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

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?

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.

COURTESY OF CABEL SASSER

BEST TREEHOUSE

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.

“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.

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.

STUDIO ZAHN

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.

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

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.

BEST CHOIR

You may have never hung out at the Multnomah Athletic Club. But anyone can enjoy the MAC Balladeers, 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