“THAT’S FLYING CARS TO THE 2000 VERSION OF ME.” P. 26
T HE D E C L INE O F R O B E R T PA MP L IN ’ S FA MILY E MP IR E L E A D S T O F IN A NC I A L ME A S UR E S T H AT A L A R M E X P E R T S .
NEWS MASS SHOOTINGS ROCK CITY. P. 6
B Y NI G E L J A Q U I S S • P A G E 11
FOOD ADVENTURE AWAITS AT PACIFIC CRUST. P. 23
THEATER RUDY’S PRESSER INSPIRES A PLAY. P. 25 WWEEK.COM
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WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 48, ISSUE 16 A cryptocurrency billionaire is spending heavily on Oregon political ads. 5
Two local icons—the classic PDX airport carpet and the Thompson Elk—are coming back. 20
A Northeast Portland man fired into a group of people at a protest march. 6
The Oregon white truffle is in abundance during the month of February. 21
Betsy Johnson expressed her opposition to tolls by riffing on Dr. Seuss. 7
A 10-foot tall smiling Sasquatch is Pacific Crust Pizza Company’s doorman. 23
Jody Allen could make or break the WNBA’s return to Portland. 8
Former Division I football player Paul Booker’s chronic pain inspired him to launch a line of CBD-infused hot sauces. 24
Robert Bragdon would have donated to Betsy Johnson sooner, but he was on a plane. 9 Robert Pamplin’s résumé includes a close encounter with a charging buffalo. 12 Unsuspecting pensioners now own a derelict concrete plant. 15
A Rudy Giuliani press conference near a sex shop inspired a new play. 25 Movie Madness tracked down the sole missing entry in its Ingmar Bergman section. 26
ON THE COVER:
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
R.B. Pamplin Corp. chairman, president and CEO Robert B. Pamplin Jr., illustration by Mick Hangland-Skill and Brian Breneman.
Who’s behind the billboards urging Portlanders to stop having kids?
Mark Zusman
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
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DIALOGUE
• •••• ••••
A T R E A LRBO S ER E T •••• A E H T
Last week, WW explored the mysterious appearance of two billboards that advised Portlanders to “Stop Having Kids.” The signs are the work of a group of “vegan antinatalists” who believe human life is suffering and a blight on the planet. They appear to be funded by Eric Goldberg, a Portland photographer. Here’s what our readers had to say:
FEB 23 anthems for a world worth saving
CARSIE BLANTON
CAUCHYS_THEORUM, VIA WWEEK.COM: “This is a great
message for anyone who takes advice from billboards.”
+ Alisa Amador
architects of new FEB 25 California rock + soul
MOTHER HIPS + Ashleigh Flynn & the Riveters
PETER ROWAN’S
FEB 27
an evening with
JUDY COLLINS
MAR 2
LÚNASA
MAR 3
TONY STARLIGHT
Will Lift Your Spirits MAR 4
MAR 5
PERT NEAR SANDSTONE +
LANEY LOU & THE BIRD DOGS
MAR 6
MORGAN JAMES MAR 10
NPR radio show live taping
JELANI MEMORY PATTERSON HOOD AND MORE
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MAR 7
dervish
MAR 11
RACHEL BAIMAN + VIVIAN LEVA & RILEY CALCAGNO •••••••••••••
3/13 • PETER MULVEY 3/14 • PORTLAND YOUTH JAZZ ORCHESTRA + THE SHANGHAI WOOLIES DANCE BAND 3/16 • CONSIDER THIS w/ DAVID F. WALKER + DOUGLAS WOLK
•••••
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
fatalism, this sentiment is hardly new. Each generation has its own version of living in the end times and a segment of its members who abhor those who have preceded them.”
T SHEEHAN, VIA WWEEK. COM: “Normally, I’d have to wait
FEB 28 MAR 1
FREE MEXICAN AIRFORCE feat. Los Texmaniacs
+ Taylor Kingman
SAFESPACER, VIA WWEEK. COM: “Like environmental
’til Shark Week in July to get my annual dose of ‘Man Is the Real Monster’ comments, but this billboard in my neighborhood is there for me every day. “And this is the difference between vegans and vegetarians. One is a diet, the other is the result of three generations of self-hate reeducation.” SCIPANDA, VIA REDDIT:
“Should do a 180 on the Christian picketers outside abortion clinics and go to picket ‘Stop Having Kids’ at Christian churches.”
COREY PEIN, FORMER LONGTIME WW REPORTER, VIA TWITTER: “Extremely creepy
outfit. Saw some demonstrating on the street here in Alberta last year and went down the rabbit hole. Links to fascists who advocate for mass death while masquerading as environmentalists.” PEDALPDX, VIA REDDIT:
“Antinatalism as a campaign seems it’s like trying to shift the Overton window in a battle that’s already been won. Particularly in (1) Oregon, and especially in (2) urban Portland. But in the meantime, you are making progressivism seem weird and depressing, so…that’s great, I guess. (Per the WW article: ‘The site lists a myriad of reasons for being antinatalist, including…“Life Is Suffering.”’ Great, inspiring message that’s definitely going to win over folks! Nicely done.) “If you wanted to make a big impact, you’d need to bring the message to places where the birth rate is still high. Primarily, that’s developing nations, but
Dr. Know
telling people of color in developing nations to have less kids is, obviously, exceedingly problematic, both morally and optically.” SOPHLADY, VIA WWEEK. COM: “The fellow seems to be
mainly an attention seeker. Opposition to human reproduction, period. Veganism. Support of anti-vaxxers and novel coronavirus denial. “Note that for this sort of person the supposed politics can change easily. We may next hear of Eric Goldberg as a Peter Thiel-admiring venture capitalist.”
APOTHECARY BEN, VIA TWITTER: “After my three sons
were born, me and my wife decided to ‘stop having kids.’ And we’re sticking to our guns!” ANTIFUGGEDABOUTIT, VIA WWEEK.COM: “Me, seeing the
billboard: ‘That’s crazy! What a horrible and nihilistic view of humanity.’” “Me, reading the WW comments: ‘I think they might be on to something.’”
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 MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx
The manual for my fancy new garbage disposal claims that letting it handle my food scraps is better for the planet than composting them. Surely this can’t be true—I love my green bin! —Matt G. Which bin you love is your business, Matt. Personally, I don’t know why you’d pick the worst-smelling of the three available receptacles as your favorite, but what do I know? Our whole entertainment culture right now is almost entirely about butts, and I don’t get that either. (And for pretty much the same reason.) Perhaps I’m just…out of touch. Just kidding! It’s the children and their jeweled butt plugs who are wrong. Still, the green bin (and composting in general) does deserve some respect. And so does the garbage disposal! Both of them do important work: They keep your food scraps from going to the dump. We generally think of manmade materials like plastic as the villains of the landfill, but organic waste can cause trouble, too—it degrades into methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The green bin and the garbage disposal, however, mitigate this effect by letting the waste break down in a controlled environment (a composting facility
and a wastewater treatment plant, respectively) where any methane can be captured. That said, garbage disposals have a few impacts composting isn’t troubled by. For starters, washing all those macerated cantaloupe rinds down the sink uses a lot of excess water. That’s rarely a major issue in water-rich Portland, but if you’re writing from, say, the Klamath Basin, you might want to dial it back. Another thing your fancy new garbage disposal might not be telling you is that, while sewer systems can obviously handle some solid waste, too much of it—puréed or not—can cause problems. This circumstance led New York City to ban garbage disposals in the 1970s. (The city relented in 1997.) Portland’s wastewater infrastructure today is obviously very different from that of New York in the Jimmy Carter era, and I don’t know of any Rose City campaigns against garbage disposals. Still, there’s probably a reason the city offers restaurants a break on their sewer bill if they get rid of their garbage disposals. I’ll cut to the chase: It’s close, but the green bin wins (ironically, by a nose). It’s probably just as well, too—there’s something about a receptacle lined with whirling blades that’s not very appealing either. Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
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CRYPTOCURRENCY MINING IN THE DALLES CRYPTO BILLIONAIRE SPENDS BIG ON OREGON POLITICS: Protect Our Future, a political action committee funded by cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, has bought more than $420,000 in TV ads for the last week of February and the first week of March, supporting the candidacy of political newcomer Carrick Flynn for Oregon’s new congressional seat. It’s early in the primary for such a significant TV buy—and could lead to record spending for a congressional seat if that pace continues. Bankman-Fried made his fortune with the Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which sells Bitcoin, and he is seeking to influence federal regulation of virtual money, Politico reported earlier this month. (It did not report the new spending in Oregon.) “A tax-dodging billionaire in the Bahamas has no place in Oregon politics,” says Robin Logsdon, a campaign manager for Intel engineer Matt West, another candidate for Oregon’s 6th Congressional District. “I don’t think the people of the 6th District are going to let him buy a seat for his friend regardless of how much he spends.” Carrick campaign manager Avital Balwit disputes the idea the candidate is friends with the billionaire: “Carrick has never met or talked to Sam Bankman-Fried.” A representative of Protect Our Future PAC did not return calls seeking comment. PSILOCYBIN BOARD CONSIDERS CONFLICTS: The Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board is considering adding conflict-of-interest disclosure requirements to its bylaws. During its monthly meeting Feb. 23, the board will discuss two proposed amendments: one that would require members of the board and its subcommittees to disclose conflicts of interest more generally, and another that specifically states board members must disclose financial, business and employment conflicts. The proposed amendments follow WW’s cover story last week (“Business Trip,” Feb. 16), which raised questions about board members who have established or plan to operate businesses in the psilocybin industry, for which they are crafting rules and stand to profit from. At least two board members have formed LLCs related to psilocybin use. If adopted, the amendments would expand current conflict language in the bylaws, which state that “members will adhere to the highest standards of ethical conduct and will be responsible for understanding and
acting in accordance with the provisions of [Oregon law], including the code of ethics.” GONZALEZ CONFLATES PORTLAND CAMPSITES: A Feb. 15 campaign email from City Council candidate Rene Gonzalez solicited contributions by using a photo showing trash and remnants of tents strewn about an entire block of Portland’s South Waterfront. In the email, the challenger to Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty pledged he would “clean up our city.” Gonzalez described a dire scene: “Homelessness and littered streets have spiraled out of control under Joann [sic] Hardesty’s watch,” he wrote. There’s just one problem: The photo, which appears to have first run in The Oregonian in July 2018, depicts a protest blockade that formed around a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on the South Waterfront, not a homeless camp. The trash-strewn street was the aftermath of a police raid on the protest camp. Gonzalez campaign manager Shah Smith says it was not aware of the photo’s context. “It has been removed from our stock and was definitely included in error,” Smith says. “The difference in context is important, and matters.” INVESTMENT COUNCIL SEES TURNOVER: The five-member Oregon Investment Council, which oversees more than $130 billion in state pension and other investments, is experiencing unusual turnover. Charles Wilhoite, whom Gov. Kate Brown appointed to the council last March, resigned Dec. 31, saying new ownership of the consulting firm where he works left him with insufficient time for the OIC and the state Housing Stability Council, on which he also served. Another OIC member, Monica Enand, is expected to step down in May, an Oregon State Treasury spokeswoman said. Enand could not be reached for comment. Spots on the OIC are coveted but hard to fill because they require expertise that’s difficult to find in Oregon’s relatively small finance industry. But the departures will ease one point of tension: Both Wilhoite and Enand also serve on the board of NW Natural, the state’s leading fossil fuel company. In December, three Democratic state lawmakers joined climate activists in urging the OIC to divest itself of nearly $2 billion in fossil fuel investments.
MUSIC MILLENNIUM SATURDAY MARCH 5TH, 2022 | 2PM PERFORMANCE BY EMILY SCOTT ROBINSON
Emily Scott Robinson Colorado songwriter Emily Scott Robinson beckons to those who are lost, lonely, or learning the hard way with American Siren, her first album for Oh Boy Records. With hints of bluegrass, country, and folk, the eloquent collection shares her gift for storytelling through her pristine soprano and the perspective of her unconventional path into music.
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
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SAM GEHRKE
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
FATALITIES
MOURNING: A memorial to June Knightly in Normandale Park.
Deadly Weekend Three fatal shootings last weekend leave the city shaken— and put Portland on pace to eclipse its homicide record. BY T E S S R I S K I
tess@wweek .com
The city of Portland is reeling after a trio of shootings last weekend left three dead and at least eight others injured. During a sobering press conference Feb. 22, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler called for a “cease-fire.” “This was a deadly, difficult and disturbing weekend for our city,” Wheeler said. “[I] want to convey my steadfast and my urgent determination to find those who are responsible and bring them to justice, to end the cycle of violence.…We are not going to stop until peace returns to Portland.” Here’s what we know about the three incidents that took place: 1. On Feb. 19, 43-year-old Benjamin Smith opened fire into a group of protesters, killing 60-year-old June Knightly and striking four others, according to prosecutors. On Tuesday, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office charged Smith with one count of first-degree murder with a firearm, four counts of attempted murder and four counts of assault. The victims were participating in an organized demonstration held in remembrance of Amir Locke, a 22-year-old Black man was shot and killed by a Minneapolis police SWAT team earlier this month. According to charging documents, Smith confronted the protesters, began yelling at them and demanded that they leave the park area. In return, the demonstrators asked him to leave, and Smith demanded that they “make” him do so, prosecutors allege. He then pulled out a handgun and opened fire until someone else shot him in the
hip area, charging documents say. As of Tuesday, Smith is in critical condition at the hospital, according to police. Of the four surviving victims, one remains hospitalized in critical condition after being struck in the neck, leaving them paralyzed from the neck down, according to prosecutors. Another who was struck in the abdomen is still hospitalized, and the two others have been released from the hospital. 2. That same day, Portland police shot and killed an individual during a “shelter in place” incident that resulted from a disturbance call. The bureau has not released details about the exact circumstances of the shooting, nor has it identified the victim. PPB named two officers who were involved: acting Sgt. Zachary Kenney, a 17-year veteran of the bureau, and Officer Reynaldo Guevara, who joined PPB in January 2020. It is unclear whether one or both officers fired and which fired the fatal shot. 3. Then, on Feb. 20, an unnamed suspect shot and killed a woman in the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood. The woman was in a vehicle, along with a man and two children: a 1-yearold who was shot in the leg, and a 5-year-old who was shot in the arm. The man and children were transported to the hospital. Police have not yet released the identities of the victims or the suspect. The Normandale shooting, in which an armed man allegedly fired into a group of protesters, occurs at a moment when the
city is increasingly polarized about such topics as police reform and houselessness. That tension was exacerbated when police erroneously identified Smith as a homeowner, though they later walked back that statement. City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty mourned Knightly and described Smith as a person with “white supremacist sympathies.” “There is a history and pattern of threats of violence against activists, including myself,” Hardesty said. “As a community this is deeply wounding and distressing. June was part of a group of unarmed women peacekeepers who supported racial justice demonstrations and engaged in compassionate work with the homeless.” The police chief expressed sorrow. “This was probably one of the most deadly and challenging weekends our city has experienced,” Lovell said. “It’s also one of the most heartbreaking. People are dead. People are injured, lives [were] destroyed over senseless violence.” “Little kids injured by gunfire is especially heartbreaking,” Lovell added Wheeler said the bureau’s new Focused Intervention Team, which began operations at the start of the year, is “actively investigating” the shootings. But officials also warned that this year’s gun violence trend—15 gun homicides and 211 shootings in less than two months—is already on pace to eclipse the homicide rate in 2021, which broke the previous record from 1987. “We are in unprecedented territory again this year,” Portland FBI Special Agent Kieran Ramsey said at the press conference. “Whereas last year, law enforcement, especially the Portland Police Bureau, continued to sound the alarm of record-breaking violence on the streets of Portland, this year we are already on pace to easily surpass that level.” Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt said Tuesday that his office had issued 16 gun violence-related cases so far in 2022. But he also cautioned that prosecution alone cannot solve what the mayor described as an “epidemic” of gun violence in the city. “We cannot prosecute our way out of this crisis alone,” Schmidt said in a statement to WW. “The criminal justice system is one tool of many to address violence in our community. If you pick up a gun and decide to shoot someone, you will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. But a lot happens before a person decides to pick up that gun. We must take a systemwide ‘yes, and’ approach, investing in and empowering organizations by and for impacted communities that prevent and interrupt harm before yet another life is taken.” U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon Scott Asphaug said during Tuesday’s press conference that the “isolating nature” of the coronavirus pandemic may be one of the underlying factors behind the shootings. “Can we prosecute our way out of it? The answer, of course, is no,” Asphaug said. “But the reality is, if you pull a trigger and you kill somebody, either Mr. Schmidt’s office or my office are gonna come look for you.” Near the end of Tuesday’s press conference, the mayor also acknowledged that societal issues play a role: “If we as a society can work with young men in particular, but not exclusively, to understand that, if you have a conflict with somebody, there are other ways to resolve it than by picking up a gun.”
QUOTE OF THE WEEK “I have many times been endorsed by organized labor unions, including [United Food and Commercial Workers]. But here’s the funny thing: They have been on both sides of the two exact decisions that you’ve described. They had endorsed Mr. Kristof and were very unhappy when he was disqualified from the race. Literally a month later, UFCW supported the decision that we made to disqualify initiative petitions 43, 44 and 45. Same union, within one month. “What you’re actually seeing is the very boring thing, which is that I’m just doing my job. I’m just applying the law. And let’s remember, I am a progressive Democrat. I ran as a progressive Democrat. And the two most controversial decisions I’ve made so far have mostly pissed off Democrats and progressives.” 6
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
—Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, appearing on the latest episode of WW’s Dive podcast. Fagan has been at the center of controversy this winter for how she’s guarded the ballot: first by disqualifying Nicholas Kristof from running for governor, then by rejecting three ballot initiative petitions aiming to limit political spending. In the Feb. 18 interview, conducted shortly after the Oregon Supreme Court unanimously affirmed her decision that Kristof was ineligible, Fagan defended herself against allegations that she’s protecting Oregon’s entrenched interests, especially labor unions. Listen to the full interview at wweek.com.
ONE QUESTION
DONOR
Do You Support Highway Tolling? Most candidates for governor can’t abide tolls. Say the word “toll” and Oregonians on both sides of the aisle clutch their wallets. That’s not stopping the Oregon Department of Transportation, which plans to make substantial changes to Portland area roadways. As soon as 2024, drivers may have to pay to cross Interstate 205’s Abernethy Bridge and may in the years to come have to pay to cross the Columbia River, after ODOT expands the number of lanes. Plans can change, however. Most of the leading candidates for governor rejected all or some part of these plans when asked by WW. R AC H E L M O -
equitable, always taking into consideration how low-income drivers will be protected from excessive costs. These projects must also meet our climate goals and sustain our current infrastructure.
NO FOR ABERNETHY BRIDGE YES TO INTERSTATE BRIDGE YES TO CONGESTION PRICING
WW asked: 1. Do you support tolling on the Abernethy Bridge as part of funding that project? 2. Do you support tolling as part of the Interstate Bridge replacement? 3. Do you support tolling or congestion pricing on Interstates 5 and 205 from the Washington border to where they intersect?
State Treasurer Tobias Read (D) The interstate bridges previously had tolling, and it’s unfortunate that the tolls weren’t continued for maintenance. Tolls with programs to support low-income families so they aren’t unnecessarily burdened is a prudent financial mechanism for funding and upkeep. It will be important to make decisions on tolling that ensure that there is not a huge swing of traffic from one bridge to the other. Tolling for existing facilities like the Abernethy Bridge will take a different set of considerations.
YES TO ALL THREE, WITH CONDITIONS
NO TOLLING FOR ANY OF THEM
Former House Speaker Tina Kotek (D) Oregon’s infrastructure needs immediate attention. Our bridges were not constructed to withstand earthquakes, making this a serious public safety issue. The plain truth is that we have urgent needs and not enough money to pay for them, so the people who use the roads and bridges should be part of funding the solutions. Any tolling proposal would need to meet strict requirements. For instance, the pricing proposals must be crafted through a strong public process, and the plans should be transparent—all funds must be used to improve our existing transportation infrastructure. And these proposals must be
Political consultant Bridget Barton (R) Both I-5 and I-205 are the key and virtually only routes for moving truck and auto traffic through our region. Already seriously overcongested, they cannot be further slowed or impeded by tolling. A 40-plus-year focus on light rail, bike lanes, and pedestrians has resulted in purposeful underfunding of necessary road projects…. The very suggestion of adding additional tolls in the face of historic inflation, supply chain issues, and businesses still reeling from COVID is nothing short of government malpractice. As governor, I will look for ways to reduce the tax burden on Oregon families.
NAHAN.
Former state Rep. Christine Drazan (R) Gridlock on our highways is a threat to public safety and our economy, and a huge frustration for Oregonians trying to get to work or school. We can’t tax our way out of traffic—we need more lanes. Tolling is not the answer, especially when tolling doesn’t add capacity but simply pushes drivers off our highways to side streets. We must use existing revenues to strengthen our transportation system and reduce traffic, including those made available by the recent bipartisan infrastructure package approved by Congress, instead of placing a new tax on Oregonians in the form of a toll. Former state Sen. Betsy Johnson, unaffiliated Let me understand this: Charging me again for the roads we built with my tax money and then telling me when I can drive on them? How about hell no. I do not like tolling, I do not like it here or there, I do not find tolling fair, I won’t support it anywhere. Dr. Bud Pierce (R) I am opposed to tolls in a state awash in revenue and which has failed to economize in order to fund priorities such as the building of roads and bridges. I would seek, as possible, the transfer of funding for mass transit expansion to the building of new roads and bridges. No tolls to pay for ongoing maintenance that is to be paid for by current revenue flows. I am absolutely against congestion tolling. We must create more roadways. Sandy Mayor Stan Pulliam (R) Taxpayers fund government infrastructure projects through gas and other taxes and fees that are already too high. I do NOT support government tolls on top of taxes to fund these projects.
SAFE REST SITES
Dan Ryan pledged six safe rest villages. Where are the other three?
Locations: Last July, Ryan asked all city bureaus for a list of available properties owned by the city that could be used as sites for safe rest villages. Seventy were suggested, though most were quickly ruled out. Three sites were seriously discussed: a portion of the parking
HOW MUCH? $250,000 WHO GOT IT? Bring Balance to Salem, a political action committee formed in November to elect Republicans to the Oregon Legislature. WHO GAVE IT? Murphy Company, a Eugene-based wood products manufacturer. WHY DOES IT MATTER? The quarter-million-dollar donation from the company (as well as two more contributions of the same size from other donors) raises the newly formed PAC’s war chest to more than a million dollars. That’s a sizable chunk of change in legislative races, especially this early in the election cycle. The donors so far represent the fiscal-conservative end of the Republican Party, seeking to influence state government in a year when Democrats may struggle. Former U.S. Congressman Greg Walden’s sister-inlaw Marta Simmons is one of two people identified as working with the PAC. Walden’s connection could mean it will become a fundraising powerhouse. Notably, the PAC has reported no expenditures at this point. WHAT DOES MURPHY SAY? A company representative did not immediately return calls seeking comment. R AC H E L M O N A H A N .
THE SITES THAT WEREN’T It’s been nine months since City Commissioner Dan Ryan pledged to open six “safe rest villages” across the city as an alternative to street camping. In that time, his office has selected only three locations. As the clock ticks on Ryan’s pledge, we examine the status of the other three promised villages.
CONTRIBUTION OF THE WEEK
lot at the Expo Center, a parking lot adjacent to Errol Heights Park in Southeast Portland, and the former campus of Whitaker School in Northeast Portland. What happened: Less than a week after Ryan announced possible locations for the villages in late September, the city reversed itself on the paved lot near Errol Heights Park in the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood because it was in a flood zone along Johnson Creek, something the city hadn’t checked before selecting it. Ryan’s office and officials at Metro, the agency that owns the Expo Center, couldn’t agree on a parking
lot to lease there for people living in their vehicles (“Long Term Parking,” WW, Nov. 10, 2021). Metro offered the city a gravel lot, but Ryan’s team said in September the city could only work with a paved lot. After nearly a year of negotiations, the deal fell through—the city said the cost of making the gravel lot suitable was too high. Ryan first approached Portland Public Schools about the Whitaker School site next to Fernhill Park in the Concordia neighborhood in October. (The school shut down in 2001 after WW reported high levels of toxic chemicals in the ground there.) The Portland School Board shot down the idea in January. Board member Julia Brim Edwards said at the time, “We have a fiduciary responsibility to use our land and properties to support PPS on our mission of educating students, and this proposal doesn’t hit that mark.”
What’s next: Bryan Aptekar, the safe rest village communications liaison, says Ryan’s office is now in “conversation with several property owners about specific locations right now.” It won’t discuss those locations. Neighborhoods have balked at Ryan’s approach to community engagement: Select a site first, then talk to nearby residents. That method has intensified backlash to each selected location, but Ryan’s office says it’s the right way to do it. “Once we know a site is viable, meaning there are no significant zoning or permitting concerns and the property owners support the concept, among other things, then we announce the site,” Aptekar says. In October, Ryan’s office provided a list of reasons why the timeline kept getting pushed back. It cited labor shortages, “universal support for the concept of safe
rest villages, but near universal disapproval of any specific proposed location (strong NIMBYism),” hesitation from landowners to offer their land, and media leaks about locations before they became public. Ryan’s office says all of those barriers still stand. On Feb. 18, Mayor Ted Wheeler announced his intention to seek more locations for sanctioned homeless camps—each of them far larger than Ryan’s villages. Ryan voiced skepticism: “I’m all in for urgency—but I cannot support this idea to corral hundreds of vulnerable people without social services, without community safety assurances, or a strategic management plan in place.” As of press deadline, the city has not sheltered a single person at any of its pledged homeless villages. S O P H I E P E E L .
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
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NEWS
Rekindling the Fire Potential buyers want to bring women’s professional basketball back to Portland, but they will need support from Trail Blazers ownership. BY S O P H I E P E E L
speel@wweek .com
For a brief moment, women’s professional basketball had a home in Portland. The Portland Fire played in what was then called the Rose Garden and amassed a loyal following: more than 8,000 fans a night. That was 20 years ago. The Fire skipped town in 2002, after then-Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen declined to add them to his portfolio of sports franchises. But now at least two parties are interested in bringing a WNBA team back to Portland, sources familiar with the discussions tell WW. One of them is a Vancouver, Wash., tech founder named Kirk Brown. Brown co-founded DiscoverOrg and left the company in 2015 before it changed its name to ZoomInfo after acquiring a competitor in 2019. ZoomInfo, which went public in 2020, offers data and intelligence to help marketing companies increase their sales. Brown remains a shareholder and partial owner, and public databases list him as a billionaire. A representative confirmed the size of Brown’s fortune, but declined to discuss the specifics of his interest in a WNBA team. It’s not clear who the other interested party is, but four people familiar with discussions say a second group has also made inquiries regarding the placement of a new team in the Rose Quarter. The biggest complication: the current occupant—the Blazers. At first glance, returning professional women’s basketball looks like a shot as clean as a Sabrina Ionescu jumper. Portland and Oregon have long been powerhouses for women’s sports. The Portland Thorns’ attendance is the envy of every other women’s professional soccer team. The University of Oregon and Oregon State University are annually in the top echelon of women’s college basketball programs. Nike offers major clout. Jim Etzel, CEO of Sport Oregon, a nonprofit that promotes sports across the state, says Portland is an obvious choice for a WNBA expansion. “I would think the league would be interested in Portland, and I know potential owners are,” Etzel says. “Do I think that it can be successful here? Yes.” But if a WNBA team wants to come back, it would need the approval of the Trail Blazers, who currently control the two major sports arenas in Portland. Rip City Management, an arm of the Blazers’ ownership group Vulcan, is currently under contract with the city to manage and operate both Moda Center and Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum— where a WNBA team would likely play if it returned. That means Rip City ownership—that is, Vulcan—controls all vendors and event scheduling at both venues. The contract to manage the Coliseum is up for renewal next year. It’s expected to get renewed with little pushback. It’s beneficial for both parties: It guarantees the arena’s not a financial albatross for the city, and the Trail Blazers ensure that events held at Memorial Coliseum don’t interfere with Blazers games and attendance. But renewal of the Coliseum contract is also the first step in a delicate negotiation over the future of the Blazers in Portland. Moda Center’s lease is up for renewal in 2025. Built in 1995, it’s one of the oldest arenas in the NBA. Paul Allen’s death in 2018 meant his sister, Jody Allen, became the trustee of his estate, including the Blazers. Rumors that she plans to sell the team have bubbled for the past four years—and sports business experts say the Moda Center lease negotiations will be the first concrete signal of her intentions. 8
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
The addition of another professional sports team to the Rose Quarter—competing for Portlanders’ dollars—would further complicate that dance. Be that as it may, the Blazers tell WW they would welcome a WNBA team. “It is no surprise to us that there may be parties interested in bringing a WNBA team to the market and, quite frankly, we welcome conversations about bringing a team to the Rose Quarter,” says Dewayne Hankins, president of business operations for the Blazers. The Blazers did not specify which venue they might offer, if any. The uncertain future of the Blazers is one reason to wonder how enthusiastic Allen would be about a new basketball team. Another is that Vulcan already had an opportunity to keep the WNBA in Portland—and declined. In 2002, only three years after the Fire arrived in Portland, WNBA teams were given an ultimatum: be bought out by your NBA counterpart, find a new owner, or fold. The Fire’s chairman was Paul Allen. He chose not to buy the team. Another ownership deal fell through. The Portland Fire left. It was a short stint, tying as the briefest run ever for a WNBA team. Fire center Jenny Mowe was playing overseas in China when she got an email in late 2002: No buyer had been found for her team. “I came back to the States and was like, ‘What happened?’ By then, the team was all dispersed already,” says Mowe. “There was no goodbye party; it was just, ‘Oh, I got redrafted.’” Mowe says no one ever really knew why Allen didn’t buy the team: “I was told he didn’t want us, that we were a distraction to the Blazers.”
“The league and potential owners would be interested in Portland. Do I think that it can be successful here? Yes. Portland is definitely on the market.”
COME BACK: Fans could see former University of Oregon star Sabrina Ionescu play twice a year if a WNBA team returned to Portland.
When Mowe came back stateside, she heard that there had, in fact, been a potential buyer: the duo of former Blazer Clyde Drexler and eccentric Clackamas business tycoon Terry Emmert. It fell through. “Let me put it this way: They threw a lot of money down the drain that we would have given them,” Emmert tells WW. “We offered them a very fair price. How politics works in professional sports leaves a lot to be desired.” Twenty years later, Portland hasn’t gotten a second shot at a WNBA team. There are only 12 WNBA franchises, with 12 roster spots apiece. Seven of the teams are independently owned, and the remaining five are owned by their cities’ NBA teams. The WNBA plays a 36-game season, less than half the length of the NBA’s, and it runs from May through mid-August, when the NBA is largely on hiatus. Memorial Coliseum, with fewer than 13,000 seats, is an attractive arena for a league that averaged 6,500 fans per game in 2019, the last pre-COVID season. The WNBA has sought to grow its fan base and revenue in recent years, and even fundraised $75 million earlier this month, with contributions coming from sports businesses, team owners and companies such as Nike. And while a handful of cities and potential owners are hungry for a team—Oakland is a strong contender, as is Houston—WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has warned that the WNBA needs to build more revenue before it expands. Sandi Bittler, who was vice president of business affairs for the Fire, says it’s a perfect time to bring back a team. “We needed a little more time, and we just didn’t get it,” Bittler says. “The Timbers and Thorns have shown there’s enough room in the city for multiple teams.”
NEWS JOHN RUDOFF
OFF THE BALLOT: Sheryl WuDunn and Nick Kristof last week.
Party On BY N I G E L J AQ U I S S
njaquiss@wweek .com
When the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed the disqualification of Democratic candidate for governor Nicholas Kristof on Feb. 17, it marked a reset for the May primary. The seeming beneficiary of Kristof’s political demise: the likely front-runner, former House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland), who no longer faces a well-funded insurgent aggressively criticizing the state’s performance under her leadership. Even before the ink was dry on the court’s ruling, however, Kotek had a rougher than expected time securing the endorsement of a key labor union. Delegates from the Oregon Education Association met remotely Feb. 19—but unlike Service Employees International Union, which came out strongly for Kotek last month, the teachers struggled to make a choice. No candidate got a majority on the first ballot, according to an OEA spokesperson, sending the vote to a runoff for the first time since 2006. Ultimately, Kotek eked out 51% of the vote. Now, she and State Treasurer Tobias Read will compete for the party faithful—and Kristof partisans. One obvious question is where Kristof’s supporters will land.
With Nicholas Kristof out of the Democratic primary, where will his supporters go?
Although most of the $2.75 million the former journalist raised came from out of state, Kristof secured contributions from more than 6,500 Oregonians—far more than either of his opponents. We asked some of them: What now? Dan Clay: The president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 made an early and bold statement in November, when his union’s political action committee gave Kristof his largest donation ($75,000). Clay makes no effort to hide his feelings about Kristof’s disqualification. “Last week’s ruling was a powerful defense of establishment politics,” Clay says. “The only winners are the stale ideas of the status quo upon which Oregon’s problems will continue to comfortably rest. The real losers here are Oregonians, who once again will have only politics as usual as an option on their ballot.” Clay adds that the union is still pondering whether to seek a refund of its contribution. “Neither UFCW 555 nor Mr. Kristof thinks that this calls for snap decisions made in the heat of the moment,” he says. Glen Van Peski: Van Peski is a Bend resident and the founder and chairman of Gossamer Gear, which makes backpacking equipment.
“If I hadn’t been flying home at the time, I would have made a donation to Betsy [Johnson] within minutes of reading the Supreme Court’s opinion. She has been a family friend for as long as I can remember and someone I have worked closely with over the years. I have now contributed to her.” His contribution ($10,000) was among Kristof’s largest from an Oregon resident. “I switched my party registration [from Republican] so I could vote for Nick in the primary, but I’ll be switching it back now,” Van Peski says. “Nick is a friend from backpacking, and while we hold different opinions in many, maybe even most areas, I have found him through the years to be committed to making the world better.” Van Peski says he’s not looking for his money back. “If I trust Nick with the future of Oregon,” he says, “I sure trust him with my contribution.”
Peter Bragdon: A longtime Democratic insider, the former chief of staff to Gov. Ted Kulongoski, and now general counsel at Columbia Sportswear, Bragdon was an early Kristof backer ($5,340). “If I hadn’t been flying home at the time, I would have made a donation to Betsy [Johnson] within minutes of reading the Supreme Court’s opinion,” Bragdon says. “She has been a family friend for as long as I can remember and someone I have worked closely with over the years. I have now contributed to her.” Bragdon says Kristof and Johnson have a similar appeal: “They are obviously very different in their views, but I am not looking for someone I agree with all or most of the time. I am looking for a fresh approach to the governorship and someone whose judgment I can trust.” John Russell: Another longtime Democratic insider, downtown Portland real estate investor Russell currently holds one of the most coveted gubernatorial appointments in the state: a seat on the Oregon Investment Council. Russell was one of the few non-journalists at Kristof’s post-decision press conference last week. He also donated office space to the candidate for a total contribution of $5,500. “Kristof attracted me because he’s the only candidate that gave me hope for a positive future for Oregon,” Russell says. “I absolutely would like him to run again. I think he was qualified to be on the ballot and to be a dominant figure in Oregon politics.” Unlike other Kristof supporters, Russell plans to support a Democrat in the May primary—he just won’t say which one. Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
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WW FILE PHOTO
T HE D E C L INE O F R O B E R T PA MP L IN ’ S FA MILY E MP IR E L E A D S T O F IN A N C I A L ME A S UR E S T H AT A L A R M E X P E R T S . B Y NIG E L J A Q UIS S
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Land Swapping Robert Boisseau Pamplin Jr. casts a large shadow over the state of Oregon and beyond. The Pamplin School of Business at the University of Portland bears his name; so does the athletic center at Lewis & Clark College. In Virginia, there is a $40 million Pamplin Historical Park and a Pamplin School of Business at Virginia Tech. Pamplin, 80, is president of R.B. Pamplin Corp., a sprawling and family-owned enterprise that includes a string of Southern textile mills and, in Oregon, an 81,000acre cattle ranch, a vineyard and a 900-acre Yamhill County farm. For many years, Pamplin was a fixture on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans. In Portland, his company owns Ross Island, the leafy, crescent-shaped archipelago that splits the Willamette River downtown and is a magnet for kayakers. Also in the R.B. Pamplin Corp. portfolio: the state’s largest news organization, with 24 papers that include the Portland Tribune. “No individual in Oregon has done more to support local journalism than Dr. Robert B. Pamplin Jr.,” says Mark Garber, president and publisher of the Pamplin Media Group. Yet, as the Tribune celebrates its 21st birthday this month, interviews and a review of public records paint a picture of a crumbling empire. That decline, some experts believe, may be jeopardizing the pensions of nearly 2,400 current and former R.B. Pamplin Corp. employees. A three-month investigation by WW found: • More than four dozen lawsuits filed in state and federal courts in recent years against Ross Island Sand & Gravel and other R.B. Pamplin Corp. companies for unpaid bills. • Tax liens filed by federal, state and local governments against three of R.B. Pamplin Corp.’s companies and, briefly, by the state of Oregon against Pamplin himself for failure to pay state income taxes. (Many liens have now been released.) • The Pamplin companies’ recent and, experts say, highly unusual sales and contributions of his companies’ real estate to his employees’ pension fund. Those transactions appear to shift risk to pensioners and funnel cash to Pamplin operating companies. And, according to pension experts WW spoke with, some of the transactions may violate federal pension law. One of those experts, Terry Deneen, a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Pension Rights Center, examined a number of those real estate transactions and went so far as to say there appears to a “systematic looting of the pension plan.” “I can’t believe he’s getting away with it,” Deneen says. WW reached out to Pamplin on Feb. 2 and, after he declined an interview, submitted written questions on Feb. 6. Two of his top executives, Garber and R.B Pamplin Corp. chief financial officer Andrea Marek, responded to questions about financial issues to say that Pamplin, R.B. Pamplin Corp. and its subsidiaries have acted legally and honorably in all instances, including the real estate transactions. “During COVID, there was great disruption, not just for us, but for everybody,” the executives say. “We have addressed these issues, and they have been resolved or are being successfully managed. Through hard work and diligence, our companies have emerged stronger and are growing through acquisitions.” 12
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Mount Vernon Mills 1 Corporate Office Building Mauldin, SC
One interested stakeholder: Gary Nordby, a 73-yearold retiree who spent 35 years working for a local R.B. Pamplin Corp. paving company. Nordby had no idea that Pamplin’s companies transferred real estate to the pension fund. “This is the first I’ve heard of it, and I don’t like the sound of it,” says Nordby, whose gravelly voice reflects decades of inhaling sulfurous asphalt fumes. “I don’t want to get screwed out of my pension—I worked hard for it.”
LaFrance Facility 2 Anderson, SC 3 Smith and Waters Ware Shoals, SC 4 Alto Land Alto, GA
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obert Pamplin Jr. was born into a family of extraordinary wealth. From the 1950s through ’70s, Pamplin’s father, Robert Pamplin Sr., built Georgia Pacific, then headquartered in Portland, into one the nation’s largest publicly traded forest products companies. The private company he founded, R.B. Pamplin Corp., also bought Oregon companies that included Ross Island Sand & Gravel and built one of the nation’s biggest privately held textile companies, South Carolina-based Mount Vernon Mills. The elder Pamplin had only one child, Robert Jr., who, after graduating from Lincoln High School and Lewis & Clark College, soon joined the family enterprise. The younger Pamplin added more businesses to the family holdings: a Christian music company and bookstore chain, farming and ranching operations, radio stations and newspapers. Today, the front page of every Pamplin newspaper and every online news story features a thumbnail illustration of a smiling Pamplin alongside the caption: “Owner and neighbor, Dr. Robert B. Pamplin, Jr.” (His two doctorates are from an online, for-profit school and Western Seminary on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard.) Pamplin’s 10-page résumé includes, in granular detail, a summary of his physical accomplishments (“able to do 500 push-ups, 75 chin-ups, and 1,000 sit-ups”) and offers examples of his adventures: “Escaped Kenya tribal war and killed a charging buffalo.” Pamplin, an ordained minister who says he’s written 44 books, also produced two feature-length films about his family. He hired Hollywood actors Hal Holbrook and Corbin Bernsen for key roles in A Place Apart, a 1999 biopic of his travails at Virginia Tech (he left after a year of hazing), and also made The Other Shore: An American Journey, which is billed as the “1000-year family saga of the Pamplin family.” Despite his philanthropy and multimedia interests, Pamplin remains relatively unknown both by employees and by people in his professional and social spheres. After Pamplin launched the Tribune in 2001, he occasionally wandered through the newsroom, handing out $50 bills. It was an odd, if welcome, gesture. “Anybody born with that much money is going to be a little eccentric,” says former Tribune columnist Phil Stanford. Stanford and his former colleagues say Pamplin rarely interacted with newsroom employees after 9/11, which accelerated a decline in print advertising. Others in the community haven’t seen much of the industrialist either. “I really thought that Pamplin and I would have had something in common to talk about,” says Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle. “There’s not a lot of apparel manufacturers in Portland.” Pamplin and Boyle have also supported many of the
5 Trion Lodge Trion GA 6 Alto Fabric Plant Warehouse Alto, GA 7 Gresham Press Property 8 Lake Oswego Property 9 Madras Property 10 Prineville Property 8 Yamhill County 11 Properties 12 Tait Property Portland 13 Albina Property Portland 14 Ross Island Portland R.B. Pamplin Corp. and its subsidiaries contributed or sold 21 properties from 2018 to 2020 to the Pamplin pension fund. The fund subsequently resold four of them. In 2021, the Pamplin companies sold another $13 million in real estate to the fund but have not yet disclosed the properties’ locations. Source: U.S. Department of Labor
same nonprofits. No matter. “I tried to reach out to him a few times but never got anywhere,” Boyle says. Allen Alley, the former CEO of Pixelworks, an Oregon tech company, and two-time candidate for governor, shares interests and geography with Pamplin: Both are Republicans and, for 23 years, were neighbors in an exclusive Lake Oswego Homeowners Association where Pamplin’s $5.5 million home is one of just a dozen residences. “He and his wife were very nice,” Alley says, “but they didn’t interact with others much.”
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omewhere along the way, the wheels started to fall off the R.B. Pamplin Corp. empire. The most obvious problem: the implosion of the U.S. textile business. Over the past 40 years, federal figures show, foreign competition and automation have cost the industry 85% of its U.S. jobs. R.B. Pamplin Corp.’s Mount Vernon Mills subsidiary
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“I don’t want to get screwed out of my pension—I worked hard for it.”
The income tax liens—which give the government a security interest similar to a mortgage—reflect unpaid withholding taxes before the pandemic began. “Failure to pay withholding taxes means he’s absolutely in extremis,” Deneen says. “The red light is flashing that the nuclear power plant is melting down.” Two top R.B. Pamplin executives—Pamplin Media president Garber and CFO Marek—dispute that. “Both the R.B. Pamplin Corporation and Ross Island are profitable and have ample funds to take care of financial needs, including lease payments, with no distress,” they say.
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hree pension lawyers WW interviewed say the most curious aspect of R.B. Pamplin’s Corp.’s financial dealings may be the way that Robert Pamplin, as the trustee or “fiduciary” for the corporation’s $98.4 million pension plan, is using money set aside for pensioners as a source of cash for the companies.
CONT. on page 14
used to operate 18 plants. Now, according to its website, the company is down to six. The corporation also closed its Christian music and retail businesses, jettisoned radio stations and, in 2019, auctioned off the fleet of 38 yellowand-black Ross Island cement mixers that used to roar out of the company’s Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard headquarters like a swarm of bumblebees. The corporation’s Oregon companies exhibited financial troubles well before the pandemic. In recent years, for example, dozens of lawsuits targeted Ross Island Sand & Gravel for nonpayment of basic obligations. In addition to vendors who sued for nonpayment, the federal government has come after Ross Island Sand & Gravel, Pamplin Communications companies, and Columbia Empire Farms for unpaid income taxes. Records show current federal tax liens against Pamplin Communications and its subsidiaries of about $900,000 (see “Lien on Me,” page 16).
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FORMER
F O R
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ROSS ISLAND SAND & GRAVEL TA I T 2611 SE 4th Ave / Portland, OR 97202
Virtual Tour
2611 SE 4th Ave / Portland, OR 97202
SALE PRICE: $3,195,000 Call for lease quote INVESTMENT HIGHLIGHTS
PROPERTY DETAILS
• Large waterfront redevelopment site
Parcel Number
• Rare urban, industrial site
Land Area
2.90 Acres
• Riverfront views
Zoning
IH - Heavy Industrial
R197256
• Immediate access to public transit & OR-99E
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NEW PRICE: After the Pamplin pension fund paid $4.8 million for a shuttered concrete plant, it was later relisted for $3.195 million.
w w w. c b r e . u s / p o r t l a n d
The Sunken Barge
On Oct. 24, 2020, a Ross Island Sand & Gravel dredging barge sank in the San Joaquin River at the Port of Stockton, Calif. Although Ross Island Sand & Gravel closed Portland concrete operations in 2019, Ross Island remained in the dredging business, deepening navigable waters by scooping material from river bottoms. For decades, the company has deployed dredging vessels on waters in Oregon and California. But when salvagers raised the sunken Ross Island barge from the bottom of the river, court records show it bore the signs of long-term neglect. The barge, according to court records, hadn’t been surveyed in almost 25 years, which a specialist who examined it said was highly unusual. “There apparently had been no inspections or repairs to the hull or internal bulkheads since [1997],” says a complaint filed in federal court in California by the insurance company Starr Indemnity, seeking to recoup $2.6 million in cleanup costs, alleging Ross Island failed to maintain the barge or inform the insurer of its true condition. Ross Island is contesting the lawsuit, and company officials declined to comment. N J . 14
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
For one thing, companies the size of R.B. Pamplin Corp. often use independent professionals as trustees to safeguard their pension funds. U.S. Department of Labor filings, however, show Robert Pamplin Jr. serves as sole trustee for his employees’ pension fund. While there is no law preventing the owner of a company from also being the lone guardian of the company’s employee retirement fund, lawyers say that doing so can create conflicts of interest between requirements of the employer (R.B. Pamplin Corp. and its subsidiaries) and the needs of pensioners. Robert Pamplin wears both hats: He is president of R.B. Pamplin Corp. and its subsidiaries, and trustee of the companies’ pension fund. More unusual is R.B. Pamplin Corp. and its subsidiaries’ recent practice of contributing and, more frequently, selling real estate to their employees’ pension fund. Prior to 2018, the pension plan’s written contribution policy called on the parent company (R.B. Pamplin Corp.) to contribute cash every year to fund its pension obligations. In 2018, records show, that policy changed to allow “cash contributions or property contributions.” That same year, R.B. Pamplin Corp. stopped contributing cash to fund its retirees’ pensions and switched to contributing real estate. Since then, according to annual filings with the Department of Labor, R.B. Pamplin Corp. and some of its subsidiaries have completed more than 20 real estate transactions with the pension fund, contributing real estate in lieu of annual cash contributions and, more frequently, selling real estate to the fund. The pension fund now owns two Ross Island Sand & Gravel properties; two former Mount Vernon Mills properties in the South; six winery properties in Yamhill County; and Gresham and Lake Oswego properties formerly owned by Pamplin Communications, among others. (Since the real estate transactions began, filings show, R.B. Pamplin Corp. and subsidiaries have sold $38.3 million worth of property and contributed $10.8 million worth. The pension has resold some $12 million in properties to third parties, leaving $37 million worth of property in the fund, as of Oct. 15, 2021.) The federal Department of Labor, which regulates pensions, discourages operating companies from doing business with their pension funds. The selling or contribution of real estate in lieu of required cash contributions to a pension fund by a related party is, according to the Department of Labor, a “prohibited transaction.” “Plan fiduciaries [such as Robert Pamplin] have an obligation to avoid engaging in ‘prohibited transactions,’ which the statute specifically prohibits, because of the dangers posed by the conflicts of interest associated with such transactions,” says Michael Petersen, a DOL spokesman.
The department does permit such transactions in limited situations, but only if they meet certain criteria and qualify for an exemption. The accounting firm that prepares R.B. Pamplin Corp.’s annual DOL filings writes, “The Plan Trustee [Pamplin] believes” the property transactions would qualify for DOL exemptions. To qualify, the transactions must represent a fair price and cannot personally benefit the fiduciary. That belief has never been tested. “[DOL] has not received an application from nor granted an exemption to the R.B. Pamplin Pension Plan,” Petersen, the DOL spokesman, says. Garber and Marek insist the real estate transactions are above reproach. “All of the properties were purchased by or contributed to the plan at fair value, and no personal benefits were received by any plan fiduciary or other person,” they say. Garber and Marek also note that much of the real es-
BRIAN BURK
No Man Is an Island
CONCRETE JUNGLE: A bird’s-eye view of Ross Island Sand & Gravel’s shuttered plant just north of the Ross Island Bridge.
“It leaves the pension fund with a very high concentration of risk,” he says. “The domestic textile industry is bust. Print journalism is in terrible shape. His sand and gravel business is mostly closed,” Deneen adds. “He’s sitting on three-legged stool where all the legs have collapsed underneath him.”
O
ne large transaction shows the potential risks that real estate creates for pensioners. In March 2019, two months after Ross Island Sand & Gravel closed its concrete business, records show, the company sold a closed concrete plant on 2.9 acres at 2611 SE 4th Avenue to the pension fund for $4.8 million cash. Garber and Marek say the sale was appropriate and legal: “The auditors of the plan and legal experts continue to find no conflict with Dr. Pamplin being trustee and an officer with the R.B. Pamplin Corporation.” The property, however, was far from the sort of low-
risk, blue chip asset the DOL prefers pension funds to own. And the price the pension fund paid to Ross Island Sand & Gravel raised some eyebrows. The year after RISG sold the plant to the pension fund for $4.8 million, the fund then put the property on the open market at $3.195 million, $1.6 million less than the fund paid RISG for the property. Even at that price, it didn’t sell. One prospective buyer, Richard Freimark, tells WW he wanted to buy the property but walked away when he says Pamplin’s broker refused to provide an environmental report or let Freimark do his own environmental testing. Portland’s industrial waterfront is notoriously polluted, so a buyer would want to know what’s in the dirt after decades of industrial use. “That was the biggest red flag,” Freimark says. “[The broker] told us they didn’t have the environmental report.” Garber disputes any information was withheld. “We
CONT. on page 16
tate sold to the pension fund is being leased back by the selling companies at market rates, as the DOL requires. “The real properties provide an income stream that is greater than the dividends and interest provided from stocks and bonds,” Marek and Garber say. “Also, owner-operated properties used in their business avoids irrational changes in value, and leaseback ensures a steady stream of income.” Deneen, the pension expert, says the transactions don’t pass the smell test. DOL rules say that no exemption applies unless the fiduciary acts “‘prudently’ and ‘solely in the interest’ of the plan’s participants and beneficiaries.” For a variety of reasons, Deneen says, the real estate transactions are imprudent. Real estate, he notes, is illiquid and riskier than bonds and blue chip stocks; industrial property carries environmental liabilities; and the properties are leased back to companies that are shedding jobs and struggling financially.
Just before Christmas 2021, environmental advocates learned that the state of Oregon had granted Ross Island Sand & Gravel a lengthy extension on its obligation to restore Willamette River habitat damaged by 75 years of mining at Ross Island. “We were blindsided,” says Bob Sallinger, director of conservation at the Audubon Society of Portland, which pushed for a reclamation plan 20 years ago. In 2002, Ross Island finalized an agreement with the Oregon Department of State Lands, which regulates river bottoms. That plan followed a blistering Oregonian investigation of Ross Island’s mishandling of contaminated soil the company used to begin refilling the river bottom, which had been mined to a depth of 125 feet. In a 2001 interview with WW about why his company was getting into the newspaper business, Pamplin groused about the daily’s coverage. “They weren’t balanced,” he said as his company launched the Tribune to compete with The O. The company told the state it would reclaim the river bottom with clean fill and restore upland habitat. Two decades later, the work isn’t close to being finished. “Our expectation was they would complete the reclamation by 2013, but that wasn’t put into permits so couldn’t be enforced,” Sallinger says. The DSL has now placed an enforceable end date on the company: 2035. N J .
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BRIAN BURK
Lien on Me
PENSION ASSET: Regulators want pension funds to hold AAA bonds and blue chip stocks. Pamplin pensioners own a lot of industrial real estate, like the concrete plant shown here.
worked extensively with potential buyers on environmental information,” he says. The pension fund has now reduced the value of the property in federal filings to $2.5 million. (Garber and Marek attribute the decline in value to a city land use change.) James Ambrose, a Portland pension lawyer, also reviewed the R.B. Pamplin Corp. pension fund’s 2020 DOL filings, which disclose the sale of the concrete plant and the other property transactions. Ambrose says he found the filings remarkable because the transactions violate settled pension law. “I am very disheartened that a major company with easy access to sophisticated, competent counsel and accounting expertise has engaged in activity that blatantly disregards the clear rules under which everyone is obliged to comply,” Ambrose says. “One would be hard pressed, to say the least, to even come up with a defensible position to support these actions.”
A
nother aspect of the R.B. Pamplin Corp. pension fund particularly concerns experts. Even if the real estate transactions between an employer and its pension fund were to qualify for exemptions, the Department of Labor strictly limits the amount of related-party real estate a pension fund can hold to 10% of the fund’s total assets. “The purpose of the 10% cap and other limitations is to protect plans from conflicts of interest and from the obvious danger of concentrating too much risk in one company,” the DOL’s Petersen says.
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As of the end of 2021, however, federal filings show the R.B. Pamplin Corporation and Subsidiaries Pension Plan and Trust holds real estate it acquired from R.B. Pamplin Corp. and subsidiaries that amounts to nearly 38% of its total assets. “I don’t see how they could be in compliance with the law,” says professor Norman Stein, who teaches pension law at the Drexel Kline School of Law in Philadelphia. Petersen, the DOL spokesman, says the consequences for exceeding the 10% cap can include penalties and excise taxes for the trustee and, potentially, undoing the improper transactions. He declined to comment on specific R.B. Pamplin Corp. pension plan transactions or whether the agency is investigating them. Garber and Marek say they don’t believe the pension plan’s holdings are improper and insist all of the real estate transactions were legal and prudent and “no monetary penalty is imposed for violation of the 10% real property rule.” “Most importantly,” they add, “the pension plan has never been late or failed to pay the beneficiaries when due.” Bill Gallagher, who worked as a radio journalist for Pamplin Communications, is one of the retirees who relies on his monthly Pamplin pension check to make ends meet. He says he hopes his pension is safe. “I’m counting on the Department of Labor’s rules and regulations,” Gallagher says. “And my belief is that Dr. Pamplin will do the right thing.”
Over the past four years, various suppliers and one lender have won judgments against certain R.B. Pamplin Corp. subsidiaries. Labor groups successfully sued Ross Island Sand & Gravel dozens of times in federal court for failing to make contractually required payments to union benefit and retirement trusts (both are separate from the R.B. Pamplin Corp. pension fund for nonunion workers). Nearly all the lawsuits WW reviewed were decided against Pamplin Corp. companies. In addition to the raft of lawsuits against Ross Island Sand & Gravel, other Pamplin Corp. subsidiaries have struggled to make payments. For instance, Columbia Empire Farms got sued in 2020 for failure to pay Federal Express ($14,500) and a trucking company, Dominion Freight Lines ($41,450). Long before RISG closed its Portland concrete operations, the company regularly ranked among Multnomah County’s largest property tax nonpayers, running balances in the low to mid-six figures. County records show the company currently owes $440,000. Multnomah County charges 16% interest on property tax delinquencies. RISG effectively borrowed from the county at that rate, an expensive form of financing. In 2019, Robert Pamplin briefly failed to pay his quarterly personal income taxes to the Oregon Department of Revenue. The agency filed a lien against him for $138,000 on Sept. 27. He paid it off less than a month later. The Internal Revenue Service and Oregon Department of Revenue require employers to withhold income taxes from workers’ paychecks and send that money to taxing authorities. Experts say failure to pay is a sure sign of financial distress. “You don’t want to screw with the IRS on withholding of employee tax payments,” says Terry Deneen, a fellow at the Pension Rights Center. “It’s not your money; it’s the IRS’s money and the employees’ money.” In 2020, the IRS filed a total of just over $2 million in tax liens against R.B. Pamplin Corp.’s news businesses; it filed another $500,000 in liens against Ross Island and affiliates, and a $325,000 lien against Columbia Empire Farms. The companies have now paid off all but $900,000 of those liens. NJ.
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STREET
GONE FISHIN’ Photos by Chris Nesseth On Instagram: @chrisnesseth
Anglers, hunters and outdoors enthusiasts gathered at the Portland Expo Center on Feb. 16-20 for the Pacific Northwest Sportsmen’s Show, where there were booths with experts in their fields along with an arrow-shooting gallery.
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WILLAMETTE WEEK
Saturday, March 26 @ 8pm
Alberta Rose Theatre
Featuring this city‛s top five comics, as chosen by their peers.
TICKETS ON $ALE NEXT WEEK! This years’ winners will be announced 3/23 in WW!
Hosted by
Katie Nguyen
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STARTERS
T H E MOST I MP ORTANT P O RTLA N D C U LTU R E STORI E S OF T H E W E E K—G RA P H E D .
R E A D M O R E A B O U T TH E S E STO R I E S AT WW E E K .CO M .
RIDICULOUS
The Portland Pickles recover their stolen mascot.
COMFORT SHOES FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY
Mon-Sat 10-6pm Sunday 11-5pm
1433 NE Broadway St Portland • 503 493-0070
Portland is getting its first zero-proof bar.
Paddy’s will host a traditional St. Patrick’s Day street festival with no attendance cap.
Cirque du Soleil is bringing its big top back to Portland this summer.
Boxer returns from a lengthy pandemic closure and drops “Ramen” from its name.
Get Busy Tonight
San Diego-based Modern Times Beer has closed the Belmont Fermentorium.
Fire-damaged Highway 224 is expected to reopen by May 1. The Thompson Elk statue will return to its downtown pedestal.
OUR EVENT PICKS, E M A I L E D W E E K LY.
SERIOUS 20
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AW F U L
AW E S O M E
The classic Portland International Airport carpet will return to the renovated terminal in 2024.
�GO | Reset Button Arcade Grand Opening Between Ground Kontrol, QuarterWorld and multiple Wunderlands, the Portland area has become a nexus for arcades. Tigard is getting in on the action with the Reset Button Arcade, which will have its grand opening this weekend. Get ready for pinball and the chance to win prizes, including a year of free admission. Reset Button Arcade, 11945 SW Pacific Highway, Suite 240, Tigard, 971-717-8141, reset-button.com. Noon Saturday, Feb. 26. $8 for all-day unlimited play. WATCH | Harry Potter Movie Marathon Concludes
The Academy Theater’s 19-hour-plus geek extravaganza wraps up this week with director David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, in which the eponymous boy wizard battles Voldemort, Death Eaters, goblins, giants, giant spiders and some highly questionable old-age makeup. The Academy Theater, 7818 SE Stark St., 503-252-0500, academytheaterpdx.com. Friday-Thursday, Feb. 25-March 3. $4-$5.
EAT | Newberg Truffle Month
SEE | Magnus Martensson
The Nordic nations proved once again at the 2022 Beijing Games that they dominate winter sports. Though not quite as physically demanding an activity, those countries have mastered another type of performance: piano comedy. Magnus Martensson keeps the spirit of the late Victor Borge alive with his latest tour. No matter what you think about the genre of humor, you gotta give the guy credit for possessing the skills to play a grand piano and tell jokes at the same time. Nordic Northwest, 8800 SW Oleson Road, 503-977-0275, nordicnorthwest. org. 2 pm in person, 7 pm in person and online Saturday, Feb. 26. $10-$25.
Largest Native Plant Nursery
Visit: 3454 SE Powell, Portland Shop online: symbiop.com Call: (503) 893-8427
ADVERTISE in one of Willamette Week's upcoming special issues: Portland's Funniest
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SWE EKLY LAND ’S NEW
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E WEEK PORT
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P. 24 A THING?" WAS STILL
The truffle is arguably the state’s most valuable buried treasure, which makes Newberg and its surrounding forests where “X” marks the spot. The Oregon white truffle is in abundance in this area during February, which prompted Taste Newberg to declare this time of year Truffle Month. You still have a full weekend to take advantage of all the specials, which include everything from a five-course truffle dinner at a luxury resort to the release of Wolves & People Farmhouse Brewery’s truffled hazelnut stout to guided hunts for the precious tubers complete with trained truffle dogs. Various locations, tastenewberg. com/blog/trufflemonth. Through Feb. 28.
Largest Ecological Gift Shop
FOOTBALL YOU KNOW "HEY, DID
�GO | Cappella Romana When it comes to choral music, it doesn’t get much more elite than Cappella Romana, which is renowned for its performances of both early and contemporary sacred music. The ensemble’s 30th anniversary season continues with Kanon Pokajanen: The Kanon of Repentance by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, whose name alone has the power to make choir nerds gasp with delight. St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1716 NW Davis St., 503-228-4397, cappellaromana.org. 8 pm Saturday, Feb. 26. Christ the King Parish, 11709 SE Fuller Road, Milwaukie, 503-659-1475. 3 pm Sunday, Feb. 27. $30-$50.
COURTESY RESET BUTTON ARCADE
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STUFF TO DO IN PORTLAND THIS WEEK, INDOORS AND OUT.
Is Portland's Funniest Person
Quarantine comedy. can’t stop city’s Here are the as top comics, chosen by their peers.
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P. 6 Could Play Hooky. SCHOOLS: Teachers No Unity. P. 9 NEWS: All Timber, P. 25 ture , Take a Crea . MAP: Give a Creature
VOL 47/14 02.03.2021
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Top 5
Hot Plates WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.
1. PICCONE’S CORNER
3434 NE Sandy Blvd. #400, 503-2658263, picconescorner.com. 9 am-7 pm Tuesday-Saturday, 9 am-5 pm Sunday. This combination butcher shop-restaurant continues to fill a hole in the city’s dining scene that was left when Old Salt Marketplace closed. Now, Piccone’s Corner is serving all-day breakfast, setting our ham-loving hearts awhirl. The updated menu includes a substantial plate of two eggs, polenta cakes and bacon or sausage links, mushroom toast, and an obligatory grain bowl. But our eyes are set on the breakfast sandwich topped with your choice of house-cured pork from Wallow & Root farms.
2. SEBASTIANO’S
411 SE 81st Ave., 503-841-5905, sebastianospdx.com. 11 am-3 pm Wednesday-Saturday. As we continue to ride the Omicron crest, Montavilla’s Sicilian deli, Sebastiano’s, has launched a take-and-bake dinner program to keep you cozy through winter. Specials rotate, but the extra-large, Catanese-style arancini are a must-have. Each order includes two goose egg-sized fried balls of rice mixed with Olympia Provisions mortadella, Tails & Trotters ham, and mozzarella. Add a radicchio salad, a bottle of wine, and a slice of olive oil cake, and you’ve got yourself a nice little weeknight meal.
3. SUNSHINE NOODLES
2175 NW Raleigh St., Suite 105, sunshinenoodlespdx.com. 5-9 pm Monday-Thursday, 11 am-3 pm and 5-9 pm Friday-Sunday. Diane Lam, the former chef de cuisine at Revelry, is back in full force with Sunshine Noodles, a relaunch of her pandemic pop-up that now has a brick-and-mortar home in Slabtown. Snag a seat at the countertop, where you can watch the kitchen team work the wok station, then dig into the catfish spring rolls. Though not a noodle dish, it’s the current standout. The fish is blackened, rolled into rice paper with herbs, vermicelli noodles, a slice of watermelon radish, and then topped with a citrusy nuoc cham sauce that’s a mixture of bitter, sweet, salt and funk.
4. PASTIFICIO D’ORO
8737 N Lombard St., doropdx.com. 5-8 pm Monday-Tuesday. Pastificio d’Oro is a restaurant inside another restaurant in St. Johns. But its heart—and thus, your stomach—is in Bologna, the Northern Italian city known for its handmade pasta, meat ragù (aka “Bolognese”) and mortadella (which America turned into, yes, “bologna”). Chef Chase Dopson had never cooked this style of cuisine until he caught “the pasta bug” at the start of the pandemic. With just a single induction burner to boil water and Gracie’s Apizza’s wood-fired oven, Dopson generally builds his menu around just two pastas, most frequently a tagliatelle ragù and a filled pasta in the tortellini family. It’s very heavy food, but incredibly soul soothing.
5. NICO’S ICE CREAM
5713 NE Fremont St., 503-489-8656, nicosicecream.com. 3-9 pm Wednesday-Friday, noon-9 pm Saturday-Sunday. Ice cream in February? Where do you think we are, New Zealand? At Nico’s Ice Cream, yes. The Northeast Portland shop’s only item, vanilla ice cream blended with berries, has its roots in the land of kiwis. It also requires its own appliance that combines plain vanilla Tillamook with your choice of frozen fruit. Once the ice cream is finished mixing, you have something with the butterfat richness of hard-pack, but the airiness and mouthfeel of soft serve.
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FOOD & DRINK MAKE IT RAIN: Unique toppings are the star at Pacific Crust, which took over the former Crown space downtown.
Editor: Andi Prewitt | Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com
Top 5
Buzz List WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.
Slice of the Action Outdoors-themed Pacific Crust Pizza rewards if you take the road less traveled. BY A N D I P R E W I T T
aprewitt@wweek .com
Josh Johnston, contrary to pretty much everyone else in Portland, is betting on downtown. When the co-owner of Pacific Crust Pizza Company was presented with the opportunity to relocate his business from Northeast Alberta Street to the former Crown space adjacent to Hotel Lucia, he didn’t let the surrounding vacant restaurants deter him. Instead, Johnston envisioned the return of a thriving city center, and he’s planning to be there for it. “If we do this right, we want [to become] some sort of hub downtown for tourism,” he says. “There’s not much more prime real estate than Broadway, and the hotel was desperate to get some food and beverage in there. It worked out as a win-win, so we moved.” Four months in, that gamble appears to be paying off. Stumbling across Pacific Crust right now can feel like a bit of a surprise—amid blocks of boarded-up storefronts, one corner of downtown has been roused from its pandemic hibernation. A vibrant orange awning and matching logo that mirrors the Pacific Crest Trail emblem—the rounded triangle has been replaced by pyramid-sharp pizza slices—beckon passersby. And if that doesn’t catch your eye, the 10-foot-tall doorman—a smiling Sasquatch carving—certainly will. Though once you’re through the front doors, downtown practically evaporates behind you. That’s because Pacific Crust has fully embraced its Northwest outdoors theme and pitched a king-sized tent in its dining room by draping the interior in white canvas. To underscore the glamping motif, Coleman-style lanterns and climbing rope are here for decorative purposes rather than utilitarian ones. Visiting Pacific Crust’s new home is vastly different when compared to what customers experienced at the original location. For starters, you can now have a seat indoors. When Johnston and his team at Independent Restaurant Concepts (Paddy’s, Produce Row, North 45) were trying to figure out how to spend the remaining months of their lease at former sports bar the Station, they decided to launch a prototype of the pizzeria they’d long considered. Culinary director Aaron Dionne began experimenting with the company’s pizza ovens, and a delivery-only operation got underway in October 2020—literally out the back door. “The feedback we were getting was really funny,” says Johnston. “It said, ‘Wow, really great pizza, but I feel like I’m doing a drug deal.’ Because they were walking up to the back kitchen door [and told to] ring this bell, stay here, someone will answer.” Dark alley handoffs aside, Pacific Crust built a following big enough to justify the move to a more permanent location, where customers
1. BOXER
1668 NW 23rd Ave., 503-954-3794, boxerramen.com. 11 am-9 pm, Wednesday-Sunday. This popular Portland fast-casual restaurant brand has finally reemerged following a lengthy pandemic closure. Boxer— formerly Boxer Ramen—welcomed back customers this month to its new Slabtown location. Though not previously a drinking destination, the noodle shop has doubled the size of its menu, which includes an exciting lineup of sake and cocktails.
2. 503 DISTILLING LOUNGE
4784 SE 17th Ave., Suite 150, 503-9755669, 503distilling.com. 3-9 pm Thursday-Saturday, 1-7 pm Sunday. Portland has a new outlet where you can sample draft cocktails right next door to the source. 503 Distilling recently opened a lounge adjacent to its distillery inside the Iron Fireman Collective building. That’s where you’ll find six rotating cocktails on tap, plus made-to-order mixed drinks, beer and wine. The draft options offer visitors first tastes of some of the newest concoctions coming out of the distillery, acting as something of a laboratory. And once you’ve had your fill of spirits, Ruse Brewing is a short stumble away.
3. BRASA HAYA
412 NE Beech St., 503-288-3499, brasahayapdx.com. 5:30-9 pm Tuesday-Thursday, 5:30-10 pm Friday-Saturday. Though only open since June, Brasa Haya serves a traditional Spanish coffee that’s already one of the best in town. Rich chocolate vies for dominance with locally roasted Junior’s brew and a cool cloud of amaro whipped cream. Start your meal with a glass and have a second at the end—you’ll be justified because the decadent drink appears on the dessert menu, too.
The menu is modeled after a key for hiking trails and divided into three sections (“Easy,” “Intermediate” and “Expert”). And just know that here risk takers will be rewarded.
not only come and go through a proper front entrance; they can also now stick around and eat. The relocation came with another perk: the Montague gas oven that powered the Crown, Vitaly Paley’s pizza joint, which folded due to COVID. The stove was a considerable upgrade. “The one we were dealing with before was kind of a nightmare. It took a lot of manipulation,” Dionne says. “Each pizza, instead of being able to just drop it and turn it once, we were doing three, four, five turns. Vitaly was kind enough to leave me a nice oven.” The pies now coming out of the Montague— set at 650 degrees—blur the line between New York and New Haven styles, which is a delightful hybrid for those who like to fold their slices as easily as a book yet appreciate a hefty rim for its chew and crunch. Dionne allows his dough to rise for three days and has dialed in a very precise 62% hydration, making for a springy bite. Despite the time and effort it took to perfect that crust, you’ll likely take it for granted as just another sturdy vehicle to shovel toppings into your mouth, because those ingredients are what
help Pacific Crust stand out in an ever-congested pizza town. The menu is modeled after a key for hiking trails and divided into three sections (“Easy,” “Intermediate” and “Expert”) to help you decide how adventurous you want your meal to be. And just know that here risk takers will be rewarded. Take, for instance, the Peak Bagger ($24, $35), which is studded with fennel sausage that Pacific Crust elevates by use of a 50-50 elk-pork blend. The large crumbles would be just as welcome in a chili or with pasta, but Dionne makes the sausage the star by placing it on a pie. Its hint of sweetness amplifies similar notes in ribbons of caramelized onion and fontina, yet it also pushes back with a mild heat. Pacific Crust’s greatest strength is its ability to allow each topping to have its moment. Save for the taste bud-searing Bear Spray ($23, $33), whose combination of chiles overpower the soppressata and green olives, no single component ever dominates. Nowhere is that better exhibited than in the Traverse ($23, $33), a crimson-and-gold disc of lightly smoked tomato sauce and plump corn kernels adorned with a tuft of peppery arugula. The flavors come in welcome waves. First, there’s the fusel-like truffle shavings, then the sweetness of the black pepper honey rolls in. That’s followed by ripples of blue-cheese funk. That standout pie also just so happens to be in the menu’s Expert category—proof that just like in hiking, taking the difficult route always results in a more rewarding experience. EAT: Pacific Crust Pizza Company, 400 SW Broadway, 503-719-5010, pacificcrustpizzaco. com. 11 am-10 pm Sunday-Thursday, 11 am-11 pm Friday-Saturday.
4. PUNCH BOWL SOCIAL
340 SW Morrison St., #4305, 503-3340360, punchbowlsocial.com/location/ portland. 11 am-11 pm Sunday-Thursday, 11 am-1 am Friday-Saturday. If you’re looking to spend an evening trying to rack up the high score on The Simpsons arcade game and then pick up spares in a bowling alley, head to Punch Bowl Social. Sure, the 32,000-squarefoot gaming palace may be in a mall, but it fills a wonderful niche in downtown Portland—there’s something on the menu for everyone, a deep beer list and creative cocktails, to boot. You can also count on at least one special punch to be offered during holidays.
5. HOLY GHOST
4101 SE 28th Ave., holyghostbar.com. 3 pm-late daily. This may be the fifth entry in Ezra Caraeff’s bar portfolio, which includes long-standing favorites like Hi-Top Tavern and Paydirt, but Holy Ghost has its own personality, which can be found in everything from the goddesslike blue and gold color scheme to the impressively deep selection of agave spirits. Make it a point to always order at least one gin fizz while you’re here. A machine behind the bar named “Shake Gyllenhaal” agitates the New Orleans classic for at least five minutes—a manual task that keeps the drink off many other menus.
ALL PHOTOS BY THOMAS TEAL
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
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POTLANDER
Seeking Cultural Diversity in Cannabis Here are six Black-owned companies to support in order to promote social equity during Black History Month, or any time of year. BY B R I A N N A W H E E L E R
For many, Black History Month is a month of discovery—a time to binge-watch retrospectives about Black inventors and scholars, a time to share information about your favorite Black authors and artists with the larger community, and a time to find new Black-owned businesses to support, particularly those in the cannabis industry. While you may be familiar with local favorites like LOWD, Viola, Sway, Green Muse and Releaf Health, we sought out some fresh names that are also worth spending your hard-earned coin on. Whether you check them out during Black History Month or bookmark them for future gifting purposes, each of these Black-owned cannabusinesses is worth your attention.
Satan’s Breath CBD Hot Sauce Chef Paul Booker’s line of prize-winning hot sauces was created with the athlete’s wellness priorities in mind. The former Division I college football player is no stranger to chronic physical stress, which led him to the cannabis community once he hung up his cleats. Now, he sells his hot sauce as an alternative method for pain relief. Booker’s collection of 50 mg CBD-spiked condiments come in five varieties, including two Carolina reapers, habanero pineapple, Jamaican mango and Fresno chile. For the hot sauce connoisseur who medicates regularly, this might just be the ultimate canna-culinary gift set. satansbreathhotsauce.bigcartel.com
Green Heffa Farms Tea Green Heffa Farms produces more than just the hemp flowers that contribute to the brand’s signature tea; it also cultivates the botanicals that round out the blends. Founded by Clarenda “Farmer Cee” Stanley, who comes from an agrarian family in Alabama’s Black Belt region, the company’s focus goes beyond the pursuit of capital. Stanley’s ethos is couched in what she calls the four E’s: economic empowerment, equity, education and environment—a structure designed to increase the number of socially conscious BIPOC entrepreneurs in the hemp/cannabis industry. Even Green Heffa’s packaging celebrates Black heritage: Each label is inspired by the quilts of Gee’s Bend—a rural Alabama community where enslaved women in the 19th century began making blankets from scraps of fabric. greenheffafarms.com
Budzy Box Budzy Box is a curated CBD subscription service founded by Shatoia Robinson, a former medical sales rep who pivoted to cannabis after losing her job at the outset of the pandemic. Each package features everything from luxury skin care items to sleep-inducing edibles, all assembled based on the CBD expertise Robinson acquired while working in health care. Beyond that, boxes also contain educational materials intended to normalize cannabis use. budzybox.com
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The Apothecarry Case As the stigma around cannabis evaporates, so do the clandestine weed storage methods many of us are used to, as evidenced by the popularity of Apothecarry’s luxury stash boxes and humidors. Founder Whitney Beatty, a former TV exec, developed the company because of the disconnect she felt between cannabis users like her and the ones represented in pop culture (spacey, lazy, homogenous AF). Each stylish Apothecarry case can hold at least two jars of cannabis. They also come equipped with a locking mechanism, making this a lovely option for parental tokers. theapothecarrycase.com
While you may be familiar with local favorites like LOWD, Viola, Sway, Green Muse and Releaf Health, we sought out some fresh names that are also worth spending your hard-earned coin on. Mellow Fellow Premium Organic Smoke Wraps Blunt smokers and pre-rollers of all kinds can get into Mellow Fellow’s organic cannabis wraps. These wraps are an exceptional alternative to the Backwoods or Swishers you might pick up from the corner store. That’s because Mellow Fellow wraps are made from organic, unprocessed leaves rather than traditional cigar-style tobacco wraps. Founded by Asha Richards and developed by the brand’s resident Rastafarian botanist Ras Nuru and a team of herbalists, the company offers wraps in hemp, banana and sugar palm leaf varieties. There are also organic corn husk sheets and cones ready for filling. themellowfellow.com
Buena Botanicals It was the mother of Coral and Rah Hines, twin founders of Buena Botanicals, that served as primary inspiration for their holistic skin care brand. She suffered from arthritis, sciatica and several co-morbidities, but found relief by using CBD. Already proponents of plant-based medicine and naturopathic wellness, the sisters developed a CBD bath bar, body cream, elixir/tincture, and unrefined, infused coconut oil. In keeping with their wellness priorities, each Buena Botanicals product is made with ethically grown, hand-harvested and organic full-spectrum hemp oil. buenabotanicals.com
PERFORMANCE
Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson | Contact: bennett@wweek.com H E AT H H Y U N H O U G H T O N
MUSIC Now Hear This Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery.
BY DANIEL BROMFIELD // @BROMF3
SOMETHING OLD
In the States, Snow is best-known for “Informer,” which is basically the “Ice Ice Baby” of dancehall. In Jamaica, though, his legacy lies with “Anything for You (All Star Cast Remix)”—and not necessarily because of him. Though the Canadian’s sweet, lilting hook is the glue that ties the song together, “Anything for You” is all about the guest stars, especially when it comes to consecutive verses from Beenie Man and the awesome, bullfrog-throated Buju Banton. It’s one of the hardest posse cuts in any genre, and it’s even more incredible because it’s mostly a love song. SOMETHING NEW
MASK FORCE: Kaia Hillier and Jacquelle Davis in Landscape.
One Day in November A bizarre Rudy Giuliani press conference gets a backstory in the brilliant audio drama Landscape. BY B E N N E T T C A M P B E L L F E R G U S O N
On Nov. 7, 2020, Rudy Giuliani held a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a Philadelphia business specializing in mulching, pruning shrubs, weed control and more. Giuliani took the opportunity to rave that Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania was the result of voter fraud. Yet his message was obscured by the mystery of why the Trump campaign chose to host the event at Total Landscaping, an unglamorous enterprise located near a jail, a crematorium and a sex shop. Theatre Vertigo’s audio drama Landscape, written by Sara Jean Accuardi and directed by Clara-Liis Hillier, imagines an answer to that question. The result of the speculation is a touching, disturbing and hysterical tale of American folly that takes the temperature of the nation using phone calls, voicemails, voice memos and text messages read aloud. While Trump looms over Landscape, the play is written mostly from the perspective of Bets (Victoria Alvarez-Chacon). She works for Total Landscaping, but that’s a mere fraction of her frantic life that includes pursuing a theater degree and clashing with her ex-husband Cory (Tom Mounsey), whose callous attitude toward COVID threatens their asthmatic son. Fiction and reality collide when Bets, who is exhausted and worried about her mother’s heart surgery, receives a phone call. The caller asks her a question and she hazily answers—only to later realize that in her delirium, she agreed to let the Trump campaign use Total Landscaping as the backdrop for Giuliani’s bloviating. If you followed the saga of the Total Landscaping press conference in real time, you know that what happened is even zanier than Landscape suggests, but that’s beside the point. In the play, Total Landscaping is more than a location—it’s a reflection of some of the deepest scars on America’s soul. Notwithstanding Cory’s assessment of Biden, Trump and the election—“they both suck. It still matters”—the characters often seem politically disengaged. Some are sympathetic to Trump and some speak his name as if they’re choking on disinfectant, but there are too many strains and stresses in their lives for them to dwell on the 45th president’s ambitions and delusions. Yet when Total Landscaping is selected for the press conference,
the lives of Bet, Cory and everyone around them begin to revolve around Trump, like moons drawn into his orbit. Cory agrees to shop for American flags, and even his girlfriend, Ainsley (Jacquelle Davis), joins the crusade to Trump-ify Total Landscaping by printing signs at a FedEx Office store. While Landscape offers a chilling chronicle of ordinary existence being overtaken by tyranny, the humanity of the characters is never in doubt. Like crystals of eccentricity, vulnerability and yearning, each phone conversation reveals a piece of who they are, making it all the more tragic that they’re becoming lost in the garish sweep of contemporary American politics. As Susan Soon He Stanton’s exquisitely poignant play Today Is My Birthday proved, restricting a narrative to the phone makes the experience more intimate, not less. Communicating solely through voice has a way of making you feel painfully exposed, as Bets learns when Ainsley accuses her of being “uptight” about COVID. In a face-to-face exchange, the cruelty of that word—it makes it sound like Bets is concerned about the cleanliness of a carpet, not saving lives—might have been mitigated by body language. On the phone, it zips through the air like a hurled dagger, mocking Bets’ concern for her son. The pain of that moment echoes another play that Accuardi wrote during the pandemic, Joy Frickin’ Hates Her Dumb Stupid Room. A tale of a girl, a hamster and a very funny reincarnation, Joy ended with its protagonist laughing, but it was left to the audience to decide if she was bursting with delight or cackling as she descended into an emotional abyss. There’s less ambiguity in Landscape. As a pointed reference to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol reminds us, the Total Landscaping press conference was just one of many absurd and dangerous chapters in Trump’s war on democracy—a war in which Bets and her colleagues witlessly become soldiers. It’s easy to gaze upon that bleak reality and despair. Yet there’s something perversely reassuring about Landscape’s refusal to indulge in false hope. Its relentless honesty isn’t just a choice—it’s one small step toward actually making truth and justice the American way. LISTEN: Landscape streams at theatrevertigo.org through Feb. 27. $5-$20 (pay what you will).
The new Beast Nest album, Sicko, opens with a distorted vocal sample from the beloved Bollywood rom-com Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, setting the tone for its uncompromising but uplifting vibe and its fascination with pop cheese (several song titles are cribbed from Keeping Up With the Kardashians). These six lengthy avant-techno epics build but never explode, perpetually ascending and ascending along with the listener’s spirits. SOMETHING LOCAL
Jake Soffer’s new instrumental EP, The Tree That Remained Standing, reflects
hard-earned levity—its title is inspired by post-forest fire devastation and implicitly by human resilience against pandemics, breakups, you name it. Though the Easy There Tiger guitarist is only 27, these four tracks crackle with the kind of cozy domesticity that generally shows up in folk artists’ music once they’ve been happy and weird for a long time. It’s great, stoned, early-afternoon porch music for fans of New Age noodlers like Michael Hedges and Ted Greene.
SOMETHING ASKEW
Armed with a breakneck rhythmic sensibility and a discussionconfounding name, DJ Nigga Fox (aka Rogerio Brandão) is one of the most formidable creative forces to come out of Lisbon’s electronic music scene. His new Música da Terra EP must be named as a joke, because nothing here is earthbound; if anything, Brandão must have discovered some sort of anti-gravity technology to make his drums swirl in midair like that. His label Principé Discos, with its hyper-complicated club music and Grecianinspired cover art, is worth a deep dive. Willamette Week DECEMBER 22, 2021 wweek.com
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G ET YO U R R E P S I N
Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson Contact: bennett@wweek.com COURTESY OF MOVIE MADNESS
SCREENER
MOVIES
Black Orpheus (1959)
Winner of Cannes’ prestigious Palme d’Or and the Best International Feature Oscar, this romantic tragedy transplants the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the country’s spectacular annual Carnaval celebration. Featuring a smooth samba soundtrack that helped kick off the international bossa nova craze of the early ’60s. Clinton, Feb. 24.
NEON DREAM: Movie Madness is still shining on Belmont.
It’s Alive!
A new book chronicles the industry-defying saga of Movie Madness. BY C H A N C E S O L E M - P F E I F E R @ c h a n c e _ s _ p
One of the last and largest video stores in the United States, Movie Madness has devoted itself to historical preservation in recent years. Now, a new book returns that favor. Chronicling Movie Madness’ evolution from hip local staple to cultural landmark, Movie Madness: 30 Years Behind the Counter at Portland’s Iconic Video Store (Floating World Comics, 56 pages, $15) originated as a net for overflowing memories. When Movie Madness celebrated its 30th anniversary last April, former employees gathered digitally, sharing stories that they felt were too many and too valuable to exist only on Facebook threads, says Movie Madness general manager Matt Parnell. “People who hadn’t talked in 20 years were suddenly reconnecting like they just got off work together yesterday,” says Parnell, who was first hired at Movie Madness in 2000 by founder and owner Mike Clark, who is his uncle. Reunion recollections—from outlandish customer interactions to looking up crushes’ rental histories—became the book’s oral history of the store. Other highlights of the 60-page, zine-style tribute include an essay by Movie Madness devotee (oh, and revered director) Todd Haynes, a comprehensive conversation with Clark, and the tale of how Movie Madness became part of Hollywood Theatre. Nate Ashley, the lead designer at Powell’s Books, fashioned the book to look like a tattered but vivid VHS box, complete with genre stickers like “Adventure” and “Bizarre” on various stories. “I think it works really well as ‘let’s wallow in nostalgia for a minute,’ but it’s not just about Movie Madness in my mind,” says book editor and Hollywood Theatre director of education and community engagement Alison Hallett. “It’s also about this video store culture that doesn’t exist anymore.” While the contemporary version of Movie Madness touts the artistic and cultural significance of its 90,000 titles, the book also pours amber around what Hallett calls “a little bit of the dirtbag ’90s vibe.” That includes the store’s defunct adult film section, which is detailed in the book alongside an anonymous essay on bootlegging. Recalling the spring-coiled racking of the porn corner’s saloon doors and dead-animal smells wafting from un26
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
derneath the store’s old connective hallway, Parnell says current innovations like the Miniplex would’ve seemed unthinkable two decades ago. “That’s flying cars to the [2000] version of me,” he says. While sense memory and ephemera abound, one of the book’s core themes is how Movie Madness’ library grew into a completist’s fantasy and slowly shifted the store’s self-concept. In the 1990s, with 50 other video stores within a 5-mile radius (according to Clark), the store’s efforts to acquire titles beyond obvious new releases were simply good business. But as its famed subsections—organized by everything from director to cult-horror theme to country of origin—began to reflect the staff’s boundless movie appetites, its inventory graduated to being a collection. By the time Clark was mulling retirement circa 2015, Parnell says even his entrepreneurial uncle couldn’t bear to let the movies themselves “disperse.” “I remember Mike saying, ‘What would Portland do?’” he says. “‘Where are people gonna get this movie or that movie?’” Both Parnell and Hallett say they are struck by how much Movie Madness owes to 30 years of employee and customer tastes—with Hallett likening the store experience to a human “thumbprint” no streaming service can rival. “Am I the only person who knows the answer to the question of what movie I should watch tonight?” she asks of algorithmic viewing habits. “I guarantee you the three people working the counter at Movie Madness have better ideas.” In her chapter about managing the Hollywood’s 2017 donor-driven campaign to acquire Movie Madness, Hallett notes that rentals and memberships increased in 2018 and 2019. While the pandemic certainly took its bite out of business, Parnell is encouraged by the 150 to 200 new signups a month since resuming full business hours last summer. As captured in the book, there’s glory and melancholy to being the last of any dying breed, but it’s also a potent reminder not to rest on any laurels. Just last week, in fact, Movie Madness tracked down the sole missing entry in its Ingmar Bergman section. Parnell jokes the 1950 film’s title speaks directly to the store’s eternal attitude toward collection holes: This Can’t Happen Here.
Dark City (1998)
In this neo-noir sci-fi film reminiscent of The Matrix (which came out just one year later), an amnesiac (Rufus Sewell) is suspected of a murder he has no memory of. Now, he must uncover his true identity, all while evading a mysterious group called “the Strangers” and stumbling through a nightmarish world that no one ever seems to wake up from. Directed by Alex Proyas (The Crow). Cinemagic, Feb. 24.
Mouchette (1967)
A searing portrait of human desperation, this acclaimed coming-of-age character study follows a young girl named Mouchette (“little fly” in French) struggling to survive with her dying mother and alcoholic father in a rural French village. Screens as the closing film of the Clinton’s Robert Bresson Film Festival! Clinton, Feb. 25.
The Conversation (1974)
Written and directed by the legendary Francis Ford Coppola, The Conversation stars Gene Hackman as an antisocial surveillance expert whose spying on a couple is upended when he overhears a potential plot to murder them, opening up myriad moral dilemmas. Screens on a gorgeous new 35 mm print! Hollywood, Feb. 25-27.
House (1977)
A seminal staple of Japanese horror, this psychedelic ghost story centers on a young girl who travels to her aunt’s secluded rural home with six friends. One by one, the girls are picked off by the haunted house, be it via a killer grandfather clock, a ravenous piano or even a blood-spurting cat portrait. Screens in 35 mm! Hollywood, Feb. 26-27. ALSO PLAYING:
5th Avenue: Do the Right Thing (1989), Feb. 25-27. Academy: Boyz n the Hood (1991), Feb. 23-24. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010), Feb. 23-24. Purple Rain (1984), Feb. 25-March 3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011), Feb. 25-March 3. Cinemagic: The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Feb. 23. Clinton: Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell (1968), Feb. 25. Unforgiven (1992), Feb. 26. The Music Room (1958), Feb. 27. Thank You and Good Night (1991), Feb. 28. Hollywood: Battleship Potemkin (1925), Feb. 26. Midnight Angels (1987), March 1.
MOVIES M E T R O G O L D W Y N M AY E R P I C T U R E S
TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
Dog
OUR KEY
Dog follows the basic road-trip structure that audiences have known since The Odyssey, but when you like who you’re riding with, that’s irrelevant. The film stars an infectiously charming Channing Tatum as Jackson Briggs, a former Army Ranger, and a beautiful Belgian Malinois dog named Lulu (played by three different dogs) who accompanies Briggs down the Pacific coast to the funeral of a fellow soldier. Along the way, they encounter a colorful collage of characters and misadventures that strengthen their bond. In contrast to some cringeworthy scenes featuring on-the-nose political commentary, the matter-of-fact way the film handles the effects of trauma is extremely powerful—there’s no pandering as you watch both man and dog deal with their pain in the quiet way that so many are forced to. As the co-director of Dog, Tatum proves that no one knows how to use him as well as he does—and makes the film a treat for anyone who’s ever had a pet with a lot of “personality” and a fun ride for anyone else who wants to come along. PG-13. RAY GILL JR. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, Studio One, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.
DRIVE MY CAR
After you see Drive My Car, you will never look at snow, suspension bridges or stages the same way again. When you see the world through the searching eyes of director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, there is no such thing as mere scenery. There is only the living fabric of the places and objects that envelop Yûsuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and Misaki (Tôko Miura), whose compassion and complexity are a world unto themselves. Most of the film is set in Hiroshima, where Yûsuke is directing a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Misaki is assigned to be his driver, but their relationship transcends the divide between the front seat and the back. During drives, conversations and surreal yet strangely believable adventures, their reserve gradually erodes as they reveal their losses and their inner lives to each other, building to a cathartic climax that leaves you at once shattered and soaring. The film, based on a novella by Haruki Murakami, isn’t afraid to face the agony of grief and loneliness, but Hamaguchi’s obvious love for his characters suffuses the entire journey with life-giving warmth. A tender, hopeful coda set during the pandemic could have been cringe-worthy, but like every moment of the movie, it’s worth believing in because Hamaguchi’s sincerity is beyond question. “We must keep on living,” Yûsuke tells Misaki. With those words, he speaks not only
to her but to us. NR. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Cinema 21, Hollywood.
KIMI
The latest from director Steven Soderbergh, Hollywood’s most prolific shape-shifter, opens with a swipe at relevance. Locked in her Seattle apartment with crippling pandemic anxiety, tech worker Angela Childs (Zoë Kravitz) discovers a Kimi recording (think Siri or Alexa) of a possible violent crime. By reporting it, she’s thrust into a spiral of tech malfeasance: shady IPOs, hackers and surveillance. But once the movie’s thriller elements accelerate, David Koepp’s script resorts to tired tropes, borrowing shamelessly from Rear Window, Blow Out, The Firm and even Koepp’s own Panic Room screenplay. No points for originality, but Soderbergh’s eternal wit and curiosity elevate the material. He portrays Kimi (voiced by Betsy Brantley) as both latent and central—a paradoxically powerful MacGuffin—while visually and thematically capturing Angela’s domestic existence. She’s curated a stylish, spacious, gentrified apartment (complete with untouched vinyl, guitars and gathering areas), but for all her elegant taste, the animating force in her world is Kimi, a pink gadget identical to millions of others. Clear-eyed tech observations suit Soderbergh, who’s traded Ocean’s romps and Oscars for intelligent, inexpensive streaming
efforts (No Sudden Move, Let Them All Talk) that drop without fanfare every eight months or so. If Kimi’s best moments keenly probe the behavior of the housebound, it’s no wonder. In 2022, that’s where Soderbergh finds us all. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. HBO Max.
MARRY ME
In the most rousing scene in the 2002 romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan, Marisa Ventura (Jennifer Lopez) tells her mother, “I’m going to take that chance without any fear. Without your voice in my head telling me that I can’t.” Given the genre, you might guess that she was talking about marriage, but you would be wrong. She was talking about her dream of being a manager at a hotel, but Lopez spoke those words with the level of passion that many actors reserve for romantic love, proving that she possessed the power to make a rom-com more than a frictionless fantasy. At least some of that spirit lives on in Marry Me, which stars Lopez as a pop goddess who falls for a guileless math teacher (Owen Wilson). It’s a slick, shiny film—the emotional roughness of Maid is a distant memory—but Lopez’s performance invests it with more passion and pathos than it deserves, and Wilson is perfectly cast as a guy who’s frightened by the intensity of his desire to bask in her glow. Best of all, Lopez sings several original songs, including the
: THIS MOVIE IS EXCELLENT, ONE OF THE BEST OF THE YEAR. : THIS MOVIE IS GOOD. WE RECOMMEND YOU WATCH IT. : THIS MOVIE IS ENTERTAINING BUT FLAWED. : THIS MOVIE IS A STEAMING PILE.
swoon-worthy “After Love.” She and Wilson have chemistry, but her singing is a chemical reaction in and of itself. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Peacock, Pioneer Place, Studio One.
DEATH ON THE NILE
Movies based on Agatha Christie’s novels always disappoint. However elegantly constructed her puzzles, the quiet pleasures of identifying the murderer from a trifling detail rarely survive cinematic adaptations for the same reason that crosswords aren’t turned into feature films. To that end, director and star Kenneth Branagh somewhat miraculously wrung global commercial success from the ponderous, antiseptic tedium of Murder on the Orient Express (2017) through little more than relentless mustache-twirling and a rogue Belgian accent so lovingly showcased that it practically deserved separate billing. He’s back in the lead role and the director’s chair with Death on the Nile, which crams an enviable, ill-used cast of suspects (Russell Brand, Gal Godot, Annette Bening, Arnie Hammer, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders) into another archaic emblem of colonial travel. For reasons unclear, Branagh’s semi-depraved epicurean twinkle has curdled toward an oversated misanthropy—even his joy upon spotting dear chum/ eventual murder suspect Bouc (Tom Bateman, also reprising his Orient Express role) seems like a practiced affect. Should he return for a third whodunit—Slaughter Aboard the Burmese Dirigible or some such—this dark new Poirot (Noirot?) ought to be interested in why. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Bagdad, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen
Parkway, Fox Tower, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, St. Johns, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.
THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
In the most memorable scene in The Worst Person in the World, Julie (Renate Reinsve) farts in front of Eivind (Herbert Nordrum). It’s not an accident— the two are engaged in an erotic game fueled by embarrassment—or a mere bodily function. The scene is a cornerstone of Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s quest to create a romantic comedy that scorches the fairytale sheen off the genre, much as he cut against horror-movie sadism with the satisfyingly soulful Thelma (2017). The Worst Person in the World follows Julie, who works in a bookstore in Oslo, as she wavers between two suitors—Eivind, a perky barista, and Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), a pompous cartoonist. Like her go-nowhere career, her love life is perpetually in limbo, which is both Trier’s point and his problem. He has made a film about aimlessness that is also an aimless film, complete with an unwieldy screenplay divided into chapters—what will it take for filmmakers to abandon that cumbersome gimmick?—and a twist that suggests he secretly wants the entire film to be about Aksel, whose cringeworthy sexism is ultimately overshadowed by a tragic revelation. Trier works mightily to make us understand Aksel’s all too human contradictions, an act of empathy that allows the character to hijack the film. Neither Julie nor Aksel is the worst person in the world, but only one of them has Trier’s full attention. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Cinema 21, Clackamas, Laurelhurst, Living Room.
Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
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Willamette Week FEBRUARY 23, 2022 wweek.com
AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE
JONESIN’
FREE WILL
B Y M AT T J O N E S
"Director's Cut"--where do we go from here?
ASTROLOGY ARIES
(March 21-April 19): "I not only bow to the inevitable," wrote Aries author Thornton Wilder. "I am fortified by it." Wow. That was a brazen declaration. Did he sincerely mean it? He declared that he grew stronger through surrender, that he derived energy by willingly giving in to the epic trends of his destiny. I don't think that's always true for everyone. But I suspect it will be a useful perspective for you in the coming weeks, Aries.
TAURUS
(April 20-May 20): Vive la différence! Hooray for how we are not alike! I am all in favor of cultural diversity, neurodiversity, spiritual diversity, and physical diversity. Are you? The coming weeks will be an excellent time to celebrate the bounties and blessings that come your way because of the holy gift of endless variety. The immediate future will also be a perfect phase to be extra appreciative that your companions and allies are not the same as you. I encourage you to tell them why you love how different they are. Now here's poet Anna Akhmatova to weave it together: "I breathe the moonlight, and you breathe the sunlight, but we live together in the same love."
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Gemini singer-song-
writer Bob Dylan said, "I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom." I think that will be a key theme for you in the coming weeks. Dylan described the type of hero I hope you aspire to be. Be alert! You are on the cusp of an invigorating liberation. To ensure you proceed with maximum grace, take on the increased responsibility that justifies and fortifies your additional freedom.
CANCER
ACROSS
49. Become less intense
1. Fashion mogul von Furstenberg
52. "Help!" co-star Ringo
6. "And Winter Came..." singer
56. Fasteners that pop into place
10. Sound-boosting devices 14. "Citizen Kane" director Welles
54. Memorized perfectly
60. Sandpaper quality 61. Neither wins nor loses
15. "High" places for pirates
64. "Blues to the Bone" singer _ _ _ James
16. "Who Let the Dogs Out?" group _ _ _ Men
65. Market order
17. "Hairspray" director 19. Laugh-and-a-half
66. "Dia de _ _ _" (Shakira song)
25. What the circled letters represent 27. Former heavyweight champ Riddick 28. Picture that can be dragged 29. Consults 31. "Let's see what you got!" 34. Minister, for short 35. Ques. response 37. Ancient legend 38. "CHiPS" remake actor Michael
20. Like tough push-ups
67. "Fantastic Mr. Fox" author Roald
21. Matriarch
68. Graded item
44. Circulatory conduit
23. Suffix after Insta- or auto-
69. Extra you may have to ask for at some drive-thrus (due to state laws)
46. Apartment, typically
DOWN
50. Principal artery
1. "Cobra Kai" school 2. Metal that can rust
51. "Blue Ribbon" beer brand
33. Folk singer Phil
3. NYC tennis stadium namesake
53. Vessel boarded by pairs
34. Flautist Jean-Pierre _ _ _
55. Sloth's hangout
4. Obscure people
36. HRE part
57. Loving or lasting leader?
5. Swaddle
39. "_ _ _ is me!"
58. Part of TB
6. Yearbook superlatives ender
59. Lots of it was created for the Beijing Olympics
7. "Born," in a Wikipedia bio
62. South African golf legend Ernie
26. Groups of quail 27. Arm muscle, informally 30. In addition 32. Uncompressed audio file format
40. Colorful writing implements 41. "Bill _ _ _ Saves the World" (Netflix series) 42. Abbr. at the bottom of a business letter 43. Birds, formally 44. "Heads up" abbr. 45. _ _ _-One ("Sound of da Police" musician)
8. Fabric shop purchase 9. NBA component? 10. Brand used to treat cold sores 11. Big-ticket items 12. Counterfeit 13. Appeases fully
47. "_ _ _: Vegas" (rebooted TV series)
18. CPA's entry
48. Actress Tyler of "Archer"
24. Underscore alternative
22. Cat noises at night
©2022 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.
40. Fill the tank
48. Comes to light 49. Having a border
63. _ _ _-newsweekly (paper you might be holding)
last week’s answers
(June 21-July 22): "I'd rather be seduced than comforted," wrote author Judith Rossner. What about you, Cancerian? Do you prefer being enticed, invited, drawn out of your shell, and led into interesting temptation? Or are you more inclined to thrive when you're nurtured, soothed, supported, and encouraged to relax and cultivate peace? I'm not saying one is better than the other, but I urge you to favor the first in the coming weeks: being enticed, invited, drawn out of your shell, and led into interesting temptation.
LEO
(July 23-Aug. 22): A woman from Cornwall, UK, named Karen Harris was adopted as a little girl. At age 18, she began trying to track down her biological parents. Thirty-four years later, she was finally reunited with her father. The turning point: He appeared on the "Suggested Friends" feature on her Facebook page. I propose we make Karen Harris your inspirational role model. Now is a favorable time to find what you lost a while ago; to re-link with a good resource that disappeared from your life; to reclaim a connection that could be meaningful to you again.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Buddhist teacher Chög-
yam Trungpa told us, "Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss, or tranquility." Instead, he said that meditation is how we "expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes." Excuse me, Mr. Trungpa, but I don't allow anyone, not even a holy guy like you, to dictate what meditation is and isn't. Many other spiritual mentors I've enjoyed learning from say that meditation can also be a discipline to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss, and tranquility. And I suspect that's what Virgo meditators should emphasize in the coming weeks. You people are in a phase when you can cultivate extraordinary encounters with that all fun stuff. If you're not a meditator, now would be a good time to try it out. I recommend the books Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield and How to Meditate by Pema Chödrön.
LIBRA
(Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Comedian Fred Allen observed, "It is probably not love that makes the world go around, but rather those mutually supportive alliances through which partners recognize their dependence on each other for the achievement of shared and private goals." That's an unromantic thing to say, isn't it? Or maybe it isn't. Maybe it's very romantic, even enchanting, to exult in how our allies help us make our
WEEK OF March 3
© 2022 ROB BREZSNY
dreams come true—and how we help them make their dreams come true. In my astrological opinion, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to focus on the synergies and symbioses that empower you.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): "It's never too late to
have a happy childhood!" declare many self-help gurus. "It's never too early to start channeling the wise elder who is already forming within you," declare I. Oddly enough, both of these guiding principles will be useful for you to meditate on during the coming weeks. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you're in an unusually good position to resurrect childlike wonder and curiosity. You're also poised to draw stellar advice from the Future You who has learned many secrets that the Current You doesn't know yet. Bonus: Your Inner Child and your Inner Elder could collaborate to create a marvelous breakthrough or two.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "A myriad of
modest delights constitute happiness," wrote poet Charles Baudelaire. That will be a reliable formula for you in the coming weeks, Sagittarius. You may not harvest any glorious outbreaks of bliss, but you will be regularly visited by small enchantments, generous details, and useful tweaks. I hope you won't miss or ignore some of these nurturing blessings because you're fixated on the hope of making big leaps. Be grateful for modest delights.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): I found out some
fun facts about renowned Capricorn poet Robert Duncan (1919–1988), who was a bohemian socialist and trailblazing gay activist. He was adopted by Theosophical parents who chose him because of his astrological make-up. They interpreted Robert's dreams when he was a child. Later in life, he had an affair with actor Robert De Niro's father, also named Robert, who was a famous abstract expressionist painter. Anyway, Capricorn, this is the kind of quirky and fascinating information I hope you'll be on the lookout for. It's time to seek high entertainment as you expedite your learning; to change your fate for the better as you gather interesting clues; to be voraciously curious as you attract stimulating influences that inspire you to be innovative.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): "I always strive,
when I can, to spread sweetness and light," said P. G. Wodehouse. "There have been several complaints about it." I know what he means. During my own crusade to express crafty, discerning forms of optimism, I have enraged many people. They don't like to be reminded that thousands of things go right every day. They would rather stew in their disgruntlement and cynicism, delusionally imagining that a dire perspective is the most intelligent and realistic stance. If you're one of those types, Aquarius, I have bad news for you: The coming weeks will bring you invitations and opportunities to cultivate a more positive outlook. I don't mean that you should ignore problems or stop trying to fix what needs correction. Simply notice everything that's working well and providing you with what you need. For inspiration, read my essay: tinyurl.com/ HighestGlory
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Pastor and activist
Charles Henry Parkhurst (1842–1933) said, "All great discoveries are made by people whose feelings run ahead of their thinking." The approach worked well for him. In 1892, he discovered and exposed monumental corruption in the New York City government. His actions led to significant reforms of the local police and political organizations. In my astrological opinion, you should incorporate his view as you craft the next chapter of your life story. You may not yet have been able to fully conceive of your future prospects and labors of love, but your feelings can lead you to them.
Homework: See if you can forgive yourself for a wrong turn you haven't been able to forgive yourself for. Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com
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