Willamette Week, April 27, 2022 - Volume 48, Issue 25 - "Help Wanted: WW’s May 2022 Endorsements"

NEWS: Carrick Flynn vs. Owls. P. 6 FOOD: Phuket Arrives With a Bang in Portland. P. 34 FILM: Dudes in Coppola-Land. P. 39

“IT’S A SAFE BET WE CAN ALL DRINK TO THAT.” P. 38

WW’S MAY 2022 ENDORSEMENTS PAGE 8

WE’RE LOOKING FOR PUBLIC SERVANTS TO AID A STRUGGLING PORTLAND. WWEEK.COM VOL 48/25 0 4 . 2 7. 2 02 2

Year 10

May 28 2

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

FINDINGS AARON LEE

PHUKET CAFE, PAGE 34

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 48, ISSUE 25 Oregon invented Oregon Ball. 4 Carrick Flynn says the spotted owl “looks like other owls.” 6 Donald Trump is more popular in Oregon than Ron Wyden. 9

Casey Kulla is the candidate in this election cycle who we’d most like to smoke a bowl with.

11

Lisa Reynolds felt normal went she saw Jesus Christ Superstar.

17

A Republican candidate wrote a science fiction novel that features interstellar kidnapping. 17

Jollibee, the Philippines-founded fast food chain known for its fried Chickenjoy, is opening its first Oregon restaurant. 30 The mushrooms that end up on your plate at Urban Farmer are grown inside a terrarium in The Nines Hotel. 33 Bartender Eric Nelson’s nickname for business partner and restaurateur Akkapong “Earl” Ninsom is MMFIC, or Main Motherfucker in Charge. 34 Better Edibles’ cannabis-infused nod to the Rice Krispies treat is the perfect trail snack.

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The owner of Bambuza is running for the Legislature. 19

TriptheDark’s Mausoleum combines a live dance performance with an elderberry kombucha.

Bob Clark legally changed his middle name to Elvis. 19

Nicolas goes full Cage. 40

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ON THE COVER:

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

WW’s May 2022 Endorsements: Looking for a few good candidates, photo by Brian Burk.

Oregon is getting a Jollibee.

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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THE BURGER YOUR MOMMA WARNED YOU ABOUT

DIALOGUE Last week, WW took a close look at Vadim Mozyrsky, a candidate for Portland City Council who hopes to unseat Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty (“Detail Work,” April 20). He’s campaigning on a pledge to bring order to a city that’s become synonymous with messiness.

Mozyrsky, Ukrainian immigrant and Social Security Administration judge, is a figure whose tight hold on his emotions contrasts with Hardesty’s heart-on-sleeve persona. Yet opinions of how well Mozyrsky collaborates tend to fall along ideological lines: Those who agree with him say he’s a pleasure to work with, while those who disagree with him have accused him of bullying.

Here’s what our readers had to say.

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OREGONJIVE, VIA WWEEK. COM: “If this guy reboots half of

the basic common-sense things that use to just be standard operating procedure for any U.S. city, he will go on to be mayor of Portland. Then we name the city after him: Vadimland.”

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A9, VIA TWITTER: “Portland: where you can be accused of anti-Black racism and deny a ton of disability claims, but @ wweek and voters will like you ’cause you don’t have a dusty house.”

JOSHUA MARQUIS, VIA WWEEK.COM: “This op-ed

masquerading as a news article tries to paint immigrant Vadim as a ruthless automaton, in contrast to Jo Ann Hardesty’s kind

persona. Anonymous lawyers whining that he doesn’t dish out more of the limited resource of billions of Social Security dollars are hardly the most reliable or objective observers.”

FANCY EVAN, VIA WWEEK. COM: “‘I’m fighting for what I

think is a voice that’s not heard or represented in those halls,’ says the guy who thinks we need to get tough on unhoused people and be nicer to the police.”

RUDIGER, VIA WWEEK.COM:

“The biggest problem Jo Ann had was not anticipating these problems and communicating those drawbacks to her constituents.

“Defund the police? OK, but you have to prepare people that

Dr. Know

it is gonna be a transition.

“Focus on long-term housing solutions? OK, but how many homeless are there? What rate are we moving people to long-term housing? Are people willing to wait?

“Communication, folks. It’s a beautiful thing.”

INEVITABLE_RACCOON85, VIA REDDIT: “Vadim sounds

like a serious guy who has gotten involved in the community and will take his responsibility to the public seriously, and understands that the status quo isn’t working and we need change. He also clearly won’t just go along with the woke kumbaya bullshit just to appease outspoken voices who do not represent the silent majority of Portland. In other words, he has a backbone. He sounds like a good, solid middle ground between Hardesty and Gonzalez, who seems kinda creepy and right wing. He has my vote.”

SOMETIMESPDX, VIA TWITTER: “If only he had glasses

to match Wheeler, Ryan and Adams.”

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: PO Box 10770, Portland OR, 97296 Email: mzusman@wweek.com

BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx

I heard Washington recently named pickleball its state sport. I see Oregon doesn’t have a state sport named; if we were to have one, what would it be? —Ralphie Most people who write me letters are unhinged (the folks trying to collect my student loans are particularly delusional). Thus, I naturally assumed that you too, Ralphie, were full of shit—but you’re not! (I mean, you probably are, but not about this.) The badmintonlike game created on Bainbridge Island in the 1960s really did become Washington’s official sport a few weeks back.

So what about a sport for Oregon? This is where I’d normally toss off a few snide wheezes about the Pre-Dawn Cookie Toss or the 40-Yard Bong Rip and we’d all have a lighthearted, minimally researched chuckle. Unfortunately for my happy-hour plans, it turns out there are actually a few legitimate contenders.

The first is “Oregon Ball,” aka “The Oregon Game,” a descendant of handball invented at the University of Oregon in the 1920s that within two decades became the most popular intramural game on campus. As a name for the state sport, you have to admit Oregon Ball is hard to

beat. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, no one’s actually played Oregon Ball in at least 50 years, so…well, it may not be a total slam dunk.

How about jogging? Sure, running has been around since the invention of bears, but the halfhearted dogtrot to nowhere we call jogging can actually be traced to a public health pamphlet written in 1963 by UO track coach William Bowerman. The four-page “Jogger’s Manual” explained this new form of exercise, ending with “Good jogging to you!” which is just one of the reasons I want to punch it in the face.

Finally, modern Hacky Sack was devised in Oregon City in 1972. I was reluctant to bring this up because, in many ways, Hacky Sack fits the bill—like pickleball, it’s a local invention with a stupid name—but I feel strongly that we shouldn’t use it.

Oregon has spent the past 30 years overcoming the stereotype that we’re a bunch of slack-jawed hippies. Ensconcing the hack as our official pastime would set us back 29—you might as well make Phish the official state band. No, thanks—I’ll stick with Oregon Ball. It has a nice ring, and no one will ever ask me to actually play it.

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

MURMURS UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND

ROBERT D. KELLY ALCOHOL WATCHDOG PUSHES BACK ON MERKLEY: Dr. Reginald Richardson, executive director of the Oregon Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission, fired off a letter last week urging U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) to drop his sponsorship of legislation that would allow the U.S. Postal Service to ship alcohol to people’s homes. Currently, only private shipping companies such as UPS and FedEx are allowed to ship beer, wine and spirits. For Oregon producers and consumers, that means less competition among shippers and less shipping capacity—and for the financially ailing Postal Service, less revenue. The proposal, which would generate an estimated $180 million a year in revenue, is a top priority for the American Postal Workers Union. In his letter, Richardson acknowledges the size and diversity of Oregon’s alcoholic beverage industry, but he wants Sen. Merkley to focus on the damage alcohol does. He notes that Oregon’s rate of substance abuse disorder ranks second in the nation, and he fears USPS shipping would make alcohol more available to children. “Alcohol harms cost Oregon $4.8 billion annually,” Richardson writes. “The amount of additional revenue to USPS simply can never equate to the economic cost of increasing access to alcohol.” Merkley acknowledged many Oregonians struggle with addiction and says it’s “imperative” to provide services for them. But he still plans to move forward with a bill he says will benefit Oregon businesses and provide greater transparency. “USPS, as a public agency, is more accountable and subject to government oversight than private shippers that are currently allowed to deliver alcohol while the USPS cannot,” Merkley said.

TWO SAFE REST VILLAGES INCH ALONG: Portland City Hall placed 65 tiny sleeping pods over the weekend at two of the city’s planned safe rest villages, a project spearheaded by Commissioner Dan Ryan. The two sites include a portion of the Jerome F. Sears Army Reserve Center in Multnomah Village and the 2300 block of Southwest Naito Parkway, which will serve as a relocation area for Queer Affinity Village residents displaced from the Central Eastside by development. The city used pods held in reserve by the Joint Office of Homeless Services and purchased by the

county from Pallet Shelter of Everett, Wash., for $7,000 a pod. The city placed 35 pods at the Naito site and 30 at the Sears site. The Sears site is still awaiting project approval by the Federal Emergency Management Agency because the land was granted to the city by the feds in 2012 for emergency management.

UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND BREAKS WITH TRADITION: Since its founding in 1901, the University of Portland has always had as its president a priest from the Order of the Holy Cross. But the Catholic university in North Portland pledged to cast a wider net in 2020 when its then-president, the Rev. Mark Poorman, retired. On April 26, UP announced it had followed through with its pledge, hiring Robert D. Kelly, a vice president at Loyola University Maryland, as its first president who is Black and not a priest. (Kelly is Catholic, however.) Kelly, who has a Ph.D. in education, previously worked at Union College, Loyola University Chicago, and Seattle University. “I walk in the footsteps of so many wonderful Holy Cross priests and brothers who have preceded me in their service on the Bluff,” Kelly said in a statement. “And I pledge to the congregation, and to all who call UP home, my commitment to ensuring that our Catholic, Holy Cross mission endures and thrives.”

THIRD OREGON CONGRESSMAN CONTRACTS COVID: U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is the third member of Oregon’s congressional delegation to test positive for the coronavirus this month. Earlier this month, U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Peter DeFazio announced they had COVID-19. His office issued the following statement April 26: “As part of routine testing, Sen. Wyden tested positive today for COVID-19. He is fully vaccinated and experiencing minor symptoms. He is in Washington, D.C., and working from his residence while following CDC guidance to quarantine.” Wyden’s office said he last tested negative “right before” he was among the dignitaries greeting President Joe Biden at a Portland visit April 21. He does not know how he got it, but he is not considered a close contact of the president, says spokesman Hank Stern, nor does Wyden believe he exposed anyone.

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CORRESPONDENCE

Failure to Communicate Metro recognized voters weren’t seeing benefits from housing and homeless measures, but its solution hit a brick wall.

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

njaquiss@wweek .com

Metro had a problem.

The regional government convinced voters to put up $653 million for a housing bond in 2018 and $2.5 billion to reduce homelessness in 2020. But by early last May, agency officials realized the public wasn’t seeing results.

So they went looking for a salesman.

What follows are excerpts from a public records request WW filed to see how the agency tried to get on top of what pollsters say is the single most pressing issue in the upcoming May 17 election.

Last May, Metro sent solicitations to five local strategic communications firms, looking for help convincing the public that money from the housing bond and homeless services measure was having an impact on the streets.

Here’s what the agency said in the solicitation: We’re moving quickly and really need to get the communications work up and running as we head toward our official program launch this summer. We’re looking for a comprehensive communications strategy with a strong focus on racial equity in its delivery.

By November, staff had arrived on the top proposal, which came from Winning Mark Public Affairs, a new branch of the political consulting firm run

by Mark Wiener. Noah Siegel, a former senior Metro and Portland Bureau of Transportation staffer, came on board to develop new business in strategic communications. (Wiener says he had no involvement in the contract.)

Here’s how Elissa Gertler, Metro’s planning development and research director, described the need for the $150,000 contract to the procurement department: Metro’s housing program is a relatively new and evolving body of work for the agency and as staff are in the process of developing and refining our communications and engagement efforts, we recognized that we need additional capacity, specialized-skill and support to effectively do this work.

Metro, which handles land use and transportation planning, among other functions, has a big communications office: 32 employees and a budget of $4.75 million. That might seem like enough resources to craft a message on how taxpayer money was making a difference.

But Metro spokesman Nick Christensen says most of those communications

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HOW MUCH? $50,000

WHO GAVE IT? specialists work on specific subject areas, such as recycling or the Oregon Zoo, or specific tasks, such as website maintenance. Christensen says in order to move quickly, it was more efficient to contract outside help. Christensen notes Metro was headed in that direction even before People for Portland, the nonprofit that’s seeking to take over spending of the homeless services tax, began operations in July.

“We knew we needed to talk about the program,” Christensen says. “And we hadn’t figured out how to do that yet. It was really critical that we figure out how to get the message out.”

Metro hired Winning Mark, and the firm prepared a communications plan, laid out in a Feb. 16 memo: It will take time for people to see the results, but we don’t have time to spare. The general public was already losing patience in 2020, and the pandemic has exacerbated the situation dramatically. Many voters believe that the problem is government, and there is widespread skepticism that the work is getting done as promised. The biggest problem is the eye-test; even if good things are happening every day, people continue to see public camping, garbage and disorder. They will only be able to recognize progress when these things diminish.

Winning Mark’s nine-page plan contained a variety of approaches: social media, seeking press coverage, digital advertising, a promotional video, and the deployment of trusted community representatives who could talk about what was working.

The most important tool: data.

The public’s view on the supportive housing approach remains favorable, but support has weakened since the funding measure was first proposed in 2019. Research shows that many people have not heard much about the work that is underway, and many do not believe that it is actually happening. In order to begin changing perceptions, high-profile initiatives should be paired with a clear narrative of progress driven by data.

Metro got to work. On March 9, the agency alerted reporters that its data dashboard, with various measurements of progress, was live.

But on March 28, People for Portland filed a ballot measure seeking to dictate how revenue from the homeless services measure would be spent in future.

That move forced Metro to immediately shut down Winning Mark’s work, Christensen says, because Siegel’s communications could now be seen as a violation of laws that prohibit public agencies from engaging in political campaigns. The plan was ready and a few ads had already run.

Siegel says the abrupt end of the communications effort is unfortunate.

“The goal was to get out of the political crossfire,” he says. “We wanted to create space for people to tell the story.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“It’s an owl, looks like other owls.”

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Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

—Carrick Flynn, front-runner for the Democratic nomination in Oregon’s new, 6th Congressional District, discussing the northern spotted owl during an April 13 appearance on the political podcast The Bridge. Flynn, who’s backed by a cryptocurrency billionaire in his quest for office, expressed affinity for the advocacy group Timber Unity and criticized the process that listed the spotted owl on the endangered species list.

“There is a part of me still feels indignant or angry that…that you have these people in the city who were like, ‘Oh, look. There’s an owl. Isn’t it cool? We’re gonna destroy all of your livelihoods in your community because we like this owl,’” Flynn said. Read more at wweek.com. R AC H E L M O N A H A N .

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 48

WHO GOT IT?

Christina Stephenson, a civil rights lawyer running for labor commissioner

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Three serious candidates are running to be commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries, a statewide elected position that often flies under voters’ radar. It’s an important post: The commissioner polices workplace issues, namely wages and civil rights, as well as supports apprenticeship programs.

Labor really cares about both the agency’s work policing the workplace and its job-creation role. Although the position is nonpartisan, two of the leading candidates—Stephenson and Yamhill County Commissioner Casey Kulla—are Democrats, while former state Rep. Cheri Helt (R-Bend), a restaurant owner, will seek to corral GOP voters. With IBEW’s contribution, Stephenson has now raised $378,000, the vast majority of it from unions. That’s more than her two opponents combined. In a three-way race in which voters are likely to be unfamiliar with all the candidates, IBEW’s support could make a difference.

WHAT DOES THE UNION SAY?

“For IBEW Local 48, the two most important political positions in the state are governor and labor commissioner,” says IBEW political director Marshall McGrady. “The labor commissioner oversees registered apprenticeship programs throughout the state and ensures that employers provide a discrimination-free workplace that enforces all workplace laws.”

McGrady adds that IBEW thinks Stephenson is right for the job: “Christina has shown she has the skills and determination to take on employers and developers that refuse to play by the rules.”

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WE’RE LOOKING FOR PUBLIC SERVANTS TO AID A STRUGGLING PORTLAND.

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Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

WW’S MAY 2022 ENDORSEMENTS Warning: What you’ll read in the following pages will probably piss you off.

We’re guessing you’re already pretty angry.

Most Oregonians are: A February survey by the polling firm DHM Research found that most voters, in both parties, were disgusted by the condition of the state and ready to blame anybody at the helm.

The result should make any Democrat shake in their Nikes. More Oregonians held a positive view of Donald Trump than of Joe Biden, Kate Brown or Ron Wyden.

Those numbers would have been inconceivable a mere two years ago. Yet they also make intuitive sense. A prolonged shutdown of public life exposed fundamental failures in how Oregon handles poverty, mental illness and addiction. The excesses of Portland’s nightly protests against police triggered a predictable backlash—which only intensified when citizens began shooting and killing each other at record rates.

Two years ago, we warned that Portland’s and Oregon’s leaders needed to act urgently to restore order to the city’s daily life. They didn’t.

Too often, it has felt like our elected officials were hiding from us instead of leading. No one in Salem or Portland City Hall has taken responsibility for the botched execution of bold experiments. (In just one infuriating example, progressive advocates persuaded voters to decriminalize possession of small amounts of meth and heroin—and the new law took effect a year before money started flowing to addiction treatment programs that were supposed to replace jail.)

It’s cold comfort that a similar dynamic is playing out across the county: Democrats in retreat, Republicans smelling blood. Why should it make you feel better to know that Seattle is struggling, too, when your car window has been smashed and there’s a shooting on your block?

So we walked into endorsement interviews this month ready to throw the bums out.

Just one problem: We have to replace them with someone.

Anybody who’s tried to hire for a job in this tight labor market has felt despair at the difficulty of finding someone both qualified for a position and interested in doing the work.

That’s a sensation we felt repeatedly this election cycle.

We invited candidates to join us at WW’s office for joint conversations—job interviews, really. We endorsed in every local and statewide race on the ballot that was meaningfully contested, which we defined as two candidates submitting statements to the Voters’ Pamphlet.

Despite being disappointed by the performance of our elected officials, we rarely encountered challengers who could convince us they could do better.

There were exceptions: Ron Noble impressed us in the race for a new congressional seat, and Thuy Tran showed great skill for a first-time candidate in House District 45.

(You can watch video of the full interviews at wweek.com.) But on the whole, we left interviews feeling we were better off retaining the candidate who currently holds the job or picking an establishment politician.

In many cases, we found ourselves more in agreement with the positions voiced by a challenger, but weren’t convinced they could execute. On other occasions, we had the uneasy sense that we were being asked to abandon our core values in a moment of crisis. (Too many people are seeking office this year on a platform that boils down to the idea that not being able to afford a home should also mean losing your freedom.)

So that’s why what you’re about to read may infuriate you. Our message is: As bad as things may be, consider how the wrong vote could make them worse. A lot is at stake this year: the governor’s office, a new congressional seat, and the direction of the Portland City Council. Be careful.

Whether you agree with that message or not, we hope you find some small reason for optimism in these pages. After two years in isolation, Portlanders are returning to schools, restaurants and concert halls. The renewed engagement with others means friction—but that conflict can be productive. We can no longer hide from one another.

We asked each candidate to recall a moment in recent weeks when, after two pandemic-choked years, they felt joy at seeing life return to normal. Some of them answered that the first moment they felt that joy came while sitting in a room with their adversaries, with masks off.

We felt that, too. Our greatest hope for the coming election is that, after so long apart, we will see each other face to face.

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

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GOVERNOR

Christine Drazan Republican

Tina Kotek Democrat Sixteen Democrats filed to run for governor this year. One of them wasn’t legally eligible to hold the office. The disqualification of former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof created a great legal drama, but it denies Democratic Party voters an alternative to the state’s establishment leaders. Of the remaining candidates, only former House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland) and State Treasurer Tobias Read possess the gravitas and experience to be considered seriously for the nomination.

Kotek, 55, and Read, 46, won their first elections to the Oregon House in 2006 and worked closely together for 10 years before Read ran for treasurer in 2016. Despite their shared history, they are very different. Kotek, the first lesbian House speaker in the U.S., went on to hold the top job in the House longer than anybody in Oregon history.

Kotek is smart, strategic and decisive. She figured out how to pass difficult bills that make working-class Oregonians’ lives better—from a minimum wage increase that acknowledged employers in rural Oregon couldn’t pay as much as ones in Portland, to family medical leave, to an end to no-cause evictions. Under her leadership, Democrats passed a school funding increase they’d been chasing for 30 years. To achieve that goal, Kotek told public employees, her strongest source of support, they’d have to take a haircut. That’s a rebuke to the conventional wisdom that Kotek cannot say no to public employees, who hold a lot of sway with her party. It’s also the mark of an effective leader: reaching difficult compromises for the greater good and having the fortitude to tell supporters unpleasant truths.

Kotek acknowledges Oregon is in tough shape—and few parts of it feel more pain than the blue-collar North Portland district she represented, which is brimming with unsanctioned homeless camps and sees more than its share of gun and traffic deaths.

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Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

Kotek argues—convincingly—that her job as speaker was to pass laws that create opportunities for positive change. It’s the job of the governor and the state agencies that report to her to implement those laws. We think she can do that better than Read, a moderate, Mister Rogers-style politician. She says she will demand better delivery of basic services, such as mental health treatment, affordable housing, and unemployment benefits that the state has struggled to provide.

Read makes similar claims, but there’s less reason to believe him. As a lawmaker, he earned consistently OK ratings in WW’s “The Good, the Bad and the Awful” issue. As treasurer, he’s been steady and reliable—but no more than that. After changing his position on the sale of Elliott State Forest (against it, for it, then against it again), Read doggedly pursued a complex compromise that will keep the land in public hands. He’s sunny and bright but has never displayed the steely focus that makes Kotek effective.

Kotek’s enemies have already begun portraying her as Gov. Kate Brown 2.0. In terms of style and substance, that characterization could hardly be less accurate. Kotek says she can be governor for all of Oregon, not just progressives in the Willamette Valley.

That’s remains a proposition she’ll need to prove. We’d like to see her matched up against the unaffiliated candidate and the best the GOP has to offer.

Of the other candidates in the race, George Carrillo, a former sheriff’s deputy and Department of Human Services manager now working for the Oregon Health Authority, and Dr. Julian Bell, an Ashland pulmonologist focused on climate change, have the most to offer voters.

Moment of joy when Kotek felt life was returning to normal: When people in Columbia Park in her neighborhood began walking closer to each other rather than staying 6 feet apart.

The chances of a Republican being elected to serve as governor of Oregon are usually dim.

But 2022 may be Republicans’ best shot in a generation, and certainly since 2010. The GOP electorate has reason to pick its nominee carefully.

Among the 19 candidates, Sandy Mayor Stan Pulliam, 40, stands out for his shamelessness: He has all the hallmarks of a candidate who will say and do anything to obtain higher office.

His chances were diminished by the revelation, explored in these pages, that he and his wife spent time as members of a Portland swingers’ group. To his credit, Pulliam expressed no shame about his swinging, and that may have cost him a key endorsement from Oregon Right to Life. He is otherwise a predictable parrot of Trump Republicanism: fear of crime, fealty to police and, most cynically, demonization of transgender children.

Dr. Bud Pierce, 65, who won his party’s gubernatorial nomination in 2016, has failed to answer our questions or appear for an endorsement interview to focus on his (admittedly important) work as a Salem oncologist. He has the adoration of the many patients he has served, and he is a pleasant if less than magnetic politician. But we wonder how much he actually wants the job.

We didn’t get a chance to ask.

The conservative writer Bridget Barton, 69, is perceptive and sound, making a well-reasoned argument for the Republican agenda and sharply diagnosing the state’s current ills. But in a year when voters are looking to challenge the status quo, she is stretching the meaning of the word “outsider.” She tried and failed to get elected to Legislature in the 1990s, but she has built a career, most notably, as a political consultant in a takeover of Clackamas County. The power behind the power is properly called the establishment. She would be an excellent candidate for local office or the Legislature.

Bob Tiernan, 66, a former legislator and GOP state chairman, is making a new run for office after a decade away. He has experience in business and in politics that would serve him well. In the 1990s, he was skilled in navigating the politics of the Capitol,

OREGON LABOR COMMISSIONER

driving his party to the right. His tough-on-crime stance again has an audience, but it’s difficult to imagine him negotiating across the aisle.

Among the Republicans who failed to gain traction with the donor class, the standout is Jessica Gomez, 44, a Medford business owner. We applaud her courage in telling her party the truth about election integrity: A Republican secretary of state’s audit found Oregon’s elections are sound, and to imply otherwise is sour grapes. We hope she’ll find a path to elected office. Nick Hess, 36, owner of local telecom and computer companies, also represents an alternative future for Republicans. He convincingly argues that Republicans in Oregon need to win by seeking compromise. Whether they can do that this year will determine their chances of winning.

That requires choosing the strongest candidate—someone who’s electable in November. That is Christine Drazan.

Drazan, the former House minority leader from Canby, hardly represents Portland values. She’s no RINO: Drazan is pro-life and opposed climate legislation. She also returned a level of savvy and fundraising skills to House Republicans. Drazan served as senior House staff 20 years ago when Republicans ran the Legislature and, unlike many in her party, knows how to exercise power. Last year, she even forced then-House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland) to give the GOP equal say (for a while) in redistricting.

Drazan faces criticism from the right for failing to obstruct every piece of legislation unpopular with conservatives that came before the House. Firearms activists, for instance, blame her for letting Democrats pass a pretty innocuous gun safety bill last year. They wanted her to order her caucus to deny Democrats a quorum and are now blasting her for that. Drazan stuck around, perhaps because she knows walkouts are unpopular with the electorate. She faces down those critiques with equanimity and is sure to offer this state a solid alternative in the general election. Other candidates won’t do that.

May the best woman win in November.

Moment of joy when Drazan felt life was returning to normal: She hasn’t had a distinctive moment of joy yet because normal came too slowly, she says.

Christina Stephenson Nonpartisan

The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries investigates workplace complaints and promotes apprenticeships and job training.

The current labor commissioner, Val Hoyle, is running to fill the open seat of Congressman Peter DeFazio, who is retiring this year.

In the scrum to succeed Hoyle, Christina Stephenson is the clear choice—a candidate with demonstrated effectiveness in the work BOLI does.

Stephenson, 38, a Portland civil rights lawyer, owns a small law firm and has represented workers seeking relief from sexual harassment, wage theft and discrimination. She’s championed

workplace reforms, including the addition of paid bereavement leave to the Oregon Family Leave Act, and helped pass the Workplace Fairness Act in 2019, which tightens employers’ requirements for sexual harassment and discrimination protocol.

Stephenson says BOLI imposes too few penalties on scofflaw employers. The Oregon Center for Public Policy reported in January 2021 that only 1% of penalties were collected in substantiated wage theft claims from 2013 to 2019. BOLI, which has an annual budget of $35 million, also has the smallest staff in decades, resulting in a high caseload for investigators.

She’s frank about the industries that she says are getting away with exploiting their laborers—including construction and home health care. Stephenson is a watchdog—just what her agency needs.

She faces intriguing competition, including Casey Kulla, 42, a Yamhill County commissioner and organic farmer. Kulla is intelligent and ebullient. The former cannabis grower is the candidate this election cycle we’d most like to smoke a bowl with. But until a few months ago, he was running for governor, and we’d like to see a little more seasoning and knowledge of the office he seeks in his next campaign.

Former state Rep. Cheri Helt (R-Bend) entered the race on the last possible day. She runs a popular restaurant but doesn’t have a clear rationale for her candidacy.

We recommend you cast your vote for Stephenson.

Moment of joy when Stephenson felt life was returning to normal: Going to Pietro’s Pizza with her son, and winning paper tickets at skeeball to redeem for prizes.

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U.S. HOUSE DISTRICT 1

U.S. SENATE

Suzanne Bonamici Democrat

At a time when national and state politics are in upheaval, Suzanne Bonamici is as reliable as spring tulips.

First elected 10 years ago to a district that runs from Portland’s West Hills to the mouth of the Columbia River, Bonamici, 67, has grown in proficiency without showboating. She’s endearingly wonky—her favorite topic is ocean wave energy, and she formed a House caucus that’s trying to include art and music classics in STEM curriculum. Nerd! But her work on developing President Biden’s infrastructure bill and her commitment to fighting climate change remain much needed in Congress.

Bonamici faces nominal opposition from Scott Phillips, 57, an IT consultant. He’s running to bring more attention to issues such student debt relief.

Moment of joy when Bonamici felt life was returning to normal: A memorial service for her mother-in-law, delayed by two years. “It wasn’t joyful,” she says, “but it was meaningful.”

U.S. HOUSE DISTRICT 5 Ron Wyden Democrat For 26 years, Wyden, 72, has served as senator from Oregon. He faces no meaningful opposition this time—from fellow Democrats or from Republicans. That may be an indictment of our current democratic system, but Oregon has good reason to return him to Washington, D.C., in the fall.

As chair of the Senate Select Committee on Finance, he holds the gavel to issues important to Oregonians, including the management of Social Security and Medicare. He has championed a tax on billionaires that President Joe Biden has now adopted, secured billions in unemployment relief during the pandemic, and passed a law that will bring together mental health care providers and law enforcement to respond to people in crisis on the streets. (It’s based on a model developed in Eugene.)

Ever since he voted against the U.S. Patriot Act in 2006, Wyden has been a leader in holding the federal government’s intelligence services to account. Intelligence overreach has not stopped in the intervening decades. And most recently he pushed for an audit of Homeland Security’s broad surveillance of immigrants’ money transfers to their home countries.

It is also worth recognizing that Wyden, who has fashioned a career as a champion of working across the aisle, was among the senators who less than a year into Trump’s term called on the former president to resign over allegations of sexual misconduct.

Two failed impeachments and an attempted insurrection later, Wyden looks prescient.

The men running against him have not held elected office in the past and offered no compelling reason they should now.

They include Brent Thompson, 75, and William Barlow III, 40.

Moment of joy when Wyden felt life was returning to normal: “A lot of people smiling” with their masks off (or on) as he visited one Fred Meyer the previous weekend.

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Darin Harbick Republican Harbick, 53, a hotel and restaurant owner who served on the McKenzie High School board of directors and the chamber of commerce in the tiny logging town of Vida, is the strongest challenger Republicans can offer to Wyden. That’s not saying much. Harbick trotted out the line of argument that the federal government (not the pandemic) cratered his businesses. We don’t expect him to be a formidable challenger, but Harbick accepts the legitimacy of the Biden presidency, at least.

He faces Prineville Mayor Jason Beebe, 48, a veteran who has public service experience but made the suspect argument that he accepted his own county’s election protocols while questioning the results of elections elsewhere. Chris Christensen, 58, a former candidate for the 1st Congressional District, called himself the moderate of the bunch and offered that his priority in Congress would be to complete the Interstate Bridge project. Harbick’s public service gives him the edge.

Moment of joy when Harbick felt life was returning to normal: Not wearing a mask, and not making his employees enforce the state mask mandate.

Jamie McLeod-Skinner Democrat

For seven terms, Kurt Schrader has represented a congressional district that runs like a belt across the Willamette Valley until it T-bones at the Oregon Coast. When state lawmakers drew new maps this year, they spun Schrader’s district east—removing the coastline and adding the zoomtown of Bend.

It’s a good time for a reassessment.

Schrader, 70, is a folksy veterinarian and the trail boss of a centrist caucus in Washington, D.C., that tries to keep the Democratic Party from moving too far left. He argues that such moderation is what makes him the only Democrat who can maintain control of a swing district where his party holds a mere 27,000-vote edge in voter registration over Republicans.

Such logic has previously swayed us—and it seems to have

persuaded President Joe Biden, who endorsed Schrader last week.

The problem: In recent years, Schrader has been reliable only as an obstructionist. He voted against COVID stimulus checks because he wanted more means testing. He held up Biden’s infrastructure package because he didn’t want to let Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices. On a conference call with Democratic leadership, he complained that the second impeachment of President Donald Trump would be “a lynching.”

Schrader’s challenger, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, 54, would make an ambitious but not absurd leap to D.C. Much of her government work has been on volunteer boards in Central Oregon, including an elected seat on the Jefferson County Education Service District board. Yet among the candidates who’ve emerged from the Bernie Sanders movement, McLeod-Skinner strikes us as one of the more substantive. Her rigor in digging into Schrader’s voting record speaks well of her attention to detail. Her commitment to addressing climate change would be a welcome contrast to Schrader—like finding a cool ponderosa pine grove in the high desert.

If the president’s backing still gives you pause, consider who hasn’t endorsed Schrader: any of his five Democratic colleagues in the Oregon congressional delegation. And most of the county Democratic parties, including Clackamas where Schrader lives, endorse McLeod-Skinner.

U.S. HOUSE DISTRICT 6

Moment of joy when McLeod-Skinner felt life was returning to normal: Watching a friend’s daughter play in the Oregon State Basketball Championship in Redmond.

Andrea Salinas Democrat

Jimmy Crumpacker Republican

Crumpacker, 43, has offered no service to the district since he last ran for Congress in a different district two years ago. The new boundaries of Oregon’s congressional districts afford him a new opportunity to run.

In his previous run, Crumpacker was a Republican in the mold of Trump. Now he says he’s a moderate, acknowledging the legitimacy of the last presidential election and the reality of climate change.

Crumpacker, a graduate of Georgetown and former intern for U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, worked on Wall Street before returning to Oregon. He is smart, knows energy and foreign policy. We give him the nod for his current decision to choose reason over extremism—at least for now.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer, 54, a marketing executive for her husband’s medical practice who ran unsuccessfully in two hardfought races for the state Legislature in 2016 and 2018, was a moderate in the past, running on a pro-choice platform. She has now convinced some that she’s a true conservative and opposed to abortion (though she did not get Oregon Right to Life’s nod; Crumpacker did). We didn’t get a chance to ask her about that swivel. With such a notable change and a failure to find even five minutes to defend it, we can’t find a reason to endorse her this time.

Among the other candidates running is Laurel Roses, 62, a community leader and mother of five who has hardline views on climate change but is also open to abortion rights after the lived experiences of friends and neighbors. We are heartened to encounter views independent of party orthodoxy.

Moment of joy when Crumpacker felt life was returning to normal: A 40th birthday party for a friend.

After a decade of population growth, Oregon earned a new, sixth congressional seat this year. The district is centered in the northern Willamette Valley and draws its largest bloc of voters from Marion County.

Because there is no incumbent to beat, a number of interesting candidates have surfaced.

Three-term state Rep. Teresa Alonso Leon (D-Woodburn), 47, is the first Mexican-born woman to serve in the Oregon Legislature. Dr. Kathleen Harder, 63, a Salem hospitalist, has a wealth of knowledge on health care, but her political experience is limited to losing a school board race. Cody Reynolds, 44, a West Point graduate who has made a fortune in cryptocurrency, says this race is the culmination of a 10-year plan to serve in Congress and, should he lose, “I’ll go back to mentoring artists.” Former two-term Multnomah County Commissioner Loretta Smith began her political career as an aide to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), so she knows D.C. Matt West, 35, is an Intel engineer.

And then there’s Carrick Flynn, 35, a former foundation consultant who’s drawn $6 million in independent expenditures from Bahamas-based crypto-billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried but is otherwise a cipher (he ghosted WW’s endorsement interview).

Flynn grew up in Vernonia but lived outside Oregon from 2008, when he graduated from college, until 2020, when he moved back during the pandemic. But he has a massive fundraising advantage, thanks to Bankman-Fried and the House Majority PAC, the national Democratic fundraising machine, which would love to have a nominee so generously bankrolled that it can concentrate its attention elsewhere. It’s difficult to find anybody in Oregon who knows Flynn, however, and we oppose outside groups buying congressional seats.

By contrast, state Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-Lake Oswego), 52, has built a track record both as a lobbyist for environmental, prochoice and labor groups and as a smart and effective lawmaker since 2017. Prior to going to work in Salem, she served for a decade as a congressional aide to U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Utah) and Reps. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) and Darlene Hooley (D-Ore.).

She’s a strong choice who deserves the nomination.

Moment of joy when Salinas felt life was returning to normal: Last October, she attended a Violent Femmes concert at the Les Schwab Amphitheater.

Ron Noble Republican

Given the political geography, Democrats are expected to prevail in Oregon’s new congressional district. (The Dems have a 26,000vote advantage in voter registration.) But seven Republicans are vying for a shot at the seat.

Only two of them came to our endorsement interview: state Rep. Ron Noble, who has represented parts of the new district since 2017, and Angela Plowhead, a clinical psychologist who began her career as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force.

We’re big fans of independent thinking here at WW, and both Noble and Plowhead described positions that separate them from the Trump-era pack.

Noble, 62, is a former police officer who bucked his party on immigration. His son-in-law is from Ireland. Watching him navigate our broken immigration system convinced Noble that something must be done for people whom the right demonizes.

“If my daughter had fallen in love with someone from Mexico City, would I see my grandson?” Noble asks. “There are inequalities.”

That explains why he defied his party in 2019 and voted to allow undocumented immigrants to obtain Oregon driver’s licenses.

Some of his conservatism sounds George Bush compassionate, but we thought Noble sounded pretty sincere about bridging divides, and his record speaks to that.

Plowhead spent much of our conversation railing against critical race theory. She’s a woman of mixed race, so her views interested us. Unfortunately, she fell back on familiar tropes.

Of other candidates, Mike Erickson is a logistics consultant who wants to reduce voter access, and Amy Courser, who owns a carpet cleaning company, spoke in 2020 at a QAnon recruiting rally. Neither offers a viable alternative to Noble.

Moment of joy when Noble felt life was returning to normal: When people could choose whether to wear a mask and not be demonized for their choice. “The wearing of a mask is not a political statement,” Noble says. “The willingness to be vaccinated is no longer a political statement.”

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YOU ARE HERE

These are Oregon’s new congressional and legislative districts.

After the 2020 census, the Oregon Legislature engaged in a bruising fight over new boundaries for congressional and legislative districts. The result is, you might be voting whether to reelect a different incumbent than in past years. As you read our endorsements for Congress and the Oregon House and Senate, refer to these maps to see which districts we’re discussing.

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SENATE DISTRICT 19

(Lake Oswego, West Linn)

Wendy O’Riley Republican

Two proponents of “medical freedom”—a term commonly used by vaccine skeptics—are vying for the Republican nomination to unseat Senate Majority Leader Rob Wagner (D-Lake Oswego) in November.

Wendy O’Riley, a tax accountant, and Ben Edtl, who runs a nonprofit called Free Oregon that seeks to challenge government overreach in civil court, are running to represent a district encompassing parts of Lake Oswego, Tualatin and West Linn.

In some regards, Edtl, 44, echoes former President Donald Trump: He believes cancel culture, “lawlessness” and tyrannical government overreach caused a “humanitarian crisis” in Oregon, and he is bombastic in his delivery of those opinions.

O’Riley, 52, embraces some traditional Republican values, like wanting to lower taxes and reduce government spending. She also believes the state’s school curriculum does not adequately prepare students for the workforce. O’Riley also emphasized that she thinks Oregon schools teach sex education at too young an age—an argument we haven’t seen much evidence for, and one that doesn’t strike us as a key issue in the state.

Much of her platform is focused on the concept of “medical privacy,” which essentially boils down to not wanting to be asked to show a vaccine card.

O’Riley demonstrated a stronger ability to listen to differing viewpoints and to think independently, like when we pressed her on whether her beliefs about medical freedom also apply to abortion.

“I can’t go on [about] medical privacy and then say, ‘But that doesn’t count.’ Your body is your body, and we have to respect that,” she said. “Medical privacy is medical privacy. It shouldn’t matter if it’s about a shot, if it’s about abortion, if it’s about your cancer records. It is private.”

Given the choice between two candidates espousing views dangerous to public health, we respect O’Riley’s intellectual consistency.

Moments of joy when O’Riley felt life was returning to normal: Camping and Friday night dinners.

and cutting a deal to allow some timber harvests on federal lands.

We did not sense the same affability in Steve Bates, 69, who is challenging Bonham with the backing of Sandy’s culture-warrior mayor, Stan Pulliam. Bates sold fire trucks before his retirement and works on veterans’ issues in the Capitol. We admire his commitment to honoring vets, but don’t see how he’d be an improvement on Bonham.

Moment of joy when Bonham felt life was returning to normal: When the mask mandate ended and he could see people’s smiling faces again.

(Sherwood, Wilsonville)

Ken Helm Democrat

(Hood River, The Dalles)

Glenn Lancaster Republican

Bonham, 44, has represented The Dalles in the House since 2017. Now, he’d like to move up to the Senate to replace retiring Sen. Chuck Thomsen (R-Hood River) in a district that stretches from Corbett to The Dalles. He owns Maupin’s Stoves and Spas in The Dalles—fireplaces are an imperiled business model these days, and we may have spent too much time in our interview discussing flues. In the House, Bonham demonstrated some knack for bipartisanship, securing dental coverage for veterans 16

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(Beaverton, Cedar Hills)

HOUSE DISTRICT 26

SENATE DISTRICT 26

Daniel Bonham Republican

HOUSE DISTRICT 27

Democrat Courtney Neron currently represents a collection of suburbs at the southern edge of Washington County. In redistricting, Democrats’ registration advantage shrank by about 1,100 voters, making it one of the more balanced districts in the metro area, and Republicans would love to seize it.

Jason Fields, a Yamhill County tree farmer, has the advantage of more endorsements, including that of the Oregon Family Farm Association. But we’re growing weary of Republicans’ single-minded fixation on never having to pay highway tolls—that’s what Fields mostly talks about in the Voters’ Pamphlet. (He didn’t attend our endorsement interview.) Give us the genial, eclectic Glenn Lancaster, who recently sold his company that supplies transformer equipment to electric utilities. We don’t agree with him on much, but he strikes us as a gentle, thoughtful fellow.

Moment of joy when Lancaster felt life was returning to normal: Shopping at the Wilsonville Fred Meyer without a mask.

Helm will probably never deliver a rousing Kennedy-style speech about going to the moon or defeating communism. It’s hard to imagine him even raising his voice. He has the demeanor of a Swiss banker, or a land use lawyer, which he happens to be.

In this time of hyperpartisan cacophony, Helm’s actions speak louder than his words. Since being elected in 2014 with the backing of the Oregon League of Conservation Lawyers, he has been a champion of the environment. “My fingerprints are on every piece of climate legislation, every piece of clean energy legislation, every piece of environmental legislation,” Helm, 57, says in soft-spoken self-promotion.

That’s not hyperbole. Helm, who has represented Beaverton, Cedar Hills, West Haven, and Rock Creek, has worked hard to promote solar, increase energy efficiency in buildings, transition Oregon to 100% clean electricity, and prevent the poaching of wildlife.

After learning that homeowner associations often had racist, homophobic, bigoted language in their covenants, he began designing a bill to make the associations remove the vile stuff by the end of this year. And rather than push it by himself, Helm brought in first-term Rep. Dacia Grayber (D-Tigard) to co-sponsor it.

Helm’s opponent is Tammy Carpenter, 51, a Raleigh Hills anesthesiologist who’s never held elected office. She’s running for very noble reasons: to bring single-payer health care to Oregon and to tackle climate change with “more Bernie Bro energy in Salem.” But even she admits that Helm has done an impeccable job—and can’t find a flaw in his voting record. We’re sticking with the guy who votes for the environment with the regularity of a Swiss watch.

Moment of joy when Helm felt life was returning to normal: Walking his dog on a Saturday in early April after the mask mandate was lifted. “Everyone was waving at each other. People driving by in their cars were waving at us.”

HOUSE DISTRICT 28

(Southwest Portland, Washington County)

Patrick Castles Republican

Castles, a novelist, hopes to live out a tale of overcoming great odds. Should he win the primary, he’ll face Rep. Dacia Grayber (D-Tigard) in a solidly blue district that stretches west from Council Crest. Worse yet for Castles, Grayber belongs to a tribe the public loves: She’s a firefighter.

First, Castles will need to get past primary opponent Charles Mengis, a former Portland General Electric accountant who wants to crack down on crime and bolster school choice. Both men are literary. Castles, a retired invoice manager for IBM, has written a sci-fi novel that features interstellar kidnapping.

In his election filing, Mengis lists his “most recent” education as “G.K. Chesterton, Jane Austen, Aristotle, Dante, Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Sean Carney.”

Castles, 71, is running because he’s fed up with the state’s inability to put money to work solving Oregon’s problems, including at the Employment Department, which got $86 million from the federal government in 2009 to upgrade its systems and spent almost none of it before COVID-19 exposed its shortcomings.

He isn’t a bomb-thrower. We appreciated Castles’ measured criticism and genuine dissatisfaction. These days, that makes a bigger impression from the right, at least on us.

Moment of joy when Castles felt life was returning to normal: “Every time I walk into Fred Meyer, every time I go to church, it feels much better.”

HOUSE DISTRICT 34

(Washington County)

HOUSE DISTRICT 35

(Aloha)

HOUSE DISTRICT 31

(St. Helens, Scappoose)

Brad Stout Republican

Oregon House District 31, which runs up the Columbia River from Sauvie Island north to Rainier and back south to Cherry Grove, is one of the most evenly divided by party in the state. Of the two Republicans running, Brad Stout seems more focused on reaching out to the many unaffiliated voters in the district.

He’s the owner of a graphics and printing company, and his Voters’ Pamphlet statement shows a focus on protecting jobs in extraction industries.

His opponent Drew Layda is a certified “saturation diver,” a specialty in which highly trained workers spend prolonged periods deep underwater, often beneath offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Layda, 48, lives on an 85-foot boat near Sauvie Island, where he can fish for salmon and steelhead from the stern of his vessel and walk to where he hunts elk.

So, an interesting guy. But we were troubled by his rhetoric.

We asked Layda our last, fun question: Name an experience that brought you optimism that the pandemic might be ending. Some candidates say it was when they went to a concert, or visited an elderly relative who’d been quarantined. Layda’s answer was much different.

“It was the moment the lockdown started,” he said. “I decided I was not participating. I did not wear a mask. I decided I wasn’t going to allow the edicts of a public administration to carry the simulated gravity of fully ratified legislation.”

Such contempt for the health of his fellow Oregonians is disqualifying. We’re endorsing Brad Stout.

Lisa Reynolds Democrat

Some lawmakers draw too much upon their own lives when they arrive in Salem. There’s nothing more tiresome than legislating by anecdote. But Dr. Lisa Reynolds, 58, a pediatrician seeking her second term in a district that covers a portion of unincorporated east Washington County, brings to the Capitol not only three decades of ministering to children but a lifetime of knowledge about living with a family member who suffers from schizophrenia.

Those two experiences form key poles of Reynolds’ life: a focus on the healthy development of young people and an understanding of how challenging mental illness is, both for the patient and the patient’s family. In her rookie term, Reynolds earned a reputation as an effective, plainspoken lawmaker. She continued her long-term interest in promoting gun safety, helping to pass a hard-fought gun storage bill.

Reynolds’ opponent, lawyer Jennifer Kinzey, 31, is relatively new to Oregon, having moved here in 2017 and spent a couple of years since then earning a degree overseas. Kinzey wants to go to Salem to advocate for more and better child care, but she’s not quite ready yet.

Moment of joy when Reynolds felt life was returning to normal: She went to Keller Auditorium last fall to see Jesus Christ Superstar.

Farrah Chaichi Democrat

Two newcomers are taking a shot at succeeding state Rep. Wlnsvey Campos, who’s running for the Oregon Senate after one term representing this district that includes Aloha and parts of Beaverton.

Zeloszelos Marchandt, 42, a journalist and owner of a small theater, has chaired the Washington County Democrats’ Black caucus and is seeking to become the first trans person to serve in the Legislature. Farrah Chaichi, 36, an administrator at a law firm, is the daughter of an Iranian immigrant father and lost her mother to COVID-19. Chaichi has also been active in the Democratic Party. She took the bold step of calling on Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem) to resign in 2019 over his mishandling of a sexual harassment scandal in the Capitol. Both candidates have compelling personal narratives and boast strong community involvement, but Chaichi, who snagged endorsements from both Campos and Beaverton Mayor Lacey Beaty, demonstrated a clearer focus in our interview.

Moment of joy when Chaichi felt life was returning to normal: She and her partner were able to fly to Florida over the winter holidays to visit family.

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HOUSE DISTRICT 38

(Lake Oswego)

who’s running for the state Senate.

The best contender to succeed him is Charles Gallia, 64. We’ve long had a soft spot for Gallia, who ran unsuccessfully for the state Senate in 2018. Gallia concedes that his ambition is narrow: He wants universal health care. But his qualifications are extensive: He spent 15 years at the Oregon Health Authority and has helped a state task force craft a policy to expand coverage.

His opponent, James Farley, is equally well-spoken and knowledgeable. Farley, 65, worked for private health care giants, including UnitedHealth Group. He just retired, and his bid for public office appears to stem from a sincere noblesse oblige. Voters in the district are lucky to have a choice between two experienced professionals. But we think on the issue that matters most in this contest, Gallia is right.

Moment of joy when Gallia felt life was returning to normal: As President Joe Biden visited Portland, “it finally felt real.”

Daniel Nguyen Democrat

Rep. Andrea Salinas is making a run for Congress, vacating her seat in this deep blue district. Both the Democratic candidates seeking to succeed her are people of color who’ve been politically active in one of the whitest cities in the area.

Daniel Nguyen, 43, is the owner of three Bambuza restaurants.

He joined the Lake Oswego City Council in 2019 and championed a diversity and equity inclusion task force to look at city hiring practices. (The council plans to make it a permanent advisory board.) He also helped inch along the redevelopment of two city blocks into a mixed-use complex that reserved a number of units for low-income residents.

His opponent, Neelam Gupta, 51, is a director at the Oregon Health Authority who joined the city’s school board after her daughter was the victim of racist bullying. She’s helping to craft curricula that address biases and has helped place new books written by local authors of color into schools.

Neither candidate overwhelmed us. But we think Nguyen’s even-keeled work in city government, understanding of small business challenges and championing of racial diversity initiatives suggests he can do the same in Salem. We’re glad Gupta is on the school board—she’s a passionate voice.

Moment of joy when Nguyen felt life was returning to normal: When his kids first went back to school after pandemic closures.

HOUSE DISTRICT 40

(Oregon City, Gladstone)

Adam Baker Republican

Adam Baker is a cop. Daniel Tooze is a Proud Boy. Easy call.

Baker, 47, was among the most thoughtful Republicans to visit our office this cycle. He’s the chief drone pilot for the Gresham Police Department, with previous stints as a spokesman and a hostage negotiator. He offered a sober critique of Oregon’s experiment with decriminalizing hard drugs, and we look forward to seeing him face off with the Democratic nominee in November—we think he and Gallia would make worthy foils.

Tooze, as this newspaper has previously reported, is the self-proclaimed Proud Boy whose private security firm guarded meetings of the Multnomah County Republican Party—a step in the county party’s splintering into militancy and street brawling—and reserved Oregon City’s Clackamette Park for a rally that turned into a melee with anti-fascists that filled the city streets with the stink of bear spray. His very candidacy is an embarrassment to his party. Baker is a candidate of whom the GOP can be proud.

Moment of joy when Baker felt life was returning to normal: A Primus concert at Edgefield.

herself as a star in the Democratic caucus, a leading voice on environmental and child care issues. But Power was one of three lawmakers who announced they would not run again because they were no longer willing to do full-time work for part-time pay.

Several people hurried to replace Power before the filing deadline. The two leading candidates would both be a notable downgrade from Power, although they share her progressive values.

Mark Gamba, 63, is finishing his second term as mayor of Milwaukie, and is barred by city charter from seeking a third. A former National Geographic photographer, Gamba has enjoyed playing the know-it-all kid brother at the south edge of Portland as the larger city struggles with basic tasks that don’t seem to fluster Milwaukie (like picking up trash). What impresses us more is Gamba’s commitment to addressing climate change at a local level. He says his first bill would require a reduction in carbon emissions from housing construction, and he rightly criticizes the Portland Clean Energy Fund as a slush fund with few benchmarks for making the region greener.

Yet it’s on this point that Gamba is most vulnerable to attack.

His opponent, Kaliko Castille, 34, is a Native Hawaiian and communications director for the racial equity nonprofit Brown Hope.

(He previously led the Minority Cannabis Business Association.)

He rightly points out that few people in the Legislature share his background—and that there’s something presumptuous about Gamba shouldering into the race after Castille had entered.

This is undeniably true. But it’s also the case that Gamba can point to a record of accomplishment—and a tough-mindedness about safeguarding the public treasury—that Castille didn’t demonstrate much interest in during our interview.

We wish we were getting Power. But we’ll settle for Gamba.

Moment of joy when Gamba felt life was returning to normal: “A group of old friends in Milwaukie—we just happened to end up at the Beer Store at the same time.”

HOUSE DISTRICT 41

(Milwaukie)

Bob “Elvis” Clark

Republican

Charles Gallia Democrat

This district wraps along the banks of the Willamette and Clackamas rivers in Oregon City and Gladstone—you’ll find Willamette Falls here and High Rocks. You won’t find incumbent Mark Meek,

Mark Gamba Democrat

The March announcement by Rep. Karin Power that she would not seek a fourth term came as a shock. Power, 38, had established

Both men vying for the GOP nomination in House District 41, which covers Milwaukie, belong to their city’s Public Safety Advisory Committee. But when we asked them which issue they’d attack first in Salem, both Bob “Elvis” Clark, 68, a retired utility economist, and Rob Reynolds, 51, who sells commercial security systems, gave the same answer: tolls. They don’t like the state’s long, slow effort to charge motorists to use its interstate highways.

Clark, who worked for the Bonneville Power Administration and the Oregon Public Utility Commission, has a better grasp of economics and market forces. He is more concerned about climate change and is “sort of” pro-choice. (He also legally changed his middle name to Elvis in 2019, because friends called him that already.) His positions are more in tune with our values and those in his overwhelmingly Democratic district.

Moment of joy when Clark felt life was returning to normal: He enjoyed going to his local Safeway last summer but that’s it, he reports. “My wife keeps things pretty buttoned down.”

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HOUSE DISTRICT 45

(Northeast Portland)

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Candidates' written answers to questions onlin online

Thuy Tran Democrat

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A Video Voters’ Guide and podcasts with recordings of candidate Interviews, and forums of selected contested races.

____________________________________________ PRINTED VOTERS’ GUIDE Find printed LWV Multnomah Co. Voters’ Guides at all county libraries, the County Elections Office, and Gresham Voting Center Express

After eight years in the Legislature, former House Majority Leader Barbara Smith Warner (D-Portland) is not seeking reelection. That opens up a seat that encompasses much of Portland’s Parkrose neighborhood, with Northeast 82nd Avenue bisecting the district.

Two doctors are vying to fill the vacant seat: Thuy Tran, an optometric physician and lieutenant colonel for the Air National Guard, and Catherine Thomasson, an internal medicine physician and environmental health policy specialist.

Thomasson, 64, has built a career centered on climate health and environmental justice. The Democratic Party Environmental Caucus chair and former executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility advocates eliminating natural gas emissions in Oregon, as well as implementing policies that increase the amount of carbon that forest lands can absorb, such as requiring a longer period of time for trees to grow before they can be cut.

Tran, 55, immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam when she was 9 years old. If elected, she would become the second Asian American currently serving in the Oregon Legislature (after Rep. Khanh Pham, who was elected in 2020). Her background as an immigrant and person of color is especially relevant in District 45, which is among the most ethnically diverse in Portland.

The two candidates differ in their views on policing—a topic especially germane to their district, where gun violence rates are among the highest in Portland.

We asked the candidates about a pivotal moment that occurred in June 2020, as police reform measures swept the country, when the city removed school resource officers from Portland Public Schools. Thomasson supported this decision. Tran, a member of the Parkrose School Board, did not. She argued that students need exposure to police officers at school to learn how to interact with them.

“Our police officers put their lives on the line all the time. And the school is a very safe environment for a relationship to be established, for trust to be developed, so that a student can come to the police in that environment,” Tran said. “But if they don’t have exposure, and they get into an incident, there’s going to be fear.”

Tran signified that she may be better suited than her opponent to build consensus across the aisle.

We appreciated her nuanced approach to policing issues, and she has demonstrated a firmer grasp on the specific issues affecting her district.

Moment of joy when Tran felt life was returning to normal: Visiting her boyfriend’s mom, who lives in a care facility: “She was able to see my smile.”

HOUSE DISTRICT 52

(East Multnomah County)

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Jeff Helfrich Republican From East Multnomah County through Corbett and out to The Dalles, House District 52 covers a wide variety of terrain—including Mount Hood.

Incumbent Rep. Anna Williams (D-Hood River) is stepping down after two terms, unable, she says, to continue doing full-time work for part-time pay.

Williams’ predecessor, Jeff Helfrich, a retired Portland cop who held the seat from 2017 to 2019, wants his old job back. He faces Dr. James Born, a clinical psychologist from Welches, in this race.

Unlike Helfrich, who served in the Air Force and also worked for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office after the Portland Police Bureau and also served on the Cascade Locks City Council, Born has little record of civic engagement. His platform is even thin-

ner. Helfrich also has the endorsement of state Sen. Chuck Thomsen (R-Hood River) and Helfrich’s predecessor, former state Rep. Mark Johnson (R-Hood River).

As a lawmaker, Helfrich hoped to create an enterprise zone in Cascade Locks, which has historically been starved for economic development. He’s a sunny optimist who hopes to take advantage of voters’ unhappiness to surmount Democrats 3,500-voter registration advantage in an increasingly blue part of the region. We’ll see—but he’s by far the most qualified Republican hopeful.

Moment of joy when Helfrich felt life was returning to normal: When he and fellow grocery shoppers could see each other’s teeth.

PORTLAND CITY COUNCIL

Position 2

PORTLAND CITY COUNCIL

Position 3

Jo Ann Hardesty

Dan Ryan

Commissioner Dan Ryan took office less than two years ago, winning an August 2020 special election to serve out the remainder of late Commissioner Nick Fish’s term.

Ryan, 59, brought a strong nonprofit and civic background to City Hall. The former CEO of education nonprofit All Hands Raised and a Portland Public Schools board member, Ryan also worked as a fundraiser at Portland State University and Oregon Ballet Theatre.

His résumé suggested he could hit the ground running.

Ryan joined the council as a critic of the Portland Police Bureau but soon changed his tune. He called the police budget “bloated” and “secretive” in his 2020 campaign, yet now has reversed course and voted against police budget cuts and initially voted against expanding Portland Street Response last spring.

Ryan says now that he’s privy to the inner workings of the bureau, he no longer thinks it’s bloated or secretive. Hmm. As housing commissioner, Ryan consistently talks about homelessness in Portland as a humanitarian crisis. But his actions display little urgency.

He pledged to site six safe rest villages outfitted with tiny homes, basic sanitation and behavioral health services by the end of 2021.

None has yet opened. And Ryan left empty handed from a yearlong negotiation with Metro to secure a section of the Expo Center parking lot for sanctioned RV and car camping.

To his credit, Ryan helped negotiate a joint package between the city and county during the fall that puts dollars toward more shelter beds and behavioral health outreach workers.

As the commissioner in charge of the Bureau

of Development Services, he’s also trying to streamline permitting, a worthy if elusive goal.

Despite Ryan’s slow start, he still inspires far more confidence than his challengers, led by AJ McCreary, executive director of the nonprofit Equitable Giving Circle. That operation, which primarily works with small BIPOC farmers to feed minority families, doesn’t have much of a track record and has yet to secure consistent funding streams.

McCreary, 36, supports cutting the police’s behavioral health unit and crisis response team and diverting those dollars to Portland Street Response. She opposes sweeping homeless camps, but she did not convince us her plan to house people in unused apartments and hotel rooms—an idea borrowed from a group of local housing advocates—has a clear path forward with her at the helm.

Sandeep Bali, 39, is a pharmacist who’s funded his own campaign. He pressed a no-tolerance camping ban, but seemed mostly fueled by his personal annoyance at tents. Steven Cox, 42, an unemployed human resources worker, says he’d end homelessness within three years using 150-bed shelters.

We wish Ryan had drawn stronger competition. For the city’s sake, we hope he’ll find the courage of his convictions in a full term and move decisively toward tackling homelessness and the red tape that makes developing new housing in Portland needlessly slow and difficult.

Moment of joy when Ryan felt life was returning to normal: When he went to a University of Oregon football game tailgate last October.

In 2018, WW endorsed Jo Ann Hardesty’s bid to become the first Black woman on the Portland City Council. Four years later, Hardesty’s road to reelection appears bumpy.

And our own decision to endorse Hardesty, 64, this time was difficult.

Our reservations concern both her personal conduct and her performance. Her unpaid credit card debt and failure to appear in court for that debt betrayed a cavalier attitude toward financial obligations rare in a senior, well-paid public official—and the matter raises questions about whether she should oversee city bureaus with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Her public remarks about policing issues have been divisive and inflammatory—most notoriously when she claimed in an interview with a national magazine that Portland Police Bureau officers were starting fires at protests.

That remark—for which she later apologized—is indicative of Hardesty’s tendency to view politics in terms of clear-cut heroes and villains. It’s why her relationship with other elected officials can become strained. It also may explain why she didn’t take a more active role in responding to the record gun violence that has plagued the city.

Nonetheless, Hardesty has delivered much of what she promised four years ago. No commissioner in living memory has done more to hold police accountable—or to provide alternatives to armed officers responding to people in mental distress.

She championed and implemented the creation of Portland Street Response, which sends a medic and a social worker, rather than cops, to calls for service to citizens in crisis. In the past, such calls have escalated to violence often enough for the Police Bureau to be placed under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Justice. Hardesty has consistently questioned the assumptions underlying the demand for more police resources. The budget choices she pushed for deemphasized policing that disproportionately targeted Black people.

Hardesty’s management of the city’s fire and transportation bureaus has been praiseworthy.

As traffic deaths have soared, she’s provided real leadership and practical solutions: lowering speed limits on all arterial streets, and wresting control of 82nd Avenue from the Oregon Department of Transportation, along with $80 million in federal funding to make it a neighborhood street rather than an urban highway.

At the risk of oversimplifying a complicated political moment, we think Hardesty is so embattled partly because she has focused on police at a time when many Portlanders are alarmed by crime. Her challenge to police power is no longer in fashion.

But we also recognize the risk any public of-

ficial takes on when they openly criticize and challenge police in this town—be it the bureau or the union.

Last March, Hardesty was the victim of an attempt by the then-head of the police union to destroy her reputation by leaking what turned out to be a false report of her involvement in a hit-and-run. That incident isn’t a reason to endorse Hardesty, but it illustrates the threat some police officers feel from her scrutiny.

And they have reason do so. She convinced 82% of Portlanders to vote for the creation of a new police oversight board, and despite the efforts of the police union’s lobbyists, she shepherded the passage of Senate Bill 621 last summer, which effectively paved the way for the implementation of the oversight board. She’s also surmounted obstacles while implementing Portland Street Response, such as the 3-2 vote against expanding the program citywide last May, as well as efforts by the police union to restrict PSR’s ability to respond to indoor, private settings and suicide calls.

Hardesty faces two substantive opponents running to her right.

Gonzalez, who owns a legal and consulting firm and formerly worked as a lawyer for Stoel Rives and KinderCare, supports criminalizing homelessness if people sleeping on the streets refuse services and shelter when there’s enough shelter available. He pledges to undo several of Hardesty’s police reforms, including placing police officers back in schools and bringing back a gang unit.

Administrative law judge Vadim Mozyrsky offers a more compelling alternative. Since moving to Portland from Texas in 2014, the Ukraine-born Mozyrsky has served on half a dozen volunteer commissions and boards, including two police accountability panels. He’s a measured, serious person who we believe could be a steady manager of city bureaus.

And he will likely benefit from an independent expenditure of as much as $700,000 to boost his chances.

Mozyrsky says neighborhood associations are the group least listened to by City Hall. That’s puzzling: The city’s neighborhood associations have proved the greatest obstacle to opening homeless shelters, building infill housing and making housing more affordable through greater density.

We were also disappointed with his unwillingness to take a firm stance on policing issues.

Mozyrsky says he is an advocate for police accountability and reform, yet his voting record on Portland public safety boards does not back that up. Neither does his view that “bad apples” are at fault rather than systemic issues that plague police departments nationwide.

We are just as frustrated as our readers by the dual crises of homelessness and gun violence in our city.

But we think Hardesty’s dissenting voice for low-income Portlanders and people of color is still of value, particularly if she can become more effective by listening to criticism of her tactics and rhetoric.

For those reasons, we endorse Hardesty.

Moment of joy when Hardesty felt life was returning to normal: “I got to go see President Biden today. And most people were not masked.”

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

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OVERREACH

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PORTLAND CITY AUDITOR

METRO COUNCIL PRESIDENT

Lynn Peterson

Simone Rede

The city auditor essentially functions as a sixth independent commissioner tasked with watchdogging how the city functions and how it spends taxpayer dollars. And after two terms of working alongside of—and sometimes scuffling with—the Portland City Council, Auditor Mary Hull Caballero is vacating her seat.

The position has attracted two candidates: Brian Setzler, a Portland CPA who runs his own business, and Simone Rede, a principal management auditor at Metro.

In her current role at the regional agency, Rede, 39, has conducted performance audits of the affordable housing bond program and the Oregon Zoo. From 2013 to 2015, she worked as a performance auditor for the state, where she audited child care in Oregon and TriMet. Setzler, 60, has spent the past three decades building a career in the private sector, with extensive experience conducting financial audits. He told WW he was prodded to run by people in his circle. But when pressed on who, exactly, those people were, Setzler declined to disclose—a move we found oddly opaque for a city auditor hopeful. (It’s also unnecessary, since Setzler made it clear his run was motivated by Hull Caballero not penalizing the campaign finance violations of Mayor Ted Wheeler.) His backers include Our Revolution Oregon, the Pacific Green Party of Oregon, the Oregon Progressive Party, and the Independent Party of Oregon.

Rede has received endorsements from Oregon establishments that span the political spectrum, from the Next Up Action Fund to the Portland Business Alliance. On top of that, a spate of current and former elected auditors have put their names behind Rede, including Metro Auditor Brian Evans, Multnomah County Auditor Jennifer McGuirk, and Gary Blackmer and LaVonne Griffin-Valade, who both served as auditors for the city and the county.

We agree with them. Of the two candidates, Rede is the only one with extensive performance auditing experience. While Setzler’s status as a CPA is noteworthy, the job of city auditor in Portland is primarily a performance auditing function rather than a financial one. By that metric, Rede is the clear choice.

Moment of joy when Rede felt life was returning to normal: Attending a concert at Topaz Farms on Sauvie Island during a full moon last summer.

Need evidence that money can’t buy happiness? Look no further than Metro, the once-sleepy regional planning agency that now serves as a cash register for papering over Portland’s social ills with greenbacks. Metro’s portfolio traditional includes land use planning, trash collection and recycling, and operating venues like the Oregon Zoo and the Schnitz. In the past two election cycles, voters agreed to send Metro $653 million for affordable housing, and another $2.5 billion for homeless services.

Why Metro? Because it’s a government body that covers three counties—thus, the largest pool of taxpayers in the Portland region. But the Brink’s trucks pulling up to Metro’s door come with heightened expectations—especially when the money is supposed to help other governments get tents off the streets. So a public body that used to see controversy only when an aging zoo elephant died now regularly faces an ill-tempered electorate.

Much of that ire is directed at Lynn Peterson, 53, who is seeking a second term at the reins of the agency. We’ve long expressed admiration for Peterson, previously chair of the Clackamas County Commission and secretary of transportation in Washington state.

Yet some of the heat is well deserved. Peterson badly misplayed a high-stakes poker game with social services advocates, business leaders and voters while negotiating those tax measures. The result was a humiliating defeat in 2020 of Peterson’s darling: a $4 billion tax on company payrolls that would have built a light rail line to Tigard and funded road improvements.

In hindsight, the rejection looks like a watershed moment: when Portland-area CEOs drew a line on how much they would pay in taxes and what control they expected on spending in return. The attempt this year by the advocacy group People for Portland to seize control of Metro’s homeless services spending is a sign of dissatisfaction with her tenure. That Peterson was so badly outflanked doesn’t inspire our confidence.

But we are not impressed by the alternative. Alisa Pyszka, an urban planner and former vice president of the business development agency Greater Portland, offers sharp critiques of Peterson’s leadership, especially the sluggishness Metro has shown getting its projects shovel ready. But she had trouble outlining an alternative vision.

Our concern with Peterson is she spends too much time mired in public process and seeks affirmation from progressive advocates at the cost of getting things done. But we fear Pyszka would listen to only one constituency: corporate boardrooms. She’s not ready for prime time. We’ll take Peterson—with hope she’s learned something from a difficult four years.

Moment of joy when Peterson felt life was returning to normal: When she saw piles of trash cleared away from Southeast Powell Boulevard.

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METRO COUNCIL

District 2 (Lake Oswego, Milwaukie, Oregon City)

Christine Lewis

If there’s a matter that Metro handles that Christine Lewis isn’t up to speed on, then we couldn’t find it in our hourlong endorsement interview. She came to Oregon from Dallas in 2003 to attend Reed College, and she clearly brings a scholar’s focus to the toughest issues.

Ever hear a cynical friend suggest that Portland’s generous benefits are attracting homeless people from other states? Lewis collected data on that very question as a volunteer for Multnomah County’s point-in-time count, walking Portland’s streets, armed with a clipboard, and asking homeless people about their circumstances.

“People are not going to move from Idaho to

be homeless in Portland,” Lewis says.

Concerned about all the trash piling up in Portland? Lewis is on top of that, too. Half of it, she says, comes from households, not homeless camps. People in houses dump stuff around town in part because trash haulers aren’t compelled to pick up bulky waste.

Residents of Dallas can put dead appliances, old mattresses, and other big items out once a month as part of their regular trash service. The Portland area should do the same, she says. And she’s fighting a hike in the dump fee, another impediment to proper disposal.

Lewis, 37, serves as Metro’s non-voting delegate to the committee that oversees the regional government’s distribution of $250 million a year for homeless services. She is also the Metro Council’s liaison to the committee overseeing the agency’s $653 million housing bond. That’s work where her granular approach to public policy will matter.

Her opponent, Mei Wong, is a first-generation immigrant and businesswoman who does not offer a single policy proposal in the Voters’ Pamphlet.

Moment of joy when Lewis felt life was returning to normal: “You’re talking to the mom of a toddler, and I still don’t have access to that 0-to-5 vaccine. There are a bunch of us who still feel a little left behind.”

METRO COUNCIL

District 6 (Southeast and Southwest Portland)

Duncan Hwang

In January, Hwang was appointed to the District 6 seat on the Metro Council, representing Southeast and Southwest Portland, after Councilor Bob Stacey resigned because of poor health. Five of the Metro councilors voted for Hwang as replacement, and one voted for Terri Preeg Riggsby. Now they square off for the support of voters.

Hwang, 41, comes from a family that emigrated from Taiwan to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. (His mother opened a restaurant there.) He came to Portland to attend Lewis & Clark Law School. After a stint in China, where he worked as a corporate lawyer and helped plan the 2008 Summer Olympics, he returned to Oregon in 2012 and went to work at the Asian 24

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

Pacific American Network of Oregon, where he is a director.

He’s accomplished a lot. He led the development of the Orchards of 82nd, an affordable housing complex with 48 badly needed units.

He planned the first Jade International Night Market, which attracts 20,000 visitors each year with Asian food, dragon dance performances, and music.

Hwang faces significant opposition from Preeg Riggsby, 47, whose face lights up when she describes getting federal money for a new culvert that will help salmon reach a cool, clear stream to spawn. She’s been working to clean up that stream for two decades and has succeeded, as a member of the Tryon Creek Watershed Council, where she is now executive director.

But there’s other context worth considering here. Oregon’s Asian community is underrepresented in the state’s politics. There is only one person of Asian descent in the Oregon Legislature, one on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners and none on the Portland City Council. Hwang is the only one on the Metro Council.

After his stint in China, Hwang could have come back to a plush job at a private law firm.

He chose instead to live near Southeast 82nd Avenue and work on the neighborhood’s behalf.

We think the council picked correctly. Vote for Hwang.

Moment of joy when Hwang felt life was returning to normal: “Last fall when I was able to fly home to upper Michigan and visit my parents, whom I hadn’t seen in two years, and eat Mom’s cooking.”

MULTNOMAH COUNTY CHAIR

Jessica Vega Pederson Although the chair of the five-member Multnomah County Board of Commissioners gets less media coverage than the mayor of Portland, the county leader enjoys both more authority and, given the current division of duties, more say over the region’s most pressing issue: homelessness.

Unlike the mayor, who must delegate oversight of most city bureaus to the four other commissioners, the county chair retains supervision of both the budget and all county human services functions. (Law enforcement authority rests with the sheriff and the district attorney, who are independently elected, but the chair controls their budgets too.)

The city of Portland is nominally an equal partner with the county in the Joint Office of Homeless Services. But Chair Deborah Kafoury (who is term-limited from running again) led the 2020 campaign to secure a bond measure to fund services for people living on the streets.

With a $254 million budget for 2023, the provision of homeless services is one of the county’s largest functions—and it reports to the chair.

All of that makes the county chair’s position crucial. And four legit candidates want the job.

Commissioner Lori Stegmann, 62, who represents Gresham, is a fine public servant who offers a small-businessperson’s point of view and is a strong voice for east county. Sharia Mayfield, 30, a lawyer making her first run for public office, lacks experience but is clear-eyed and persuasive about what’s going wrong on the streets. We respect her honesty for saying aloud what other candidates only hint at: that forcing people to vacate roadside campsites will require jailing them if they refuse to leave. But we can’t follow her down that path. Perennial candidate Bruce Broussard is also running.

The choice really comes down to two sitting commissioners: Jessica Vega Pederson, 47, a former state legislator who represents East Portland, and Dr. Sharon Meieran, 57, an emergency room physician who represents the west and inner east sides.

Meieran is often unafraid to say in public what the hive mind of Democratic politicians in a one-party town and state are too cowardly to admit. She was a key critic of Gov. Kate Brown’s initially anemic reaction to the COVID-19 crisis and her later inability to set and stick to metrics to guide her decisions on safety measures.

Similarly, on homelessness, Meieran has been a persuasive and outspoken critic of the Joint Of-

fice and the county’s provision of mental health services. She makes a compelling case that the county’s war on homelessness lacks urgency, transparency and useful data. For years, she has been the county’s most clear-eyed critic. Some in our newsroom agree more with her views than those of any other candidate running for this office.

Yet her time on the board and in our endorsement interview do not demonstrate she can produce the results she wants. Meieran is seeking to manage an enormous, highly complex operation. It’s a job that requires focus, people skills, and an ability to compromise. Meieran has built a record on penetrating observation and an ER doc’s bias toward decisive action, but that is not enough. While we agree with several of her concerns (especially the need for a more effective approach to behavioral health services), we are not convinced she’s ready to make the leap from chief critic to chief executive.

Vega Pederson, who has garnered most of the institutional support in the race, has what Meieran lacks: a record of accomplishments.

Vega Pederson successfully passed a new tax to fund preschool for children whose parents can’t afford it, and she is shepherding that measure to enactment. (She maneuvered some difficult politics, including a similar measure backed by the Democratic Socialists of America’s Portland chapter; she had the county send a more effective compromise initiative to the ballot.)

Vega Pederson also played a part in siting a controversial permanent shelter on Southeast Foster Road despite strong opposition; helped mediate a path forward on the Interstate 5-Rose Quarter project; and pushed for COVID vaccination clinics in east county. The chair, no matter who is elected, will be under the gun to show results on reducing homelessness. We believe Vega Pederson will respond effectively to that pressure and has the skills to command the army of forces charged with getting more people off the streets.

It is her record of accomplishment that makes us believe she should head a government with 5,600 employees and a $2.8 billion annual budget.

Moment of joy when Vega Pederson felt life was returning to normal: After the first round of vaccines became available, her extended family gathered on her back porch.

MULTNOMAH COUNTY COMMISSIONER

District 2 (North and Northeast Portland)

MULTNOMAH COUNTY SHERIFF

Nicole Morrissey O’Donnell

Susheela Jayapal

Jayapal, 59, has served as a steady, confident hand in four years on the county board of commissioners. She was instrumental in extending the county’s eviction moratorium during the pandemic, helped craft Metro’s homeless services tax measure—for which she secured funding for more outreach and navigation services, along with the county’s first long-term rental assistance program.

She weighed a run for Multnomah County chair. But unlike her three colleagues who are seeking the top job, her term expires this year and she would be out of office if she lost.

We’ll be glad to see Jayapal return to the board, although we wish she, and the other commissioners, would express more urgency about the county’s homelessness crisis, the way fellow Commissioner Sharon Meieran has.

Jayapal represents a district that includes some of Portland’s historically Black neighborhoods, and both her bids for office saw an undercurrent of racial friction. In this cycle, Elizabeth Taylor, 67, a retiree who worked for former state Sen. Bill McCoy, and former Portland Public Schools board member Derry Jackson, 59, both showed zeal for public service but didn’t demonstrate they’d be an improvement. Jayapal is the clear choice.

Moment of joy when Jayapal felt life was returning to normal: When she attended her son’s wedding in San Francisco this spring.

For the first time since 2010, Multnomah County voters have a choice between two candidates for sheriff. The decision won’t be an easy one.

The county sheriff is tasked with overseeing a $170 million budget and running the two county jails, where about 400 corrections deputies supervise criminal defendants while they’re held pending trial. That’s on the corrections side.

There is also a law enforcement side, comprising about 135 sheriff’s deputies, many of whom are tasked with patrolling the office’s 280-square-mile patrol area, which encompasses unincorporated portions of Multnomah County, Fairview, Troutdale and Gresham, as well as about 110 miles of waterways.

Two sheriff’s office insiders, each with decades of experience, are vying to succeed Mike Reese, who reaches his term limit in December. (A third candidate, corrections deputy and former private security guard Nicholas Alberts, has not reported any fundraising to the state.)

Undersheriff Nicole Morrissey O’Donnell, 49, has worked in the sheriff’s office for nearly 26 years.

She is a graduate of the University of Portland, and she has dual certifications in law enforcement and corrections.

Captain Derrick Peterson, 59, heads the auxiliary services division in the corrections branch.

He’s spent the past three decades working in the two county jails after earning his corrections certification in 1986, state records show. The Portland State University graduate also leads the local chapter of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, or NOBLE. By several measures, Morrissey O’Donnell has more managerial experience in the sheriff’s office than Peterson. After earning her law enforcement certification, Morrissey O’Donnell moved into a chief deputy role, which included leading the office’s law enforcement division, as well as overseeing the process of MCSO assuming command of TriMet’s transit police last year.

That’s partly because she was given the opportunity. In 2019, Reese selected her to be his second-in-command, which means she manages the entire organization when Reese is gone or unavailable. In 2021, Reese designated her undersheriff—the first during his tenure.

The county press release on that promotion also makes note of the fact that Morrissey O’Donnell is dual-certified in law enforcement and corrections. Her opponent, Peterson, has only the latter, meaning he has not undergone the police academy basic training required to be certified in law enforcement.

That’s relevant, because state rules dictate a sheriff must earn the law enforcement certification through the Department of Public Safety Standards & Training within one year of taking office.

Failing to obtain his law enforcement certification in time was why Sheriff Bob Skipper resigned in 2009.

It’s also a topic that’s been a point of contention. As WW first reported, Peterson alleges that Reese blocked his opportunity to earn his law enforcement certification (Reese has denied the allegation). Should he be elected, Peterson says he intends to get his law enforcement certification within the allotted one-year window.

That background is relevant to this contest, in which two highly qualified candidates are going toe to toe.

The racial makeup of the sheriff’s office is important, especially considering the racial disproportion of criminal defendants held in the county’s jails (about 20% of detainees are Black compared with 6% of the Multnomah County population). Peterson’s years of experience leading diversity and equity training is a massively valuable asset in law enforcement.

The sheriff’s office currently faces major staffing shortages. To address those, Peterson described an ambitious plan that prioritizes diversity: connecting with colleges, specifically Black colleges, to find recruits, and traveling cross-country to meet with prospective candidates. “You have to be able to pivot in these situations to bring in a diverse workforce,” he said. “You can’t just be making phone calls.”

Morrissey O’Donnell is, in many ways, as close as a candidate can be to an incumbent without actually being one. We also respect Reese’s legacy and recognize that, through his leadership, he helped right the sheriff’s office ship after a series of failed predecessors.

With the acknowledgement that Reese has, in essence, hand-picked Morrissey O’Donnell to succeed him, we believe she is highly qualified for the role and is the most prepared candidate to lead the organization.

Moments of joy when Morrissey O’Donnell felt life was returning to normal: Attending community events in person, like Los Posadas in Wood Village and the Fourth of July parade: “That’s, I think, what I missed the most, is not being able to see people’s smiles.”

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

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HOW TO APPLY View jobs and apply online at http://careers.pps.net and search for “Rover”

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Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

STREET

BRETT STERN

BRETT STERN

BYRON BECK M C K E N Z I E YO U N G

M C K E N Z I E YO U N G

SIGNS OF THE TIMES This week, we kick off WW’s new street sign series in which we ask readers to submit photos of their favorite signs around town.

Our first batch includes everything from classic, cool neon marquees to the trusty, old-fashioned sandwich board, and businesses ranging from a veterinarian clinic to a long-standing Portland sex shop brand. To have your photo of a sign published, email art@wweek.com no later than 5 pm Monday each week.

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

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Summer Camp Guide Language Immersion

SUMMER CAMP

Spanish, Japanese, or Chinese Beginner to Advanced

•

A WO R OF FU LD N

PreK - 5th Grade

!

• Learn language and world cultures through hands-on projects, games, outdoor fun, and more • Activities are designed to be engaging and fun while also developing & enhancing language skills.

intlschool.org/summer • summer@intlschool.org

summer camps at the theater & in your community nwcts.org • 503-222-2190 28

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

YOUTH SUMMER CAMPS JUNE 13–AUG 26 AGES 8–14 pamcut.org

Summer Camp Guide

ART

CAMP NOW ENROLLING!

JUNE 13TH- AUG 26TH Monday - Friday 2:00PM - 6:00PM

$185 / WEEK CEDARWOOD WALDORF SCHOOL SUMMER CAMP Bring some Cedarwood magic into your summer! Cedarwood’s camps are filled with crafting, storytelling, outdoor adventure, and plenty of time for play as campers explore the season of summer together. Each week of camp is designed around a special theme: Latin crafts, theater, quilting, puppet making, songwriting, and more!

Early childhood camps are for children aged 4 - grade 1. Grades camps are for children in grades 2 - 8. Camps run June 20 - August 12, 8:30 am - 3:00 pm.

HEY FAMILIES! The Hangout PDX’s weekly summer camps are designed to inspire creativity, confidence, and friendship while introducing our campers to exciting new ideas and experiences in the arts!

503.957.4915

WWW.THEHANGOUTPDX.COM

FOLLOW YOUR CURIOSITY THIS SUMMER Saturday Academy Summer STEAM Camps & Classes Visit our website to learn more!

www.saturdayacademy.org Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

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STARTERS

T H E MOST I MP ORTANT P O RTLA N D C U LTU R E STORI E S OF T H E W E E K—G RA P H E D .

R E A D M O R E A B O U T TH E S E STO R I E S AT WW E E K .CO M .

RIDICULOUS

JOLLIBEE

Filipino fast food chain Jollibee will open its first Oregon restaurant in Tanasbourne Village.

TA H O E J AC K S O N

TOPWIRE HOP PROJECT

The Star Theater will host a memorial potluck for late Portland blues and soul singer Tahoe Jackson.

AW F U L

AW E S O M E

TopWire Hop Project— the beer garden that first opened in the middle of Crosby Hop Farm in 2020—kicks off its third season April 30.

WESLEY LAPOINTE

A L I S A B E T H V O N P R E S LY

Choral composer Lisa Neher debuts a new song cycle, No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us, to inspire action to mitigate climate change.

Interstate 84’s exit 41 to the popular Eagle Creek Recreation Area closes due to road construction.

SERIOUS 30

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WINNER!

CHAMPION OF THE NATIONAL CHEESEMONGER INVITATIONAL.

717 SW 10th Ave Portland, OR 97205 503.223.4720 www.maloys.com

Sam Rollins from Cowbell Cheese Shop in Portland Oregon.

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For fine antique and custom jewelry, or for repair work, come visit us, or shop online at Maloys.com. We also buy.

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Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

GET BUSY

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

SAMUEL GOLDWYN/EVERETT COLLECTION

�

WATCH: Hollywood Shuffle Director-star Robert Townsend’s satire Hollywood Shuffle may have been released in 1987, but its portrayal of racism in Tinseltown still sings. As a Black actor who battles the systemic bigotry of the casting process, Townsend (who wrote the film with Keenen Ivory Wayans) is perfect—especially during the climax, in which the character’s cynical acceptance gives way to idealistic defiance. Screens in 35 mm. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.org.

7:30 pm Monday, May 2. $8-$10.

 SEE: Auditions! The Musical

Created and co-authored by Rebekah Hetrick, this musical is based on the real people she met during her decadeslong career as a director, performer and writer. It’s an original work, but with a seductive, stacked catalog of songs from beloved musicals, including Cabaret, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, The Producers, The Greatest Showman and La La Land. Alberta Abbey, 126 NE Alberta St., 541-543-0915, albertaabbey.org. 7 pm Friday-Saturday, 1 pm Sunday, April 29-May 1. $15. 18+.

ALSO is hiring.

Are you looking for the kind of job where you can make a difference everyday? Make heart work your work.

Hiring bonus | Great benefits | Make an impact Visit heartworkoregon.com to learn more.

 SEE: The Smuggler

Corrib Theatre has been on a roll lately, delivering productions that delve into debates surrounding everything from immigration to reproductive rights. The Smuggler, written by Ronán Noone, promises to continue the company’s provocative streak with a tale of an Irish immigrant (Tom O’Leary) who comes face to face with the grim realities of the American dream. T. C. O’Leary’s Pub, 2926 NE Alberta St., 503-389-0579, corribtheatre.org. 7:30 pm Wednesday and Sunday, 10 pm Thursday, 2 pm Saturday, April 28-May 22. $30. 21+.

 EAT: Mushroom Dinner

Foraging mushrooms is an activity shrouded in secrecy— most Oregon mycologists work hard to keep their go-to locations under wraps. But the source of Urban Farmer’s fungi is not confidential. The terrarium where they grow is on display inside The Nines Hotel. Those mushrooms—plus more gathered within a 30-mile radius of Portland—will be on display in a four-course meal featuring dishes such as an asparagus and morel sformato, crispy chanterelles and hon-shimeji served with duck prosciutto, and truffled Wagyu beef alongside chicken of the woods. Need more shrooms? Order a pisco infused with matsutake. Urban Farmer, 525 SW Morrison St., 503222-5700, urbanfarmersteakhouse.com. 7:30 pm Friday, April 29. $120.

� GO: One Motorcycle Show When you picture a motorcycle gathering, images of a gang of Sturgis-bound old men clad in leather chaps likely come to mind. The One Motorcycle Show, however, was founded in part to appeal to a wider audience of bikers: sure, those bearded boomer-aged dudes in flannels, but also old gals, young people, families, racers, chopper folk and garage tuners.

Anyone with a love of the open road is invited to tour the event’s unparalleled collection of more than 200 custom-built motorcycles and showcase of helmets that combine safety and style. Beyond the bikes and gear, attendees can grab drinks at any of the venue’s four bars and get tattooed by an on-site vendor, though not necessarily in that order. Zidell Yards Barge Building, 3121 S Moody Ave., the1moto.com. 9 am-10 pm Friday, 8 am-10 pm Saturday, 8 am-3 pm Sunday, April 29-May 1. $15-$100.

CELEBRATE MOM Pickup and delivery available for Mother’s Day weekend!

ELEPHANTSDELI.COM 503.937.1099 Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

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FOOD & DRINK

Top 5

Buzz List WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.

1. FERMENT BREWING FERMENT BREWING CO.

Thai One On Phuket Cafe, the latest restaurant from culinary star Akkapong “Earl” Ninsom, is a compelling take on nontraditional cuisine from Thailand.

403 Portway Ave., Hood River, 541-436-3499, fermentbrewing.com. Noon-9 pm daily.

There are few places more beautiful in Oregon during spring than Hood River when the fruit trees are in full bloom. Make a day trip to the area before the cotton candy-colored canopy disappears, and while you’re there, visit a stunning human-made attraction: Ferment, a two-story, gleaming glass brewery feet from the Columbia River. The business just released four new seasonal beers: Pink Boots Society fundraiser the Brewster’s Pale, Japanese-style lager Hana Pils, Holy Citra IPA, and White River, a limited-edition, wild-fermented saison. Do not leave without a half-liter bottle of the latter.

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. VON EBERT BREWING

133 NW 13th Ave., 503-820-7721; 14021 NE Glisan St., 503-878-8708; 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.

4. THE EMERALD ROOM

2117 NE Oregon St., Suite 202, 971-213-1085, aimsiremerald.com. 4-10 pm Wednesday-Saturday.

Portland’s Aimsir Distilling Company just nabbed three awards from the prestigious San Francisco Spirits Competition, so if you haven’t made your way into the brand’s swanky bar the Emerald Room, now you have as good an excuse as any to book a reservation. Be sure to sample the Aimsir Bourbon, its first whiskey that won double gold, and the Cold Brew Bourbon, which took home silver. The latter can be ordered in a boulevardier starting April 20, National Cold Brew Day.

5. URDANETA

3033 NE Alberta St., 503-288-1990, urdanetapdx. com. 5-10 pm Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday, 5-11 pm Friday-Saturday.

If you live by the slogan “Rosé all day,” then you’ll want a standing reservation at Urdaneta this spring.

The tapas restaurant just announced its wine of the season is Punctum Petulante Pét Nat—essentially a wilder version of Champagne with a vibrant pink hue, bright berry aroma and red summer fruit notes. Urdaneta’s wine director chose this particular rosé because it pairs perfectly with chef Javier Canteras’ Spanish-inspired dishes, such as burrata drizzled with harissa honey, tortilla de bacalao (confit salt cod), and croquetas de jamon filled with béchamel.

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BY M I C H A E L C . Z U S M A N

Rocketship Earl has catapulted skyward again.

Phuket Cafe, located inside the compact former Ataula space in Northwest Portland, is Akkapong “Earl” Ninsom’s newest restaurant and co-venture with bartender and cool hand Eric Nelson. After barely a month, lines down the block mark the daily opening hour, and waits can run long for Ninsom’s new, twisted take on Thai cuisine, a niche he owns.

Ninsom has made a decadelong run to the top of Portland’s restaurant ladder. He began in 2011, slinging simple Thai noodles at MeeSen on North Mississippi Avenue. Traditional Thai food followed at PaaDee, then haute Thai tasting menus at Langbaan in a “secret” backroom behind PaaDee. Next came uncompromised southern Thai specialties in a fast-casual format at Hat Yai. Eem was the penultimate expression, a mind-bending but mellifluous melding of Thai flavors and Texas barbecue that drew raves from the get-go. Shortly before Phuket Cafe opened, Ninsom merited 2022 national finalist honors from the James Beard Foundation in the Outstanding Restaurateur category. With this latest launch, Ninsom should stand behind no one when the awards are handed out in Chicago on June 13.

It’s a challenge to categorize Phuket Cafe’s menu, so I asked Ninsom and Nelson. Ninsom says the theme is “dining through the eye of the local chef in Phuket and Bangkok.” This raises the question: What is the local chef in Phuket or Bangkok seeing these days? With a menu featuring oysters on the half shell, bacon bites, a pork chop, aged rib-eye steak, paella and smashed fingerling potatoes, among other unexpected fare, the Western influence is difficult to discount.

Nelson offered a more detailed response.

Phuket Cafe, he said, “is a direct reflection of the creativity in Thailand right now as seen through the eyes of our MMFIC.” The acronym stands for “Main Motherfucker in Charge,” his affectionate moniker for Ninsom.

Reflecting on their recent travels around Thailand, Nelson added that “there’s a fuckton of food to experience, and we wanted to bring something very Thai, and maybe not so traditional, to the table.” Everything on the menu is something they ate “in some form or another” in Thailand.

The oysters ($18 for six, $35 a dozen) are emblematic of the sly creativity at work in the Phuket Cafe kitchen. Small, sweet Willapa Bay mollusks are paired with a ramekin of fiery green chile mignonette (nahm jim actually,

which uses lime instead of vinegar) and another container with fried shallot. Remarkably, the brininess of the oyster stands up to these condiments, and the combination makes for a bracing beginning.

An equally splendid opening course is striped bass ceviche ($15), in which green chiles and lime once again provide flavor, power and the acidic element that “cooks” the fish. Peanut brittle pieces are strewn on top for fun. Still another must-have starter: muu kua grua ($9), a habit-forming bowl of well-rendered chunks of bacon served with makrut lime, threads of Thai chile and raw shallot. This is also offered at brunch ($14) with fried eggs and sticky rice.

Another highlight is miang plaa jaramed ($24), a whole, fried pompano topped with a mélange of shallots and herbs, doused in a dressing that veers from sweet to tart to tangy.

The saltwater fish is accompanied by betel and romaine leaves for DIY wrap-making.

The standout among the mains is the pork chop ($42), a massive 18-ounce Tails & Trotters cut, sliced from the bone for service. The bone arrives, too, for those like me who simply must gnaw away every juicy morsel. The accompanying addictive dunk is an umami-blasted blend of fish sauce and chopped shallot, garlic and grilled tomato. Small piles of toasted ground rice and powdered red chile, sliced shallot and green onion, herbs and lime add even deeper dimension to the dish. Diners are urged to mix up these condiments, so that every bite can realize a full field of flavor. I can’t recommend this porcine masterpiece highly enough. Though there is no prize for taking it down solo—it is an achievement for which good eaters will strive. There is no shame in sharing, however.

For lighter eaters, another solid but quirky choice is the mussel-crowned Thai paella ($22), really a rendition of a pork fat fried rice and dry seafood tom yum from southern Thailand served in holdover paella pans from Ataula. It’s a toothsome, if pragmatic homage.

For dessert, which is mandatory, the Thai tea kakigori ($12) is a no-brainer. A Taiwanese shave ice machine behind the bar produces feather-light shards that envelope chunks of toasted brioche and grass jelly. This is drizzled with the tea syrup, creating a dramatic sweetand-airy snowball of distinction.

As Eem was in 2019, Phuket Cafe is for 2022: a compelling take on nontraditional Thai cuisine that no one could have envisioned, except of course the MMFIC. EAT: Phuket Cafe, 1818 NW 23rd Place, 503-781-2997, phuketcafepdx.com. 5-10 pm Monday-Friday, 10 am-2 pm and 5-10 pm Saturday-Sunday.

Editor: Andi Prewitt Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

Top 5

Hot Plates WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.

1. BLUTO’S AARON LEE

2838 SE Belmont St., 971-383-1619, blutospdx.com.

11 am-10 pm daily.

Bluto’s, named after John Belushi’s hard-partying character in Animal House, comes from Lardo and Grassa mastermind Rick Gencarelli and the ChefStable restaurant group. Like Lardo and Grassa, it aims for that fancy, fast-casual niche, with counter service and midrange prices belying some seriously tasty cooking. Bluto’s portion sizes are perfect for sharing, so covering a table in a variety of dishes and allowing the flavors to mingle is the right way to eat here. The zippy citrus and sour labneh in the chicory salad should be eaten in between bites of the savory skewers and hummus scooped up with pita bread.

2. 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.

HEY, NONPROFITS! It’s time to apply for WW’s Give!Guide!

3. CAFE OLLI

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

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. 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. No matter when you visit, the menus have a choose-yourown-adventure feel, suitable for anyone in need of a quick meal, or a customer looking to sample every dish. Pro tip: Get there early for dinner to guarantee yourself a slice of classic chocolate fudge cake.

What’s the Give!Guide?

It’s our year-end grassroots fundraising campaign that’s raised more than $48 million since 2004.

4. KING TIDE FISH & SHELL KING TIDE FISH AND SHELL

1510 S Harbor Way, 503-295-6166, kingtidefishandshell.com. 7 am-1 pm and 4-9 pm Monday-Thursday, 7 am-1 pm and 4-10 pm Friday, 8 am-1 pm and 4-10 pm Saturday, 8 am-1 pm and 4-9 pm Sunday.

One of Portland’s rare downtown riverfront restaurants has a new chef helming the kitchen. Alexander Diestra is a familiar name to anyone who pays attention to the city’s culinary scene, boasting more than 18 years of experience at places like Saucebox, Clarklewis and Andina. The Peruvian native is now shaking up the menu at King Tide by introducing new items such as bluefin tuna tartare, kanpachi crudo, ono ceviche, Wagyu coulotte and a seafood risotto with prawns and scallops—lively dishes that are a mashup of the flavors of his home country and Japan.

That includes a jaw-dropping $7,845,497 for 202 local nonprofits and the Oregon Cultural Trust last year.

Local nonprofits of all sizes, all types are encouraged to apply.

Learn more at

GIVEGUIDE.ORG and apply by April 30!

5. EAST GLISAN PIZZA LOUNGE

8001 NE Glisan St., 971-279-4273, eastglisan.com.

Meatless lasagna available 4-8 pm Sunday, new lasagna pinwheels available 9-11 pm Friday-Saturday.

Though best known for its Detroit-style pies, East Glisan makes room on its menu for lasagna every Sunday, and the pasta is just as hefty as the shop’s square pizzas. With 12 lustrous layers, each slice is as thick as a brick and feels sturdy enough to construct a wall. The whisper-thin noodles are every bit as important as the creamy ricotta and crushed DiNapoli San Marzano-style tomatoes since there are no fillings like meat or spinach. This is filling food. This is comforting food. This is “slow down and pay attention” food.

SNOWBALL EFFECT: The Thai tea kakigori is a stunning shave ice dessert that shouldn’t be missed at Phuket Cafe.

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

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• •••• ••••

A T R E A LRBO S ER E T •••• A E H T APR 27

music infused with the spirit of Hawai‘i

MAK AN A journey through time and space into worlds where dreams are born

APR 29

Booklover's Burlesque

the Sci-Fi edition MAY 1

60 years of Green Onions

BOOKER T. JONES APR 30

MAY 6

STEPHANIE SCHNEIDERMAN BAND +

strings

SWANSEA MAY 12

NPR radio show live taping

JON MOOALLEM KEANON LOWE JOHN CRAIGIE MAY 21

MAY 14

JOHN GORKA JUNE 18

JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION two shows MAY 21

a gender bending burlesque cabaret

UPCOMING SHOWS

Eldon “T” Jones + LaRhonda Steele JUL 2

PASCUALA ILABACA Y FAUNA

May 6-8, 2022 OREGON CONVENTION CENTER

Friday 10-7 Saturday 10-6 Sunday 10-4

+ Alisa Amador

•••••••••••••

4/28 • CHAMBER MUSIC NORTHWEST PRESENTS IMANI WINDS: WE CANNOT WALK ALONE 5/7 • TWO OF A KIND feat. LANI MISALUCHA & TIM PAVINO 5/11 • CONSIDER THIS WITH LAURA KIPNIS

•••••

albertarosetheatre.com

3000 NE Alberta • 503.764.4131 36

WITH THE

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

Featuring over 200 Northwest artists from six guilds!

For more information, including our current covid policy, visit: CER AMICSHOWCASE .COM GATHERINGOFTHEGUILDS .COM

POTLANDER M C K E N Z I E YO U N G - R OY

Edible Arrangements Here are our favorite gummies, chocolate bars and baked goodies that now have twice the potency than previously allowed by state law.

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

When consumers first learned that Oregon’s new legal THC limit for edibles would increase this April from 50 mg to 100 mg per package, stoners statewide agreed it was about time.

Manufacturers, however, were less enthusiastic—particularly owners of smaller brands who would need to modify their formulations and start scoring products to indicate serving sizes.

“Before I say anything, I want to emphasize that the OLCC is made up of some of the most understanding, thoughtful and compassionate people I have ever had the pleasure of working with,” says Laurie Wolf, founder of Laurie + MaryJane and member of the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission’s cannabis advisory committee. “With that said, to put it bluntly, it has been a real pain in the neck. Asking us to completely retool our production process from soup to nuts, benefited the large, multistate operators and caused little companies like us a nearly immeasurable amount of totally unnecessary grief.”

“It is important to note that edibles are not required to have up to 100 mg THC in the package,” says OLCC spokesman Bryant Haley, “OLCC-licensed processors can continue to make edibles that are less than 100 mg THC. It’s a ceiling, not a requirement.”

Even though the higher concentration limit is a suggestion, supply must meet demand, and faced with ever-increasing inflation, it’s clear that consumers are looking for more bang for their buck. So even though we may have to sit tight while some of our favorite smaller producers create new recipes, there are plenty of higher-dose edibles on shelves now. We rounded up some of the best products currently in stores.

GUMMIES Drops Drops produces strain-specific fruit pastilles, or jellies, that are dusted with sugar and often retain a significant amount of terpy cannabis flavor. For users who prefer to taste the weed in their edibles, this gummy is a good choice. Drops’ 100 mg packages are available in a variety of flavors (lemon, lime, blackberry, watermelon, orange, raspberry, cherry) and strains.

BUY: Lemonnade, 6218 NE Columbia Blvd., 971-279-2337.

Wyld Oregon-based Wyld has 100 mg offerings in multiple flavors made with real fruit, including its original marionberry and raspberry gummies. The packages contain 10 servings, so users can share with pals or up their doses to blast off on a solo magic carpet ride.

BUY: Green Muse, 5515 NE 16th Ave., 971-420-4917, gogreenmuse.com.

Smokiez

and its newest line of bars is made with vapor-extracted, solventless THC to preserve the candy’s rich flavor profile.

BUY: MindRite Recreational Cannabis Dispensary, 1780 NW Marshall St., 503-477-4430, mindritepdx.com.

BAKED GOODS Better Edibles CannaCrispy

Smokies is an established interstate producer, and its 100 mg edibles were ready to roll April 1, the day the concentration limit officially increased. The fruit chews come in a handful of flavors, such as blackberry, blueberry and apple, and are packaged in shareable bags.

BUY: Green Front Dispensary, 6834 NE Glisan St., 503-2520036, thegreenfront.org.

Better Edibles makes great trial snacks, and its 100 mg tribute to the Rice Krispies treat is another fantastic backpack addition. These budget-friendly bars are more shareable than your typical gummy, but essentially still feel like a single serving. Bonus: They won’t melt in your fanny pack while you’re on a hike.

BUY: Budlandia Dispensary, 16440 SE Division St., 503-8052871, budlandiapdx.com.

Mule Kicker

SDK Chocolate Chip Cookie

Another local brand, Mule Extracts, recently launched a line of 100 mg gummies called Mule Kicker. The edibles are exceptional because they feel as though they’ve been designed for high-tolerance users, packaged as a single, dense candy rather than in a bag of shareable chews. Fun flavors like pineapple dreams, twisted citrus and tropical tango also make Mule Kicker unique.

BUY: Deanz Greenz Dispensary, 10415 NE Sandy Blvd., 971255-0758, deanzgreenz.shop.

For die-hard cookie lovers, SDK has delivered a 100 mg version of its flagship chocolate chip biscuit. These cookies are on the firm side, so breaking one into 10 servings is a messy proposition. Plan on eating the whole thing in one sitting.

SDK uses high-quality regional ingredients for each batch, like Bob’s Red Mill grains and Darigold butter.

BUY: Doctor’s Orders, 3424 NE 82nd Ave., 971-254-4731, doctorsordersdeals.com.

Lunchbox Alchemy Squibs Another edible seemingly designed for experienced consumers with a sky-high tolerance is Lunchbox Alchemy Squibs.

The gummy can be broken up into servings, but it’s enjoyed by most as a single dose. Squibs are available in a variety of classic, fruit-candy flavors.

BUY: Satchel, 6900 N Interstate Ave., 503-206-4725, satchelpdx.com.

CHOCOLATE

DRINKS Major Pink Lemonade Whether you’re making cannabis cocktails for your squad or sipping straight from the bottle, Major’s Pink Lemonade can be enjoyed multiple ways. Now, at 100 mg per container, users have the option of stretching out their consumption over the course of an event, or making the drink an event in itself by cautiously doling out smaller doses to lower-toleranced homies.

BUY: Diem Cannabis, hellodiem.com.

Grön Chocolate High-Dose Mini Bar Grön also got the memo that a 100 mg ceiling is less about larger, shareable servings and more about single doses for high-tolerance users. The brand’s chocolate is 72% cacao,

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

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PERFORMANCE

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson | Contact: bennett@wweek.com JOSH SCHOONMAKER

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

BY DANIEL BROMFIELD // @BROMF3

SOMETHING OLD There’s a sorely missed strain of pop that proliferated around the turn of the millennium, when glitchy beats jostled with cutesy vocals, as if to suggest a robot suddenly acquiring emotions. The evolution of that optimistic sound might have culminated with the Postal Service’s Give Up, but it’s also epitomized by “The Light 3000,” a wonderful version of the Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” sung by the German-accented charmer Schneider TM in collaboration with clicks-andcuts maestro KPT.Michi.Gan.

CIRCLE OF LOSS: The pandemic haunts Mausoleum.

Caution: The Spirits May Move You TriptheDark pairs dancing and drinking with Mausoleum.

BY L I B BY M O LY N E AU X

How you feel about a live dance performance that pairs wine and beer with the movement onstage may depend on your outlook on ingesting mood-altering substances with your art.

Some of us feel looser, more relaxed and open to artistic expression after a few, while others prefer to meet creativity with sobriety.

But it should be noted that TriptheDark’s Mausoleum: A Dance & Drink Pairing Event is no Mythbusters-like test to see if your rising blood-alcohol level will turn you into a raging dance critic.

The Milwaukie-based dance company has stated that its new work is a celebration of “the elements of life that were lost due to the pandemic: death of variety, death of stability, death of inhibition, and more.” After all we’ve been through, it’s a safe bet we can all drink to that.

While one might be tempted to joke that a riesling or a fruity IPA pales compared to the gravity of lives lost or the pain of the relationships that suffered from quarantine, TriptheDark has a history of testing boundaries. After all, the company has, with great humor and hip factor, produced shows based on Twin Peaks, the Jim Henson-David Bowie movie Labyrinth, and House of Cards.

Each of the four acts of Mausoleum, which comes from TriptheDark co-creative directors and co-founders Corinn deTorres and Stephanie Seaman-Keith, is accompanied by a short film featuring a sommelier and a cicerone, who describe the tipple you are about to sip. Oh, there are also non-alcoholic offerings, such as virgin mojitos and elderberry kombucha.

After an opening dance, the show dives into a lively pair of pieces titled “Death of Trust” and “Death of Variety,” which are set to music by Garbage and Thom Yorke, respectively, and performed

by Seaman-Keith, deTorres, Erin Shannon and Ashley Long.

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Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

Subsequent dances “Death of Social Norms” (perfectly set to Björk’s “Human Behaviour”), “Death of Optimism,” “Death of Casual Conversation” and “Death of Sanity” force us to think about how our pre-pandemic daily habits have changed over the past two years (and how 2018 boutique wine from Adega Northwest can go down awfully fast).

Of all the pieces in Mausoleum, dancer, choreographer and winemaker Diana Schultz’s joyful “Death of Inhibition” (set to Childish Gambino’s “Sober”) got the most applause. Yet “Death of Casual Conversation,” choreographed and performed by token dude Kaician Kitko, packs an extra emotional wallop, partly because it’s set to a poem by Natalie Myers-Guzman with lines like “No, I don’t think I’m going to get through this.”

With its myriad motions—pushing, crawling on hands and knees, robotic movements evoking potent feelings of social despair and even jazz hands—Mausoleum flies by. It’s a lot to absorb (you try taking notes while balancing four glasses of wine), but for a performance whose theme is death, the mood is pretty upbeat.

Just ask the audience. I overheard the guy next to me say, “Nothing says joyful loneliness like this IPA.” He later happily proclaimed, definitely getting into the spirit of the evening, “The beer was bitter, like the subtext.”

Even when Mausoleum is over, the cheery vibes remain. Before you know it, the dancers hit the bar for their post-show libations and you are chatting with them while finishing up your last glass—and thinking about the fact that being able to share artistic experiences is worth celebrating.

SEE IT: Mausoleum plays at the Chapel Theatre, 4107 SE Harrison St., Milwaukie, 971-350-9675, tripthedark.com. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday, April 29-30. $15-$25.

SOMETHING NEW “Rudolf Klorzeiger” is actually Gerald Donald, a Detroiter who was one half of the great 1990s Afrofuturist techno duo Drexciya. His collaborations with the even more mysterious Michaela To-Nhan Bertel as Dopplereffekt continue his old band’s sci-fi world-building and rich textural experimentations, and the new Neurotelepathy is one of the best albums in his catalog: cold, melancholy, unexpectedly moving, and permeated with the kind of rich weirdness that comes from being a seasoned vet.

SOMETHING LOCAL Daniel Crommie is one of Portland’s most challenging New Age artists. He prefers harsh, oblong sounds to dulcet tones and drifting synthesizers; don’t come to his music for comfort but to feel like you’ve been thrust into some obscure ritual. His new Twenty Twenty Two is some of his most forbidding work yet, with stretches of industrial clamor separated by brooding, richly colored ambient tracks that don’t provide relief so much as heighten the tension.

SOMETHING ASKEW Tape-loop collagist William Basinski and experimental turntablist Janek Schaefer work in aged and deteriorated media, yet their first full-length collab, …on reflection, teems with life. Made from piano loops and field recordings plundered from their vast sound libraries, it’s one of the most accessible and luxuriously sound-designed albums of either’s career, though hardly representative of the lo-fi murk in which these artists usually work. It’s out this Friday on Temporary Residence Ltd.

G ET YO U R R E P S I N

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

AGE OF INNOCENCE: The boys of The Virgin Suicides.

Sofia’s Men The Virgin Suicides and The Bling Ring prove Sofia Coppola understands men better than they understand themselves.

BY B E N N E T T C A M P B E L L F E R G U S O N

@thobennett

Wayne’s World (1992)

Based on Mike Myers’ and Dana Carvey’s SNL characters Wayne and Garth (and directed by the supremely underrated Penelope Spheeris), this hit comedy follows our lovably dorky rock fans as they sell their DIY public access show’s rights to a corporate TV producer who’s determined to prevent the duo from partying on. Screens in honor of the film’s 30th anniversary. Hollywood, April 28.

Inland Empire (2006)

Yes, it’s true, we just covered David Lynch’s surrealist horror epic two weeks ago, but we’re championing it again because its magnificent 4K re-release is a can’t-miss! Laura Dern stars as an actress teetering on the edge of madness while working on a supposedly cursed movie set, unable to distinguish between her own psyche and her film character’s.

Cinema 21, April 29-May 5.

Hollywood Shuffle (1987)

Robert Townsend produces, directs, co-writes and stars in this satirical (and semi-autobiographical) comedy about Black stereotypes in Hollywood movies. Screens in 35 mm as part of the Hollywood’s original series Wayans’ World, a tribute to the works of the Wayans family (Keenen Ivory Wayans co-stars and co-wrote the script). Hollywood, May 2.

The Wobblies (1979)

This newly restored documentary tracks the 1905 formation of the Industrial Workers of the World in Chicago, a history-making radical labor union that included all “unskilled” laborers, promoted international solidarity, and paved the way for many of the workers’ rights we have today, such as the eighthour workday. Free event! Clinton, May 2.

Scream 2 (1997)

In the sequel to the original slasher-parody megahit, a copycat Ghostface terrorizes the Ohioan college that final girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) attends. This 25th anniversary screening will be hosted by drag clown Carla Rossi and will open with a meta-slasher preshow featuring more Portland drag stars. Hollywood, April 29.

DIMENSION FILMS

Midway through The Virgin Suicides (1999), Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett) turns to his father (Peter Snider) for advice about his high school crush, Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst).

“You just need to talk to her at school, you know, about anything. About the weather, or school assignments,” Trip is told. “Um, you know, anything to have the chance to communicate with the language of eye contact. And, uh, project confidence.”

That’s not terrible advice, but Trip just stares helplessly.

How come Dad doesn’t get it? This girl is a goddess! Talking to her is tantamount to rocketing to another galaxy.

It’s a testament to writer-director Sofia Coppola, who adapted the film from Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 novel, that this moment thrums with authenticity. The Virgin Suicides has been rightly proclaimed a feminist rallying cry, but Coppola doesn’t get enough credit for her profound understanding of masculine desire, desperation and delusion.

That understanding will be splashed across the big screen in 35 mm this weekend at 5th Avenue Cinema, which is screening a double feature of The Virgin Suicides and The Bling Ring, Coppola’s 2013 delightfully trashy, truth-based saga of thieving Los Angeles teens.

Both films are populated with compelling female characters, from Kathleen Turner’s tragically monstrous matriarch in Suicides to Katie Chang’s mesmerizingly opaque schemer in Bling. The twist? Coppola observes these women through the male gaze—while studying the men (and boys) behind that gaze with a forthrightness that male directors too rarely achieve.

In The Virgin Suicides, the dance of perspectives is shaped by a nameless narrator (Giovanni Ribisi) speaking for a group of boys in an upper-middle-class suburb of Detroit during the ’70s. Through their eyes, we encounter the Lisbons, five adolescent sisters living under the reign of an adrift father (James Woods) and a tyrannical mother (Turner).

When a tryst between Lux and Trip leads to a ferocious parental crackdown—the girls are placed under virtual house arrest—the boys fantasize about leading a heroic rescue. “We got a car, a full tank,” one crows over the phone. “We’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

When they later learn that the sisters have killed themselves, they are both horrified and baffled. How could the Lisbons end their lives? They were about to be saved! The boys can’t comprehend how paltry their chivalry seemed in the face of misogynistic oppression.

A similar lack of self-awareness bedevils Marc (Israel Broussard) in The Bling Ring, based on a 2010 Vanity Fair article. Lonely and desperate for friendship, Marc becomes

a wingman to Rebecca (Chang), the only student at his new school who shows him a trace of kindness.

Rebecca also has a hobby of robbing the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. Apparently motivated by absolute greed, she’s a defiantly difficult-to-like character akin to Leonardo DiCaprio’s deliberately one-dimensional Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street.

If Marc is driven by love and loyalty, not materialism, does that make The Bling Ring unfair to its female characters? Not if Coppola is defending Chang’s right to embody a joyously shallow and villainous young woman—and Broussard’s right to play an emotionally vulnerable young man.

In 2011, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott wrote in The New York Times, “The movies may be male dominated, but images of men are surprisingly narrow.” That’s still true, and it’s why Broussard’s performance still seems radical.

Marc is gay, but his friendship with Rebecca is as impassioned as a romance. “She was the first person I felt like was my best friend….I loved her almost as a sister, that’s what made this situation so hard,” he says. It’s so rare for a male character to talk about his feelings so clearly and honestly that when Broussard speaks those words, they strike like a thunderclap.

Neither The Virgin Suicides nor The Bling Ring reaches the emotional heights of Coppola’s 2003 Tokyo odyssey Lost in Translation, but both are worthy installments in her decadeslong study of American masculinity.

She’s still writing new chapters in that story. Last year, she directed On the Rocks (streaming on Apple TV+), starring Rashida Jones as Laura, a writer coping with a chauvinistic father (Bill Murray) and a workaholic husband (Marlon Wayans).

Laura initially believes her father’s self-justifying logic: that men are animals incapable of treating women with respect. Yet by the third act, she’s had it. “You are not an animal with no self control,” she tells him. “You can control your own behavior.”

In that moment, you can feel Coppola speaking through Laura. If she seems to understand men better than they understand themselves, it’s not just because she sees more and knows more. It’s because she expects more.

PA R A M O U N T P I C T U R E S

PA R A M O U N T C L A S S I C S

SCREENER

MOVIES

ALSO PLAYING: Hollywood: The Cameraman (1928), April 30. Eye of the Devil (1966), April 30. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), May 1.

Maximum Force (1992), May 3.

SEE IT: The Virgin Suicides and The Bling Ring screen at 5th Avenue Cinema, 510 SW Hall St., 503-725-3551, 5thavecinema.com. The Virgin Suicides: 7 pm FridaySaturday, 3 pm Sunday; The Bling Ring: 9:30 pm FridaySaturday, 5:30 pm Sunday; April 29-May 1. $4-$5. Free for Portland State University students, alumni and faculty.

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

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MOVIES K A R E N B A L L A R D / L I O N S G AT E

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.

spacetime. The metaphysical mysteries of the universe boom and then retreat. PG. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Cinema 21, April 27-28.

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT Nicolas Cage is a rare acting legend whose filmography has become a genre-fluid library of cult classics. It’s a unique cinematic achievement that spans generations—and it’s what makes The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent work. In the film, Cage plays a version of himself so meta it becomes difficult to determine what’s satire and what’s autobiography. Here, “Nick Cage” is in a career slump, plagued by financial woes and rumors concerning his eccentric spending habits (in one scene, he offers to pay $20,000 for a gun-wielding statue of himself inspired

by John Woo’s Face/Off). This compels him to accept a humiliating gig from wealthy superfan Javi (Pedro Pascal): appearing as a guest at his birthday party for $1 million. The action kicks off when the CIA recruits the actor to spy on his host, channel his inner “Cage,’’ and complete a mission. This results in a fun bromance with Javi based on their shared love of film (the true heart of the movie). Moments of absurdity come infrequently enough to enhance the comedic tone without defining it—and co-writer and director Tom Gormican knows his audience, giving viewers what they want with little care for what anyone else thinks. That’s an attitude any Nicolas Cage fan can relate to, and gleefully revel in. R. RAY GILL JR. Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Laurelhurst, Lloyd Center, Living Room, Mill Plain, Pioneer Place, Studio One, St. Johns Twin, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.

AMBULANCE

Michael Bay’s Ambulance is stupid beyond belief, but it’s also thrilling, terrifying and impressively brutal. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Danny, a career criminal who enlists his adopted brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) to help steal $32 million from a Los Angeles bank in broad daylight. It’s an insultingly improbable setup—even if Will needs money for his wife’s “experimental surgery,” why would he agree to Danny’s delusional scheme in minutes? But once they steal an ambulance to escape the army of police officers on their trail, the movie gets into a volatile groove. By trapping a bleeding cop (Jackson White) and a hardened EMT named Cam (Eiza González) in the ambulance with the brothers, Bay creates countless possibilities for triumphant tension.

When Cam has to use a hair clip to perform surgery, your heart skips a beat—and when snipers prepare to fire shots that could kill everyone in the ambulance, it nearly stops. Hyperactive editing and swooping camera movements make too much of the action a frantic blur, but there’s no denying Bay’s control over the exhilarating currents of fear that course through your mind and body as you watch.

Based on a 2005 Danish film, Ambulance strikes its share of false notes, but unlike most modern action movies, it understands the difference between bombast and suspense. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. AMC Vancouver, Bridgeport, Cascade, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Fox Tower, Movies on TV, Progress Ridge, Tigard,

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Vancouver Plaza.

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 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 the 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, 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. Academy, Bridgeport, Cinema

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

21, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Joy Cinema Laurelhurst, Lake Theater, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Roseway, Studio One, Tigard.

MEMORIA

The latest from “slow cinema” master Apichatpong Weerasethakul starts with a bang—but only literally. Jessica (Tilda Swinton), an orchid grower living in Medellín, Colombia, is awakened one night by a booming, unidentifiable sound. Along with insomnia, the noise becomes a fixture in Jessica’s life, heard only by her.

In a long-term waking daze, she eventually heads into the mountains toward the sound’s origins. That said, to fixate on a Weerasethakul movie’s plot misrepresents its appeal; sensory exploration is the main attraction. In Memoria, time slows, stalls and reconstitutes itself in minuteslong unbroken takes of jazz quartets, hospital visits and even deeply poetic naps.

Swinton is as committed as ever, giving a performance seemingly bare of desire, charisma and even makeup. Fans of Weerasethakul standouts like Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives may be easily swept away in the Thai director’s first (partly) English-language film, but it’s difficult to speculate whether the uninitiated will find Memoria more transcendent or just tedious. There’s little spiritual enrichment to Jessica’s alienation—rather, the movie gradually positions her and the audience as infinitesimal, with identity and logic as mere blips and coincidences in

THE NORTHMAN

If you like your men handsome, violent and oozing self-pity, you’ll get a kick out of The Northman, a new take on the Scandinavian legend that inspired Hamlet. It’s a satisfyingly brutish, mystical epic directed

by Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse, The Witch) and starring Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth, a comically obsessive Viking prince. When Amleth was a boy, his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), was murdered by his uncle, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), who then married Amleth’s mother, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman). By the time Amleth is old enough to seek revenge, Fjölnir has lost the kingdom to a rival ruler and become a farmer, which is one of the film’s many perverse jokes—Fjölnir can never fall far enough to sate Amleth’s fury.

While Amleth’s macho theatrics could have been intolerable, they’re undercut by the film’s peculiar humor. There’s a charming self-amusement behind the exaggerated Scandinavian accents of the actors—they know they’re in a bonkers movie and they’re loving it. Plenty of audiences probably will too, but save for Queen Gudrún mocking her son with a beautifully mad cackle, Eggers is a director of divided loyalties—he rebukes toxic masculinity while reveling in it. Hypocrisy is by no means fatal, but despite a glorious climactic duel on a lava-drenched volcano, The Northman leaves weary familiarity in its wake.

Critiquing men like Amleth and Fjölnir? Good. Leaving them behind? Better. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Clackamas, Cinemagic, Cinema 21, City Center, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Studio One, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2

For the past decade, film studios have chased the culture-shattering impact of The Avengers with mixed results. Yet Sonic the Hedgehog 2 understands what made Marvel’s 2012 superhero mashup a success: not apologizing for making a children’s movie starring a cast of shiny action figures that repeatedly get smacked together. Sonic’s latest adventure is unlikely to change the lives of anyone above the age of 12, but if Sega Sammy silliness is your jam, you’re in for a wild ride.

Directed by Jeff Fowler, the

sequel is dominated by a sense of exploration, earnestness and, above all, fun. The action is fast-paced and creative, some of the gags are genuinely funny, and the cast is game—Idris Elba in particular has a ball voicing the ever-stoic Knuckles the Echidna, making the character both an unflappable warrior and an overgrown child trying to convince everyone of his seriousness. Outside of Jim Carrey’s gleefully maniacal Dr. Robotnik, however, the film struggles to find a purpose for its human supporting cast, to the point you begin to wonder why they even bother. Ultimately, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is at best a mostly harmless romp that keeps you entertained, or at least distracted. PG. MORGAN SHAUNETTE. Academy, AMC Vancouver, Bridgeport, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, Tigard, Wunderland Milwaukie, Vancouver Plaza.

THE BAD GUYS

During its infancy as a major studio, DreamWorks Animation was often accused of attempting to mimic the output of its primary competition, the House of Mouse. Shark Tale was “Finding Nemo with gangsters.” Antz was “A Bug’s Life with Woody Allen” (despite being released first). Shrek was “any Disney princess movie with Jeffrey Katzenberg’s unmitigated bitterness over being ousted from the company.”

Now, 2022 brings us The Bad Guys, aka “Zootopia but not as good.” That’s a shame, because parts of the film genuinely work. The animation offers a beautiful blend of sketchbook textures and 3D models, and the voice actors are game for most anything, particularly Sam Rockwell and Zazie Beetz (who exchange winning repartee as a pickpocket named Mr. Wolf and a red fox politician named Governor Foxington, respectively).

However, the story is paper thin and flimsy—particularly during a third act that makes an unexpected detour from heist movie to science fiction—and the gags lean heavily on crude jokes, broad slapstick and the occasional out-of-nowhere pop culture reference. The Bad Guys isn’t terrible or offensive, but it’s far below the standards DreamWorks has set for itself.

PG. MORGAN SHAUNETTE. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, Studio One, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza, Wunderland Beaverton.

JONESIN’

FREE WILL

B Y M AT T J O N E S

"I'm Gonna Have Some Words"--themeless time again!

ASTROLOGY ARIES

(March 21-April 19): Poet Jennifer Willoughby writes, "I am so busy. I am practicing my new hobby of watching me become someone else. There is so much violence in reconstruction.

Every minute is grisly, but I have to participate.

I am building what I cannot break." I wouldn't describe your own reconstruction process during recent months as "violent" or "grisly," Aries, but it has been strenuous and demanding. The good news is that you have mostly completed the most demanding work. Soon the process will become more fun. Congratulations on creating an unbreakable new version of yourself!

TAURUS

(April 20-May 20): Rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z tells us, "Don't ever go with the flow. Instead, *be* the flow." Here's what I think he means: If we go with the flow, we adjust and accommodate ourselves to a force that is not necessarily aligned with our personal inclinations and needs. To go with the flow implies we are surrendering our autonomy. To claim our full sovereignty, on the other hand, we are wise to *be* the flow. We should create our own flow, which is just right for our unique inclinations and needs. I think this is the right approach for you right now, Taurus. Be the flow.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The Italian language

ACROSS

Whoopee"

1. British comedian who plays Ivan on "Our Flag Means Death"

57. Basketball players Broyles and Benjamin (but not Wade)

8. Lake rental 15. Post-1968 tennis period 16. City with a SUNY school 17. Wool extract 18. Mark of shame that can be "hit" or "reached" 19. "Piece of cake" 21. Pre-packaged meals and desserts for a speedy checkout 22. Pogues bassist (and former spouse of Elvis Costello) O'Riordan 24. Nearly 20-year-old OutKast hit 25. NASCAR Cup Series champ of 2015 and 2019 29. 4:00 function 30. Respectful act 31. Symbols of September

DOWN 1. Use sparingly, with "on" 2. In a tough jam 3. Emmy-winning "Euphoria" star 4. Bumpy, like tires 5. Capital near Yellowstone 6. "Single Ladies (Put _ _ _ On It)" 7. Title hunter of a 1922 film (whose real name was Allakariallak) 8. 2013 hit that mentions a tiger

41. Prepared in advance

13. Science that deals with nuclear energy

52. Original and influential 53. Tries to whack 54. Like some hobbitses 55. Auricular 56. Lyricist who wrote "Ain't We Got Fun?" and "Makin'

37. Japanese floor mats 38. Gets control of, as spending 39. Slip-up left off 40. Euripides protagonist 42. Set the DVR back to 0%, say 43. Weaving of "Bill & Ted Face the Music" 44. Characteristic of lowquality TP 47. Club regulation

51. Novelist Elinor who coined the "It girl" nickname for Clara Bow

38. Brisbane bouncer

48. Up and running, like a credit card reader

36. It got its current halfoval shape in 1629

10. Hall of Fame NFL coach Ewbank

12. Rented out

46. City dweller

35. Ultravox leader Midge

49. _ _ _ Paqcha (Peruvian mountain)

35. Frisbee sport

45. Bachelor chaser?

34. Local fundraising gp.

9. "Step _ _ _ pets" (palindrome that's good advice)

11. "Dumb & Dumber" hairstyles

43. Frere's sibling

33. Jim's love on "The Office"

50. Rhymester Ogden

52. Brit. money abbr., once

14. Spotted, Tweety-style 20. Pumped 23. Iron Maiden's "Hallowed Be _ _ _ Name" 26. Law, in Lyon 27. Slov.'s setting 28. _ _ _-Z (rapper who played Freda Gatz on "Empire") 31. Certain ally

last week’s answers

used to be a dialect spoken in Tuscany. That area comprises less than eight percent of the country's territory. How did such a dramatic evolution happen? Why did a local dialect supersede other dialects like Piedmontese, Neapolitan, Sicilian, and others? In part, it was because three potent 14th-century writers wrote in the Tuscan dialect: Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio. Another reason: Because Tuscany is centrally located in Italy, its dialect was less influenced by languages in France and other nearby countries. I offer this as a metaphor for you in the coming months. One of your personal talents, affiliations, or inclinations could become more influential and widespread—and have more authority in your life.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): "Always strive to be

more interested than interesting," said actor and activist Jane Fonda. That may not be easy for you to accomplish in the near future, dear Cancerian.

Your curiosity will be at peak levels, but you may also be extra compelling and captivating. So I'll amend Fonda's advice: Give yourself permission to be both as interested and as interesting as you can imagine. Entertain the world with your lively personality as you go in quest of new information, fresh perceptions, and unprecedented experiences.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "When in doubt, act like

God," proclaimed Leo singer-songwriter Madonna. I wouldn't usually endorse that advice.

But I'll make an exception for you Leos during the next three weeks. Due to a divine configuration of astrological omens, you are authorized to ascend to new heights of sovereignty and self-possession—even to the point of doing a vivid God impersonation. For best results, don't choose an angry, jealous, tyrannical deity to be your role model. Pattern yourself after a sweeter, funnier, more intimate type of celestial being.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): My Virgo friend Amanda

told me she felt tight and overwrought. She was overthinking and on the verge of a meltdown.

With a rueful sigh, she added, "I adore anything that helps me decompress, unwind, simmer down, stop worrying, lighten up, compose myself, and mellow out." So I invited her to take deep breaths, close her eyes, and visualize herself immersed in blue-green light. Then I asked her to name influences she loved: people, animals, natural places, music, books, films, art, and physical movements that made her feel happy to be alive. She came up with eight different sources of bliss, and together we meditated on them. Half an hour later, she was as relaxed as she had been in months. I recommend you try a comparable exercise every day for the next 14 days. Be proactive about cultivating tranquil delight.

32. Schumer of "Life & Beth"

©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.

Willamette Week APRIL 27, 2022 wweek.com

LIBRA

(Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Author Anne Lamott is renowned for her tender approach to expressing her struggles with addiction, depression, and other tribulations. One of her supreme tests was being a single mother who raised her son Sam. In this effort, she was her usual plucky self.

Anytime she hosted playdates with Sam's young friends at her home, she called on the help of crayons and paint and pens and clay and scissors.

"When we did art with the kids, the demons would lie down," she testified. I recommend a comparable strategy for you in the coming days, Libra. You will have extra power as you tame, calm, or transform your demons. Making art could be effective, as well as any task that spurs your creativity and imagination.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): "My heart has

developed a kind of amnesia, where it remembers everything but itself," writes Scorpio poet Sabrina Benaim. If you suffer a condition that resembles hers, it's about to change. According to my astrological analysis, your heart will soon not only remember everything; it will also remember itself. What a blissful homecoming that will be—although it may also be unruly and confounding, at least in the beginning. But after the initial surprise calms down, you will celebrate a dramatic enhancement of emotionally rich selfknowledge. You will feel united with the source of your longing to love and be loved.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "Just because

things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong," writes Sagittarian author Ann Patchett. Her thought may be helpful for you to meditate on. My guess is that you will ultimately be glad that things didn't go the way you planned. God or your Higher Self or the Mysterious Forces of Destiny will conspire to lead you away from limited expectations or not-big-enough visions so as to offer you bigger and better blessings.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Novelist Jane

Austen (1775–1817) confessed she was a "wild beast." Really? The author who wrote masterfully about the complex social lives of wealthy British people? Here's my theory: The wild beast in her made her original, unsentimental, humorous, and brilliant in creating her stories. How is your own inner wild beast, Capricorn? According to my reading of the astrological omens, now is an excellent time to give it fun, rich assignments.

What parts of your life would benefit from tapping into raw, primal energy?

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Aquarian poet Jack

Gilbert wrote, "I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end."

I don't know how Gilbert solved his dilemma.

But I suspect you will soon be inclined to pose a similar question. In your case, the answer will be that the quiet in you is a beginning. Ah! But in the early going, it may not resemble a beginning.

You might be puzzled by its fuzzy, meandering quality. But sooner or later, the quiet in you will become fertile and inspirational. You will ride it to the next chapter of your life story.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The genre of poetry

known as haiku often relies on unexpected juxtapositions. Critic R. H. Blyth observed, "In haiku, the two entirely different things that are joined in sameness are poetry and sensation, spirit and matter." I suspect your life in the coming weeks will have metaphorical resemblances to haikus. You will be skilled at blending elements that aren't often combined, or that should be blended but haven't been. For inspiration, read these haikus by Raymond Roseliep. 1. in the stream / stones making half / the music. 2. horizon / wild swan drifting through / the woman's body. 3. birthcry! / the stars / are all in place. 4. bathwater / down the drain / some of me. 5. grass / holding the shape / of our night. 6. campfire extinguished, / the woman washing dishes / in a pan of stars.

Homework: You can now make a change that has previously seemed impossible. What is it?

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