of Environmental Services.

ST. JOHN’S TANK

Two grassy lots, each one acre, sit next to a fallow railroad and industrial buildings. One of the lots is surrounded by a tall fence with barbed wire at the top. It consists mostly of overgrown fennel bushes, grass and weeds. It overlooks the Willamette River, and the view of Forest Park offers a bit of romance. Less idyllic: It sits adjacent to an underground sewage well so large that the Portland Building could fit inside. “In places where it’s too flat or sewage needs to go uphill, pump stations push the sewage up so that gravity can take over again,” explains BES, which owns the pump station and four others on the list.

The only sign of what lies beneath this site? An unsightly square of concrete. Still, it’s hard to imagine the city suggesting this as housing, any more than a community garden. SOPHIE PEEL.

CLOCKED

Hunzeker Watch He’s still on leave—and we’re still waiting for answers.

127 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.

Yes, this is a working garden: green, vibrant and busy. The garden gently slopes downward and is filled with rows of planter boxes of tomatoes, sunflowers and lettuce. Two massive zucchini sit on the sole wooden table on the lot.

It’s surrounded by a fence, overlooks North Columbia Boulevard, and borders apple trees on one side. It’s owned by the Bureau of Environmental Services and is one of three community gardens on the list.

138 DAYS:

COLUMBIA BUFFER STRIP The lot adjacent to busy North Willamette Boulevard lies near the Willamette River in the St. Johns neighborhood and is tucked between houses on three sides. About three-quarters is fenced. Two huge water tanks tower over the small, rectangular lot. Around the taller, thinner tank, called a standpipe, a spiral staircase winds to the top. The more massive tank stilts on 11 trunklike legs. Both structures would have to be taken down, a project that would cost the Water Bureau at least $200,000.

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.

126 DAYS:

That’s how long it’s been since the city signed a contract with an outside investigative firm to probe the leak. TESS RISKI.

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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NEWS

Bad Influence

Does Portland look like shit?

Somebody with a lot of Instagram followers thinks so.

AARON MESH

POVERTY PORN: A popular Instagram account challenges Portland’s efforts to repair its reputation. This photo, of a burned-out car on Mount Tabor, has not been posted.

BY S OPHI E P E E L

F

and

T E SS RI S K I

503-243-2122

or much of 2021, Mayor Ted Wheeler and Portland business groups have tried to repair the city’s tattered reputation in the face of rampant homelessness.

They launched a marketing campaign called “Here for Portland” in December, bought a full-page ad in The New York Times and other newspapers to extol the city’s virtues, and pledged zero tolerance for vandalism and trash.

Unfortunately, their work has been overshadowed in many circles by an anonymous Instagram account with a single message: Portland looks like shit.

The images the account shares with its 53,000-plus followers, in more than 500 posts since last June, compose a mosaic of a city in disrepair.

A man clings to the back of a TriMet bus like SpiderMan. Dozens of orange syringes are scattered next to a freeway on-ramp. Someone defecates on the street in broad daylight. Someone else washes their feet in one of the public drinking fountains called Benson Bubblers.

And—in one of the most popular categories on the page— vehicles and RVs are engulfed in flames and later shown charred into blackened shells.

The account, called @portlandlookslikeshit, has only a quarter of the followers that Travel Portland has on its Instagram page—yet far more engagement, with its viewers submitting their own photographs and videos, captured on cellphones and surveillance cameras, of fires, filth and mental distress on the streets.

Travel Portland, which is primarily a marketing organization for Portland tourism, says it won’t dignify @ portlandlookslikeshit with a reply.

“Travel Portland has no comment on an anonymous social media channel designed to convince people that Portland is a dangerous and unwelcoming place,” the tourism board tells WW. “Our priority is supporting Portland’s reopening, uplifting local businesses, creators and experiences, and bringing back visitors who have a major economic impact on the city and surrounding region.”

Much of the focus of the Instagram account is directed at Mayor Wheeler and his staff. “Thank you for your outstanding policies that have driven this city into the third world,” says one image in the “Letters to Ted” section.

Wheeler calls the account harmful and cruel. “This account exploits those who are most vulnerable in our community,” he says, “and shows a lack of compassion for people who are less fortunate, fighting addiction or 8

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

experiencing mental health crises.”

That’s a common criticism. “It breaks my heart to view this account,” says Kaia Sand, executive director of Street Roots. “Ridicule is cruel.”

Even potential allies are alienated. Britt Howard, whose Portland Garment Factory burned down in April in a fire that investigators say was started by a homeless woman, is a public critic of the account.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of people who can say a houseless person who’s likely not mentally stable burned down their life,” she says. “[But] posting photos of people when they’re suffering is such a low blow and so ignorant.

Now you have 50,000 followers, and what’s your message?

It’s baloney.”

In June 2020, @portlandlookslikeshit posted its first photo.

Early on, the images and videos were mostly of homeless encampments, with only a few unhoused people dotted throughout. Not one post got more than 100 likes until this February. Now a typical post has 350 likes within 20 minutes.

The tone has since intensified in both captions and images, which now often show the faces of unhoused people in obvious states of mental distress. Many of the videos feature an anonymous videographer interacting with people in some way.

In one video posted to the account June 13, someone off camera films a man defecating on a sidewalk corner. The man, squatting next to a wall, appears to turn his face away as the unnamed videographer remarks: “There’s a bathroom at the park like a block away. What the fuck is wrong with you, man? There’s a fucking school across the street.”

The @portlandlookslikeshit account is similar to others documenting homelessness in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. (The L.A. account @ gutterpeoplefromlosangeles also has over 50,000 followers and often refers to homeless people as “it” and “zombie.”)

It’s also not the only Portland version: There are spinoffs, but @portlandlookslikeshit is the city’s most prominent.

Rebecca Armstrong, CEO of Portland ad agency North, says such accounts are dangerous because it “starts to look like news reporting, but it’s a very one-sided approach. It’s worrisome, and this is a national trend right now.”

Beyond the sensational photos and footage, much of the intrigue surrounding @portlandlookslikeshit stems from the mystery of who runs it.

Through an Instagram message, the account’s moderator declined to comment for this story, to disclose who runs the

page, or to say what that person’s or group’s intentions are.

Among those who comment on the account is Brandon Weeks, owner of HunnyMilk, a brunch spot on West Burnside Street. On a video of two men passed out in a car, Weeks wrote, “Just a couple of hardworking gentlemen down on their luck.”

Weeks tells WW the account paints an honest picture.

“We’ve dealt with a lot of the issues directly with the negative parts of the homeless population here in town.

Crapping on our doorstep, trying to smoke drugs in the bathroom. People harass me and employees,” Weeks says.

“It’s just born out of frustration. It’s just reactionary, to be honest. It’s probably against my better judgment to do that.”

Killer Burger employee Reagan Brunk, 22, has submitted a handful of photos to @portlandlookslikeshit.

“I like it because it’s the shock value, and a lot of what’s going on here is getting watered down and hidden. The account is like a slap in the face to the people who are acting like it’s not a problem,” Brunk says. “I do think they should at least blur faces out, but I don’t think it’s cruel to take those pictures.”

Downtown real estate owner Jordan Menashe, who operates Menashe Properties with his father, Barry, tells WW he was a vocal fan of the account—at least for a while.

In June, Menashe says, he exchanged direct messages with @portlandlookslikeshit because he hoped to speak on the phone or in person with whoever ran the page—partly to learn who they were as well as to possibly collaborate in some capacity.

On Feb. 25, Menashe posted a screenshot of the account on his personal Instagram page.

“Follow this and let’s apply some pressure!” he wrote in the caption. “The way [downtown] Portland looks and feels isn’t fair to anyone. It is entirely inhumane!!!”

Menashe says he stands by his original post encouraging people to follow the account but that, in hindsight, he thinks the account has strayed far from what it was when he first supported it in February.

“It’s gone too far,” he tells WW. “There’s the edge, and then there’s going too far.”

Commercial real estate broker Bruce Garlinghouse leases buildings throughout the city, including in Old Town.

He says the account isn’t creating any real change.

“I understand the wanting to highlight and not sugarcoat the issues that have plagued downtown, especially Old Town,” Garlinghouse says. “But when you’re coloring something with such a negative tone, I just don’t think it’s helping.”

NEWS J U S T I N YA U

Boots On

the fire outward, causing rapid expansion.

Currently, the fire is moving east toward Gearhart Mountain. The area has about 150,000 acres of dried-up trees killed by an insect infestation called “beetle rot” or “beetle kill,” which cataclysmically exacerbates the wildfire’s already rapid expansion by providing it with much more fuel.

“This certainly has the potential to be the largest wildfire in Oregon state history,” Kelly says grimly. “The largest fire was about 585,000 acres; this one is already more than 200,000 acres and still expanding.” In the four days between this interview and press deadline, the fire grew by another 150,000 acres.

Against the enormous scale of the blaze, the typical mission of the Multnomah County task force is to protect as many homes as it can. “Our job is to get there before the fire.” Selden explains. “We have to prep the structure, clear out all the brush, dry grass, or anything that can fuel the fire.”

About 2,000 people have been ordered to evacuate the sparsely populated area. Though evacuations are mandatory, and the area is supposed to be uninhabited, the task force has encountered residents who did not want to leave. “They’re usually really happy to see us. To them, it’s like having their own personal fire department,” Selden says with a chuckle.

Many residents who refuse to leave mandatory evacuation zones fear losing everything on their property from the fire and therefore choose to stay to combat the flames themselves.

“One of the components of this mission is the customer service aspect,” a quaint term Selden uses to describe calming people who expect to lose all their worldly goods.

“Sometimes local residents will see small embers in an already burned-out area. It wouldn’t do us any good to go put that stump out, because it’s not going to threaten any other structures. But from a customer service perspective, if that’s going to put them at ease and we have the time to do that, we will go do that.”

The Multnomah County crew works nights in 12-hour graveyard shifts. They use the day to rest and service their vehicles for the next night’s work.

It is now 5 pm. The camp is buzzing with activity as firefighters wake up and get ready for another trip into the beast. The Multnomah County firefighters are starting their vehicles and donning their yellow wildland fire uniforms, adding to the loud mechanical din of the motor pool.

Selden’s wife and two children are waiting for him in Corbett. “Deployments like this usually last four or five days,” he says, “but it looks like we’re going to be staying the full 14 days.”

The unprecedented nature of the Bootleg Fire in terms of size, speed of growth, and time in the season shocks many veteran firefighters. “This is already my second wildfire, and it’s only July,” Selden says. “I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like in August.”

A day with Portland firefighters in a camp at the edge of an inferno called the Bootleg Fire.

RISE AND FIRE: Multnomah County task force wildland firefighters prepare their vehicle for a 12-hour night shift.

BY JU ST I N YAU

O

@PDocumentarians

D AV E S E L D E N

COURAGE UNDER FIRE: Members of Task Force 21 stand in front of their brush unit for a group picture.

J U S T I N YA U

n its fourth night fighting the Bootleg Fire, Portland Fire & Rescue’s brush truck died.

The brush trucks—red Ford F-550s with 300-gallon water tanks bolted to their beds—are the vehicles Portland firefighters use to reach blazes in places fire engines can’t go. These are the trucks PF&R uses when fireworks set a thicket ablaze. So when Multnomah County fire departments sent a convoy to Oregon’s southern border to fight one of the largest wildfires of the past two decades, that’s what Portland sent.

Just one problem: The trucks’ engines are choking on the dust of the high desert.

“When we’re on these dirt roads, there’s often this fine talcum powder dirt,” says Battalion Chief Jason Kelly of Portland Fire & Rescue. “It’s hard on equipment. We have to blow our air filters out every day, and it looks like a dirtball fight when we do it.”

On July 14, one of the brush trucks broke down. Kelly made a call to Portland at 10 pm. By the next morning, a new brush unit was on the road to Klamath Falls, courtesy of Portland Fire Chief Sara Boone.

Oregon is throwing everything at the Bootleg Fire.

Spurred by historic heat waves, the blaze has consumed 388,359 acres of the Fremont-Winema National Forest as of press deadline, with the fire only 25% contained.

It spans 600 square miles, roughly the size of Houston.

More than 1,000 firefighters are now on the ground—13 of them from the Multnomah County task force also known as Task Force 21.

Dave Selden is one of them. Selden, a volunteer with the Corbett Fire District, had just finished a deployment to a fire in the Columbia River Gorge on July 10. “I got a phone call from the chief, with a 20-minute warning.”

Selden tells WW. He took the assignment.

It’s a seven-hour drive from a Southeast Portland fire station to the town of Bly. It looks like a trip to the front lines of an alien invasion. In the foreground, the showers, food trucks and air-conditioned tents of the fire camp, where several hundred firefighters sleep and use the Wi-Fi. On the horizon, a monster.

During the day, Kelly explains, the intense heat from the fire lifts plumes of smoke 40,000 feet in the air—causing an atmospheric vacuum that sucks in surrounding air, creating gusts that feed fresh oxygen to the fire. At night, the rapid cooling causes the column of smoke to collapse in on itself, generating 50-mile-an-hour winds that push

GEARING UP: A Corbett volunteer firefighter dons his protective shirt as he boards his water tender vehicle in Bly, Ore. Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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BEST PEOPLE COURTESY OF NIKKI BROWN

BEST LITERACY CLOWN

THINK PINK FLAMINGO FLOCKING, PAGE 18

A city is what you make of it.

When I moved to Portland in 2008, it wasn’t to live the dream of the ’90s or slack off into early retirement or any other cliché—I just needed to get out of my hometown.

I was 25, with no job, no friends and only a vague plan to eventually worm my way onto the staff of a local alt-weekly. Over 13 years, I met my wife, had a kid, fell in with a great group of people and, well, you can see how the newspaper thing turned out.

In between, there were hundreds of nights at dozens of different bars. I spewed red corn syrup in my roommates’ faces for a “zombie prom” none of us even remember. I got the worst sunburn of my life floating the Clackamas. I saw Dave Chappelle bring half the damn city to Pioneer Square for a show that never happened and stood 20 feet away from Prince at Roseland Theater.

Sorry to make this about myself. But then, what is the measure of a city if not millions of individual experiences playing out at the same time?

Our annual Best of Portland issue is rooted in the idea that to truly understand a place, you have to dig beyond the prevailing narratives and find the small, inspired and, yes, weird ways people have made their lives here—like the former weed dealer who started a cannabis-themed magic show (page 11). Or the guy named Jesus Christ—no, for real—who found salvation riding through downtown on a cross-shaped skateboard (page 11).

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It’s been a rough 16 months. But through the wildfires and ice storms, the heat and the tear gas, Portlanders have continued to look out for each other, whether through odd community projects, like converting this paper’s old boxes into miniature Blockbuster Videos (page 23), or starting a whole new business, such as a ride-share service tailored to the most vulnerable passengers (page 23).

Our Readers’ Poll is itself a testament to how the city reacts to tough times: We asked about the best local responses to the pandemic, and readers voted en masse (page 26).

I’ve been thinking about the experience of living in Portland because mine is ending—this is my final issue at Willamette Week. I’m moving with my family to Tucson, Arizona, to see what we can make of that place.

I’m leaving at a time when the debate over the city’s future is raging louder than ever before. Is Portland dying? Is it already dead? Or is all the hand-wringing overwrought, and things are both as good and bad as they’ve always been?

All I can do is speak for myself: I’m going to miss the hell out of it.

—Matthew Singer, Willamette Week Arts & Culture Editor (2012-2021)

There are balloon clowns and magician clowns. Nikki Brown Clown (nikkibrownclown.com) is a literacy clown.

“She is just ridiculous when she’s reading a story,” Nicole Brown says of her clown persona. “She’s constantly interrupting it and infusing it with music.”

In 2011, Brown’s aunt, Doris Rush, asked her to come up with a lighthearted character for the Juneteenth parade.

Though the celebration—commemorating the 1865 emancipation of U.S. slaves—is more popular now, Rush considered the annual parade 10 years ago somewhat dour.

Clowns are something of a rarity these days, and Black clowns are practically unheard of. So when Brown saw the positive response—especially from children who hadn’t seen a Black clown before—it inspired her to take up the latex nose.

Due to the pandemic, the last two Juneteenth parades have been virtual, as have Nikki Brown Clown’s virtual story hours, in partnership with the Multnomah County Library. She focuses on children’s books

by Black authors and the Black experience.

“We want to wait till kids get into high school or middle school to talk about race,” Brown says. “I’m teaching them about cultural pride now.” SUZETTE SMITH.

WHEN BROWN SAW THE POSITIVE RESPONSE— ESPECIALLY FROM CHILDREN WHO HADN’T SEEN A BLACK CLOWN BEFORE— IT INSPIRED HER TO TAKE UP THE LATEX NOSE.

BEST PEOPLE

On the last Halloween before quarantine, Kirstin Byer received one of the greatest compliments of her entire career.

In 2019, a local design company dressed up as a different bike lane character it found around the city—a jellyfish, a Timbers fan, a purple mouse with a big block of cheese—all of which Byer designed herself.

“It just gives my heart joy that someone’s enjoying something I might’ve had something to do with,” says Byer, a recently retired maintenance supervisor for Portland Bureau of Transportation.

“There’s no better feeling.”

Portlanders have Byer to thank for the bike lane art that’s become ubiquitous

BEST SKATEBOARDING SAVIOR The Jesus hath risen in Portland.

Maybe you’re among his 1.18 million followers…er, disciples on YouTube. Maybe you bought a Cameo from him for your grandmother ’s birthday. Or maybe you’ve just seen him riding around downtown on a skateboard surrounded by plywood in the shape of a cross.

OK, so he might not be the biblical Jesus. But he certainly looks the part. And he’s got the name—he legally changed it to Jesus Herbert Christ (thejesuschrist.com) in order to officiate a wedding.

This Jesus, though, grew up a devout Mormon in Bakersfield, Calif. It wasn’t until his 30s that he grew disillusioned and eventually left the church. He felt ostracized and depressed, and wanted to try to convince his family to follow his lead.

“I thought, if I could somehow make a career out of being Jesus and being successful at it,” he says, “I can’t think of another way that’s as shocking and cognitive dissonance-inducing.”

Living in Los Angeles at the time, he put on a tunic and stood out on Sunset Boulevard. He came home with only $75.

Feeling discouraged, he remembered he had recently purchased a custom birthday message from the Fiverr app for his sister’s birthday. He then realized how he could monetize the character.

His first YouTube video showed him

unboxing a crown of thorns. It earned 50,000 views in one day. At that point, he started to get more serious about making YouTube videos—answering questions, performing kung fu, skateboarding around Portland in shades and sandals— donating all the money from YouTube to an Australian shepherd rescue, while also jumping on Fiverr and Cameo.

Now, he’s made a legitimate career of being Jesus—and successfully convinced many of his family members to leave the Mormon church.

A relatively new transplant, Jesus moved to Portland in January 2020. But despite the city’s godless reputation, he says he feels more welcomed here than in L.A. “I seem to fit in well here,” he says.

“It definitely is Bethlehem 2.0 for me.”

SOPHIA JUNE.

K A I T LY N T AY L O R

BEST (RETIRED) BIKE LANE ARTIST

around the city. Twenty-one years ago, Byer started the tradition of using scrap material to decorate the white silhouettes of cyclists that mark lanes around the city, transforming the symbol into everything from a scuba diver to a tennis player, a bike-riding slug to David Bowie.

It began in 2000 when Byer noticed that members of her pavement markings crew would use leftover materials to add small details to the generic stick-figure cyclists, like a white rectangle for a hat or a penny in the center of a wheel.

Byer took it several steps further. She started taking scrap thermoplastic paint home so she could heat, cut and rearrange the material into increasingly intricate designs. Over the past two decades, Byer spent countless hours pioneering the medium of road-marking art, and she did it all on her own time, after work hours.

“It was like knitting or crocheting, but I weld plastic,” she says. “It was meditative.”

Byer retired last March, but the tradition she started is still very much alive.

Bike to Books, a program where kids can submit designs for city streets, will continue past Byer’s retirement. She’s long encouraged others to make their own designs. Now, former colleagues regularly send her pictures of new bike lane art they’ve found or installed themselves.

“I had my turn,” says Byer. “I’m happy to pass the torch and let others use their own creativity.” SHANNON GORMLEY.

CHRIS NESSETH

Almost a decade ago, Laura Hall ( lauraehall.com) introduced Portland to the concept of escape rooms.

In 2014, it was a new idea to Hall herself. An avid puzzler, she and some friends experienced their first escape room on a trip to Seattle and decided on the way home to design their own. It was called Spark of Resistance. Participants entered the office of a missing undercover agent who had been working for a dystopian government’s Bureau of Propaganda, and were given an hour to investigate the clues left behind to figure out what happened to him.

“People were very, very receptive to it,” Hall says. “The concept was still pretty new at the time, and escape rooms can seem intimidating at first, but people came to play and were enthusiastic about it. Now there’s a huge scene.”

At the time, there were only 20 escape room companies in the United States.

There are now more than 2,000—and Hall, 36, is considered one of the top designers in the field.

She and her partner founded the interactive gaming company Meridian Adventure Co. in 2017, operating out of a space in Southeast Portland. She’s also created more than a dozen games around the country, including pop-ups for Adidas, New York Comic Con and Twitch. She’s won awards. She’s even written a book on the subject: Planning Your Escape: Strategy Secrets to Make You an Escape Room Superstar, which publishes Aug. 3 from Simon & Schuster, is part strategy guide, part history of immersive gaming.

Today, escape rooms are thought of as fun diversions—a group activity for a birthday party, or a corporate team-building exercise. Hall has always thought bigger.

“We try to make stories that are truly going to transport the players,” she says.

“A lot of the stories we tell are adventures.

But, for example, with Spark of Resistance, it’s actually about the dystopian society and ‘What does censorship mean?’ There’s a power crisis. So it’s woven in, in ways that are enriching to the story and not distracting. But it’s deliberate.”

Hall and her partner are about to launch The Traveler’s Guide to Little Sodaburg, the first online game she and her husband have designed themselves, which she describes as a “colorful puzzle romp.”

They also have a new in-person escape room called The Forgotten Forest coming to Meridian Adventure Co. in fall, in which guests investigate the attic hideout of a teenage girl obsessed with an ’80s TV show that never had a final episode.

“It’s an example of how escape rooms can be elevated. They can be artistic expression as well as a fun experience,” Hall says. “It’s more than fun. It’s an excuse to be transported for a time to somewhere else.” SOPHIA JUNE.

P O R T L A N D B U R E A U O F T R A N S P O R TAT I O N

BEST ESCAPE ROOM PIONEER

BEST STONER MAGICIAN Ben Zabin dropped out of college to pursue a career in magic. Whekjgn that ended up being a bigger challenge than anticipated, he became a weed dealer instead. That didn’t work out much better.

“I never made too much money selling weed,” Zabin says. “I smoked a lot of it.”

Turns out, he didn’t need to choose between cannabis and magic—the trick was to combine them. Zabin, 22, now hosts Portland’s first stoner magic show, the aptly named Smokus Pocus (smokuspocus.com). Currently held at a small event space in Old Town, the production is filled with all the classic trickery you’d expect— mind reading, sleight of hand, teleportation—only with reefer as the primary theme.

Zabin cut his teeth working stage shows in Las Vegas at the age of 17, so his magic credentials largely outweigh his pothead street cred, but his affable-freshman vibe lines up well with the nod-wink inclusion of cannabis in his act.

He makes items “vanish” and reappear inside a fat sack of nugs. He performs acts of mentalism with stoner snack items like boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese. In a particularly R-rated finale, he plays a very NSFW game of camera-roll roulette, framed around the clumsy experience of dating online while stoned.

Don’t expect Zabin to appear from a trapdoor smoking a blunt, though—the admitted “hardcore cannabis lover” stays sober for his weekly performances. The same cannot be said of the audience, though. In case there was any doubt, the cartoonish chorus of oohs and ahhs are a dead giveaway that the crowd is stoned to the bone.

Smokus Pocus will remain in its Northwest Portland location until the end of August, after which Zabin hopes to either extend his engagement or relocate to a spot where guests can smoke inside.

“I think there’s a lot lacking in regards to entertainment and cannabis,” Zabin says, “and since cannabis is only becoming more and more popular on a national scale, I think there’s a lot of room where entertainment and cannabis collide.” BRIANNA WHEELER.

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BESTANIMALS

Sir Wellington of Kenilworth first appeared in Amy Westphal’s yard one morning back in March.

“I have chickens, and all of a sudden they were making so much noise,” the graphic designer says. “I came outside to find this peacock perched over them.”

No one is quite sure where the magnificently colored peafowl came from—the working theory is that he’s a castoff from a feral colony that’s lived in the Woodstock area for 20 years. Regardless, he’s stuck around Westphal’s block of Creston-Kenilworth ever since, spending his days hopping and preening on neighboring rooftops and sleeping in the evergreen tree across the street.

In the months since he arrived, Westphal (who gave the bird his knightly title, in honor of a street she once lived on in Chicago) has learned quite a bit about peacocks, and Sir Wellington specifically.

For one thing, he’s incredibly vain: She’s caught him staring at his reflection in windows and the wheel wells of cars. Also, she’s discovered peacocks make some horrible noises, somewhere between “a cat and a baby,” she says.

BEST GOAT GIRL

AMY WESTPHAL

BEST SHOWOFF

Nevertheless, she’s developed quite an affinity for the shrieking narcissist. In April, she started an Instagram account to document his activities (@portland_peacock)—which mostly consist of wandering around her porch, flying from one roof to the next and, of course, showing off his plumage.

“My phone has transitioned from all photos of my cats and chickens,” she says, “to all photos of this peacock.”

MATTHEW SINGER.

BEST KITFLUENCER Like most things on the internet, the legend of OwlKitty (owl-kitty.com) was born of sheer boredom.

A few years ago, Portland-based video editor Tibo Charroppin was working from home when, on a whim, he decided to make a video splicing his cat, Lizzy, into a scene from Jurassic Park—instead of being hunted by a velociraptor, the Murphy kids suddenly found themselves menaced by a fluffy black tabby.

BEST GEESE GUYS Seven years ago, the South Waterfront Greenway was anything but green.

The strip of field along the Willamette was beyond patchy. It was downright balding—the large brown patches of dirt weren’t just an eyesore, they could lead to erosion problems along the riverbank if left unattended. And if that were not bad enough, the carefully planted native trees and shrubs as well as a paved walkway were completely coated in bird droppings.

The culprits? Hundreds of resident and migratory geese.

Flocks had settled into the area and weren’t budging for anyone. Who do you call about a gaggle of hostile squatters known to hiss and charge at any human in their way? Geese Guys (geeseguys.com), a 10-year-old company that relies on a crew of 30 to 40 border collies to get those birds on the move without putting them in harm’s way.

“Humanness is one of our important pillars,” says Geese Guys general manager and lead wildlife biologist Vance Kimball.

“Anytime we’re operating, that’s our No. 1 concern—animal welfare, with the geese and the dogs.”

Kimball says border collies are ideal for goose abatement for several reasons. First, they are trained herders. Second, dogs are far more effective in flock relocation than other common suppression methods, like decoys or noisemakers, because they can mimic predator behavior, reducing the chances that geese will return to a particular golf course, park or schoolyard.

“It triggers something primal in the brain that elicits the response we’re looking for,” says Kimball, “which is the goose figuring it’s not worth it here.”

It took about two years to get the South Waterfront Greenway to a point where Geese Guys was satisfied with the land12

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

scape. Now the property is in maintenance mode, where a Goose Dog comes out to walk the property three or four times a week during summer and multiple times a day once nesting and migration season begin.

It’s not just large properties or sites with big budgets that Geese Guys will assist. Kimball has advised everyone from private homeowners to public facilities with shoestring budgets.

“We have a growing resident [goose] population, a shifting migratory population, and a growing human population taking up more room, so there’s more conflict happening, which is basically why we came to be,” Kimball explains. “There’s so much conflict, somebody needed to make sure it was getting handled.” ANDI PREWITT.

It went viral overnight. Charroppin’s partner, Olivia Boone, made an Instagram page, and OwlKitty was born. Since then, Lizzy has appeared in the trailer for Jaws, as Baby Yoda and as the balrog from Lord of the Rings, earning a million followers across her platforms.

Judging by her ultra-popular YouTube channel, you’d think she’s sponsored by Friskies and going to influencer conventions. But OwlKitty has never left the house. Boone and Charroppin have been approached by brands, but they don’t want to do anything that would make Lizzy uncomfortable.

“That’s what helps earn trust in the following,” says Boone. “ We stuck to everything we said she’d do. She doesn’t leave the house. We get invitations to bring her to cat conventions and we’re like, ‘No, that’s the opposite of what cats enjoy.’”

SOPHIA JUNE.

Scott Waddle is best at tearing ivy off tall trees. Chainsaw is a machine, trimming anything in sight. Donkey likes to clear the Scotch broom. Barnie Rebel, aka Lumpy, is the workhorse, the one who will do any old job thrown at him while hoarding food in his left cheek.

Scott, Chainsaw, Donkey and Lumpy are goats. But they’re also Linda Williams’ employees.

A year ago, Williams, a former Intel engineer, became the third owner of Westside Goat Girl (wsgoatgirl.com), a company that makes use of the insatiable appetites of the Capra aegagrus hircus to clear residential and commercial properties of blackberries, Scotch broom, overgrown grass and other foliage.

Williams, 57, keeps a crew of 26 goats at a farm in Gaston. She trucks out about 15 to 19 for each project, which can take anywhere from four to seven days. Prior to delivery, Williams scopes out the property, puts up an electric fence so the goats stay confined, and then drops them off. From there, they munch, tear and eat away, 24/7, until the property is sufficiently cleared.

“Usually, the first night I can’t sleep,” Williams says. “I’m wondering how well I did the fence and were there any predators. Each morning I’m out there pretty quickly, and then I start to relax.”

In the past year, Williams has served about 20 clients and is currently booked through September. Her next big project is taking her goats to an apartment complex right across from the Nike campus so they can trim brush and plants along a stream that cuts through the property.

It’s a far cry from her previous gig in the corporate tech world. But Williams loves it.

“Other retirees refinish furniture,” she says. “I’m the crazy goat lady equivalent to the crazy cat lady.” SOPHIE PEEL.

“I’M THE CRAZY GOAT LADY EQUIVALENT TO THE CRAZY CAT LADY.”

AMPLIFY YOUR VOICE! Portland Gray Panthers hold regular Community Forums. Speakers have included:

"for the future"

Ted Wheeler, Ellen Rosenblum, JoAnn Hardesty, Carmen Rubio, Dan Ryan, Mingus Mapps, Sharon Meieren, Kim Thatcher, Mary Nolan, Michael Dembrow, Loretta Smith, Lew Fredrick, and more! Come and ask questions!

PORTLAND GRAY PANTHERS

Current Projects: 1 EDAP. ELDARS & DISABLED ADVOCACY PROJECT. Elders in Action folded and went out of business. AARP - mostly - sells insurance. But you can support and join an activist, grassroots movement for equality and social justice, on many fronts, with Porland Gray Panthers.

2 S.H.E. (SENIOR HOUSING EMERGENCY)

CAMPAIGN. Elders who have worked hard all their lives, sometimes at more than one job, face skyrocketing rents, foreclosures (even before the pandemic). S.H.E. Campaign advocates for vulnerable elder women and men who have not benefited from a Wall Street-focused economy.

3

ANTI-RACIST ACTION (ARA) PROJECT. The Black Women Matter - On the Job! Project, part of ARA, supports elder women community leaders JoAnn Hardesty and Ruby Haughton-Pitts. On average, black women make 50 cents for every dollar white men make.

4 WALMART BOYCOTT TO END GUN VIOLENCE. One of five bullets sold in the U.S. is sold by Walmart.

Walmart has profited from guns and ammo sales, year after year. Enough! With legislative stalemates, we need a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Gun violence and mass shootings in the U.S. are preventable!

5 Digital Divide Project.

Elders and low-income folks are disproportionately left out of our internet society. Broadband access is needed now.

6 GRAY PANTHERS GLOBAL UNION (GPGU).

Working across class and age divides, the social justice Gray Panthers movement seeks activists, in the tradition of Dorothy Day and John Lewis, across borders, in other states, and other countries.

7 MAGGIE KUHN U.S. POSTAGE

STAMP CAMPAIGN. In 1970, after being fired from her church job at age 65, Maggie Kuhn founded the Gray Panthers as a radical, activist group to challenge the powers that be.

Cynics tell us the 'complicated process' of getting a U.S. stamp for Maggie is challenging - but we like challenges!

MEMBERSHIP & MOBILIZATION JOIN THE MOVEMENT! You can join the Portland Gray Panthers. It's a tax deductible, $30 membership. Our EIN number is: 320 602 518. Please make checks payable to: "Portland Gray Panthers" and send to: Portland Gray Panthers, P.O. Box 40011, Portland, OR 97240.

We are on facebook and wordpress: Gray Panthers of Oregon.

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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BEST PLACES

In Portland, there are more than 3,600 rain gardens, which absorb and filter stormwater and slowly release it back into the soil. But few are as enchanting, large or old as the rain garden near the southern end of Cathedral Park in the St. Johns neighborhood. “ I t ’s d e f i n i t e l y a showcase rain garden,” sa y s D i a n e D u l k e n , spokeswoman for Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services.

“It’s an early example of green infrastructure in Portland. Since then, we’ve really ramped up.”

The rain garden, built in 1998, is enclosed within a crescent-shaped stone wall. To the untrained eye, it looks like the gathering place for a coven of witches. And the area within that wall is teeming with life: Cattails and verdant grass sprout out of the marshy soil while animals make frequent guest appearances, from raccoons, deer and frogs to the occasional coyote, says a security guard.

But beyond its beauty, the 23-year-old structure has an important job in managing the surrounding ecosystem. Stormwater runoff from about 50 acres of streets in St. Johns gathers in sedimentation manholes yards away from the garden. The manhole removes debris from the stormwater, which then flows through a rock-lined flume into the crescent-shaped garden.

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© C I T Y O F P O R T L A N D , C O U R T E S Y B U R E A U O F E N V I R O N M E N TA L S E R V I C E S

BEST RAIN GARDEN

word of mouth. Last winter, when its 7 to 9 pm meetup time left everyone skating in the dark, people brought a hodgepodge of Christmas lights and LEDs to illuminate the grounds. Many of Secret Roller Disco’s regulars—including its resident DJ Maaxa—found out about the event just because they were passersby who lived in the neighborhood.

“Once [attendance] goes beyond anything you said to anyone,” says Hasson, “you realize it was something people really wanted and needed.” SHANNON GORMLEY.

The rain garden then slows and stores the water deposited from the flume. From there, plants and soil filter out pollutants.

Slowly, the filtered water flows into the Willamette River, which is a stone’s throw away.

The rain garden can hold over 224,000 gallons of water—“enough water to fill about 5,000 bathtubs,” according to a nearby sign. If there is too much runoff for the garden to hold at once, the water is redirected elsewhere through a bypass pipe.

“Basically, we’re working with nature to act as a sponge,” Dulken says.

She also offered a word of advice to Portlanders: “The public can help maintain these gardens by just keeping your dog out of them,” she says. “They are not a place for dog poop. So enjoy them, but let them do their work.” TESS RISKI.

COURTESY OF RAINBOW CITY

The day someone showed up pedaling a human-sized nudibranch puppet was the day April Hasson realized Secret Roller Disco had become way bigger than she and her co-founders ever intended.

Last summer, Hasson and a handful of her fellow retired roller derby friends began meeting up to skate in a downtown parking garage. Just over a year later, that casual weekly meetup has blossomed into a family-friendly rave on wheels. Now located on a blacktop outside Buckman Elementary, it hosts up to 200 people every Thursday night— including a rotating list of DJs, an ice cream truck, one person who regularly shows up to blow giant bubbles, and eccentrically dressed skaters of all-ages and abilities.

And last month, one participant came dressed like a cowboy and rode around on a bike cloaked in a neon blue and green nudibranch—a psychedelic-looking type of mollusk.

“That’s when we were like, ‘OK, we’ve turned into an unofficial Burning Man,’” says Hasson.

Though it’s not exactly “secret” anymore, Secret Roller Disco’s name still speaks to its DIY ethos. The loosely organized event only started an Instagram account after it had already caught on by

CHRIS NESSETH

BEST (NOT SO SECRET) ROLLER DISCO

BEST PLACE TO SHOOT A MUSIC VIDEO, HAVE A WATER-GUN FIGHT OR HANG OUT WITH A DAY-GLO TRICERATOPS Last year, Strawberry Pickle’s future was looking grim.

The artist and DJ sold her house to fund Rainbow City (21 SE 11th Ave.), the psychedelic warehouse just off East Burnside she opened in January 2020. People told Pickle for years that she’d never get her self-described “community center for the weird” off the ground. But her critics didn’t count on just how many weirdos would come out of the woodwork to validate her vision.

“It’s a really diverse and accepting group of people,” she says.

Pickle grew up in Portland attending legendary all-ages venues like City Nightclub, X-Ray Cafe, and Big Bang Warehouse. When no heirs apparent emerged after the Barmageddon of the mid-2010s, she set out to find a roof under which to unite misfits from the hip-hop, rave, drag and under-21 crowds. She found it in Southeast Portland.

At its calmest, Rainbow City acts as a trippy art gallery, populated with vivid cartoon murals, furry day-glo monsters and lifesize sculptures of a horse, a triceratops and Darth Vader. But when the energy turns up, it’s impossible to categorize: It has hosted everything from water-gun fights and lightsaber duels to fashion shows and music video shoots.

Pickle now sets her sights on philanthropic events. Her first one will benefit survivors of domestic violence, and she hopes to support more efforts as parties come back.

“After being able to survive COVID for a year, when a lot of other people had to close their doors,” Pickle says, “the community had so much to do with donating and helping us along that we want to give back to the community.”

ANDREW JANKOWSKI.

SHE SET OUT TO FIND A ROOF UNDER WHICH TO UNITE MISFITS FROM THE HIP-HOP, RAVE, DRAG AND UNDER-21 CROWDS. SHE FOUND IT IN SOUTHEAST PORTLAND.

STRAWBERRY PICKLE

BEST COSMIC ARCHERY The folks at Archers Afield (11945 SW Pacific Highway, Suite 121, Tigard) are serious about bows and arrows. They’ve been around since 1980, and they have instructors with decades of experience who specialize in compound bows, longbows, and Olympic recurve bows, which look like weapons out of Star Wars.

But they know how to have fun, too.

Archers Afield has two date nights a month and two family nights, and they do birthday parties. And once a month, they really go nuts, firing up the disco ball, black lights and strobes for Cosmic Archery. The white spaces in targets glow, and you can shoot at balloons that they tack alongside them.

“People have had cosmic bowling forever,” says Archers Afield manager Kris Demeter.

Why not cosmic archery? If you can’t make the regular night every month ($20 per person), go ahead and book the cosmic room for a party ($30 per person). Every event includes a lesson where you learn some technique and a lot of safety.

Cosmic Archery is just getting rolling again after the pandemic. Head out to Archers Afield and see what the War of the Roses might have looked like—in space.

ANTHONY EFFINGER.

Expertly trained

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24/7 emergency care. Always essential. dovelewis.org Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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BEST PLACES

The Living School of Art ( livingschoolofart.info) can be seen by appointment only. Its primary audience isn’t outsiders.

The audience instead are the tenants of the East Portland apartment complex where the school is located. It also isn’t a school, per se, but more an ongoing art project or installation, which Amanda Leigh Evans started in 2016.

Evans holds an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University, a program that has a reputation for fusing social issues and art on levels that are both conceptual and practical.

So when she received a yearlong residency at the complex—from an arts nonprofit called Community Engagement—Evans proposed something that could incorporate anyone within the 150-apartment complex who wanted to join.

“The approach that I decided to take was just to be a neighbor, first and foremost.” Evans says. “Just to see what my neighbors wanted to do together. Being

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their neighbor isn’t all my practice is, but it is the foundation of this project.”

Five year in, the Living School of Art has eight galleries (in the building’s laundry rooms), two community gardens, a pottery studio and countless personal practices employed by the complex’s residents. Sometimes these practices are cooking classes, shared meals, or jewelry making. Part of Evans’ contribution is coordination and gathering resources to facilitate the art projects.

One of the easiest to explain is the community’s medicinal garden, which contains plants like calendula, dogfennel, echinacea and yarrow. Some can be picked and made into medicines. Some go nicely in a salad.

Some, like the dogfennel, were planted to create interesting visual textures. The result is lovely and full of fat, busy bees.

The idea that a garden could be an art installation will be laughable to some, but Evans sees the effort put in by residents over time.

“Some of the herbs couldn’t adapt to Portland’s climate,” she says. “This garden is the product of many attempts.”

SUZETTE SMITH.

BEST LOVE LETTERS TO THE DRAG SCENE When mononymous LGBTQ+ event producer Katya was a child, none of her classmates would attend her birthday parties.

That childhood trauma now informs her drive to facilitate queer connections in Portland.

“I never wanted anyone to feel like that,” she says. “I never want anyone to feel left out, so if I can be part of that process, let’s do it.”

Initially throwing parties at night spots like Whiskey Bar, Holocene and Barbarella, Katya invariably shifted her focus during quarantine. Her company, Klip Klop Productions (@klipklopproductions), now offers services meant exclusively for the local queer community, including personal fitness training, video production and sobriety-focused events.

But she never took her eye off the club scene. During the pandemic, Katya

“I NEVER WANT ANYONE TO FEEL LEFT OUT, SO IF I CAN BE PART OF THAT PROCESS, LET’S DO IT.”

MICHAEL DURHAM/OREGON ZOO.

BEST ART THAT ISN’T FOR YOU

newcomers first trying their hands.

“They become such personal extensions of your expression,” says Valoppi.

“There are collectors who just want a shelf piece, but if you’re going to actually be typing, spend a minute and make sure this machine is the one that combines the right look and feel and efficiency. Like trying on a shirt, it has to fit you.”

Nevertheless, Valoppi envisions Type Space as more of a gallery and salon than a storefront. Weekly courses are planned for both typing tutorials and introductory restoration of the machines themselves.

A central table holds several floor models made available for public use. Valoppi hopes to “establish meetups—writers’ workshops, poetry-offs, calligraphy, or just people who want to gather around and brainstorm ideas,” or perhaps just type out a letter for someone.

“If you and a friend want to just hang out, whether or not you’re typing, come on in!” Valoppi chuckles. “You’ll still end up typing.” JAY HORTON.

XY BOUGE

Antony Valoppi, proprietor of recently-opened vintage typewriter boutique Type Space (2409 SE 49th Ave.), has a complicated relationship with the machines.

At age 14, newly transplanted from New York to South Carolina, Valoppi enrolled in a school typing course, when an argum e n t ove r p r o p e r t e c h nique led the “extremely proficient” two-fing ered typist to accidentally hurl his manual device at the instructor.

“After that typing class debacle,” he says, “I never reapproached the typewriter. All of my writing—from prose to poems to plays—was by hand or straight digital input.”

A later visit to Coos Bay’s Marshfield Sun Printing Museum may have sparked an interest in the mechanisms of classic model typewriters, but Valoppi never dreamed of turning his small collection into a business until an extended rehabilitation after a motorcycle accident followed by the COVID shutdown forced him to consider changing careers.

Inside Type Space’s bright, airy showroom, display cases boast a multicolored array of typewriters from every style and era up until the mid-1980s, when Valoppi believes the industry abandoned craftsmanship. The shop’s current inventory of 150-some models includes such historic marvels as an 1830s typographer more closely resembling a Ouija Board and the turn-of-the-century, proto-portable “Five-Pound Secretary.” Several have been priced as low as $75 to encourage curious

also launched two online talk shows: From the Horse’s Mouth on Instagram and Herd and Heard on Apple Podcasts.

Inspired by RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Trixie Mattel and namesake Katya Zamolodchikova’s unapologetically queer, anything-g oes approach, she interviewed her favorite queer, trans and nonbinary nightlife personalities about everything from therapy to queer media to nude beach etiquette.

In addition, Katya also helped wrangle dozens of illusionists for Portland Drag KATYA Excellence, a video directed by her colleague Breydon Little, aka Silhouette. The video showcases over 60 Portland queer performers, including Darcelle, Jinkx Monsoon and James Majesty. Even with a few noteworthy absences, it feels like a warm reintroduction to the city’s irrepressibly DIY drag community, and a testament to the resiliency of Portland’s queer culture.

“A lot of us survived the pandemic, and that’s nothing to shake a stick at,” Katya says. “A lot of people took advantage of the time to do something. I’m even impressed with the gays who bought houses.”

ANDREW JANKOWSKI.

CHRIS NESSETH

BEST KEY PARTY

BEST BYTES

BEST CUTENESS OVERLOAD The Oregon Zoo has been open on and off for the past year, but throughout the pandemic, it never lapsed in bringing animal cuteness to a world desperate for small moments of joy.

Even before COVID-19, the zoo had an outsized social media presence—its punnily captioned videos frequently go viral on Twitter, even beyond Portland. (See the many clips of Filbert the beaver, aka “the branch manager.”)

But it was during quarantine that the zoo’s TikTok account really blew up.

The Oregon Zoo made its debut on the app in summer of 2019, with a video of a beady-eyed otter batting at a zookeeper’s keys to the tune of DJ Khaled’s “I Got the Keys.” When the coronavirus hit, the account’s average views per video skyrocketed: Clicks on Takoda the black bear splashing around in a tub of water, Lincoln the sea otter shucking an oyster, and Maple the beaver stuffing her jowls with carrot sticks are all in the millions.

During last month’s record-breaking heat wave—when it would have been miserable to visit the animals IRL—the zoo posted videos of Samudra the elephant and Nora the polar bear cooling down in pools of water and piles of ice. It’s reassuring to know that in times of crisis, our zoo will come to us. SHANNON GORMLEY.

IT’S REASSURING TO KNOW THAT IN TIMES OF CRISIS, OUR ZOO WILL COME TO US.

Free Writing Prospectus (to Prospectus dated January 24, 2020, as Supplemented by the Prospectus Supplement dated June 11, 2021) Filed Pursuant to Rule 424(b)(2) Registration Statement No. 333-236080

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BEST BYTES

BEST VIDEO DIARY

BEST STREAM

Any future historians hoping to study the past year of life in Portland would be advised to start with the social media accounts of Todd Gee. Four years ago, the videographer and bassist began posting short daily videos on his Instagram and YouTube pages, initially aiming to document Portland’s music culture. But even after the pandemic effectively made the city go silent, Gee kept filming.

“I knew I had to keep myself doing a creative thing every day or I might go more crazy,” he says. “It became a reflex, like making your bed every day; it’s the same, but that’s sort of the point.”

Gee’s video diary—over 1,100 entries and counting—consists mostly of his bike treks around the city, walking his dog and running errands and doing chores, with a gorgeous B-roll of the Portland landscape in between. It sounds mundane, but taken together, it forms a living timeline of one of the most significant years in city history.

Capturing everyday things,” Gee says, “is a nice reminder of what you did each day outside the house.” SAM HILL.

Buried deep within the darkest recesses of Roku, among the thousands of networks trawling the public domain for lapsed copyrighted material, The Portland Feed contains views of a still-blossoming Rose City from angles few alive have ever seen.

Launched in 2018 by schlock horror editor J.T. Waldron, the channel’s mission statement promises “unique retro and contemporary programming that celebrates the city of Portland, Oregon, and the community feel” of television’s golden age.

That includes a daft smattering of original content—conspiracy-laden news stories, in-depth looks at a coffee cart menu and mini-market inventory, an unedited 26-minute clip of ice falling from trees— but the impeccably curated treasure trove of motion pictures, TV episodes, campaign films, docs, ads, and batshit found footage compose a kaleidoscopic supercut plucked

In a way, the Instagram page @peterpicksuptrash could be considered an influencer account—only, it’s not trying to convince you to buy an overpriced handbag or trendy, unproven health supplement. It wants to inspire you to clean up garbage.

For years, Peter, who works a corporate job and prefers to remain mononymous, would spend his lunch break going on walks around the office park, picking up trash whenever it crossed his path. On a number of occasions, people would thank him—which was puzzling, because right after they would, they’d walk by a piece of trash without a second thought.

That’s when the idea for an Instagram account came about. Maybe social media, he thought, could provide enough peer pressure for others to do their part.

He wasn’t wrong: After starting the account two years ago, he’s amassed nearly 6,000 followers so far, simply by posting images of his left hand holding detritus like coffee cups, cigarette boxes and, since COVID, face masks, alongside the caption: “This was very easy to do.”

Of the 300-plus posts he’s shared, Peter estimates they document only 10% of the trash he’s picked up since starting this experiment. The point, he says, is to inspire others to take the extra few seconds to pick up a stray piece of plastic the next time they see it and throw it away.

“There’s no time investment to pick up a straw or a plastic wrapper,” he says.

“Individuals are the biggest difference makers on the planet. Anyone can be @ peterpicksuptrash.” MEIRA GEBEL.

“ANYONE CAN BE @PETERPICKSUPTRASH.” 18

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BEST BORAT For years, Portland comic Jake Silberman avoided doing comedy on the internet.

Then the pandemic hit, and he had no choice.

Lucky us: Silberman’s YouTube channel (youtube.com/c/JakeSilberman) is goddamn hilarious, especially his Jake on the Streets segments in which he and cameraman Jesse Newell have gone out to document Proud Boys rallies, Trump rallies, and something called The Rally to Celebrate the Natural Heterosexual Family in Sandy, Ore., among other politically motivated gatherings.

Silberman, 34, goes a little easier on his subjects than Sasha Baron Cohen. Silberman is from Minneapolis, and besides dropping a few F-bombs, he’s Minnesota-nice. He asks questions and let’s people talk, and the results are by turns illuminating and hilarious, like the guy in a riot helmet and goggles talking effusively about the Grapefruit OG weed he likes to smoke, or the woman at an anti-mask protest (inside a Winco Foods in Salem) defending her position by arguing, “We have a right not to wear a mask and put our own lives in jeopardy.”

Silberman says he’s rarely felt unsafe at a right-wing event. But at left-wing ones, threats have been frequent.

While covering the occupation of the Red House on North Mississippi Avenue in September, someone with a gun told Silberman and Newell that there would be trouble if they didn’t leave. At a Portland protest against Joe Biden’s inauguration, demonstrators surrounded them and took swipes at their camera.

The far left and the far right both hate the media, Silberman says, but the right often uses that to its advantage.

“We stopped going to left-wing stuff,” Silberman says. “It wasn’t worth it. In their reality, I’m more dangerous with a microphone than other guys are with guns. It’s sad, but it’s true.” ANTHONY EFFINGER.

BEST SIGHTS AND SOUNDS CHRIS NESSETH

BEST GARBAGEMAN

JAKE SILBERMAN (RIGHT)

from when Old Portland was young.

Thrill as screen idols from Clark Gable to Marlene Dietrich to Sophia Loren drop by for brief location shoots around the state! Gape at the number of Oregonians cheaply killed for ’70s made-for-TV disaster flicks! Click from a Frank Zappa commercial for PGE to a 1925 claymation experiment, past exploding whale coverage through University of Oregon hypnosis trials on to a travelogue of the undammed Columbia River Basin!

Sampled en masse, the sheer array of singular perspectives negates any semblance of communal sensibilities or romanticized past civic glories. But click through the jumbled breadth of perspectives all the same for a rarefied glimpse of the infinite variations on our rain-swept, white-bread, sex-positive town—an endless multiverse of proofs of concept for all the proto-Portlandias that could have been. JAY HORTON.

BEST FLOCK Why celebrate a loved one with cake and candles when you could flock them instead?

That’s what Wendy Edelson and Robin Posen wondered when they created Think Pink Flamingo Flocking (thinkpinkflamingoflocking.com), a company whose sole service is to flood lawns with pink plastic flamingos.

Every evening at nightfall, bird-stuffed vans set out across the greater Portland and Vancouver, Wash., area. When they arrive at their targets—the homes of graduates, expecting parents, birthday boys and girls, retirees, or just anyone in need of a smile—the drivers silently stake flamingos in the front yard.

Fifteen years ago, with the combined goal of making people happy and raising money for their kids’ high school sports programs, Posen and Edelson purchased

their inaugural flock of 25 flamingos from Fred Meyer. Now, they care for more than 1,200. On any given day, the plastic birds are spread across up to 24 unsuspecting front yards.

If you want to surprise a loved one with a flood of pink, rates start at $55 for a flock of 25 birds that will remain at your recipient’s house for “two sleeps.” That includes on-theme decorations for the birds themselves—think party hats and boas—and a laminated, fully customizable sign. Price and flock size goes up from there, and Think Pink doesn’t shy away from big jobs.

They once flocked the Oregon Zoo with 800 flamingos when the zoo welcomed a new, actual live flock to its ranks.

Edelson and Posen are overjoyed that demand remains for this unique experience.

“The only bad part,” Posen says, “is we don’t get to see the peoples’ faces when they open the front door.”

ELIZA ROTHSTEIN.

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BEST SIGHTS AND SOUNDS

One of them ended up in Los Angeles with a friend, “a huge Arby’s fan” who runs a video game merchandise business. The other is currently sitting in the Panic offices on West Burnside, which is just beginning to repopulate with staff post-pandemic.

“I’m still trying to figure out where to put it,” he says. “But for now, it’s the perfect way to welcome our employees back to the office, causing a resigned chuckle and an, ‘Oh God, what did Cabel do this time?’”

MATTHEW SINGER.

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BEST SPOKEN WORDS Vinyl LPs of poetry readings usually get chucked into the bins at thrift shops or the free boxes at record stores. Fonograf Editions wants the world to reconsider that impulse.

Since 2016, the Portland label has released a series of beautifully designed albums featuring recordings of poets reading their work, such as Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout and Black dancer and writer Harmony Holiday. Co-founder and editor Jeff Alessandrelli says Fonograf was inspired by those same records from the ’50s and ’60s now treated like relics of the cultural past.

“It was really cool putting on a record and hearing Gertrude Stein, this seemingly distant modernist figure, coming out of my speakers,” Alessandrelli says. “It captured this set moment.”

Much of Fonograf ’s output has that same quality. On the label’s debut LP, Aloha/irish trees, poet Eileen Myles is heard stumbling over her words. “Fuck, this is so hard,” she mutters at one point.

And Fodder, Fonograf ’s most recent release, is a gloriously messy live recording of poet Douglas Kearney reading from a cycle of poems inspired by the ongoing civil rights protests around the country, while musician Val Jeanty provides a backdrop of electronic noise and fractured rhythm.

Fodder also introduced Fonograf to an international audience, as it received a full-page review in British music mag The Wire, which praised it as “a bold fusion of word and sound.”

As Fonograf has grown, the scope of its work has gotten wider, too. The imprint has recently released a pair of print editions, including the debut collection of Philippines-born poet Charles Valle, and will soon be dipping into the past with an archival recording of the late John Ashbery. “ We’re trying to intermix things,” says Alessandrelli, “while not losing our minds.” ROBERT HAM.

BEST CHOIR

BEST DIGITAL STOREFRONTS Artist Ted Zahn has long traveled the country photographing dive bars, clubs and storefronts, influenced by the likes of Stephen Shore, Ed Ruscha and John Margolies.

Cooped up during the pandemic, he dug into his prints and memory bank—with occasional assistance from the internet— to start a series of what he terms “little digital restorations,” celebrating the architecture, history and signage of such cities as Austin, New York and Chicago, as well as the three cities Zahn has lived in: Milwaukee, San Francisco and, for the past 12 years, Portland, with 5% of sales going to nonprofits, including the Portland Architectural Heritage Center.

“I try to celebrate places that mean something to people,” says Zahn, whose personal favorites include Apizza Scholls (“if I had to choose a last meal...”) and The Alibi (“I’ve performed there, badly, several times”).

Among the others in his Portland series are the Original Hotcake House, Huber’s Cafe, Nick’s Famous Coney Island, Kelly’s Olympian and the Palms Motor Hotel.

Coming soon: Wonder Ballroom, Crystal Ballroom and Laurelhurst Theater.

JASON COHEN.

You may have never hung out at the Multnomah Athletic Club.

But anyone can enjoy the M AC B a l l a d eers, who have been singing in public dating back to 1941, when a few members got together on the banks of the Willamette in the middle of a fishing trip.

Per their website, the Balladeers “claim to be” the oldest continuously active, noncollegiate tenor-bass choir west of the Mississippi—“tenor-bass” has replaced “men’s chorus” as the term of art. They are essentially a community service organization, with an annual public spring concert supplemented by appearances at assisted living centers, veterans shelters, Pioneer Square naturalization ceremonies and St. Mary’s Home for Boys.

They’re also a community themselves.

“They’re really trying to spread goodwill,” says choir director Scott Tuomi, who is also the chair of Pacific University’s music department. “The guys that are in there just want to sing together. They just want to be together.”

The choir’s 35 members range in age from their 30s to 90s and have included both father-son and grandfather-grandson pairs. Anyone can join, regardless of singing ability. There are even a few non-MAC members—including accompanist Paul

COURTESY OF MAC

It looks like something out of Tolkien: a wood-shingled cottage balanced between two Douglas firs and a Western red cedar, 15 feet above the Woodlawn neighborhood.

“Like in the mallorns of Lothlórien,” says James Rossi, one of its caretakers, who practices for his voice-over gigs by reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy aloud.

Rossi and his partner, Susanna LowBeer, built it in 2012 using scrap from the ReBuilding Center and limbs from the three evergreens supporting the platform. SunRay Kelley, the natural builder, drove down from Sedro-Woolley, Wash., with logs strapped to his Toyota pickup.

Volunteers with the Village Building Convergence—the same people who paint the intersections of Portland with flowers— bolted the logs to the tree trunks.

“It was a workshop, kind of barn-raising style,” Low-Beer says. The house is 200 square feet.

A neighbor complained because of course they did—this is Portland. So LowBeer and Rossi had to remove the log staircase and railing leading up into the treehouse and replace them with a metal ladder. That way, it’s not a permanent structure. Yet it’s a landmark. Tour guides stop fleets of bikes on the street out front to marvel. Rossi brings them fresh plums.

Low-Beer, a healing artist, acupuncturist and jewelry maker, holds astrology readings in the treehouse. “I like to come up here and drink tea,” she says. Rossi takes naps in the hammock.

“We like to call ourselves naptivists,” Low-Beer says. “I’ve always been inspired by the spirit of Portland that I encountered when I first moved here in 2004. Also, being able to pretend that I don’t live in the city.” AARON MESH.

STUDIO ZAHN

BEST TREEHOUSE

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

In March, Cabel Sasser was driving around the outskirts of Portland with his family when he spotted something that made him slam on his brakes: two detached Arby’s signs locked behind a fence.

As a connoisseur of American cultural iconography, he’d been staking out the remodel of the meat palace’s Cedar Hills location, just in case an opportunity to acquire some small part of the franchise came about.

“I have a non-ironic appreciation of fast food,” says Sasser, co-founder of Portland game publisher Panic. “The corporations aren’t great, and the worker treatment needs to be better, but there’s something uniquely fascinating and exciting to me about fast food chains.”

When he direct-messaged the company about possibly acquiring the signs, he didn’t expect a response—turns out, Arby’s was more than happy to hand them off to a dedicated customer. All he had to do was rent a U-Haul.

Once he had them in his possession, though, reality set in: What the hell was he going to do with two Arby’s signs?

COURTESY OF CABEL SASSER

BEST ACQUISITION

Nelsen, who’s still trying to come up in the club’s lottery.

While the repertoire leans heavily on showtunes and jazz standards, they’ve been on the TikTok cutting edge with “The Skye Boat Song” and have also performed Mac Davis’ “Hard to Be Humble” and, of course, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

During the pandemic, the Balladeers took to—where else?—Zoom and YouTube, and in May, they produced a tribute to Damian Lillard, set to the tune of “There Is Nothing Like a Dame” from South Pacific.

“We were trying to do something positive for the community,” says Tuomi. “I think Portland’s had a difficult year, but we could all be really happy and enthusiastic about Lillard.”

Hopefully, they won’t have to redo it for Ben Simmons. JASON COHEN.

BEST SIGHTS AND SOUNDS

BEST BITES

Long dismissed as the clunky playthings of techie voyeurs and black-ops middle management, a certain stigma may still hover over unmanned aerial vehicles, otherwise known as drones.

Jamie Goodwick has put in work to change that.

Since 2017, when Goodwick launched Portland’s first aerial photography specialist firm, Portlandrone (portlandrone. com), its early fly-over gigs for realtors have given way to widescreen cinematography for an elite array of corporate clients, including Nike and Adidas, and film and TV productions for the likes of Trinkets and Grimm.

“I saw an opportunity to start a business,” Goodwick says. “Slowly but surely, the clients got bigger—Netflix, the Discovery Channel—and, soon enough, we’re the go-to resource for folks coming in from L.A. or New York.”

A former track athlete, Goodwick was at work last spring on his dream assignment, shooting the Olympic trials at University of Oregon’s Hayward Field for NBC, when COVID effectively shuttered the entertainment industry. That spurred him forward in his pro bono archival work with nonprofit civil rights foundation Don’t Shoot PDX: Enlisting his fiancée as visual observer, Goodwick documented the swiftly mushrooming early June protests through a bird’s-eye lens.

After The New York Times reached out to Portlandrone on the day that crowds marching across the Burnside Bridge grew to an estimated five figures, Goodwick’s aerial photo would lead the Sunday edition. Though he was one of about 100 U.S. drone operators authorized by the FAA to fly directly over crowds, Goodwick stayed consistently ahead or behind the throngs.

The resulting imagery offered both a stirring illustration of the sheer numbers engaged and a much-needed spotlight on the demonstration’s peaceful intentions.

“You never know what you’ll get when you put [a drone] up in the air,” Goodwick says. “It was really terrible weather that day—raining, pouring—but then, 6 pm came around and the skies opened up. My concentration is on making sure that nobody’s harmed, but there was that moment: I looked down, saw what I was capturing, and realized this was way bigger. I didn’t do anything other than fly a drone safely from a distance, but we felt really blessed to be a part of something we believed in so strongly, even in a very small way.” JAY HORTON.

During the pandemic lockdown, street graffiti was one of the few visual art mediums on display that changed frequently, if not daily.

It was inscrutable, often funny, and at times even poignant. Out of all those scrawls, the tag that wrote itself on Portland’s heart was undeniably Penis Girl—the seemingly pro-trans moniker that appeared everywhere from Interstate 205 to the Eastbank Esplanade, ranging in styles from marker on bus benches to big balloon lettering on the walls of train tunnels.

The artist behind Penis Girl is hesitant to reveal too much about themself, graffiti being illegal and all, other than to approve of the trans-rights interpretation of their tag.

“I fully embrace that, especially being nonbinary and gender nonconforming myself,” they said. “I’ve never actually been good at art, but graffiti became a good way for me to channel all the bad shit that I and everyone else have been dealing with— like quarantine, capitalism and the police state. Plus, it’s a super-fun way to pass the time.”

Though Penis Girl often travels with other graffiti artists, they quash rumors that there’s a Penis Girl collective. “There are random people that wrote it, but it’s just me,” they said. “I appreciate that people love the tag, but I am just a person with a pen. I’m not Banksy, and I promise I will straight-up stop tagging if people keep trying to treat me like I am.”

SUZETTE SMITH.

WINE PAIRINGS There’s probably not another wine shop in the world that’s gone on record saying Arya Stark is a riesling, the Allman Brothers are a vintage 2019 Vin de France and that a Cancer is most likely to enjoy a juicy beaujolais.

But that’s what Pairings Portland (455 NE 24th Ave.) owner Jeff Weissler has been doing for almost nine years on the corner of Northeast 24th and Glisan.

Pairings’ approach is divergent to the detached ironic chic of highbrow wine. Instead of austere white walls and Monstera plants, the shop’s walls are brightly colored, there’s a 3-foot metal chicken that serves as a mascot, and you’ll definitely get an answer to what wine works best for a viewing of The Princess Bride.

“A lot of fine wine people don’t take us seriously,” Weissler says. “They think this is a silly thing. But it’s a way to bring natural and quirky wine to people in a way that’s fun and approachable.”

The approach may not be to everyone’s palate, but if you’re a serious drinker of natural and organic wines, the pairings themselves should be. Weissler has three criteria for the wines he sells: They’re organic, have no added yeast and are not made by corporations. You’ll see local darlings like Day Wines on the shelf beside

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

BEST TRANS-VISIBILITY TAG

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

SUZZETTE SMITH

PORTLAND DRONE

BEST EYE IN THE SKY

BEST WIZARD OF

BEST MEALS ON WHEELS THE ARTIST BEHIND PENIS GIRL IS HESITANT TO REVEAL At age 56, Lorenzo Daliana decided to go TOO MUCH ABOUT THEMSELF, rogue.

Like a lot of people in the service industry, Daliana, a chef and restaurateur with GRAFFITI BEING ILLEGAL 30 years of experience working in Portland, AND ALL, OTHER THAN TO lost his job due to the pandemic. He needed work but didn’t want to go back to a full-serAPPROVE OF THE TRANSvice kitchen. Instead, he wanted to provide RIGHTS INTERPRETATION OF a service.

So last August, Daliana, who grew up THEIR TAG. in Italy, bought a truck on Craigslist from some Ukrainian guys. He spent the next month outfitting it with commercial-grade kitchen equipment. Then he took out a map and drew a mile-and-a-half radius around his house in Northeast Portland. From there, he penciled out five different routes—

French gamays and a chablis that won’t break the bank.

The idea of the pairings, Weissler says, is to break down anything you want to pair to its adjectives. For a recent flight pairing wines to classic rock bands, the “country, bad boy, boozy and flirtatious” Rolling Stones went with a raw rustic 2019 Domaine de Brin Vendemia Gaillac.

As the world reopens from the pandemic, Pairings is doing one new themed flight a week, and bottles are available to go and for delivery. You can also pop in anytime and ask for a zodiac-based gift pack for your favorite Leo or Libra.

“We have a nerdy side,” Weissler says, “but don’t let the nerdy side let you think that we carry anything except really freaking killer wine.” ANDREA DAMEWOOD. one for each day of the week.

A month later, he hopped in the truck, adorned with the word “food” in different languages and, blaring Kormac’s jaunty “Big Bad Trumpet Player” on a loop, drove his first route, serving food to people who sauntered out of their homes to see what was up.

“It’s the ice cream truck concept,” Daliana says of his new business, simply called The Food Truck (thefoodtruckpdx.com).

“It’s just food, not just sugar.”

The Food Truck’s menu changes every two weeks. He has grab-and-go options, but his specialty is cooking to order. Sometimes it’s stir fry, sometimes steak sandwiches, sometimes Italian food. He always has a kale noodle salad prepared.

His regulars now know his schedule and are ready to come out when they hear his signature tune. Naturally, many kids would also approach the truck and end up disappointed to find he doesn’t sell ice cream. Eventually, Daliana conceded their point: He ripped out the passenger seat and installed a freezer, which he fills with frozen treats.

“I’d like to feel that this will be my last career [change],” Daliana says. “I’ve hustled for the last 30 years. I worked weekends and nights. I lost a family. This business rips you of everything, and so I’d like to think I can just be the neighborhood jester. It’s very comforting to be under the radar.”

SOPHIE PEEL.

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BEST BITES CO U R T E SY O F PA L S M U S H R O O M S

BEST BLUE OYSTER CULT

Jaclyn Leedy has always loved dogs.

For the past five years, the longtime Oregonian volunteered with Free State Four Paws, an Alabama-based dog rescue located in a county without a shelter. The more involved she got, the more she felt the need to help. She got an idea for spreading awareness through a warm, comforting moment: your morning cup of coffee.

“I knew I wanted to get adoption stories on coffee bags,” Leedy says. “It’s a canvas you can use for change. Maybe you have that bag in your kitchen for a week, maybe months.

Every time you see that bag, you’re taking in that label.”

Leedy and her partner, Mark Wilcox, launched Mutt’s Coffee (muttscoffee.com) in November 2020, offering premium roasted coffee beans by the bag, each featuring the face and story of an adopted dog from Free State Four Paws, with 25% of profits going to the organization. Their online store now ships nationwide, and their cold brew stand is an institution at several Portland-area farmers markets. She estimates they’ve donated over $1,000 so far, and that number is sure to grow— the coffee is quite good.

“It’s not cheap coffee with good dog stories,” Leedy says. “It’s good coffee with good dog stories.” LAUREN YOSHIKO.

After 25 years driving taxis, slinging drinks and playing drums around Portland, Holly Morgan realized she needed to come up with some sort of retirement plan.

Then it dawned on her: mushrooms.

A story of mushroom crops grown and bike-delivered by unemployed New Zealand miners inspired Morgan to enroll in Mercy Corps business classes, travel downstate for cultivation workshops and, toward the end of 2018, purchase a dilapidated mushroom farm in a former St. Johns shipyard, which she rechristened Pals Mushrooms (palsmushrooms.com).

“It’s a pretty magical slice of the oldschool Portland I didn’t think still existed,” she says of the space, “but, basically, I had bought a broken-down jalopy. I had to literally reboot the farm a dozen times and completely start over just because crazy things kept happening.”

Nevertheless, in little more than a year, Morgan had Pals’ signature blue oyster mushrooms on the menu at some of Portland’s most beloved foodie meccas, including Beast, Urban Farmer and Sweedeedee.

After the pandemic effectively shuttered the industry, she pivoted once again, tapping her 12-plus years of experience as a driver for Radio Cab and shifting to home delivery.

“Honestly,” she says, “my knowledge of the streets saved the business.”

Bringing as little as 1 pound to doorsteps anywhere within Portland city limits for a minimal charge, Morgan’s residential delivery program kept Pals afloat through the elongated COVID shutdown. But when the local economy began to reawaken early this spring, she started shopping the business to fund a long-awaited return to Michigan.

After showing the shipping containers to more than 30 interested parties, Morgan sold the farm to her neighbor, Kris Young. Morgan will stay on as part of the new collective, which plans to steadily add more members, though not species—the oyster, Young says, remains the company’s “bread and butter.”

“They’re so meaty that I’ve actually had vegan customers tell me they felt weird and kind of guilty,” Morgan laughs. “I’ve had to reassure people that the mushrooms want to be eaten. Allow them the gift of nourishing you. You’re not hurting them. You’re fulfilling their destiny.”

JAY HORTON.

BEST ROBOT BARISTA For those interested in currying favor with the robot overlords—before their inevitable domination of our inefficient, feelings-based society—consider sucking up to Jarvis, the robot barista at Muji (621 SW 5th Ave.).

Simply by purchasing an iced chai latte through the Blue Hill Robot Coffee app, you’ll be advancing the pursuits of the artificial intelligence machine learning that taught Jarvis how to churn out cappuccinos, mochas and lattes with delicate, machine-perfect milk foam art.

Jarvis coffee robots can be found at two other coffee shops in Portland, J Coffee and Swee2o, but Muji—the store where settling for what’s functional is its entire mission statement—really does feel like the best place for the AI revolution to begin. After all, Jarvis learned to make those delicious drinks by observing actual human baristas.

What else could Jarvis observe? Schematics? Passwords? Human frailty and unworthiness? The machines can do it perfectly now! The espresso was a little bitter.

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As multiple groups bend over backward to convince Major League Baseball to move a team to Portland, one former pro ballplayer has already made his way here—to serve coffee.

Last summer, Kevin Youkilis, who helped the Boston Red Sox win two World Series and earned the nickname “the Greek God of Walks,” opened Loma Coffee Co. (4229 SE Woodstock Ave.), a new cafe and roastery. It’s the latest venture for Youkilis, who retired from baseball in 2014 and has spent his post-playing career parlaying his beverage habits into successful businesses.

“I never really imagined myself in coffee in any way,” says Youkilis, who previously opened craft brewery Loma Brewing with his brother in their hometown of Los Gatos, Calif., in 2016. “It was just figuring out the different varieties out there and being in a great area where there’s a lot

of different roasters where I could do my research.”

Loma Coffee became a reality after Youkilis, looking to open up a coffee bar at his brewpub, hooked up with Portland coffee fixture Brandon Smyth, co-founder of Water Avenue Coffee. Within months, the pair opened their storefront in Portland— in the middle of a pandemic and while the skies were hazy with wildfire smoke.

“It was not the easiest of times, in many ways,” Youkilis says, laughing.

Things have been looking up for Loma Coffee. The business is doing well enough that it’s hiring extra help, and its beans will soon be available at Market of Choice locations around the state. The next step?

Expansion.

“We want to grow the brand and show off Brandon’s talents,” says Youkilis.

“There’s no limits.” ROBERT HAM.

BEST UNITED FRONT A week after the March s hooting tha t took the lives of six Asian women in Atlanta, a handful of Portland Asian American and Pacific Islander restaurant owners met up to offer one another support. “ We learned that first meeting that we’re all busting our asses—grinding, all going through the same thing, just in different parts of town,” says Aron Moxley, who was a member of the all Asian American band the Slants prior to slinging smoked banh mi from his Stabs pop-up.

By the end of that inspiring, spontaneous meetup, the group committed to continuing to gather to share projects and challenges and process their unique experiences as Asian American business owners in Portland. They christened the newly formed group the Rice Bowl Posse (instagram.com/ricebowlposse).

“It can be small things like posting or sharing stories about each other [or] supporting each other’s businesses by word of mouth,” says Jacky Ren of Bing Mi. “The five of us did a gift card raffle and raised $2,700 for some local and nationwide AAPI organizations. Then we did a second meeting, and a lot more small businesses joined—not only from the food industry.”

Nearly 30 other AAPI business owners have reached out to join the Posse since its inception. Moving forward, the group aims to be a collaborative force that uplifts the local AAPI community and supports Portland’s BIPOC community in general.

They’re currently working on a free meal plan delivery program to AAPI seniors in need and planning future in-person events.

JOE JIANG

BEST PUPS ON CUPS

BEST MAJOR LEAGUE COFFEE

“These new friends I consider family and it’s amazing to have the thing we’ve needed all along: support,” Moxley says.

“In our cultures, it’s tough to ask for help.

Now it’s all around us.”

LAUREN YOSHIKO.

MOVING FORWARD, THE GROUP AIMS TO BE A COLLABORATIVE FORCE THAT UPLIFTS THE LOCAL AAPI COMMUNITY AND SUPPORTS PORTLAND’S BIPOC COMMUNITY IN GENERAL.

BEST IDEAS

When Laura Glazer and Jennifer Jones set out to spread the gospel of filmmaker Agnès Varda, neither had any idea how far it would actually go.

The two multimedia artists have long been friends and bonded over a shared love of the late French New Wave director after they ran into each other at a screening of Varda’s documentary Faces Places at the Hollywood Theatre in 2018.

Last spring, the pair stapled posters all around Portland with the words “Agnès Varda Forever” written in bold letters and pull tabs with names of the director’s films—sort of like an analog version of Letterboxd, or the staff picks at a video store.

It’s hard to think of another director better suited for the project: Varda’s lengthy filmography relishes the small, tiny moments of connection hidden in everyday life.

“What I really like about Agnès Varda movies is that she’s not afraid to dwell on details,” says Glazer, who’s currently working on her MFA at Portland State University. “The idea that we could make a piece of art in our community where there’s layers of delightful details—that’s something we really like about Agnès Varda, and about life.”

The fliers papered telephone poles from Kenton to Sellwood and out to 188th Avenue. On a road trip to California, Jones put them up at every stop, all the way down to Palm Springs.

The posters quickly gained a cult fol-

BEST USE OF OLD WILLAMETTE WEEK BOXES WHERE GO GIRL DIFFERS IS IN THE HIRING PROCESS. DOYLE INTENDS TO USE HER EXTENSIVE HR BACKGROUND TO SCREEN POTENTIAL DRIVERS, BOTH FOR THEIR FACILITY BEHIND THE WHEEL AND THEIR IDEOLOGICAL ALIGNMENT.

In a city littered with free libraries, free fridges, free toy swaps, and piles of general free stuff deposited on residential street corners, the idea of a free movie exchange seems overdue.

Thomas Mosher agrees.

So when he and his housemate, Stephen Katulak, came across an article about the fledgling Free Blockbuster movement late last year, they figured it was time to introduce the concept to Portland’s urban topography. As film buffs with expansive DVD collections, Mosher and Katulak had the inventory. All they needed was a newspaper box to put them in—preferably one already colored a shade of blue similar to the nearly extinct video rental chain.

G U R U S U R YA K H A L S A

When riders would get into Trenelle Doyle’s Uber, she’d frequently hear a sigh of relief, particularly from female-identifying and nonbinary passengers grateful to see a woman behind the wheel.

“My riders would tell stories ranging from weird, creepy interactions to being sexually assaulted,” says Doyle, 36. “That’s really where the idea for Go Girl Ride came from.”

Go Girl Ride (gogirlride.com) is a ride-sharing service primarily focused on serving marginalized and vulnerable passengers who otherwise feel unsafe getting into strangers’ cars. Doyle spent around four years developing the concept before launching in late 2019. Having now rebounded from the pandemic, she expects to have a fleet of wheels—many provided by electric car company Forth— on the ground just in time for Halloween, with rates and accessibility commensurate to other popular ride-sharing services.

Where Go Girl differs is in the hiring process. Doyle intends to use her extensive HR background to screen potential drivers, both for their facility behind the wheel and their ideological alignment.

“We definitely will have some cis-gendered males working sometimes. We’re inclusive. But our training is focused on the safety of women and nonbinary folks,” Doyle says, “because we are often the folks who are ignored.”

It’s not just about creating safe boundaries for passengers. As an Uber driver, Doyle has found herself in situations where she’s picked up unsupervised children, tech-averse grandparents and, in one case, even a man in the midst of a heart attack in need of a ride to the hospital— none of which she was trained to handle.

“We’ll also have first aid and CPR training. And not just one background check— we’re going to do them constantly,” she says.

Doyle plans to launch initially as a private or contracted service before rolling out the app for the Portland market. For now, Doyle asks potential drivers and riders to sign up on the website.

“I love to drive, but something else I’m passionate about is people,” Doyle says.

“Go Girl Ride doesn’t even feel like work because it’s something that I’ve always dreamed of doing.” BRIANNA WHEELER.

LAURA GLAZER

BEST APPRECIATION

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

BEST RIDE SHARE

lowing. According to Google Trends, the term “Agnès Varda” has seen a dramatic spike in searches in Oregon. News of the project even reached the famed director’s daughter, Rosalie Varda, who left a comment of support on the Hollywood Theatre’s Instagram page.

Now, the project has grown even beyond Jones and Glazer. Friends of the two artists put fliers up in New York City and Chicago—and last month, the duo learned that a woman in Laredo, Texas, put up posters in her town, 2,000 miles from where the project began.

“I started it just for fun, but so many people have engaged with it,” says Jones.

“When something sort of goofy like this happens and Portland really participates and takes it up, it makes me very proud of Portland.” SHANNON GORMLEY.

Thankfully, Portland is full of those as well: A neighbor discovered a disused Willamette Week box in their backyard when they moved in, and donated it to the cause. Operating on a “take a movie, leave a movie” model, the container at Southeast 75th Avenue and Division Street has become something of a community hub.

“I never talked to anyone until I put the box out there,” Mosher says. “If I’m out in the yard, I end up in a conversation.”

(Another box has since sprung up in Beaumont-Wilshire.)

So what’s in stock? Over the past few months, it’s varied from a stash of BMX tapes to an instructional paddle-making video to eight copies of the 1997 action classic Face/ Off. Some homemade stuff has appeared as well, which raises obvious concerns. But Mosher is hopeful no one is abusing the idea.

“It’s an honor system,” he says, “so, hopefully, people aren’t putting terrible stuff in there.” MATTHEW SINGER.

ALL THEY NEEDED WAS A NEWSPAPER BOX TO PUT THEM IN—PREFERABLY ONE ALREADY COLORED A SHADE OF BLUE SIMILAR TO THE NEARLY EXTINCT VIDEO RENTAL CHAIN.

BEST UNMENTIONABLES For much of her adult life, Celeste Sipes worried about her underwear.

“I was born with a really big butt,” she laughs, “and all my underwear I’ve ever worn had just ridden straight up. I really was always depressed about underwear.”

Sipes’ undie woes finally came to an end in 2005 after her sister moved to New Zealand and spotted some briefs decorated with rocket ships. The print reminded her of the tighty-whities worn for good luck by the protagonist in Calvin and Hobbes, Sipes’ favorite comic strip, so she bought a pair and shipped them off to her sibling.

More than the pattern, what was even more impressive was how the underwear molded to her body when she slipped them on.

Though she didn’t realize it at the time, that was the first step toward the launch of Thunderpants USA (thunderpantsusa. com), with Sipes in the ownership role of the Portland-based offshoot.

Sipes, who grew up in Kalispell, Mont., learning to sew under her mother’s guidance, has actually spent years in the clothing industry. When Sipes opened West End boutique Radish Underground in 2008, one of the first products she made sure she could carry was that life-changing underwear line, becoming the company’s first American account. Demand for Thunderpants grew so much, the business reached out to see if Sipes would helm a U.S. spinoff.

Now, bolts of brightly colored fabric— some with playful patterns like an explosion of avocados or galloping ponies—are cut and sewn at Evergreen Apparel Manufacturing in Hillsboro. Made with a proprietary 90-10 blend of organic cotton and Spandex, the unique underwear has garnered a passionate following inspired equally by its fabric and its fit.

“Because the fabric has such nice bounceback and retention to it, it just stays in place all day,” Sipes explains. “They’re wedgie-proof, which is sort of our main claim to fame.”

Most of all, Sipes loves the fact that a seemingly simple undergarment can help women feel confident in their own skin.

“We make underwear for big butts, big stomachs, big thighs, and also for people with tiny butts and tiny thighs,” she says.

“It’s so stretchy, it really fits so many different body types. I love how comfortable and sexy people feel. And powerful! A lot of people say, ‘I feel like a superhero in my Thunderpants.’” ANDI PREWITT. Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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BEST IDEAS

BEST PARK POSTERS

BEST ANALOG MATCHMAKER

A hallmark of gift shops and kitchen wall calendars, most national parks posters are replicas of a handful of Works Progress Administration prints. But why stop at national parks? Don’t Portland city parks deserve a little illustrative shine, too? After all, civic leaders purchased much of Washington Park in 1871—three decades before Yosemite was established.

That was the logic of the Portland Parks Foundation, the private fundraising arm for Portland Parks & Recreation. The group decided to celebrate its 20th anniversary by commissioning four graphic designers, chosen from 97 hopefuls, to draw tributes to three iconic parks: Alberta, Laurelhurst and Peninsula, as well as the Wildwood Trail (portlandpf.org/20th-anniversary-poster-project).

Allie Yacina picked Laurelhurst Park, near her house. In mood-boarding meetings, the foundation set guardrails for the designs: “You have four colors, here’s the size, and you have to include this type,” Yacina recalls. Within those limits, the designers tried designs far more abstract and pop than their New Deal-era inspirations.

The trees in these screen prints seem to dance off the page—a reminder of the energy in places meant for human enjoyment as much as conservation. In Yacina’s design, the four colors (Prussian blue, dark and light green, and a pastel pink) create windows of action, like glancing through breaks in the fir canopy and spotting a house at the park’s edge.

In his print of the Wildwood Trail, which winds through nearly 30 miles of West Hills woods, Zach Pranji used just two colors—golden green and black—and long shadows to convey a Brothers Grimm feeling of getting lost in mysterious forest.

“I couldn’t put it all on there,” Pranji says, “but I wanted something maplike [that] somehow conveys the more sublime emotional experience of the trail.”

The posters are idealized—no used syringes or drive-by shootings—but a little realism seeps in. Yacina included a crow on a railing. A foundation member wondered if perhaps a songbird might be more fitting. “Crows are such a staple for me at this park,” she says. “You hear them in the background all the time. I don’t think they’re pests at all.” The crows stayed.

AARON MESH.

Like many online daters, Autum Bird grew tired of swiping for love.

She figured her fellow single neighbors must be feeling the same way—and took it upon herself to find a solution.

She stapled 60 fliers to telephone poles around Northeast Portland: “Are you tired of Tinder? Want to meet a local? Let me interview you and potentially find you a perfect match!”

And just like that, Bird, a barber by day, became a matchmaker by night.

Since February, Bird, 32, has met and interviewed over 45 singles either from a reserved table at Cully neighborhood bar Mad Hanna or in the swing in her front yard. The singles answer 80 questions ranging from “Are you into sports?” to “How often do you wash your sheets?”

“I don’t want to connect someone who washes their sheets every two days with someone who only washes them every two months,” Bird says.

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BEST OF (ALMOST) PORTLAND ADREON WILLINGHAM

THE TREES IN THESE SCREEN PRINTS SEEM TO DANCE OFF THE PAGE—A REMINDER OF THE ENERGY IN PLACES MEANT FOR HUMAN ENJOYMENT AS MUCH AS CONSERVATION.

Bird doesn’t charge for her service.

Instead, she calls it her “social project.”

Right now, she is preparing the first installment of “speed dates”—pairing up people she thinks will be “perfect” to do a “walk and talk” around Normandale Park at the beginning of August.

She has one rule: no exchanging phone numbers. She does this to keep the matchmaking service comfortable and exclusive, for all parties, as well as to avoid giving out digits to someone with a weird vibe.

She also wants to avoid the oftentimes awkward “Will there be a second date?” bit at the end of first-time encounters. Once the speed dates are over, Bird will instead send out a survey, asking the participants if they would like for her to arrange another rendezvous, whether they want to arrange it themselves or keep looking for love elsewhere.

“I started this as a way to connect with my neighbors,” she says, “but now I am going to connect them with Portland.”

MEIRA GEBEL.

BEST KIDTREPRENEUR Ask Amira Ashley how she balances her busy life with managing her fledgling cosmetics brand, and she’ll let you know it’s no sweat for her.

“I’m the boss with the gloss,” she says.

“I can do anything!”

Big talk for a 10-year-old. But the Vancouver, Wash., native is ready to back up her catchy mantra with tangible success.

Ashley’s debut line of cosmetics, Boujee Vegan Girl (shopboujeevegan.com), launched mid-pandemic. Despite some well-placed motherly apprehension, the flagship line of scented, flavored, multicolored glosses quickly sold out.

“Everyone was super-excited to support me,” says Ashley, who credits her mother, Amber, as her primary inspiration.

“I just love playing in my mom’s makeup, and she was getting tired of it, so I was like, ‘Well, I’ll just make my own.’”

Borrowing a page from her mother’s already established vegan cosmetics

business, she branded her own line of youth-oriented lip glosses with flavors like Bubble Gum, Pineapple Poppin and Tangerine Tang.

Boujee Vegan Girl’s line of cosmetics includes a rainbow of sheer, glittery, flavored glosses, as well as a limited-edition set of lippies in shades of beige and brown suited for deeper skin tones but flattering across a broad spectrum.

“I just want it to be fun and very colorful,” Ashley says. “I want bright colors and a nice flavor.”

After selling out post-launch, the Boujee Vegan Girl site is now restocked and includes even more youth-oriented flourishes, like mini butterfly clips and a forthcoming shirt with her signature phrase, “I’m the Boss with the Gloss” Ashley feels certain the brand will mature and transform alongside its founder, but her long-term goals are resolute.

“I just want to get my mom a Louis Vuitton,” she says, “and a pink castle.” BRIANNA WHEELER.

BEST OF (ALMOST) PORTLAND

BEST SELF-DRIVING TRACTOR Jay Boberg envisions a future without tractor drivers.

That’s not because the co-founder of Nicolas-Jay winery presumes that particular piece of farming equipment will become obsolete. As the proud owner of Oregon’s first electric autonomous tractor, he simply has faith that cutting-edge technology will render butts in seats unnecessary.

Introduced by East Bay-based startup Monarch Tractor last December, it wasn’t so much the self-driving vehicle that initially caught his attention. Instead, he was drawn by the dream team that launched the company: a fourth-generation California wine grower who’s led pioneering efforts to eradicate herbicides in his industry; the former head of the Tesla Gigafactory; and a scientist who has experience developing everything from automated cars to four-wheel drive subterranean robots that can map as they go.

Does the idea of spending eternity embalmed in a box turn you off ? Do you worry that cremating your corpse will just add more greenhouse gases that are cooking the planet?

If so, then Walt Patrick has a solution for you.

Patrick runs the Herland Forest Natural Burial Cemetery near Klickitat, Wash., just over the Columbia River from The Dalles, where you can be buried in a pine box, a linen sheet—or nothing at all.

By choosing a natural burial, your remains go to good use.

Washington state law protects cemetery land from development. The more folks who choose burial in the Herland Forest, the more land that’s protected. And your remains fertilize the trees. Graves are marked not with headstones but with small surveyors’ markers. Locations are logged with GPS. So far, Herland has had 79 clients, 72 below ground and seven above.

“More people are opting out of the funeral industrial complex,” Patrick says.

People who’ve thought a lot about death say Patrick is onto something.

“Natural burials remind us that we are part of something greater than ourselves,” says Barbara Becker, author of the new book Heartwood: The Art of Living With the End in Mind. “In returning organically to the earth, the elements of our bodies rejoin the majesty of the wild, and we renew the circle of life.”

Herland offers a green alternative to cremation, too. It’s called natural organic reduction.

BEST APPLE HUNTER Until a few decades ago, if you told Joanie Cooper she’d become one of the foremost collectors of rare apple varieties, she would’ve thought you were crazy.

That changed in 1990, when Cooper left her job working for a plastic surgeon and bought a 50-acre plot of land outside McMinnville. Hidden on the property was an old apple orchard full of big, delicious fruit. When she had the apple varieties identified by local experts, she learned she was the owner of heirloom, thought-to-beextinct apple trees.

“It was like opening a door to something I knew nothing about,” says Cooper. “I find it intriguing when you think of all these old trees that are hiding.”

Now Cooper is the owner of the largest collection of rare apples in the county. In 2012, after decades honing her apple identification and grafting skills at Oregon City’s education nonprofit Home Orchard Society, she opened the Temperate Orchard Conservancy. Located along the Molalla

WA LT PAT R I C K

BEST FINAL RESTING PLACE

“They basically saw an opportunity to bring farming into the 21st century,” says Boberg.

The Monarch does more than just steer itself. It can complete other tasks all on its own, everything from weed removal to crop data analysis, including yield measurements and health metrics. The tractor will even send you a text if it looks like rain is in the forecast. And the fact that the machine doesn’t devour diesel means there is no tailpipe pollution—a typical model would produce 14 times the emissions of the average car.

Although the driverless rig isn’t trundling around Nicolas-Jay’s 53 acres in the Dundee Hills just yet, a prototype at Ponzi Vineyards and Lingua Franca will make test runs in late July. The hope is that the spectacle will convince more vintners who may be on the fence that a riderless tractor really can negotiate hundreds of rows of grapes without mowing down the vines.

“It’s important,” Boberg says, “that Oregon is very early on the innovation side of things when it comes to farming.”

ANDI PREWITT.

That’s a fancy term for composting, and Washington was the first state to allow humans to be mulched like this. (Colorado and, most recently, Oregon have followed.)

Herland puts a corpse in a wooden box with wood chips and wild flowers. The box rolls on a track so that the contents can be turned, just like in a good composter. Solar panels help boost the temperature to kill any dangerous microbes.

When the process is finished, parts like pacemakers and artificial hips are removed and recycled. Loved ones can leave the compost at Herland to fertilize a new tree in the forest, or take it home to spread it on gardens or at a favorite place, just like ashes. Full-body burial and natural organic reduction both cost $3,000.

The name Herland comes from a 1915 work of utopian fiction by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman about an all-female society that lives in the woods without conflict. They reproduce asexually and live in harmony with nature, free from men and their wars.

Sounds like a great place to spend eternity. ANTHONY EFFINGER.

BEST FUNGI-KILLING ROBOT Between the hours of 10 pm and 4 am, Willamette Valley Vineyards in Turner, Ore., is mostly quiet. Through the stillness each night, however, a figure can be seen moving among the vines: an 11-foot-tall, 5-foot-wide robot.

It’s how the grape grower—responsible for some of the region’s most acclaimed pinot noir—fights the ultimate crop-destroying pest: powdery mildew.

Founder Jim Bernau was installing ultraviolet lamps in the winery’s HVAC systems last year to aid in the disinfection against COVID when he was reminded of a study, done by researchers at Cornell, about how the same light was being used to kill fungi in agriculture through the use of autonomous, GPS-tracked robots.

“This is a real solution,” he says, “and we need to move as an industry as quickly as we can in applying it so we can eliminate the use of dangerous chemicals.”

River just south of Portland, the conservancy is home to around 4,000 varieties of apples, many of which were assumed extinct before Cooper helped find them.

Curious fruit-finders from as far away as New York send their apples to the conservancy to be identified. Then, Cooper and Temperate Orchard co-founder and resident pomologist Shaun Shepherd go through dozens of traits—from taste to skin texture and stem length—in order to identify the variety. Last fall alone, Cooper and Shepherd examined around 200 apples.

Cooper hopes to find and preserve as many varieties as possible—a goal with a time limit. Many orchards containing lost apple varieties are already over 100 years old, so until they’re found in some remote part of the country, there’s no way of knowing if those trees are still alive. But for Cooper, that’s part of what makes the discovery of a lost variety so thrilling.

“It’s fun to say, ‘Aha! It isn’t lost now, we’ve found it,’” she says. “If we don’t hurry up and do it, they’re going to be gone.”

SHANNON GORMLEY.

While the study was initially conducted on the East Coast, Bernau was determined to be the first to bring the new tech to his farm in Oregon. And he did: Last summer, the robot was deployed on West Coast soil for the first time.

Instead of using fungicides like sulfur to ward off mildew, the robot is equipped with tubes of low-grade UV light, which is most effective at night, when the fungi’s DNA is susceptible to injury.

After a year of use on his own vines, Bernau says the benefit of UV light on his grapes has “ basically confirmed” the research he placed his bet on.

So far, the robotics and its operation have cost Bernau $75,000.

The next hurdle is convincing others in the agriculture industry to embrace the technology.

“Farmers are busy people,” says Bernau.

“They don’t have a lot of time to experiment with ideas like this. But it’s my role to show farmers this will work, this will save money, and this will reduce the strain and stress on their employees without any negative environmental impacts.”

MEIRA GEBEL.

THE NEXT HURDLE IS CONVINCING OTHERS IN THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY TO EMBRACE THE TECHNOLOGY.

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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Brought to you by

Portland wasn’t quite Portland this past year, with many local businesses closed or shuttered for months on end. So for our annual Readers’ Poll we identified categories that best reflect shared experiences from the last year of Quarantine.

The results are in!

Best Take-Out Food

Most Missed Restaurant

Fire on The Mountain

Pok Pok

Second Place: Hat Yai

Second Place: Le Bistro Montage

Runner Up: Eem

Runner Up: Toro Bravo

Best Business Pivot

Best Virtual Fundraiser

Drive-Thru Strip Club, Lucky Devil Lounge

Oregon Humane Society Doggie Dash

Second Place: Division Street Grocers

by Ava Gene’s

Second Place: Black Resilience Fund

Runner Up: Lombard House

Runner Up: Stream of Hope, Hopewell House

Best Veterinary Practice

Best Outdoor Dining Spot

DoveLewis

Eem

Second Place: North Portland Veterinary Hospital VCA

Second Place: 10 Barrel Brewing

Runner Up: Broadway Vet Clinic

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Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

Runner Up: Cafe Nell

Best Local Lockdown Service

East Bridge Massage Second Place: QuarterWorld Pinball and Arcade Rental Runner Up: Portland Running Company Curbside Service and Delivery

Best Socially Distanced Event

Black Lives Matter Protests Second Place: PSU Farmers Market Runner Up: Elisabeth Jones Art Center Global Arts Festival

Best Auto Dealer

Best Drive Through Experience

Subaru of Portland Second Place: Tesla Macadam Runner Up: Beaverton Hyundai

Best Public Place to Safely Gather

Best Local Lockdown Product

Wyld Gummies

Second Place: Oregon Zoo Lights

Second Place: Freeland Spirits Cocktail Kits

Runner Up: Shine Distillery Drag Thru

Runner Up: Oregonic Tonic

Mt. Tabor Park Second Place: Laurelhurst Park Runner Up: Cathedral Park

Best Local Furniture Store

City Liquidators Second Place: Lounge Lizard Runner Up: Dania

Best Beer Delivery Service

Rev Nat’s Hard Cider Second Place: Baerlic Brewery Runner Up: Ex Novo Brewery

OHSU COVID19 Vaccinations at PDX

Best Local Mask Maker

Portland Garment Factory Best Virtual Experience from a Local Arts Organization

Elisabeth Jones Art Center, Global Arts Fest

Second Place: Stark’s Vacuums Runner Up: Keen

Second Place:

Wicked Wednesday Runner Up: Vanport Mosaic Festival

Best Local Grocery Store

New Seasons Market

Best Virtual Workout Class

Barre3 Second Place: Firelight Yoga Runner Up: Online Fit with Nora

Second Place: Market of Choice Runner Up: Basics Market

Best Cannabis Delivery Service

Kush Cart

Best Retail Therapy

Powell’s Books Second Place: Portland Nursery Runner Up: The Herb Shoppe

Second Place: Green Box Runner Up: Rip City Delivery

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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WEST END Living Room Theaters Sizzle Pie Woonwinkel BRIDGEPORT VILLAGE Chop Chop Miss Hannah’s Popcorn Shoe Mill

NW 23RD Blush Beauty Bar Fetch Eyewear Harlow Hip Hound Smith Tea PDX AIRPORT Tillamook Market Westward Whiskey

HAWTHORNE BLVD Communion Fried Egg I’m In Love Harlow Metro Boutique Seven Virtues Twill tndr.lv/prp

Need something to do?

Got a special event to share?

Check out

wweek.com/calendar to find out what’s happening around town.

NINKASIBREWING.COM 28

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

STREET

OUT & ABOUT Photos by Chris Nesseth |

On Instagram: @chrisnesseth

Who we saw at the Cathedral Park Jazz Festival.

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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What will your kid be when they grow up?

The Oregon College Savings Plan can help you save for their future, wherever it takes them.

All you need is $25 and about 15 minutes.

Explore the possibilities at

OregonCollegeSavings.com

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Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

STREET

Photos by Chris Nesseth |

On Instagram: @chrisnesseth

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STARTERS

THE MOST IMPORTANT PORTLAND CULTURE STORIES OF THE WEEK—GRAPHED.

B R U C E E LY / C O U R T E S Y O F PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS

B R U C E E LY / C O U R T E S Y O F PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS

RIDICULOUS

…but says he hasn’t “made any firm decision on what my future will be.”

Damian Lillard publicly denies a report that he wants a trade out of Portland…

WESLEY LAPOINTE

W W S TA F F

Beloved WW Arts & Culture editor Matthew Singer is leaving Portland this week. The city weeps.

Seltzerland, a touring hard seltzer festival, is coming to Portland.

AWFUL

DINGER’S DELI

STEEPLEJACK

AWESOME

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 .

EMMA BROWNE

Oregon’s snowpack was worryingly low—even before last month’s heat wave melted much of it.

Shuttered Old Town nightclub Fortune is reopening in the Sentinel hotel…

J U S T I N YA U

PRIVATE ADULT FETISH AND FUN!

W W S TA F F

Steeplejack, the new Portland brewery built inside an old church on Northeast Broadway, is already planning a second location in Hillsboro.

Popular vegan sandwich cart Dinger’s Deli has closed permanently.

The Portland Winterhawks finally change their logo.

OPEN 24/7 PORTLAND W I N T E R H AW K S

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Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

SERIOUS

Oregon has nine large, uncontained wildfires, including the largest in the country: the Southern Oregon Bootleg Fire.

Congratulations

to the winners!

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LOCAL

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Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug. For use only by adults twenty-one years of age and older. Keep out reach of children.

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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FLASHBACK

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BACK IN 2000

Open for indoor & Now accepting online outdoor dining! pre orders for 7Mother’s days a week - 2pm Day8am Brunch!

Check out our menu at jamonhawthorne.com

kids!

Mon-Sat 10-6pm Sunday 11-5pm

1433 NE Broadway St Portland • 503 493-0070 Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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= IN PERSON = VIRTUAL EVENT

Your Heart Is Mine

IMDB

Merging ASMR-ready sound design, confessional poetry, ghostly cinematography, a showstopping monologue, and enough spilled water to devour an entire security deposit, the Portland-made short film Your Heart Is Mine is an expression of tension burrowed so deeply no amount of moviemaking can relieve it. Exhibited last year to positive receptions at the Oregon Scream Week Horror and Sherman Oaks film festival, Your Heart Is Mine was conceived piecemeal and birthed uncomfortably by Vancouver, Wash., filmmaker Jake Whiston, perhaps best known as half of the Portland folk-noir duo Whiston & Warmack. The self-deprecating director calls his own film flawed, but it’s an equally fascinating and devastating pit in which to spend 20 minutes, steeped in intense craft, untrained Method acting and sensory precision. Good thing too, because there’s no escape. Streams at filmfreeway.com/YourHeartIsMine. Free.

Resound Fuller Rosen’s new two-person show offers deeply personal perspectives on global unrest. Before moving to New York, Pacific Northwest College of Art grad Angélica Maria Millán Lozano made a name for herself in Portland thanks to her lush, textile-focused installations. Her half of this dual show deals with the Colombia-born artist’s reflections on the political uprising in her native country and the sleep paralysis and night terrors she experienced most intensely while living in Portland. Frankie Krupa Vahdani’s work also takes an introspective look at revolution and diaspora: Her rich, colorful prints reflect on her Polish Iranian heritage and family history. Fuller Rosen Gallery, 1928 NW Lovejoy St., fullerrosen.com. Noon-5 pm Thursday-Sunday, through Aug. 22.

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Lots of Laughs: Curtis Cook 2014 Funniest 5 comedian and WW columnist Curtis Cook left Portland for L.A. in 2016.

So although we can still watch him get kicked off Twitter for impersonating Dr. Oz, there aren’t many chances in the remote ephemeral online world to see his IRL standup. Cook is a laid-back, hilarious thinker whose jokes snake unpredictably through race, relationships and drunken misadventures. Whenever you get a chance to catch his set, you should. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave. 5 pm Sunday, July 25. $15. Bring your own chair or sit on the pavement like a serf.

Live at the Lot: Produce Organic Records Showcase Portland should be proud of Produce Organic Records, the multifaceted collective that somehow manages to be a record label, a retail store, a social lounge and about 10 other things out of a little storefront in Old Town. Its showcase at Zidell Yards will present Produce Organic artists in the most spacious setting we’ve seen them in for a very long time. Not everyone is ready to get back into the club, and the clever stylings of Lambo Lawson, Bocha and Donte Thomas alone are worth the sticker shock. Zidell Yards, 3030 SW Moody Ave., thelotatzidellyards.com, 6 pm Sunday, July 25. $35-$50 per person; all tickets sold in 2-, 4- and 6-seat pods.

M I N DY T U C K E R

Double Dustoff Amy Miller of the Funniest 5 class of 2013 and Johnny Pemberton team up for a West Coast comedy tour, rolling through the recently reopened Siren Theater for a two-evening, double-headliner bill. Those who don’t remember Miller from her Portland tenure may still be familiar with Who’s Your God?—her long-standing, piercingly funny podcast about spirituality. Miller’s wry, assertive observations continue to keep her on Portland hearts and minds.

Pemberton’s “mildly knowledgeable gardener, reggae enthusiast” idiosyncrasies present the possibility of untold treasures. Siren Theater, 315 NW Davis St, sirentheater.com. 8 pm FridaySaturday, July 23-24. $25.

Kassa Overall Touring shows are slowly making their way back to Portland, and the chill, infectious grooves of Kassa Overall should make for an ideal reintroduction for the vaccinated but ill at ease. Overall’s laidback, hazy blend of jazz and hip-hop is made for sinking into like a well-worn couch. The Seattleborn, Brooklyn-based jazz drummer played his last set in this city less than a month before the pandemic shut everything down. A year and a half later, it’s strangely poetic that he’s returning to the same stage where he delivered one of the best sets of 2020’s PDX Jazz Festival. Plus, as a Pacific Northwest native now living on the East Coast, this show is a return for Overall in more ways than one.

Jack London Revue, 529 SW 4th Ave., jacklondonrevue.com. 9 pm Friday, July 23. $25. 21+.

MUBI

Street Bazaar Perusing treasures beneath fairy lights is a time-honored tradition in this city, and it’s all the better if the people at those tables were curated by Portland Flea and Portland Bazaar tastemakers. Street Bazaar is a brand new open-air art and food market at the Central Eastside’s Electric Blocks beneath the Hawthorne Bridge. Sample the Laotian cuisine of Cully Central and Soen’s exquisite Japanese shaved ice, or just go full plant-based food coma with Buddy’s Philly cheesesteaks. Art includes the skewed mythical figures of Erika Reir and the stern Warhol-esque RBG portraits of Caroline Czajkowski.

DJ Prashat brings the Bollywood jams. The Electric Blocks, 240 SE Clay St., streetbazaarpdx.com. 5 pm Friday, July 23. Free.

K E L LY D W Y E R

GET BUSY

STUFF TO DO IN PORTLAND THIS WEEK, INDOORS AND OUT.

Cinema Paradiso In this exalting ode to movie theaters, a young boy in Sicily develops a lifelong passion for cinema after being taken under the wing of the town projectionist. As he ages, however, he realizes that life doesn’t always mirror the magic of the movies—but sometimes, if we’re lucky, it can. The perfect way to celebrate the return of that sacred tradition of going to the theater. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd. 7 pm Saturday-Sunday, July 24-25. $8-$10.

VIRGINIA HILL

GET OUTSIDE Stop and Stay Awhile Oregon’s rest areas offer more than a quick break from the highway.

BY M I C H E L L E H A R RI S

As if there already weren’t enough reasons to hit the road in Oregon, the state has something else besides natural marvels and kitschy attractions: some pretty amazing highway rest areas.

There are even some state parks that have a portion designated as a rest area. While we mainly stop by rest areas to, y’know, rest— stretch our legs and answer nature’s call— Oregon has several that are worth a longer visit, where, besides the basic amenities, you’ll find viewpoints, walking trails, and historical points of interest.

Here are several rest stops to explore next time you’re on the road.

Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint A must-stop if traveling toward Bend along Highway 97, the Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint, located in Terrebonne, is one of the most photographic rest stops in the state. It is named after explorer and fur trapper Peter Skene Ogden, who led several expeditions through the High Desert. The park features a walking path above basalt cliffs that drop 300 feet down into the Crooked River, along with three bridges that stretch across the canyon: the Crooked River Railroad Bridge, the Crooked River High Bridge and the Rex T. Barber Veterans Memorial Bridge.

Directions: From Interstate 84 east, take exit 14 for Fairview and turn right onto Fairview Parkway. Go almost 1 mile before turning left onto Northeast Glisan Street and then right onto 223rd Avenue.

You’ll then make a quick left onto Northwest Fairview Drive and then another quick left onto Northeast Burnside Road. Drive 1.7 miles and continue straight onto US 26 east. After driving 104 miles, you’ll continue onto US 97 south. Drive another 15 miles before turning right into Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint.

Tillamook River Rest Area A grassy rest stop just south of Tillamook along Highway 101, the Tillamook River Rest Area sits alongside the Tillamook River, complete with winding trails and lots of trees. The scenic rest area has even been used as a photo setting for weddings. Almost more like a park than a rest stop, it’s a great spot to score a free cup of coffee, sit by one of the picnic tables and contemplate life.

Directions: On US 26 west, drive about 20 miles before making a slight left onto OR 6 west toward Tillamook. You’ll drive about 50 miles before hitting US 101 south. Drive 3 miles and make a right into the Tillamook River Rest Area.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR: Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint.

Charles Reynolds Rest Area

French Prairie Rest Area

The highlight at this rest stop along westbound I-84 has no relation to Charles Reynolds, who served on the Oregon State Highway Commission and was also president of the Old Oregon Trail Association for several years. Located about 35 miles west of Baker City, part of the rest area was once a ranch operated by William N. Banton, who settled there with his family in 1868. In 1911, Banton built a water-powered tool shop and operated on the land until he retired in 1940. The rustic water wheel and tool shop still stand as a reminder of simpler times. The stop also has a horse area, a vending machine and picnic tables.

There are plenty of rest stops along the Interstate 5 corridor, but the French Prairie Rest Area, located in Aurora, has attractions on both sides of the highway.

One of Oregon’s largest rest areas, French Prairie makes up over 40 acres on each side of the interstate.

The Grove of States, located on the southbound side, features a short trail lined with trees representing the 50 states and island territories. Dedicated in 1967, the Grove of States is believed to be the oldest public arboretum of state trees in the country. If heading north, check out the state’s largest solar station, which includes a walking path with interpretive panels that describe the sustainable energy project.

Directions: On Interstate 84 east, drive 270 miles and take exit 273 toward Frontage Road. Swing left onto I-84 west and drive 4 miles before taking the exit for Charles Reynolds Rest Area.

Sunset Rest Area Just 45 miles west of Portland, Sunset Rest Area is a convenient stop while traveling on Sunset Highway toward the coast. However, in addition to the basic amenities, Sunset Rest Area’s short hiking trails provide opportunities to stretch your legs and take a walk through the Clatsop State Forest. Starting at the footbridge, cross over the South Fork Rock Creek, which connects you to the Springboard and Dooley Spur trails, a quiet forest loop that stretches almost a mile. There are also interpretive signs that describe the area’s logging history. Though a short trail, it’s a chance to take a necessary break from the road and commune with nature.

Directions: On US 26 west, drive 45 miles before turning right into the Sunset Rest Area.

Directions: On Interstate 5 south, drive about 14 miles before making a right into the French Prairie Rest Area.

Deadman Pass Rest Area For those of us who grew up playing The Oregon Trail, there’s a rest area along Interstate 84 in Eastern Oregon that brings the nostalgic video game to life.

Located 18 miles east of Pendleton, the Deadman Pass Rest Area has Oregon Trail wagon ruts that can be seen at the eastbound location. Located in the Blue Mountains, this was one of the most dangerous places along the Oregon Trail route. Heading back westward, take in some mountain views at the Deadman Pass Lookout Area.

Directions: On Interstate 84 east, drive 225 miles before taking exit 228 for Deadman Pass.

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BAR REVIEW

BRIAN BROSE

FOOD & DRINK

TOP 5

BUZZ LIST

Where to drink this week.

1. Parts & Service

2940 NE Alberta St., partsandservicepdx.com.

3 pm-11 am Monday-Friday, 11 am-11 pm Saturday-Sunday.

Presumably, what brings someone to Parts & Service is a love of motorcycles, which form both the theme and décor. But one need not know about choppers or hogs to fit in. This is a friendly biker bar. If it’s not the bikes bringing you in, 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.

2. Good Luck Charm

3. Radio Room

1101 NE Alberta St., 503-287-2346, radioroompdx.com. 9 am-11 pm daily.

The Radio Room rooftop is a low-key hot spot for viewing summertime sunsets. If you can’t snag a spot up top, you’ll enjoy the starry night experience on the ground-floor patio, with a few tables around a large fire pit, covered fully

TOP 5 C

H

NE

HOT PLATES

IS

Where to eat this week.

SS ETH

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™ DRINK: White Owl Social Club, 1305 SE 8th Ave., whiteowlsocialclub.com, 4 pm-2:30 am Monday-Friday, noon-2:30 am SaturdaySunday.

B

R

Gone is the sign that once topped the White Owl Social Club bar: “Please do not form lines.”

Without such direction, a woman in linen shorts stands dutifully behind a group whose audible conversation relates to frozen margaritas and brain freeze. The bartender serves them without batting an eye, and not just because her lashes are on point. White Owl has a new vibe.

It was difficult to pigeonhole White Owl before. The bar was the site of local artisan markets, live music jamborees, movie screenings and weekend dance parties.

But the bar packed up its stage a few years back—turning it into a lotto room—and now general manager Jesse Brooks says there’ll be no more weekend DJs. “We’re not a nightclub anymore,” he says.

A recent renovation has given the space a light tiki vibe. The lotto room now sports an unobtrusive thatched roof. Windows that make up the northside wall hold a variety of palm-leaved plants—a kind of Portland status symbol.

If the White Owl ever becomes unstuck in time, tacos should be its constant. The space has celebrated Taco Tuesdays for years, but now, due to its partnership with Oaxacan-style Mexican cart La Tehuana, those tacos are better than ever.

An unassuming star of its North Killingsworth food cart pod, La Tehuana’s carnitas elevate what was already a good patio into a solid dinner spot. Vegetarians and vegans should look to the dynamite chiles relleno.

In fact, everything that has to do with peppers on the White Owl menu is worth your time. The vegetarian nachos come heavy with sautéed zucchini, red pepper and mushrooms. You never knew you needed that until La Tehuana showed all that you could have.

The cocktails are slightly out of step with the food—there’s not as much tequila as one would expect. But the margarita slushy flows out from its churning cylinder, strong and true. The Chicharita—a misty little glass of tequila and pink punch—is as visually appealing (pink drink, green lime wedge) as it is refreshingly sour.

A place with a patio like White Owl’s never really needed DJs. The whole purpose of its sprawling, picnic table-dotted deck was that you could bring a large group, which is vital in a town where a party over four often runs into trouble.

Brooks, however, thinks better of his earlier statement and mentions an upcoming Sunday when a DJ will spin house music.

“No night DJ,” he says. “Sometimes day DJs.”

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.

OS

suzette@wweek.com

5. Al’s Den

BR

BY S U ZE T T E S M I T H

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.

N

White Owl Social Club changes things up, mostly for the better.

4.Holy Goat Social Club

IA

Lounge Mode

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.”

with a canvas and tight grid of LED lights, where, on a clear night, you can look for constellations while drinking a classic cocktail or one of the rotating draft beer selections.

1. Xinh Xinh Vietnamese Bistro

970 SE Morrison St., 971-229-1492, xinhxinhbistro.com. 11 am-8 pm Monday-Tuesday and Thursday, 11 am-9 pm Friday-Saturday, 11:30 am-8 pm Sunday.

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. Served with a slightly sweetened fish sauce dressing, you’ll find yourself slurping down the grated cabbage, onion and carrots. Peanuts add even more crunch, while basil adds depth. It is an epic salad.

2. Chayo

3601 SE Division St. Lunch 11:30 am-2 pm, dinner 4:30-8 pm 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.

3. 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 European-inspired bites, like Catalan-style shrimp and the always-popular patatas bravas.

4. Buddy’s Steaks

5235 NE Sandy Blvd., 215-694-8095, buddyssteaks.com. 3-8 pm Friday and Monday, noon-8 pm Saturday-Sunday, or until sold out.

What’s a cheesesteak without cheese or steak?

Vegan cheesesteaks are all over Philadelphia, but Buddy’s exists because co-owners Buddy Richter and Angela D’Occhio hadn’t found any meatless cheesesteaks that lived up to their own pre-vegan, Philly native memories. The “steak” is made in house by Richter, and the cashew- and coconut-based whiz is available as either “provolone” or “cheddar,” which is an especially radioactive-looking orange.

5. Birrieria La Plaza

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 consommé 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.

YOUR BACKSTAGE PASS TO THE WWEEK NEWSROOM Available anywhere you get your podcasts

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Editor: Andi Prewitt | Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com MARK DANIELS

PERFORMANCE

MUSIC Written by: Daniel Bromfield | @bromf3

Now Hear This

Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery.

SOMETHING OLD

ON RECORD: Alec Cameron Lugo plays a music obsessive who owns a record store in Analog & Vinyl.

So Satan Walks Into a Record Store…

A rock-and-roll fan meets the devil in Broadway Rose’s musical Analog & Vinyl.

BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E LL FERGUS O N

Imagine Satan strutting into a musical adaptation of High Fidelity and you’ll start to gauge what Broadway Rose’s Analog & Vinyl is about. The play is technically a supernatural love story, but that barely does it justice. In one hour and 45 minutes, Analog & Vinyl takes on so many intriguing ideas—including nostalgia, toxic masculinity and hell—that it makes you wish it worked better.

The play, directed by Sharon Maroney, unleashes all the typical pleasures of a Broadway Rose production, from slickly gorgeous sets and costumes to actors with enough charisma to send tremors through the company’s massive theater in Tigard. It’s beautiful work, but it is in the service of a subpar script that offers archetypes instead of characters and confusion instead of catharsis.

Alec Cameron Lugo stars as Harrison, a cranky music obsessive who has transformed his father’s 7-Eleven into a record store. The shop is Harrison’s kingdom of good taste—a temple where he can preach the gospel of the Beatles and Brian Wilson while railing against what he sees as the heretical excesses of the digital age.

Harrison works with Amanda (Molly Duddlesten), an unpaid assistant who sings about her blog and practically explodes with joy after watching a video of dachshunds playing with a baked potato on her phone. Her faith in the internet comes across as naïve, but it is more endearing than Harrison’s Luddite cynicism, which stems from both heartfelt belief and forced hipness.

Analog & Vinyl references the romantic comedies of Nora Ephron—who directed Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail—which underscores Harrison’s resemblance to a crotchety Tom Hanks and Amanda’s to a buoyant Meg Ryan. Yet the arrival of Satan (Jessica Brandes) disrupts their flirtatious banter, injecting comedic existential dread into a bubbly boy-meets-girl story.

Given the self-conscious weirdness of Analog & Vinyl’s blending of biblical humor and rom-com cliches, the play could have been clever, but not moving. The actors fight to save it from that fate—especially Lugo, who peels away Harrison’s pretensions to reveal the grief and desperation festering beneath.

The peak of Lugo’s performance arrives when Harrison sings an impassioned ode to Nat King Cole and other musical gods. As Harrison clutches a stack of records as

if they were a life preserver and then kneels before his beloved collection, you realize that he clings to his passions not only out of love, but out of desperation. There are tragedies in his past, and hearing them explained is never as moving as watching Lugo channel them into his acting.

Analog & Vinyl features songs by Paul Gordon, who wrote the play’s book with Michael Berresse. Their decision to turn Satan into a cheery prankster and matchmaker is delightful, but portrayals of the play’s hero and heroine are oddly unimaginative. Harrison and Amanda rarely deviate from their respective roles as a self-pitying sufferer and a sparkly savior, inhabiting all-too-familiar gender stereotypes that diminish their humanity.

It is difficult to believe in Harrison and Amanda as human beings, but it is even harder to believe in them as a couple. Because of Harrison’s mansplaining, Amanda’s condescension, and the fact that stalking plays a pivotal role in their relationship, they sometimes seem like divorced spouses, not two people on the precipice of romance.

If Analog & Vinyl were a story about characters not meant to be together, the nasty side of Harrison and Amanda’s bond would be less strange. Yet the play wants us to believe that they could be soulmates, which leaves a gaping gulf between who Gordon and Berresse want their unlikely lovers to be and who they actually are.

To watch Analog & Vinyl is to pinball between frustration and delight. For every baffling plot twist, there are several visual flourishes that reaffirm Broadway Rose’s commitment to beautiful theater. It would be easy to write an entire review of Robert Vaughn’s set design or Allison Dawe’s costumes, which include a sparkly pantsuit worn

by Satan and a metallic jacket so cool it tempts Amanda to sell her soul.

In the half-dystopian, half-optimistic song “Anything That Matters,” Amanda sings, “Anything that matters can be tweeted or fangirled.” Yet Broadway Rose’s version of Analog & Vinyl is a testament to the belief that art should be big and tangible—a case that the production makes more convincingly than the play.

SEE IT: Analog & Vinyl takes place at the Broadway Rose New Stage, 12859 SW Grant Ave., Tigard, 503-620-5262, broadwayrose.org. Through Aug. 1. $5-$40. You can also stream the show at broadwayrose.org/analog-vinyl. $25.

You know that meme about how Young Thug sings in cursive? Same goes for Josephine Foster, whose music is as pretty as Thugger’s but with way better guitar playing—she and her husband, Victor Herrero, both shred. 2016’s No More Lamps in the Morning is her best album: seven of her older songs, two of them adaptations of poems, arranged for twin guitar and that spine-tingling voice. It rewards repeat listens, first to soak in its sound, then to figure out what the hell she’s even saying.

SOMETHING NEW Going pop is a good strategy for an ambient artist: Once you’ve mastered tone and texture, adding a beat and a melody is the natural next step. About You is the first album of song songs from Suzanne Kraft, who until recently made slow, melodic, Enostyled ambient music with nary a vocal in sight.

These 10 tracks envelop the ears, but they’re in no way obscure or impressionistic. They’re firmly pop, and it’s hard to imagine anyone not at least grooving to them.

SOMETHING LOCAL The most you could hope from an album called Dream Jungle is for it to deliver on its title. The new effort from local junglist Golden Boy satisfies immediately: Its breakbeats switch between dainty and skull-shattering, and the chords explode like the popcorn in Portlander John McLaughlin’s famous Regal Cinemas roller-coaster animation. If you dig Lone’s Galaxy Garden, CFCF’s Liquid Colors, and other louche takes on the jungle sound, this should be up your alley. And if those names aren’t familiar, you heard about them here first.

SOMETHING ASKEW Texas musicians More Eaze and Claire Rousay enjoy a fruitful friendship based, apparently, on listening to emo rap and making field recordings. The edges of the generously AutoTuned, almost-pop songs on their new collaboration, An Afternoon Whine, are filled with errant chatter, flushing toilets, dogs barking and other sounds of everyday, transient life. It’s the first album they’ve made in the same room together, and they’re clearly having a blast.

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POTLANDER PRODUCT REVIEW

Dream State Don’t sleep on Sun God Medicinals’ THC Hypnos Sleep Herbal Blunt—just don’t count on it to actually put you to sleep.

BY B R I A N N A W H E ELE R

I know several folks who dabble in cannabis exclusively to help them fall asleep. I have never been one of those people.

Sleep-specific products that feature alternative cannabinoids like CBD and CBN have served my infrequent insomnia so well that the concept of a fat blunt with 283 mg of THC before bed—even if coated in sleep-supporting herbs—definitely feels superfluous. Though I often smoke before bed, I don’t necessarily smoke myself to sleep, and certainly not with a 2 gram blunt. So it was with a healthy skepticism that I lit Sun God Medicinals’ THC Hypnos Sleep Herbal Blunt at 10:30 pm and tucked myself into the corner of the couch to watch an hourlong episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars.

I planned my night with Sun God Medicinals’ mega-spliff to be flexible. If the blunt’s high was too intense, I was ready to ride its wave. If it put me to sleep, I could comfortably conk out where I sat. Being prepared for two distinct outcomes put me in a good position to experience them both—which I did, though not in the way I’d anticipated.

SETTING THE SCENE Sun God Medicinals is foremost a naturopathic producer of wildcrafted herbs. It’s been manufacturing herbal teas from its Southern Oregon farm since 2012 and, in 2016, began incorporating therapeutic hemp in its formulations.

Sun God has maintained its bohemian energy since crossing over to cannabis, using locally grown, organic flower to infuse its already established herb blends with cultivar-specific effects.

Sun God’s infused blunts are the newest addition to its product line, each using premium cannabis, CO2 oil, kief and a potpourri of cooperative botanicals. Available in either Hypnos sleep-supporting or Heka “mind-opening” varieties, the resulting spliffs look like surreal, alien bouquets of rock candy. With 2 grams of rolled material, the blunts are substantial in size, stuffed in a perfunctory hemp cone with an inch and a half of flower petals, crushed shoots and muddled herbs encrusting the head.

The perfume is a muddled mélange that, in my nose, bent slightly savory, kind of like a window box of kitchen herbs. The Hypnos blend features mullein, skullcap, catnip, lavender, lemon balm and hops atop a Northern Lights cultivar dusted with Golden Papaya kief and dipped in Apple Jager live resin. None of these botanicals smelled particularly sweet, and even though each has its own particularly savory, floral perfume, they came together in a way that was neither offensive nor mild. Aromatically, they reminded me of herbes de Provence, a portent of the flavor profile that would follow.

THE BEDTIME BLUNT EXPERIENCE Lighting this blunt is an event. As soon as the flame from my Bic touched the herb-encrusted tip, the crunchy coating sparked up like a peewee firecracker. I handed it to my partner and tied my highly flammable head of cotton-candy frizz into a topknot to avoid any coiffure casualties. The sparky introduction was relatively short lived: A few puffs past the initial whiz bang, the botanicals had burned through the poppingest of their flammable

parts. But, dang, those first few inhales were a confusion of disparate flavors and sparky flowers. There was a whisper of charcoal under the herb blend as it burned, but before the herbs evaporated under the fire, they tasted of—and I mean this in the best possible way—a casserole.

“Does this taste like…a casserole?” I asked my partner.

They took a deep hit, swatted a spark out of their face and nodded in agreement. This was absolutely not the mouthfeel we were anticipating, but neither of us was angry about it. It was an unexpected flavor profile that, at first blush, I thought I should feel repelled by. Instead, I savored the complexity and contemplated whether these casserole-ass herbs could take me to a place that felt as good as they tasted.

The first 15 minutes of our program flew by as we passed the blunt back and forth, barely clearing the encrusted tip. The burn on this spliff was so slow that even by Act 2, we hadn’t cleared the halfway point. Coughs arrived only after hubristic full-chested hits, but smaller sips of the blunt were clean and mild.

We arrived at a point in our program where trios of drag queens were competing against each other in a replica of a panel talk show. As each performer revealed some life-altering trauma or heartwarming act of acceptance, my partner and I melted deeper and deeper into their technicolor world, our eyes wet from anecdotes of parental rejection, sexual liberation, transition-retransition and overcoming the odds to fulfill impossible goals.

The high, which reached its fever pitch as drag queen Pandora Box unpacked the aging of her “twink” figure, hit me like a blast of ice water on a hot day. I was already comfortable, but when the high bloomed, it blanketed me in a kind of refreshing relaxation that I could feel under my toenails and behind my lips.

Not only did the blunt last through the entire segment, it made us sentimental as heck. By the time the last trio of queens had performed their “pink table talk,” we had only just begun to approach the filter tip. Between the two of us, this blunt lasted through more than half an hour of revelatory television.

Fifteen or so minutes later, we snubbed the filter of the blunt into an ashtray, and suddenly I felt locked in an infinite yawn. Since it was my legitimate bedtime, it was tough to pin down the difference between my own circadian sensitivity and the effects of the casserole blunt. I focused on the last 15 minutes of the program and then, still reeling from the sympathetic head high, called it a night.

I lay in bed for at least another hour before I finally fell asleep. I was just too high to suspend my consciousness.

The body buzz was slow to taper off, and while surely that sensation is enough to massage some to sleep, it made me want to dance. My mind ran in one direction and my body pined to go in another, neither of which was a feeling conducive to sleep.

But like I said, I’ve never been a weed-for-sleep type of cannabis user, so to some extent I expected these effects.

Your results will almost certainly vary, especially if weed and/or bedtime herb blends already make you sleepy.

THE BOTTOM LINE Approximately two hours after I first fired up the Hypnos Sleep Herbal Blunt, I finally fell asleep. My partner also knocked around the house well past bedtime, too euphoric to be restful. In this way, we might have felt let down by the intended use of the spliff, but the reality was that this was a pretty awesome high that neither of us wanted to (or could) waste on sleep.

It’s worth mentioning that I woke the next morning feeling refreshed and well rested, which is assuredly just as critical to the efficacy of this blunt as falling asleep in the first place. So in that regard, Sun God Medicinals delivered. And I would enthusiastically use this product again, though probably not with the intent to pass out with any immediacy. In fact, I might take it to a dance party.

But, as with all things cannabis, your results may vary.

Get it from: Virtue Supply Co., 510 NW 11th Ave., 971-940-6624, virtuesupplycompany.com.

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Sale does not apply to already discounted items. Prices do not include tax.

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Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug.

For use only by adults twenty-one years or older

Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

GET YO UR REPS I N VIDEO STILL

screener

MOVIES

Hairspray (1988) John Waters (aka the King of Filth) ventures into family-friendly territory with his 1960s-set comedy about a “pleasantly plump” teenager who gets on a local TV dance show and also finds the time to successfully protest against racial segregation. Not to be confused with the 2007 Hairspray movie musical. OMSI Bridge Lot, July 22.

Cinema Paradiso (1988) In this exalting ode to movie theaters, a young boy in Sicily develops a lifelong passion for cinema after being taken under the wing of a local projectionist. As he ages, however, he realizes that life doesn’t always mirror the magic of the movies—but sometimes, if we’re lucky, it can. The perfect way to celebrate the return of that sacred tradition of going to the theater. Hollywood, July 24-25.

Donnie Darko (2001) EVERETT COLLECTION

HEAVY HEART: Stark imagery and visceral acting by podcaster Jude Brewer elevate Your Heart Is Mine.

One Long Scream From music video to morbid experimental film, Your Heart Is Mine may be unusual, but it’s winning awards and garnering attention.

BY C H A N C E S O L E M - P FEI FER

@chance_s_p

SEE IT: Your Heart Is Mine streams at filmfreeway.com/ YourHeartIsMine. Free.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as the titular Donnie Darko, one of the most iconic emo teens in film history. Depressed and troubled (all around him are familiar faces, worn-out places, worn-out faces), Donnie has visions of a man in a grotesque bunny suit called Frank who tells him the world will end in 28 days. Drew Barrymore, Jena Malone and Patrick Swayze co-star. Clinton, July 26.

Claudine (1974) In this 1970s Harlem-set romantic dramedy, a garbage collector named Roop (James Earl Jones) falls for Claudine (Diahann Carroll), a mother of six scraping by on welfare.

Though Roop is at first intimidated by her chaotic home life, and systemic economic inequality threatens the pair’s stability, their love manages to overcome all obstacles. Hollywood, July 26.

Dark Star (1974) LETTERBOXD

Merging ASMR-ready sound design, confessional poetry, ghostly cinematography, a showstopping monologue, and enough spilled water to devour an entire security deposit, the Portland-made short film Your Heart Is Mine is an expression of tension burrowed so deeply, no amount of moviemaking can relieve it.

Exhibited last year to positive receptions at the Oregon Scream Week Horror and the Sherman Oaks film festivals, Your Heart Is Mine was conceived piecemeal and birthed uncomfortably by Vancouver, Wash., filmmaker Jake Whiston, perhaps best known as half of the Portland folknoir duo Whiston & Warmack.

“I think giving you a coherent answer would be dishonest,” Whiston says of the film’s evolution from music video idea to macabre experimental drama.

The director compares the finished product to shaking off a nightmare, which suits the 20-minute short’s oppressive gloom. It begins in a black-and-white bathroom with images of a frighteningly distant, long-locked woman (nearly recalling The Grudge). Within this traumatic childhood memory, we absorb the whispered mantra (“your heart is mine”) of a deceased mother and volatile artist played by Portland’s Zoe Stuckless. That voice still echoes within her adult son Charles (Jude Brewer) as color flows back into the present tense and local thespian Tim Jaeger unloads a sinister, almost Tywin Lannister-esque dressing down on his silent son about movers who ruined their apartment by setting off the sprinkler system.

From there, Your Heart Is Mine grows only more eerie, driven by Whiston’s obsession with rhythm and the titular song by Jared Hinton, aka People, that announces the film’s climax. There’s a fixation with floor-bound water droplets, then a father-son tussle so intimate it literally bumps into the camera, then a prolonged encounter with a sex worker having very little to do with sex.

“When these strings hit, something awful has to happen,” says Whiston of his instinctual writing process.

He confirms it’s difficult to summarize how these narrative and stylistic pieces fully unify. The editing, Whiston says, amounted to a brawl between artistic ambition and the subconscious.

“[The film] is almost kind of stupidly metaphorical for how I felt during making it,” he adds, “wrestling with all these forces I didn’t have control over.”

Ultimately, Your Heart Is Mine is elevated by stark imagery and visceral acting, including the film debut of Portland podcaster and author Jude Brewer. The host of the literary podcast Storybound (with a new season featuring Chuck Klosterman and Matt Haig) embodies hapless protagonist Charles—stunted into overmatched silence by the emotional assaults of his ever-present, spectral mother and wickedly eloquent father.

Brewer spends most of the movie in claustrophobic close-up: clenching, swallowing, thinning his voice into a quaver through which he’ll try to ask the father about the mother’s untimely death.

“It felt like a very unconventional protagonist for a film,” Brewer says. “I’m literally not in control of any of it.

I’m just forced to experience it.”

While the film’s genre remains an unsolvable question, both director and star particularly appreciate the accolades from last year’s Oregon Scream Week Horror Film Festival, at which Brewer was named Best Actor.

“It’s definitely horror of a kind,” says Brewer, comparing his performance to one long unutterable scream. “I was just trying to torture myself for, like, four days basically. I think a much more experienced actor would not do that, probably.”

After several more submissions, Brewer and Whiston hope additional 2021 festival appearances lie ahead for Your Heart Is Mine, but for now, audiences can view it online, with headphones recommended to fully immerse in its spine-tingling sound design and the score Whiston devised partially by smacking butter knives against wine bottles.

The self-deprecating director calls his own film flawed, but it’s an equally fascinating and devastating pit in which to spend 20 minutes, steeped in intense craft, untrained Method acting and sensory precision. Good thing too, because there’s no escape.

Horror master John Carpenter’s debut feature is a sci-fi comedy about the Dark Star, a dilapidated starship tasked with the mission of destroying unstable planets. Bored after 20 years of the same routine and frustrated by their faulty equipment, the isolated crew soon finds themselves in a series of misadventures. Clinton, July 23.

ALSO PLAYING: Clinton: Flower Storms: Iranian Animation, July 21. Astro Boy (2009), July 22. The Iron Giant (1999), July 24.

Hollywood: The Producers (1967), July 23. The Wizard of Oz (1939), July 24-25. Smokey and the Bandit (1977), July 27.

OMSI Bridge Lot: Flashdance (1983), July 23.

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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MOVIES MISS CONCEPTION FILMS

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

Cousins If you’re scouring Netflix for a breezy summer flick, the New Zealand saga Cousins is not your best bet. It’s an ambitious, often heartbreaking film that follows the lives of three Maori women, cousins Mata, Missy and Makareta. The sprawling family epic opens on an adult Mata wandering barefoot through the streets of Wellington, disheveled and muttering a nursery rhyme under her breath. As her story unfolds, we begin to understand how she wound up there: Mata became estranged from her Maori culture after being illegally adopted by a white Christian orphanage. She never learned to speak te reo, the Eastern Polynesian language of the Indigenous population, and has the Bible shoved down her throat. Soon, Mata begins to distrust her own culture. The film is a homecoming story but also one of loss and alienation. We follow the cousins in a kind of narrative mosaic that chronicles the characters’ lives as their paths weave together and diverge.

At times, the dialogue veers from expository to didactic. Luckily for the viewer, it’s also gorgeously shot and impeccably acted, with standout performances by Tanea Heke as older Mata and Keyahne Patrick Williams as a young Missy. NR. GRACE CULHANE. Netflix.

Black Widow

OUR KEY

: T H I S M O V I E I S E X C 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, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Division, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, Lloyd Center, Peacock, Pioneer Place, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard.

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The New Bauhaus You probably don’t know the name László Moholy-Nagy. You wouldn’t be familiar with his paintings, and the Hungarian-born 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 Moholy-Nagy 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.

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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, 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, Wunderland Beaverton.

Space Jam: A New Legacy Early in Space Jam: A New Legacy, two marvelously smarmy Warner Bros. executives (Sarah Silverman and Steven Yeun) pitch a galaxy of LeBron James crossover projects, including LeBron v Batman and LeBron of Thrones.

LeBron (who plays himself) calls

the concept one of the top five worst ideas he’s ever heard, but the idea is essentially the plot of A New Legacy, a shameless commercial for Warner Bros. properties that barely keeps up the pretense of being a movie. If the film was merely the story of LeBron and his son Dom (Cedric Joe) being sucked into the so-called Warner Bros. ServerVerse to play basketball with the Looney Tunes, it might have gotten by on goofy charm, but director Malcolm D. Lee (Girls Trip) inserts LeBron into The Matrix, Mad Max: Fury Road and even Casablanca. By the time LeBron is playing basketball in front of Catwoman, Pennywise and the Night King, it’s clear that the film is nothing more than a product engineered to sell other products.

Like too many mainstream movies, it adheres to the golden rule of the Ready Player One school of filmmaking—bludgeon your audience with references until they beg for mercy. PG. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Classic Mill Plain, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Division, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, Studio One, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza, Wunderland Milwaukie.

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.

JONESIN’

by Matt Jones

"Free Up Space"--another themeless, for these times.

Week of July 29

©2021 Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

What does it mean to *feel real*? Some people have a hard time doing that. They have such false ideas about who they are that they rarely feel real. Others are so distracted by trivial longings that they never have the luxury of settling into the exquisite at-homeness of feeling real. For those fortunate enough to regularly experience this treasured blessing, feeling real isn't a vague concept. It's a vivid sensation of being conscious in one's body. When we feel real, we respond spontaneously, enjoy playing, and exult in the privilege of being alive. After studying your astrological potentials, Aries, I suspect that you now have an enhanced capacity to feel real.

Now is a fantastic time to seek out effervescent socializing and convivial gatherings and festive celebrations. If you surround yourself with lively people, you'll absorb the exact influences you need.

May I suggest you host a fun event? If you do, you could send out invitations that include the following allures: "At my get-together, the featured flavors will be strawberry chocolate and impossibly delicious.

There'll be magic vibrations and mysterious moodenhancers. Liberating conversations will be strongly encouraged. Unpredictable revelations will be honored. If possible, please unload your fears and anxieties in a random parking lot before arriving."

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

When she was a child, author Valerie Andrews visited her secret sanctuary at sunset every day for seven years. She lay on the ground among birch trees and aromatic privet plants, feeling "the steady rhythmic heartbeat of the earth" as she basked in the fading light. I'd love for you to enjoy the revitalizing power of such a shrine. The decisions you have to make will become clear as you commune with what Andrews calls "a rootlike umbilicus to the dark core of the land."

Do you know of such a place? If not, I suggest you find or create one.

GEMINI (May 21-June20)

ACROSS 1 Skids laterally 10 Indifferent individual 15 1968 album whose first single was "Think"/"You Send Me" 16 Decoy customer 17 Comic commentator on both the U.S. and Australian versions of "Holey Moley" 18 "O Pioneers!" author Cather 19 Anna Mill/Luke Jones 2018 graphic novel about robotic cities 21 Room 204, at the Roman Holiday Inn? 22 Lying beneath 23 Gp. that supports summer reading 24 _ _ _ kama (imitation crab used in California rolls) 25 One-liner, e.g.

26 Drive out on the prairie?

42 Regional butter substitute (I swear nobody calls it this on the West Coast)

20 Shaw who sang "Puppet on a String" for the U.K. at Eurovision 1967

43 "_ _ _ Poetica" (Horace work)

25 Research ctr. that comanufactured the Curiosity Rover

44 Lesson at the end 46 Imperfection 47 Leaders of the bunch?

50 Paleontologist's big find 52 Fake (like with lipsynching or air guitar)

35 Letters before nus

55 Small, but cute

36 Well-rounded positive makeovers

DOWN 1 _ _ _-CoV-2 (virus that causes COVID-19) 2 "Confederacy" of Native American peoples 3 Explained as false

6 Red Stripe is one

36 Sponge cake seen on "The Great British Bake-Off" (and named for an Italian city) 37 Streaming service that sounds like a Haitian religion 38 Microsoft hybrid product announced in 2001 41 30-miles-per-hour runners

32 Small, but cute

34 Flatterer

29 "Percy Jackson: The Battle of the Labyrinth" author Rick

33 Culatello or Black Forest, e.g.

A Tumblr blogger named Cece writes, "The fact that you can soak bread in sugar, eggs, cinnamon, and vanilla, then butter a pan and fry said bread to make a meal is really liberating." I agree. And I share this with you in the hope of encouraging you to indulge in other commonplace actions that will make you feel spacious and uninhibited. You're in a phase of your astrological cycle when you'll thrive on doing day-to-day details that excite your lust for life. Enjoying the little things to the utmost will be an excellent strategy for success.

30 Rubbing alcohol variety

54 Embarrassed acknowledgement

4 Web-based stock follower, maybe

32 "Right?"

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

29 Go off on

33 Focus of much genetic research

28 San Francisco Bay structure

31 "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" stuff

27 2021 role for Mayim

53 Flee, in a way

56 PBS series of programs for at-home education

5 Hobbits' home, with "The" 7 "Splendor in the Grass" Oscar winner William 8 With "The," Dallas indiepop group that often has up to 27 members 9 Tiny candy brand with the slogan "Be Both" 10 London-to-Madrid dir.

11 Get set 12 Early carrier tank on the tracks 13 "Fighting" NCAA team 14 His Final Jeopardy response was "Who are three people who've never been in my kitchen?"

©2021 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JNZ990.

I suspect that your immediate future will be a patchwork of evocative fragments. You may be both annoyed and entertained by a series of flashing attractions, or an array of pretty baubles, or a hubbub of tasks that all seem at least mildly worth doing.

Chances are good that they will ultimately knit together into a crazy-quilt unity; they will weave into a pattern that makes unexpected sense. In the spirit of the spicy variety, I offer three quotes that may not seem useful to you yet, but will soon. 1. "Isn't it possible that to desire a thing, to truly desire it, is a form of having it?" — Galway Kinnell 2. "It is not half so important to know as to feel." — Rachel Carson 3. "Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what's out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it." — Pema Chödrön

37 Supervillain who's queen of the Skrull Empire, in the Marvel Universe 38 Heath bar ingredient 39 Alternative form of a gene 40 Long jump gold medalist Bob 44 Skill demonstrated on the U.K.'s "Countdown" (that isn't seen much on U.S. game shows) 45 "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" reporter April 48 Reporter's assignment 49 Scattered, as seed 51 WWE wrestler Mysterio

last week’s answers

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) Leo poet Renée Ashley articulates a perspective I recommend you adopt. She writes, "I’m drawn to what flutters nebulously at the edges, at the corner of my eye—just outside my certain sight. I want to share in what I am routinely denied, or only suspect exists. I long for a glimpse of what is beginning to occur." With her thoughts as inspiration, I advise you to be hungry for what you don't know and haven't perceived. Expand your curiosity so that it becomes wildly insatiable in its quest to uncover budding questions and raw truths at the peripheries of your awareness.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) "There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person," declared Virgo actor Greta Garbo (1905–1990). "It is not right that you should tell them," she concluded. "You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them." I presume Greta was being melodramatic. My attitude is the opposite of hers. If you find allies who listen well and who respect your vulnerability, you should relish telling them the secrets of your heart. To do so enriches you, deepens you, and adds soulful new meanings to your primary mysteries. The coming weeks will be a favorable time to seek this wise pleasure in abundance.

Scorpio author Andrew Sean Greer writes, "As the Japanese will tell you, one can train a rose to grow through anything, to grow through a nautilus even, but it must be done with tenderness.” I think that's a vivid metaphor for one of your chief tasks in the coming weeks, Scorpio: how to carefully nurture delicate, beautiful things as you coax them to ripen in ways that will bring out their sturdiness and resilience. I believe you now have an extra capacity for wielding love to help things bloom.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Suggested experiments to try soon: 1. Remember a past moment when you were touched with the sudden realization that you and a person you'd recently met were destined to fall in love. 2. Remember a past moment when you kissed someone for the first time.

3. Remember a past moment when someone told you they loved you for the first time or when you told someone you loved them for the first time. 4. Allow the feelings from the first three experiments to permeate your life for five days. See through the eyes of the person you were during those previous breakthroughs.

Treat the whole world as expansively and expectantly as you did during those times.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) Capricorn poet Kenneth Rexroth was shirtless as he strolled along a rural road. To his delightful amazement, a fritillary butterfly landed on his shoulder, fluttered away, landed again, fluttered away—performed this dance numerous times. Nothing like this had ever happened to him. Later he wrote, "I feel my flesh / Has suddenly become sweet / With a metamorphosis / Kept secret even from myself." In the coming days, I'm expecting at least one comparable experience for you.

Here's your homework: What sweet metamorphoses may be underway within you—perhaps not yet having reached your conscious awareness?

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) "Each time we don’t say what we want to say, we’re dying." Aquarian artist and singer Yoko Ono said that.

I will add a further nuance: Each time we're not aware of the feeling or experience or situation we want, we’re dying. And these will be key themes now that you've entered the "I KNOW WHAT I WANT AND I KNOW HOW TO ASK FOR IT" phase of your cycle. The most healing and vivifying thing you can do during the next six weeks is to be precise about your desires.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) In 1829, Piscean author Victor Hugo began work on his novel, *The Hunchback of Notre Dame*. He had other projects, though, and by September 1830, he had made scant progress on *Hunchback*. Growing impatient, his publisher demanded that he finish the manuscript

by February 1831. In response, Hugo virtually barricaded himself in his room to compel himself to meet the deadline. He even locked his clothes in a closet to prevent himself from going out. For the next five months, he wore only a gray shawl as he toiled nonstop. His stratagem worked! I recommend you consider trying a somewhat less rigorous trick to enforce your self-discipline in the coming weeks.

There's no need to barricade yourself in your fortress.

But I hope you will have fun taking stringent measures.

HOMEWORK: Send descriptions of your wildly hopeful dreams for the future. newsletter@freewillastrology.com Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes

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

1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700 Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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SPOTLIGHT ARTIST SHANNON AXELSON Shannon Axelson is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Portland. Her current practice focuses primarily on painting and illustration. The work uses bright colors and bold forms to communicate stories focused around people and the every day.

Current events and social issues also play an important role thematically.

And for upcoming local projects I will have a piece and prints of that piece in the Blanchet House “On the Ledge” fundraiser show https://www.bhontheledge.com/ Website - www.axelsonart.com

Instagram - @axelsonart

COMiCS!

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Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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Any art style is welcome!

Let’s share your art!

Contact us at art@wweek.com.

COMiCS! JACK KENT’S

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

IG @sketchypeoplepdx kentcomics.com

Join me! This Saturday at the St. Johns Art Walk and Sunday at Slabtown Makers Mkt.

Willamette Week JULY 21, 2021 wweek.com

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