Willamette Week, April 6, 2022 - Volume 48, Issue 22 - "Beer Guide 2022 - Tipping Point"

NEWS: Pamplin Digs a Deeper Hole.

P. 11 WILLAMETTE WEEK

PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY

“THE BODY NEVER LIES.” P. 34

SCHOOLS: Football Boosters Hire Robots.

P. 13 FILM: Tilda Swinton Is Inescapable.

P. 35

TIPPING POINT

WWEEK.COM VOL 48/22 04.06.2022

Oregon’s craft beer industry now faces more challenges than ever.

Here’s why it still sees the glass as half full. page 15

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Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

FINDINGS THOMAS TEAL

CAFE OLLI, PAGE 30

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 48, ISSUE 22 Betsy Johnson does not want transgender students playing girls sports. 8 The man trying to move Oregon counties into Idaho grew up in Gresham. 9 Ross Island Sand & Gravel told a judge its namesake island was worthless, except for the sand and gravel. 11 The Grant Generals use computer software to pay for travel. 13 The U.S. lost more than 12,000 bars in the past two decades. 17 An anonymous donor bought $100 worth of crowlers from Eugene’s Gratitude Brewing for the community’s first responders. 22 Deschutes Brewery now makes a no-alcohol version of its classic Black Butte Porter. 23

Hard seltzer isn’t cool anymore.

25

This spring, downtown will host both a balloon-art store and a museum of dinosaur art. 28 Someone wrote a book about Minor League Baseball’s best mascot, Barley the Hop. 29 The wood-fired oven that powered Ned Ludd is back at work inside Cafe Olli, roasting vegetables and baking pizzas. 30 The nation’s first bar with TVs playing only women’s athletics has opened in Portland. 31 There is a coloring book made up of nothing but images of sneakers, including the original Pro-Keds and Yeezys. 32 Yes, Jared Leto is capable of being boring. 36

ON THE COVER:

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

The Beer Issue: A tall, cold pour from Imperial Bottle Shop & Taproom, photo by Aaron Lee.

Shit’s not working in Oregon. How much is Tina Kotek to blame?

Masthead EDITOR & PUBLISHER ART DEPARTMENT

Mark Zusman

EDITORIAL

News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Andi Prewitt Assistant A&C Editor Bennett Campbell Ferguson Staff Writers Anthony Effinger, Nigel Jaquiss, Rachel Monahan, Sophie Peel, Tess Riski Copy Editor Matt Buckingham

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DANCE THEATRE OF HARLEM ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, VIRGINIA JOHNSON “The arts ignite the mind, they give you the possibility to dream and hope.”

-Arthur Mitchell, Co-Founder

DIALOGUE Last week, WW examined the paradox of former Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek: She’s the Democratic front-runner for governor, but none of the last four Democrats to hold that office has endorsed her. Kotek may be a victim of her own success in passing progressive legislation—or getting blowback for her hardball tactics, which alienated some who worked closely with her in Salem. Or, as reporter Nigel Jaquiss later noted on WW’s podcast, she might be taking blame for a state whose results don’t match its spending. Here’s what our readers had to say:

SAMANTHA GLADU, VIA TWITTER: “Sigh, nearly 3K

words on the likability of @ Tina4Oregon. She’s bossy; she’s too successful—why don’t notorious grudge holders like her??? This article could only be more cliché if @juleskbailey had added he doesn’t want to drink a beer with [her].”

MT. HOOD, VIA WWEEK.COM:

“Wow, what a Kotek love fest.

WW dedicates more space to Kotek’s car than to rampant crime that’s staring us in the face every hour of every day.”

Photo by Rachel Neville

NICHOLAS KRISTOF, VIA TWITTER: “In a @wweek pod-

WEDNESDAY | 7:30PM

MAY 4

ARLENE SCHNITZER CONCERT HALL

TICKETS AT WHITEBIRD.ORG

SPONSORED BY: LISA AND SHAWN K. MANGUM 4

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

cast, @NigelJaquiss asks a blunt question: How is it that Oregon is a blue state with high tax rates, yet has outcomes in education, homelessness, mental health access and addiction that are among America’s worst?

What are we doing wrong?

“This is something that I’ve wondered about as well (and this is partly a West Coast blue

state issue, for CA and WA also underperform in key areas like homelessness). I think the answer is partly about policy mistakes and partly about lack of accountability.”

NATALIE BURTON, VIA FACEBOOK: “Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer

says, ‘I give Tina huge kudos for standing up to the labor unions.

They made it incredibly painful for all of us who voted for the bill.’ Really? It made it painful for you? No, it made it painful for me—a public employee who’s pension won’t be sufficient to retire on. I don’t give a sh*t about ‘business interests, who wanted to scale back the state’s underfunded Public Employee Retirement System.’

Why on earth would they have a voice in my compensation and benefits? Tina Kotek is not far left. We need someone further to the left.”

APURTURA86, VIA REDDIT:

“If current crime and drug use is the reform they talked about, I think we’ll have a swing of the pendulum real soon.”

WHATEVER YOU CALL IT, KOTEK GOT THE JOB DONE

How do you define the difference between “transactional” and “skilled negotiation”?

Whatever you call it, it’s how things get done in a state with diverse constituencies.

Tina Kotek is a smart manager with clear values who knows how to make things happen. That’s why a long list of legislators who have served with her are lining up to endorse her candidacy for governor. We know her as a person with high integrity who is focused on bettering life for all Oregonians.

We worked together to pass strong, progressive policies under Speaker Kotek; now we need an executive committed to making sure those policies translate to action on the ground.

I want a governor who has a vision and a track record. And if she also knows how to put together a deal that works for varied interests—well, I call that leadership.

State Rep. Pam Marsh D-Ashland 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

“They call this progress? Murder rates from the ’80s?

Dr. Know

BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx

A few days ago, a checkout person at my local overpriced organic supermarket visibly recoiled from my lack of a mask. I told her I’m vaxxed and boosted, but she continued to treat me like Typhoid Mary. Am I rude for not following a mask mandate that ended three weeks ago? What’s the etiquette here? —Typhoid Tony The COVID mask prominently shows that the wearer puts the good of the community ahead of their own convenience, so I can’t say I’m surprised that some residents of a city whose unofficial motto is “Allow Me to Demonstrate I’m a Kind and Compassionate Person or I’ll Beat the Shit Out of You” aren’t ready to let it go quite yet. Hell, if we play our cards right, we can probably turn unmandated masking into a permanent part of Portland culture, like our famous “No, you first” traffic game.

If it’s any consolation, Tony, people who still wear masks are getting harassed as well.

This is probably even less justifiable than what happened to you, since wearing a mask has literally no impact on anyone else (except maybe

depriving them of your germs). Also, while there are lots of sympathetic reasons to keep the mask, from immune disorders to medically fragile family members, there’s really only one reason to ditch it. As justifications go, “Masks are kind of a pain in the ass” is never going to be as compelling as, say, “I have lupus.”

All that said, in every report I’ve seen on the subject, the person being attacked for their mask choice has had the same message: You do you. Not one’s demanding that everyone else adopt their views; it’s all, “I’ve chosen to do this for my own reasons, but you should do whatever you want.”

If that’s the way the wind of mask etiquette is blowing, I say we let it blow us. We can start by assuming that someone else’s decision about what to put on their face is their business, and is probably not intended as a tacit rebuke to us personally. We could also presume that (absent notice to the contrary) they don’t care what we do, either.

After that, who knows? Maybe we could agree that accepting the right of way at an intersection doesn’t make you a serial killer. It doesn’t have much to do with masks, but hey, a man can dream.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.

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Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com 4/1/22 3:32 PM 5

Gregory Grenon was raised in Detroit, Michigan, where he worked as an artist in the city’s Cass Corridor neighborhood after studying at the Center for Creative Studies. He then worked at Landfall Press, a major printmaking workshop in Chicago, before relocating to Portland, Oregon, in the late 1970s. Soon after he arrived in Portland, my late mother Arlene Schnitzer, who operated the Fountain Gallery of Art for 25 years, met him and was so impressed with his work that she asked him to join her gallery. Over the years, being represented by the gallery, he had many solo exhibitions, which always sold out quickly. His technique of painting images on the back of glass was revolutionary, and he also worked on many found objects. He and his wife, artist Mary Josephson, were an artistic power couple in Portland and added so much to our art scene! While the majority of his images were of women, he also loved baseball as well as other sports. His work has always captivated audiences. Tragically, he passed away unexpectedly February 6. I know all of us in the community express our sincere condolences to Mary and their daughter, Aurora.

The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation operates an art exhibition space, and we are mounting a retrospective exhibition of Gregory’s work as a memorial to this incredible human being and artist.

– JORDAN D. SCHNITZER

Gregory Grenon: In Memoriam 1948 - 2022

Opening Reception in memoriam Sunday, April 10 • 12:00-3:00pm

Closing Reception in honor of Gregory Grenon’s birthday Sunday, May 8 • 12:00-3:00pm

Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation Exhibition Space 3033 NW Yeon Ave • Portland, OR 97210 Proof of vaccination required for entry.

Please direct inquiries to: Julia Oswald, JSFF Director of Research and Engagement | juliao@jordanschnitzer.org | 443.857.5583 LEFT: Gregory Grenon, And These Lips Are Mine, edition 44/60, 1992. Lithograph, 45 1/2 x 55 1/2 in. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer. Image: Aaron Wessling Photography RIGHT: Gregory Grenon, Like the Opening of a Flower, 2015. Oil on glass, 37 x 31 1/2 in. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer. Image: Aaron Wessling Photography 6

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

• •••• ••••

MURMURS SAM GEHRKE

A T R E A LRBO S ER E T •••• A E H T comedy Star Trek podcast

APR 6

THE GREATEST GENERATION

The Double Dumbass Tour APR 7 FEATURING

NPR radio show live taping

CECILY WONG GREGORY GOURDET NO-NO BOY

SCIENCE ON TAP SOUTHEAST 122ND AVENUE AND STARK STREET MAYOR ASKS FEDS FOR $2M TO FUND BODY CAMS: The Portland City Council will vote Wednesday whether to authorize a grant application requesting $2 million from the U.S. Department of Justice to fund the purchase of body-worn cameras for police officers. In the fall, the City Council approved $2.6 million in one-time funding to buy about 600 cameras. But now, former Mayor Sam Adams, a top adviser to Mayor Ted Wheeler, tells WW that an undetermined amount of that fall funding will be allocated to offset costs in the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office, as well as the Public Defenders’ Office, whose staff will eventually review body-worn camera footage in criminal cases. Money awarded by the feds would pay for the body cameras themselves, Adams says, and the excess would help the city “make good on our promise” to offset costs for the county. The city plans to begin the competitive solicitation process for body-worn cameras this spring, according to budget documents, followed by a program launch in the upcoming fiscal year.

Doing so will help the city get back in compliance with its 2014 settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. During mediation in the fall, the DOJ included the launch of a body-worn camera program in its list of remedies for Portland to regain compliance with the agreement.

NO BUD ADS ON TV: With three weeks to go before ballots drop in the May primary, Republican gubernatorial candidates Christine Drazan, Bridget Barton, Bob Tiernan, Stan Pulliam and Kerry McQuisten have premiered at least some TV advertising for their campaigns. Notably missing from the list: Dr. Bud Pierce, the Salem oncologist who was the party’s nominee in 2016. Pierce has some of the best name recognition among Republicans and led in early polling. His ability to put his own fortune into the race at the last minute means other campaigns aren’t counting him out, but his absence from TV airwaves has political insiders wondering whether he is making a serious go of it.

(Also notable: Reed Christensen, the candidate under indictment for involvement in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, has outspent Pierce on radio ads thus far.) Pierce’s campaign says he is still working full time seeing cancer patients all day, and his work ethic makes him a good fit for the job. Pierce spokeswoman Mary Louise VanNatta says, “We have [advertised] in the past and will again in the coming days and weeks leading into election day.”

CITY INSTALLS TRAFFIC CAMERA ON 122ND AVENUE: The city of Portland installed a first-of-

its-kind traffic safety camera at a major intersection Tuesday, the start of a new technique to make the city’s most dangerous streets less deadly.

The camera, installed at Southeast Stark Street and 122nd Avenue, will issue automatic tickets for speeding and running red lights to drivers traveling east on Stark. (Before now, the city only had cameras that either monitored speeding or running red lights—but not both.) Citations will be issued come May 11. The city plans to install additional devices this year. The installation follows a March change in Oregon law that scrapped a requirement that a sworn police officer review every automated ticket. The law now allows a civilian to review such tickets. City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who oversees the Portland Bureau of Transportation, championed the change. She tells WW the cameras are a “cost-effective way to reduce dangerous driving on our streets” and says she’ll continue to push for “more of this technology.”

BETSY JOHNSON GETS KNIGHTED: On April 1, Nike co-founder Phil Knight donated $750,000 to Betsy Johnson’s run for Oregon governor as an unaffiliated candidate. Combined with an earlier contribution in February, that brings Knight’s bankrolling of the Johnson campaign to $1 million.

That’s the largest donation of the governor’s race so far, and an indication of Johnson’s appeal to well-heeled donors irritated with Democratic Party policies but skeptical of Republicans’ ability to win an office they haven’t held in almost four decades.

Knight, the wealthiest man in Oregon, with a net worth of $56 billion, gave $2.5 million to then-state Rep. Knute Buehler (R-Bend) for his unsuccessful bid to unseat Gov. Kate Brown in 2018. This week’s donation suggests he’s willing to spend at the same level on a candidate from neither major party. Johnson now has more than $5.1 million on hand, far more than any other candidate. “Without the money and machinery from the two-party system,” she says, “I need all the help I can get to rescue Oregon.”

APPLY NOW FOR GIVE!GUIDE 2022: Each fall, WW presents Give!Guide, a citywide fundraising campaign for local nonprofits of all types and sizes. It runs Nov. 1 through Dec. 31. Applications for nonprofits to join the campaign are now available at giveguide.org. The deadline to apply is midnight April 30. Give!Guide has raised $48,055,946 million since its inception in 2004. That includes $7.84 million for 202 nonprofits last year.

APR 8

RISE UP

APR 9

The Music of Hamilton and Broadway

DIFFERENT Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist APR 14

APR 15

ALAN DOYLE

+ Chris Trapper

APR 16

MICHAEL NAMKUNG Good Pain: The Art of Being Hurt

JUDY BLUE EYES

APR 21 APR 22 Crosby, Stills & Nash Tribute with members of

The NowHere Band + CSN guitarist Jeff Pevar

with

Steven Gosvener

APR 23

LADY SINGS THE BLUES

a tribute to Billie Holiday

feat. LaRhonda

Steele Danielle M. Barker Arietta Ward Anandi + more

APR 28

APR 27 infused with the spirit of Hawai‘i

MA K A NA

Chamber Music Northwest presents

APR 29

IMANI WINDS

Booklover's Burlesque

We Cannot Walk Alone

the Sci-Fi edition

UPCOMING SHOWS

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WESLEY LAPOINTE

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

ONE QUESTION

Should Transgender Athletes Be Barred From Girls Sports?

How Utah’s ban would fare under Oregon’s leading candidates for governor.

BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N

POOL RULES: Transgender athletes at swim meets have become targets for national controversy.

WW asked: Do you support or oppose legislation that would ban transgender athletes from participating in girls sports, as passed in Utah?

BOB TIERNAN (R) It is unfair to allow transgender athletes to compete in women’s events.

SUPPORT

OPPOSE

BRIDGET BARTON (R) As a former three-sport varsity athlete with a daughter who played volleyball and basketball, I know that women have worked too hard to gain equal footing in sports. People who are born as women need to compete as women, and people born as men need to compete as men in order to save women’s sports.

rmonahan@wweek .com

For years, Democratic control of all branches of Oregon government has made hot-button social issues into debates that happen elsewhere. But the culture wars aren’t so far away—geographically or spiritually.

Last month, the Utah Legislature passed a bill barring transgender athletes from participating in girls sports. As he vetoed the bill, the state’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, issued a striking statement that attempted to appeal to reason.

Of Utah’s 75,000 high school athletes, he said, only four transgender kids play—just one of them in girls sports. “Four kids who are trying to find some friends and feel like they are part of something,” Cox wrote. “Four kids who are trying to get through each day. Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few….I hope that we can work to find ways to show these four kids we love them and they have a place in our state.”

His veto was swiftly overturned. But WW wondered if there was similar moral courage among the leading candidates for governor in Oregon. Here’s what we found.

CHRISTINE DRAZAN (R) We need to respect the dignity of every individual, but that does not mean we should accept that biological males competing in women’s sports is fair or appropriate. Women have fought for—and earned— respect and support for themselves in sports and have made incredible gains in doing so. We must defend that progress and stand up for fairness.

BETSY JOHNSON (UNAFFILIATED) I don’t believe it’s fair to force female athletes to compete against biological men. Sports should be about fair competition, not social engineering.

STAN PULLIAM (R) Fairness matters. As the father of two girls, I’m outraged that second has become the new first. As governor, I will enact protections for girls to ensure they have the opportunity to play in girls sports.

TINA KOTEK (D) I believe in supporting all children to be their authentic selves.

Unfortunately, some politicians are racing to stigmatize vulnerable trans kids in order to divide people and distract us from real issues. When we talk about our trans community, we should be talking about how to prevent assaults on trans people, especially trans women of color, who are more likely to be assaulted. While other politicians work to bring harm to the LGBTQ+ community, I’m going to focus on the work that matters: ensuring all Oregonians are safe and protected.

TOBIAS READ (D) Let’s be honest, these Republican proposals have nothing to do with parents’ rights, education theory, or what’s in the best interest of kids. These measures are about fueling culture wars, cynically winning elections, and beating up on vulnerable Oregonians. We should be talking about bringing down the cost of child care, creating pre-K classes for every child, and increasing our graduation rates, instead of trying to divide Oregonians against each other.

DIDN’T ANSWER

DR. BUD PIERCE (R)

CONTESTED

Judge, Oregon Court of Appeals, Position 3 A suspended judge seeks a second act.

WHO’S THE INCUMBENT? Judge Darleen Ortega, who has served on the Court of Appeals since 2003. She also teaches at the University of Oregon’s School of Law. She’s the first woman of color and the only Latina to serve on the appellate court.

WHO’S THE CHALLENGER? Vance Day, a former Marion County circuit judge. In 2018, the Oregon Supreme Court 8

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

suspended him for three years after the state’s judicial fitness commission found a series of ethical violations. Three years earlier, in 2015, the commission recommended Day’s removal from the bench altogether.

WHY DOES IT MATTER? A onetime chair of the Oregon Republican Party, Day is attempting to resurrect a judicial career marked by past ethical and legal troubles.

The judicial fitness commission’s investigation was prompted in part by Day’s refusal to wed gay couples. The probe also revealed that he had hung a picture of Adolf Hitler in the Marion County courthouse. (Day said it was part of a historical display about the defeat of fascism.)

WHAT DO THE CANDIDATES SAY? “I’m seeking reelection because I’m committed to the ideal of access to justice and to moving

the judiciary toward a more open and listening posture,” Ortega tells WW. “My opponent was suspended from a prior judicial position for willful judicial misconduct. An appellate court is a place where collaboration, consensus-building, and listening are especially important. The impacts of our work are profound and hard for the public to understand even while they feel those impacts.” Day did not respond to WW’s request for comment by press deadline. T E S S R I S K I .

DONOR

CONTRIBUTION OF THE WEEK

BUDGET ITEM

Safe and Sound PORTLAND FIRE

Mike Myers’ massive undertaking: unifying Portland’s fragmented public safety systems.

1. MYERS IS READY TO CONSOLIDATE— EVEN IF OTHERS WANT HIM TO WAIT. CSD is requesting $2.6 million in ongoing funding to reallocate 17 PPB positions, as well as $500,000 in one-time funding for three BOEC positions to “consolidate the budget, finance, and accounting functions for public safety bureaus.”

(Fire bureau reallocations are expected in the next fiscal year.)

In its review of the Office of Management and Finance’s proposal, the City Budget Office said taking this next step before a work plan and service agreements have been established “risks that core budget and finance functions could be adversely impacted in the short term and that duplication rather than a consolidation of business operations services could occur over time.”

Myers disagrees with that analysis.

“I’m not going to let any kind of bureaucratic hurdle stop me,” he says. “I appreciate all of their advice. But I disagree that it needs to slow down and wait. In fact, it needs the opposite. It needs to move. The mistake would be not doing it.”

2. HE SAYS THE POLICE BUREAU SHOULD FIRST FOCUS ON FILLING CURRENT VACANCIES. Last week, Mayor Ted Wheeler told WW he wants to hire 200 more sworn officers and 100 unarmed public safety support specialists, known as PS3s. And last fall, the police union proposed hiring an additional 800 officers in the next five years.

Myers has a different approach. He says the Police Bureau should first focus on filling its dozens of vacancies.

“The Police Bureau already has vacancies today,” Myers says. “I’m in favor of them filling their vacancies. They need to cover their shifts so they can keep their overtime down and they can respond to the calls that they’re currently being asked to respond to today. Let’s get there first before we talk about any other increases.”

MERGER: Mike Myers is tasked with consolidating Portland’s public safety bureaus.

By mid-2024, the financial operations of Portland’s four public safety bureaus will live under one roof: the Community Safety Division. That’s if all goes according to a plan laid out by Mike Myers, Portland’s community safety transition director.

Myers began serving in his current role last April, about five years after the city hired him as fire chief in 2016. In that role, he drew on his prior experience as fire chief in Las Vegas, which has a city manager governance structure as opposed to the commission system in Portland, wherein commissioners supervise and protect a portfolio of bureaus. (Portland is the last remaining large city in the nation with such a structure.)

The city manager form of governance tends to “solve problems collectively,” Myers tells WW. “But that wasn’t happening here in Portland.”

Whether Portland will change its form of government is a question city voters will decide in November. Yet for the past year, Myers and his team have been chipping away at Portland’s fragmented public safety system in an effort to

consolidate financial management of the Portland Police Bureau, Portland Fire & Rescue, the Bureau of Emergency Communications, and the Bureau of Emergency Management. (The CSD is housed in the city’s Office of Management and Finance.)

As part of the consolidation process, the Portland City Council last year approved moving financial oversight of the Bureau of Emergency Management to Myers’ division, as well as the transition of two Police Bureau positions and one fire bureau position, according to the City Budget Office’s analysis.

But the work is far from over. In its request for the upcoming budget cycle, the Community Safety Division is asking for $3 million to reallocate 20 full-time employee positions from PPB and BOEC, as well as $200,000 in one-time funding for an outside consultant to craft a “comprehensive community safety strategic plan.”

WW spoke with Myers about his vision and philosophy as it pertains to public safety. Here are three takeaways from that conversation.

3. HE TAKES A MULTIFACETED APPROACH TO REDUCING GUN VIOLENCE. Myers explained that he often hears from people in two camps: those who believe more policing is the solution to gun violence, and those who believe investing in outreach and community-based organizations is.

“No one group alone can reduce gun violence in and of themselves and by themselves. Gun violence and violence is largely the symptom of the environment in which people live,” Myers says. “It’s the neighborhoods that have been divested in for decades, ultimately, [that] end up in a situation where there’s poverty, there’s wealth gaps, there’s lack of access—whether it’s access to safe walkable streets, parks and education. And when these things exist in your neighborhood, they will oftentimes create conditions where violence and gun violence will occur.

“It is not a policing issue,” he concludes. “It is a public health issue.”

Myers also advocates streamlining the city’s 911 system, hiring a supervisor to oversee three of the city’s police oversight groups, and reestablishing a sobering center in Portland.

HOW MUCH? $115,000 on March 4 WHO GOT IT? Move Oregon’s Borders, a political action committee that advocates Oregon lawmakers cede some eastern and southern counties to Idaho WHO GAVE IT? Citizens for Greater Idaho, a nonprofit advocacy organization WHY DOES IT MATTER? The May 17 primary features three local measures on the ballot to push for the next step in a yearslong drive by a grassroots group, Citizens for Greater Idaho, to consider expanding the borders of Idaho. Klamath, Josephine and Douglas counties will all weigh versions of how to move the proposal forward, with Josephine County residents offering an advisory vote on whether they prefer to join Idaho or remain in Oregon.

Changing state lines is an idea that faces many logistical obstacles before it can be enacted. But support for the concept is one measure of Oregon’s urban-rural divide—and the alienation of counties east of the Cascades, which are subsidized by the Portland area but deeply resent liberal control.

WHAT DOES THE CAMPAIGN SAY? “There was somebody from the Northwest who wanted to anonymously donate,” says Michael McCarter, a founder of Citizens for Greater Idaho. “They said, ‘Would this help to get those three counties?’ because advertising is not cheap.”

McCarter says the donor actually gave the advocacy group more than $115,000, which passed along a portion of the gift to the PAC. (That doesn’t appear to run afoul of campaign finance laws, say experts WW consulted this week.)

McCarter, 74, who grew up in the Gresham area, says he still considers Portland “my Rose City,” though he doesn’t care to visit after the recent protests, and retired to La Pine, a town outside Bend. He has no beef with Willamette Valley leaders making decisions that benefit this part of the state, but says it’s time to figure out how to serve rural communities.

“People get more and more frustrated,” says McCarter. “There’s a cultural divide that’s happening. When northwest Oregon legislators start talking about reducing diesel or getting rid of diesel, pushing everything to electric vehicles, that’s not practical for the rural parts of Oregon.

The biggest complaint rural Oregonians have is they don’t feel their voice is heard.”

R AC H E L M O N A H A N .

TESS RISKI.

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

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Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

BRIAN BURK

NEWS

The Pits In court, Ross Island Sand & Gravel argued island properties later sold to pensioners for $10.8 million were nearly worthless.

BY N I G E L J AQ U I S S

njaquiss@wweek .com

In 2020, Ross Island Sand & Gravel sold its namesake island in the Willamette River to a related pension fund for $10.8 million, a price so high one critic called it “egregious.”

Court records newly obtained by WW show just how flagrant the transaction was. In 1985, the company, controlled by Robert Pamplin Jr., once one of the wealthiest men in the state and still the biggest newspaper publisher in Oregon, argued in court that the 122-acre island would be worthless once the company stopped mining there—as it did in 2001.

That information, newly obtained via a public records request, raises additional questions whether Pamplin fulfilled his legal duty as the trustee of his company’s pension fund to look out for the interests of its nearly 2,400 retirees.

Way back in 1985, court records show, Ross Island Sand & Gravel sued the state Department of Revenue in Oregon Tax Court over its property tax assessment, challenging the agency’s valuation of Ross and Hardtack islands, which are joined by an earthen berm and were part of the company’s gravel mining and processing operation.

Ross Island Sand & Gravel won that case and, in his opinion, the judge found that “[Ross Island Sand & Gravel]’s position is that Hardtack Island has no market value separate from the mineral deposit,” and “neither party assigned any [residual] value to [Ross Island],” the judge added.

In other words, the company stipulated that the only value the two islands had was the present value of the gravel it could extract under a longterm agreement with the state of Oregon.

The company ceased mining at Ross Island two decades ago—which meant, according to the argument the company advanced in court, that neither island had any value at that point. (Between 2001 and 2019, Ross Island Sand & Gravel used Hardtack Island for gravel processing, leaving it denuded and strewn with a massive array of rusting machinery.)

Yet in 2019 and 2020, records show, Ross Island Sand & Gravel transferred the properties to the R.B. Pamplin Corporation and Subsidiaries Pension Plan in a series of transactions totaling $10.8 million.

People familiar with Willamette River property question whether the islands have any value,

PENSION INVESTMENT: Ross Island, located in the Willamette River.

particularly since they need substantial cleanup (“Fantasy Island,” WW, March 9).

Terry Deneen, a fellow at the Pension Rights Center in Washington, D.C., reviewed the Oregon Tax Court case at WW’s request. Deneen says the argument Ross Island Sand & Gravel made in tax court conflicts with the $10.8 million valuation.

“The information in these court documents further undermines the assertion that these properties were fairly valued and validly sold to the pension fund,” Deneen says.

Robert Pamplin Jr., 80, well known for his philanthropy, is the scion of one of Oregon’s largest fortunes. As the president of R.B. Pamplin Corp., he oversees the company’s portfolio of businesses, which include Ross Island Sand & Gravel; Mt. Vernon Mills, a South Carolina-based textile company; Columbia Empire Farms; and Pamplin Communications, which operates 24 Oregon newspapers.

In addition to leading the family company, Pamplin also serves as the sole trustee for the R.B. Pamplin Corp. pension fund, which holds nearly $100 million in assets for pensioners from the various Pamplin companies.

As WW has previously reported, Robert Pamplin, beginning in 2018, engaged in more than 20 highly unusual real estate transactions in which R.B. Pamplin Corp. companies either sold or transferred ownership of properties valued at nearly $50 million to the pension fund. (As of Oct. 15, 2021, the pension held about $37 million worth of real estate, nearly four times the 10% limit the federal Department of Labor says is prudent.)

In effect, Pamplin acted as both the seller, as president of R.B. Pamplin Corp., and the buyer, as pension trustee, in those transactions.

Pension experts say there is a built-in conflict of interest in transactions where the R.B Pamplin Corp. sold company-owned properties to the pension fund because the seller wants a high price and the buyer wants a low price.

Mark Garber, president of the Pamplin Media Group, whom Robert Pamplin has designated to

communicate with WW, declined to respond to specific questions about the tax court case.

Instead, Garber reiterated earlier explanations for the Ross Island transactions.

Garber says the Ross Island and Hardtack Island transactions were based on independent appraisals (which he declined to share) and that all property transactions between R.B. Pamplin companies and the pension fund were legal, appropriate and prudent.

“The pension plan is well funded and has always paid retirees on time and in full,” Garber added.

But Deneen and other pension experts WW interviewed say the properties are unsuitable as pension investments in the first place and appear to be greatly overvalued at pensioners’ expense.

“In my opinion, this situation calls out loud and clear for a Department of Labor investigation,” Deneen says.

Michael Petersen, a spokesman for the Department of Labor’s western regional office in San Francisco, says he cannot comment on the Pamplin pension fund.

“Information that a pension fund may not be operating in the best interest of its participants and beneficiaries is always concerning,” Petersen says. “However, as a matter of agency policy, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”

The U.S. Senate Finance Committee, along with other congressional committees, has oversight of the DOL’s work policing pensions.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) chairs that committee. He made it clear in a statement that he wants DOL to watch out for Pamplin pensioners.

“As the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I expect the Labor Department to conduct full and fair oversight of all pension plans under its jurisdiction,” Wyden said in a statement. “The Employee Retirement Income Security Act protects not only the hard-earned pension benefits of workers but also the interests of taxpayers who insure those plans. Failure to carry out this responsibility would be a betrayal of both workers and taxpayers.”

Lost and Found The 1985 Oregon Tax Court case in which Ross Island Sand & Gravel challenged the state’s valuation of the island appears in an online court docket.

But when WW requested a copy of the case, a court administrator said the file disappeared in a 2001 warehouse incident. “The court’s administrator visited the warehouse on a weekday, and saw the court’s paper files stored in cardboard boxes on one pallet, as per usual,” says tax court administrator Rocco Lieuallen.

“A few days later, the administrator visited again, and the court’s files were gone.”

Nobody ever figured out what happened.

The Oregon Department of Justice, which defended the state in the case, had long ago purged its files per retention schedules, and a Department of Revenue spokesman said his agency had likely done the same. But when the agency double-checked its files, the judge’s opinion turned up.

“What do you know?” says DOR spokesman Robin Maxey. “Apparently, this case was considered precedent setting, and so we maintain a copy of the court opinion.”

NIGEL JAQUISS.

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

11

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Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

NEWS

GO GRANT!

Flag on the Play Portland high school football boosters are using a Seattle software the school district banned.

BY V E R O N I C A B I A N C O

veronicav vbianco @gmail .com

Karmen Von Arx raises money for Grant High School’s football team, the Generals. Since 2018, that job’s gotten a lot easier.

That’s because Von Arx, 50, president of a boosters club called Friends of Grant Football, has outsourced fundraising campaigns to a Seattle tech company called Snap! Raise.

For the team’s last campaign, a February 2021 bid to raise money for equipment and travel costs, Von Arx asked the team’s 44 players to each send the company 20 email addresses of possible donors. Then the company’s software took over and created an online fundraising portal for the football team.

In about four weeks, the football players raised $16,000. “We used to make eight to nine thousand,” Von Arx says, “but we would have to do multiple fundraisers.”

It’s a far cry from selling candy bars or running a hot dog stand at the games. These days, high school students can automate their fundraising and let computer software annoy their relatives on their behalf.

Colin O’Rourke, a senior on the Grant football team, says that using Snap! Raise is easy. “They keep it pretty simple and don’t try and complicate things.”

Snap! Raise is quick, not demanding, and consistently suc-

cessful. Just one problem: It’s also banned by Portland Public Schools.

The district told the Grant football team it couldn’t use Snap!

Raise in January 2021, even as the COVID-19 pandemic had already limited the ways sports programs could raise money.

Jill Ross, Lincoln High School’s business manager, says the district banned Snap! Raise because the IT department determined the software took too large a cut of the money raised: $1 out of every $5.

In many ways, the conflict over Snap! Raise is a pee-wee version of fights over tech startups like Uber and Ridwell that arrived from out of town with the aim to shake up established business methods. As Uber did with taxi cabs and Ridwell is doing with hauling recyclables, Snap! Raise promises to ease the unwieldy task of fundraising for high school athletics by handing the work to an app. As with its predecessors, it has run into suspicious regulators.

Another parallel: The rules are toothless. At Grant High, Snap!

Raise is still in use despite the ban.

Grant isn’t the only school where programs ignore the prohibition—at least three other PPS high schools continue to use the service.

Because Snap! Raise is prohibited, checks from the company cannot be accepted into Grant’s student body accounts. The football program gets around this by depositing checks with the nonprofit boosters club and then transferring the money from there into the school’s official account.

Von Arx says there haven’t been any consequences for the continued use of Snap! Raise. “The school wants the kids to be able to get their funds too,” she says.

Snap! Raise was founded in 2014 in Seattle by former high school football coaches who wanted to streamline the fundraising process. Its CEO is Cole Morgan, a former quarterback at Washington State University. “[Morgan] felt like there just needed to be a better way to do fundraising than doing product sales and those type of things,” says Bryan Dundas, a company spokesman.

The company has since expanded and operates in most major U.S. cities. It has raised $115 million in two funding rounds.

Snap! Raise’s ease of use is what makes the service so appealing.

“There’s no product to sell. It’s easy for the kids. It takes them, I don’t know, 20 minutes to get all of their emails together,” Von Arx says.

Participants have a relatively small part to play in the fundraising. All each student has to do is collect and submit 20 emails to Snap! Raise, whose software then takes over.

That software sends out emails to the submitted addresses, directly asking for money. The emails don’t stop until the recipient donates or the fundraising period ends.

During the fundraising period, Snap! Raise representatives go out to teams and make promotion videos featuring students to supplement the donation page.

That digital hawking comes at a price: Snap! Raise takes 20% of funds raised.

“If you just looked at the percentages, then we’re expensive,” Dundas says. “But when you look at the revenue, what is being generated and how much is the district actually making in relation to what they’re spending?”

Lincoln’s Ross says the district banned Snap! Raise because of the steep price: “Snap! Raise charges a very large percentage of the money raised. There is no reason for schools to give away money raised by parents to an outside organization.”

Von Arx thinks the ban has to do with student privacy concerns.

“From the outside, it can look like we just have a ton of kids sending out their digital information,” she says, “and so I think there was miscommunication on all angles on how it worked.”

The PPS ban isn’t the only one of its kind. Dundas says districts across the country put similar policies in place: “School districts have written these policies where you can use Snap! Raise for whatever reason, or they think that they provide the same type of platform to generate funds.”

The district says that it offers a comparable alternative to Snap! Raise: a program called SchoolPay. That program charges no fees to donors and recipients. In 2020, the district signed a $735,000 contract for SchoolPay’s services.

Von Arx says SchoolPay was offered to the Generals as an alternative, but they chose to continue using Snap! Raise because they felt it better protected student privacy. “The kid would have to take their SchoolPay link and personally email it to every single person they know, which would give every single person they know all of their digital information.”

So she’ll keep using the banned software. And not just for the football team, either.

At one point, five Grant sports teams were running Snap!

Raise campaigns through the football nonprofit. “We ended up having football take the funds and then we would help out the other sports,” says Von Arx. Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

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Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

AARON LEE

TIPPING POINT Oregon’s craft beer industry now faces more challenges than ever.

Here’s why it still sees the glass as half full.

In Oregon, beer is more than just a beverage. It’s part of our identity.

That became even clearer when the pandemic threatened the very existence of the state’s craft beer industry.

When the framework most breweries rely on—serving pints to customers seated next to each other on barstools—was forbidden for significant segments of 2020, fiercely loyal drinkers found other ways to support those businesses. We ordered cans for doorstep delivery, filled containers to take home, and attended brewers’ markets that popped up in parking lots.

Once outdoor service resumed, we embraced impromptu patios and parklets even though it may have been bitterly cold, blisteringly hot, or pouring down rain. Beer lovers continued to prove it’s not just about the beer—losing access to our beloved pubs and the fellow enthusiasts who gathered there felt like getting cut off from a space as comfortable and intimate as our own living rooms.

However, with the end of the pandemic in sight, the industry isn’t returning to business as usual. In fact, big changes were already underway before COVID placed the world in lockdown. Craft beer sales had slowed, and other beverages were gaining in popularity. Two years later, there are more new trends shaping consumer behavior and brewery production.

In our annual Beer Issue, you’ll learn how industry leaders are adjusting to this new era and what may be in store for the future.

For instance, we spoke to three different-sized breweries, all in various stages of growth in 2020, who’ve had to pull back on production and scramble for cans, but are finding ways to reengage the public (page 22).

Beer bars are particularly vulnerable right now since they face new competition—in some cases from breweries themselves—and you’ll discover how taproom owners are making changes to draw customers (page 17).

We’ve also provided a roundup of some of the most exciting new taprooms in the metro area to help you plan your next beer crawl (page 19).

And you’ll find a report on Oregon’s low- and no-alcohol beers, which taste a whole lot better than the near beers that might have once lurked in your dad’s fridge (page 23).

This week also marks the in-person return of the Willamette Week-sponsored Oregon Beer Awards at Revolution Hall. The April 6 ceremony honors the state’s top producers, and this year’s competition was the second-largest ever held, with more than 1,000 entries in 29 categories. If you’re reading this after it took place, you can find the complete results on our website.

Despite the current upheaval, the truth is that craft breweries have long dealt with change—rapid industry growth, amended alcohol laws, new beer styles and shifting consumer demographics. Transitions are rarely easy, but they typically lead to positive outcomes.

That’s good news if you’re a beer drinker in Oregon.

—Andi Prewitt, Arts & Culture Editor Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

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AARON LEE

TIPPING POINT Business has been tough for the traditional beer bar, which faces stiff competition and lasting effects from the pandemic.

BY A N D I P R E W I T T

aprewitt@wweek .com

demic,” Kurnellas says.

He rattles off the similar businesses that folded in the year leading up to the outbreak, which included 15th Avenue Hophouse, the Abbey Bar & Bottle Shop and Growlers Taproom Hawthorne.

Since COVID, that list has grown—and not just in Portland: small but beloved operations, like Lincoln City’s Black Squid Beer House, which poured its last pints in mid-March, as well as iconic names that drew tourists and prompted “end of an era” declarations when they went dark, such as Bailey’s in downtown Portland and Denver’s Falling Rock Tap House.

What all of these places have in common is a commitment to serving a wide variety of constantly rotating craft beers made by independent producers.

With dozens of taps—larger beer bars boast upward of 100—owners pride themselves on educating customers about what they’re pouring, whether that’s explaining the difference between a lager and an ale or getting into the complex details of making a cold IPA. Some serve food, but most stick to beer and allow customers to bring in their own snacks or takeout from a neighboring restaurant.

This is part of a larger trend. The number of establishments that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies as drinking places (bars, taverns, nightclubs) have steadily declined over the past two decades—from 54,296 in 2001 to 41,942 in 2021.

On a statewide level, the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission reports a reduction over the past two years in the number of limited on-premises sales license holders, which include beer, wine and cider bars. As of April 1, there were 2,447 licensees compared to 2,828 on Jan. 1, 2020.

The pandemic undoubtedly sped along the closure of those nearly 400 watering holes, but overall lower demand for beer could have been a contributing factor.

In 2020, sales by independent breweries declined for

the first time in the modern craft era by 9.3%. The year before, craft was still growing, but at a crawl—4%, and the overall beer market actually fell by 2%. Figures were more optimistic for 2021. According to the Brewers Association trade group, which released last year’s numbers April 5, production rebounded and grew by 8%, largely due to the return of on-premises drinking.

While taprooms may not be as abundant as they were a decade ago, quality craft beer is easier to find now more than ever.

In Oregon, you can get an IPA fresh from the tap while completing your list of errands at the grocery store, laundromat and bike repair shop. On top of that, pretty much every entertainment venue, from Saturday Market to Oaks Amusement Park to the Woodburn Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival, serves cans, draft or both.

“If I were to describe the trend, it’s twofold,” says Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association.

“The number of places to drink alcohol have increased in recent decades, but the number of places specifically focused on drinking have declined. Americans have generally turned to more ‘experiential’ drinking. So you can get a beer at the zoo, but beer bars are struggling.”

A walk through almost any Portland neighborhood reveals who’s vying for drinkers along with beer bars.

Take, for instance, food cart pods. A growing number of them have a resident bartender on wheels or a clubhouse with someone overseeing the taps. It’s the type of place that would appeal to families with kids who aren’t allowed in many traditional beer bars.

Then there are pop-up event spaces like Function PDX in Northwest, which hosts week- or monthlong tap takeovers that highlight a single brewery. It’s the type of promotion commonly used by beer bars to get customers in the door for exclusive tastings and meet-the-brewer sessions.

Perhaps one of the most formidable rivals to emerge more recently in the Portland area, though, is the brew-

CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

When Alex Kurnellas opened Imperial Bottle Shop & Taproom on Southeast Division Street in 2013, he fulfilled two dreams.

The bar was a path to self-employment, allowing Kurnellas to walk away from his corporate career as a technical writer. But the immediate payoff was becoming fully immersed in the craft beer industry, a passion that prompted him to make pilgrimages to breweries to sample what were, at the time, rare offerings and ferry them back to Portland.

“I used to drive out to Double Mountain [in Hood River] when they released Killer Red and Killer Green,” Kurnellas says. “It was like the only fresh hop beers you could get.”

Thanks to its carefully curated tap list and wellstocked cooler, Imperial gained a loyal, engaged customer base. Four years into operations, Kurnellas and his then-partner, now-wife Shawn Stackpoole were ready to expand. The couple opened a second Imperial on another busy stretch, Northeast Alberta Street, and hoped to see growth similar to that at the Division shop.

They didn’t. Back-to-back blows put the business in a precarious position: Stackpoole was diagnosed with cancer and sales began to slump.

“Shawn was really sick,” Kurnellas says. “We went from running one beer bar with the two of us to just me running two, so I didn’t have time to really grow business there. Then we had COVID, and at a certain time, I think you’re past the point of no return with a business.”

He considered giving up the Alberta location in 2019.

Two years of pandemic restrictions later, Kurnellas finally pulled the plug in March. Now he and Stackpoole, who has no evidence of disease anymore, can focus solely on the original site.

“The beer bar was on the downturn before the pan-

HOPTIMISTIC: Alex Kurnellas shuttered his Alberta taproom this year to focus on Imperial’s original location, where he has devoted regulars.

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

17

ery-owned satellite taproom. Familiar names such as Breakside, Great Notion, Gigantic, Level and Ex Novo have all spun off one or more locations where the brand’s beer isn’t brewed but simply served, a model that cuts out the need for a third-party distributor.

Beer bars, however, are required to buy from either a distributor or a brewery that has a brewery public house license.

“You really have lots of other novel businesses chipping away at ours,” says Kurnellas. “If you opened up a beer bar anywhere in 2010, you were going to be guaranteed successful. Craft beer was something special and cool and new and hard to get. It became ubiquitous, and so you lost that.”

Despite stiff competition, along with the beer bar’s version of long-haul COVID (happy-hour crowds and bar hopping have never really recovered), dozens of taprooms have opened across the state since 2020.

Most founders, however, appear to have gone into business with an understanding that beer alone won’t keep barstools filled.

When Tia Williamson and Kris Corey went from employees at Natian Brewery’s bar to owners of the Buckman space they renamed Neighbors Taproom, they felt fortunate to have a built-in clientele. The taphouse is nestled in the first story of an apartment complex and surrounded by at least a half-dozen more.

Yet they still thought it was best to remodel the bar— which now has more of a coffee shop vibe, with ballet slipper-pink walls, subway tile and a jungle’s worth of potted plants—and diversify their offerings.

“We knew that just being a taproom might not be enough, even with our location. So we’re like, let’s add coffee,” Williamson says. “We also become a little unique for being a plant-based bar. In all of our coffee 18

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

we use oat milk, and none of our beers will ever have any milk sugars.”

Where cafe aesthetics and a vegan menu may be keys to success for one beer bar, sporting events and rare kegs have sustained another.

Nebulous Taproom opened in December 2019 in a Beaverton strip mall anchored by Fred Meyer. At nearly 3,500 square feet, the place is practically an arena compared to Portland’s many closet-sized, walkin taprooms. It’s exactly what the trio of owners were looking for since they knew they wanted to focus on holding large functions.

“That’s kind of our big differentiator,” says co-founder Dayton Rodegerdts, who adds that Nebulous hosts everything from Timbers Sunset Division watch parties to concerts.

The owners also spend up to 20 hours a week calling breweries and poring over distributor lists to hunt down rare kegs. In late March, that was a vanilla-cardamom version of Fort George’s Matryoshka, a popular Russian imperial stout released annually in multiple small batches with different ingredients.

“We focus on high-end, hard-to-get beer,” Rodegerdts says. “We want people to come in here and look at the board of 48 beers and be like, ‘Oh, I’ve never even heard of 24 of those. Tell me about that.’”

As new beer bars open, Kurnellas of Imperial hopes drinkers will remember his place.

“I think the beer bar will always be around,” says Kurnellas. “There are beer bars that are hundreds of years old in Europe. I can’t imagine Belmont Station or BeerMongers not being there. But I think with a saturated market, beer bars need to find a niche. If you’re a new beer bar, you need to do something to appeal to bring people in.”

AARON LEE

BREW CREW

We may have lost some iconic beer bars during the pandemic, but that didn’t prevent a new crop of entrepreneurs from going into business. Here are 16 new metro-area taprooms we’re most excited to visit.

13th Moon Gravity Well

4513 SE 41st Ave., 13thmoongravitywell.com. 4-11:13 pm Tuesday-Thursday, 1:30-11:13 pm Friday-Sunday.

Number of taps: 12 Ari Moss was taken with the culture of the Netherlands, particularly the beer bars, which is why he named his nanobrewery 13th Moon Brouwerij (Dutch for brewery). You can find his beer at this cozy, dimly lit wood-paneled taproom, which opened last spring and shares the 13th Moon name, along with beer and cider made by other small-scale producers. It’s the kind of place where it’s easy to fall into friendly conversations at the bar, and Moss enjoys talking about his business and what makes it special. There is a Mexican food truck in the parking lot, or you can bring your own snacks. Keep an eye out for Bamberg’s legendary Schlenkerla Rauchbier, which is occasionally on tap. D O N S C H E I D T.

Benbear’s Beers

5029 SE Division St. 11 am-9 pm daily.

Number of taps: 11 Last year, camping-themed Scout Beer left its anchor position at the Lot cart pod, and Benbear’s has moved into the space with an equally intriguing theme that is less Smokey Bear and more Grateful Dead dancing bear. The décor is made up of phallic mushroom tap handles and eye-popping psychedelic imagery as well as numerous paintings of its namesake animal on the walls. Ostensibly, Benbear’s is just a libation shack for the food carts—a way to get lubed up while waiting on a order to go. But owner Clint Colbert is as passionate about beers as he is bears and maintains a carefully curated draft list. E Z R A J O H N S O N - G R E E N O U G H .

Blind Ox Taphouse

4320 N Interstate Ave., 971-302-6352, blindoxpdx.com. 2-10 pm Monday-Thursday, noon-11 pm Friday-Saturday, noon-10 pm Sunday.

Number of taps: 36 After vacating its Fremont taproom, Blind Ox made the move to the former Untapped location on the Yellow MAX Line. It’s a straightforward, no-frills beer bar well-suited for after-work unwinding or getting some additional work done in the company of a laptop and a pint. Blind Ox’s tap list balances modern and classic, offering up Mac and Jack’s Amber alongside the latest West Coast or hazy IPA, plus cider and hard seltzer.

Though you won’t find the boozy ice cream that was a hit at the original Blind Ox, the bar does offer pizza and encourages patrons to bring in outside food as well. Keep an eye out for trivia and other events in the future. N E I L F E R G U S O N .

Central Station Taps

3925 SW Rose Biggi Ave., Suite 120, Beaverton, 503-430-8819, centralstationtaps.com. 1-9 pm Monday-Wednesday, noon-10 pm Thursday-Saturday, noon-9 pm Sunday.

Number of taps: 30 Not that long ago, Beaverton would’ve been considered a beer desert by Portland standards. The founders of Central Station Taps, who call the suburb home, also noticed it was hard to find bars devoted primarily to craft beer in the area, let alone any production breweries. So they decided to help fill that void by opening a taphouse. The only problem was the date they officially launched: March 6, 2020. Of course, we all now know the timing couldn’t have been worse, but Central Station—named after the MAX stop where it’s located —toughed out the lockdown. Now, you’ll

find the barstools filled with chatty regulars and small groups at the long, mixed-wood tables, playing games from the bar’s well-stocked library.

There’s also an abundance of sidewalk seating and complimentary blankets for chilly spring days. Since one of the owners has a day job that requires travel around the state, expect to find kegs from farther-flung breweries you might not see elsewhere, like Roseburg’s Two Shy and Hermiston Brewing. A N D I P R E W I T T.

Corner 14 Foodcarts Spirits & Brew

508 14th St., Oregon City, 503-908-8789, corner14oc.com.

11 am-8 pm Monday-Thursday, 11 am-10 pm Friday, 9 am-10 pm Saturday, 9 am-7 pm Sunday.

Number of taps: 24 During a trip to Bend, Cherisse Reilly and her father, Dan Fowler, were inspired by the area’s thriving beer gardens and food cart pods and decided they needed to bring something similar to Oregon City. The two are also passionate about restoring the community’s historic structures, which led them to open Corner 14 in the former Spicer Brothers Produce market. The site has 10 food trucks surrounding a covered beer garden with gas fire pits, ax-throwing lanes, and an indoor bar serving cocktails, wine and beer. On a nice day, it can be hard to snag a table, but in times like those the QR codes save the day. Instead of lining up to get a drink, you can get it delivered directly to you, a service that’s rare even at the best pods in Bend or Portland. E Z R A J O H N S O N - G R E E N O U G H .

Hindsight Taproom

5829 SE Powell Blvd., 503-764-9739.

4-9 pm Monday-Thursday, noon-9 pm Friday-Sunday.

Number of taps: 7 Owner-operator Karyn Wisniewski was already pouring pints from her Hindsight Beer Cart at the Bite on Belmont pod when she learned the former Brewery 26 Tap Room on Powell was available to lease.

Hindsight Taproom now operates in this intimate space, serving local draft beer alongside ciders and wine as well as a small, beer-compatible snack menu. The “No crap on tap” sign tells you this is a place where you’ll find an eclectic selection. D O N S C H E I D T.

Loyal Legion Beaverton

4500 SW Watson Ave., 503-372-5352, loyallegionpdx.com.

11 am-midnight Sunday-Thursday, 11 am-2 am Friday-Saturday.

Number of taps: 72 For months, people living in Beaverton watched the vacant Arthur Murray Dance Studio with anticipation. Loyal Legion, the 99-tap beer hall in Portland’s inner eastside announced it was launching a Beaverton outpost in that location, with a planned July 4, 2021, opening. That date came and went—the pandemic and supply-chain issues created delays—but ultimately it was worth the wait. By November, the former ballroom had been transformed into a 150-seat taphouse with an ovalshaped bar that mirrors the counter in the original location as well as the Spanish colonial-style architecture of the building. The space tends to fill up quickly on weekends, so don’t dawdle when choosing a seat—the black banquettes are much more comfortable than the butt-punishing barstools, which have seats that are too small and legs that are too tall. Once the temperatures warm up, take your pint to the sprawling patio, a converted 3,000-square-foot parking lot shaded by a pergola. A N D I P R E W I T T. Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

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AARON LEE

Congratulations Oregon Beer Award Winners!

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Nebulous Taproom

11645 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway, 503-352-5620, nebuloustaproom.com. 3-9:30 pm Monday, 3-9 pm Tuesday-Wednesday, 3-10 pm Thursday-Friday, noon-10 pm Saturday, noon-9 pm Sunday.

Number of taps: 48 A grocery store strip mall isn’t the first place anyone would volunteer to hang out for a few hours, but thanks to three friends who were sick of their jobs and wanted to own a bar, Beavertonians now have Nebulous adding some excitement to the Town Square just off Highway 217. At nearly 3,500 square feet, it’s less of a tap “room” than a cavernous beer hall, which was a lifesaver when it came to social distancing orders in 2020. All of that room now allows the owners to host everything from Timbers watch parties to concerts. The beautiful, knotty wood bartop is a Doug fir salvaged from Silver Falls State Park following a fire, and each of the tables is made from handsome redwoods. You can expect to find pretty much any sport playing on one of the nine TVs or a giant projector screen, but the autographed murals of the two Diegos—Valeri and Chará—tell you that this is a Portland soccer bar. Art featuring the Thorns’ Christine Sinclair will soon join them. A N D I P R E W I T T.

Neighbors Taproom

1306 E Burnside St., 503-597-8483, neighborstaproom.com.

2-9 pm Monday-Wednesday, 2-10 pm Thursday-Friday, 10 am-10 pm Saturday, 10 am-9 pm Sunday.

Number of taps: 24 When Natian Brewery owner Ian McGuinness decided to stop brewing and dissolve the brand, two employees at his taproom saw the opportunity to take over the space and rechristen it as Neighbors. Now, under the leadership of Tia Williamson and Kris Corey, the business serves as both a daytime coffee shop and an evening neighborhood bar. You can get a decently drawn espresso, vegan pastries, and craft beers brewed in the Pacific Northwest (or nearby). Neighbors also allows third-party food vendors—often those supporting various causes—to set up shop inside.

The concept is a good one, particularly since the airy pink-and-green taproom is surrounded by apartments and condos filled with new-toPortland residents looking for a chill place to hang out. D O N S C H E I D T.

Proper Pint Oakroom

7654 SW 32nd Ave., 971-346-2177, properpintoakroom.com.

2-9 pm Monday-Tuesday, 1-11 pm Wednesday-Thursday, noon-midnight Friday-Saturday, noon-11 pm Sunday.

Number of taps: 18 The spinoff of Woodstock’s first Proper Pint location sits on a corner along Multnomah Village’s quaint main drag. Decked out in flannel and memorabilia, the Oakroom has a cozy, twee, neighborhood sports bar vibe. The spacious triangular taproom is lined with cushioned seating that provides sightlines to four TVs and the gorgeous stained-glass mosaic bar wall crafted by the owner. The small but appealing tap list includes wine, which is a hit with the neighborhood demographic, and its proximity to other bars and restaurants make it an ideal part of a pub crawl. Don’t snooze on the small but well-curated selection of beer to go. N E I L F E R G U S O N .

Tinker Tavern

7980 SE Stark St., 971-544-7081, tinkertavernpdx.com.

3 pm-midnight Monday-Thursday, 3 pm-1 am Friday, noon-1 am Saturday, noon-midnight Sunday.

Number of taps: 12 Regulars at Prost! and Stammtisch will recognize Erik Mahan, who was a fixture at those German establishments as a bartender and manager before striking out on his own and opening Tinker Tavern. This beer bar also serves booze and has a kitchen that prepares simple pub food, including beef on weck, a sandwich with shaved roast beef and creamy horseradish mayo on a Kummelweck roll that was made popular in Buffalo, N.Y. The tavern and its wood-topped bar went nearly unused by customers after opening in December 2020. Patrons now gather inside, but the parklet remains available to those who prefer to sit outdoors.

If you want to go Central European old school, order a chilled shot of Becherovka, a classic Czech herbal booze, as a chaser or nightcap. D O N S C H E I D T.

Tomorrow’s Verse Taproom & Bottle Shop

4605 NE Fremont St., Suite 103, 971-346-2198, youenjoymybeer.com. 2-11 pm daily.

Number of taps: 16 TJ Fuller opened Tomorrow’s Verse in April 2020, which took a lot of tenacity since the mandatory shutdown of service industries was still in

effect, and the business’s continuing existence is itself a model of perseverance. The taps pour a variety of Oregon- and Washington-brewed beers as well as cider and seltzer. There are also cans and bottles in fridges along the back wall. Beyond bar seating, there are several blond wooden tables, a couch and two armchairs gathered in front of a stone fireplace, and benches outdoors. Tomorrow’s Verse was founded to function not just as a beer bar but also as a venue for live music, which typically happens on weekends. When bands are not performing, the space’s soundtrack comes courtesy of a record player and a stellar selection of vinyl. D O N S C H E I D T.

Treebeerd’s Taphouse

822 SW 2nd Ave., 503-954-2176, treebeerdstaphouse.com. Noon-9 pm Tuesday-Thursday, noon-10 pm Friday-Saturday. Grand opening April 8.

Number of taps: 36 Named after the oaklike giant that first appeared in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novel The Two Towers, Treebeerd’s pays homage to The Lord of the Rings and is a spinoff from the original Corvallis location. Unlike some of the other themed bars around town, this one won’t submerge customers in its source material. In other words, you won’t be transported to Middle-earth via walls plastered with images of hobbits and wizards. Beyond the name, the LOTR motif will be gently referenced in the design, which includes the use of actual trees (live-edge resin tables and a 30-foot-long showstopping bar) and some nods here and there to beards. A N D I P R E W I T T.

Valley Public House

12960 SE 162nd Ave., Happy Valley, 971-271-2099, valleypublichouse.com.

11 am-10 pm Monday-Friday, 10 am-10 pm Saturday, 10 am-9 pm Sunday.

Number of taps: 70 Valley Growlers has been Happy Valley’s favorite hole-in-the-wall beer bar since 2013, but for their second location, owners Brian and Ami Shannon wanted to do something different—get out of the strip malls that dominate suburbs. Valley Public House accomplished that goal. The new 8,000-square-foot, two-story development includes an adults-only taproom, a cafeteria-style food court, and a lower-level whiskey lounge, and you can come and go freely, with drink in hand, between all three.

The space may not have the lived-in charm of older Portland establishments, but the benefits include a quiet neighborhood, on-site parking, and indoor/outdoor seating that makes Valley Public House a onestop-shop for beer lovers and families. E Z R A J O H N S O N - G R E E N O U G H .

White Oak Taphouse

14661 SW Teal Blvd., Beaverton, 503-521-7456, whiteoaktaphouse.com. 2-10 pm Monday-Thursday, noon-11 pm Friday-Saturday, noon-9 pm Sunday.

Number of taps: 22 The first thing you’ll notice at White Oak is the sleek, blond bartop that doesn’t end at the wall—instead the wooden panel extends upward and then crosses back overhead following the same shape of the countertop, creating a lighted canopy that is functional and architecturally intriguing. The creation was sourced from the bar’s namesake, a tree from Southeast Portland that must have been massive. All of the wood in the taphouse—from the booths to the tables—came from that mighty oak. If you prefer softer seating, there is a pair of black leather couches around a triangular coffee table. No matter where you park with your pint, you can to see the two TVs, which were playing Oscars red carpet coverage on our visit. Solo visitors tend to drop in for a quiet pint before or after running errands in Murrayhill Marketplace. Enjoy a drink or two here, then head across the street for a lakeside dinner at Murrayhill Taphouse—a vast improvement from the Ruby Tuesday that used to occupy that space. A N D I P R E W I T T.

Workers Tap

101 SE 12th Ave., 503-764-9584, workerstap.com. 5-11 pm Monday-Thursday, 5 pm-midnight Friday, 3 pm-midnight Saturday, 3-11 pm Sunday.

Number of taps: 20 Four people collectively own and operate this venue, a two-level pub in a house built in 1904 with a patio out back. Cozy, wood-paneled rooms feature workers-of-the-world iconography and other art on the walls. A brown leather sofa, glossy coffee table, and built-in bookshelf add to the classic drawing-room feel. There is a wide variety of Pacific Northwest beer on tap, including IPAs, Belgians, sours and even a rauch Märzen lager. Workers is an easy walk from Neighbors Taproom, Ecliptic’s Moon Room and Loyal Legion, making for a good inner-eastside Buckman pub crawl. And although the bar opened only this past February, it’s already on its way to neighborhood gem status. D O N S C H E I D T. Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

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TANK UP: COVID prompted Ninkasi to diversify, so the brand started producing other alcohol products and canning even more beer.

A PACKAGE DEAL

COVID can consumption caused chaos for breweries of all sizes.

Here’s how three in Oregon coped.

BY A A R O N B R U S S AT

“Breweries have always been part of sharing culture,” says Ninkasi Brewing co-founder Jamie Floyd. “That’s who we are.”

With a pandemic suppressing our ability to share culture in person for the past two years, the beer world has suffered losses beyond revenue.

Facing universal adversity, breweries ended up making choices driven by necessity, guided by ethics and community, and shaped by a passion for the culture of beer.

Craft breweries are generally categorized into large, medium and small sizes based on production volume, and there are both benefits and drawbacks unique to each. To get a sense of how different categories of breweries adapted as COVID swept the globe, we spoke to three Eugene-based businesses, all of which were caught in different phases of development in 2020.

Gratitude Brewing opened its small brewpub on the edge of downtown Eugene in December 2019. Owner Tristan Cooley was blunt about the first waves of the pandemic.

“Getting [Paycheck Protection Program] loans was based on showing a drop in revenue in years past,” he explains. “That evidence didn’t exist [for us].”

The restaurant shut down for a month, and Gratitude started selling crowlers online for outdoor pickup, reengaging with customers from a distance.

“Someone purchased $100 worth of crowlers for us to give to first responders and medical personnel,” says Cooley. That inspired the addition of a simple button on Gratitude’s website allowing customers to give beer as a gift. “People were really generous.”

It quickly became apparent that packaging beer was a necessity; in-house sales, which are the most profitable for a brewery, didn’t exist. Gratitude initially worked with a mobile canning company but realized it wasn’t worth it.

“We were paying them twice what it would take to buy a canning line,” Cooley says. So Gratitude took on more debt and bought a single-head canning line. “It enabled us to can smaller runs, whereas running 20 barrels for the cost break didn’t work for shelf life.”

The brewery also squeaked by on Restaurant Revitalization Fund relief.

Gratitude produced less than 600 barrels (1 barrel equals 31 gallons) of beer in its first two years but is on track to make around 500 in 2022.

The pandemic introduced similar challenges to Whiteaker neighborhood favorite Oakshire Brewing, though the 16-year-old, medium-sized brewery had different strategies. First, it bought back its kegged beer from distrib-

utors, pushed it into tanks, and then canned it—a tremendous amount of extra work. Oakshire’s two taprooms in Eugene and Portland also closed while the owners came up with social distancing solutions.

Fast forward a year. “We got emails from can suppliers [stating] that unless you buy a truckload, you can’t buy [12-ounce] cans,” says Dan Russo, director of brewing operations for Oakshire. So the company switched entirely to 16-ounce containers.

Russo adds that the brewery’s strategy moving forward is to “focus on taproom operations, because that’s where the profit is. We’ll work with wholesalers to dial in forecasts for beer, and not go into winter with three times more beer than we should.” Oakshire’s production dropped approximately 30% from 2019 to 2021 to around 4,300 barrels.

The pandemic was perhaps even more complicated for the larger-sized Ninkasi Brewing. Owners Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge were in the process of buying the brewery back from Legacy Breweries—a company that formed in 2019 to allow breweries to pool resources and equity through acquisitions. They’d also just opened a restaurant in the brewery’s administrative building called the Better Living Room. Then COVID hit. The restaurant all but closed until mid-2021, and brewery production dropped by about a third, from 81,238 in 2019 to 60,193 in 2021.

“The 2020 barrels were a lot of mixed 12-packs as people stocked up,” says Floyd, “but those are the most expensive and, therefore, least-profitable products we make.”

Ninkasi also started canning more of its beer and producing other alcohol products. Because although it may appear very large, the brand competes with much larger breweries, like Deschutes and Sierra Nevada, for shelf space.

“Nikos and I saw the need to diversify well before COVID and started that process with seltzer and now canned cocktails,” Floyd adds. “We are a big machine, it’s true. With human nature, you have an idea that you’ll work hard and hit a level and be stable. We knew that was not going to happen in this industry. So getting our employees to understand that the only consistent thing is change helped to prepare us for a global pandemic.”

All three breweries are working on reengaging with the local community and getting folks to come back in for a pint. Ninkasi hosted its first NinkasiCon in late March and will put on the revered Sasquatch Brew Fest on June 11. Gratitude Brewing even has a stage, which is finally being used properly.

“We have live music on a regular basis, and weekly drag Bingo and trivia nights,” says Cooley. “We’re looking forward to the summer and all the events in town, including the World Athletic Championships, so we can go into winter with a little cushion.”

C O U R T E S Y O F C R U X F E R M E N TAT I O N P R O J E C T

HYDRATION STATION: Bend’s Crux makes two N/A beers: NØ MØ IPA and NØ MØ Hazy IPA.

LOW BUZZ IS FINALLY BUZZWORTHY

As more drinkers become health conscious, breweries are responding by finding new ways to produce lower-alcohol beer—particularly in Central Oregon.

BY J O N A B E R N AT H Y

One of the more disruptive beer trends in recent years has been brought about by the rising popularity of the lifestyle beverage category. From hard seltzers to CBD-infused sodas, sparkling hop waters and more, the focus is often on low calories and low carbs. Add in growing awareness about the deleterious effects of ethanol, and that means low (or no) alcohol is in demand for those reasons as well.

Over the past several years, N/A beer sales have increased—up 39% and 38% in 2019 and 2020, respectively. In 2021, there was a 315% overall increase in combined no- and low-alcohol brand sales, according to Nielsen.

The good news is, non-alcoholic beer has been getting better in recent years, in flavor, variety, and availability.

And Central Oregon is the place to find it.

“Most of the N/A beer that has been available the last 10 to 20 years was not very good,” says Dustin Kellner, brewmaster at Bend’s Worthy Brewing. “I imagine it served a purpose, but enjoyment wasn’t it.”

He points to the lineup from Connecticut’s Athletic Brewing as well as recent N/A beers from Deschutes Brewery and Crux Fermentation Project as examples of more recent innovators.

“As brewers, we are always looking to improve on what we make as well as the never-ending pursuit of producing the best example of any particular style,” Kellner says. “Buying N/A no longer means you’re sacrificing quality and flavor to maintain an alcohol-free lifestyle.”

“I think there are many people looking for healthier alternatives when it comes to drinking beverages,” says Cam O’Connor, head brewer at Crux. “They want a reduced calorie and either low or no alcohol.”

Crux currently produces two N/A beers, NØ MØ IPA and NØ MØ Hazy IPA, while Deschutes introduced its non-alcoholic Irish Style Dark in 2020, and released Black Butte Non-Alcoholic earlier this year.

To legally qualify as non-alcoholic, beer must have

0.5% or less alcohol by volume. A common method to achieve this target is known as arrested fermentation: A recipe is formulated and brewed normally, but the fermentation process is stopped before reaching half a percent of alcohol. However, in such brews, residual unfermented sugars can leave a “worty,” unfinished quality, and there’s often a harsh, oversteeped hop bitterness.

Crux doesn’t follow this process at all. Instead, the NØ MØ brews begin as fully fermented, albeit extremely low-gravity, beers and are essentially diluted with water until the target alcohol-by-volume level is reached. It has to be tweaked with this dilution in mind, of course, but the process works—the results, though light and a bit watery, taste like beer.

“If you have tasted some of the N/A beers of the past, you can see why people are looking for something that tastes more like a craft beer,” O’Connor says. “I took some NØ MØ IPA on a rafting trip down the Deschutes last Memorial Day. It was great to have a beer while rowing on the river and not have the alcohol content in the beer.”

In many ways, Deschutes has been leading the way in the lifestyle category in Oregon. The brewery launched Da Shootz in 2019, its 99-calorie, 4% ABV light lager, to tap into the calorie-conscious “lite” beer market. It followed up in 2020 with Wowza, a 4% ABV hazy pale ale with 100 calories. And Deschutes has long offered a house-brewed, gluten-free option in its pubs.

Not all of the brand’s efforts have been successful.

Modified Theory, the low-sugar, gluten-reduced “craft hard bevvies” designed to compete with hard seltzer, debuted just as the pandemic hit and was discontinued.

When it came time to produce N/A beer, Deschutes partnered with Colorado’s Sustainable Beverage Technologies and its proprietary BrewVo technology. Details on how this process works are vague, but production begins with a full-strength beer, and the alcohol is removed while other essential qualities are maintained.

According to Deschutes brewmaster Veronica Vega, it provides the closest profile to a regular beer among

those it tried.

“Through tasting products made from other processes and meeting with different vendors of de-alc equipment, we did explore other options,” she says.

“BrewVo simply provided the best tasting beer and a path to scale that we could embark upon.”

The proof is in the experience, and with Black Butte N/A, it’s reasonably close to drinking full-strength Black Butte Porter. It lacks the full body and malt richness of the original, but it avoids the off flavors of old-school N/A brews.

Vega thinks it took some disruption in the market for quality N/A beers to gain traction, but low alcohol is a tougher sell. “I think low alc is a more difficult proposition to take to market to be honest,” she says. “It can work as a beer on draft at a pub but is very difficult at retail.”

Kellner doesn’t brew alcohol-free beer at Worthy, but he recently produced Hop Quencher, a sugar-free sparkling hop water featuring Strata hops, and developed the Easy Day line of low-ABV, low-calorie hazy IPAs. The Easy Day beers “definitely provide the satisfaction of a full-flavored hazy IPA while maintaining the sub-100-calorie count that has been the focus of the many flavorless American light lagers out there,” he says.

The region has plenty of light lagers and alternatives to offer. Boss Rambler Beer Club in Bend and Redmond’s Kobold Brewing, for instance, brew Stokes Light (4.2% ABV) and K-Lite American Lager (4.3% ABV), respectively. Bend’s Spider City Brewing has a regular line of house-brewed hard seltzers, as do Three Creeks Brewing in Sisters and 10 Barrel Brewing.

Boneyard Beer in Bend also explicitly markets a line of CBD-infused sodas as wellness beverages, which feature CBD derived from locally farmed hemp.

Expect to see more of this as breweries continue to diversify to meet the demands of the lifestyle market. In particular, watch what comes out of Central Oregon’s breweries, which are on the cutting edge of this trend.

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

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WHAT’S FIZZING AND WHAT’S FLAT

The beer fads of the 2010s are officially dead.

Here’s how we’ll be drinking this year.

BY E Z R A J O H N S O N - G R E E N O U G H

Glass is out, metal is in.

People are no longer swigging out of long-neck glass bottles. Cans keep your IPA from skunking, don’t require bottle openers, take up less room in the fridge, and fit into the pocket of a hoodie. The only drawback is that it’s a lot harder to make a Molotov cocktail out of an aluminum container, should you need one.

Growlers are out, 19.2-ounce cans are in.

Oregon is filled with growler stations that years ago popped up in every strip mall for the primary purpose of filling moldy-ass, half-gallon brown jugs with beer that will inevitably go flat in two days. Thanks to mobile canners, giant stove pipe-style 19.2-ounce cans are now the best way to take home your beer.

Sexualized labels are out, socially conscious art is in.

Before the Trump administration, beer labels used to feature more sexual innuendo and sleazy misogynistic jokes about stacked blond (ales) and easy redheads than an entire season of The Apprentice. Now, packaging naming and art tends to be split between jokes about the former president (covfefe, tiny hands, stable genius) and messages championing causes like the Black Lives Matter movement, wildfire relief and women’s rights.

Beer bars are out, satellite taprooms are in.

In Oregon, you can find a good beer list at a white tablecloth restaurant or your neighborhood strip club.

But people love to go to the source, so breweries realized that instead of fighting for tap handles or grocery store shelf space, they should go directly to consumers by opening multiple branded taprooms, cutting out distributors and the potentially fickle independent bar buyer. Unfortunately, non-brewery-affiliated taprooms that kept the industry afloat for so long will be the first casualties.

Brewpubs are out, food trucks and catering partners are in.

Instead of having customers struggle with Wi-Fi and QR codes to download an uncompressed PDF file of a limited menu prepared by a short-staffed kitchen, breweries and taprooms are now relying on food carts

and catering companies to provide just enough hot dishes to get the state liquor commission to allow kids minors inside their bare-bones tasting rooms.

Seltzer is out, N/A beer is in.

Hard seltzer was fueled by spring breaks and a 20-something crowd of woo girls and bruhs looking for a quick buzz without having to learn the difference between IPA and gose. Realizing they were losing the prized young-drinker demographic, craft breweries flocked to hard seltzer like white girls to a Taylor Swift concert. But the luster faded as fast as a spray-on tan as they realized the non-alcoholic beer market was pretty much up for grabs, which has no side effects!

Smoothie sours are out, cask beer is in.

Before the infantilization of alcohol in recent decades, our great-grandfathers were quaffing warm pints of dark mild ale from a cask engine at the local tavern.

Now kids are TikToking about smoothie sours that are so packed with fruit puree and artificial ingredients that they explode unless kept at the coldest temperatures. Beer nerds who’ve grown tired of cleaning up shrapnel from $10 cans of blueberry doughnut slushie sour are now turning to cask ale. The beer relies only on malt, hops and gentle carbonation from natural refermentation in the keg before it’s then served at a warmer temperature that won’t mask flaws.

Lining up for rare releases is out, signing up for exclusive beer membership clubs is in.

Beer nerds used to line up around the block for dock sales of limited-release hype beers from their favorite brewery and then check them off their street cred list.

With the dawn of black market forums for beer resale, and breweries creating exclusive, subscription-only memberships, beer connoisseurs have abandoned their sidewalk pop-up camps, but they’re still logging beers into a mobile app to earn merit badges like a prepubescent Boy Scout.

Imported beer is out, making it distinctly American is in.

Beer snobs used to seek out imported abbey ales brewed by Trappist monks. Now they are all about Pilsners locally made with heirloom hops from Yakima, Wash., and fermented with a wild yeast cultivated from the beard of a well-coiffed hipster in a faded YOB T-shirt.

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

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Portlanders rallied in the South Park Blocks on March 31 in honor of the International Trangender Day of Visibility.

Some held signs displaying messages of support while others wore the light blue, pink and white pride flag representing the trangender community.

Demonstrations took place across the country this year to protest legislation and orders against transgender people, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent directive that targets families who allow gender-affirming medical care of transgender youths.

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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 .

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Dinolandia, an immersive museum of Mike Bennett art, will open downtown this spring.

Mon-Sat 10-6pm Sunday 11-5pm

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GEM FAIRE America’s Premier Jewelry & Bead Faires

Portland balloon artist Kameron Messmer opens the Joy Store, a pop-up installation dedicated to spreading good vibes.

APRIL

8, 9, 10 { 801 NE 34th Ave., Hillsboro, OR } GEM FAIRE HOURS: FRI 12pm-6pm SAT 10am-6pm SUN 10am-5pm

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AW E S O M E

Westside Commons

Formerly Washington County Fairgrounds

Oregon Children’s Theatre will conclude its 2021-22 season with Last Stop on Market Street, a Motown musical based on a kids’ book.

( No admittance after 4pm Sunday )

JEWELRY ² CRYSTALS GEMS ² BEADS ² MINERALS F FA FASHION ACCESSORIES ² AND MORE!

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Portland-area theaters screen Oscar-winning films for anyone who missed them before the ceremony.

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The Sports Bra, billed as the first and only bar that will exclusively screen women’s sports, opens in Northeast Portland.

Get Busy Tonight OUR EVENT PICKS, E M A I L E D W E E K LY.

Lake Oswego artist James McGrew is selected to paint at the 14th annual Grand Canyon Celebration of Art. SERIOUS

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AW F U L

HILLSBORO

HILLSBORO HOPS

PHOTO CREDIT

GET BUSY

STUFF TO DO IN PORTLAND THIS WEEK, INDOORS AND OUT.

MUSIC FOR 4/20 An experiential evening of modern minimalism featuring Music for 18 Musicians

by Steve Reich April 20th at PICA 15 NE Hancock St. 7:00-8:00pm Doors open at 6:30

 GO: Hillsboro Hops Opening Week

Nothing says “spring” like hearing the crack of a bat while eating a ballpark dog. The Hillsboro Hops will be back in action at 4,500-seat Ron Tonkin Field this weekend, which means a slew of events in addition to games to kick off the 2022 season. You can expect a fireworks spectacular on opening night, the Hops’ first jersey retirement ceremony, swag giveaways, and the release of a new book about one of the best mascots in the minors—a bulbous, green hop named Barley. He’ll also be on hand roaming the stadium like always, stopping for selfies and hugs. Ron Tonkin Field, 4460 NE Century Blvd., Hillsboro, 503-6400887, milb.com/hillsboro. 6:35 pm Friday-Saturday, 1:05 pm Sunday, April 8-10. $7-$50.

WATCH: Cameraperson

Filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has collaborated on zeitgeisty documentaries like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and Laura Poitras’ Citizenfour, but Cameraperson proved her a legend in her own right. The 2016 doc assembles footage she shot from other films, taking us to Brooklyn, Nigeria, Guantánamo Bay and beyond. It’s a singular experience at once beautifully cohesive and thrillingly fragmented. 5th Avenue Cinema, 510 SW Hall St., 503-7253551, 5thavecinema.com. 7 and 9:30 pm Friday-Saturday, 3 pm Sunday, April 8-10. $5.

In partnership with...

event details + tickets: www.45thparallelpdx.org

Celebrate 420 with

LISTEN: Skegss

Who better to cheer up Portland than three musical mates from Australia? Ben Reed, Toby Cregan and Jonny Lani are Skegss, the rock group from Down Under with an irresistibly buoyant style. Lucky for us, they’re stopping in Portland en route to Coachella. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., mississippistudios.com. 8 pm Tuesday, April 12. $20. 21+.

SEE: Comedy of Errors

P O R T L A N D C E N T E R S TAG E

Whether he’s being transplanted to Manhattan’s Upper West Side or a contemporary high school ruled by Heath Ledger’s coiff, Shakespeare is nothing if not malleable. Speculative Drama’s Comedy of Errors is another intriguing take on one of the Bard’s works, with a mostly female cast and a narrative set in a coastal queer community. The play also takes inspiration from’90s sitcoms and the films of Kevin Smith. The Steep and Thorny Way to Heaven, Southeast 2nd Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard, patreon.com/speculativedrama. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, through April 16. $35.

SEE: Freestyle Love Supreme

Before Hamilton and In the Heights, there was Freestyle Love Supreme. The original hip-hop musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail and Anthony Veneziale is coming to Portland, direct from Broadway, and every performance of this Grammy-nominated show brings the unexpected since the performers take suggestions from the audience and spin them into instantaneous riffs and full-length musical numbers. Portland Center Stage at the Armory, 128 NW 11th Ave., 503-445-3700, pcs.org. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, 2 pm select Thursdays, April 8-May 1. $25-$92.

FOOD | MUSIC | DEALS | PRIZES - GnomeGrownOrganics.com Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

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Top 5

Buzz List WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.

Editor: Andi Prewitt Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

THOMAS TEAL

1. VON EBERT BREWING

FOOD & DRINK

133 NW 13th Ave., 503-820-7721; 14021 NE Glisan St., 503878-8708; vonebertbrewing.com. Pearl: 11:30 am-10 pm Monday-Saturday, 11:30 am-9 pm Sunday. Glendoveer: 11:30 am-9 pm Tuesday-Sunday.

Two Portland obsessions—basketball and beer—have come together for Parkinson’s Awareness Month this April. Former Blazer Brian Grant, who was diagnosed with the condition in 2008, raises money through a beer-centric campaign every spring for his foundation, which helps others who have Parkinson’s. This year, he went behind the scenes at Von Ebert and brewed Rasta Monsta, a 4.9% ABV tropical Pilsner named after Grant’s on-court persona. You can get it for a limited time at both brewery pubs.

2. 503 DISTILLING LOUNGE

4784 SE 17th Ave., Suite 150, 503-975-5669, 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. DESCHUTES BREWERY PORTLAND PUBLIC HOUSE

210 NW 11th Ave., 503-296-4906, deschutesbrewery.com. 11:30 am-10 pm Sunday-Thursday, 11:30 am-11 pm Friday-Saturday.

In a town filled with top-notch craft beer, it can be hard to settle on one place to drink. Next time you need to make a decision, keep it simple: Go with the most recent award winner. Deschutes won five medals—three of them gold— and was given the title of Brewery of the Year at the Best of Craft Beer Awards in early March. If you can find it on tap, order the Bines & Sunshine, which won top honors in the Juicy or Hazy IPA category, one of the most competitive in the contest.

4. SUCKERPUNCH

1030 SE Belmont St., 503-208-4022, suckerpunch.bar. 6-11 pm Thursday-Sunday.

Suckerpunch, the local business that started as a nobooze cocktail kit vendor in 2020, has launched an experimental pop-up in the Goat Blocks—further proof the alcohol-free trend is gaining steam after a well-documented spike in pandemic drinking. Here, you’ll find a regular rotation of zero-proof, seasonally inspired cocktails along with events like tasting flights and dessert pairings.

5. STEEPLEJACK BREWING COMPANY

2400 NE Broadway, 503-206-8880, steeplejackbeer.com. 9 am-10 pm daily.

Like so many beloved Portland buildings lost to redevelopment, the 1909 Metropolitan Community Church appeared to be destined for the backhoe. But a pair of old college buddies looking to open their own brewery stumbled across the real estate listing and decided it would be the perfect place for Steeplejack. The breathtaking architecture and stained glass are reason enough to visit, but for a limited time you can also find a rare beer on tap: a Dortmund-style lager made with oysters and seaweed. Collaborator Flying Fish is also pouring the brew while it lasts.

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Cafe Olli Is Whatever You Want It to Be It’s a bakery, all-day brunch spot, pizzeria, bar and nighttime dinner restaurant all built around a wood-fired oven and employee profit-sharing.

BY JA S O N C O H E N

@cohenesque

Cafe Olli is a lot of restaurants.

By day, it’s a casual counter-service spot, with your pick of pastries, sandwiches and square Roman-style “pizza alla pala” by the slice. There’s also soup, two different kinds of fancy cheese on toast (whipped ricotta with bee pollen and citrus marmalade or stracciatella with Calabrian chile honey), and made-to-order breakfast options, all in a bright space with big windows facing both Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Failing Street.

At night, the room darkens. There’s wait staff on the floor, and the cooks get busy with the wood-fired oven, which remains from the space’s previous occupant, Ned Ludd (though it is not the only cooking implement). The pizzas are now whole and round, and the menu includes snacks like beef tartare and marinated olives, salads, roasted veggies, a single pasta, three mains and desserts (get there early or eat fast to guarantee yourself a slice of classic chocolate fudge cake).

With its eclectic simplicity, Cafe Olli has a decided “this is what a restaurant needs to be after a pandemic” feel. Its five founding partners all previously worked for Submarine Hospitality (Ava Gene’s, Tusk). They own 50% of the restaurant, while the other 50% is in an employee-owned trust. That means half of quarterly profits go to employees based on hours worked and seniority.

There is also no tipping here since Cafe Olli charges a 20% service fee to pay all staff higher wages and provide health care as well as paid time off. Socially minded practices extend to the

menu, which includes a sliding scale ($0-$14) community meal— savory farro porridge during the day and a meatball entree at dinner—available, as it describes, to “those who are experiencing food insecurity or financial hardship. No questions asked.”

But Cafe Olli also has familiar pre-pandemic elements: It is, of course, “seasonally focused” and “locally sourced,” with Pablo Munoz Farms produce and Laney Family Farms beef. There’s also a commitment to making as many things as possible in-house, including pasta, breads and roast meats for sandwiches. Both the menu and the space also bring to the mind the brunchy, crunchy vibe of all-day L.A. stalwarts Sqirl and Gjusta.

For breakfast, a frittata of the day ($8) changes with whatever seasonal veggies are on hand—during a recent visit, that was potato, leek, spring onion and green garlic. It came with a swipe of mayo and a side of hearty dressed greens.

If you’d prefer a sandwich instead, Cafe Olli allows you to order your frittata nestled inside a seeded ciabatta roll served with cheddar, greens, mayo, and a fermented jalapeño and serrano hot sauce ($10).

A big green schmear of hot sauce with cheddar and mayo is also on the sausage sandwich ($10), which can be ordered with or without fried egg. Its smallish crusty “breakfast roll” looked unlikely to contain its layers, but, in fact, the roll is both chewy and compressible, and all the elements held together without needing the supplied knife.

If it’s Saturday or Sunday, the star pastry attraction is bombolini ($6), a gigantic, crunchy sugarcoated Italian doughnut that walks the “is it dessert or is it breakfast?” line, especially when the

Top 5

Hot Plates

WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.

1. THE SPORTS BRA

2512 NE Broadway, 503-327-8401, thesportsbrapdx.com. 11 am-11 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Billed as the first and only bar whose screens feature only women’s athletics, the Sports Bra is a unique concept that has generated excitement on a national scale. But the pub also promises to distinguish itself by serving food all made from scratch that will please carnivores, vegans, gluten-free patrons and everyone in between.

We’re most excited to try owner-chef Jenny Nguyen’s family recipes for dishes like Mom’s Baby Back Ribs— Vietnamese-style pork caramelized with coconut milk—and Aunt Tina’s Vietna-Wings, fried-and-glazed chicken on a bed of cabbage slaw.

2. 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.

3. GABBIANO’S

FIRED UP: Cafe Olli inherited Ned Ludd’s wood-fired oven, which it uses to make everything from roasted vegetables to pizza.

5411 NE 30th Ave., 503-719-4373, gabbianospdx.com. 4-10 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Certain restaurants are just like certain people: You know you’re gonna like them from the first moment you lay eyes on them. We clicked with Gabbiano’s right away thanks to its warm, bustling interior with hand-painted Italian fresco walls and a “When you’re here, you’re family” vibe that Olive Garden can only fake. The classics (chicken Parm, chitarra, calamari, the Caesar) are all dialed in. But you must order the mozzarella cups—breaded and fried cheese served as a molded shot glass and then filled with marinara.

Conceived By

ANTHONY VENEZIALE Created By

THOMAS KAIL LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA ANTHONY VENEZIALE

ON STAGE THROUGH MAY 1, 2022 503.445.3700 | PCS.ORG SEASON SUPERSTARS

L-R: Anthony Veneziale, Aneesa Folds, and Kurt Crowley (on keyboard) in Freestyle Love Supreme. Photo by Joan Marcus.

4. RIPE COOPERATIVE filling is a salted chocolate custard. Other recent options have been passion fruit curd and cheesecake mousse. There’s also an old-fashioned doughnut ($5), with vanilla bean buttermilk glaze, as well as good old coffee cake in loaf form ($3 a slice).

The dinner menu has a choose-your-own-adventure feel, suitable for someone looking for a quick meal of pizza and salad at the counter with its full view of the oven, or a customer looking for a full trip through the menu. On a recent night, a plate of deeply flavored roasted Brussels sprouts ($10) stole the show.

In fact, its char, sweetness and acidity also made the next plate, beef tartare with potato chips, horseradish and Meyer lemon ($14), seem bland.

If you have to choose your carb, go pizza over pasta. Current options include a four-cheese (no tomato) with kale raab and agrodolce onions ($26) and an Italian sausage with pepperoncini and Calabrian chile ($25), which you can also gild with Calabrian hot honey ($3). But it’s the minimalist pomodoro ($20)—nothing but tomato sauce, thinly sliced garlic, oregano and olive oil—that really shows off the naturally leavened, fire-kissed crust.

Except you are also going to want to “spoil” the purity of this pizza by adding stracciatella ($3). And oh boy, will you feel spoiled.

Hand-stretched from curd provided by Cowbell Creamery, the milky fattiness of the fresh cheese is simultaneously decadent and simple. Which also sums up Cafe Olli.

EAT: Cafe Olli, 3925 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-2068604, cafeolli.com. 9 am-2 pm Tuesday, 9 am-9 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

5425 NE 30th Ave., 503-841-6968, ripecooperative.com. Noon-8 pm Thursday-Saturday, noon-5 pm Sunday.

The lasagna at Naomi Pomeroy’s cafe-market is richness upon richness, with what is currently a duck Bolognese, ricotta and, per the website description, “lots of mozzarella and Parmesan.” That’s no lie: This is more or less a white lasagna, and something of a dairy bomb, with a big layer of ricotta, béchamel and a three-cheese blend, plus mozzarella. You won’t need bread for sopping at the end, but you could probably fry a few potatoes in the slick of duck fat that’s left over.

5. REPÚBLICA

721 NW 9th Ave., 541-900-5836, republicapdx.square.site. À la carte menu served 9 am-3 pm, chef’s tasting menu served 5-9 pm daily.

República has introduced Portland to another thread of Mexico’s complex gastronomic tapestry: the modernist-leaning tasting menu, which the Pearl District restaurant began serving in 2021. Packaging indigenous Mexican ingredients with sophisticated technique in a town known for its disdain of pretension was bold as hell. But it has been pulling it off with aplomb.

And the idea of simultaneously serving each twosome one vegetarian-leaning tasting menu and one with a meatier bent is brilliant, especially for good eaters who share.

WE’RE HIRING! • STUDENT LOAN REPAYMENT • BENEFITS AFTER 30 DAYS • PAID TIME-OFF APPLY ONLINE! elephantsdeli.com/careers Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

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music millennium in-store events jon koonce - friday, april 15th 6pm book reading & signing ‘guilty as homemade sin’

the second book by North Carolina author Jon Koonce, Jon was born and raised in the southeast United States until his teens when he made an extended move to Portland, Oregon, where he established himself as a consummate singer-songwriter-performer with fourteen albums to his credit.

ryan pinkard - Saturday, april 16th book reading & signing

‘boxer’ from the 33 1/3 series

5pm

Released in 2007, The National’s fourth full-length album, Boxer, is the one that saved them. For fans, Boxer is a profound personal meditation on the unmagnificent lives of adults, an elegant culmination of their sophisticated songwriting, and the first National album many fell in love with.

pond - sunday, april 17th

3pm

live in-store performance ‘rock collection’ 25th anniversary

In 1997, Pond released the magnificent ‘Rock Collection’ on Sony/Work.

A record that sonically was filled with angular guitar riffs, sharp and dynamic drums, and wonderfully harmonic vocals.

An album that clearly that stands the test of time and sadly, never got the attention it was due... until now.

YOUR BACKSTAGE PASS TO THE WWEEK NEWSROOM

DIVE PODCAST

BY WILLAMETTE WEEK

AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE

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Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

Join the Dive podcast every Saturday as we quickly cover the week’s headlines, and then dive deeper into the big stories of the week. Host Hank Sanders sits down with the paper’s staff as well as the biggest names in Portland to discuss the city and the events that change lives. The Dive podcast by Willamette Week is the best way to stay up to date with Portland’s news, sports, arts, and culture.

POTLANDER

Outside the Lines These adult coloring books are perfect for stoners looking for a relaxing outlet as well as art that goes beyond the iconic pot leaf.

BY B R I A N N A W H E E L E R

Just because we’ve had a sudden burst of sunny days doesn’t mean the wool sweaters and wellies should be packed away until fall. We’ve got an entire month of April showers to get through before we can begin frolicking in those much-anticipated May flowers, so might as well engage in some wholesome indoor recreation in the meantime.

During those drizzly days, find comfort in some colorfully creative canna-meditation. That’s right, y’all. I’m talking about the treasured pastime enjoyed by generations of stoners: coloring books. It’s an activity that can help you unwind, relieve stress and perhaps even keep your hands occupied for a few hours so you’re not tempted to doom-scroll.

The following selections are available to purchase either in local shops or online, and we’ve even suggested cannabis products that pair perfectly with each book. After you’ve put some work into the pages, you may just end up with some pieces of art worthy of hanging on the wall.

The Stoner Babes Coloring Book Local artist Katie Guinn gorgeously captures over 60 iconic femme cannabis users in her Stoner Babes Coloring Book. Each illustration is presented on perforated, one-sided pages so users can tear out finished masterpieces and display them.

In addition to hypnotic patterns, floral compositions, and the cannababes in the title, this book also features short, enlightening profiles on each subject, making it an enriching coloring and intersectional learning experience.

Buy: Microcosm Publishing, microcosmpublishing.com.

Pair with: Cherry Chem Dabs

Wiz Khalifa’s Weed Farm Coloring Book The art in marijuana magnate Wiz Khalifa’s coloring book has the nostalgic feel of a Saturday morning cartoon. It’s hyperslick with bold, precise graphics that include not just psychedelic cannabis imagery, but also tributes to lowriders, Hollywood Boulevard and even a few stoner co-opted holidays. Whether displayed untouched on a coffee table or fully scribbled in, this book is a fun piece of canna-memorabilia.

Buy: Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-8787323, powells.com.

Pair with: Khalifa Kush

Depression Cats Not every stoner coloring book has to be chock-full of fanshaped leaves and psychedelic swirls. Sometimes cats are enough. Artist Cat Champion’s coloring book series Depression Cats features simple illustrations of fluffy, complacent cats set against complex geometric backgrounds. For stoners whose truest state of relaxation is achieved only in the company of their own purring feline, there is no better book to settle down with after an angst-ridden day.

Buy: Thriftbooks, thriftbooks.com.

Pair with: Cat Piss

Art Forms in Nature Cannasseurs who prefer art that captures botanical discovery over simple images of pot leaves and swirly joint smoke will appreciate this coloring book version of problematic German zoologist Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature. Each illustration reveals the extraordinarily complex patterns and shapes found in flora and fauna, making this the perfect tome to zone out with while stoned to the bone.

Buy: Vancouver Art Space inside Vancouver Mall, 8700 NE Vancouver Mall Drive, #283, 360-787-8772, vancouverartspace.com.

Pair with: Luminous Botanicals Sky Tincture

Sneaker Coloring Book Most of us are not flexing custom kicks with vintage Louis Vuitton leather panels, but we can dream with this coloring book. While not necessarily high art, the illustrations include more than 40 sneaker models, including the original Pro-Keds, Adidas Superstar and Vans Sk8-Hi, as well as modern sneakers like Yeezys and those crazy Balenciagas.

Buy: Microcosm Publishing, microcosmpublishing.com.

Pair with: 503 Wifi

Fantastic Planet: A Coloring Book of Amazing Places Real and Imagined Another science-is-art coloring book worth the attention of nature-loving stoners is Fantastic Planet by Steve McDonald.

His photo-based images create realistic patterns that are both complex and elegantly simple. You can easily get lost in his art, drilling down through the layers and playing with perspective.

There are also plenty of abstract interpretations, resulting in trippy mandalas that are enjoyable to color in.

Buy: Sandman Books, sandmanbooks.com.

Pair with: Fire Dept. Cannabis Chocolate Chip Cookie

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

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PERFORMANCE

MUSIC

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson | Contact: bennett@wweek.com K AT H L E E N L A F L A M M E

Now Hear This Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery.

BY DANIEL BROMFIELD // @BROMF3

SOMETHING OLD Dennis Wilson was the only Beach Boy who surfed, and his 1977 solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue, is one of the most elemental-sounding rock albums ever made, its great crashing drums approximating the buffeting power of the ocean. The rock songs boast the meanest grooves this side of T. Rex or Led Zeppelin (“Dreamer” gives “When the Levee Breaks” a run for its money), and the ballads are nearly as beautiful as his brother Brian’s. Even the obligatory corny shuffle number (“What’s Wrong”) sounds badass. Listen to it next time you’re on a stormy pier.

FOR THE FALLEN: In the Name of Forgotten Women confronts atrocities against women worldwide.

Say Their Names Cindy Williams Gutiérrez’s “choreopoem” In the Name of Forgotten Women is a vibrant call to action.

BY S A R A G I Z A

Since the beginning of time, women from every culture and country have endured every form of violence possible and the erasure of their stories. It’s easy to live with atrocities when you choose not to think of them. Denial is a simple pill to swallow, even if that prescription proves lethal for others.

In the Name of Forgotten Women provides viewers an antidote by shining a light on a pathway to proactive action. The play, co-produced by CoHo Productions and Grito Poetry/Productions, is an 85-minute, two-act creation that is both a beautiful work of art and an eye-opening education.

A “choreopoem” billed as an attempt “to restore the Feminine in the world,” In the Name of Forgotten Women employs a variety of art forms simultaneously—live music, poetry, dance, singing and projections—to create a vibrant call to action. It recognizes we must first be willing to remember our history to reckon with the present.

A cast of seven women (Dre Slaman, Kristin Robinson, Mini Sharma-Ogle, Naiya Amilcar, Eleanor Amorós, Hannah Edelson and Melanie Moseley) executes that task brilliantly. The play first introduces Enheduanna (Slaman), the first known author of the world and a High Priest, who shares her story and aids in narration.

With each cast member representing a different culture and country, they one by one disclose the seemingly endless ways that society has silenced them.

The production’s creative team worked with nine cultural consultants, each from a different country. Facts, laws and real-life news stories are incorporated throughout, such as 722 men in Brazil who claimed “defense of honor” as the justification for killing their wives.

In one scene, each cast member walks in a circle as they hold a photo of an actual woman who has gone missing in Argentina—and if you’re thinking North America is any better, think again. As a projected map shows uncountable red dots, the audience is asked, “Where are the missing and murdered Indigenous women?”

Playwright Cindy Williams Gutiérrez has waited years to see 34

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

her vision for In the Name of Forgotten Women come to fruition. “I began to imagine this choreopoem over four years ago. I have kept the flames burning for this production for two years,” she tells WW, adding, “CoHo selected the play two years ago—just two weeks before COVID ‘struck’ the U.S.” Even under the best of circumstances, pulling off a show is no easy task. Yet Gutiérrez never lost her motivation.

“My impulse for this work is, in a single word, embodiment. The body never lies. We hold pain in our bodies. We must move through pain to reclaim our power,” she says. To her, “it was not enough for these poems to exist in a collection. My body told me they needed to be embodied by seven diverse women. Their stories had to be told through their raised voices, luminous faces and tender bodies.”

Helping her bring this vision to life was director Gemma Whelan.

“I see In the Name of Forgotten Women as a cry against forgetting,” she says. “The first author of the world, a Sumerian High Priest, summons women from around the globe and serves as a midwife to their stories of violence and oppression.”

While In the Name of Forgotten Women takes the injustices it confronts seriously, it is not without joy—and it refuses to let audiences passively accept the horrors it depicts. Whelan says she “would hope that audiences are moved by the stories of these women and feel challenged to stand up, to speak out, and to work on creating a better future where the life-giving power of the feminine is embraced and respected.”

That hope is part of what makes In the Name of Forgotten Women activist theater at its finest. As the audience was asked, “Where are the missing and murdered Indigenous women?” it turned into a chant. The chant transmuted into a mission: first remembrance, then recompense.

SEE IT: In the Name of Forgotten Women plays at CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 503-220-2646, cohoproductions. org. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, through April 17. Pay what you can.

SOMETHING NEW Dan Bejar goes full Dan Bejar on Destroyer’s new album, Labyrinthitis, which leans into the crypticism that’s made his band hipster catnip, yet ends up being his most accessible album in 11 years. “June” might be the best thing he’s ever written (“You’ve got to look at it from all angles, says the cubist judge from cubist jail!”) As always, Bejar comes across as the smartest, drunkest guy at the party, watching young lovers with the bemused eye of someone who’s been there before and knows that all there is on the other side is disappointment.

SOMETHING LOCAL Multi-instrumentalist and Portland resident Brian Jackson boasts a co-credit on one of the great protest-soul albums of all time: Winter in America, with the late singer, poet and proto-rapper Gil Scott-Heron.

Now comes his first solo album in 20 years, This Is Brian Jackson, which drops May 27 and looks like the kind of easygoing, eccentric stuff that’s second nature to low-key legends. Singles “All Talk” and “Path to Macondo/Those Kind of Blues” are consummately professional and deeply eccentric.

Think later Prince, but with way more taste.

SOMETHING ASKEW Ramallah, Palestine, is the source of some of the most forward-thinking instrumental hip-hop right now, miles away from the complacent “chill beats” that the genre has succumbed to stateside. Julmud’s Tuqoos balances industrial abrasion with dragging curtains of atmosphere, but the scene’s best offering so far might be Kamil Manqus, an unsettling collection of glitch-trap dirges by Muqata’a.

Check out Boiler Room’s short documentary Palestine Underground for a survey of this rising scene.

SCREENER

MOVIES

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson Contact: bennett@wweek.com

G ET YO U R R E P S I N

Scanners (1981)

IN A LONELY PLACE: Tilda Swinton in Memoria.

Tilda Time From screenings of the mysterious Memoria to PAM CUT’s Tilda-Whirl series, Tilda Swinton is dominating Portland cinemas.

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

Availability is a baked-in expectation of modern movies.

Google any new film and you’ll find a slew of SEO-manufactured clickbaits entitled “Is [x movie] on Netflix?” as if written for legions of automatons about to angrily throw the remote.

So it’s surprising that a 2022 movie would prioritize scarcity. But that’s the release strategy for Memoria, a new film directed by Thai luminary Apichatpong Weerasethakul and starring Tilda Swinton.

Touring the country gradually like the 70 mm epics of the 1960s, Memoria’s roadshow-style release means that it will appear in only a few cities at a time. It stays for a quick engagement and moves on, with distributor Neon presently claiming it will never stream or reach home video.

When Memoria plays Cinema 21 from April 22 to 28 and Whitsell Auditorium on May 27, you won’t find it in Portland anywhere else or at any time in between.

Cinema 21 owner Tom Ranieri says his theater hasn’t hosted a proper roadshow screening since Steven Soderbergh visited with Che in 2009, and manager Erik McClanahan believes Memoria’s unique release method is potentially a draw in and of itself.

“That’s what’s got people even knowing what this strange, capital-A arthouse movie is,” he says.

The director of films like Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) and Tropical Malady (2004), Weerasethakul is widely regarded as a master of “slow cinema,” poetic meditations on nature, discovery and metaphysics that temporarily rewire the viewer’s nervous system.

McClanahan compares the director’s films to dreams, best experienced in a pitch-dark theater where they can spellbind an audience without distraction. Intense focus isn’t required, but the movie’s idea of action is a man taking a dramatic nap in the grass. “[Memoria] is such a big-screen movie, but in a completely opposite way to how most people think about it,” says McClanahan, comparing the benefits of seeing Weerasethakul movies in theaters to those of Tarkovsky films or 2001: A Space Odyssey.

While narrative isn’t the emphasis, Memoria does have a compelling plot. Swinton plays Jessica, an orchid farmer living in Medellin, Colombia. She suffers from insomnia, punctuated by a resonant banging sound heard only by her.

What follows is a quest of sorts to identify the noise’s source, and viewers are likely to become swept up in the film’s immersive sound design—cicada chirps, rippling rivers, car-alarm symphonies and, of course, the mysterious boom.

For her part, Swinton excels in Weerasetakuhl’s first (partially) English-language film. She plays Jessica as shy, searching and spent—a character so hollowed by her weariness that there’s nothing left but a dazed curiosity.

For Portlanders, now is the time to savor Swinton’s eclectic 40-year career, with its gallery of wildly disparate characters and collaborations with iconic filmmakers.

PAM CUT (the recently renamed NW Film Center) is celebrating her with its “Tilda-Whirl” series, which will feature her maniacal performance in Bong Joon-Ho’s Okja (2017) on April 9 and a far more sensual role in Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love (2009) on April 8 and 9 (for more information, see Get Your Reps In).

“When you see [Swinton] is in a movie, you know you’re in for something interesting,” says PAM CUT’s associate director of creative programs Jon Richardson. “That’s what we feel passionate about—getting people excited about cinema.”

While Memoria’s exclusivity might be a draw, both Cinema 21 and PAM CUT are eyeing more Swinton. Richardson hopes this spring will be only the first spin of the “Tilda-Whirl,” and McClanahan speculates Memoria could float around the country and through Portland theaters for years, cultivating an arthouse audience hoping to have this particular dream again.

“I’m not naive enough to think everyone will think it’s incredible,” he says. “Some people probably will walk out, but I contend that if people go in with an open mind…that sound is going to lull people into a trance.”

In body horror maestro David Cronenberg’s iconic sci-fi horror film, 237 “scanners” (psychics with deadly telepathic and telekinetic abilities) start an underground movement intent on world domination, led by a tyrant with a penchant for head-exploding (Michael Ironside).

It’s up to one unrecruited scanner (Stephen Lack) to stop them. Hollywood, April 8.

I Am Love (2009)

Luca Guadagnino directs this romantic drama, the first installment of his loose Desire trilogy, preceding A Bigger Splash (2015) and Call Me by Your Name (2017). The film stars Tilda Swinton as a wealthy textile magnate’s wife who has an affair with a renowned chef (Edoardo Gabbriellini). Screens in 35 mm as part of PAM CUT’s Tilda-Whirl series. PAM CUT, April 8-9.

Cameraperson (2016)

With over 50 cinematography credits to her name, documentarian Kirsten Johnson has collected a plethora of unforgettable footage throughout her 20-year career.

This Criterion Collection-inducted film weaves intimate autobiography, discourse on media ethics, and mesmerizing images from all over the world into a wholly unique docu-collage. 5th Avenue, April 8-10.

Okja (2017)

PAM CUT’s Tilda-Whirl series continues with Oscar-winner Bong Joon-ho’s eco-adventure about a genetically modified “super pig” and the little girl (An Seo Hyun) desperate to save it from the clutches of the evil Mirando Corporation.

Swinton co-stars as the braces-clad head of Mirando, while Paul Dano co-stars as the head of the revolutionary Animal Liberation Front. The cast also includes Steven Yeun and Lily Collins.

PAM CUT, April 9.

Mind Game (2004)

Based on Japan’s cult underground manga, this experimental anime follows a 20-year-old slacker (voiced

by Koji Imada) whose fatal encounter with two yakuza sends him on a psychedelic journey of self discovery, along with his childhood crush and their friends. Notable for featuring several disparate animation styles, merging the real and the surreal. Hollywood, April 10.

ALSO PLAYING: Hollywood: Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976), April 12.

SEE IT: Memoria plays at Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515, cinema21.com. 3:45 and 7 pm Friday-Thursday and 12:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, April 22-28. $9-$11.

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MOVIES TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

OUR KEY

: 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.

matter. The Lost City is a film designed simply to entertain— and it succeeds. PG-13. RAY GILL JR. Academy, Cedar Hills, Cinemagic, City Center, Eastport, Fox Tower, Joy Cinema, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin, Studio One, Wunderland, Wunderland Milwaukie, Tigard.

X

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE A hyperkinetic sci-fi/martial-arts (kung fusion?) fever dream grounded in Asian American family dynamics, Everything Everywhere All at Once will be absolutely adored by some moviegoers from its very first moments. It’s a film made to be loved—and, given the sheer eye-popping technical wizardry at play throughout, nearly impossible to hate. Michelle Yeoh is typically dazzling as Evelyn Wong, a misanthropic laundromat owner who is called upon to save the multiverse from her daughter’s worst self (Stephanie Hsu, in a role intended for Awkwafina).

Evelyn is an underwritten character, but Yeoh brings a welcome authenticity to the film, even if a performance of such finely shaded nuance isn’t best fit for the DayGlo sensationalism of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the filmmaking duo known as Daniels (Swiss Army Man). As with Terry Gilliam or Edgar Wright or any other avant-garde sentimentalist pressing restless rhythms and visual inventiveness into the service of a wholly undeserving story, the directors effortlessly pep up the slow parts and paper over the plot holes, but when the pace calms and the fireworks die down for an emotional climax, the film moves glacially. Inevitable? Perhaps, but it’s still disappointing that Everything Everywhere All at Once is less than the sum of its dazzling parts. R. JAY HORTON. Bridgeport, Cinema 21, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Hollywood, Laurelhurst, Lloyd Center.

DRIVE MY CAR

After you see the Best International Feature Oscar-winning 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 cringeworthy, 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 36

speaks not only to her but to us. NR. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. HBO Max.

CODA

Near the climax of CODA, which won Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards, audiences experience a much-foreshadowed concert from the perspective of a singer’s deaf family. It’s not just sound’s absence that seals the Apple TV+ film’s best scene; it’s how the camera registers Frank and Jackie Rossi gauging the crowd’s reaction to their daughter Ruby (Emilia Jones) belting.

That’s the moment you know why CODA (which stands for child of deaf adults) won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and why, despite playing on a clear inspirational formula and remaking a 2014 French film, it’s a smart and heartfelt portrayal of deafness in mainstream American movies. For one, there’s Ruby’s complex role as the only hearing member and de facto translator for her gruff yet charming New England fishing family. Playing her parents and brother, deaf actors Marlee Matlin (Oscar winner from Children of a Lesser God), Troy Kotsur (a newly minted Oscar winner) and Daniel Durant are grounded and multidimensional, signing with Ruby in rage, mockery, hubris and shame. While some of the supporting performances pale— Ruby’s fastidious choir teacher is more irritating than aspirational and her love interest is a classic doesn’t-deserve-her wet blanket—just try not to be

Willamette Week APRIL 6, 2022 wweek.com

moved by this loving, needy, overwhelmed and surprisingly horny family confronting change. The formula works for a reason. PG-13. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Apple TV+, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Fox Tower, Laurelhurst, Oak Grove.

THE LOST CITY

Though it relies on premise more than plot, The Lost City stands tall among its rival predators in the catalog of action comedies. The story begins with author Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) reluctantly going through the motions of a press tour for her latest romantic adventure novel in which she’s forced to work with the book’s cover model, Alan (Channing Tatum), whose earnest portrayal of her leading man “Dash” puts them instantly at odds. Loretta is then kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe) who believes she holds the key to finding the lost treasure featured in her novel. From there the film becomes much less about story and more about the comedic chemistry between Tatum, Bullock and the hilarious supporting cast. Brad Pitt provides the type of scene-stealing punch that’s made him one of the best bit players we’ve ever seen, and the fact that the story doesn’t get mired in the friction between Loretta and Alan lends an authenticity to the chemistry that anchors the film. Even though the story falls apart in the third act, the characters build enough goodwill it doesn’t

A skillful, clever, not entirely satisfying homage to the heyday of both skin flicks and slasher cinema, the latest left-field fearjerker by Ti West (The Innkeepers, The Sacrament) thrusts new meaning into grindhouse. It’s a bloodsteeped farmer’s grandmother yarn about a van full of overripe, reflective, Linklaterian Texas stoners renting a ramshackle cabin from a decrepit couple for an amateur hardcore shoot.

An undersexed harpie and long-suffering codger might not seem especially terrifying on paper, but West expertly teases, say, the looming specter of Chekhov’s Alligator just long enough for audiences to walk straight into the business end of a rusted pitchfork. If anything, the technical facility and lockstep set pieces can feel too perfectly composed. Given the sheer amount of gore on display, there’s an odd sense of restraint tempering the anarchic abandon that burbles throughout the classics of the genre.

Halfhearted attempts at providing a psychological basis for the elderly couple’s homicidal mania weaken the lingering air of menace as swiftly an acoustic Fleetwood Mac cover kills any sexual tension. Like a cameraman/budding-indie-auteur character pointedly claims, every dirty (or scary) movie may as well strive for greatness. R. JAY HORTON. Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Studio One, Tigard.

THE BATMAN

“What’s black and blue and dead all over?” In The Batman, the Riddler (Paul Dano) poses that question to the Dark Knight (Robert Pattinson), but blacks and blues don’t figure into the film much—visually, morally and emotionally, it’s a gray movie.

While director Matt Reeves brought a majestic mournfulness to the Planet of the Apes series, he seems utterly lost in Gotham City. His nearly threehour film is less a narrative than a mechanistic survey of a political conspiracy that the Riddler wants to expose—the story starts after the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents not just because we’ve seen it before, but because Reeves is more interested in plot than pathos.

Even the soulful, sultry presence

of Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman can’t liven up the film—she and the Batman flirt so chastely that if it weren’t for a few F-bombs and clumsily staged fight scenes, Reeves could have easily gotten away with a G rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. When Christopher Nolan was directing the Dark Knight trilogy, he tore into the Batman mythos with fervor, whereas Reeves just seems to be lackadaisically marinating in misery—especially when the film attempts an embarrassingly halfhearted critique of Bruce and the rest of Gotham’s 1%. What’s dead all over? The Batman. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Academy, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Cinema 21, City Center, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Laurelhurst, Lake Theater and Cafe, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Pioneer Place, Studio One, Tigard.

MORBIUS

Jared Leto has been exquisitely vulnerable (Requiem for a Dream), exquisitely sinister (Blade Runner 2049) and exquisitely ridiculous (House of Gucci). Yet in Morbius, he’s something he’s never been before: disastrously dull. It may sound improbable that the man who bragged about sending used condoms to his Suicide Squad castmates could be boring, but as scientist-turned-vampire Dr. Michael Morbius, he’s more zombie than bloodsucker. Originally a second-tier Spider-Man adversary, Morbius has been drafted for Sony’s second attempt at a supervillain franchise, following Tom Hardy’s Venom series. Those movies are trash, but at least Hardy attacks them with gonzo fervor—he dived into a tank of lobsters to earn his paycheck. Leto, on the other hand, just gazes glumly from under the shadow of a dark hoodie, meekly surrendering the spotlight to Matt Smith (Doctor Who), who co-stars as a nastily charismatic fellow vampire named Milo. Smith understands that vampirism should be suave and sensual—in one scene, he dances seductively while donning a suit, doing an apparent homage to Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man 3 (that’s a compliment, by the way!). In a Jared Leto movie, Smith is the only one giving a Jared Leto-style performance. He’s goofy and hammy and weird, but at least he’s memorable. That’s more than you can say about the other actors in Morbius, including its newly languorous leading man. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Academy, Bagdad, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, St. Johns, St. Johns Twin, Studio One, Tigard, Wunderland Milwaukie.

JONESIN’

FREE WILL

B Y M AT T J O N E S

"Room Dividers"--some partitioned phrases.

ASTROLOGY ARIES

(March 21-April 19): "I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it." Aries author Erica Jong said that.

Since I'm not an Aries myself, her aspiration is too strong for me to embrace. Sometimes I just don’t have the courage, willpower, and boldness to do what I fear. But since you decided to be born as an Aries in this incarnation, I assume you are more like Erica Jong than me. And so it's your birthright and sacred duty to share her perspective. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to carry out another phase of this lifelong assignment.

1. Letter before lambda 6. Tale spinner 10. Ear warmer 14. Snacks in sleeves 15. Award now presented by the American Theatre Wing (previously the Village Voice)

identify with something that maybe happened to you?

30. Pale purple color

61. Outscore

32. Director Bogdanovich

65. Modernist sculptor who became a Dame in 1965 68. Leave voluntarily 69. Hair colorist 70. "Absolutely Fabulous" mother

16. Huron's neighbor

71. KFC side

17. Classical symphony also called "Eroica"

72. Princess who's Dorothy Gale's best friend, in the book series

20. Wild West Wyatt 21. Showtime show that returned with "New Blood" 22. Twelvesome in a Crash Test Dummies title 23. "The Last King of Scotland" name

73. Up to this point

DOWN 1. Japanese seaport famous for beef 2. Geometry class calculation

31. School, on the Seine 33. Singer Coppola 34. "Cars" and "Are 'Friends' Electric?" singer Gary 35. Duane Allman's brother 40. Second-oldest of the Jackson 5 42. Use a pulley 45. Bamboo-munching beast 47. Type of test no longer done on "Maury" (once the series ends in 2022) 50. _ _ _-well 51. Z-lister 54. Grilling events, briefly

3. Member of the jury pool

55. Gomez Addams portrayer Julia

4. Crusty frozen food entree

56. Operatic highlight 58. Blue Ivy Carter's dad

37. Power

5. Barty with a March 2022 tennis retirement announcement, to fans

38. Madagascar primate

6. Valentine's Day theme

39. Have an itch for

7. Alpine wild goat

41. DMV worker in "Zootopia"

8. "_ _ _ No Sunshine"

43. Response when you identify with something that happened to you

10. "It's just OK"

25. Go on the radio 27. Outdoor alternative to D&D with actual props 36. Minecraft substance

44. Provide with gear 46. Went over like _ _ _ balloon 48. Pester 49. Marathoner's specialty 52. Jacques Plante's jersey number (retired by the Montreal Canadiens) 53. Official language in Vientiane 54. Garment with hooks 57. Response when you

9. Put back in a baggie 11. Panic! At The Disco singer Brendon 12. Mattress option 13. Government agents, for short 18. Execrable 19. Experimental period 24. 76ers legend, familiarly 26. Dark deli breads 27. Emulated a cow 28. Mosul resident 29. "King Richard" character

©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.

59. "Uh, I'm right here ..."

60. Designer Wang 62. Brockovich who inspired a movie 63. _ _ _ point (never) 64. Leave out of the freezer 66. Texting shorthand that some end with "dubs" 67. Haunted house decoration

last week’s answers

pastureland that had no trees, biodiversity increased dramatically. For example, in one area, there were no bird species before the tree and 80 species after the tree. I suspect you can create a similar change in the coming weeks. A small addition, even just one new element, could generate significant benefits. One of those perks might be an increase in the diversity you engage with.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Smallpox has been

(April 20-May 20): "Sometimes suffering is just suffering," writes novelist Kate Jacobs.

"It doesn't make you stronger. It doesn't build character." Now is your special time to shed suffering that fits this description, Taurus. You are authorized to annul your relationship with it and ramble on toward the future without it. Please keep in mind that you're under no obligation to feel sorry for the source of the suffering. You owe it nothing. Your energy should be devoted to liberating yourself so you can plan your rebirth with aplomb.

eliminated thanks to vaccination, but it was once among the most feared diseases. Over the course of many centuries, it maimed or killed hundreds of millions of people. For 35 percent of those who contracted it, it was fatal. As for the survivors, their skin had permanent scars from the blisters that erupted. As disfiguring as those wounds were, they were evidence that a person was immune from future infections. That's why employers were more likely to hire them as workers. Their pockmarks gave them an advantage.

I believe this is a useful metaphor for you. In the coming weeks, you will have an advantage because of one of your apparent liabilities or imperfections or "scars." Don't be shy about using your unusual asset.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): "I am very much afraid

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian

TAURUS

ACROSS

WEEK OF APRIL 14

© 2022 ROB BREZSNY

of definitions, and yet one is almost forced to make them," wrote painter Robert Delaunay (1885–1941). "One must take care, too, not to be inhibited by them," he concluded. He was speaking of the art he created, which kept evolving.

In his early years, he considered his work to be Neo-Impressionist. Later he described himself as a "heretic of Cubism," and during other periods he dabbled with surrealism and abstract art.

Ultimately, he created his own artistic category, which he called Orphism. Everything I just said about Delaunay can serve you well in the coming months, Gemini. I think you'll be wise to accept definitions for yourself, while at the same time not being overly bound by them. That should ultimately lead you, later this year, to craft your own unique personal definition.

CANCER

(June 21-July 22): As a postgraduate student in astronomy, Cancerian-born Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered radio pulsars in 1967.

Her supervisor, who initially dismissed her breakthrough, was awarded the Nobel Prize for her work in 1974—and she wasn't! Nevertheless, she persisted. Eventually, she became a renowned astronomer who championed the efforts of minority researchers. Among the 25 prestigious awards and honors she has received is a three-million-dollar prize. I urge you to aspire to her level of perseverance in the coming months. It may not entirely pay off until 2023, but it will pay off.

LEO

(July 23-Aug. 22): "One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards," wrote author Oscar Wilde. Let's make that your motto for the next six weeks. If life could be symbolized by a game of poker, you would have the equivalent of at least a pair of jacks and a pair of queens.

You may even have a full house, like three 10s and two kings. Therefore, as Wilde advised, there's no need for you to scrimp, cheat, tell white lies, or pretend. Your best strategy will be to be bold, forthright, and honest as you make your moves.

VIRGO

(Aug. 23-Sept. 22): "In all the land, there is only one you, possibly two, but seldom more than 16," said comedian and actor Amy Sedaris. She was making a sardonic joke about the possibility that none of us may be quite as unique as we imagine ourselves to be. But I'd like to mess with her joke and give it a positive tweak. If what Sedaris says is true, then it's likely that we all have soul twins somewhere in the world. It means that there are numerous people who share many of our perspectives and proclivities; that we might find cohorts who see us for who we really are. I bring these thoughts to your attention, Virgo, because I suspect the coming months will be an excellent time for meeting and playing with such people.

LIBRA

(Sept. 23-Oct. 22): A team of biologists unearthed a fascinating discovery in Costa Rica. When the group planted a single tree in

author Pearl Cleage sets the tone for the future I hope you'll seek in the coming weeks. The Black feminist activist writes, "We danced too wild, and we sang too long, and we hugged too hard, and we kissed too sweet, and howled just as loud as we wanted to howl." Are you interested in exploring such blithe extravagance, Sagittarius?

Do you have any curiosity about how you might surpass your previous records for rowdy pleasure? I hope you will follow Cleage's lead in your own inimitable style.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): "I can never rest

from tenderness," wrote author Virginia Woolf. I won't ask you to be as intense as her, Capricorn. I won't urge you to be constantly driven to feel and express your tenderness. But I hope you will be focused on doing so in the coming weeks. Why? Because the astrological omens suggest it will be "in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender." (That's a quote by aphorist Jenny Holzer.)

For inspiration, consider trying this experiment proposed by Yoko Ono: "Try to say nothing negative about anybody: a) for three days; b) for 45 days; c) for three months."

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): "I gamble everything

to be what I am," wrote Puerto Rican feminist and activist poet Julia de Burgos, born under the sign of Aquarius. Her gambles weren't always successful. At one point, she was fired from her job as a writer for a radio show because of her progressive political beliefs. On the other hand, many of her gambles worked well. She earned awards and recognition for her five books of poetry and garnered high praise from superstar poet Pablo Neruda. I offer her as your role model, Aquarius. The rest of 2022 will be a fertile time to gamble everything to be what you are. Here's a further suggestion: Gamble everything to become what you don't yet know you must become.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Piscean jazz saxophon-

ist and composer Ornette Coleman was a trailblazer. He created the genre known as free jazz, which messed with conventional jazz ideas about tempos, melodies, and harmonies. In the course of his career, he won a Pulitzer Prize, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and MacArthur Fellowship "genius" grant. He was a technical virtuoso, but there was more to his success, too. Among his top priorities were emotional intensity and playful abandon and pure joy.

That's why, on some of his recordings, he didn't hire famous jazz drummers, but instead had his son, who was still a child, play the drum parts. I suggest you apply an approach like Coleman's to your own upcoming efforts.

Homework: What's the hardest thing for you to do that you also get satisfaction from doing? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

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