20 minute read
gardens
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.
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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
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.
BEST RAIN GARDEN
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.
“It’s definitely a showcase rain garden,” says Diane Dulken, 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.
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.
“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.
© CITY OF PORTLAND, COURTESY BUREAU OF ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES COURTESY OF RAINBOW CITY
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.
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.
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 argu ment over proper technique led the “extremely proficient” two-fingered 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
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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. 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-goes 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 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.
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
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KATYA
BEST ART THAT ISN’T FOR YOU
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 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.
MICHAEL DURHAM/OREGON ZOO.
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.
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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.
BEST GARBAGEMAN
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.
JAKE SILBERMAN (RIGHT) 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. 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 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.
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.
BEST SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
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
