6 minute read
If Arya Stark were a wine, she’d be a riesling
PORTLAND DRONE
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BEST EYE IN THE SKY
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.
SUZZETTE SMITH
BEST TRANS-VISIBILITY TAG
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.
BEST WIZARD OF 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 MEALS ON WHEELS
At age 56, Lorenzo Daliana decided to go rogue.
Like a lot of people in the service industry, Daliana, a chef and restaurateur with 30 years of experience working in Portland, lost his job due to the pandemic. He needed work but didn’t want to go back to a full-service kitchen. Instead, he wanted to provide a service.
So last August, Daliana, who grew up 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.
