NEWS: Clackamas County Can’t Count. P. 9 WEED: Barbecue Season Blunt Roundup. P. 25
“AM I GONNA FEED MY KIDS OR SOME LAWYER’S KIDS?” P. 26
WILLAMETTE WEEK
PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
FILM: The Hollywood Gets Bigelow and Cameron Back Together. P. 27
City Hall tried to undo gentrification. Black Portlanders are conflicted about the results. By Nigel Jaquiss. Page 13
WWEEK.COM VOL 48/29 0 5. 2 5. 2 02 2
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Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
FINDINGS BLAKE BENARD
MEMORIAL MORIAL DAY Honoring & Remembering
A new resident of the Queer Affinity Village hopes for a space whip as a housewarming gift. 7 Sherry Hall stopped performing civil weddings when same-sex marriage became legal. 9 We Heart Seattle’s Portland branch offers homeless people 20 bucks to pick up trash. 10
The return of an in-person Rose Festival opens with its largest fireworks display to date. 21 Le Pigeon’s elevated take on the sloppy Joe returns for one day only this weekend. 21 After two years, Portland steakhouse icon RingSide is finally open seven days a week again. 22 One variety of Sun God Medicinals’ blunts contains catnip. 25
Portland bulldozed 1,000 homes in the Albina District. 14
Gil Scott-Heron collaborator
The city received 1,622 home loan applications from people who want to move back to North and Northeast Portland. 16
26
Brian Jackson is releasing his first solo album in two decades.
Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron may be divorced, but you can watch some of their best films back to back. 27
ON THE COVER:
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
You can go home again: Ta’ Neshia Renae in North and Northeast Portland’s Piedmont neighborhood; photo by Joseph Blake.
Dissatisfaction at a famed cart pod demonstrates why Multnomah County wants to regulate them.
Masthead EDITOR & PUBLISHER ART DEPARTMENT
Mark Zusman
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Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
3
DIALOGUE
• •••• ••••
A T R E A LRBO S ER E T •••• A E H T Siren Nation presents
the 16th annual
JUN 4
DOLLY HOOT
featuring
Alexa Wiley • Gerle Haggard Band Lindsie Feathers • Miss Iris Tara Velarde • The Apricots White Bike + emcee Tave Fasce Drake
PORCHELLO
JUN 3 Oregon Symphony
Open Music
Band Launch
Nathalie Joachim
+ Naomi LaViolette
presents
JUN 9
COMRADESAID, VIA REDDIT:
“My experience with this place is similar. I like the spot, but I tried to use the bathrooms at Asylum like two weeks ago and they were so foul I just held it.” CHRISTOPHER HEDGECOCK, VIA FACEBOOK: “I have been
with
to the Asylum a few times now over the last couple of months. I have found it to be super clean and tidy. Lots of people enjoying the open fire pits.“
JUNE 18
JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION
MARYSUE HEALY, VIA WWEEK.COM: “We’ve had food
with
Eldon “T” Jones + LaRhonda Steele
SCIENCE ON TAP
Last week’s WW cover story examined the complaints of several food cart owners renting space in a Southeast Portland parking lot, or “pod,” dubbed Hawthorne Asylum. Those cart owners alleged unsanitary conditions, such as overflowing dumpsters and “foul” portable toilets. Multnomah County officials say such conditions wouldn’t be unusual; instead, they’re a frequent result of a lax regulatory system for pod owners. Here’s what our readers had to say:
JUN 23
JUN 24
Making Memories:
carts and pods in Portland for decades with little to no issues, including food-borne disease outbreaks and complaints. This just sounds like the Asylum lot owners are bad food cart lot owners. You don’t hear about
these issues at the large lot up the street on Hawthorne, the one on North Mississippi, Cartopia on 82nd, Killingsworth Station, etc. “Although, agreed that the county and city should do more to inspect and regulate the cart lots.” SOLLIPSISTER, VIA WWEEK. COM: “Meh. Food carts and the
pods they’re in…I always bring hand sanitizer and make other plans for relieving myself. It’s not a ‘sit down for a big meal’ experience. I liken it to those depictions of chaotic medieval or Renaissance-era European street life with beggars, merchants, stray dogs and rats, half-naked orphans alongside carts of vegetables and fish and, probably, poo.”
JIM RUBY, VIA FACEBOOK:
“With city regulations, we should be able to get a hot dog for $12.”
GREAZYSTEAK, VIA REDDIT:
“Am I the only one that has a problem with it being called a famed cart pod and it has only been there three years and there isn’t a signature cart there anymore?” VOTE4BOAT, VIA REDDIT:
“Food carts are like growlers. It was only ever cool because it was cheaper. People paying $13 to eat with plastic forks should probably reconsider the whole paradigm.”
CHRISTINE, VIA WWEEK. COM: “Over $2,000 for a park-
ing space? What would be the rent for one of the closed food court restaurant spaces at Lloyd Mall, with full utilities, indoor seating? Maybe some of the cart owners should consolidate and move back inside.”
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
a gender bending burlesque cabaret
Using Neuroscience to Enhance Teaching & Learning
JUN 28
JUN 29 Chamber Music Northwest
New@Night
Rhapsodies & Demons
ACOUSTIC ALCHEMY
Fused Creative
JUL 2
presents
PASCUALA ILABACA Y FAUNA
a Post-Pride Extravaganza
+ Alisa Amador
SCIENCE ON TAP
JUL 9
JUL 14 How Do Scientists See Black Holes
UPCOMING SHOWS
JUL 15
JESSE COLIN YOUNG •••••••••••••
5/31 • PORTLAND YOUTH JAZZ ORCHESTRA + THE MEDLER SEXTET 6/8 • CONSIDER THIS WITH JELLY HELM & NATAKI GARRETT 7/29 • BOOKLOVER’S BURLESQUE: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S TEASE
•••••
albertarosetheatre.com
3000 NE Alberta • 503.764.4131 4
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx
Dr. Know is under the weather this week, so we’ve fished this seasonally appropriate column from the archives.
I’m losing the battle (and the war) in my conflict with sugar ants—you know, the super-small ones. I never had them in Seattle. Do ants prefer the climate in Portland? The more relaxed attitude? More importantly, how do I combat them? —Axel O.
Anyone who’s ever dropped a maraschino cherry on a warm day can attest to the unnerving swiftness with which ants conquer territory. Since I drink a lot of Manhattans—which (a) require maraschino cherries and (b) make you inclined to drop stuff—I’ve experienced it many times. Within a few short hours, the ants will have built a tiny fracking boom town around their new resource. Let it go for a whole day and they’ll have a whole civilization down there, with trade and the beginnings of written language. It’s creepy. All of which is to say that I share your pain, Axel. According to Oregon Department of Agri-
culture entomologist Josh Vlach, those “supersmall ones” are probably odorous house ants. Like human beings, odorous house ants are a nominally nonnative species that, at this point, the Northwest has approximately zero chance of getting rid of. Also, like human beings, they smell bad—squish a few and you’ll know what I’m talking about. If your ants don’t stink when crushed, they could be the slightly larger pavement ants. It doesn’t really matter, because the treatment is the same in either case: baiting (aka poisoning) them with a borax-and-sugar solution. Around here, the brand Terro seems to have a lock on that market. Borax is sufficiently harmless to people and pets that it’s used as a food additive in some countries (though not here)—it’s like putting out chocolate if you had a bad infestation of dogs. Any time you find one of those maraschino-cherry boom towns, remove the food source and replace with poison. “If you can be patient and kill the colony, you should have a decent period of being ant-free— maybe even a couple of months,” says Vlach. But don’t get cocky: “Eventually they’ll be back, because the environment is full of them.” Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
MUSIC MILLENNIUM’S
MURMURS
MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND O R E G O N D E PA R T M E N T O F F I S H A N D W I L D L I F E
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SELECT CDS + DVDS SEA LION AT WILLAMETTE FALLS
CONFLICT MOUNTS AT WILLAMETTE FALLS: The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde filed a motion this week to intervene in a federal lawsuit Portland General Electric filed in April regarding Willamette Falls. PGE seeks to seize land that the Oregon Department of State Lands controls. The state had granted the Grand Ronde a permit to use the falls for fishing and ceremonial purposes, but PGE objected to the fishing platform on safety grounds. In its filing, the Grand Ronde say PGE’s lawsuit “is a massive overreach based on false and misguided concerns.” Tribal council chairwoman Cheryle Kennedy wrote: “If PGE succeeds, not only will it threaten the Tribe’s ceremonial fishery, it will transfer ownership of Oregon’s iconic Willamette Falls from the state of Oregon, and all of Oregon’s citizens, to a private, for-profit corporation.” PGE declined to comment.
avoid taxes as they pass on wealth to their descendants. Not Grand Central Bakery. It’s setting up a trust to keep the company from ever being sold and to preserve its mission: treating its 370 employees and suppliers fairly. The trust also ensures the bakery will keep making Jammers and Bolo Rolls in perpetuity. When the transition to trust ownership is complete this summer, Grand Central will become one of just a few companies that are perpetual purpose trusts, noncharitable trusts established for the benefit of a purpose rather than a person. Grand Central was founded in 1989 by Gwyneth Bassetti. Her son Ben Davis opened the first Portland location on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard in 1993. The new trust will have an independent seven-member board that will collaborate with the CEO to ensure the company’s actions align with the trust’s objectives.
JUDGE REJECTS HOMELESS SERVICES TAKEOVER: A Multnomah County circuit judge ruled Monday that attorneys for Metro, the Portland area’s regional government, were correct in ruling that an initiative by the advocacy group People for Portland to reallocate hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes for homeless services could not be put on the ballot in November. Circuit Judge Stephen K. Bushong agreed with Metro that People for Portland failed to include the full text of laws that the initiative seeks to change. Advocates for Metro’s homeless services measure, which is expected to raise about $250 million a year through a tax on wealthy income earners in the three metro-area counties, say they’re thrilled with Bushong’s decision. People for Portland says it is considering further legal action.
FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION: WW received nine awards last week from the Society of Professional Journalists in a five-state contest. The Region 10 Excellence in Journalism Contest picks the best work by newspapers in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. Among the awards WW received: first place among medium-size newsrooms for reporter Sophie Peel in environment and natural disaster reporting for her cover story on Portland’s heat islands (“The Hottest Place in Portland,” July 14, 2021). Arts and culture editor Andi Prewitt won first place in soft news feature writing for her history of the tater tot, while art director Mick Hangland-Skill took first prize for his year-end photo essay of Portland places reshaped by the events of 2021. WW received the second-place award for general excellence among midsized newsrooms.
GRAND CENTRAL BAKERY BECOMES A TRUST: When most people set up trusts, it’s to
UP TO 70% OFF! LOADS OF USED CDS
AS LOW AS $1!
LEE ROGERS LIVE AT
MUSIC MILLENNIUM MAY 27TH @ 5pm
“It’s good to have LEE BACK. Who would have THOUGHT a wild man could age like wine? I have never heard HIM sounding better”
- FOY VANCE
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
5
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
REAL ESTATE
UNAFFORDABLE:
A triple whammy has sent home affordability rates plummeting to their lowest levels since 2007, right before the recession. Hood River
New numbers show Oregon housing is at its least affordable in 15 years. Where might surprise you.
Bend
64 65
37
59 46
29
Eugene
42 63
30
Medford
42 44
28
Oregon
Salem
27
Portland Area
27 0%
10%
20%
Sources: Oregon Employment Department, Zillow
Dream Houses
75
47
39 40 39 43 38
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Average Monthly Mortgage as a Share of Average Wage Q1-2007
The outlook for prospective Oregon homebuyers is worse now than at any time since 2007, according to a new report by the Oregon Employment Department. Why? Damon Runberg, a regional OED economist, gives three reasons in the report he released May 19. First, houses are in very short supply, a shortage that has worsened through the pandemic. In Portland, for instance, the inventory of homes for sale is one-third of what it was in April 2020. The lack of supply, Runberg notes, means higher prices. Indeed, Zillow shows Oregon home prices jumped more than 10% in the first quarter alone. That’s more than three times the typical increase for a year. Soaring mortgage interest rates are the second challenge, up to 5.5% from 3% a year ago. “That means that in the past year the average buyer with a mortgage can afford roughly 20% less home while at the same time the price of housing continues to
Q1-2020
rise,” Runberg writes. The third factor: inflation. Prices of all goods are going up faster than workers’ paychecks, leaving them less money for mortgage payments. Inflation and a cooling job market have wiped out the wage gains Oregonians saw earlier in the pandemic. “After accounting for the changing costs of goods and services,” Runberg says, “Oregonians were making less money on average than they were a year prior.” The combination of those three factors leaves Oregonians in a vise, the likes of which they haven’t seen since 2007, right before the real estate bubble burst, plunging the nation into recession. WW has previously reported on the spike in home prices in Portland’s suburbs and surrounding towns (“You Can’t Afford This,” April 13). But state numbers show that affordability in Hood River and Bend is even lower than in Portland. Mike Wilkerson, a housing economist at the firm ECONorth-
Q1-2022
west, which recently completed a 600-page report on housing supply for the Oregon Legislature, says that’s because homes for sale are scarce in the “Zoom towns” where recreational opportunities have attracted telecommuting workers, while housing supply is greater in Portland, where workers also get paid more. Even Medford, by state measurements that compare wages to mortgage payments, is less affordable than Portland. ECONorthwest’s report, which determined that Oregon has underbuilt by 111,000 housing units over the past two decades, offers a backdrop for the current shortage. The pain is particularly acute now. “There’s no question, though, that the trend is getting worse every day,” Wilkerson says. “The recent increase in mortgage rates is really driving that.” The chart above compares home affordability in various Oregon cities. N I G E L J AQ U I S S .
LINEUP
Coins Per Vote A crypto-billionaire’s campaign spending achieved little in Oregon. In the history of American billionaires blowing large sums of cash on political campaigns, Michael Bloomberg stands out: The former New York City mayor spent $1 billion during his 100-day run in 2020 for the Democratic presidential nomination. But that run cost him just over $500 for each vote he won. That’s a small fraction of what was just spent per vote in Oregon. It pales in comparison to the lavish spending on the congressional candidacy of Carrick Flynn: The $14 million in expenditures on Flynn’s behalf translated to more than $1,200 per vote. The vast majority of that cash came from political action committees backed by the richest 6
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
man in cryptocurrency, Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried’s PAC spent more than $11 million on Flynn—who last week lost the Democratic Party nomination to state Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-Lake Oswego). Flynn never campaigned in any traditional sense—failing to give key Democratic leaders a sense of who he was. He never tried to meet the mayor of Salem, the largest city in the district, for example (“Bitcoin Republic, WW, May 4). He alienated environmentalists, a key Democratic Party constituency, attacking efforts to preserve the northern spotted owl and professing “emotional” sympathy for Timber Unity, a group that blocked Oregon climate legislation.
Most voters encountered him only in a blanket of television advertising. And some observers see a backlash against the money itself. “PACs can’t manufacture leadership,” says Robin Logsdon, campaign manager for Matt West. “You have to run a real campaign with a real candidate. Spending $14 million and getting HMP involved were moves that could only serve to make the election a referendum on Carrick—something the PAC should have known they didn’t want.” Having failed to give Flynn a sizable lead, the super PAC misstepped at the end. Salinas ran a TV ad about abortion rights at the same moment the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft decision to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked. Protect Our Future tried to counter with an ad telling the story of how Flynn’s late mother was forced into a care home when she became pregnant, and was abused. It was an ineffective and confusing response—compounded by a last-gasp wave of attack ads against Salinas that failed to make a dent. On Tuesday, Flynn conceded: “I have deeply enjoyed the hundreds of conversations
I’ve had with voters from all walks of life,” he said in a statement, “and I will approach the next chapter with renewed energy and optimism.” Flynn wasn’t the only entrant in the Democratic primary for the 6th Congressional District to spend big. Two of his opponents, Cody Reynolds and Matt West, self-funded their campaigns with cryptocurrency fortunes—only to finish third and sixth, respectively. Here’s how much was spent on each candidate per vote, by their campaigns and the super PACs that backed them. R AC H E L M O N A H A N .
TOTAL SPENDING PER VOTE
Carrick Flynn: $1,217.05 Cody Reynolds: $366.60 Matt West: $198.03 Andrea Salinas: $100.80 Kathleen Harder: $79.91 Loretta Smith: $40.76 Teresa Alonso Leon had reported no expenditures as of April 27. Source: Federal Election Commission
VILLAGER
Mia Winters BRIAN BROSE
A resident of the new tiny pod village along Naito Parkway is tired of reading about themself.
NEW KID ON THE BLOCK: Mia Winters is tired of being judged before people meet them.
Two weeks ago, 30-year-old Mia Winters boarded a chartered bus with other residents of the Queer Affinity Village on the eastside and rode to their new home: a tiny pod village along Southwest Naito Parkway, shaded by big trees. The village was still being set up when villagers arrived. But Winters likes the new location better: “We’re not under the bridge, so we’re no longer a zoo for people to stare at.” But Winters, who is nonbinary, is troubled by what they’ve read about neighborhood reaction to the arrival of houseless people, many of whom identify as LGBTQ+. “I don’t think there has ever been so much pushback,” says Winters. “This is a gross new thing.” For eight months, Queer Affinity residents knew they’d be moved to the other side of the river. But recently, they became the subject of an intense discussion between the neighborhood and the city over what impact the villagers would have on the new location. Last month, the heads of two schools across from the village withdrew their support, citing the city’s unwillingness to require felony background checks and implement a 1,000foot no camping barrier around the village. Commissioner Dan Ryan, who’s spearheading the villages but has met fierce pushback, implied the neighborhood’s rejection was rooted in homophobia. (The neighborhood strongly rejected that characterization.) “They equated us with perverts. They were like, ‘We want background checks for sex criminals,’” Winters says. “They don’t even know us. It’s so frustrating.” Winters grew up in Arkansas. After working different jobs in Reno, Nev., they moved to Portland with a friend to trim cannabis in 2017. When the friends they came to trim weed with decided to move away from Portland, Winters found themself without a home or a job. Winters first slept outside in December 2017 and has been mostly houseless since. Winters creates mixed-media art. One piece comprises two pieces of painted plywood, with a colorful skeleton on one board attached to the other. Until recently, Winters worked at a gas station near the old village. Winters plans to apply for a job at the Franz Bakery, but hopes they don’t get stuck on the night shift. They’re in a training program to become a peer support specialist and intend to take the state certification test by the end of the summer. Winters says one of the schools offered to provide gift baskets to each villager. “No request was too big,” Winters says of the school’s offer. Winter asked for a space whip, a cord filled with LED fiber-optic lights. The glow-in-thedark accessory is popular at raves. “You whip it around like a flowtoy,” Winters says. No gift baskets have been delivered yet. SOPHIE PEEL .
ELECTION 2022
WINNERS AND LOSERS
in crisis. She received 44% of the vote last week, nearly besting the total of her two leading challengers, Rene Gonzalez and Vadim Mozyrsky, combined. That still means she lost 56% of the vote, and when she faces a police union-backed candidate in November, anything is possible. But for now, the cause has won. R AC H E L M O N A H A N .
May 17’s primary election results contained several unexpected triumphs— and some big flops. But not every success or failure appeared on the ballot. We’ve identified three winners and three losers from last week. Read the full list—including Betsy Johnson and campaign finance limits—at wweek. com. Here’s a sampler:
Loser: Downtown Property Owners
Winner: Police Reform
Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty won election to City Hall four years ago in large part based on her record of advocating for police reform. Hardesty delivered, going to the ballot to reform police oversight and creating Portland Street Response, an alternative to calling in police for citizens
Two months before the primary, downtown property owners poured money into “Portland United,” an independent expenditure campaign to oust Hardesty and get Vadim Mozyrsky into City Hall. Despite spending $200,000 on ads for Mozyrsky, their efforts flopped: He was edged out of the November runoff by Rene Gonzalez, who ran a blunter campaign fueled by Portlanders’ rage over tents, trash and gun violence. Mozyrsky didn’t hide his disdain for the independent cash spent on his behalf when he conceded to Gonzalez on Monday, saying the expenditure “didn’t help” his chances. S O P H I E P E E L .
REVENUE
UP IN SMOKE A NEW VAPE TAX SHATTERS PROJECTIONS FOR TAX REVENUE. LOTS OF PUFFING:
Vape tax revenues are coming in at three times the predicted rate.
2021-23 (FORECAST)
$19.7 million
2021-23 (ACTUAL)
$65.7 million
Source: Oregon Department of Revenue Buried in the small print of the quarterly revenue forecast state economists released last week is an eye-popping number: revenues from a new tax on e-cigarettes and vaping products that deliver nicotine. “Inhalant delivery [vaping] revenues, a new tax in 2021, continue to come in significantly above initial expectations,” the economists wrote. “Over the first year of the tax, actual collections have been three times as large as expected.” Vaping is still pretty new in Oregon. It’s so new that prior to 2020, the state didn’t collect any taxes on it. That changed with Measure 108 in 2020. That measure, referred by the Oregon Legislature, included a suite of new policies aimed at reducing the harmful effects of tobacco use—most notably a $2 tax increase on every pack of smokes. The measure, which passed 66% to 34%, also included a tax of 65% of the wholesale price of vaping products. In October 2020, right before the general election, the Legislative Revenue Office prepared an estimate of how much the new vape tax would raise. Its guess then? About $10 million a year. But in 2021, the first full year of collections, the state took in about $30 million. It’s not unusual for projected revenues from a new tax to be significantly low, especially if they deal with new products such as vapes or newly legal products such as recreational cannabis, which also significantly overperformed in the early years. Lillie Manvel, executive director of Upstream Public Health, a nonprofit that advocated for Measure 108, says the new tax is a good thing because higher prices reduce consumption and revenues go in part to anti-smoking and -vaping education. “Upstream is very much interested in the programs that the vape and tobacco taxes support,” Manvel says. “They are sound public health policy and are shown to reduce youth use of commercial tobacco products.” N I G E L J AQ U I S S . Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
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8
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
NEWS BLAKE BENARD
COUNTDOWN: Observers watch the Clackamas County vote tally.
Hall Pass The Clackamas County ballot fiasco is Sherry Hall’s biggest blunder. But it isn’t her first. BY ANTHONY EFFINGER
aeffinger@wweek.com
When Jeanne Atkins was Oregon secretary of state, she visited all 36 Oregon counties, checked out their elections operations, and met with county clerks. She was impressed with all of them, with one exception: Clackamas County, where County Clerk Sherry Hall has held office despite almost 20 years of blunders and scandals, including misprinted and misplaced ballots and the felony conviction of an elections staffer. “A lot of people had questions about Clackamas County,” Atkins says in a recent interview recalling her visits in 2015 and 2016. “I came away from there not quite as assured about things as I did from other counties.” Atkins was right to be concerned. At this very moment, Hall is presiding over perhaps the biggest election snafu in Oregon history. While other counties are almost done with their vote counts, Clackamas has two rooms full of county employees trying to accomplish by hand over the course of days, or maybe weeks, what machines could have done in hours. The problem started in early May with a blurry bar code on ballots printed for the county by a Bend firm called Moonlight BPO. It grew worse after Hall refused help from county commissioners and the state to hand-duplicate the ballots onto new ones that could be read by machines, costing valuable time and imperiling certification of the election, which the county must complete by June 13. The outcome of several key races hangs in the balance, including the Democratic primary for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, where incumbent Kurt Schrader clings to slim hopes for an eighth term against Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a progressive from Terrebone. That result, among others, hinges on ballots under the oversight of Hall, a Trump supporter whose lackadaisical management has observers questioning whether the fiasco stems from incompetence or malice toward the institution
of Oregon’s vote-by-mail elections. “We never had anything this alarming happen under my tenure,” Atkins says. “It’s so contrary to everything I learned by sitting down with clerks and talking about their process.” The question now is whether Clackamas County voters, who have stuck by Hall for five terms, through more than a dozen scandals and gaffes, will finally toss her out this November. (Hall is one of the county clerks in Oregon who are elected. The others are appointed.) Because Hall’s race is nonpartisan, and because only two people are running, there was no primary. Her opponent in November is Catherine McMullen, a program specialist for Multnomah County Elections. As an elected official, Hall is insulated from mechanisms that might be used to remove her from office. Many other county clerks are employees who can be fired. That said, evidence this week shows Hall may have lied about a matter brought to her attention by the McLeod-Skinner campaign. Earlier this month, McLeod-Skinner alleged to Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan that Clackamas County Elections violated state law by allowing a representative of Schrader’s campaign into the office an hour before admitting an observer from McLeod-Skinner’s. A log sheet provided by the elections office in response to a records request by WW shows a Schrader campaign representative signed in at 7:30 am Thursday, May 19. The office officially opened at 8:30 am, and a McLeod-Skinner observer signed in eight minutes later. At a press conference the next day, Hall said she had no idea how someone could have gotten in before business hours on the 19th. It was possible that an employee badged in and someone followed, she said. Then, on May 24, the county released video showing Hall walking out of the counting room and into the observation area with an elections worker identified by the county as Tiffany Clark at 7:36 am. Seconds later, Clark
is seen on another camera letting a visitor into the building. The incident raised the ire of Fagan, who was already exasperated by Hall’s performance. “It’s absolutely outrageous to stand in front of the public and say one thing and then have a video showing something very different,” Fagan said at a press conference May 24. Fagan said state law prevents her from taking over a county election and that she was working with Hall to get the votes counted and certified. “The county clerk is the only person who can conduct this election,” Fagan added. All of which means the heat is on Hall, 70, like never before. But you’d never know it from her appearance at an emergency meeting of county commissioners last week and at a subsequent press conference. At both, the redheaded Hall seemed unfazed behind her distinctive rectangular eyeglasses, as if she were talking about a plugged toilet in the elections building, not a crisis that is shaking public confidence in elections at a time when they need no more shaking. Steve Kindred, who worked for Hall as Clackamas County elections manager from 2010 to 2017, says that’s Hall’s weakness. Elections are complicated, Kindred says, “but when this stuff happens, Sherry doesn’t attack the problem and fix it. There’s a lack of energy. She didn’t really work a 40-hour week and wasn’t always around to answer questions.” So far, Hall’s gaffes appear to stem more from her work ethic than her politics. In her campaign literature, Hall says: “I don’t accept or give endorsements because endorsements are political statements. Elections are process oriented, not politically oriented. As Clerk, I will continue to keep politics out of the office and protect your vote.” But her Facebook page tells a different story. Among her liked pages are “Donald Trump Is My President,” “Judge Jeanine Pirro Has Fans,” and “The Daily Caller.” Hall graduated from Milwaukie’s Rex Put-
nam High School and attended Eastern Oregon University. She was a legal secretary in the Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office when she first ran for clerk in 2002, listing her government experience as serving on a DUII panel and the Oregon Trail Pageant board. The Clackamas County elections blunders began a year after Hall took office. In 2004, her office mailed ballots to some 300 voters in Sandy that excluded three questions about land annexation. Hall discovered the error 10 days before the election but failed to alert the public, according to The Oregonian. In 2010, Hall included the race for Position 3 on the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners on the May ballot, even though it was not supposed to appear until November. The state Elections Division ordered all county ballots to be reprinted at a cost of $118,000. Voters’ Pamphlets also contained wrong information. A year later, state elections director Steve Trout had to monitor the county’s process for verifying petition signatures after he concluded Hall’s office had accepted invalid signatures for a measure to require voter approval of county funding for light rail. “She has a deserved reputation for incompetence,” says Peter Toll, volunteer chairman of the Clackamas County Democratic Party’s campaign committee, who’s lived in the county since 1989. “She’s been there too long and is totally unable to keep up.” Hall’s biggest blunder may have come in 2012, when a Clackamas County elections worker named Deanna Swenson got caught filling in votes for Republican candidates on ballots in which voters had left choices blank. Swenson, who told The Oregonian her judgment had been clouded by medication for a sinus infection, was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Beyond elections, county clerks also officiate at civil weddings. Hall did that regularly until 2014, when same-sex marriage became legal. Then she stopped. Kindred, Hall’s former elections manager, says many of the errors over the years weren’t Hall’s fault, though they happened on her watch. The question of when a race should appear on the ballot, in May or November, is complicated, he says, and depends on whether an officeholder is appointed or elected. In the Swenson case, Kindred thought the county deserved some credit for catching her early, getting her out of the counting room, and reporting her to law enforcement. “To me, that was a success,” Kindred says. Some things, though, Kindred can’t forgive. He wrote an op-ed in the Clackamas Review about Hall’s halt to weddings. Then he filed a complaint against Hall with the state in 2014 after she asked him how he’d answer a series of questions about ballot tampering and working relationships with other county departments. He didn’t think much of it until he saw his answers in a story about Hall’s candidacy in The Oregonian. He thought he had inadvertently broken the law by working on a campaign during county business hours at a county office. Kindred says Hall agreed to report the incident herself, after the election. She was found guilty and fined, Kindred says. From then on, Hall treated him differently. “Those years were not really comfortable,” Kindred says. “I retired when I could.” Toll of the Clackamas Democrats says Hall keeps winning reelection despite her poor performance for two reasons: The old guard in Clackamas County likes her, and the race for county clerk appears so far down the ballot that many voters don’t get to it. “People don’t go to the bottom,” Toll says. Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
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NEWS
Where the Heart Is An embattled Seattle trash pickup nonprofit parachutes into the Pearl District. BY S O P H I E P E E L
speel@wweek .com
Last year, Seattle city officials rebuffed We Heart Seattle, a nonprofit that conducts trash pickup and outreach at homeless camps. The Seattle mayor’s office warned that untrained volunteers could endanger themselves by performing such tasks. Three city council members worried that the group’s ad hoc efforts to shelter unhoused people could create confusion and, at worst, cause trauma. One council member wrote on Twitter, “If this happened to a housed person, this would be considered burglary.” Last month, the nonprofit applied to participate in a city cleanup day held this past weekend. Mayor Bruce Harrell rejected its application. That nonprofit has now arrived in Portland, thanks to a $10,000 check from the Pearl District Neighborhood Association. On May 1, We Heart Seattle officially launched a Portland chapter, We Heart Portland. Its tactics are controversial. The group regularly conducts cleanups within 20 feet of tents—a proximity that Seattle officials warn could spark conflict with the people living in them. And the group’s volunteers encourage campers to get clean from drugs and find indoor shelter, with a persistence that some observers say borders on harassment. The nonprofit’s founder and executive director, Andrea Suarez, says the “homeless industrial complex” “coddles” and “enables” homeless people, and that mutual aid groups enable and encourage unsheltered homelessness by giving away too much food and tents. By contrast, Suarez says We Heart Seattle seeks to raise unhoused people above their circumstances. “We’re truth tellers and we question the status quo, and that hasn’t always gone over well.…Work is a virtue,” Suarez says. “There’s that element of, ‘Someone is cleaning and doing something for me, and I start to feel like that makes more sense than lying over here on garbage and sticking a needle in my arm.’” The eagerness of the Pearl District to welcome such an organization to town indicates impatience with the 10
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
city’s response to street camping and trash buildup at a time when Portlanders are growing increasingly disenchanted with conditions on the city’s streets. Indeed, the “tough love” approach of We Heart Seattle echoes the efforts by the business-backed group People for Portland to compel local governments to move unhoused people into shelter. Stan Penkin, board president of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, says the buildup of trash at homeless camps left his group no choice but to give the $10,000 to We Heart Portland: “We are doing this because we have to.” Other Portlanders say the group’s tactics raise several red flags. Juan Chavez, a Portland civil rights lawyer, says the group’s cleanups are subtly compelling people in a vulnerable state to move. “Stick a uniform on someone or tell them they’ve got a very special mission, and unless the public has the means of reining that in, it’s just unaccountable vigilantism.” The origin story of We Heart Seattle will sound familiar to many Portlanders: Suarez founded the nonprofit in late 2020 after feeling frustrated with the disrepair of downtown Seattle amid pandemic closures. The organization is mostly volunteer and has only two paid full-time employees and five that are “on call.” Suarez tells WW the nonprofit raised $300,000 in 2021 and has raised $40,000 so far in 2022, as well as $17,000 in Portland. WW asked for a breakdown of where the nonprofit spends its dollars since no tax forms have yet been filed. Suarez says 75% of funds raised go to housing and rental assistance, employee wages, gift cards for homeless workers, cellphones, gas—and bus and airfare for homeless people to return to their towns of origin. The nonprofit also offered WW a list of where it has sent people. Many went to sanctioned camps or shelters, tiny houses or apartments. Three were bused to Bybee Lakes Hope Center, where Suarez says the Portland chapter has already successfully sent a family
BLAKE BENARD
HE T T A Y F I T TES TER R A H C D N PORTLA ION MAY COMMISS ARINGS PUBLIC HENOVEMBER E BEFORE THCTION ELE Sign up at www.portland.gov/omf/charterreview-commission CharterReview@portlandoregon.gov
INCOMING: Tent camping along sidewalks led a neighborhood association to invite a controversial nonprofit to its streets.
of four, a family of seven and two other adults. Eight others were sent by bus or air to destinations in other states, including Georgia, Boston and Indiana. Five others were bused to other places within the state or “bused home,” according to the list. One destination was listed as a “mental hospital.” Suarez says the group doesn’t compel campers to leave but simply encourages them to get on with their lives. She relishes the criticism her group has received in Seattle. “The activist class started snowballing and trying to find anything they could on me: ‘Andrea is a fake, she’s a fraud,’” Suarez tells WW. Then she offered some alternative labels for herself: “Social worker? Humanitarian? Mother Teresa?” Both Suarez and Kevin Dahlgren, president of the nonprofit and leader of the Portland chapter’s leader, have spoken on conservative podcasts about what they say is the government’s lackadaisical response to homelessness. Dahlgren said on a podcast that homeless people are gifted cars merely by creating Amazon wish lists. Suarez told a story on a recent podcast about a camper she had helped. “I wasn’t bringing cookers or tourniquets or needles, and there’s something about us being anti-enablement that the homeless are like, ‘Thank you for not encouraging me.’ He felt loved for the first time,” Suarez told the host. “Giving him a clean needle and more free food and coddling him…he’s just being served in his crib.” Such sentiments have garnered intense pushback from mutual aid groups and housing advocates in Seattle, sometimes climaxing in confrontation. Central City Concern, one of Portland’s leading housing nonprofits, says its trash pickup team will not work with We Heart Seattle. “We strongly encourage all volunteers to receive appropriate training before removing potentially dangerous materials,” says spokeswoman Juliana Lukasik. But few Portlanders have gotten to see the group in action. So WW joined what the nonprofit calls a “litter pick” on Sunday morning in the Pearl District. At 9 am, close to 20 volunteers in neon safety vests were handed pinchers, plastic gloves and trash bags in the parking lot of an Ace Hardware. They split up and headed off to camps. Nina was one of the volunteers. She lives at a nearby camp and was told she would get a gift card and some cash if she worked that day. She says volunteers had been visiting her nearly every day for the past week or so, encouraging her to get into shelter or housing. She
didn’t care for it. “One guy told me to move on with my life,” Nina told WW. “You don’t own the earth. Why don’t you clean up your own house area?” Why, in that case, WW asked, did she agree to help out? “Because I need money,” Nina said. “I don’t have money.” At the first camp, volunteers pulled out a shopping cart, tarps, a tent they deemed abandoned, damp food containers and a toaster oven. Volunteers stuffed everything in trash bags and left it on the sidewalk. Suarez said a U-Haul she had rented would take it away later. Trey, who lived in a tent at the encampment, came out to help, telling WW, “They said they’d pay me or something when we’re done.” A confrontation took place at the next camp. An unhoused man named Will objected to how close the volunteers got to the cluster of tents. At one point, a volunteer peered into a tent. “I watched people go in and look into my friend’s tent. That’s his home. If I looked into any of their windows, they’d call the police,” Will said. “This lady pulled out a $20 bill like it was a biscuit, like, ‘Do you want to help?’ I don’t care about the money, I care that you’re intruding on these people’s spaces.” Suarez, the founder, approached Will. “I’m just here to pick up trash as a form of harm reduction,” Suarez told him. “I’m just here to pick up trash, sir.” She turned to WW once Will left and said, appearing annoyed: “I don’t see why he’s triggered, but that’s OK, we’re just doing our thing.” Another homeless man named Ben was handed a $20 bill and a gift card by Suarez at the end of the cleanup. As volunteers headed to River Pig Saloon for lunch, an older Pearl District volunteer asked if Ben would like to join. He lit up as she peppered him with questions about his family. The volunteers appear well meaning. John Hollister sits on the Pearl District Neighborhood Association board. He’s proud of getting to know the residents, and feels he’s getting closer to convincing some of them to seek shelter, treatment or housing. On Sunday, he approached one tent, where he says a man named Jacob who’s addicted to fentanyl is close to accepting help. He walked up to the tent and called for Jacob. A woman answered, saying Jacob wasn’t there. “We’ll come back a little later, OK, sweetie?” Hollister said. “Help me nudge him along, OK? I think that’s the best for him, to go to treatment and get off fentanyl.”
Get Busy Tonight OUR EVENT PICKS, E M A I L E D W E E K LY. Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
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THE AMERICANS
TAKE TWO
June 3 – 11, 2022 | Newmark Theatre
The second installment of The Americans series celebrates the unique voices and rich history of American choreographers, including Portland’s Ashley Roland and Jamey Hampton.
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OBT Company Dancer, Hannah Davis, by Jingzi Zhao
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Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
City Hall tried to undo gentrification. Black Portlanders are conflicted about the results. By Nigel Jaquiss Photographs by Joseph Blake
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
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Between 1960 and 1980, the city of Portland bought 1,000 houses in the Albina District— and bulldozed them all. Black Portlanders owned many of those homes, but city officials wanted to make way for Interstate 5, Memorial Coliseum, Legacy Emanuel Hospital and Portland Public Schools’ district headquarters. So, using the power of eminent domain, the city flattened dozens of blocks. The effort dislocated families from their homes, the greatest source of wealth for most of them, and eliminated Black-owned businesses and other gathering places in the neighborhood. (The city bought out homeowners and compensated renters, but critics say those payments were insufficient.) It was a historic injustice for which the city is now trying partly to atone. Since 2014, it has been spending big money—$91 million to date—to stem the tide of gentrification and displacement that bleached Portland’s historically Black 14
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
neighborhood white. The goal? To keep families in Albina from having to move; to build new, subsidized apartments that give preference to families who were displaced; and to help other displaced families buy homes and return to their old neighborhood. The results of what the city calls the North/Northeast Neighborhood Housing Strategy are mixed. In 2018, Mayor Ted Wheeler called it an “abject failure.” Today, a national housing discrimination expert says Portland’s strategy is a “pernicious” attempt at resegregation. At the same time, for 94 families who’ve been able to buy homes through the program, it’s life changing. And 400 other families have been able to move back into new, city-subsidized apartments in Albina. For this reason, supporters argue that the North/
Northeast Neighborhood Housing Strategy is a national model. Bishop Steven Holt, who lived in an Albina home that was later leveled, now chairs the oversight committee that directs city spending on the program. Last month, Holt led a presentation before the Portland City Council on the strategy’s accomplishments after eight years. “This story,” Holt tells WW, “is miraculous. We don’t tell it well enough or often enough.” Others say that despite the undeniable benefits of the city allocating more than $100 million to preserve homes and bring families back to Albina (the total budget is $138 million, of which $47 million remains unspent), the policy allows city leaders to assuage white guilt while benefiting a relative few. To such critics, the strategy is a noble gesture but ultimately a fig leaf. Darrell Millner, former chairman and professor emeritus of Black studies at Portland State University, says the city is not tackling the larger issues that prevent a wide range of low-income families in Portland—not just those displaced from Albina—from being able to afford homes and build wealth. “It’s kind of a typical Portland reaction to an injustice,” Millner says. “It’s a feel-good story that doesn’t move the needle very much.” During the past six months, WW has reviewed stacks of documents and spoken to dozens of people with connections to Albina or the city’s policy, which some call
“It’s kind of a typical Portland reaction to an injustice. It’s a feel-good story that doesn’t move the needle very much.”
a “right to return.” Nobody ever expected the policy to make up for decades of injustice, but Portland—and Albina—are less affordable now and arguably less equitable than ever. “We have about 300 people working for us, most of them women, Black or Latina,” says Ron Herndon, executive director of Albina Head Start. “Many of them have been forced to move to Vancouver or east county because they just can’t afford to live here.”
Portland has a lot of history to overcome. That history included the legal prohibition of Black people from living or owning land in the state in the 1800s. It included segregation, first in Vanport in the 1940s—which ended when it flooded in 1948, causing the death of 15 people and the destruction of the state’s second-largest city. After the flood, most of the city’s Black residents lived in the Albina District, trapped there by racist lending policies and victimized by predatory landlords. De facto segregation concentrated the city’s Black population in a small geographic area. Churches, Blackowned businesses, restaurants and stores lined North Williams and Vancouver avenues. “The Black community was an artificial construct,” Millner says, “but it was also a haven in a very hostile environment.” In 2013, the Portland African American Leadership Forum demanded an accounting from the Portland De-
velopment Commission (now Prosper Portland) for the urban renewal efforts that gutted the neighborhood. Those projects first destroyed homes and businesses but later generated tens of millions of dollars in new tax revenue. “We wanted to know how much of the urban renewal money was spent for the benefit of African Americans,” says Cyreena Boston Ashby, who was then PAALF’s executive director. “How much on African American businesses, and how many people who got money employed Black people?” At about the same time, PDC sold a piece of property in the heart of Albina to a white California developer who planned to build a Trader Joe’s there. It was a public relations nightmare for the city, and then-Mayor Charlie Hales and Housing Commissioner Dan Saltzman needed something to quiet their critics. In March 2014, Hales announced his North/Northeast Housing Strategy. Hales offered home repair loans and grants to families living in Albina; the construction of new, affordable housing in the neighborhood; and forgivable loans to help returning families buy homes. The city would also try to buy land for future development. The program gave priority to low-income families who could prove historical ties to Albina. The highest priority went to families whose homes the city had seized by invoking eminent domain. The preference policy had to be artful because federal
fair housing laws prohibit preference or discrimination based on race. (Race is not an explicit factor in Portland’s policy, although records show the vast majority of those who have returned are Black.) Initially, the required documentation proved difficult. “I always felt like what keeps a lot of low-income people and people of color down is the process itself,” says Tony Hopson, executive director of the social services nonprofit Self Enhancement Inc. and part of the PAALF group that prompted the city’s policy. There were hiccups: WW reported in 2019 that one new building filled very slowly because of a conflict among the developer, Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives, and the Portland Housing Bureau over whether PCRI could use its own list of applicants or the city’s list. But there’s been progress. Over the past four years, six new apartment buildings that include 501 units were built. Approximately 400 of those units are set aside for tenants using the preference policy. One of them is King + Parks, a brick-clad, 70-unit townhouse and apartment complex. It’s a project developed by the Black-run nonprofit PCRI and built by a Blackowned construction firm, Colas Construction, to provide affordable apartments and condominiums mostly for Black families with historical ties to Albina. Like other public housing programs, demand far outstrips supply: There have been 3,782 applications for about 400 rental slots. And critics say that although providing affordable apartments for displaced families
BUILDING BACK BETTER: King+Parks (left) and the Beatrice Morrow (right) added 140 units of new affordable housing to Albina. Ninety percent of residents are people of color.
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
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M U LT N O M A H C O U N T Y
LEADING THE WAY: Bishop Stephen Holt (above) heads the oversight committee for the N/NE strategy that allowed Ta’ Neshia Renae (left) to buy her home.
is better than doing nothing, it doesn’t help them build wealth, which economists say is the strongest protection against displacement. That’s why the city’s effort to help exiled families buy homes in Albina is arguably more important than the rental strategy. It’s also demonstrably less successful. In April 2018, when the N/NE oversight committee presented its third annual report to the City Council, Mayor Wheeler could not disguise his disappointment that the policy had yielded just five new homeowners. He called it an “abject failure.” Housing Bureau director Shannon Callahan had just stepped into her role when Wheeler provided his assessment. “I would not have chosen to use those two words,” Callahan says, “but he wasn’t wrong that we needed to make changes.” The city has since streamlined the down-payment loan process, connecting homebuyers who may be able to qualify for a mortgage with the nonprofit Portland Housing Center, which helps them improve their credit rating and financial profile. Still, it often takes two years for buyers to prepare. (The city provides a $100,000 down-payment loan, which is 50% forgivable after 15 years and fully forgiven after 30 years.) The number of new homeowners created through the strategy is now up to 94, although that number includes at least 18 homes outside Albina. And the total is just a fraction of the 1,622 applicants to the homeownership program. “We’re seeing some forward momentum,” Wheeler now says, “but we have a lot more work to do and we need to stay at it.”
For some, the city’s strategy is too little, too late.
Cumulative Preference Policy Homebuyers by Year
Preference Policy Homebuyers by Race/Ethnicity 90
120
80 100
80
70 60
80
50 60
40 30
40
20 10
20
1 2017 16
2018 2019 2020 Source: Portland Housing Bureau
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
2021
Black/AA
Asian
4
4
Hispanic Multi-Races Source: Portland Housing Bureau
5
White
SEI’s Hopson, now 68, grew up in Albina when the Black population was more than two and a half times the percentage it is today (see chart below). His organization’s headquarters is in Unthank Park in the Albina neighborhood, and it’s also suffered from displacement. “Most folks that work for SEI can’t afford to live in the neighborhood,” Hopson says. “I don’t see that changing. There’s no predominantly Black neighborhood in Portland anymore, and you can’t turn the clock back.” Like Hopson, Roslyn Hill, a Black architect who bought a commercial property on North Alberta Street in 1993, says it’s impossible to re-create the Black Portland community of her youth. “It’s too late to do it the way they are trying to do it,” Hill says. “The neighborhood doesn’t have the culture anymore. A lot of the Black churches aren’t there anymore. And a lot of the stores and the businesses, they are not friendly.” The look of the neighborhood just isn’t the same. “I’m on Alberta Street all the time,” Hill adds. “Usually, I don’t see anybody who looks like me.” Those who have come back have expressed thanks and some ambivalence. In a study of residents who have returned to Albina using the preference policy, Amie Thurber, a PSU assistant professor of social work, found that returnees reported joy and a strong level of civic engagement. They also described a sense of alienation from their move back to a neighborhood that had grown whiter, more affluent and less welcoming. Some said they experienced “persistent racism.” Ta’ Neshia Renae, 39, a disabled veteran and mother of two teenagers, bought a home last May with help from the city. After an unstable childhood spent bouncing from temporary home to temporary home, mostly in Albina, she joined the military. When she came back to Portland, she was priced out of her old neighborhood until she qualified for a forgivable city loan. Renae felt profoundly grateful when she got the keys to her place in Northeast. “I never thought I’d be able to do it,” she says. “I felt a real sense of accomplishment. Now I have something I can leave to my kids.” Renae also feels somewhat conflicted. If the city only aimed to right wrongs and give her the opportunity to be a homeowner, she says she could have gotten a lot more for her money in Gresham or Parkrose. And, she adds, the Northeast Portland of her youth is gone. “It doesn’t feel like home anymore,” she says. “I feel like a stranger. It’s pretentious, it’s wealthy, and it’s expensive—you’ve got a make $100,000 a year to live in this neighborhood.”
Some wish the city focused more directly on a root cause of displacement—the lack of wealth in the Black community.
In 2020, the Brookings Institution found that the median wealth of white households in America was about eight times that of Black households. Much of the gap is attributable to white families being more likely to own and pass along the wealth created by owning a home to their heirs. One Portland group, the Emanuel Displaced Persons Association 2, wants direct compensation for families whose homes were taken for the construction of the Legacy hospital campus. The Housing Bureau’s Callahan says it would indeed be possible to identify people whose families’ homes were seized and destroyed. Those transactions were well documented. “We’ve got a list,” she says. But the city has rejected the option of directly compensating such families. Professor Gerard Mildner, director of the PSU Center for Real Estate, says the city’s approach allocates scarce resources inefficiently. “Your chances of getting the $100,000 down payment are few and far between,” Mildner says. “There could be two families with equal circumstances, and one gets it and one doesn’t. That seems inequitable to me.” Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center in New York, says housing preference policies like those in New York and Portland are a form of resegregation. (His organization is suing New York over its preference policy, which is similar to Portland’s.) Gurian, who describes his politics as “way off to the left,” says giving preference to Black families to return to their old neighborhood is a misguided attempt to replicate the concentration of Black families caused by redlining and prohibitions on where Black people could live. Preference policies, he says, are based on premises that are either “false or pernicious.” “The idea that somehow Black neighborhoods formed naturally or organically as opposed to what happened everywhere in the country, where there were many places that Black people could not live, is just wrong,” he says. Gurian says preference policies divert focus and resources from true equity: “The people who need housing fight over scraps, and the people who have it just sit back and laugh because the basic structures aren’t being dealt with.”
PSU’s Millner agrees with Gurian that the city’s policy fails to address the high housing costs that afflict all low-income Portlanders, not just those exiled from Albina. Millner moved to Oregon to get his Ph.D. in 1970. Since then, he’s become an expert on the history of Black Oregonians going all the way back to 1788. He says he’s glad that 94 families, most of them Black,
Completed Rental Projects
Albina’s Changing Population Total Population
Black or African American Population
94,650
90 80 70
77,195
80,557
83,237
60
Sponsor
Rental Project
#PP Units
Total # Units
% BIPOC
Status
PCRI
Beatrice Morrow
59
70
87%
Occupied
PCRI
King + Parks
49
70
93%
Occupied
CCC
Charlotte B. Rutherford
51
51
94%
Occupied
IHI
Magnolia II
49
50
87%
Occupied
Reach CDC
Renaissance Commons
185
189
79%
Occupied
Bridge
Songbird
20
60
83%
Occupied
50 40 30 20 10
23,724
have become homeowners through the city’s strategy and others have found apartments. “That’s great,” he says, “but it’s a drop in the bucket.” Lawmakers have ended single family zoning and made other changes to promote housing production. Millner wishes city leaders would also pressure the state to also rethink the region’s urban growth boundary, the limitation on development Oregon put in place in 1980. Although many Oregonians say the UGB is a leading example of the state’s progressive values and even its exceptionalism, Millner sees it differently. To him, the limitation on where people can build homes is a policy akin to redlining, benefiting those who own land inside the boundary while punishing those who do not. “A lot of the rationale for the UGB was saving the farmland,” Millner says. “The lack of land has never been a real issue in Oregon. I think it’s more that progressives who live in cities want to be able to drive less than 30 minutes and see goats and chickens.” Portland regularly ranks among the nation’s least affordable cities, meaning that residential real estate prices and rents are high relative to income. And since 2000, Portland home prices have risen faster than in all but five of the nation’s 40 largest metro areas, according to the Case-Shiller index. (In Albina, during the first five years of the preference policy, home prices rose 20% faster than the city average and ended 31% more expensive than the average Portland home.) Supporters of the UGB say the policy is aimed at delivering dense, walkable city centers while preventing sprawl and preserving farmland. They disagree with Millner’s premise and say other factors, such as zoning and permitting restrictions, are to blame for the region’s shortage of affordable homes and apartments. Nick Christensen, a spokesman for Metro, the agency that regulates the UGB regionally, notes that home prices in Salt Lake City are comparable to Portland’s, while prices in Austin and Sacramento are only slightly lower. “None of these cities have urban growth boundaries,” Christensen says. But Jerry Johnson, a Portland housing economist, says the density of urban development that Metro and others want comes at a high price: For it to pencil out, rents for high-rise apartments must be $4 a square foot. That’s twice the current market rate. Rather than trying to roll back the clock in Albina, Millner says, policymakers should seek to help a larger number of low-income residents across Portland. “The city is more interested in superficial solutions and never deals with the complexities of the underlying problem,” he says. “That’s affordability.” This story was reported with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
22,340 14,271
11,845
2000 1990 2010 2020 Sources: Portland Housing Bureau, Portland State University
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STREET
OUT TO CHANGE THE WORLD Photos by Mick Hangland-Skill On Instagram: @mick.jpg
Thousands of students from across the Portland area walked out of class and took to the streets on Friday, May 20, calling on city leaders and businesses to take action on global warming. The Youth Climate Strike began at Portland City Hall, where participants asked elected officials to sign a pledge saying they’ll oppose new investments in fossil fuel. Students then marched across the Burnside Bridge to join a climate festival at Revolution Hall.
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ROSE FESTIVAL is Back
THREE WEEKENDS
May 27-30, June 3-5, June 10-12 Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park This Friday – Opening Night Fireworks presented by and
On the
Stage
PRESENTED BY
MAY 28 Concerts Free with CityFair Admission
JUNE 11 - MODESTEP
May 27 @ 7pm
The Junebugs & Hit Machine,
May 29 @ 1pm
Pacific Island Celebration & Ukulele Jam featuring Andrew Molina
May 30 @ 2pm
Kids, Clowns & Characters
June 3 @ 6pm
Caribbean Night featuring Conjunto Alegre
June 12 @ 2pm
Good in the Hood Meets CityFair featuring Norman Sylvester
PORTLAND STORIES EVERY MORNING Sign up for WW’s Daily Primer newsletter
Tickets & More Info at RoseFestival.org 20
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
M C K E N Z I E YO U N G - R OY
GET BUSY
STUFF TO DO IN PORTLAND THIS WEEK, INDOORS AND OUT.
WESLEY LAPOINTE
COMING UP ROSES: The Rose Festival CityFair will return to Waterfront Park after a two-year absence.
� GO: Portland Rose Festival For the past two years, the Portland Rose Festival’s parades and other pageantry went virtual while Waterfront Park sat empty. Now, the city’s signature event is back in person, with its largest fireworks display to date. The pyrotechnics aren’t the only element to return—the carnival, concerts and Fleet Week are all on the schedule this year. The moment you get a whiff of that first funnel cake, you’ll feel like everything is back to normal. Tom McCall Waterfront Park, 98 SW Naito Parkway, 503-227-2681, rosefestival.org. Ribbon cutting at 5 pm, fireworks begin at 9:50 pm Friday, May 27. Free. �
LISTEN: Lawrence Siblings that play together stay together. Clyde and Gracie Lawrence bring their eightpiece pop-soul band Lawrence to Portland (as part of their Sound of Summer Tour with MisterWives) following several high-profile appearances, including their late-night debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and two performances at Coachella. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 503-225-0047, crystalballroompdx.com. 7:30 pm Sunday, May 29. $35-$45.
EAT: Sloppy Joe Memorial Day Weekend
Kickoff Le Pigeon’s elevated take on the sloppy Joe makes its return for one day only. Gabriel Rucker teams up with Michael Keskin of Bark City BBQ to make the sweet-and-tangy sandwiches as a fundraiser for Ben’s Friends, an industry recovery group that’s near and dear to both chefs. Keskin will smoke beef cheeks using Le Pigeon’s recipe, then top the meat with truffled carrot slaw and aioli. There are few better ways to start the unofficial kickoff to summer than with a messy, childhood classic—and make sure you get there early to snag one. Only 100 sandwiches will be served. Bark City BBQ, 3582
SE Powell Blvd., barkcitybbq.com. 11 am-8 pm Friday, May 27. $25 for a sandwich and Bark City side of your choice.
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WATCH: Memoria If you missed this acclaimed cinematic odyssey from star Tilda Swinton and legendary Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul when it played at Cinema 21, you can still catch it at PAM CUT. Get your tickets while you have the chance, since the film is playing exclusively in theaters and is never coming to streaming platforms or home video (really!). Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., 503-221-1156, pamcut.org. 7 pm Friday, May 27. $12.
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WATCH: RoboCop In 1987, director Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers) made the all-time greatest black comedy about a morally questionable cyborg-Jesus policeman walking on water. Kidding aside, RoboCop still kicks ass—in a way that makes you meditate deeply on the dystopian horrors of futuristic fascism, of course. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-4931128, hollywoodtheatre.org. 9:30 pm Saturday, May 28. $8-$10.
DRINK: Choice Beer Release
Breweries continue to prove they’re more than just a place to drink; taphouses can function as hubs for social engagement that highlight important causes from the Black Lives Matter movement to the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Slabtown’s Hammer & Stitch is stepping up to support access to safe and legal abortions with a new beer called Choice. A dollar from each pint of the blackberry hazy IPA will go to Planned Parenthood during this release party. Hammer & Stitch Brewing, 2377 NW Wilson St., 971254-8982, hsbrew.co. 6 pm Friday, May 27. Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK
Top 5
Buzz List WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.
1. STEEPLEJACK BREWING PIZZA & BEER
4439 SW Beaverton Hillsdale Highway, 503-7196241, steeplejackbeer.com. 3-10 pm Monday-Saturday, noon-10 pm Saturday-Sunday. First they rehabilitated a century-old church and turned it into a brewery. And while the SteepleJack owners’ second construction project—the former IBU Public House on Southwest Beaverton Hillsdale Highway—wasn’t quite as ambitious, the end result is just as exciting for beer lovers on the other side of town. The company’s pizza-and-beer-focused pub opened in mid-May, which mirrors the original location’s Craftsman aesthetic. The beer offerings are also similar to what’s on tap at the Northeast Portland flagship, which includes two beer engines, one of which is currently pouring Alewife, an English dark mild that won gold at the Oregon Beer Awards.
Dame Time Chef Patrick McKee’s intimate Italian dinners reflect both his mother’s heritage and his perseverance in the kitchen.
2. 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.
BY M I C H A E L C . Z U S M A N
3. FLORA
4500 SW Watson Ave., Beaverton, 503-372-5352, exploretock.com. 6 pm-close Thursday-Sunday. You can now reserve a stool inside the hidden bar perched above the new Beaverton Loyal Legion taproom. Flora is an intimate and refined cocktail-focused venue, serving concoctions in crystal glassware in a swanky setting—here the lights are dimmed and the wallpaper depicts mythical creatures. Customers can expect an eclectic, plantbased drink menu that’s as playful as it is colorful. Opening offerings included a Caribbean horchata, a Tang-based cocktail and a whiskey-Aperol mix with a kick thanks to the addition of cayenne simple syrup.
4. SUCKERPUNCH
1030 SE Belmont St., 503-208-4022, suckerpunch. bar. 6-10 pm Thursday-Saturday, 6-8 pm Sunday. You will leave Suckerpunch as sober as you were when you walked in, but the thing is, Portland’s first non-alcoholic bar still works its magic: It’s a place where adults can enjoy some complex yet balanced cocktails in a cozy place and catch up with friends. Andy McMillan, who founded the business because he was desperate for better zero-proof concoctions around town, recently changed the three-item menu, so you’ll find some new options if you’ve already been.
5. TOPWIRE HOP PROJECT
8668 Crosby Road NE, Woodburn, 503-765-1645, topwirehp.com. 11 am-8 pm Thursday and Sunday, 11 am-9 pm Friday-Saturday. The average beer nerd can’t score a badge to the Craft Brewers Conference, the brewing industry’s largest annual gathering. But you can get a taste of some of the same beers that were only available to attendees of this year’s event. TopWire Hop Project—the beer garden that opened in the middle of Crosby Hop Farm in 2020—has announced it will kick off its third season with a selection of special collaboration beers, many that were available only at the 2022 convention in Minneapolis. Even when those kegs have tapped, return for the view of the hop bines, which grow 18 feet tall and surround the space like emerald green curtains.
TOPWIRE
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Editor: Andi Prewitt Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com
Dame may be the most wonderful, underpublicized restaurant in Portland. The intimate Italian meals served at Dame nourish the body and elevate the spirit. Its chef, Patrick McKee, is an exemplary talent, leader and human being; the kitchen and floor staff reflect a constructive culture; and the food is simply superb. Regulars—and I include myself here—know all of this, but many remain unaware. Backstories can be overblown, but McKee’s directly illuminates Dame’s allure. McKee, now 52, has long been a presence in Portland restaurant kitchens, honing his craft for a decade under mentor Vitaly Paley. McKee had a reputation as your typical work-hard, play-hard hotshot. But then life changed. McKee got sober in 2017. As all of us recovering alcoholics know, opportunities abound for personal and professional growth after one’s sobriety date. Yet, tests of humility, strength of character and sobriety itself invariably await. Professionally, McKee bounced around after he left Paley’s Place, failing at first to find his niche. At home, he was gifted three beautiful children, but his son Henry died suddenly on March 27, 2019, at age 14. The predecessor to Dame was a pop-up called Estes + Dame, a conjoined reference to McKee’s Italian mother’s surname, d’Estes, and the existing wine bar, Dame, run by Jane Smith. McKee had barely fired up the burners in February 2019 before Henry’s death. Even as he anguished over his lost child, McKee didn’t drink and continued to host weekly explorations into his maternal heritage cuisine. Whether it was Henry’s spirit on his shoulder, McKee’s formidable skills, or the recipes he was able to pry out of his mother, Estes found an audience. In fall 2019, Smith and McKee joined forces to create a fullfledged restaurant. In mid-March 2020, COVID shut down the planet just as Dame found its groove. Within days, on the first anniversary of Henry’s passing, McKee penned a reflection straight from the soul and addressed it to his son. “I’ve stayed sober through staggering loss, our family is more together than ever, and I continue to get stronger as I learn life without you,” he wrote. “Your leaving taught me more about myself than I’d ever learned, and that a community can help build you back again. I literally felt like I had burst into a million pieces that could never be put back together, yet somehow, they are, perfectly, just not in the same way.” Perseverance through community has been doctrine at Dame. In a trade notorious for its brutal grind, shitty pay and resulting transience, Dame’s crew has mostly stuck around. “We pivoted immediately to takeout and just kept going,” Smith says. “It bonded our team. We were able to keep people employed and the business could stay afloat.” Outdoor dining soon followed, despite hiccups from fragile tents, fussy heaters and extreme weather. In July 2021, Dame resumed indoor service, retired takeout and saw business thrive. In October, an employer-paid trip to Italy for the crew was a timely community-building experience and a chance to research and recharge. Prioritizing a work-life balance is part of Dame’s ethos,
which is why the restaurant will continue operating four nights a week. McKee is certain a shorter work week leads to happier, more productive employees. After at least a dozen visits, I’m convinced the uncommon ethic at Dame translates to exceptional service and joy expressed on every plate. When you go, order pasta, the high-water mark of McKee’s creativity and the skill in his kitchen. Typically, a half-dozen pastas are made fresh daily, and every dish is the product of painstaking flavor-building technique. Servings are generous, but order ravenously; these pastas are virtuoso performances. Though the offerings change, a family-rooted rabbit pasta is customary. The most recent iteration, braised rabbit and ricotta cavatelli ($24), is a stewlike combination of shredded meat, basil, leafy greens, garlic and bits of rendered guanciale supporting the fresh cheese-enriched scrolled pasta. The base of “brothy goodness”—Smith’s menu description—is a multilayered extraction from bunny bones and braising liquid, sofrito, herbs, and broth left over from the previous batch. Its depth is mesmerizing. Squid ink pasta ($27) is another menu staple. McKee extrudes bucatini, shaped like hollow spaghetti, that is black and briny from generous use of the ink. The dish is unabashedly chile hot. Another complex broth begins with seared lobster and prawn shells deglazed in brandy. More flavor comes from colatura (Italian fish sauce), fresh lemon juice and pomodoraccio, half-dried oil-cured tomatoes. Panseared prawns complete this striking ensemble. Other pasta preferences that should be enjoyed during high spring: flat, half-inch-wide tagliatelle noodles lightly coated in basil-hazelnut
Top 5
Hot Plates WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.
1. RINGSIDE STEAKHOUSE
J O R D A N H U N D E LT
2165 W Burnside St., 503-223-1513, ringsidesteakhouse.com. 5-9 pm Monday-Thursday, 4:30-9:30 pm Friday, 4-9:30 pm Saturday, 4-9 pm Sunday. For the first time since the start of the pandemic, RingSide will be open seven days a week. The iconic steakhouse remained closed on Mondays and Tuesdays once it resumed indoor dining, but let’s face it: Sometimes you really need to carve into a dry-aged, bone-in rib-eye to get your week started on the right foot. The $48 three-course prime rib special has returned to its normal Monday slot, and if you’re looking for some quality meat for a Memorial Day weekend meal without the work, RingSide is selling its baby back rib kit for the holiday.
2. BLUTO’S
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.
(503) 493-0070 1433 NE Broadway, Portland MON-SAT 10-6 PM & SUNDAY 11-5 PM
THE BURGER YOUR MOMMA WARNED YOU ABOUT PEANUT BUTTER PICKLE BACON BURGER
3. YES PLEASE SMASH BURGER
WABBIT SEASON: You’ll typically find a family-rooted rabbit pasta on the menu at Dame, like this version with ricotta cavatelli in broth.
pesto ($18); oozy goat cheese and egg raviolo ($26); black pepper and grana padano-kissed cacio e pepe ($17); and a creamy pasta-ish risotto, with morel and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, plus truffle butter ($28). There are plenty of inspired dishes at Dame that aren’t pasta. A simple but substantial square of focaccia ($7) is dark golden on the outside and absorbent within, perfect for mopping plates. Two can share the Caesar salad ($15), with or without a thin slice of culatta ham tented on top, or indulge in wagyu beef carpaccio showered with shaved foie gras ($16). Leave room for dessert. Pastry chef Gabriella Martinez left República to join the Dame team. Her sweets are as euphoric and technically refined as McKee’s pasta. The most compelling recent menu items are the three-layer chocolate mousse cake ($10) made with Ecuadorian dark, milk and white chocolate and gelatin, presented in an audacious pool of bone marrow caramel; as well as the cannoli sundae ($9), which incorporates cannoli ingredients into a baseball-sized scoop of ice cream. If you do Dame right, you will depart stuffed, with leftovers, but gratified to have been a part of something virtuous beyond the food itself. Come back soon. You never know what hurdles lie ahead of you.
3950 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 707-500-2117, yespleasesmashburger.com. Noon-5 pm Wednesday-Sunday. As the child of a naturopath and a herbalist, Tai Pfeifer grew up eating fresh and healthy, and was determined to bring that to his slow fast food. The Yes Please Smash Burger is grass-finished (as opposed to “grass-fed,” a term that still allows grain consumption), and until recently, Pfeifer ground the meat himself, using a mixture of brisket and heart. He also makes his own American cheese from real cheddar, which doesn’t have the dozen-plus ingredients you’ll find in Kraft Singles. It’s also actually a cheese sauce, which gets poured directly on the burger during cooking, resulting in an almost fricolike crusty crispy cheese halo.
4. MERCATO AT CAFFE MINGO
807 NW 21st Ave., 503-226-4646, caffemingonw.com. 11 am-9 pm Tuesday-Friday, 2-9 pm Saturday-Sunday. Mercato’s Jerry Lasagna is named after Mingo chef Jerry Huisinga, who’s been feeding Portland pasta for three decades. This is a petite and classic white lasagna, with a strongly nutmegged béchamel sauce playing the starring role in every bite. The noodles and the pork-and-beef Bolognese add texture as much as flavor, with one cheese, grana Padano, capping it off. Add a salad and some bread and you’ll definitely get two servings from one order.
GET IT DELIVERED KILLERBURGER.COM
DIVE IN WW’s podcast is your backstage pass to the newsroom. Listen anywhere you stream podcasts.
5. 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. 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 Eric Nelson. After barely a month, waits can run long for Ninsom’s new, twisted take on Thai cuisine, a niche he owns. It’s a challenge to describe the menu, but it reflects the pair’s recent travels in Thailand, and includes everything from oysters on the half shell to bacon bites to paella to a glorious pork chop—a massive 18-ounce Tails & Trotters cut, sliced from the bone for service.
EAT: Dame, 2930 NE Killingsworth St., 503-227-2669, damerestaurant.com. 5-10 pm Thursday-Sunday. Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
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POTLANDER
Smoker Season Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial kickoff to summer, so here are some barbecue-worthy blunts to take to the party.
BY B R I A N N A W H E E L E R
So you scored an invite to a Memorial Day weekend cookout (weather permitting). Good for you! But before you commit to bringing something for the ice chest or grill, maybe consider a contribution that will make you a real barbecue hero: weed. I’m not talking about infused snacks, THC drink concentrates, or marijuana-spiked condiments. I’m talking about a different party necessity, one that has evolved right alongside contemporary edibles, drinkables and spreadables. For this year’s Memorial Day weekend festivities, unless your potato salad has been specifically requested, leave your picnic basket at home and instead be the friend that delivers the party blunts. In case you missed the blunt bus, it is a cannabis cigar traditionally rolled with either a tobacco, cannabis or hemp leaf. They are more substantial and potent than pre-rolls, and can often be found in kief-dusted, rosin-infused or extra-thick cannagar styles. Blunts are a party favor (almost) everyone can get (their lips) behind—so here are a few suggestions to get you started:
in their blends that complement and enhance the psychotropic experience, resulting, ideally, in overall mellowing effects. Pro tip: The blunts snap and spark when puffed, which is exciting but jarring. Be prepared to flinch a few times. BUY: Mongoose Cannabis, 3123 SE Belmont St., 541-933-8032, mongoosecannabis.com.
Toking Blunts Whether users opt for this brand’s standard blunts or 1-gram Bloints, Toking Blunts delivers a classic, hand-rolled experience for users who eschew fancy additions like concentrate, kief or herbs. These are blunts for purists who still yearn for the occasional Backwoods, but lack the motivation to roll one themselves. Since Toking Blunts’ wraps are simple and unflavored, this product would be a gentle, low-stakes introduction to blunt appreciation for users who prefer paper cone prerolls, or are otherwise unfamiliar with the joys of smoking a stupid, fat blunt. BUY: Attis Trading, 4920 NE Cully Blvd., 503-477-8981, attistrading.com.
Sun God Medicinals Cannabis-Infused Herbal Blunts
Iconic Blunts
Don’t let the botanical terminology fool you. These blunts contain potent, high-THC flower, live resin and kief in addition to aromatic herbs. Depending on the variety (Sun God produces three distinct herb-crusted blunts: Hypnos Sleep, Heka Visionary and Panacea Transition), these blunts may include mullein, skullcap, stinging nettle, rose, or even catnip
Another classic blunt for the nostalgic smoker is the Iconic Blunt. These clean, straightforward, smooth-smoking doinks are available as either full or half grams, and feature a relatively robust variety of medium-high (more than 20%) THC strains twisted into a slightly sweet wrap. My squad and I regularly smoke these blunts during our weekly RuPaul’s Drag Race
watch parties, and if they’re good enough to blow at RuPaul, they’re certainly worthy of Auntie’s Memorial Day cookout. BUY: Happy Leaf Portland Dispensary, 1301 NE Broadway St., 971-800-0420, happyleafportland.com.
Fire Dept. Dipper Blunts For an event populated with high-tolerance smokers who probably like their blunts with extra seasoning, consider bringing a handful of Fire Dept. Dippers. These hemp-rolled blunts are infused with Lunchbox Alchemy extracts and then dusted with dry ice-extracted kief. Showing up to the barbecue thrown by your most-established pothead pals with a fistful of Dippers will not only grant you legendary guest status; you’ll probably get the first plate at the buffet, which is arguably the greatest honor. BUY: Broadway Cannabis Market, 427 NW Broadway, 503212-0608, broadway-cannabis.com.
Korova Unrivaled Blunts Korova packs 2 grams of flower (no shake allowed) in each of its hemp-rolled blunts, which all feature prime cuts culled from Korova’s top-shelf growing partners. These blunts are exceptional because of their husky size, which makes them sharable at more intimate parties, ensuring everyone gets a hit before the food is served. BUY: Cured Green, 3715 N Lombard St., 503-206-5430, curedgreen.com.
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MUSIC
Shows of the Week
Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson | Contact: bennett@wweek.com
What to see and what to hear. C H R I S TO P H E R “ P U M A” S M I T H
LEANING IN: Brian Jackson.
The Bluesologist Returns
BY DANIEL BROMFIELD // @BROMF3
THURSDAY, MAY 26:
If you’re invested in American underground rock, there’s a good chance you’re a fan of at least one of the countless bands Anthony Green, Laura Jane Grace or Tim Kasher has put together. Green’s eerie, childlike vocal tone is the sonic signature of Circa Survive, Grace is the indomitable leader of Against Me! and the Devouring Mothers, and Kasher fronts Cursive while writing boozy anthems for The Good Life. They’ve all ditched their bands to shoot the shit together on a three-way, heavily collaborative tour that celebrates punk rock as a songwriters’ medium. Wonder Ballroom, 128, NE Russell St., 503-284-8686, wonderballroom.com. 7 pm. $25. All ages.
TUESDAY, MAY 31:
The legendary Brian Jackson is releasing his first solo album in more than 20 years. BY DA N I E L B R O M F I E L D
Brian Jackson wants to clarify a point about the blues. The genre’s image in popular culture has long been depressive: “the sad, weeping guy with his foot on the soapbox singing about how he lost his woman,” Jackson says. But to quote from “Path to Macondo/Those Kind of Blues,” a single from his new album This Is Brian Jackson, the 69-year-old musician prefers the kind of blues that say, “Don’t believe what they tell you, you are important, you are an individual, you are intelligent, you can get past this.” The Portland resident can comfortably share the title of “bluesologist” with Gil Scott-Heron, the late singer-songwriter, poet, and foundational hip-hop artist with whom Jackson recorded nine albums between 1971 and 1980. Though Jackson has worked with everyone from Stevie Wonder to Kool & the Gang to Earth, Wind & Fire, he’s best-known as Scott-Heron’s former musical partner, and his arrangements give a sense of sweep and melancholy to classic albums like Pieces of a Man and Winter in America. Jackson has been a Portland resident since 2019, when he retired from his longtime job with the city of New York, where he was born and lived for most of his life. With more time on his hands to make music, he’s gearing up to release his first album as a solo artist in more than 20 years, which comes out on BBE Records on May 27. “There were two songs that were originally recorded in the ’70s,” he says of the album’s eight tracks. “We had this idea that maybe we would run a contest to award people a free album or something if they guessed which ones, so I’m not at liberty to disclose which ones.” The music itself is very much within the continuum established on those ’70s albums with Scott-Heron, especially “Little Orphan Boy,” which marries elegiac lyrics to a seductive dance groove in the fashion of the duo’s 1974 masterpiece “The Bottle.” Yet the spit-shined production by Daniel Collás feels distinctly modern, and there’s a clear-eyed calm in Jackson’s voice that really only shows up in the music of those who’ve been around for a long time and are comfortable in their own style. “I’m constantly improving,” he says. “I’m constantly figuring out new ways to say things. I’m proud of all of my work, and I won’t put it out unless I am.” Jackson was a teenage piano prodigy when he met Scott-Heron, 26
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
then a fellow student at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Within a few years, the duo was leading world-class session musicians on some of the most acclaimed soul albums of the ’70s. Sensing a rift in their musical sensibilities, the two parted ways in 1980. A few years later, Jackson discovered that Scott-Heron had dissolved their publishing company Brouhaha Music behind his back and removed Jackson’s name from the publishing. To this day, Jackson sees no royalties from the music he and the man he still refers to as his “brother” made together, even when sampled by mega-selling artists like Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar. Jackson’s initial efforts to create a solo album were to no avail. “It wasn’t the best time musically for someone who makes the kind of music that I do,” he says. “I went to 15 labels and they all turned me down. So instead of crying in my beer, I decided to get a job working for the city.” (He worked as a project manager in the city of New York’s IT department.) For a few years in the early ’90s, Jackson almost quit music, focusing on martial arts as a form of emotional self-control. “I believe it prolonged my life and gave me a new strength that I hadn’t been able to access,” he says. Encouraged by his martial arts teacher to return to music, Jackson released his solo debut Gotta Play in 2000. His day job and family occupied the bulk of his time until his retirement and relocation, but now he’s more prolific than ever. He released an album last year called Jazz Is Dead 008 with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and composer Adrian Younge, and an album of “Little Orphan Boy” remixes is coming in July. Jackson harbors more love for his former partner, who died in 2011, than one might expect. He never took legal action against him (“am I gonna feed my kids or some lawyer’s kids?”), and though Scott-Heron had few kind words for Jackson after the dissolution of their partnership, Jackson finds himself able to forgive. “We all have family members we don’t get along with very well,” he says. “But we have memories of having had each other’s backs and grown together and experienced life together. And when you have that kind of relationship with someone, it’s impossible to discount that.” SEE IT: This Is Brian Jackson is available Friday, May 27, on BBE records, bbemusic.com. $14.97.
If Bob Dylan ever dies, he’ll be eulogized as an agent of change, his mighty honk soundtracking the counterculture’s great moment of upheaval as he strums out anthems and glowers from behind his black shades. But the singer-songwriter deserves to be known as one of rock ’n’ roll’s great literary presences, and if you’re still not convinced of what the man can do with words, sit down and listen to “Visions of Johanna,” one of the most brain-fryingly evocative songs anyone’s ever written. He’s been touring nonstop since 1988, and if you haven’t seen him yet, now’s your chance. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 503-248-4335, portland5.com. 8 pm. $59.50$135. All ages.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1:
Love or hate folk punk, it wouldn’t be the same without the Violent Femmes. Their debut album nearly 40 years ago set the blueprint for just about any subsequent American band that’s ever caterwauled about sex and murder over crudely strummed acoustic guitars. “Blister in the Sun” is one of rock’s most enduring standards, a staple of mixtapes in the ’80s and the repertoire of just about every young punk band today. They still tour and record prolifically, and singer Gordon Gano is still jovial and apple-cheeked enough to convincingly sing about being a teenager while approaching 60. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 503225-0047, crystalballroompdx.com. 8:30 pm. $42.50-$45. All ages.
MOVIES
Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson Contact: bennett@wweek.com
G O R D A N C O M PA N Y/ C A R O L C O P I C T U R E S
SCREENER
YOUR WEEKLY FILM QUEUE 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
PORTLAND PICK:
Spirit of ‘91
BRON STUDIOS
THE WARRIORS: Linda Hamilton, Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze.
STREAMING WARS
Revisit the year Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron unleashed two masterpieces of anti-establishment action cinema. BY B E N N E T T C AM PB E LL FE RG U SO N @thobennett
SEE IT: Point Break and Terminator 2: Judgment Day play at the Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.org. Point Break: 3 pm Sunday and 7 pm Monday, May 29-30. Terminator 2: 6 pm Sunday, May 29. $8-$10.
From the Portland Aerial Tram to the St. Johns Bridge, PDX landmarks adorn Leave No Trace, Debra Granik’s 2018 adaptation of My Abandonment, a novel by Peter Rock (a professor in Reed College’s English department). But the best reasons to see the film are Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie, who play a father and daughter journeying ever deeper into the wilderness and their own souls. Hulu.
INDIE PICK:
Oh, to have been at Cannes last week when James Gray’s cinematic memoir Armageddon Time got a minuteslong standing ovation. Still, you don’t need to be on the Croisette to bask in his brilliance since his glorious 2008 romance Two Lovers is streaming. Joaquin Phoenix stars as a bereaved Brooklynite torn between two very different women, played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw. HBO Max.
HOLLYWOOD PICK:
DISNEY
In 1988, Bruce Willis and director John McTiernan turned a Los Angeles skyscraper into a warzone in Die Hard, a brutal blast of jubilant chaos that made them movie gods. Yet behind the film’s daring mayhem was a panicked narrative about big government, globalization and feminism destroying the American nuclear family—which could only be saved by a hot-blooded heterosexual male in a tank top. A master class in wild yet disciplined action filmmaking, Die Hard should be judged on both its artistic merits and its ideological toxicity. Yet the film’s far-right fearmongering demanded a cinematic response—and it received two from Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron. Released in July 1991, Bigelow’s Point Break and Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, both of which screen at the Hollywood Theatre this weekend, assault everything Die Hard venerates, including tough-on-crime political grandstanding and patriarchal gender roles. While it’s doubtful that Bigelow and Cameron, who divorced the same year their respective films were released, were responding directly to Die Hard, they offered a clear philosophical alternative, bringing progressive firepower to the action genre. Set years after the first Terminator (1984), Terminator 2 introduces us to John Connor (Edward Furlong), who is caught between two terminators—a benevolent T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and a sinister, shapeshifting T-1000 (Robert Patrick). When the T-1000 first appears, he kills an LAPD officer and mimics his appearance. Countering the proto-Blue Lives Matter posturing of Die Hard, Terminator 2 immediately associates police work with barbarism, foreshadowing a later scene in which cops pose almost as dire a threat to John as the T-1000. If Terminator 2 degrades law enforcement, Point Break rejects it completely. Bigelow’s protagonist, Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), may be an “F-B-I AGENT!” (to quote the inimitable Reeves), but he questions the validity of his profession after going undercover with a gang of bank-robbing surfers (!) led by the mystical Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). Johnny eventually tracks Bodhi to Bells Beach in Australia, where he’s about to surf into a likely lethal “50-year storm.” Yet rather than arrest Bodhi, Johnny lets him become one with the waves, tossing his FBI badge into the ocean. By now, Bigelow has cast aside Johnny’s love interest, Tyler (Lori Petty). Point Break lacks the romantic coziness
of Die Hard, which reunites Willis’ John McClane with his estranged wife (although they divorce later in the series). What matters to Bigelow is Johnny, Bodhi and the freedom their bond represents. Terminator 2 is equally leery of anything that could be characterized as domestic bliss. After John’s foster parents (whom he dismisses as “dicks”) are slain by the T-1000, he turns to his mother, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), who puts the infrequent heroics of Bonnie Bedelia’s Holly Gennaro McClane to shame. Nothing—not bullets, not blades, not the walls of a psych ward—can stop Sarah. In a film filled with indelible images, nothing is more memorable than the sight of her battling the T-1000 after she’s been shot, firing again and again as she defies the limits of her battered body to defend her son. Sarah isn’t perfect—she wouldn’t be interesting if she were—but with a little help from the T-800 (who becomes a beloved robo-uncle to John), she helps her son grow into a capable young man. He doesn’t have a father or even a permanent home, but he has her, which makes Terminator 2 a moving ode to single parenthood. Today, it’s hard to find a blockbuster as proudly liberated as Point Break, which you can read more about in Get Your Reps In on page 28, and Terminator 2. In 21st century action films, it’s so hip to work for The Man that even the Fast & Furious gang ditched their carjacking street cred to become de facto government agents. It’s equally rare to find a modern big-budget movie as besotted with marriage and parenthood as Die Hard. Tony Stark and Wolverine were both killed off as soon as they became fathers—and, apparently, Eon Productions would rather James Bond perish in a missile strike than raise a daughter. Was Die Hard a prophecy of Trumpism? Did Point Break, and Terminator 2 preview elements of contemporary progressivism? Maybe. But now that the action genre tends to be populated by largely sexless characters, all three films provoke nostalgic yearning. Which is all the more reason to see Point Break and Terminator 2 on the big screen, and to recognize that Die Hard has one semi-wholesome message: If you have to sell your soul to the establishment, you may as well get laid and have kids while you’re doing it.
Ten years ago, Andrew Stanton’s John Carter was declared an Ishtar-level box-office catastrophe. Today, the film’s ticket sales seem trivial compared to its sweeping desert battles (shot by Star Wars cinematographer Dan Mindel) and the sexy, soulful romance between a Civil War veteran (Taylor Kitsch) teleported to Mars and the renegade princess (Lynn Collins) who asks for his aid. Disney+.
INTERNATIONAL PICK:
In 2019, Italian director Pietro Marcello took Jack London’s novel Martin Eden and transformed it into arguably one of the most European films ever made. The strapping Luca Marinelli stars as Martin, an impoverished striver whose hunger to become a renowned writer propels him on an epic and erotic quest for greatness. Mubi, Roku, Showtime. Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
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MOVIES
The horizon may stretch romantically in this family drama from directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel (The Deep End, What Maisie Knew), but the film doesn’t revise the Western so much as trap two characters inside one. Owen Teague and Haley Lu Richardson star as estranged siblings Cal and Erin, who reunite on their family’s Montana ranch when their dad suffers a stroke. Because the plot finds its skeleton key in off-screen family history, the dialogue suffers from lead-weighted exposition that challenges Teague (It). But as the family outcast who’s unafraid to speak viciously, Richardson (Support the Girls, After Yang) fares better as the siblings tread on eggshells toward reconciliation. Past trauma aside, the film works best when observing banal yet loaded interactions touching on class, race and rural authenticity, like Cal giving a property tour or Erin buying a truck on a nearby reservation. Here, the film lets us see the kids for who they are—the embarrassed offspring of cowboy tourists. They’ve been molded by Big Sky Country, but they’re also hoping for a redemptive exit. Despite its genre trappings, Montana Story is ultimately an anti-Western: an ode to stunning, rugged country best left and loved. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Living Room.
A Swedish 19-year-old going by “Bella Cherry” (Sofia Kappel) arrives in Los Angeles with a singular desire—porn stardom by any sex act necessary. That’s about the breadth of her character, as Pleasure focuses on Bella’s on-set experiences, including the girl-nextdoor foray in which she first registers the camera’s power; an outlandish bondage scene that prioritizes performer comfort; and others that are horrifyingly unsafe. Alongside mostly adult-film actors, Kappel excels in a debut that could scarcely demand more, considering that she makes porn production convincing when writer-director Ninja Thyberg switches to a documentary-style vantage point. Plumbing the formulaic and often unregulated construction of what the industry calls “pleasure,” the film dispenses so thoroughly with seduction that even Bella’s desires (sexual or otherwise) remain abstract. In turn, Thyberg sometimes weighs in too heavily with hiphop or opera soundtrack selections to assure us certain scenes are appealing or upsetting (or not a well-performed kink). All told, Pleasure is a fascinating, disturbing, inherently ungratifying success story (like a joyless Nightcrawler). Though porn’s exploitation of labor should surprise no one, Pleasure’s research-driven portrayal is still valuable. Obviously, sex work is work. But is it workable? NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Cinema 21.
DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA
The secret touch in
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H O L LY W O O D R O A D F I L M S
Teen Witch (1989)
MONTANA STORY
PLEASURE
G ET YO U R R E P S I N
BIG CREEK
TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
This nostalgia-soaked ’80s fantasy follows a high school misfit (Robyn Lively) who learns that she’s a reincarnated witch. Of course, she plans to use her new powers to win over the hottest guy in school, Brad (Dan Gauthier). A flop upon release, the film has since achieved certified cult classic status, in large part due to its viral “Top That!” impromptu rap scene. Clinton, May 28.
The Host (2006)
The multiple Academy Award-winning Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) directs this creature feature about a large amphibious Han River monster mutated from dumped toxic waste. After it kidnaps the young daughter of hapless snack shop owner Park Gang-Doo (Song Kang-Ho), he and his loving family embark on a mission to save her. Screens in 35 mm. 5th Avenue, May 27-29.
Starship Troopers (1997) series-to-cinema transitions is finding a compelling reason to get the band back together— and Downton Abbey: A New Era has some fun with it. Compelled by “financial issues,” Lady Mary Talbot (Michelle Dockery), née Crawley, agrees to allow a film to shoot at the titular estate, which elicits everything from enthusiasm to outright disdain from her elders. Simultaneously, another group of characters embark on a trip to the South of France to inspect a villa bequeathed to the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith), leading to the unraveling of the mystery as to why. Balancing so many beloved characters can’t have been easy, but screenwriter and series creator Julian Fellowes weaves them all together delicately enough and handles moments of gravitas with grace. A New Era may be a tale of rushed romances and obscenely affluent people falling ass-backwards into even more wealth, but those potential pitfalls are diluted by whimsical storytelling leading to a satisfying ending. The Crawleys live in a fantasy world with its own rules—and Fellowes clearly demonstrates that he understands his audience and the depth of their passion for his characters and the universe they inhabit. PG. RAY GILL JR. Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, Studio One, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.
MEN
Let’s talk about the dress. It’s pale pink, it’s long sleeved, and it’s worn by Jessie Buck-
Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
ley, the star of Alex Garland’s dreamy and blood-chilling thriller Men. An archetypal symbol of femininity, the dress is the first of many clues that Buckley is playing not just a woman, but all women—just as her co-star, Rory Kinnear, is playing all men. Haunted by the death of her husband (Paapa Essiedu), Harper (Buckley) flees to an English country estate to recuperate. Almost the moment she arrives, she’s tormented by seemingly everyone in the area with a Y chromosome, including a little boy who calls her a “stupid bitch,” a silent stalker who appears in her garden naked, and a priest who hides his predatory nature behind courtly manners and long locks. All of these men are played by Kinnear, but it doesn’t seem strange to Harper that they have the same face. Why would it? The idea of a woman being persecuted by males who represent a single malevolent force feels sickeningly real. It could be argued that Men’s points about gender are obvious—and that its attitude toward topics like race and mental health is offensively glib—but like Garland’s previous films, Ex Machina and Annihilation, it digs impressively deep under your skin and into your psyche. Harper may be afraid, but she isn’t powerless. And as she goes from fleeing to fighting, the film solidifies its power over you. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Academy, Cedar Hills, Cinema 21, City Center, Clackamas, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Studio One, Tigard.
A wild blend of sci-fi action and political satire, this galactic adventure from Dutch provocateur Paul Verhoeven (whose RoboCop is also playing this week; see below) centers on a futuristic military unit engaged in an interstellar war with giant alien bugs. Starring Caspar Van Dien, Denise Richards, and Neil Patrick Harris. Screens in celebration of the film’s 25th anniversary! Hollywood, May 27.
Aliens (1986)
James Cameron takes the wheel from Ridley Scott for this sequel to Alien (1979), opting to focus on Xenomorph-splattering action (as opposed to the tense, atmospheric horror of the first film). Features the official debut of the all-powerful Alien Queen, a legendary matriarch who has never done anything wrong ever in her entire life. Hollywood, May 28-29.
Point Break (1991)
Keanu Reeves stars as Johnny Utah, an undercover FBI agent tasked with taking down a ring of bank robbers seemingly led by charismatic surfer Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). Director Kathryn Bigelow deftly examines the chemistry-infused relationship between the two men, combining fascinating interpersonal drama with action-packed thrills. Screens in 35 mm. Hollywood, May 29-30. ALSO PLAYING: Clinton: Eyes of Fire (1983), May 27. Sorceress (1982), May 27. Hollywood: Female (1933), May 26. The Terminator (1984), May 28. RoboCop (1987), May 28. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), May 29. The Devil’s Rain (1975), May 31.
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.
JONESIN’
FREE WILL
B Y M AT T J O N E S
"Sandwiched In"
ASTROLOGY ARIES
(March 21-April 19): Who loves the truth better than you Aries people? Who has the greatest potential to speak the real story in every situation, even when it requires extra courage? Who has more fun than you in discovering and defining and expressing the raw facts? In my Book of Life, you Rams are radiant beacons of candor— the people I go to when I need accuracy and honesty. And all I'm saying here will be especially crucial in the coming weeks. The whole world needs concentrated doses of your authenticity. Now read this pep talk from Aries philosopher St. Catherine of Siena: "Let the truth be your delight; let it always be in your mouth, and proclaim it when it is needed. Proclaim it lovingly and to everyone, especially those you love with a special love—but with a certain congeniality."
TAURUS
(April 20-May 20): Before the 20th century, you couldn't buy a loaf of bread that was already sliced into thin pieces. Then in 1912, the American inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder developed a slicing machine. But all his work, including the blueprints and the machine prototypes, was destroyed in a fire. He had to seek new funding and begin again. Sixteen years later, his innovation was finally ready for broad public use. Within five years, most of the bread in the US was sold sliced. What does this have to do with you? I am picking up an Otto Frederick Rohwedder vibe when I turn my visions to you, Taurus. I suspect that in the coming months, you, too, will fulfill a postponed dream.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): A blogger named
ACROSS
48. State a new way
19. Excessive
1. Some 1990s Toyotas
49. Inc. relative
7. Chicken _ _ _
50. Nelson Muntz's catchphrase
21. Remarkable showing on a baseball box score (or 1/6 of a day)
11. Big Sky Conference sch. 14. Low-tech counting device 15. Skater Kulik who won gold at Nagano
54. Manufacturer of the SURFboard modem 55. Twice, in music 56. A.C. _ _ _ (Serie A squad)
16. Sounds of hesitation
57. Readers' haven
17. Get back into
59. Rake it in
18. Instructions within instructions
60. _ _ _ mode
20. Bacon hunks
62. Baskets for fish
21. Kin, informally 22. Prefix for "venous" 23. City northeast of Reno 24. III, to Jr. 25. Hawkins of school dances 26. Ballet wear
61. Like a souffle 63. Pixar's "Turning _ _ _" 64. McEntire with a part in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar" 65. Most peeved
DOWN 1. Analyze, as grammar
24. March parade honoree, as preferred in Ireland 25. Went off track 27. Charging port, maybe 28. Bonds securely 29. Abbr. on some beef 30. Valhalla host 31. Don JosÈ or Otello, in opera circles 32. Kerouac novel 34. Stadium cheer 38. Replace a button, say 41. Eye surgery technique 45. Earnhardt's org. 47. Black eye 49. Tripoli's nation
2. "Nope, doesn't ring _ _ _"
51. Playwright Edward who won three Pulitzers
30. Prefix before "laryngologist"
3. "Wheel of Fortune" social correspondent Maggie
52. Comes down hard
33. More agile
4. Self-sustaining automaton
28. Lovecraftian entity with tentacles
35. Yale graduates, slangily 36. TV room, perhaps 37. Nassau's country 39. "_ _ _ be my honor" 40. Pt. of many airport names 42. Audience member who isn't bawling at the end, metaphorically 43. Word repeated in an Iris Murdoch title 44. Dangerous callout while bike riding 46. Monologue fodder
5. Some votes in Quebec
53. Unsettling feeling 54. "A guy walks into _ _ _ ..."
6. IRS info
55. Commuter's home, for short
7. Leaning Tower city resident
56. Spanish surrealist Joan
8. Returning grad 9. "Spare" meat 10. "Emotions" singer Carey 11. Country singer Pam's father (and singer of "I Ain't Never") 12. Sexologist with a 1976 report 13. Fictional former space agency in the game Fallout
©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.
58. Prevarication 59. British lavs
last week’s answers
Sweetlikeacherry reminds us, "Some epiphanies are only possible when you put away your phone and go completely offline for a while." She adds that sometimes you also need to at least partially avoid your phone and the internet if you hope to incubate new visions of the future and unlock important discoveries in your creative work and summon your untamed genius. According to my astrological analysis, all these possibilities are especially likely and necessary for you in the coming weeks. I trust you will carry out the necessary liberations to take full advantage.
CANCER
(June 21-July 22): Poet Carolyn Kizer (1925–2014) won a Pulitzer Prize for her poetry. She was smart! But when she was young and still studying her craft in college, a professor objected to one of her poems. He said, "You have pigs in this poem; pigs are not poetic." Kizer was incensed at such ignorance. She testified, "I got up and walked out of that class and never went back." Judging from the astrological omens, I suspect you may have comparable showdowns headed your way. I advise you to be like Kizer. You are the only one who truly knows the proper subjects of your quest. No one else has the right or the insight to tell you what your work (or play) should be about.
LEO
(July 23-Aug. 22): Leo author James Baldwin said it wasn't often "that two people can laugh and make love, too—make love because they are laughing and laugh because they're making love. The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there." Your assignment, Leo, is to be the exception to Baldwin's rule during the coming weeks. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, there's a high possibility that interesting eros can converge with humorous fun in a glorious synergy. You will have a knack for conjuring up ribald encounters and jovial orgasms. Your intuition will guide you to shed the solemnity from your bliss and replace it with sunny, carefree cheer.
VIRGO
(Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I'm worried you will over-indulge in your pursuit of perfection during the coming weeks. It's fine to be exquisitely skillful and masterful; I hope you do that. But if you get obsessed with flawlessness, you will risk undoing your good intentions. As an antidote, I offer you two pieces of advice. The first is from actor and activist Jane Fonda. She said, "We are not meant to be perfect; we are meant to be whole." The second counsel is from philosopher and psychologist William James, who wrote, "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence."
WEEK OF jUNE 2
© 2022 ROB BREZSNY
LIBRA
(Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Author Mustafa Mahmoud described the signs of love between two people: 1. feeling a comfortable familiarity; 2. having no urge or need to lie; 3. being natural, not trying to be different from who one is; 4. having little or no possibility of being embarrassed in front of the other person; 5. experiencing silence as delicious, not alienating; 6. enjoying the act of listening to the other person. I bring these pointers to your attention, Libra, because the coming months will be a favorable time to define and redefine your understandings about the signs of love. How do you feel about Mahmoud's ideas? Are there any more you would like to add?
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): "We do not love each
other without changing each other," wrote author Madeleine L'Engle. Meditate on that gem, Scorpio. Now is a perfect time for you and your loved ones to acknowledge, honor, and celebrate the ways your love has changed each other. It may be true that some transformations have been less than ideal. If that's the case, the coming weeks will be a favorable time to correct those trends. As for the positive changes that you and your allies have stimulated in each other: I hope you will name them and pledge to keep doing more of that good work.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "I always deserve
the best treatment, because I never put up with any other," wrote Sagittarian novelist Jane Austen. Sagittarian politician Stacey Abrams said, "From the moment I enter a room, I am clear about how I intend to be treated and how I intend to engage." You'll be wise to cultivate those attitudes in the next seven weeks, Sagittarius. It's high time for you to raise your self-respect in ways that inspire others to elevate their appreciation and regard for you.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In 1963, Jim Munro
and Alice Munro founded Munro's Books, a store in Victoria, British Columbia. After being on the job for a few months, Alice found she was not impressed with many of the products they sold. "I can write better books than this," she told Jim. Five years later, she published her first collection of short stories, *Dance of the Happy Shades*. Fourteen books later, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Will the coming months bring your equivalent of Alice Munro's pivotal resolution? I suspect they could.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): "True love for
whatever you are doing is the answer to everything," proclaimed performance artist Marina Abramovic. Amen to that righteous attitude! I hope you will embrace it in the coming weeks. I hope your heart and imagination will reveal all you need to know to bring tender fresh streams of true love to the essential activities of your life. Now is an excellent time to redefine the meaning of the word "love" so it applies to all your relationships and pursuits.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): A homeless woman in a
wheelchair stopped where I was sitting outside a café. She was pushing her belongings in a small shopping cart. "Would you like to go dancing?" she said to me. "There's a nearby park that has a great grassy dance floor." "Maybe another day," I told her. "My energy is low. I've had a lot of personal challenges lately." I'm sure the expression on my face was less-than-ebullient. "Cheer up, mister," she told me. "I'm psychic, and I can tell you for sure that you will live a long life and have many more fine adventures. I'll be in the park if you change your mind." My mood instantly brightened. "Thanks!" I yelled toward her as she rolled away. Now I predict that you, Pisces, will have comparable experiences in the coming days. Are you willing to welcome uplifting surprises?
Homework: If there were a clone of you, what alternate life might they be living? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com
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SPOTLIGHT
ARTIST BJ DEHUT
Website: bjdehut.com BJ DeHut was born and raised here in Portland, Oregon. He doesn’t mind the city is changing, but wants to celebrate all the old stuff that made Portland a special place. BJ DeHut doesn’t want to be called an artist - he is a gas station attendant that makes art.
Be a Willamette Week featured artist! Any art style welcome! Let’s share your art. Contact us at art@wweek.com Willamette Week MAY 25, 2022 wweek.com
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