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VOL. 47, ISSUE 46 People for Portland plans to launch lawsuits and ballot initiatives. 7
A plaque reading “Hi-diddly-ho, neighborinos!” was installed at Ned Flanders Crossing. 18
A Portland woman got her stolen Ford Escape back, plus a head of broccoli. 9
David Sedaris leaves charming notes in the books he signs. 20
Peter Courtney gave all his COVID relief money to the YMCA . 10 Linnton Feed & Seed sold out of horse deworming paste. 12
A colleague says Bret Weinstein didn’t read The Scarlet Letter. 16 People still wear that Princess Leia metal bikini. 17 Portland’s only cat cafe reopened and immediately adopted out all its cats. 18
Rapper Kevin Gates’ psychology degree shows up in his rhymes. 20 Steve Grigg wants to put the original tater tot mold in the National Museum of American History. 23
Capax Infiniti, the towering
mural on the side of downtown Portland’s Carlyle Building, has inspired a new short film. 28
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
The truth about ivermectin, straight from the horse’s mouth, design by Brian Breneman.
Nabisco’s owner sent a cease-and-desist letter to the bakers’ union.
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DIALOGUE
A Nabisco strike that began when union bakers walked out of the Oreo and Ritz factory along Northeast Columbia Boulevard on Aug. 10 has escalated sharply over the past week. For much of August, strikers stood along railroad tracks to block trains carrying flour and sugar to the bakery. Last week, Mondelez International, which owns the Nabisco factory, sent a cease-and-desist letter to the bakers’ union threatening legal action over the blockade, while its hired security guards muscled strikers away from company property. Mondelez also called the police on union members—and the cops’ quick response is what drew the most commentary from our readers. Here’s what they had to say. Eddie McMuffin, via Facebook: “Wow, PPD showed up? And in 12 minutes? Shit, took two hours to respond to someone yelling and threatening us at home in the middle of the night. Should defund them and Oreos can pay their salary and pension.” Captain Hamburger, via wweek.com: “Homeless car thieves can openly strip stolen cars and I’ve seen police drive right on by. The massive camp off Marine Drive and Northeast 33rd is a prime example. I drove down 33rd a few weeks ago and a homeless guy was cutting a stolen car into chunks with a Sawzall. A Portland police car drove by with the officer looking right at the dude and he just kept on driving.” Duke Shepard, via Facebook: “All that city/police refuse to attend to—radical vs. nut job street fight in Parkrose, crime in neighborhoods—but they’re on top of protesting union workers inside 12 minutes. JFC, I’m so sick of this place. Priorities?!” Don Iler, via Twitter: “Yet further proof that cop unions aren’t real unions and cops aren’t the allies of labor.”
Dr. Know
Patty Langasek, via Facebook: “At some point, isn’t it in Mondelez’s best interests to not reduce health insurance, not force overtime, and actually PAY overtime wages? I mean, they have been making bank through the pandemic while their workers are put at risk. Why are they being so awful to those same workers?” Steverino, via wweek.com: “If you choose to work at a job that society thinks isn’t worth that much, what would you expect? If these workers at Mondelez get out of public school with a bare minimum of tools and don’t want to improve themselves by acquiring marketable skills, guess what happens? Go ahead, tax/legislate corporations out of the existence and enjoy life in Venezuela North.” Just Doing the Math, via wweek.com: “I actually feel sorry for the strikers. They are going to lose this battle. People are way too addicted to the junk, fakey and obesity-generating food produced in this country. What harm is the potential move of manufacturing jobs to Mexico so that people can continue stuffing their faces with this crap?
ON HAW THORNE & 40TH
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Yohocoma, via wweek.com: “The neo-Pinkerton tools are likely getting paid not much more than the strikers, and of course they’re working against their own interests for short-term gain. The corporate oligarchy isn’t doing any of them any favors. Such is the pathos of our society.” Jon Cohen, via Facebook: “It’s tradition: Workers strike for better conditions, and the Big Bosses get violent.” Mt. Hood, via wweek.com: “When asked to comment, Mayor Wheeler said he hoped ‘that the two sides would choose love.’ Later, caught on a hot mic, the mayor was overheard saying, ‘I guess we’re bringing Newman-O’s to the next City Council meeting...? I love those things.’” Phil Cook, via wweek.com: “We used to live by the Nabisco plant in North Portland. The smell was amazing. Our mechanic worked there and he said that there is absolutely nothing better than a warm Oreo.” LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author's street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: mzusman@ wweek.com.
BY MART Y SMITH @martysmithxxx
Is there anything to be done about the daily cacophony of leaf blowers? Their chain saw-like roaring mars Portland’s picturesque neighborhoods. Also, why do the operators insist on constantly revving their engines like motocross riders? —Chanon B.
KRATOM
Mondelez is keenly aware of this sad fact and has the upper hand.”
I’m of two minds about how to respond to your letter, Chanon. Normally, I’d just call you a pampered bourgeois and tell you to suck it up. However, at the moment I’m nursing a hangover that just forced me to put two pillows over my head to escape the deafening roar from a bowl of Rice Krispies, so I’m more inclined than usual to sympathize with noise complaints. Even so, you have to admit there are worse things than someone using a leaf blower in your neighborhood (someone using a leaf blower in my neighborhood, for example). If that chain saw-like roaring you decry were coming from an actual twostroke chain saw, you’d be contending with a sound pressure level of 110 decibels—louder than most rock bands and capable of causing permanent hearing loss after just two minutes of unprotected exposure. Leaf blowers, by contrast, are currently required by city ordinance to be no louder than 65 dB. That
makes running a leaf blower about as loud as the hum of conversation in a typical (pre-COVID) restaurant—and between 7 pm and 7 am, it’s forbidden to operate them at all. This apologia doesn’t explain why landscaper types are so fond of revving their engines, however. You could be forgiven for thinking they do it to be as loud as possible out of sheer spite. In fact, however, that sound means the operator is using the blower precisely as intended. Revving the engine provides the power necessary for actually shifting the leaves. When the machine is idle—between sweeps, say, or when the operator is moving to another section of lawn—little power is needed, so the motor can run slower. They’re not deliberately revving the engine to make more noise, they’re actually letting it spin down (whenever possible) to make less! How thoughtful! I bet you feel bad now for all the uncharitable thoughts you harbored toward these heroic leaf blower operators. Don’t get too charitable, though—starting Nov. 1, the legal maximum volume for leaf blowers increases (as it does every winter) to 70 dB. My advice: Stay drunk till March. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
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PORTLAND SCHOOLS FACE BUS DRIVER SHORTAGE: Portland Public Schools, which reopened Sept. 1, now faces an acute shortage of bus drivers—it’s down 86 drivers out of a total of about 330. The shortage stems from a difficult financial choice the district says it was forced to make when the pandemic hit in 2020. Schools were closed, the economy looked perilous, and Gov. Kate Brown forbade districts from laying off employees. So, in spring 2020, the district laid off 186 contract bus drivers represented by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757. Those drivers moved on as the demand for commercial drivers skyrocketed with the expansion of home delivery services and other economic shifts. PPS says about half the school districts in the country now face driver shortages they termed “severe” or “desperate” in a national survey. Meanwhile, PPS says the driver shortage poses major bus scheduling problems. “We have had, and will continue to have, some routes that have had to be canceled and others that have seen pickup or drop-off times altered,” the district says. The good news: 50 new drivers have begun training.
VACANCY RATE SHRINKS AGAIN: CoStar Market Analytics, a commercial real estate advisory service, released a memo Sept. 9 to its Portland clients detailing the stock of apartment buildings in the city and the pace of new construction. The findings were grim: Vacancies are rapidly declining, rent continues to rise, and development of new multifamily units is slowing. That slowdown, CoStar said, is partially due to skilled labor shortages and more expensive raw materials throughout the pandemic. But the company also blamed an inclusionary zoning policy adopted by the Portland City Council in 2017 that requires buildings over 20 units to reserve 20% of them for affordable housing. CoStar reported Portland had the fifth-fastest declining vacancy rate among the top 50 metro areas in the country, dropping to 4.7% in the third quarter of 2021—down from 6.9% in mid-2020. As Portland struggles with mounting homelessness, CoStar warns the worst is yet to come: “The market is currently in dire need of additional units to satisfy this ferocious leasing appetite and surging rent growth, but current statistics indicate construction activity is slowing and has been for some time.”
TEAMSTER SUES NABISCO SECURITY COMPANY: A Portland Teamster filed a federal lawsuit Sept. 14 alleging assault and battery by a guard working for Huffmaster Crisis Response, a Michigan-based strike staffing company hired to police the strike at the Nabisco bakery in Northeast Portland. Jesse Dreyer, a member of International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 162, says a Huffmaster agent beat him while he was picketing with members of the local bakers’ union outside the Nabisco bakery on Monday morning. Video of the incident shows Dreyer being squashed up against a white van by a guard. The lawsuit alleges the officer was “forcefully pinning plaintiff against a van and physically striking plaintiff for several minutes.” Dreyer is seeking monetary damages in a jury trial. The lawsuit is the latest development in the escalating bakers’ union strike that began Aug. 10 and has garnered support from outside advocacy groups, politicians and even the Portland Thorns. Mondelez International, Nabisco’s parent company, hired Huffmaster to escort replacement workers across picket lines.
MEDIATION BETWEEN POLICE UNION AND CITY DRAGS INTO FIFTH SESSION: The Portland Police Association met with the city of Portland on Sept. 14 for their fifth mediation session to hash out a collective bargaining agreement. The first closed-door session was held over 45 days ago, on July 28, which puts the parties well past the minimum 15 calendar days required before either can declare an “impasse” and enter arbitration. In other words, if the city and the police union can’t resolve their differences, either may call in an arbitrator at any time to select the “last best offer” of only one party. As of Sept. 3, the city and union had reached tentative agreements on at least six articles of the contract, WW has learned through a public records request. The items they agree on include a new 90-day requirement for the city to investigate a PPA member’s complaint of underpayment, and changing the designation of PPA members from “special duty” to “association leave” when they are “attending union conventions or conferences” as “official delegates” of the police union.
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
M O N T O YA N A K A M U R A
PROPOSAL
CLOCKED
Hunzeker Watch
Bull’s-Eye
MARKSMAN: If approved, this will be the second Portland-area firing range in Reese’s portfolio.
Sheriff Mike Reese’s farewell gift to Multnomah County: a $3 million shooting range. BY TE SS R I SK I
tess@wweek.com
Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese’s legacy in local law enforcement can perhaps be described in two words: shooting range. Before his term ends in December 2022, Reese wants to ensure sheriff ’s deputies have a proper training center. WW has learned construction has begun in a Northeast Portland warehouse that will soon include office space, classrooms for training, and storage for evidence seized by the sheriff ’s office. The crown jewel of the project: a nearly $3 million shooting range. Currently, sheriff ’s deputies rent range time at the Portland Police Bureau’s training center, which includes an 18,000-square-foot shooting range. Reese is familiar with it. During his tenure as chief of the Portland Police Bureau, Reese spearheaded construction in 2012 of the $15 million, 9.6-acre training center— located a 5-minute drive from the sheriff office’s future facility. “It is a strategic investment in public safety,” Reese said in a 2012 PPB video, “and a unique opportunity for us to develop a world-class training facility.” But renting time at PPB’s shooting range is less than ideal, says sheriff ’s spokesman Chris Liedle. “The current arrangement is not efficient for various reasons,” he says, “includ-
ing rental costs, nonproductive travel time, employee scheduling challenges, lack of range availability in the region (there is not enough capacity for the overall need), and the lack of flexibility for our members to conduct drop-in training.” Now, as Reese finishes his final lap and the race to succeed him begins, construction is underway for the outgoing sheriff ’s swan song, called the Portland Portal Project. Where: Near the Wilkes neighborhood and the border between Portland and Gresham. Timeline: Soon. Interior construction is already underway. “We expect the new training facility to open later this year, with the range being constructed over the next couple of years,” Liedle says. Projected cost: $2,948,590.50. That includes $150,000 for electrical services, nearly $73,000 for acoustics, and $40,000 for bulletproof glass. The sheriff ’s office says funding for the project was reallocated from the now-scrapped Hansen Building relocation project. Last November, Multnomah County commissioners voted unanimously to approve $2.25 million specifically for construction, management fees and moving costs affiliated with the building, such as
furniture, meeting rooms, a break room, and a new concealed handgun permit office. The board has not yet voted on the budget for the firing range itself. But as part of the Portal Project budget vote last fall, commissioners approved nearly $50,000 for the footings of the firing range. It is unclear when the board will vote on the total firing range budget. The county does not own the building. Instead, it will pay a base rent of just over $13,000 a month to the owner, Downtown Development LLC, for nearly 23,000 square feet—or about 10%—of the 202,867-square-foot building. The lease agreement comes with a caveat. It stipulates that the firing range and its infrastructure is the responsibility of the county—not the property owner. “Upon expiration or earlier termination of this lease,” the agreement says, “tenant shall remove all components of the firing range, repair any damage to the premises, building and project caused by such removal, and restore the premises, building and project to their original conditions, all at tenant’s expense.” Why they want it: Currently, the sheriff ’s office operates its training center in a small gym housed in a corporate building. “The Multnomah County Sheriff ’s Office has never had an adequate training facility,” Liedle says. “It is very difficult to create real-world, scenario-based training and practice using tools required for corrections and police work inside a gym with blue floor pads and wooden, framed doors made to simulate jail cells and walls.” The training center will also provide a central office location for the sheriff ’s 800 employees. Liedle says it will be “incredibly cost-efficient, saving the county millions of dollars that would have been needed to build a new public safety headquarters.”
Six months later, the mystery of a police leak is now a feature of the political landscape.
194 DAYS:
That’s how long it’s been since the Police Bureau opened an internal affairs investigation into the leak of information that wrongly implicated Commissioner Hardesty in a March 3 hitand-run. It has released no results of its inquiry.
183 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.
182 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 SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 wweek.com
7
NEWS DOCUMENT
WESLEY LAPOINTE
THOMAS TEAL
FAQ
HEATING UP: Critics want visible progress on city streets.
EMPTY QUARTER: The post office site.
Dead Letter The demise of a development deal at the downtown post office leaves big questions. Last week’s announcement by Prosper Portland that the developer Continuum Partners was pulling out of an agreement to redevelop the 14-acre U.S. Post Office site in the Pearl District left a big hole downtown. Greg Goodman, whose family owns more than 20 downtown blocks, expressed misgivings about the city partnering with Continuum, a Denver company, in 2018 when the deal was signed. Goodman told WW then he thought the city’s redevelopment agency erred in passing over a bid from a partnership between the Melvin Mark Cos. of Portland and Related Cos., a massive New York developer. “You had the equivalent of the 1927 Yankees wanting to do business in Portland,” Goodman says. “Instead, we went with the Hillsboro Hops.” Continuum’s strikeout leaves several pressing questions at the city’s center. What is the immediate impact of Continuum’s withdrawal? Prosper Portland paid $88 million for the post office site in 2016. That’s a lot of cash to have tied up in what is now basically an unused parking lot. The plan was for Continuum to buy a big chunk of the dirt as it developed new office space. But now that won’t happen, leaving Prosper still owing $35 million to the city’s general fund. Meanwhile, Prosper spokesman Shawn Uhlman says the agency is paying the city nearly $1 million a year in interest. What happens next? Uhlman says Prosper will try to replace Continuum. “We’re optimistic that we will be able to find one or more new partners,” Uhlman says. “The timeline for land sales 8
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 wweek.com
proceeds will generally remain as previously assumed.” Goodman is skeptical. “There’s millions feet of office space available downtown right now,” he says. “There’s no market for it.” Prosper just completed a request for proposals and plans to demolish the old post office starting late this year or early next. Goodman, again, is skeptical. He says construction prices, including demolition, are extraordinarily high right now. Instead, he and others, including Mark New, who have spent their careers managing and developing real estate and stand to lose if it declines in value, would like to see the city use the space as a large safe-camping spot for people who are homeless. What’s stopping the city from establishing a homeless camp there? Putting aside the likely tsunami of NIMBYism that such a decision would provoke, there are practical concerns. First, Prosper says the soil under the post office needs to be cleaned up before humans can live there. “The site was previously a railyard, including a manufactured gas plant. Prosper Portland has a consent judgment with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality which prohibits ‘residential use of any type,’ until contamination is fully addressed,” Uhlman says. Second, the city plans to build 720 units of affordable housing on a portion of the 14-acre site partly funded by the 2018 Metro housing bond. That places a ticking clock on demolishing the post office. “Metro bond resources are required to be used within a certain time frame pursuant to the Metro bond requirements and may not be available for use if the demolition and infrastructure work does not proceed in a timely manner,” Uhlman says. Finally, the U.S. Postal Service still operates a small retail outlet on the site, and its trucks must have unfettered access. New demurs. “It’s starting to sound like Wapato 2.0, where those responsible for properly running this community are looking for excuses for not implementing the correct policy,” he says. NIGEL JAQUISS.
People PowerPoint
A presentation for donors reveals some of People for Portland’s secrets.
Last week, political consultants Kevin Looper and Dan Lavey sat down with WW for an interview more notable for what it didn’t reveal about their client, an advocacy group called People for Portland, than for what it did. The consultants wouldn’t say who was paying them, or what their campaign would involve beyond pressuring city officials to more rapidly move homeless people to organized sleeping sites. A helpful reader then passed along a PowerPoint the group has been presenting to prospective donors. That filled in some of the holes in our understanding of the new campaign, whose goal, the consultants say, is “to restore safety, cleanliness and vitality to Portland.” Here’s what we gleaned from the presentation: They will spend a lot of money. In the PowerPoint is a budget of $1.5 million for seven months. Among the line items: $750,000 for “2021 issue advocacy.” To get to that level, the campaign set a goal of five donations of $100,000 and 10 of $50,000, along with many smaller donations. As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, the group doesn’t have to disclose its donors. “We realized that to get the public involved, we need to first reach them,” Looper tells WW. “At this point, we have received more interest in supporting the project than we expected.” The strategy may require litigation. The campaign has been open about its plan to drum the results of its polling—voters are very unhappy—into the heads of elected officials. It’s talked less about going to court. But the presentation lists as an “essential tactic” to “research, initiate and leverage legal action.” The line item for initial research is a modest $75,000. “There are many legal avenues being pursued around the country—
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle—to try to force elected officials to do their jobs,” Looper says. That work includes examining camping bans and high court rulings on what cities can and cannot do. Looper says the campaign hopes to avoid the courts. “The problem is, when you mix law and politics you still get politics,” he says. The end game may include ballot measures. Although People for Portland cannot legally influence elections, it can form a political action committee that could. Under the tactic labeled “political leverage,” the PowerPoint reads, “begin drafting May 2022 ballot measure(s).” Among the potential subjects for those ballot measures: “redirect Metro tax $; require police body cameras; require shelter enforcement,” all ideas polling shows are popular with voters. The first one, Looper says, translates to ensuring that the 10-year, $2.5 billion Metro supportive housing services measure passed by voters in 2020 pays for short-term shelter as well as the longer-term fixes county officials prefer. “Shelter enforcement” refers to ensuring that if such shelters get built, people use them. Looper says the goal is to rekindle the urgency that led to the Metro measure, which he helped craft. “That energy has clearly been redirected away from the immediate need and crisis into an uncertain and long-term planning process,” he says. “Meanwhile, the immediate need has only gotten worse.” Elected officials don’t like the message—but they are hearing it. People for Portland said on Monday its supporters have generated 100,000 emails. The campaign also released a fresh round of ads. Privately, officeholders are furious, but Metro spokesman Nick Christensen says his agency and the counties appreciate citizens’ intent. “We need to do more to let people in the region know how this program is working and where their investment is going,” Christensen says. “By June 30, 2022, we’ll have placed 2500 people into permanent housing, and we’ll have gone from 2,000 to 2,900 year-round shelter beds. We’ve already placed dozens of people into permanent housing—I guarantee those people feel like this measure is a success.” NIGEL JAQUISS.
NEWS SAM GEHRKE
Strip Malls Skyrocketing vehicle thefts have left roadsides littered with carved-out hulks. BY S OP H I E P E E L
speel@wweek.com
Every day, 20 cars on average get stolen somewhere in Portland. Jennifer Wilkins knows where to find many of them. Just like clockwork, Wilkins says, an unmarked tow truck shows up two to three times a week near her business in outer Northeast Portland, dropping off another mystery vehicle at a homeless camp partially shrouded by clusters of tall trees. “It’s basically one big chop shop,” says Wilkins, who runs Acme Storage on Northeast Simpson Street in the Sumner neighborhood. “You can see tow trucks bringing cars in and dropping them off. They just sit there on the street and chop them up,” adds Wilkins, who estimates she’s called police dozens of times about stolen cars in the past year. “The police don’t do anything.” Cars in various stages of dismemberment along city streets is a common sight these days. The husks are leftovers from Portland’s outbreak of auto thefts—and a signal of the indifferent response of law enforcement to brazen criminality. Hot spots around the city—sometimes associated with homeless camps— often have half a dozen cars in various stages of disrepair and dismemberment in the open air. Chop shops aren’t a new phenomenon. They’ve long operated in unlicensed sheds on the city’s fringes. Car parts, including
engines, tires and, particularly, catalytic converters, are valuable—and the numbers show that. But what’s happening now is new: People are brazenly stripping stolen cars for parts outdoors, in full view of passersby, and nobody does anything to stop it. Kevin Flanigan owns Schooner Creek Boat Works on Hayden Island in North Portland. “Last year, in the springtime, we had one RV show up, and then another one, and within a few weeks the entire street was lined with RVs, and they were pulling cars down onto the road and stripping them right in the middle of the street,” Flanigan recalls. “On the first day, there’s no tires on the car. And then the next day, there’s no hood. It’s just a chop shop in the open.” That chop shop, by the train tracks at the end of Hayden Island, was cleared just last week after over a year in operation, Flanigan says. But he’s noticed that the problem seems to have simply migrated to Delta Park and along the nearby Interstate 5 on-ramp. The Portland Police Bureau says actively tracking stolen cars is not a priority: “That wouldn’t be very productive,” says spokesman Sgt. Kevin Allen. Allen blames the lack of response on low police staffing. “Anytime we’re debating whether to pursue a life safety case versus a property crime, we’re always going to lean towards life safety,” Allen says. “We’re in a place now where there’s no fat to trim,
LAWN FURNITURE: Stolen and stripped cars in Northeast Portland.
so anytime you’re taking resources to do something, you’re taking them away from something else.” The results are predictable: For the year ending June 30, thieves stole 7,905 cars in Portland. According to figures the Portland Police Bureau released recently, that’s 62% above the annual average for the 10 years before the pandemic. Allen says most stolen cars are eventually recovered and returned to their owners: 70% are returned to owners within 30 days, and 90% are recovered overall. That’s a solid clearance rate. But the cars are rarely returned intact. Take the case of Ellen, who asked to be identified by her first name only for privacy reasons. Three weeks ago, her red and silver 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid went missing from outside her St. Johns apartment. After Ellen, 28, filed a police report, the car’s vehicle identification and license plate numbers went into a database for stolen vehicles. Officers don’t actively hunt for stolen cars, but if they see one they suspect is stolen, they’ll scan the vehicle’s VIN to see if it’s in the system. If it is, they contact the owner. Ellen got a call from police a week after she reported her vehicle stolen. They had found it in Wood Village and ordered it towed to an impound lot in Troutdale. “When I got to the tow yard, they were like, ‘Oh, it’s going to look different,”’ Ellen remembers. It did. “It had been spray-painted all black,” Ellen says. “The rims were purple. It was filled with trash and stolen goods, including three bicycles, a suitcase full of women’s purses, a shoeshine kit, and a brand-new Eastman ax.” Also in the vehicle: a Taser, a few knives, a Bluetooth speaker, and a cream pie and head of broccoli on the dashboard. The towing company told her: It’s all yours, even the stolen goods. An appraiser
gave her tougher news—her vehicle was a total loss. For several days, Ellen’s car became one of the rash of vehicles littering the sides of Portland-area roads. Not all of them are stolen: Abandoned cars, too, are a mounting eyesore during the pandemic. Some vehicles are simply abandoned by their owners or stolen without a police report ever being filed. The Portland Bureau of Transportation is then responsible for them. PBOT has strict criteria for what constitutes an abandoned vehicle: It’s been left sitting for at least 24 hours, and is either inoperable, has insufficient registration or has been junked. At the beginning of the pandemic, PBOT implemented a rule prohibiting towing vehicles in which people sleep. That policy remains in place. “If someone lives in it, we’re not going to move it unless it’s creating an immediate safety hazard, like blocking a travel lane or construction,” says PBOT spokesman Dylan Rivera. But if a vehicle is abandoned and nobody is living in it, PBOT tags the vehicle and, after 72 hours, orders it towed to an impound lot by a city-contracted tow company. (Rivera acknowledges it often takes days and sometimes weeks longer than that to get around to towing a tagged car.) “It’s fair to say that during the pandemic, abandoned autos have continued to grow as an issue,” Rivera says, largely because the Oregon Legislature passed a temporary law in 2020 prohibiting penalties for expired registration tags, including towing. “[That] meant we couldn’t use it as a criterion for abandoned autos.” That law is no longer in effect, allowing PBOT to now impound cars with tags expired for more than six months. But after towing fewer vehicles than it did earlier in the pandemic, PBOT is now ramping up its efforts. In 2020, bureau towed 1,858 abandoned vehicles. Since the beginning of 2021, it has towed 2,886. Scrap metal yards say they pay about $150 to $250 for the frame of a car. With about 145 sworn officer positions vacated since last summer, the Portland Police Bureau says it’s overwhelmed responding to shootings and other violent crimes. The Oregonian reported last week that wait times for Portlanders calling 911 now average far longer than they do nationally. Nonetheless, the bureau has had success recovering stolen cars, recently publicizing its vehicle recovery missions on social media. On Sept. 10, North Precinct officers announced the recovery of 15 stolen cars along Northeast Marine Drive and Airport Way—a graveyard for stolen vehicles. “Some were drivable and some were nearly unrecognizable,” PPB wrote on Twitter. That’s a start. But Flanigan, the boat shop owner, and others want police to go after car thieves and chop shops more aggressively. “One time, there was a guy sitting in the middle of the street stripping a car,” Flanigan recalls. “We called the police and they said they couldn’t do anything.” Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 wweek.com
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NEWS CHRIS NESSETH
LONG TALE: Premonitions of an end to reproductive freedom were a part of Portland’s protests last November.
Texas Style Democratic leaders allowed an Oregon lawmaker to earmark $4 million in public money for an anti-abortion group. BY S OPHI E P E E L
speel@wweek.com
Leading Portland Democrats are tripping over each other to condemn Texas’ new anti-abortion law—but their actions don’t completely back up their words. On Sept. 1, for instance, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block Texas’ draconian new limits on abortion, Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland) slammed the Lone Star State. “It’s appalling that the courts aren’t protecting Texans from this extreme law,” Kotek tweeted. “We’ve worked hard to ensure full access to reproductive health care in Oregon and won’t stop fighting to protect those rights.” Kotek, the longest-serving House speaker in Oregon history (she assumed the post in 2013), is running for governor next year. She hopes to succeed another former Democratic lawmaker from Portland, Gov. Kate Brown, who like Kotek is a strong abortion rights advocate. Brown also expressed her dismay at the Texas law.“Reproductive health care and 10
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access to abortion is a human right,” the governor tweeted Sept. 1. “Here in Oregon, the right to make your own reproductive choices will continue to be protected by state law.” Although Oregon is routinely ranked as one of the most abortion-friendly states in the U.S., both Democratic leaders stood by earlier this year as state Sen. Art Robinson (I-Grants Pass) proposed to direct $4 million to what experts say is a thinly veiled anti-abortion counseling service. The earmark shows, even with Democratic supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature and nearly 40 consecutive years of Democrats in the governor’s mansion, cutting deals sometimes trumps ideological purity. Kotek was “appalled” by Robinson’s proposal to “misuse this rare opportunity to fund a so-called crisis pregnancy center,” says Kotek’s spokesman Danny Moran. Nonetheless, Kotek voted for the enabling bill and, last month, Brown signed it.
In April, the federal government funneled $2.6 billion in COVID-19 bailout dollars to Oregon for economic relief. Kotek and Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem) wanted to keep Republicans on task, so they proposed a novel idea for ladling out some of the federal pork: Give each state senator $4 million and each representative $2 million to spend at their discretion. Many lawmakers plowed the money into infrastructure or economic development. Others rewarded favorite organizations. Courtney, a long-term booster of the Salem YMCA, shoveled his whole $4 million allotment there. State Rep. Khanh Pham (D-Portland) gave $1.1 million to her former employer, the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, for property acquisition. “This targeted investment in community-building and housing was part of a response to stopping API hate,” Pham says. “As the only Asian legislator in the [Legislature] it was absolutely vital that I spoke out hard against rising hate and backed it with dollars and policy changes.” But Robinson, a 79-year-old biochemist who lost to U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio for Congress five times before winning his state Senate seat in 2020, gets the award for most eye-catching use of the bailout money. (Alongside Sen. Brian Boquist of Dallas, Robinson labels himself an independent, although he’s a staunch conservative and votes with the Republican caucus.) Abortion rights advocates say the Pregnancy Care Center of Grants Pass is essentially an anti-abortion health referral service. Samantha Gladu, who works for the
National Network of Abortion Funds in Portland, says such centers prey on uninformed women. “Women deserve medically accurate information, which they don’t get at those centers, which are not qualified in any way to give medical advice,” Gladu says. “They’re politically motivated, anti-abortion advocates.” The bailout money, which flowed from the federal government to the state general fund, is supposed to be used for educational, health-based or economic stabilization programs and COVID-19 mitigation projects. It’s unclear whether Robinson’s idea will qualify. George Naughton, chief financial officer for the state’s Department of Administrative Services, says the feds will release final guidance for disbursing the funds in the coming months and state officials will screen each of the earmarks against it. “The bill has been passed,” Naughton says. “Our role is to implement what’s been passed by the Legislature.” Grants Pass faces plenty of challenges that have nothing to do with abortion. Its hospitals are so overwhelmed by COVID19 that patients in intensive care units are doubling up in rooms meant for one. And the unemployment rate in Josephine County is 20% higher than the state average. Robinson’s earmark would be a windfall for the nonprofit pregnancy center, which had revenue of about $650,000 last year. While Kotek spokesman Moran says such operations are “deceitful,” the center says it offers informed choice. “We don’t pressure our patients to make any specific decision,” the center’s website says. “We believe people are intelligent and when provided all the information they need, each can make the best decision for themselves while considering others involved and those closest to them.” Meanwhile, the center declined to say how it plans to spend the $4 million. Gov. Brown’s spokesman Charles Boyle says Robinson’s earmark is “incredibly problematic,” but he adds that the governor had little choice but to approve it. “Because she did not want to jeopardize hundreds of millions of dollars in vital economic investments in every part of the state,” Boyle says, “the governor signed the bill rather than vetoing that particular section.” An Do, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon, tells WW that Robinson “should be ashamed.” “Attaching any blame to [Kotek or Brown] for Sen. Robinson’s decision is inaccurate and a misrepresentation of the events and circumstances of last session.” Moran declined to explain why Kotek allowed the expenditure to sail through the Legislature, placing the blame on Robinson, who Moran says “abdicated his responsibility to his community.” “It is up to him to justify his choice to the families and businesses in his district who missed this opportunity for support,” he adds. Robinson did not respond to requests for comment.
DRUG & PONY S HOW
PHOTO: Caption tktktk
A progressive biologist from Portland is one of the nation’s leading advocates for ivermectin. BY ANTHO NY EFFINGER
The loudest COVID-19 vaccine skeptic in Oregon? You might think it’s pistol-packing, Trump-loving talk radio host Lars Larson. Or Baker City Mayor Kerry McQuisten, whose opposition to mask and vaccine mandates is stoking her run for governor. You’d be wrong. Instead, the loudest voice may be that of a Toyota-driving Bernie Bro who lives near
Lewis & Clark College, an evolutionary biologist with a Ph.D. who studied and taught at two of the nation’s most liberal universities and participated in Occupy Wall Street. His name is Bret Weinstein, and he makes his living preaching the dangers of COVID-19 vaccines while extolling ivermectin, the controversial drug often used to deworm horses.
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einstein, 52, is one of the foremost proponents of ivermectin. He’s appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to flog the drug. He and his wife, Heather Heying, also a Ph.D. biologist, went on Real Time With Bill Maher in January, an appearance that boosted interest in their DarkHorse Podcast, which has 382,000 subscribers on YouTube alone. Weinstein’s biggest fan is probably Joe Rogan, host of the most popular podcast in the U.S. Weinstein appeared with Rogan four times, including a June 2020 show that’s gotten almost 8 million views on YouTube. In June 2021, it turned into a lovefest. “Your podcast is one of my very favorites,” Rogan said. “I listen to it or watch it all the time. It’s an amazing source of rational thinking by educated people who talk about things they understand, which is exactly the opposite of what I do!” Now, because of people like Weinstein, a drug meant for 1,000-pound animals is flying off the shelves in feed stores not just in red states, but even in Multnomah County, where the vaccination rate is approaching 80%. Tyler Blach, a sales associate at Linnton Feed & Seed just west of the St. Johns Bridge, says the store has no more of the paste form—flavored with apple—that’s used for horses and has proven popular with vaccine-skeptical humans. “Before this, I can’t recall a time when we were out,” Blach says.
“I know that shareholder value must be driving things behind the scenes,” Weinstein told Rogan. Weinstein, 52, is no dummy. He has a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Michigan and, until recently, held a tenured professorship. Weinstein declined to be interviewed for this story, saying he would not be treated fairly. But Weinstein and Heying reveal much in their prolific writing and podcasting, where talk about minutiae goes hand in hand with postulating megatrends. Weinstein, for example, would fit in well with much of Portland. He is gluten intolerant and a keen cyclist. He has a bike helmet that plays music. Heying loves paddle-boarding on the Willamette and watching wildlife. In an April piece for the online outlet called UnHerd, Weinstein said he and Heying considered cities around the world before choosing Portland for its “proximity to nature and its world-class food culture.” But unlike most of their fellow residents in Multnomah County, both say they are not vaccinated. Instead, they protect themselves from COVID by eating whole foods from farmers markets and by taking weekly doses of ivermectin, along with vitamins C and D, and zinc. Interviews with Weinstein’s former colleagues and a review of his work—starting with an explosive op-ed in his college newspaper— draw a picture of Weinstein as a tilter at wind12
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SHOW RUNNERS: Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying are regulars on podcasts and television. Top: Taping the DarkHorse Podcast in their Portland home. Middle: On the set of The Joe Rogan Experience. Bottom: Tucker Carlson hosted Weinstein during the Evergreen State College race crisis in 2017 and in July to talk ivermectin.
mills, someone who for much of his career has challenged authority and is now trafficking in what many medical experts and scientists say are false and dangerous theories about COVID. “Bret Weinstein is one of the foremost purveyors of COVID-19 disinformation out there,” says Dr. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist and professor at Wayne State University who also debunks quack remedies as managing editor at a website called Science-Based Medicine. “Weinstein can be ‘credited’ with playing a large role in popularizing the belief that ivermectin is a miracle cure or preventative for COVID-19, that the vaccines are dangerous, and that the disease itself is not. Why are Rogan and Maher attracted to his messages? Contrarians and conspiracy theorists tend to be attracted to each other.” Gorski says ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, a malaria treatment pushed by former President Donald Trump and later proven worthless. Nancy Koppelman, a former colleague of his at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, thinks Weinstein hasn’t done the work required to make broad claims about COVID and ivermectin but is instead just raising doubts based on dubious information—and monetizing the fear and ignorance of his audience. Koppelman says he’s a modern-day P.T. Barnum. “What Barnum did was fool people into
thinking that they were making sound judgments,” Koppelman says. “Bret is pandering to a principle of skepticism, but the substance is not there.”
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einstein is correct that ivermectin is a miracle drug, just not for COVID. In 1970, a microbiologist named Satoshi Omura took a soil sample near a golf course in Japan and coaxed a previously unknown species of bacteria from it. After a decade of research, Merck & Co. marketed ivermectin as a treatment for roundworm in animals. It was approved for use in humans in 1988 and became the go-to treatment for onchocerciasis, or river blindness, a terrible disease caused by a parasitic worm commonly found in the rivers of Africa. Ivermectin became a blockbuster. Omura and a Merck scientist shared a Nobel Prize for their discovery in 2015. The idea that ivermectin might be used to prevent or cure COVID-19 appears to have started with a 2020 study in Australia, where researchers exposed the coronavirus to ivermectin in a petri dish and stopped it from multiplying. Seeing that study and others, Weinstein, who had been following COVID closely on his podcast, went all in. “I am unvaccinated, but I am on prophylactic ivermectin,” Weinstein said on his podcast in
FARM PHARMA: Linnton Feed & Seed experienced a run on ivermectin.
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June. “And the data—shocking as this will be to some people—suggest that prophylactic ivermectin is something like 100% effective at preventing people from contracting COVID when taken properly.” Weinstein likes ivermectin, he says, because it has a stellar safety record (it does) and it’s cheap (it is, at about $5 a pill). Vaccines, meantime, are the opposite. They aren’t proven to be safe yet, Weinstein says, and they’re more expensive (for the governments who purchase them). Weinstein prides himself on being an iconoclast. He calls DarkHorse “a show for curious minds and freethinkers.” On COVID and iver-
mectin, he is definitely bucking the establishment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization have endorsed use of the COVID-19 vaccines. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Aug. 23. For ivermectin, it’s the opposite. The FDA has warned people not to take the drug because there is scant evidence it works against COVID19. One promising Egyptian study was pulled amid charges of plagiarism and flawed data. Critics of the Australian study say the concentrations of ivermectin used in the petri dishes
TYLER BLACH OF LINNTON FEED & SEED
would be toxic in humans, and, indeed, people are poisoning themselves with the stuff. In humans, ivermectin cream is used to treat head lice and the skin condition rosacea. Tablets are used for intestinal worms. The human formulation requires a prescription, but formulations for horses are widely available in farm stores and on Amazon, and people are taking them. Poisonings are on the rise across the country, including in Oregon, as people ingest ivermectin in amounts intended for 1,000-pound animals. On Aug. 24, Oregon Health & Science University warned people not to use ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID. The Oregon Poison Center managed 21 ivermectin cases in August after handling just three in all of 2020, OHSU said. Nationally, ivermectin exposure cases jumped 163% to 1,143 in the first eight months of this year, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. People who take horse-sized doses of ivermectin can be in for a wild ride. One patient, for example, drank an injectable form of ivermectin for cows and ended up in the hospital for nine days, dazed and confused with hallucinations, rapid breathing, and body tremors, according to the CDC. More mundane symptoms include nausea, diarrhea, low blood pressure, and hives. The FDA tweeted an unusually blunt warning on Aug. 21: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” Weinstein appeared unmoved. His response on Twitter: “Just say neigh.”
Tyler Blach, a sales associate at Linnton Feed & Seed just west of the St. Johns Bridge, says the store has no more of the paste form—flavored with apple—that’s used for horses and has proven popular with vaccine-skeptical humans.
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einstein is 5-foot-9 and fit, with a thick head of graying hair. He often sports a cowboy hat on his podcast. On a visit to Rogan’s studio, he wore a black bandanna he “can pull up at a moment’s notice” to protect himself from COVID. Koppelman, his former colleague at Evergreen, says Weinstein loves the Northwest. Years ago, they led a trip together to Dry Falls in eastern Washington, where Weinstein wowed students with his explanation of the Missoula Floods. “He just did an amazing job,” she says. Weinstein was born and raised in Los Angeles. He became interested in biology as a kid when his grandparents took him on a hike in Griffith Park and told him about Charles Darwin. He enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. During his freshman year, he went to a fraternity party at which, he says, fraternity leaders brought out two Black prostitutes to dance. Weinstein left, but he heard about what Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 wweek.com
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happened later and discussed it with the student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian. A few days later, Weinstein penned an op-ed about the event, damning the paper for missing key details. “Conspicuously absent was a description of how certain males present covered these women’s genitals with catsup,” Weinstein wrote. “Also missing was any mention of certain men present who penetrated these strippers’ vaginas with cucumbers.” In a 2017 video, Weinstein says he got death threats for his candor. He transferred to the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he met Heying. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology in 1992. Weinstein earned a biology degree with honors a year later. The couple began graduate work in biology at the University of Michigan, where Heying earned a Ph.D. in 2001. Heying’s career brought the couple to Evergreen. She became a tenure-track professor there in 2002. The school hired Weinstein as an adjunct in 2003. In 2007, Koppelman teamed up with him to teach, a common practice at Evergreen. “We’re both from a Jewish background, so arguing is affection,” Koppelman says. “He’s very, very smart and witty and fun. He is a dazzling presence.” Koppelman says, however, Weinstein didn’t read the books she assigned for the course, a problem since he was supposed to teach all the books—his and hers—to students. She says he didn’t read The Scarlet Letter, for example, which she had assigned. “He tried to fake it, that he had read them,” Koppelman says. “I had to cover for him. And I was morally conflicted about it.”
The FDA tweeted an unusually blunt warning on Aug. 21: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” Weinstein became a tenured professor at Evergreen in 2015. Students adored him and Heying. Weinstein scored a rating of 4.7 out of 5 on ratemyprofessors.com, and Heying got a 4.9. “Bret is easily the greatest professor that I have had,” one student wrote. Some faculty disagreed. Zoltán Grossman, a professor of geography and Native American studies, recalls listening to Weinstein’s “self-centered monologues in faculty meetings” and reading his “constant manifestos” on faculty listservs. The events that would change Weinstein’s life began in 2016, when Evergreen issued a new equity action plan. Weinstein emailed faculty and administrators that he didn’t think it would benefit Evergreen’s students of color, according to The Olympian newspaper. He sent another email on March 15, 2017, protesting plans for Evergreen’s annual Day of Absence protest. In years past, people of color would stay away from Evergreen for a day to show what the campus would lack without them. In 2017, Evergreen flipped the script and proposed that white people leave. Weinstein said whites were coerced. “It drove Bret insane,” Koppelman says. “He called it a day of racial segregation.” 16
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His email on the subject went viral and all hell broke loose. On May 23, students mobbed his classroom and demanded he resign for being a racist. A day later, students barricaded the doors to the library. Two days after that, Weinstein went on Fox News, talking to Tucker Carlson for a piece called “Campus Craziness.” A man called Evergreen and threatened to “execute as many people on that campus as I can get a hold of,” according to The Olympian. The campus closed for three days, and Evergreen moved commencement to Tacoma for greater security. Weinstein and Heying filed a $3.85 million tort claim against Evergreen on July 5, saying the college had failed to “protect its employees.” They resigned that September, collecting settlements of $250,000 each.
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einstein and Heying moved to Portland to reinvent themselves. Weinstein started their podcast on July 2, 2019. His first guest was Andy Ngo, the right-wing author and social media personality. Since then, Weinstein and Heying have swamped the internet with content. They’ve produced dozens of podcasts, loosely based on evolution, and written acres of copy for various internet publications, including UnHerd, where, in May, Weinstein weighed in on the death of George Floyd, saying that his killer, Derek Chauvin, was “prejudged” in a “mob-influenced court” and may not have been guilty of murder because Floyd had heart disease and drugs in his system at the time of his death. Weinstein and Heying say they’re focused on COVID to save lives. Data proving ivermectin’s safety and efficacy is so convincing, they claim, that it’s unethical for regulators to block its use. Weinstein’s says there is a vast conspiracy, led by drug companies, to discredit ivermectin as a COVID therapy so they can sell more profitable vaccines. “I know that shareholder value must be driving things behind the scenes,” Weinstein told Rogan. Railing against drugmaker profits appears to be a moneymaker for Weinstein and Heying. They live in a 3,500-square-foot home in Southwest Portland that they bought for $812,000 in 2018. They send at least one of their kids to Oregon Episcopal School, which costs $38,500 a year (and requires students to be vaccinated, by the way). Cast out from academia, they pay for that lifestyle with the internet. Their DarkHorse Podcast appears on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. They sell DarkHorse sweatshirts, T-shirts, coffee mugs, phone cases, and stickers at the DarkHorse online store. The premium pullover hoodie sells for $48.99. They take turns reading ads before each podcast. Recently, they have been promoting a topical pain-relief product called CryoFreeze, a “power-packed CBD cryotherapy roll-on that delivers an arctic blast of topical cooling relief for sore muscles, back aches, and stiff joints” and costs $34.95 for 3 ounces, according to Omax Health, the company that makes it. Another sponsor: ExpressVPN, a company based in the British Virgin Islands that allows users to bypass geographic limits put in place by Netflix and other streaming services by cloaking a viewer’s location. “I personally have watched BBC documentaries that are not accessible outside the U.K. by
switching my location so that it appears that I am in the U.K.,” Weinstein said in an ad that ran during his Sept. 3 podcast. “And you can do this without even faking the accent!” Weinstein and Heying each have accounts on Patreon, where they offer a menu of content options. For $2 a month, Weinstein will send an occasional newsletter. For $100 a month, subscribers get to join him in a Google Hangout on the first Saturday of every month called “Strategizing for the Coalition of the Reasonable.” As of Sept. 13, Weinstein had 3,948 patrons. Even at the $2 subscription level, that adds up to almost $8,000 a month. Subscriptions for Heying’s 1,818 patrons start at $5 a month, bringing in at least $9,000 at least. So, after platform and transaction fees, the couple probably earns a minimum of $170,000 a year on Patreon. “It’s really easy to make money with credentials like M.D. and Ph.D. after your name if you’re just willing to sacrifice all of your principles and say things that people want to hear, for money,” says Dr. Keith Roach, associate professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. But Patreon hasn’t been Weinstein and Heying’s largest source of income. Video commercials on their YouTube channels used to be, until YouTube “demonetized” their two YouTube channels, pulling paid video ads that ran before their shows because the pair disseminated information about COVID-19 that YouTube deemed inaccurate. “The majority of my family’s income is in jeopardy because YouTube has decided that some things that are very strongly supported by evidence are misinformation,” Weinstein told Rogan.
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einstein’s hard right turn into vaccine skepticism has alienated former allies. Neuroscientist and podcaster Sam Harris, who helped propel Weinstein to rightwing fame after the Evergreen crisis, devoted a whole show in July to vaccine disinformation, during which Harris and Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., puzzled over Weinstein’s schtick. “I’ve heard enough to be very uncomfortable with what he’s put out there,” Harris said. “I do consider it dangerous.” Topol went further. One of Weinstein’s claims, made on Twitter on June 25, is that headaches sometimes caused by COVID vaccines are evidence that the spike protein coded by the mRNA vaccines “not only crosses the bloodbrain barrier, but tatters it, opening the central nervous system to toxins and pathogens.” Topol rejected the claim, saying: “For anyone to posit that people who get a headache are having mRNA go into their brain is totally irresponsible. It’s reckless. It’s sick. It’s predatory. It’s really sad.” Despite such critiques—or maybe because of them—Weinstein persists, churning out video and copy from his house in Southwest Portland. Given his distaste for left-wing wokism at Evergreen, Portland seems an odd choice for Weinstein. In an April piece for UnHerd, he described Portland as a dystopia where riots “occur like clockwork” and “no neighborhood is secure from the current wave of terror.” Plenty of people are saying similar things about Portland these days, but few sound as alarmist as Weinstein. But being alarmist might be what Bret Weinstein does best.
STREET
ROSE CITY COMIC CON Photos by Chris Nesseth On Instagram: @chrisnesseth
After being canceled in 2020, Rose City Comic Con returned to the Oregon Convention Center with slightly smaller crowds, but plenty of Princess Leia metal bikini. Proud cosplayers paraded the looks they’d crafted during the pandemic—or a series of all-nighters the weekend before.
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STARTERS
•••• • • • ••
BFF podcast gone wild
SEPT 15
THIS MIGHT GET WEIRD
SEPT 16
NPR radio show
SEPT 17
the high priestess of cabaret
RIZO SEPT 18
I PUT A SPELL ON YOU
IN THE FLESH Hawaiian supergroup
Nina Simone tribute
DUFFY BISHOP
blues rock guitarist
TOO SLIM & THE TAILDRAGGERS
+ Tevis Hodge Jr.
SEPT 30 award-winning acoustic blues
RUTHIE FOSTER Mary Flower
OCT 3
genius AmericanaSEPT 30 songwriter
OCT 2
PETE CORREALE
stand-up comedy OCT 8
TONY STARLIGHT 50th birthday party
with special guest Gary Ogan
OCT 9
OCT 12
SOUVENIRS
featuring
Glenn Hughes
JOHN PRINE’S
of Deep Purple + special guests
Don Jamieson + The Black Moods
75th birthday tribute
UPCOMING SHOWS
•••••••••••••
+ 16 • EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL • BOOKLOVER’S BURLESQUE • ALASDAIR FRASER AND NATALIE HAAS • SMOOTH OPERATOR – SADE TRIBUTE
•••••
albertarosetheatre.com
3000 NE Alberta • 503.764.4131 18
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The carless bridge that spans Interstate 405 at Northwest Flanders Street between 15th and 16th avenues now has an official—though not very serious—name. On Sept. 9, City Commissioner JoAnn Hardesty, who oversees the Portland Bureau of Transportation, unveiled the walk- and bikeway’s new moniker: Ned Flanders Crossing. Northwest Flanders was named for 1840s shipping tycoon George Flanders—he was a big deal in Portland just as the city got its name. But the bridge is named for the next-door neighbor on The Simpsons, Ned Flanders. The crossing’s plaque bears the cartoon southpaw’s image as well as one of his catchphrases, “Hi-diddly-ho, neighborinos!” The bridge, which opened in June and sat nameless for three long months, is a safety improvement to the Flanders Corridor and the greater downtown pedestrian and alternative transit system. Although, the stoplight light on 16th could use some timing adjustments.
MERIT BADGE
On the well-deserved accolades front, Food & Wine magazine has declared Magna Kusina chef Carlo Lamagna one of its Best New Chefs of 2021. The national foodie mag name-checked just 11 chefs across the U.S., but singled out Lamagna not only for his flavorful but precise approach to Filipino cuisine, but for his “untethered enthusiasm and infectious pride.” Its description of Magna Kusina as “a dinner party at Lamagna’s house” is extremely apt.
CAT NEWS
VAXX STATUS
At this point, if you don’t have a photo of your vaccination card on your phone, can you please just take a moment and do that? Vaxx status is becoming the new law of the cultural landscape. One by one, local venues are announcing new entry policies requiring proof of vaccination or a recent negative test for COVID. In some cases, as at Alberta Rose Theatre, not even a negative test result is good enough. It’s gone full vaxx. More accommodating venues, like the Old Church, took a page out of Mississippi Studios’ book and arranged for a testing trailer nearby where attendees can get a rapid antigen test and thus still gain admittance. Hip, minimalist hotel Kex announced this week that it will require cards or tests for admission to its Lose Yr Mind Fest, despite planning to hold the shows on Kex’s sizable rooftop patio. The foresight paid off, as the weekend forecast of rain necessitated moving most of the festival’s shows inside after all. Farther out, Boise, Idaho, music festival Treefort will require vaxx proof or negative test results. It’s even going so far as to request that attendees sign up for the medical wallet app Bindle for fast, precheck admission.
KuDa PHOTOGRAPHY
DARRELL SCOTT
10/15 10/22 10/23 10/24
SEPT 21
SEPT 29
NW favorite blues diva SEPT 24
FLANDERS REBRAND: City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, Springfield, Ore., Mayor Sean VanGordon and Travel Portland president and CEO Jeff Miller christen Ned Flanders Crossing.
STUPID SEXY FLANDERS
with special guest Jet Black Pearl
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READ MORE ABOUT THESE STO R I E S AT WW E E K .CO M . 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
A T R E A LRBO S ER E T •••• A E H T
Bite-Sized Portland Culture News
Last week, Portland’s only cat cafe, Purrington’s Cat Lounge, held a soft reopen. It immediately adopted out 10 of its 11 cats. This has been a problem for Purrington’s for as long as it’s been in business—but it’s a good problem to have. The whole mission of the cafe is to place cats in homes. Purrington’s sources its cats from an adoption-guarantee shelter in Sherwood—Cat Adoption Team—as did the previous owners. “We’ll pivot as best we can [if we run low on cats.]” says co-owner Garrett Simpson. “In the past, we’ve decreased the number of guests in the cat lounge in order to provide a good cat-to-guest ratio.”
YOUR BACKSTAGE PASS TO THE WWEEK NEWSROOM Join the Dive podcast every Saturday as we quickly cover the week’s headlines, and then dive deeper into the big stories of the week. Host Hank Sanders sits down with the paper’s staff as well as the biggest names in Portland to discuss the city and the events that change lives. The Dive podcast by Willamette Week is the best way to stay up to date with Portland’s news, sports, arts, and culture.
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STUFF TO DO IN PORTLAND THIS WEEK, INDOORS AND OUT.
�GO | Cameron Esposito Standup comedian and actress Cameron Esposito can play a live set light or devastating, depending on what the evening demands. You recently saw her as the wisecracking helicopter pilot in Army of the Dead, but she also produced and starred in the 2016 Seeso show Take My Wife, Please with her then-wife, comedian Rhea Butcher. Esposito doesn’t consider any subject matter off-limits so it’s hard to say what you can expect, but with a style that is part perfectly timed, incisive social commentary and part wry role model, you can rest assured you’re in good hands. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503288-3895, mississippistudios.com. 8 pm Wednesday, Sept. 15. $35.
WW ARCHIVE
SEE | Shrek
SomeBODY once told me the ultimate fairy-tale satire is screening this weekend! This critical and box office hit that every animation studio has unsuccessfully tried to copy for the past two decades follows a reclusive ogre and his talkative donkey sidekick as they embark on a mission to rescue a princess. OMSI Open-Air Cinema, 1945 SE Water Ave., 503-797-4000, nwfilm. org/film-series/cinema-unbound-summer-movies-open-air-experiences. 8 pm Saturday, Sept. 18. $20-$30.
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�GO | David Sedaris Beloved author, satirical memoirist and regular guest on This American Life—the perpetually publishing, indefatigably touring David Sedaris holds court once more, reading from his 2020 best-of collection, The Best of Me. There’s something earnest, unique and patiently checked in about Sedaris’ live readings. And if you can stomach the wait, he’s known for writing charming quips in the books he signs. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 503-248-4335, portland5.com. 7:30 pm Friday, Sept. 17. $32.50-$57.50. SEAN BROWN
�GO | Campfire Stories While Artists Repertory Theatre is still in “tour” mode—it started the process of demolishing and renovating its building on Southwest Morrison in 2019—we all benefit from ART’s different stages of collaborative molting, as it works with various local performance organizations. For instance, this turn at the Old Moody Building with live storytellers BackFence PDX seems like a really power-packed pair of evenings. Headlined by two local personality giants, Eden Dawn and Shelley McLendon, the Campfire Stories format promises campout-appropriate exaggerations of true tales, ripped from the fascinating lives of names like comedian Katie Nguyen, intuitive healer Monica Choy, and many others. Old Moody Building, 3121 S Moody Ave., artistsrep.org. 7:30 and 10 pm Friday-Saturday, Sept. 17-18. $20-$50.
☛ DO | Mid-Autumn Festival at Lan Su Chinese Garden Second only to the Lunar New Year, the Mid-Autumn Festival is considered one of the most important Chinese holidays. The Lan Su Chinese Garden marks the occasion with three nights of paper lantern viewing along with illuminated performances by the Portland Lee’s Association Dragon & Lion Dance Team. Daytime activities are also scheduled, including lantern making and a mobile scavenger hunt. And perhaps the best part about the whole event is that it’s a COVID-safe way to get out of the house. Masks required. Lan Su Chinese Garden, 239 NW Everett St., 503-228-8131, lansugarden.org. Friday-Sunday, Sept. 17-19. $12.95-$45.
SEE | Christmas Freak
Sean Brown, an off-Broadway playwright who also co-ran the beloved food cart No Fish! Go Fish! before it closed in 2013, has spent the past decade busily compiling a sharply disparate and defiantly underground filmography. Despite negligible budgets and minimal crew, the indie auteur won awards at festivals across the globe for a succession of uncompromising and achingly raw cinematic fever dreams. His latest, Christmas Freak, is a gently whimsical fable about a 43-year-old boy who loves too well the most wonderful time of the year. The feature doesn’t shy away from the paternal abandonment and emotional trauma fueling the Yuletide fixation that has kept our titular elf-on-the-spectrum Rudy’s chestnuts unroasted despite the best attempts of adoring co-worker Clarice. Hardly a fit for the Hallmark Channel, in other words, but it is a candy-colored, effervescent romp. McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503-2493983, mcmenamins.com. 7 pm Friday, Sept. 17. $3-$5.
�GO | Kevin Gates Kevin Gates has had quite a trajectory. We’ve seen him work tirelessly, releasing mixtape after mixtape, and we’ve seen him incarcerated for weapon possession and assault. We’ve also seen him earn a master’s in psychology while imprisoned. Now rocketing past the modern kings of rap introspection, the Baton Rouge MC still whips out that addictive, booming bass flow on his February 2021 mixtape. Only the Generals, Part II, and drops musings like “relationships get torn/in case you’ve been misinformed/once upon a time, my self-esteem wasn’t on.” Gates’ rhymes were always a cut above, but now we stan the work of a man who truly seems to be searching for himself. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-230-0033, roselandpdx.com. 8 pm Tuesday, Sept. 21. $40. All ages.
FEATURE
FOOD & DRINK COURTESY STEVE GRIGG
Hot to Tot
Ontario, the Eastern Oregon birthplace of tater tots, celebrates its legacy with an inaugural festival that pays homage to the cylindrical spud snack.
TOT STAR: Nephi Grigg, one of the tater tot’s inventors, was also Ore-Ida’s president and sometimes modeled in the company’s ads. BY AN DI P R E W I T T
aprewitt@wweek.com
Every year, approximately 1.3 million people rotate through the Tillamook Cheese Factory, making the pursuit of skewering free cubes of cheddar one of the state’s top tourist interests. Similarly, the Willamette Valley’s 25,000-plus acres of vineyards have grown into a renowned wine destination, drawing vacationers from across the globe. If all goes well this week at the inaugural Tater Tot Festival in Ontario, an Eastern Oregon city that butts up against Idaho, organizers hope to join those locations in becoming the state’s latest culinary attraction. That may sound mighty ambitious for an agricultural community of about 11,000, situated in Malheur County, which sits at or near the top of the state’s poverty rankings based on U.S. Census data. Few people set out to vacation there and even online searches for “things to do in Ontario” primarily point you east across the border. But the town has an exclusive claim to fame that should be just eccentric enough to entice visitors: It is the birthplace of the tater tot. That’s thanks to the resourcefulness of two local brothers who, nearly 60 years ago, found a way to transform potato scraps into the now-iconic American snack food. Anyone just learning that the barrel-shaped potato bites have roots in Oregon certainly isn’t alone. Unlike other widely recognized grocery aisle creations, the tater tot origin story isn’t well documented, nor has it been told on a large scale. 22
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That’s likely due, in part, to the fact that Ore-Ida, the brand behind a plethora of frozen potato products, was sold to Heinz: a condiment behemoth with its own corporate lore to maintain. On top of that, most artifacts that would lure curious food tourists and hardcore tot fans—including the plywood board that led to its finger-friendly, three-quarter-inch round shape—are locked away in the original Ontario plant. However, at least a few longtime residents of Ontario, along with surviving family members of the inventors—Nephi and Golden Grigg, two from a Mormon family of 13 children—can tell you that the tot had humble beginnings. The whole endeavor started on a 5-acre plot in nearby Vale where the brothers weren’t even growing potatoes. They were raising sweet corn and harvesting it at night to capture the kernels at peak freshness. The modest farm allowed the siblings, neither of whom had completed high school, to scrape by. “It was pre-Depression, but they were just really, really poor. Dirt poor,” says 67-year-old Steve Grigg, Nephi’s son. “My uncle Golden is quoted as saying, ‘The Depression came and went, and we didn’t even know it.’” The Grigg brothers may not have had much in the way of resources, but the two did possess ingenuity, which is what led to those highly unusual midnight picking missions—a first step toward keeping produce cool that later culminated in the industry-changing approach of freezing produce. The Griggs discovered that by gathering their sweet corn long after the baking Lower
Treasure Valley sun had gone down, the crop would stay cool and dewy until they made their rounds the next morning, peddling ears by horse and buggy. Sales exploded once the brothers began blanching and freezing the corn, which led to coast-to-coast shipping. They also made a foray into the potato business, to fill out the harvest calendar. Eventually, the Griggs foresaw a revolution in food preservation through the use of extreme cold, so they purchased a failed frozen food factory in Ontario even though lenders wouldn’t offer them a cent. “It was the early ’50s, and frozen foods were just not a thing,” Grigg says. “People wanted fresh, so [the Griggs] couldn’t get any money from the banks. It took the entire community to gather that kind of funding—a lot of farmers put up harvests of their potatoes and corn as collateral to secure these loans.” That collective effort was enough to purchase the plant, resulting in the formation of Oregon Frozen Foods Company. Corn was still their cash cow, but there was also a steady supply of potatoes—the stockpile could get so large, they would store it in football field-length spud cellars. Once a fellow entrepreneur in Idaho discovered how to freeze potatoes without turning them black and started creating french fries, the Griggs quickly identified that as their new product and began churning out the golden splinters themselves. There was only one problem: the waste. Machinery that cut oblong tubers into thin rods left behind an excess of shavings
they had no use for. Never ones to needlessly discard, the brothers initially sold the byproduct to farmers as cattle feed. But frustrated that so much premium potato simply ended up as cow cud, the Griggs went to work finding a way to turn the scraps into something appealing for humans. They diced the shavings, tossed them with flour and seasonings and then—to achieve the perfect miniature log shape— drilled different-sized holes in a piece of plywood. Later dubbed “the holey board,” there are accounts of Nephi shoving the mixture through the openings on one side as Golden sliced on the other. After a quick bath in the
“Of course, the movie Napoleon Dynamite didn’t hurt.” fryer, the product that would come to define their company was created. Multiple narratives tell how the name “tater tot” came to be, but Nephi’s son prefers the version in which a factorywide contest led to a snappy trademark. “One of the employees there—Clora Lay Orton—she won,” Grigg says. “‘Tater’ for potato and, of course, ‘tots’ for small. Makes perfect sense to me.” Everyone agrees, however, that the tot
TOP 5
TOP 5
BUZZ LIST
HOT PLATES
Where to drink this week.
Where to eat this week.
1. Nalu
722 N Sumner St., 503-519-3415, nalukava.com. 5-11 pm Thursday-Sunday. Up a steep flight of stairs, reached through an alley behind North Portland’s Cherry Sprout Produce, you’ll find an intimate, homespun tea room. The interior sports a few tables and a canopied pillowed nook, but the second-story patio is the real draw. Nalu makes its kava tea using real roots. “Squeezing the roots,” owner Holland Mulder says. “It’s a beautiful process.” The kava tea is especially important to Mulder, and it’s the main drink she wanted to serve when she opened the small secret tea bar in March 2018.
1. Sweedeedee
2. Jackie’s
Jackie’s, 930 SE Sandy Blvd., jackiespdx.com. 4 pm-midnight Monday-Friday, 11 am-1 am Saturday, 11 am-midnight Sunday. It’s easy to mistake Jackie’s for its predecessor Century Bar—all dolled up with a new paint job and potted plants—but for its chic veneer, Jackie’s is a sports bar at heart. Wide-screen TVs are just about anywhere you look, playing the game at a volume level such that your friends can talk trash but not have to scream in each other’s faces. The cocktail pitchers are technically the better deal per glass, but the signature house drinks are easier to switch between and worth the range. The gorgeous watermelon-hibiscus-lime agua fresca margarita was our favorite. We awarded the silver medal to the confectionary halva mule—the fruity, slightly bitter (and therefore gay icon) Ms. Pittman made due with the bronze.
5202 N Albina Ave., 503-201-7038, sweedeedee. com. 9 am-9 pm Wednesday-Saturday. Sweedeedee’s cuisine has always been a little hard to define. The North Portland cafe’s menu is deeply seasonal and farm fresh. While not exclusively vegetarian, it’s certainly vegetable heavy. A sign of Sweedeedee’s style is obvious in its summer tomatoes, served in olive oil with padrón peppers, basil and salt. It’s an incredibly simple dish but somewhat jaw-dropping for its colorful beauty and bursting, herb flavors. When visiting Sweedeedee for dinner visitors are best served with an assemblage of items. Perhaps the roast chicken, a vegetable dish, some Grano sourdough to sop up the olive oil and then a bottle of wine for the table.
3. Smith Teamaker
8220 Denver Ave., 503-719-7976, derbypdx.com. 9 am-midnight Wednesday-Sunday. Judith Stokes’ Derby is both a work in progress and an act of imagination: an all-in-one restaurant, bar, cafe and market with a patio for outdoor dining and events like live music and drag bingo. For now, Derby is first and foremost a brunch restaurant offering up the classic paralyzing choice: sweet or savory. If you’re dining in a group of four, no problem: You can split the cardamom custard French toast, mini macadamia nut waffles, massive (20-ounce) breakfast burrito, and the white cheddar, arugula and mustard aioli breakfast sandwich. You may also want some sides like pandesal sweet rolls—not unlike a Hawaiian sweet roll, but with a more substantial crust and crumb—and longanisa sausage, a nod to Stokes’ Filipino heritage.
2. Derby
500 NW 23rd Ave.,503-206-745, smithtea.com. 9 am-6 pm daily. Located on Northwest 23rd Avenue, the first-ever Smith Teamaker cafe is a quiet space on the busy boutique street. The cafe serves 30 kinds of hot tea, but the curious come in for colorful lattes and aromatic tea mocktails. The Golden Light Latte is a major favorite and can be served iced or hot. It’s made by pulling Smith Golden Light tea—with turmeric, sarsaparilla root, and black pepper—through an espresso (or “teapresso”) machine, then adding maple syrup and dousing the blend with oat milk. The result is a beautiful, complex, sweet and softly spiced drink that goes mind-bendingly well with one of the pastry case’s sea salt-sprinkled miso-peanut butter cookies.
4. Lolo Pass AARON LEE
nient. It was funky—it had a funky name. Of course, the movie Napoleon Dynamite didn’t hurt.” It’s no wonder, then, that Ontario has decided to seize its legacy and promote it with glee. “When you start talking to locals, a lot of them have worked at the [Ore-Ida] campus,” says Charlotte Fugate, a Tater Tot Festival organizer and president of Revitalize Ontario, the nonprofit behind the gathering. “They’re proud of the fact they worked there, and they’ve got kids now working there.” At the event Sept. 17-18, which the Kraft Heinz Company helped fund with a $50,000 contribution, you’ll find what should be the largest concentration of fried potato nuggets ever assembled, including multiple presentations by the preliminary winners of a cooking contest—attendees get to anoint the grand prize winner, who will receive an oversized silver bowl to display as proof of their tater mastery. Feats of stomach-expanding bravery will also be on display in the form of a tater tot eating contest—participants have two minutes to pop as many tots as they can. Beyond celebrating the tot, however, is a larger goal for Ontario—to boost its reputation and become an Eastern Oregon destination that attracts travelers year-round, whether they’re seeking out the factory where the tater tot originated, or simply stopping to admire the recently refurbished historic downtown. “We had a lot of people come through before, and they said, ‘Well, your town is dirty and you’ve got farm equipment sitting around, and it’s not very practical for attracting businesses,’” Fugate said. “So our goal was to clean up the town, get it sparkling and make things happen.” Steve Grigg will attend to welcome the crowd this week, but even after the festival has wrapped, he plans to continue to try to amplify his family’s story and the history of the tater tot so that both receive the recognition they deserve. “I’m going to revisit my efforts to get a display in the National Museum of American History,” he explains. “I thought, wouldn’t it be great to get that holey board in there? You know, [patrons] walk over here and they see Dorothy’s ruby slippers and they see a Philo T. Farnsworth television set. I think they should walk by and see the Ore-Ida holey board and a story about the tater tot. So that’s my next endeavor, to see if I can make that happen.”
SWEEDEEDEE
truly arrived in 1954. That was the year Nephi packed his bags—including a suitcase filled with tater tots on dry ice—and headed to the National Potato Convention in Miami. The extravagant Fontainebleau played host, a brand-new hotel on a long strip of palm-lined land overlooking the ocean, but a rural Oregonian who grew up in poverty was about to knock the gilt off of that venue with his invention. Nephi had his biggest audience yet—a focus group of hundreds of men who traded in potatoes. Grigg, who describes his father as “a little more gregarious and humorous” than most, sweet talked his way down into the kitchen, tater luggage in tow, then convinced the chef to serve his tots to the attendees. “They fried them up and he put them on little saucers on the breakfast tables as kind of a treat,” he says. “And they just disappeared. My dad said they were ‘gobbled up quicker than a dead cat can wag its tail.’ That’s really the launching of the tater tot into the world.” Despite the enthusiastic reaction at the convention, Ore-Ida’s new potato knobs didn’t immediately take off in the marketplace. “When they first launched it, the cost was so low that nobody thought it was worth anything,” Grigg explains. “It wasn’t until they increased the price and made it a premium product that people realized it was something. Their honest, small-town upbringing came through in that regard. They didn’t know how to price and move it.” Once they caught on, though, tater tots catapulted the company to a new level: The Griggs opened a second factory in Burley, Idaho, began planting thousands of acres of land with potatoes just for tot production—scraps no longer sufficed as the supply. The brothers sold the company to H. J. Heinz in 1965 for nearly $30 million, with Nephi making the trip to Pittsburgh to finalize the deal. “[My dad] walked into the boardroom, and he said, ‘You could just smell the money,’” Grigg recounts. “They cut that check and handed it to him, and he folded it in half, stuck it in his pocket and said, ‘Thanks, boys!’ They were all just shocked. He was doing that to pretend like it was no big deal, but it was a huge, huge deal.” Given the versatility of the potato—it’s a food that can be prepared in dozens of different ways—the tater tot’s ability to stand out speaks to its originality. It’s been venerated in both culinary and pop culture as the afterschool freezer snack savior, the perfect latenight bar companion, and a cafeteria staple. “I think it was just so unique,” says Grigg about its enduring status. “It was conve-
3. 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. Found in 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.
4. Buddy’s Steaks
5235 NE Sandy Blvd, 215-694-8095, buddyssteaks. com. noon-8 pm Friday-Monday 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 prevegan, 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.
GO: Tater Tot Festival, South Oregon Street and Southwest 2nd Avenue, Ontario, Ore., tatertotfestivaloregon.com. 4-9 pm Friday, 11 am-9 pm Saturday, Sept. 17-18. Free.
5. YāYā PDX
5. Portland Cà Phê
TATER TRUCK: In the early 1960s, Ore-Ida had a fleet of semi-trailers to distribute its signature product from coast to coast.
2815 SE Holgate Blvd., 503-841-5787, portlandcaphe.com. 8 am-3 pm daily. Admittedly, we’re talking about a buzz of a different kind here. Portland Cà Phê opened less than a month ago, but its signature Vietnamese coffee drinks have already managed to become iconic. You’ve surely seen what’s already become a signature snap of the Southeast Holgate coffee shop on your socials: a perfect purple ube latte held aloft in front of a wall-sized map of Vietnam. It tastes as good as it looks.
AARON LEE
COURTESY STEVE GRIGG
1616 E Burnside St., 503-908-3074, lolopasspdx. com. Coffee 7 am-2 pm daily, cocktails 4-10 pm daily. Lolo Pass’ open floor plan lobby is a fine place to start or end a night, but the hostel-like hotel’s main attraction is the fifth-floor rooftop, which features a fire pit, a communal guitar, its own bar and no shortage of socially distant seating arrangements. The vantage offers a unique view of downtown and the Central Eastside, with everything from Big Pink to Buckman Field visible on the scenic smorgasbord.
1451 NE Alberta St., 503-477-5555, yayapdx.com. Chef Steven Chin calls Cantonese barbecue his soul food, and you really feel that. The streamlined menu focuses on serving meat over rice with hot mustard, dipping sauce and pickled cucumber and carrot. It’s simple and it’s great. YāYā particularly nails the duck and char siu pork. Of all the duck I’ve sampled (and it’s been many; sorry to my avian friends), Chin’s is the most five-spice forward. The ducks he selects also have more meat on the bone than many others, leading to luscious full bites of bird. As Cantonese duck is served chopped and bone-in, this means a bigger and better pay off as you nibble.
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POTLANDER SARA CAMPOS
cannabis while authenticating its proud “by stoners, for stoners” aesthetic. We tried out the Strain Gallery, settling on four universally desirable effects. Each search brought back multiple results so we selected one strain from each. Here are the recommendations versus the reactions:
Effect Search 1: Euphoric
Strain Suggestion: French Bread Our reaction: The perfume of this cultivar is super brisk, with heavy notes of pine that are tempered by a floral, woody foundation. The smoke is brutish: One pull from the bong and I felt dominated by the incoming high. Clutching my spiritual pearls, I expected to be laid out posthaste. The exhale, though, had the soft, poetic quality of a limited edition summer saison beer. It delivered mild underpinnings of hops, fermented fruit and slowly wilting summer blossoms being peeled apart by an early autumn breeze. For me, the high was more spacey than euphoric. I smoked it in the early afternoon and, after waxing poetic about how much my bong load tasted like the indescribable sadness of summer’s end, I passed out with chocolate in my mouth. Your results may vary.
Effect Search 2: Creative
Make Me a Match Phresh Cannabis Strain Gallery’s database lets you sort for desired cannabinoid- and terpene-led effects. BY BRIA N N A W H E E L E R
W
ith Croptober on the horizon, it’s not an outrageous idea to reexamine our criteria for new cultivars. There are tried and true methods like gathering suggestions from the homies, consulting a budtender or maybe sifting through review sites. But one local brand has a different way to explore, via its database: the Phresh Cannabis Strain Gallery. “[Cannabis] language itself is a way that people gatekeep,” says Phresh operations manager Keenan McDonald. “We wanted to cut through the noise and empower the consumer.” Founded in 2015 by chief executive and owner Art Boyd, Phresh is a Black-owned, women-led brand that, until recently, largely left customer outreach in the hands of dispensaries. That changed with McDonald’s idea to aggregate data from her terpene tests, her grow team, and her own varsity pothead preferences to create a guide for customers and cannabis users in general. McDonald developed Phresh Strain Gallery as a straightforward, user-prioritized way to explore strains based not on THC percentages, sativa-versus-indica arguments, or sales-driven predilections, but by cultivated cannabinoidand terpene-led effects. The 17 potential effects are presented in simple, user-friendly vernacular—relatable enough for new users and committed potheads alike. Each effect can be crosssearched and results suggest a variety of strains so users can filter through terp selection until they find their most attractive option. The gallery pivots Phresh’s brand from marginally inaccessible opulence to wholly inclusive essentials, and maintains Phresh’s reputation as cultivators of premium
Strain Suggestion: Zweet Inzanity Our reaction: Sketchbook time is sacred in my household, so cultivars that deliver that elusive combination of inspiration, focus and compulsion occupy the most sacrosanct position in my stash box. One of 11 strains the gallery suggested for creativity, I hit Zweet Inzanity hard before cracking open a brand-new blank book. While this cultivar delivered both focus and mild inspiration, the high was a bit too sloppy to nail the landing. I found myself making too many stoner mistakes to completely commit to my page. However, I was hella down to take several notes about how the high made me feel, so lowstakes creativity rather than tight line work might be the name of the game with this cultivar. The perfume is gassy citrus with a tang of astringent, and it burns into a mild, super-smokable puff.
Effect Search 3: Relaxed
Strain Suggestion: Skunkberry Our reaction: After a week of managing the hard transitions that come with a new school year, I was feeling both tightly wound and apathetically deflated. The gallery’s suggestion of Skunkberry felt very astute. In the nose, Skunkberry layers candy-sweet berries with a sexy, spicy funk. A sniff alone is invigorating. The mouthfeel is buttery and smooth, with a lingering smack of burnt sugar at the very backend. The high was indeed relaxing. More than that, it filled me with a lightness that a week of junk sleep and frantic mornings had robbed from me. The entire week melted away as I couchlocked, binge-watched Veneno and waited for the school bus to drop off my kid.
Effect Search 4: Energetic
Strain Suggestion: Orange Creamsicle Our reaction: The perfume of Phresh’s Orange Creamsicle is both creamy and juicy, with a familiar piney afterburn. The profile is bracing but sweet, which will be inviting to sativa enthusiasts who equate confectionary citrus perfume with a toe-tapping buzz. On an evening when I needed more hours than I had, a cup of black tea and a single bowl of this strain bolstered me through the tailend of my evening chores and cooled my manic temperament. Though I half-expected this strain to hit like rocket fuel, the buzz was manageable. Staying busy kept the high from overwhelming me, but the potential for a too-blazed scenario was certainly present. Either way, the strain gallery suggestion was on point. Bottom line: Pack your bowl accordingly, and get ready to overthink or completely forget just how well the gallery predicted your results.
A Q&A with Phresh Cannabis’
Keenan McDonald
WW: Where did the idea for the Strain Gallery originate? Keenan McDonald: I take particular pleasure in being able to talk to friends to recommend the perfect strain. I often joke that I kind of see myself as sort of the Martha Stewart of weed, even though Martha got her own thing. This approach was literally just to reach the consumer, because I feel like nobody’s really doing that. How does the team categorize effects to give these recommendations? A lot of it is an aggregation of our terpene tests—terpene profiles taken from our tests over the last two years. Everybody [on the team] can identify strains by sight and nose and smoke. We give everyone generous samples, so I expect everybody to be really familiar with everything. It works out well. How did you come up with the effect descriptions? Honestly, a lot of the characterizations I wrote as we were launching the website—literally incredibly high. I’m a big fan of smoking a really hardcore sativa early in the morning and then tying myself into a pretzel for an hour. So I got completely blazed and just turned out all of the descriptions. And, you know, I think it really worked. I mean, I think it’s a little casual, but it makes the gallery more accessible. Your team is led largely by women you promoted from within. How does that shape the company culture? Most of our in-house management team right now is women-led, which is really great. Millennials and Gen Z women are the largest consumers currently, and women tend to make better farmers anyway. We have a greater attention to detail. In this rush to consolidate—what I refer to as the Walmart-ization of weed— everybody’s rushing to produce the highest volume of the most marginal mids that they can sell for $3 a gram. Too often, people forget that there are real people tending to real plants; we’re sort of modeling through experience.
GO: Visit the Phresh Cannabis Strain Gallery at phreshcannabis.com. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 wweek.com
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Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com
and see whether I could make a movie. It turned out pretty well. I got this crappy camera off Craigslist and shot Kokoon for $500. That one actually made money because of festival honorariums. The entire budget was $500? I didn’t even have any crew for the first three. They were all $500 movies shot with this $50 Canon C100. I upgraded for Strictly Professional, the movie just before Christmas Freak, and that was a little better technically than the others. Too edgy to interest a distributor, but it got into the Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival. That was an experience. Everybody else was a big-time filmmaker with recognizable stars, and, you know, here I am with this $700 movie. I couldn’t further anyone’s career, so they lost interest in me pretty quick. Nobody cares how little you spend on your movie. Everybody wants to see how much.
WRECK THE HALLS: Sean Marlow stars as Rudy, the titular Christmas Freak.
Elf-Indulgent
Finding no room at the indie, restaurateur-turned-director Sean Brown unwraps his latest feature, Christmas Freak. @hortland
Sean Brown, an off-Broadway playwright who also co-ran the beloved food cart No Fish! Go Fish! before it closed in 2013, has spent the past decade busily compiling a sharply disparate and defiantly underground filmography. Despite negligible budgets and minimal crew, the indie auteur won awards at festivals across the globe for a succession of uncompromising and achingly raw cinematic fever dreams. Those films leapt without warning from mummified-body horror to absurdist lucha libre pastiche to, in a truly shocking twist, the soon-to-premiere Christmas Freak—a gently whimsical fable about a 43-year-old boy who loves too well the most wonderful time of the year. Recently picked up by distribution giant Gravitas Ventures for an autumn digital release, Brown’s fifth feature doesn’t shy away from the paternal abandonment and emotional trauma fueling the Yuletide fixation that has kept our titular elf-on-the-spectrum Rudy’s (Sean Marlow) chestnuts unroasted despite the best attempts of adoring co-worker Clarice (Amy Hagan). Hardly a fit for the Hallmark Channel, in other words, but the candy-colored, effervescent romp embraces the sweeter side of seasonally affected delusions and lets the sugarplums dance along to six original songs written by Brown and co-producer/Rudy’s mother Gemma Bulos. (A jazzy rendition of standout tune “Cool Christmas” won radio airplay on the U.K.’s largest R&B station, and they’ll soon release a soundtrack album.) Currently finishing the “Cool Christmas” music video, Brown spoke with WW about applying maverick sensibilities to family-friendlier fare. “Most people will relate to Christmas Freak,” he laughs, “but it was written for the outsiders. The story’s about an outsider, it was designed to appeal to outsiders, and, frankly, it’s about as mainstream as this aging outsider can muster!” WW: Had you always planned to make movies? Sean Brown: No, I really didn’t think about film until we sold the restaurant. I was very focused on theater—that’s what I studied in school—but, you know, I can’t just write a play and have it produced all by myself. It’s always a struggle. You’re always asking somebody to do something for you. So, time suddenly on my hands, I decided to have some fun 26
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Was that the intent? Every movie I made was a different challenge. Not so much technically, but each one was a bit more ambitious. With Christmas Freak, I decided to go full commercial, see if I could make one that I could sell. I also discovered something. While I love to watch these crazy movies, I don’t like making them. I’ve always loved those gritty, indie, kind of shocking movies directed by John Waters and Andy Milligan. So I thought that was the type of filmmaker I wanted to be, but I kind of gravitate to wholesome stories. They’re a little bit quirky, devoid of meanness. You leave the theater happy, maybe whistling one or two of the tunes. They make people feel good. I think Christmas Freak has that effect. Do you have a favorite Christmas movie? It’s a Wonderful Life is just amazing. I love that movie. The Rankin/Bass stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I have a favorite Christmas Carol—the 1951 version, although Albert Finney’s is good too. And then, of course, Female Trouble. It’s a Christmas film to me! Plans for a sequel? Christmas Freak 2: Boxing Day? I think there’s a whole cinematic universe for Rudy. He’s such an unusual person—kind of like Pee-wee Herman— that there’s a lot of potential. At the end, Rudy doesn’t give up on Christmas. Rudy starts celebrating other aspects of life, but he’s still a Christmas freak. So, in the sequel, I’d love for Rudy to be discovered and find his star. He goes down to Hollywood, Clarice becomes a real housewife, but then, everything starts to go sour because that’s not what Christmas is actually about. Rudy strays and then comes back to the true meaning of Christmas. So Rudy is another oddball loner searching for kinship? When I created Rudy for Sean Marlow, I wanted to explore a man made miserable by his own compulsion to be happy— borrowing Scrooge’s alienation and flipping the script. After we began working on set, everyone could see he had the hallmarks of an iconic character as both representation of misfits and a new classic figure in the Christmas canon. Christmas Freak celebrates the imperfect, freakish beauty of all life. It’s about hope. We tell outsiders they’re beautiful as they are. In my story, Christmas is the medium, not the message. SEE IT: Christmas Freak debuts Friday, Sept. 17, at McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503249-3983, mcmenamins.com/kennedy-school/kennedy-school-theater. Through Sept. 23. $3-$5.
The Deer Hunter (1978)
In this five-time Oscar-winning war epic, a trio of steelworkers (Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and John Savage) find their lives upended after fighting in the Vietnam War. Notable for featuring John Cazale’s final role, Meryl Streep’s breakout performance, and that controversial Russian roulette scene. Academy, Sept. 15-16.
Playtime (1967) Written and directed by the great Jacques Tati, this dexterous comedy follows the beloved Monsieur Hulot as he stumbles his way through a futuristic version of Paris. Purposefully sparse dialogue and grandiose set pieces work together to emphasize the humor of physicality, sight gags and creative use of space. Screens in 35 mm. Hollywood, Sept. 16.
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) TIMEOUT
BY JAY H O RTO N
Did any of the other films have a theatrical release beyond festivals? This is the first. We spent a lot more money—deep into the five figures [laughs]. We definitely went high candy. The editing style has been described as manic—you know, jarring, fast-paced—but Christmas Freak is family friendly. It’s been characterized as John Waters meets Burl Ives.
GET YO UR REPS I N
TCM
SEAN BROWN
SCREENER
MOVIES
Werner Herzog puts his own unique spin on Nosferatu, the unofficial German adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, casting Klaus Kinski as the titular vampire and Isabelle Adjani as Lucy. Screens as the final installment in Hollywood Theatre’s Descent Into Madness: The Films of Werner Herzog series. Hollywood, Sept. 18.
Shrek (2001) SomeBODY once told me the ultimate fairy-tale satire is screening this weekend! This critical and box office hit that every animation studio has unsuccessfully tried to copy for the past two decades follows a reclusive ogre (Mike Myers) and his talkative donkey sidekick (Eddie Murphy) as they embark on a mission to rescue a princess (Cameron Diaz). OMSI Open-Air Cinema, Sept. 18.
Desert Hearts (1985) Set in 1959 Reno, Nevada, this seminal romance centers on a repressed English professor (Helen Shaver), whose rigidity is loosened by the flirtations of a carefree and confident young sculptor (Patricia Charbonneau). Regarded as one of the first, and best, mainstream lesbian films, particularly for depicting the characters’ sexualities in a positive light. Clinton, Sept. 20.
ALSO PLAYING: Academy: The Big Lebowski (1998), Sept. 15-16. Repo Man (1984), Sept. 15-16. Sometimes a Great Notion (1972), Sept. 17-23. Clinton: The Mad Fox (1962), Sept. 15. Hollywood: Star Trek double feature, Sept. 15. Supervan (1977), Sept. 20. Cujo (1983) and Pet Sematary (1989) double feature, Sept. 21. OMSI: The Dark Crystal (1982), Sept. 16.
MOVIES THE CINEMAHOLIC
NOW PLAYING TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
Small Engine Repair Small Engine Repair is mostly set at an auto repair shop in Manchester, N.H., but its characters aren’t fixable—they’re broken men made monstrous by trauma. After a dinner of barbecued steaks, Swaino (Jon Bernthal) and Packie (Shea Whigham) are surprised when their childhood friend Frank (John Pollono) wants to buy ecstasy from Chad (Spencer House), the son of a successful lawyer. Yet Frank has more in mind than a high—the ecstasy is part of a dubious revenge scheme. Small Engine Repair is based on a play by Pollono, who directed the film and clearly struggled to adapt his writing. The screenplay has an excess of time jumps and tough-guy rants, but it also offers a biting meditation on American manhood. Swaino, Packie and Frank—all of whom were abused by their fathers—treat Chad like a human punching bag who exists to bear their vengeful fantasies. House is spectacularly hateful as an entitled evildoer who has no compassion for people who don’t follow him on Instagram, but the true villain of Small Engine Repair is the cycle of violence that consumes the bodies and souls of its men. In the war against toxic masculinity, they’re all losers. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Cinemagic.
OUR KEY : T H I S M O V I E I S E XC E L L E N T, O N E O F T H E B E S T O F T H E Y E A R. : T H I S M O V I E I S G O O D. W E R E C O M M E N D YO U WATC H I T. : T H I S M O V I E I S E N T E R TA I N I N G B U T F L AW E D. : THIS MOVIE IS A STEAMING PILE.
ALSO PLAYING Big House Big House answers the question none of us were asking: What if mumblecore met The Real World? The film opens on half-sisters Claire (Ellie Reed) and Ali (Paige Collins) arriving at their father’s vacation house. It’s Claire’s birthday weekend, and they’ve brought their boyfriends along to celebrate. As the couples unpack, we learn more about this odd, tikithemed pad where the ladies have set up shop. They’re staying at their father’s “honey house,” the tropical beach abode where he once took his mistresses. Even juicier, we discover that history is repeating itself: Claire has a fiancé, but she’s left him at home while she cozies up with the nerdy, endearing co-worker she’s taken as a lover. Big House was shot in just two days with improv-heavy dialogue, and you can hear it in the mumblecore-style exchanges. Often shot at close—even claustrophobic— range, with audio that lingers even after the scenes change, the movie has a hazy, confined quality. It’s a tone that fits with the broader questions about monogamy and transparency that writer-director Jack Lawrence Mayer is raising through the sisters’ romantic arcs. The script is witty, and the acting is natural and often resonant, particularly Michael Molina’s turn as Claire’s awkward, unappreciated lover String. The finale does take a turn for the Real Housewives, but after shaking the proverbial soda can for 90 minutes, the explosion feels earned. NR. GRACE CULHANE. Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vimeo, Vudu, YouTube.
CODA Near the climax of CODA, audiences experience a much-foreshadowed concert from the perspective of a singer’s deaf family. It’s not just sound’s absence that seals the Apple TV+ film’s best scene; it’s how the camera registers Frank and Jackie Rossi gauging the crowd’s reaction to their daughter Ruby (Emilia Jones) belting. That’s the moment you know why CODA (or Child of Deaf Adults) won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and why, despite playing on a clear inspirational formula and remaking a 2014 French film, it’s a smart and heartfelt portrayal of deafness in mainstream American movies. For one, there’s Ruby’s complex role as the only hearing member and de facto translator of her gruff yet charming New England fishing family. Playing her parents and brother, deaf actors Marlee Matlin (Oscar winner from Children of a Lesser God), Troy Kotsur and Daniel Durant are grounded and multidimensional, signing with Ruby in rage, mockery, hubris and shame. While some of the supporting performances pale—Ruby’s fastidious choir teacher is more irritating than aspirational and her love interest a classic doesn’t-deserve-her wet blanket—try not to be moved by this loving, needy, overwhelmed and surprisingly horny family confronting change. The formula works for a reason. PG-13. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. Apple TV+.
The Alpinist This compelling profile of climber Marc-André Leclerc comprises a mountain of existential contradictions. Leclerc’s winningest attribute is his indifference to attention while The Alpinist pours
it on. And against all odds, this is a gripping adventure documentary despite Leclerc defining his improvised solo climbs as completely solo, i.e., largely unfilmed. What’s more, can documentarians really tell an ethical nonfiction story in a retrospective present tense when the shallowest Google of the subject’s name transforms the story? In any case, The Alpinist is wise to invest so deeply in Leclerc that he can’t resist its affection and insights. The almost shamanistic British Columbian is depicted as a climber’s climber, practicing the purest expression of human movement and risk. Granted, some voice-over flourishes by directors Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen land as both pretentious and naive: “It’s hard to reconcile the ideals of his ascents with the tragic consequences.” Counterpoint—no it’s not. Maximal life and instant death dwell together in each of Leclerc’s fearless steps. And though audiences who like to stay on the ground and, let’s say, watch a lot of movies may deem The Alpinist in the shadow of Free Solo, climber Alex Honnold is here too, repeatedly testifying to Leclerc’s mixed-method supremacy on snow, ice, rock and in the undiluted philosophy of climbing itself. PG-13. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Bridgeport, Clackamas Town Center.
Reminiscence Hearts yearn and minds cloud in Reminiscence, a futuristic film noir starring Hugh Jackman as Nick Bannister, a Miami-based dream master. Using virtual reality, Nick lets his clients relive their most cherished memories, from playing with a childhood dog to enjoying a tryst with a wealthy lover. Nick has a nostalgic obsession of his own— Mae (Rebecca Ferguson), a singer who beguiled him with her lustrous voice and then vanished. Nick hunts for her across Florida and Louisiana, but the longer he searches, the more his quest seems like a romantic delusion. Reminiscence, which was written and directed by Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy, is burdened with a frantic pace and a Jackman voice-over that echoes Harrison Ford’s bored yammering in the original version of Blade Runner. Yet Joy
has created a vivid dystopia and a poignant meditation on the seductiveness of distorted memories. Like her brother-in-law Christopher Nolan, she is fascinated with lies that consume men until they no longer believe in anything else. The images of Reminiscence—especially its shots of skyscrapers sticking out of a flood like drowning giants—are darkly beautiful, but when the film reaches its grim conclusion, Joy doesn’t flinch. Reminiscence may be flawed, but it is a deeply haunting portrait of a man too weak for this world. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Vancouver Plaza.
phy effortlessly pivoting from balletic bouts to Wick-ian technique to fated CGI spectacle. Somehow, still, director Destin Daniel Cretton (Just Mercy, Short Term 12) finds space to let blossom a genuinely touching emotive backstory for our immortal archvillain and a (however fleeting) fresh perspective on a martial arts master. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Bagdad, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Classic Mill Plain, Cornelius, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Division, Eastport Plaza, Hilltop, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Studio One, Tigard, Wilsonville.
Black Magic Live: Stripped
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings In the 1970s, when a floppy-haired Bruce Lee lookalike named Shang-Chi first graced the cover of his own Marvel title, comic book crusaders seemed destined to follow radio cowboys and dime novel detectives into the dustbin of cultural oblivion. The struggling publisher responded by feverishly refashioning the heroes of trending genres (horror, blaxploitation, space opera) in the Mighty Marvel Manner, typically disappointing fans all around. But Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, forged an odd yet successful kinship with bloodless ultraviolence, pulp grandiosity and an inane origin story endlessly explained. ShangChi and the Legend of the Ten Rings completes the circle, bringing the dispossessed son of an alien-bracelet-empowered warlord to the big screen, and somehow, this latest iteration of a pointedly two-dimensional martial artist avatar reaches undeserved depths. Credit goes to the bulletproof MCU template, of course. But shove the equally athletic and comedic newcomer Simu Liu (as Shang-Chi) between the looming presence of legend Tony Leung Chiu-wai (playing Shang-Chi’s father) and comic relief Awkwafina (as Shang-Chi’s confidant/karaoke buddy), and you’ve got the makings of an excellent cast that propels the film to another level. True believers should be more than satisfied with the punch-’em-up choreogra-
Within Las Vegas exists a single all-Black male revue called “Black Magic Live.” The owner, Eurika Pratts, and CEO, Jean-Claude La Marre, have released a behind-the-scenes documentary about the production, which tracks its four-year journey that began with the fictional movie Chocolate City to current-day Vegas. Right away, you’ll notice the conflict of interest in having the film’s subjects also serve as executive producers. We’re told of their power struggle with actress Vivica A. Vox, who starred in their 2015 dramedy, but this fascinating conflict only gets a brief, one-sided explanation. Things get more interesting as Pratts and La Marre touch on America’s complicated racial history and the impact it has on their business. But again, we are only given the producers’ perspectives rather than a more complete evaluation of the historical challenges and their modern-day influence. The standout portion of the film comes when we actually get to meet the dancers and hear their accounts of letting go of past dreams in order to embrace the one they’re currently living. But overall, Black Magic Live falls short since the interview setups with a rotating cast are too clinical. So while this infomercial-style documentary successfully provides interesting details and lets the dancers share their stories, it would have been nice to see it and not just be told about it. NR. RAY GILL JR. On Demand, Virtual Cinema.
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PERFORMANCE
Editor: Andi Prewitt | Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com S A R A H E AT O N
Written by: Daniel Bromfield | @bromf3
Now Hear This
Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery.
I, Karen
White privilege withers under the harsh spotlight of Capax Infiniti.
HOLDING THE INFINITE: The soaring mural on the side of the Carlyle Building in downtown Portland helped inspire the Theatre Company’s new film. BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E L L FE RGUS O N
At the start of the Theatre Company’s new short film Capax Infiniti, Karen (Laura Faye Smith) declares: “I’m Karen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. Hey, I was Karen before Karens were Karens, OK?” It’s her way of projecting self-awareness and telling us, “I may be named Karen, but I am not a Karen.” The central joke of Capax Infiniti is that in the typical sense of the term, Karen is a Karen—she’s a privileged white woman with festering racist views. But what makes the film compelling is that the character simultaneously inspires admiration, disgust and pity, becoming someone who embodies and transcends a cultural stereotype. Capax Infiniti begins with Karen getting dressed and slathering on lipstick. She’s about to give a virtual keynote address for an organization called Empowered Women Empowering Women, an engagement she seems eminently qualified for. As the founder and CEO of the all-female and female-identified company Capax Infiniti Marketing and Design, she’s a child of the post-Sheryl Sandberg generation, an entrepreneur whose life looks like a lean-in success story. With self-satisfaction oozing from her voice, Karen frames her life with a mythic origin tale, disdainfully describing what it was like growing up in a trailer and watching her artistic mother reduced to working as a janitor. When Karen broaches the subject of privilege, she says, “I knew we didn’t have it. And I knew I wanted it.” As Karen tells it, she tried to adapt to the locker-room culture of a male-dominated company. “I had jokes that would make Howard Stern blush,” she recalls fondly. That changed when she spotted Capax Infiniti, the towering mural on the side of the Carlyle Building in downtown Portland that features a woman with her back turned. Karen says that the mural, by the South African artist Faith47, inspired her to start her company. Yet her façade of virtue gradually disappears and her speech devolves into a racist rant filled with grotesque exclamations like, “And I swear to God, if you say anything about white fragility, I will cut you! There is nothing fragile about me! Nothing!” 28
MUSIC
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 wweek.com
Capax Infiniti understands that the concept of Karen—which has become so prevalent that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot used the term to describe former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany—is problematic. Calling a woman “a Karen” can be a way to call out racism, but it can also be a way to traffic in misogynistic tropes while remaining palatable to progressives. Smith, writer DeLanna Studi, and director Jen Rowe don’t explicitly address the fact that there’s no male equivalent of a Karen, but they don’t deny the complexity and humanity of their protagonist. They have created a character who is at once a polished promoter of women’s rights, an enraged defender of white privilege, and an emotionally broken soul lost in an ocean of trauma and grief. The miracle of Capax Infiniti—part of the Theatre Company’s six-part film series the Playwright Initiative: Solo Works—is that it tries to understand Karen without excusing her behavior. We’re invited to weep when she talks about the death of a loved one, but we’re also allowed to cringe at her inability to comprehend that even in poverty, she reaped the rewards of white privilege. When Karen attempts to convey the struggles of her childhood by claiming, “Trash is trash, no matter the color,” you realize that she’s crippled by one of the worst failings a human being can have: a lack of imagination. That’s not a problem for Smith, Studi and Rowe, whose willingness to investigate nuances that have become lost in the ongoing debates about the ups and downs of so-called cancel culture is the soul of the story. If Karen were a real person and her speech went viral, she would be deservedly fired from her company and crucified on social media. Capax Infiniti looks beyond that often-told tale by challenging audiences apt to believe that the film is either too compassionate toward Karen or too cruel. Like most great works of art, it will make you uncomfortable in the best sense of the word. SEE IT: Capax Infiniti streams on Stellar through Oct. 9. Tickets are available at thetheatreco.org/capax-infiniti. $20.
SOMETHING OLD Songs are wonderful because of how they’re about their subject matter, not what that subject matter is, but “Stars on the Water” by Rodney Crowell might be the exception. It’s about nothing more— or less—than how gorgeous neon lights look when reflected in water. The song’s low-hanging synths lend it a suitably-eerie, faintly-artificial beauty. A lot of ’80s country suffered under the popular synthetic arrangements of the day, but Crowell knew how to use them to create a song so evocative it sends shivers down the spine. SOMETHING NEW On her fourth album, the awkwardly titled but often brilliant Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, English rapper Little Simz grapples with losing her sense of self in the face of her ever-growing stardom. If dropping it on the same day as Kanye and Drake’s competing displays of hubris was her way of shrinking from the spotlight, it backfired. She’s emerged as the dark-horse victor of last weekend’s rap wars, just by making an album that feels like it was actually thought out instead of thrown together on deadline. SOMETHING LOCAL Bryan Rahija is a little more extroverted and exuberant than many of his peers in the American Primitive Guitar scene (think country-blues fingerpicking with a slant toward the arty and arcane). The 12 tracks on his new album, Timber, are defined by the heartiness and brightness of his tone. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he has little interest in swampy mythology or Southern gothic darkness. He makes his instrument the star, and the spaces he summons with it feel as wide open as Portland’s skies. SOMETHING ASKEW Jimmy Fallon took great pleasure in dunking on German free-jazz stalwart Peter Brötzmann on TV last week. But if you’re in the mood for the most extreme music imaginable, 1968’s Machine Gun should do the job. Even with two drummers and two bassists working overtime, Machine Gun is all about reeds—shrieking, blasting, scoured by distortion and immediately reminiscent of the titular killing machine to whose horrors so much transgressive 20th century art was an answer in the first place.
JONESIN’
by Matt Jones
Week of September 23
©2021 Rob Brezsny
"Home Repairs"-visiting some unusual places. ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries author Steve Maraboli says, "The best way to love someone is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves." If that strategy appeals to you, the next eight weeks will be an excellent time to put it to maximum use. You're entering a phase when you can have an especially beneficial effect on people you care for. You'll be at peak power to help them unleash dormant potentials and access untapped resources. TAURUS (April 20-May 20): It's a good time
to ruminate about things you wish could be part of your life but aren't. You will be wise to develop a more conscious relationship with wistful fantasies about impossible dreams. Here's one reason why this is true: You might realize that some seemingly impossible dreams aren't so impossible. To get in the mood for this fun exercise, meditate on a sample reverie: "I wish I could spend a whole day discovering new music to love. I wish I owned a horse and a boat and a vintage brown and orange striped bohemian cardigan sweater from the 1970s. I wish I knew the names of all the flowers. I wish I felt more at ease about revealing my hidden beauty. I wish I could figure out how to eliminate unnecessary stress from my life."
ACROSS 1 Submarine acronym 6 Batting game for little kids 11 Cousin in 2021's "The Addams Family 2"
61 Major book publishing company (or what the circled squares contain)
33 Put a message on, as jewelry
66 Easy "Card Sharks" card to play from
35 Philosophy suffix
14 "Fingers crossed"
67 "The Beverly Hillbillies" star Buddy
15 Vietnamese capital
68 Poe's middle name
16 Pasture grazer
69 "Totally tubular"
17 Replaces, as with a charged battery
70 Causing jumpiness, maybe
19 Local response to "Want some Irn-Bru?", perhaps
71 Ibsen heroine Gabler
34 Hostess snack cake 37 "Messenger" material 38 Competition hosted by Terry Crews, for short 40 Faux pas comment 41 Grateful Dead bass guitarist Phil 42 El _ _ _, TX
DOWN
47 Word before hours or fours
1 Emphatic exclamation, in Ecuador
48 Units to measure London's Shard, e.g.
2 "Incredible!"
49 "_ _ _ I!" ("Same here!")
22 Choir member
3 Static, e.g.
24 "Let's get together sometime"
4 Fitting
50 Title elephant of children's lit
5 "Parks and _ _ _"
51 City on the Mohawk River
29 "That's the one"
6 What's exited in Brexit, for short
52 Preposition with mistletoe?
31 Actress Menzel of "Wicked"
7 Herb used in Thai cuisine
53 John H. Johnson's magazine
34 Not well
9 Grant played by the late Ed Asner
20 Android alternative for smartphones 21 Doctor who's a playable character in "Overwatch"
30 Was on the radio
36 Singer Rita
8 "Can I take that as _ _ _?"
54 "What _ _ _ it take?" 55 "A pity"
10 Roadside rubbish
59 TV's "Warrior Princess"
11 Plaint that may prompt words of encouragement
62 "Supermarket Sweep" network
44 Princess in L. Frank Baum books
12 "Happy Birthday _ _ _"
63 Codebreaking org.
13 Annoying sibling, maybe
64 "Likely story!"
45 Bug persistently
18 Some insurance groups, for short
65 Stadium chant for Marta, e.g.
39 More than enough at the buffet 43 Come-_ _ _ (enticements)
46 Like TV's "Batman" 49 Buffoon 50 They may involve blue material
23 Letters on a wide wedge, maybe 25 "Auld Lang _ _ _"
56 Not fully upright
26 Pick up aurally
57 Org. for Pelicans and Hawks
27 Country cottage, in Russia
58 Losing tic-tac-toe line
31 "Where did _ _ _ wrong?"
60 Seafood restaurant freebie
32 Home refuge
28 M as in NATO?
©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.
last week’s answers
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Poet, essayist, and translator Anne Carson calls her husband Robert Currie the "Randomizer." His role in her life as a creative artist is to make quirky recommendations that help her avoid being too predictable. He sends her off in directions she wouldn't have imagined by herself. Here's an example: At one point in her career, Carson confessed she was bored with her writing. The Randomizer suggested, "Let's put dancers into it." In response, she repurposed the sonnets she had been working on into a live theatrical performance featuring many dancers. I think you would benefit from having a Randomizer in your life during the coming weeks. Know anyone who could serve? If not, look for one. Or be your own Randomizer. CANCER (June 21-July 22): If you so desired,
you could travel to Munich, Germany and eat beerflavored ice cream. Or you could go to Rehoboth, Delaware and get bacon-flavored ice cream. If you were in Taiwan, you could enjoy pineapple shrimp ice cream, and if you were in London, you could sample haggis-flavored ice cream, made from sheep innards. But my advice right now is to stick with old reliables like chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream— which are still delicious even if they're not exotic. What's my reasoning? In general, the astrological aspects suggest that during the coming weeks, you're most likely to thrive on trustworthy standbys and experiences you know and trust.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Celebrated novelist Jane
Austen (1775–1817) wrote, "Sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in." People who aren't as articulate as Austen experience that problem even more often than she did. But the good news, Leo, is that in the coming weeks, you'll be extra skillful at expressing your feelings and thoughts—even those that in the past have been difficult to put into words. I invite you to take maximum advantage of this grace period. Communicate with hearty poise and gleeful abandon.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): "When you know
what's important, it's a lot easier to ignore what's not," writes author and life coach Marie Forleo. Let's make her thought the basis of your work and play in the coming weeks. Get vibrantly clear on what is of supreme value to you, which influences bring out the best in you, and which people make it easy for you to be yourself. Then compose a second list of trivial situations that are of minor interest, influences that make you feel numb, and people who don't fully appreciate you. Next, Virgo, formulate long-term plans to phase out the things in the second list as you increasingly emphasize your involvement in the pleasures named in the first list.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Happy Birthday
sometime soon, Libra! As gifts, I have collected six useful mini-oracles for you to meditate on during the rest of 2021. They're all authored by Libran aphorist Yahia Lababidi. 1. Hope is more patient than despair and so outlasts it. 2. Miracles are proud creatures; they will not reveal themselves to those who do not believe. 3. A good listener is one who helps us overhear ourselves. 4. One definition of success might be refining our appetites, while deepening our hunger. 5. With enigmatic clarity, life gives us a different answer each time we ask her the same question. 6. Temptation: seeds we are forbidden to water, that are showered with rain.
(Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Pioneering psychologist Carl Jung wrote, "I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole." But it's important to add that some dark sides tend to be destructive and demoralizing, while other dark sides are fertile and interesting. Most of us have a share of each. My reading of the planetary omens suggests that you Scorpios now have extra power to upgrade your relationship with the fertile and interesting aspects of your dark side. I hope you will take advantage! You have a ripe opportunity to deepen and expand your wholeness.
SCORPIO
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian poet Rainer Maria Rilke was a complicated person with many mysterious emotions and convoluted thoughts. And yet, he once wrote that life occasionally brought him "boundless simplicity and joy." I find it amazing he could ever welcome such a state. Kudos to him! How about you, dear Sagittarius? Are you capable of recognizing when boundless simplicity and joy are hovering in your vicinity, ready for you to seize them? If so, be extra alert in the next two weeks. I expect there'll be a visitation or two. Maybe even three or four. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Baltasar Gracián was not a 21st-century New Age self-help teacher. He was a 17th-century Jesuit philosopher born under the sign of serious, diligent Capricorn. I hope you will be extra receptive to his advice in the coming weeks. He wrote, “Know your key qualities, your outstanding gifts. Cultivate them. Redouble their use." Among the key qualities he gave as examples were disciplined discernment and resilient courage. I bring his thoughts to your attention because the coming weeks will be a rousing time to heed his counsel. It's time for you to identify and celebrate and give abundant expression to your key qualities. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): After studying
the genes that create feathers in birds, scientists found that humans have all the necessary genes to grow feathers. (I read about it in *National Geographic* magazine.) So why don't we grow feathers, then? Well, it's complicated. Basically, the feather-making genes are not fully activated. Who knows? Maybe someday, there'll be technology that enables us to switch on those genes and sprout plumage. I bet my Aquarian friend Jessie, whose body has 30 tattoos and 17 piercings, would take advantage. In the coming weeks, it might be fun for you to imagine having bird-like qualities. You're entering a high-flying phase—a time for ascension, expansion, soaring, and seeing the big picture from lofty vantage points.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Are there sensual and erotic acts you've never tried and are curious about? Are there experimental approaches on the frontier of your desires that would be intriguing to consider? Might there be lusty experiences you've barely imagined or don't know about—but that could be fun to play with? According to my analysis of the astrological omens, the coming weeks will be a favorable time to explore such possibilities. Be safe and prudent, of course. Don't be irresponsible or careless. But also be willing to expand your notions of your sexuality. HOMEWORK: It's time for Brag Therapy. Send me your proud and shiny boasts. Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com
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