Willamette Week, June 15, 2022 - Volume 48, Issue 32 - "Scouts' Honor" by Willamette Week Newspaper

WILLAMETTE WEEK

PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY

SCOUTS’ “AM I NEXT?” P. 18

WW’S PATIO PICKS P. 22

HONOR

HOW PORTLAND FILMMAKERS DISCOVERED SEXUAL ABUSE UNCHECKED IN THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA. BY NATALIE O’NEILL. PAGE 15

WWEEK.COM VOL 48/32 0 6 .1 5 . 2 02 2

NEWS: Gunplay at Grant High. P. 13

FOOD: Dough Zone Is Something to Talk a Bao. P. 24

FILM: Requiem for a Goodfella. P. 30

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

FINDINGS THOMAS TEAL

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 48, ISSUE 32

NEXT ADVENTURE WORLD FAMOUS SPORTS APPAREL ADDITIONAL 20% OFF LOWEST MARKED PRICE!

As many as 40 members of Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club have

resigned over a Saudi-backed tournament. 8

Josephine County has Oregon’s highest rate of gun deaths. 8

A new Live Nation music venue could pack in three times the patrons as the Crystal Ballroom. 9

Oregon has been celebrating Juneteenth since 1945. 21 Dough Zone has finally broken the Lucier curse. 24 The new cannadad trend is functional mushrooms. 27 Jules Ohman’s debut novel pivots on a hiking mishap. 28 Jake Silberman always wanted to open at the Aladdin Theater.

Six high-school boys cruised around the Blind Onion to shoot their classmates with gel guns.

The Hollywood Theatre is commemorating Ray Liotta with a screening of Goodfellas. 30

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

The Boy Scouts of America thought it was out of the woods on sexual abuse charges. Not so. Photo illustration by Mick Hangland-Skill.

Laurelhurst homeowners attempted to deter park camping with large planters.

Masthead EDITORIAL

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

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Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

DIALOGUE

• •••• ••••

A T R E A LRBO S ER E T •••• A E H T JUNE 18

Last week’s WW cover story examined a novel concept for getting services to unhoused people: making a list of who they are and what they need. A New York-based nonprofit has promised Portland officials that such a strategy can effectively eliminate homelessness (“The List,” June 8). Several elected officials, led by Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, see the strategy called Built for Zero as a long-awaited salvation. Others, including former mayoral staffer Tera Hurst, hear echoes of Nazi Germany. Here’s what our readers had to say:

with

EL OH KAY WHY EE EE, VIA TWITTER: “Ah yes, a list of

JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION Eldon “T” Jones + LaRhonda Steele

SCIENCE ON TAP

JUN 24

JUN 23

Making Memories:

a gender bending burlesque cabaret

Using Neuroscience to Enhance Teaching & Learning

Kevin Burke JUN 25 Inna Kovtun Espacio Flamenco O.B. Addy Michelle Alany & the Mystics Andrea Algieri Jet Black Pearl Andre Temkin Darka Dusty & the Borshch Beatniks

an international show of support

THE WORLD IS WITH UKRAINE

legendary UK jazz guitar group

JUN 28

ACOUSTIC ALCHEMY JUN 29 Chamber Music Northwest

JUL 2

PASCUALA ILABACA New@Night Y FAUNA JUL 19

New@Night

Andy Akiho’s SEVEN PILLARS

one of the world’s most creative fingerstyle guitarists

JUL 29 Booklover’s Burlesque a midsummer

REBECCANOTBECCA, VIA REDDIT: “There will be a lot of

“This can only end badly. Every time a government makes a list of a marginalized group, things end badly.”

Seymour Butz and I.P. Freely names on that list.”

MAYOR_OF_SASSYLAND, VIA REDDIT: “We’re all on a fucking

At Built for Zero, we have seen how many leaders in Portland are committed to reducing homelessness by helping folks move into permanent housing. They recognize that solving this complex problem begins by understanding each of their unhoused neighbors by name, in real time, so no one is left behind.

list. It’s called the census. “Most of us are on the list of registered voters. We’re all on a list from getting our government IDs, SSNs, or paying taxes. “The city of Portland wanted a list of the owners, and all of the units, of all rental properties to create a registry. Was Tera Hurst

A HOME WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME

Show some respect, Kilgore—that ship happens to be a U.S. Navy Zumwalt-class destroyer, and it’s arguably the most technologically-advanced warship in the world. Sure, to an ignorant civilian it might look like a stormtrooper’s helmet, but discerning students of modern maritime warfare will quickly realize that it actually looks more like Boba Fett’s helmet. Either way, its Han Solo-hating geometry is a result of the military’s ubiquitous stealth technology—the flat surfaces deflect enemy radar so as to present the appearance of a small fishing boat, rather than a huge-ass battleship. This particular Zumwalt-class destroyer, incidentally, is the USS Michael Monsoor. It was named after a U.S. Navy SEAL who won the Medal of Honor (posthumously) for throwing

•••••••••••••

7/9 • AFTERGLOW: A POST-PRIDE EXTRAVAGANZA 7/14 • SCIENCE ON TAP: HOW DO SCIENTISTS SEE BLACK HOLES? 7/31 • WAIPUNA 8/5 • CALL ME A PUSSY - FEATURING LAURA STOKES

•••••

albertarosetheatre.com

3000 NE Alberta • 503.764.4131 Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

VIOLET NOVA, VIA TWITTER:

“‘Hi, I’m Joe Jones and I live outside because we live in a market economy and fuck these rents.’”

JUL 30

featuring

the homeless can start paying the Arts Tax like the rest of us suckers.”

FILTH FREAK, VIA TWITTER:

During the Rose Festival, there was a ship moored by Waterfront Park that looked like a cross between an Aztec pyramid and the stormtrooper helmets from Star Wars. Were we hosting the navy of Venus along with our own sailors this Fleet Week? —Kilgore Trout

Ike Willis

UPCOMING SHOWS

ENJOYMYPAELLA, VIA WWEEK.COM: “Cool, then

JUL 23

Frank Zappa tribute

night’s tease

won’t believe the list they put homeowners on! They have your address, how much you paid, income and everything!”

app where we can find out in real time which shelter beds are available and for whom. 211 doesn’t always have this kind of real-time information. The technology exists.”

BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx

MIKE DAWES

Grammy & Pulitzer nominated album

CH, VIA WWEEK.COM: “You

SCOTT KERMAN, VIA TWITTER: “What I’d love to see is an

Dr. Know

Rhapsodies + Alisa & Demons Amador Chamber Music Northwest

names of people most marginalized and stigmatized, kept by the government. What could possibly go wrong?”

out here worried that it might lead to a Mao landlord guillotine massacre?”

We acknowledge that this information isn’t a silver bullet—it is, however, a prerequisite. It makes us accountable to knowing who these individuals are and supporting their needs. It tells us how much housing and other targeted investments will be required to make progress. It tells us whether all the existing efforts are leading to fewer people coming into, and experiencing, homelessness. We recognize that privacy over someone’s personal information is of utmost importance, which is why the data collected for the homelessness information systems referenced in the article—which includes, but is not limited to, by-name data—is subject to federal, state and local rules and regulations, and only collected with an individual’s informed consent. The ways in which this information can be used and shared are restricted, and are shared as part of the process of obtaining consent. You cannot solve a problem that you cannot see. Like many other communities in Built for Zero, Portland is embracing an approach that refuses to ignore the scale and dynamics of the problem it faces, and the lives of each of the individuals experiencing homelessness. It is inviting those truths as important first—not final—steps toward solving it, and we are proud to support them in doing just that. Lauren Barnes-Carrejo 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

himself on a grenade during the Iraq War. Unfortunately, given the way the Zumwalt project has been going for the Navy, any name that evokes something tragically going up in flames in the service of a misguided project probably cuts a little close to home. It’s like if Greg Oden had been named Greg Hindenburg. You’ll notice that earlier I said “most technologically advanced,” not “best” or (ahem) “most cost-effective.” The Zumwalt cohort was originally supposed to comprise 32 ships. As deadlines slipped and cost overruns mounted, that figure was trimmed repeatedly until finally there were just three. Project cost? An estimated $30 billion. The project ended up so badly over budget it triggered an automatic statutory cancellation. The Zumwalt was built around the Advanced Gun System, which fires rocket-boosted, GPS-guided shells designed as a cheaper (but shittier) alternative to Tomahawk missiles, which are apparently $1M each. But now that there are only three boats to use them, the planned economies of scale disappear, meaning the cheap but shitty shells are now just shitty, almost as spendy as the Tomahawks they were supposed to replace. I could go on. Suffice it to say that the next time you run across the word “boondoggle” in a dictionary, don’t be surprised if at first glance it appears to be accompanied by a picture of Boba Fett. Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.

Your stop for summer snacks

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Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

MURMURS J U S T I N K AT I G B A K

LABOR DAY PICNIC AT OAKS PARK IN 2018. LABOR DAY PICNIC BOOTED FROM OAKS PARK: For at least two decades, the unofficial kickoff to election season in even-numbered years has been the Labor Day picnic at Oaks Amusement Park hosted by the Northwest Oregon Labor Council. The event regularly attracts more than 10,000 attendees, many of them wearing T-shirts identifying their union affiliation. The concentration of labor might—not to mention beers, burgers and brats— has long made the event a must for Democratic candidates seeking face time with the base and an opportunity to take the stage. But Oaks Park has taken a beating during COVID, losing well over $1 million in 2020, according to its tax return. And after canceling two years in a row, the Labor Day event will not be back. “It’s really a shame because everybody looks forward to the picnic,” says Joe Baessler, political director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Oregon. Oaks Park CEO Brandon Roben says the change is not about money. The amusement park is operating at reduced capacity and simply cannot accommodate the crowds the council picnic would bring. “We just don’t have the resources,” Roben says. CRITICS ORGANIZE AGAINST NEW I-5 BRIDGE: As the latest version of the proposed Interstate Bridge replacement between Portland and Vancouver moves toward votes at Metro, Multnomah County and the city of Portland, critics from more than two dozen environmental, transportation and social justice organizations went on the attack this week. They claim the project would worsen carbon emissions, is being fast-tracked without sufficient planning or financial vetting, and that the two state departments of transportation have failed to consider alternatives. “The IBR would be the most expensive infrastructure project in the region’s history, and the two state DOTs have failed to do even the most basic financial planning,” says Portland economist Joe Cortright of the Just Crossing Alliance. “The project’s traffic forecasts are inaccurate, the cost estimates are based on decade-old engineering work, and the selected high bridge

option is the riskiest, most expensive and least affordable approach to solving this problem.” WHEELER PLEDGES TO INCREASE HOMELESS CAMP SWEEPS: Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler announced at a June 13 press conference that the city would expand an approach it has taken in Old Town over the past few months to clear camps and offer shelter to the houseless. Hundreds of camps in Old Town were cleared this spring from streets where gun violence and drug dealing had alarmed health clinic employees reporting to work (“Breakdown,” WW, May 11). Now Wheeler says he is looking to broaden sweeps to “all neighborhoods in the city of Portland.” The mayor says the city cleared 137 camps citywide in April and swept 206 camps in May. Outreach workers made contact with everyone forced to move this spring as part of the city and county’s new streamlined approach to homelessness launched this spring under the mayor’s emergency declaration to clear the city’s streeets—though only 64 people, Wheeler noted, were referred to shelters. COUNTY PONDERS RANKED CHOICE VOTING: As WW has previously reported, the city of Portland’s charter review committee wants city voters to consider switching the current method of electing candidates to ranked choice voting, a process that calls on voters to rank candidates for office. Votes are then tallied, and the candidate with the fewest top-choice votes is eliminated. Voters who picked the eliminated candidate as their first choice then have their votes go to their second-choice candidate. Votes are tallied again and the lowest-ranking candidate eliminated until one candidate gets a majority. Portland isn’t the only local government weighing this idea. On June 15, the Multnomah County charter review commission will consider a recommendation by its equitable representation subcommittee that the county adopt ranked choice voting for all elections. The charter review committee then has until Aug. 4 to decide whether to ask county commissioners to put that question before voters on the November ballot. Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

NEWS

MAPPED

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

FIRST PERSON

Great Pumpkin

ROSELAND THEATER 8 NW 6th Ave. Capacity: 1,410

Three former members of Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club explain why they quit over a Saudi-backed tournament.

company; Eamon McErlean, an executive at a software company; and Roland Carfagno, who owns Italian restaurant Justa Pasta—why they left. Members’ answers have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

speel@wweek .com

In March, a recently launched but already embattled golf league called LIV Golf announced its first tour. Its second stop in the U.S.: Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club northwest of Portland. The North Plains club, a swanky oasis nestled between huge firs, features two 18-hole golf courses—one public, the other open only to members. Pumpkin Ridge now has a few less of those members. That’s because they object to hosting a tour financially backed by Saudi Arabia’s investment arm. The Saudi Arabian government has long faced accusations of human rights abuses—as well as allegations that it’s used investment in major sports as a way to distract from those abuses. The LIV tour event at Pumpkin Ridge will be held June 30 through July 2. Pumpkin Ridge is managed locally but owned by Escalante Golf, a Texas-based company started by three college fraternity brothers. Escalante did not respond to WW’s repeated requests for comment. Another silent voice: Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler. While the tournament isn’t in Portland proper, it will likely draw thousands of spectators to a town just miles away. In late April, 11 mayors in Washington County signed a letter opposing the tournament there. Wheeler hasn’t said anything, and his office did not respond to WW’s requests for comment. Meanwhile, Pumpkin Ridge is seeing members depart. It’s not clear how many, but some former members estimate the number may be as high as 40. In the past week, WW spoke to five former members of Pumpkin Ridge. All five tell WW they first heard about the tournament being hosted at Pumpkin Ridge from news reports. Four quit the club within a month. WW asked three of them—Tom Etzel, the CEO of an events management 8

1332 W Burnside St. Capacity: 1,000

What was your reaction to the news? Tom Etzel: I was shocked, surprised and disappointed. I reached out to Escalante, both to club management and corporate headquarters. I spoke to both the club and corporate headquarters. I was disappointed in their responses, and they seemed very calculated. I left the club that same day. I’m one person, but I felt it was important and, obviously, I had had conversations with other members who shared some of the same beliefs. I hoped we could change their minds.

HENRY CROMETT

BY S O P H I E P E E L

CRYSTAL BALLROOM

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

What’s the problem with LIV Golf playing at Pumpkin Ridge? Eamon McErlean: I’m not thinking that the PGA is perfect, by any means. But what we do know about the Saudi Arabia wealth fund, when you start to pull back the layers a bit and see some of the human rights crises they’ve been associated with, it’s just not something I would want to be tied to in any way. I emailed Escalante two, if not three, subsequent emails stating my frustration with three things: One, the decision itself. Two, how it was communicated. And three, how over the past few months the level of service had significantly deteriorated. Some of the basics, like literally no golf balls on the range, no towels available. There was one Saturday afternoon a little stack shack halfway through the round wasn’t just closed, it was locked up. These are all First World problems, I get it. But as a paying member, you expect a level of service. I think it had something to do with the tournament coming, I do. Because I played once before I left, and you could see the entire clubhouse getting repainted. It was just a complete face-lift across the board. Escalante executives came to Pumpkin Ridge to answer member questions. What was that like? Roland Carfagno: There was a huge uproar right away. A lot of members were like, what’s going on? Everyone who I played with at Pumpkin left. A couple of the people from Escalante Golf came up to meet with members, and it took me two minutes to realize they didn’t really care at all what members thought. They held an open house and were there for four hours. It was them talking first, and then we were allowed to ask questions. There were questions about whether they considered how the members felt about it, concerns about how poor the service had been recently, questions about how they came about this decision. The gist of their message was: This was too good of an opportunity for them to pass up. We all assume there’s a big check behind this. They revealed nothing about money. I personally know six members beside myself who left. But nobody really knows for sure.

ARLENE SCHNITZER CONCERT HALL 1037 SW Broadway Capacity: 2,776

KELLER AUDITORIUM 222 SW Clay St. Capacity: 2,992

Standing Room Only A planned Live Nation ballroom would dwarf existing venues. On June 13, a construction executive confirmed to WW that the events promoter Live Nation intends to open a music venue on the Central Eastside. That news promises to shake up Portland’s music scene. That’s in part because Live Nation, a Beverly Hills-based entertainment giant, contracts with recording artists to run their tours. In cities where the company also operates a venue, it can simply book the artist there—cutting other independent venues out of the market. Leonard Barrett, the principal of Beam Development, tells WW the 3,000-capacity venue on Southeast Water Avenue will fill a current hole in the Portland music scene. “Just through talking to folks in the industry, we’ve been hearing for at least the last decade that a ballroom-style venue in this size represents a bit of a missing middle for venues in Portland,” Barrett says. “You’ve got the Schnitzer and the Keller of this size, but obviously they’re fixed seating.” If the Central Eastside plans come to fruition, Live Nation artists will be playing a venue with greater capacity than any other indoor concert hall in Portland outside of the two Rose Quarter arenas. And it will dwarf the other venues with open floor plans as opposed to fixed seats. Here’s how the new ballroom would compare with what currently exists. SOPHIE PEEL AND AARON MESH.

WONDER BALLROOM 128 NE Russell St. Capacity: 778

REVOLUTION HALL 1300 SE Stark St. Capacity: 850

HOLOCENE

1001 SE Morrison St. Capacity: 312

PROPOSED LIVE NATION VENUE

Southeast Water Avenue & Main Street Capacity: 3,000

ALADDIN THEATER 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Capacity: 600

BOLD ITALICS denote a ballroom-style venue.

WHERE WE’RE AT

Over a Barrel Oregon counties with the highest gun deaths per capita haven’t been in the Portland metro area. As Congress negotiates a gun control bill and Oregon religious groups gather signatures for a ballot initiative to create gun permits and limit the sale and manufacture of large-capacity magazines, the aftermath of a Texas school shooting is dividing Americans. In Oregon, the most politically fraught moment on gun policy came early this month as Betsy Johnson, an unaffiliated candidate for governor, switched her position to support a compromise on gun control, arguing she needed to represent the whole state—not just her former rural Senate district along the Columbia River. (She now says she supports expanding background checks and raising the minimum age for sale of some weapons, without offering specifics.) The lines of the debate remained unchanged

after Johnson’s reversal. Views on gun control are partisan and often divided along rural-urban boundaries. Johnson changed her stance to placate Portland metro area voters, who have little sympathy for gun rights (“On Blast,” WW, June 8). But gun deaths, researchers point out, happen where the guns are. The majority of gun deaths in the United States, and in Oregon, have been suicides. Even through 2020—the first year of the pandemic, when homicides rose—77% of Oregon’s gun deaths were suicides, 23 percentage points higher than the national average. That trend will not hold if homicides continue their sharp climb in Portland. In 2021, homicides hit a record in Portland, nearly tripling from two years ago. (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Pre-

Rates of Oregon Gun Deaths

Age adjusted, 2016-2020, per 100,000 residents

HIGHEST FIVE COUNTIES

LOWEST FIVE COUNTIES

Josephine County 28.2

Clackamas County 10.2

Klamath County 26.6

Multnomah County 9.8

Curry County 23.4

Polk County 9.3

Baker County 23.2

Benton County 8.7

Crook County 21

Washington County 7.8

Sources: The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

vention data for last year is not complete.) “Rural communities are disproportionately impacted by firearm suicide,” says Ari Davis, a policy adviser with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. “That’s often not covered. When we talk about gun violence, usually folks aren’t talking about the majority of gun deaths, which are suicides.” Older white men are more likely to kill themselves, so researchers factor in age when measuring suicide rates. But even after factoring in age, some of Oregon’s more rural counties

(Rankings exclude 13 counties with fewer than 20 guns deaths over the five-year period.)

have had a far higher rate of gun deaths than the metro-area counties. Other rural counties have so few gun deaths they’re excluded from the rankings altogether. Oregon already has in place a red flag law, aimed at keeping out guns out of the hands of those who are unwell or dangerous. But experts also say waiting periods or gun licensing (the latter is a piece of Initiative Petition 17) can aid in reducing suicides by gun. R AC H E L M O N A H A N .

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

SUMMER 2022. THE SQUARE.

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CHRIS NESSETH

NEWS

SNACK BREAK: Officers from several private security firms patrol properties in downtown Portland.

Insecure

Contractors say a city policy to boost workers’ rights is benefiting an embattled, out-of-town security giant. BY S O P H I E P E E L

speel@wweek .com

In March 2020, the Portland City Council voted unanimously to change the rules for city contractors. The upshot: To get a contract with the city, companies had to obtain a “labor peace agreement” with a union. In such an agreement, companies pledge to remain neutral in any union negotiations and not to block labor organizing. In return, workers pledge not to strike or create a work stoppage. The new clause applied to just three kinds of contractors: industrial laundry, janitorial, and private security services. It was celebrated as a step forward for workers’ rights in the industries most prone to abuse employees. Mayor Ted Wheeler said the measure would “help to foster positive working conditions for workers in high-risk industries.” Two years later, the city ordinance faces legal challenges from two companies that lost contracts under the new rule. Both employ security guards. They allege that a policy intended to improve fairness has instead resulted in an international corporation taking work away from small, local businesses and has cost Oregonians with disabilities the chance to get jobs. The legal challenges demonstrate a tension: Many companies that are locally owned and have laudable missions are also resistant to labor organizing. Another reason the city passed the ordinance, in city staffers’ own telling in internal 2020 emails shared with WW, was to create inroads for unions in those companies. Instead, the companies are losing contracts to out-of-town corporations. Dennis Steinman, an Oregon civil rights lawyer who has represented clients under the American with Disabilities Act, says the policy, while well meaning, could offer a lesson in unintended consequences. “There are many statutes and local codes that on their face appear neutral,” Steinman says, but some of them actually have “an adverse impact on a particular class, and in this case, it would be the disabled community. It’s certainly

narrowing the scope of who might be able to bid on contracts.”

Clean and Safe tells WW it “stands proudly” behind awarding the contract to Garda. For 24 years, Portland Patrol Inc. provided security guards for Portland Downtown Clean and Safe, the enhanced service district that keeps downtown tidy by charging a fee to businesses within its boundaries. This year, that changed. That’s because the city renegotiated its contract with Clean and Safe, closely affiliated with the Portland Business Alliance, largely to increase its accountability. Among the deals City Hall struck: Clean and Safe would abide by the city’s procurement policy. Like it had many times before, Portland Patrol submitted its bid in mid-May. But now there was a new requirement: It needed to obtain a certified labor peace agreement with a union. The company did not obtain such a letter. Portland Patrol does not have a unionized workforce. The company is small, with only 130 employees. Ninety percent of its workers are employed through government contracts, says owner William Guidice—including formerly homeless Portlanders who work as resource officers on MAX trains. The Clean and Safe contract instead was awarded to GardaWorld, a company based in Canada that has endured allegations of losing millions of dollars stored for clients in its vaults and creating unsafe working conditions that led to deaths (see “Coming in Hot,” right.) Guidice filed a grievance with the city over the decision June 7. Another company that submitted an application bid for the Clean and Safe contract, Northwest Enforcement Inc., which provides security

for the eastside enhanced service district, has retained legal counsel to fight the policy. “By law, any group of employees at any point have the legal right to band together and vote for a union,” says Northwest Enforcement vice president Chad Withrow. “This labor peace agreement forces that action. It almost makes it a guarantee that there will be a union. That’s outside of the city’s purview.” Meanwhile, WW has learned DePaul Industries, a company that employs disabled Oregonians, sued the city late last year in federal court over the same labor peace agreement clause. DePaul, which provides unarmed security guards, filed the lawsuit in December after the city rejected the company for a security contract because it did not obtain a labor peace agreement. (The contract was for four unarmed guards at Mt. Tabor Park. Disabilities can range from PTSD to partial deafness.) DePaul is a contractor for a state program called Oregon Forward that requires municipalities to use companies that employ disabled workers whenever such a contractor is available to provide the needed service. “Oregon laws governing the Oregon Forward program preempt the city’s requirement,” the lawsuit reads. “Among other things, they prohibit cities from developing ‘specifications that inhibit or tend to discourage’ contracting with Oregon Forward contractors.” The ongoing lawsuit says the city’s ordinance should not override state rules. In court documents, city attorneys argue that nothing in Oregon Forward rules exempts its contractors from adhering to local ordinances. The city has contracted with DePaul for various security and janitorial services for 18 years. Seventeen DePaul employees currently work for the city under different contracts. Attorney Cliff Davidson represents DePaul. He says the city’s rule placed his client in an impossible bind. “If a contractor does not accept the union’s demands, then that contractor cannot do business with the city. Period,” Davidson tells WW. “Thus [contractors] face a choice: allow themselves to be coerced into agreeing to whatever a union demands in exchange for the required labor peace agreement, or abandon its mission of providing crucial employment opportunities for those experiencing disabilities.” The state Department of Administrative Services, which oversees Oregon Forward, tells WW that five of the program’s 30 contractors currently have contracts with the city of Portland—and four of the contracts are in industries for which the city mandates labor peace agreements. Only one of those companies is unionized. DAS declined to comment on the implications of the city’s policy, citing pending litigation. City commissioners defend the policy but did not respond to questions regarding GardaWorld’s track record or the pending DePaul litigation. During contract negotiations between the city and Clean and Safe, Commissioner Carmen Rubio insisted Clean and Safe contractors adhere to the city’s procurement policy. She tells WW she stands by the policy. “As a city, we should enact policies and contracts that advance an equitable, sustainable economy that is consistent with our values,” Rubio says. “Before I took office, city leaders created sustainable procurement and fair wage policies in line with those values, and my office fought to ensure the Clean and Safe contract adhered to those.” Ethan Johanson contributed reporting to this story.

Coming in Hot Come Aug. 1, an international security company called GardaWorld—with corporate headquarters in Montreal and valued at $3 billion to $4 billion— is set to take over security guard duties in downtown Portland. The company comes with significant legal and public relations baggage. In March, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported that a whistleblower at Garda facilities in Georgia alleged the company had lied about the training qualifications of nearly 100 guards sent to Afghanistan. In October 2020, the Tampa Bay Times reported GardaWorld had lost millions of dollars in its vaults belonging to banks and that at least 19 people had been killed in Garda crashes since 2008, 12 “because of a Garda truck’s mechanical failure or a mistake by a Garda driver.” The U.S. Department of Transportation visited its corporate offices and reported “breakdowns” in the company’s safety protocols in 2013. At least two class action lawsuits have been filed against the company by former employees alleging wage violations. Garda has also faced troubles here. A 2017 lawsuit filed in Multnomah County against Garda CL Northwest alleged discriminaton based on sexual orientation and subsequent whistleblower retaliation by Garda. It ended in a stipulated settlement. Four cases in Oregon have been lodged in federal court against Garda. A 2019 lawsuit in Douglas County alleged that when two employees warned management of problems with truck safety, including broken-down and smoking trucks, employees sitting on buckets in trucks, and being forced to drive trucks with flat tires, they were retaliated against and fired. The lawsuit moved to federal court and ended in a settlement. In February 2016, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries sent Garda a warning letter, explaining it had reason to suspect the company was not offering required meal and rest breaks for its employees, nor was it paying all wages due. Later that year, BOLI demanded that Garda pay a former employee just shy of $3,000 in penalty wages. And in 2019, Garda paid BOLI $100,000 in civil penalties in a settlement over sick leave violations. (That was lowered from a pre-settlement fine of $455,000.) Clean and Safe tells WW in a statement it “stands proudly” behind awarding the contract to Garda to abide by the city’s contractor policy. “[We have] recently made a determination and provided a notice of intent to award GardaWorld the public safety program contract,” the statement reads. “[We] strive to have the highest level of transparency and welcome review, oversight and accountability of our security vendor and operations in the state.” City officials tell WW that Garda CL Northwest provided armored truck services for the city between 2009 and 2013. It did not say why Garda no longer contracts with the city. SOPHIE PEEL.

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

MEREDITH WILLSON’S

PHOTO BY OWEN CAREY

THE MUSIC MAN Meredith Willson Story by Meredith Willson and Franklin Lacey Book, Music, and Lyrics by

June 17-July 3, 2022

We’ve got treble!

Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30pm Sunday at 2pm

Six women and non-binary performers sing new life into this Tony-winning, musical theatre classic about a silver-tongued con man stirring up moral panic in small-town rural America.

Friday, June 24: BIPOC Affinity Night Saturday, June 25: LGBTQIA2S+ Affinity Night

Third Rail at CoHo Theatre • 2257 NW Raleigh St, Portland

Friday, July 1: ASL Interpreted Performance

Get your tickets today! Call 503-235-1101 or visit www.thirdrailrep.org.

F R E E T W O D AY C O M M U N I T Y E V E N T

Mike

PHILLIPS

ALSO PERFORMING:

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

Liv

WARFIELD

BRIDGECITY SOUL

Tahirah MEMORY

MUSIC: DJ DOC ROCK

NEWS PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS

SOFT THREAT: Students at Grant High school shot their peers this spring with gel guns.

Gunplay Shootings with gel guns at Portland schools this spring have parents furious. BY V E R O N I C A B I A N C O SOPHIE PEEL

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The lunch hour when Noah Carr was shot in the face with a gel gun began in the ordinary way. Scores of Grant High School students power-walked to Blind Onion for pizza and breadsticks or to New Seasons for salad rolls during their 35-minute window for lunch. But on March 10, six students broke from their usual routine. Armed with SplatRBall guns—which look like semi-automatic rifles but shoot small gel balls filled with fluid—they split into two cars and prowled the streets around Grant, shooting students at random as they drove by. When they hit Carr, a sophomore, they lit a fire under a Grant teacher and his wife. Since the incident, Noah’s dad, Jon Carr, who teaches English at Grant, and his mom, Amy Potter, have tied the incident to what they feel is a much larger issue: the secretive nature of disciplinary proceedings at Portland Public Schools. “I’m not satisfied with the district’s response,” says Potter. “There has still been no harm repaired to the students and staff and community members and people he harmed. Their communication needs to be public and transparent to the entire community.” The use of gel guns by high schoolers became a nationwide trend earlier this year, apparently stemming from a TikTok challenge. Shootings with gel guns were reported in Georgia, Florida and California. This week, Portland Public Schools confirmed to WW the suspicions of parents: SplatRBall guns had spread across Portland schools, too. “We have seen reports of incidents involving airsoft and splatzball guns with some of our students,” says district spokesman Ryan

Vandehey. “Possession of weapons, or articles that resemble weapons, may lead to student discipline or other interventions.” PPS would not disclose the scope of the trend—nor would the district reveal how many incidents had occurred or at which schools. The district did not answer most of WW’s questions, including how students were disciplined and whether the district had beefed up security in the wake of the shootings. (Principal James McGee wrote to parents after the shootings on March 10 and said they had reported the incident to law enforcement and district security.) The gel balls don’t normally break skin, and they rarely cause severe injury. But gel guns, even from a short distance, resemble assault rifles—the type of firearm used in nearly all U.S. mass shootings, including the recent slaughter of 19 children and two teachers at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school. The similarity is not lost on students and parents at Grant, who might have once dismissed SplatRBall shootings as obnoxious horseplay but now demand that the school district take them seriously. The mother of another student who was shot March 10 requested anonymity so her son wouldn’t be targeted again. A junior at Grant this year, he was hit at least five times as he walked back to school along Northeast 33rd Avenue. He says most of the shots hit his jacket, but one hit him in the neck—and it stung. “All we’re asking for is clear accountability and an apology,” his mother says. “In the world we live in today, with the increase in violence, it is really difficult not to imagine that this could be a precursor to something worse. You can’t ignore this.” WW spoke to one of the students who participated in the SplatRBall shootings. The student,

whose name WW is withholding because he is 16 years old, estimates he and his friends, all Grant students, shot around 60 people, most of whom were fellow high schoolers. “[We] came to school kind of prepared. We all kind of talked about it and were like, ‘Let’s do this. It’ll be awesome,’” he tells WW. He had bought a SplatRBall gun the day before and tested it on himself to see how it felt. (Verdict: It didn’t hurt too badly.) A video taken by a shooter from inside one of the cars shows four high school boys shooting bright orange guns out the window as they drive down 33rd. The guns make the signature popping noise of an authentic firearm. After the car passes and shoots at the crowd of students lined up outside of Blind Onion, one of the boys in the car yells, “Nobody’s safe, man!” Much of parents’ frustration stems from the district’s refusal to disclose what specific disciplinary action was taken against students involved in the incident. “It is our long-standing practice that we do not share details about incidents involving students, due to student confidentiality,” Vandehey says. But the student whom the district identified and punished spoke to WW about what he did March 10 and was also willing to say how the school disciplined him. He says his gun was confiscated, he was suspended for two weeks, and he had an expulsion hearing that resulted in two weeks of classes in a disciplinary program that trains students in conflict and emotional regulation. The student was not expelled. He says he “kind of realized how dumb it was” and that he didn’t intend to shoot random people again. The student who estimates he and friends shot about 60 people that day tells WW: “I think he learned like, maybe you shouldn’t do that.

“We came to school kind of prepared. We all kind of talked about it and were like, ‘Let’s do this. It’ll be awesome.’” Like he learned from it, but I wouldn’t say he regrets it, just because it does seem harmless.” When WW told parents the scope of discipline that students had received, several said it sounded fair. But Noah Carr’s parents are not satisfied. They say the issue is larger: The district is breaking its promise to include victims in the school disciplinary process. Since early May, the Carr-Potters repeatedly asked administrators to use a “restorative justice process” to resolve the problem but say their requests have been ignored. (Their emails were shared with WW.) The Carr-Potters say Grant administrators characterized the discipline as a “restorative process.” But that usually includes a session in which the perpetrator and victim speak in the presence of a mediator—and Noah Carr was never invited to such a meeting. Starting three years ago, the district reworked its disciplinary approach to emphasize restorative justice over punishment. But as Oregon Public Broadcasting reported last year, the district has struggled to consistently follow through with its new framework. Last year, WW reported on high schoolers naming their alleged sexual abusers on Snapchat (“Snap Judgment,” WW, Sept. 1, 2021). Two students told WW they felt ignored by Portland Public Schools, and three others said they didn’t file reports because they didn’t think they would be investigated adequately. After meeting with a Grant administrator on May 13, the Carr-Potters were told the school would not be taking any further action on the issue. On May 17, they penned a letter to both Grant and district administrators that outlined their concerns, and included two action steps: that a Grant counselor reach out to all affected students and ask what response they’d like to see, and that Grant administrators make the perpetrators write a letter of apology to the harmed students and the entire school. They threatened to press criminal charges if their requests were ignored. “This is NOT what we want to do,” they wrote. Neither of those demands were met. The Carr-Potters have since filed a police report. In written correspondence with the district, Jon Carr says PPS’s light touch on the gel gun shootings endangers the shooters as well as their targets. Carr wrote that in May he witnessed a group of Grant students shooting each other with gel guns in a McDonald’s parking lot near the school. The guns, Carr says, were realistic-looking. All of the students were Black, he wrote. “I hope that I do not need to go through all the examples of young Black men being shot and killed either by police officers or members of the public who ‘fear for their lives,’ when they see a young Black man with what appears to be a gun,” he wrote. He says he did not receive a response. The district has an entire summer to figure out how to pacify parents; the school year ended just last week. “We take these types of incidents very seriously,” PPS’s Vandehey says. “We care deeply about our students, and we are committed to their safety and well-being.” Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

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SCOUTS’

HONOR

HOW PORTLAND FILMMAKERS DISCOVERED SEXUAL ABUSE UNCHECKED IN THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA. BY N ATA L I E O ’ N E I L L

@inkonthepad

ot long before the pandemic, Portlander Irene Taylor met a friend for drinks downtown and heard a story that blew her mind. The friend knew someone whose full-time job was to take calls from men who were sexually abused as kids in the Boy Scouts. There were so many victims, she said, a Pearl District law firm had hired a social worker to help with the deluge of calls from broken men. “I really thought about that—40 hours a week, all you do is field phone calls about men who were once boys, who were abused by one organization,” Taylor says. “How does that keep you busy for months and years at a time, full time?” Taylor is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and she had to know more about the strange and awful job. She met the woman, Michele Limpens, who works for the law firm Crew Janci, and Taylor was soon chasing her next project: a riveting documentary that premiered nationally last week at the Tribeca Film Festival and debuts June 16 on Hulu. Leave No Trace centers on the Boy Scouts of America’s centurylong cover-up of sexual abuse and the Oregon case that blew it wide open. It reveals how an institution that’s as American as a Norman Rockwell painting became a playground for pedophiles, with a record of abuse that surpasses that of the Catholic Church but has received much less attention. The film spotlights survivors’ quest for justice as they seek acknowledgment from the Scouts for shattering their lives. It prominently features WW reporter Nigel Jaquiss, who was a producer on the film and acts as the movie’s narrator from the dual perspective of a former Boy Scout and an investigative reporter. The movie got made by a dream team of local journalists after weeks of reading disturbing documents, taking red-eye flights to tearful interviews, and receiving a dash of good luck. “It was clear the Boy Scouts wanted the world to believe that most of the abuse happened a long time ago and the problem was taken care of,” Taylor says. “But the numbers told a different story—a darker narrative about American boyhood.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 16 Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

“ That case was a gigantic boulder that rolled downhill and landed on the Scouts. It crushed them.”

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Jaquiss spoke to dozens more sources and conducted emotional, hourslong interviews with survivors in Florida, Colorado, Indiana, Texas and Arkansas. Taylor sometimes felt spiritual and intellectual fatigue. “This sounds melodramatic,” she says, “but one of the biggest challenges was just waking up each day and needing to deal with this topic for two years.” Repeatedly, she and Jaquiss would hear variations on what Kris Yoxall’s mother said in a heartbreaking early interview. “I feel like a fool,” she sobbed. “The Boy Scouts have known for so long that this stuff happens— and they haven’t done a damn thing.”

A dry business article in The New York Times caught Jaquiss’ eye in February 2020. The Boy Scouts of America had filed for bankruptcy in anticipation of what it then expected to be a couple thousand sex abuse lawsuits. But as headlines about a new coronavirus dominated the news cycle, the country seemed to miss the gravity of the story. It was Jaquiss’ first clue the subject might be ripe for investigation. “Nigel sort of marveled that it wasn’t a bigger story,” Taylor recalls. The two, who met at Columbia Journalism School in the mid-’90s, discussed it as a possible project over virtual coffee in July 2020. Taylor told Jaquiss about the social worker she’d met, and they agreed to look into it together. They both had day jobs, so the work began as an after-hours inquiry. Taylor, 52, is usually drawn to character-driven human interest pieces. Her Peabody Award-winning 2007 documentary Hear and Now, for example, follows her deaf parents as they get surgical implants. Jaquiss, 59, meanwhile, gets a rush from holding power to account and reporting on the workings of complex institutions. His reporting that exposed former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s sexual abuse of a teenager, for example, won him a Pulitzer Prize in 2005. “We realized this story was an intersection of what we both do best,” Taylor says. “We wanted to know how pedophilia had been allowed to run rampant inside this organization for so long.”

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

Jaquiss dug into public records and quickly discovered “a huge Oregon angle,” he says. A direct line appeared between the 2010 case of Kerry Lewis, a sexually abused former Portland Scout, and the institution’s financial downfall. “That case was a gigantic boulder that rolled downhill and landed on the Scouts,” Jaquiss says. “It crushed them.” As Jaquiss pored through files from the Boy Scouts’ bankruptcy filing, Taylor courted two important allies: Stephen Crew and Peter Janci. The lawyers, operating out of the Albers Mill Building, had worked the Lewis case and represented hundreds of other victims who allegedly suffered sex abuse in the Boy Scouts. She asked if they knew any survivors who wanted to tell their story. Over the next several months, the law firm connected Taylor and Jaquiss with five survivors scattered across the country—with the caveat that interview subjects could “back out at any moment,” Crew says. “It takes tremendous courage to come forward,” Crew says. “Surprisingly, they were comfortable with it.…They were impressed with the seriousness of the film.” That fall, nine months after the Scouts filed for bankruptcy, The New York Times reported that far more than a few thousand men, and even some women, had come forward alleging sex abuse at the hands of the Boy Scouts, which started allowing girls to join in 2019. There were at least 82,000. They ranged in age from 8 to 93, the paper reported. “The numbers were mounting,” Jaquiss

says. “It’s such a hellacious story we knew other people were going to be on it. So the question then became, are we going to get beat?” In November 2020, Taylor drove down Interstate 5 to the town of Lebanon for her first on-camera interview with a survivor, Kris Yoxall. Yoxall, 18, is a flannel-clad skater kid who looks as slender and frayed as a used toothpick. As the camera rolled, he opened up for the first time, in front of his parents, about the sexual abuse he suffered four years prior. Yoxall was preyed on by his scoutmaster, Douglas Young, when he was in his early teens. Young, who is now incarcerated at Ontario’s Snake River Correctional Institution near the Idaho border, was convicted of sexually abusing a total of 10 boys. Taylor could sense they were onto something big—and deeply disturbing. She treaded lightly. “I leaned on my instincts as a mother,” says Taylor, who has three sons, two of whom were in Boy Scouts. “I’m used to talking to boys, and I know that if you can just hold your tongue, there’s a lot of really good information that comes out,” she says. The film opens with a shot of Yoxall in his modest, poster-dotted bedroom. There’s a hole in the wall that he made with his fist. “I hate that I do it,” Yoxall says of his outbursts. Yoxall is one of six sex abuse survivors the movie centers on while tracing the arc of the Boy Scouts’ scandal and financial collapse. Over the next year and a half, Taylor and

There’s a reason journalists like Taylor and Jaquiss know the vast scale of how many kids were preyed upon by scoutmasters: the case of Kerry Lewis. Scouting had established deep roots in Oregon—thousands of members in councils and districts all over the state, 800-acre Camp Meriwether on the Tillamook County coast. But Oregon was also the scene of a trial that would lead the Scouts to financial ruin. In 2010, a Portland jury found that Timur Dykes, an assistant scoutmaster from Portland, sexually abused Lewis. Dykes had previously confessed to a Boy Scouts coordinator that he had molested 17 children—yet was still allowed to work in the organization, according to Lewis’ attorneys. In the punitive phase of the trial, the jury awarded Lewis $18.5 million, the largest single payout in a child sex abuse case in U.S. history. That the trial happened at all was highly unusual. The Boy Scouts were regularly sued but very rarely went to trial, choosing instead to settle cases. That tactic often ensured that the Scouts’ “perversion files,” records of pedophiles within their ranks, remained secret. During the Lewis trial, Judge John Wittmayer ordered a portion of the perversion files released. The vast dossier detailed the abuse of thousands of boys between 1965 and 1985. “Kerry Lewis was the genesis of those files becoming public,” says Crew, who worked on the case. The ruling was, effectively, game over for the Boy Scouts. After the massive Portland verdict, sexual abuse attorneys across the country could point to the dollar value of damage done to a single Portland Scout, and they could introduce the files that were translated into searchable databases by newspapers that included The Oregonian and the Los Angeles

SURVIVOR STORIES: Former Boy Scouts Ron Kerman, John Stewart, John Humphrey and Stuart Lord tell their stories in Leave No Trace.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The rise of streaming video services in the past decade gives filmmakers more opportunities to tell difficult stories. But in this case, the story was about an institution with close ties to many corporate boardrooms. Taylor had plenty of contacts in the film world after working with HBO for years. But early in the production process—back in 2020, in fact—she encountered a problem. Randall Stephenson, then CEO of AT&T,

MOVIEMAKERS: Producers Emily Singer Chapman and Sara Bernstein, executive producer and director Irene Taylor, and producer Nigel Jaquiss at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 9.

ABC/MICHAEL LE BRECHT II

Jaquiss says he tried for months to get Boy Scout executives involved in the documentary. “We really wanted to know, how are you thinking about this now?” But he ran into one dead end after another. Some knowledgable sources would talk off the record and point him in the right direction. But they didn’t want to go on camera. So Jaquiss was thrilled when John Stewart, a former managing director for the organization, agreed to talk. In May 2021, after a road trip from New York to Ohio, Jaquiss and Taylor met Stewart in Indiana to interview him. Jaquiss expected the executive, who resigned in 2019, to speak from a marketing perspective, possibly about how the institution could be restructured. But, over a pre-dinner drink, Stewart casually mentioned that he too had been abused as a Scout. “That was an amazing moment,” Jaquiss says. Stewart appears in one of the movie’s most jaw-dropping scenes, detailing the sexual abuse he suffered at a camp in Frankton, Ind. His older brother, he says, narrowly escaped a similar attack. “I remember him telling me a story about his scoutmaster coming into his tent one night, and he just basically said, ‘Get off me,’” Stewart says in the film. “An adult volunteer did a very similar thing to me, and unlike my brother, I didn’t have the strength or ability to push him off.”

which owned HBO at the time, had been on the Boy Scouts’ national board since 2005, including serving as president from 2016 to 2018. “We couldn’t really pitch to HBO, the best and most likely outlet to buy it,” Jaquiss says. “It would be a big conflict.” Enter Ron Howard. The Hollywood executive formerly known as Opie co-runs a production company called Imagine Entertainment. Sara Bernstein, Imagine’s co-president of documentaries, was intrigued by the fresh angle on the Kerry Lewis trial. “I was like, OK, there’s something really unique here,” says Bernstein, who had previously worked with Taylor at HBO. In early 2021, ABC News Studios and Hulu signed on to the project, hoping to compete with HBO and Netflix in the crime documentary field that had exploded while people sat on their couches during the pandemic. By January 2022, Taylor and Jaquiss were done filming and had completed most of the editing. That month, they submitted the documentary to the Tribeca Film Festival. Last week, they flew to New York City for the film’s world premiere. The Wall Street Journal called Leave No Trace “superbly conceived” and “not to be missed.” On June 8, Taylor arranged a private screening for survivors and their families at ABC’s New York headquarters. Boy Scout executives heard about the screening and asked to be invited. Taylor shut that idea down in a hurry—some of the survivors would be seeing the film for the first time, and the last thing they needed was for representatives of the organization that failed them to be in the room. The people who participated in the movie’s creation hope it serves as a warning to other powerful bodies. “The real tragedy would be if other organizations don’t learn from this,” Janci says. “I hope other folks learn from the Boy Scouts’ mistakes.” In the future, the Scouts may be replaced by a new outdoor group for kids, Taylor says: “It’s my hope that another organization will pop up in its place.” The new group could teach the same values of self-reliance and honesty, along with the Scouts’ own “leave no trace” philosophy—to leave a place better than you found it. “I don’t know if the Boy Scouts’ brand will survive,” she says. “But it’s my hope that the ideal will.”

ABC/MICHAEL LE BRECHT II

Times. Costly cases against the Scouts piled up around the country. In response to the scandals in the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America, many states, including Oregon in 2015, extended the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits for sexual abuse. Prior the Kerry Lewis case, the Boy Scouts’ annual tax returns show the organization regularly earned an operating profit. But in the decade between losing in Portland and declaring bankruptcy in 2020, the organization lost money every year, a total of more than $500 million.

SEE IT: Leave No Trace streams on Hulu starting June 16.

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

STREET

ON ONE SIDE OF A SWOLLEN RIVER, A MARCH AGAINST GUNS.

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

ON THE OTHER, PORTLAND HOSTS THE ROSE PARADE.

Photos by Michael Raines On Instagram: @m_h_raines

Portland events on Saturday showed a city returning to normal—and how far we still have to travel. A summer rainstorm eased on May 11 long enough for the resumption of the Rose Festival’s Grand Floral Parade. The first Rose Parade that Portland has seen since the pandemic descended, it featured marching bands, colorful floats, and Bill Schonely, the retired eminence of Blazers broadcasting. The parade’s route twisted from the Oregon Convention Center across Northeast Portland. On the side of the Willamette River—which had swollen by 2 feet in a day, enough to shut down the floating portion of the Eastbank Esplanade—families marched for a different reason: fury over unabated gun violence. The “Portland March for Our Lives” was one of dozens across the nation. The annual marches began after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. Weeks after another school massacre in Texas, the message remains unchanged: Congress must break out of its hypnosis by the National Rifle Association. “Am I next?” one sign asked.

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

MUSIC MILLENNIUM PRESENTS PHOTO CREDIT

GET BUSY

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

RECORD STORE DAY

WATCH: A League of Their Own

There’s no crying in baseball and there’s not much crying in this 1992 classic—it’s pure joy. Directed by Penny Marshall, the film is a witty and moving tribute to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which played from 1943 to 1954. The terrific cast includes Geena Davis, Madonna, Lori Petty, Rosie O’Donnell, Tom Hanks and David Strathairn. Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515, cinema21.com. 7 pm Wednesday and Thursday, June 15-16. $9-$11.

PART

WATCH: The Lighthouse, Men and Moonlight

Cinemagic is saving some of the best films in its A24 Studio Showcase for last. Between the philosophical intrigue of The Lighthouse, the imaginative body horror of Men, and the soul-deep romanticism of Moonlight, the final days of the festival make a compelling case that A24 is less a brand than a cultivator of thrillingly disparate works of art. Cinemagic Theater, 2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 971-420-9350, thecinemagictheater.com. Multiple showtimes Wednesday and Thursday, June 15-16. $7-$9.

- JUNE 18TH 8AM TO 10PM

C O U R T E S Y O F L I V WA R F I E L D

- 0VER 85 LIMITED EDITION VINYL RELEASES

- FREE COFFEE & GRANOLA BARS @ 7AM

➥

GO: Juneteenth Oregon 50th Annual Celebration Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the end of slavery by marking the day enslaved people in Texas learned they were free, became federally recognized in 2021. But the celebration of Juneteenth Oregon dates back to 1945, when late, beloved community leader Clara Peoples introduced the tradition to her co-workers at the Kaiser Shipyards in Portland. Now in its 50th year, festivities kick off Saturday with a parade featuring Portland Fire Chief Sara Boone as grand marshal. The two-day event will also feature guests from the Miss Juneteenth Oregon program, which provides education and resources to help youth gain confidence and make positive life choices. You can also expect a lengthy lineup of performers, including Jay Electronica, Yawa, DJ Bryson and Rasheed Jamal. Lillis Albina Park, North Flint Avenue and Russell Street, 503-228-5299, pdxjazz.org. Noon-7 pm Saturday and 11 am-6 pm Sunday, June 18-19.

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EAT: Snackdown V: The Return! While most beer dinners are somewhat formal affairs with multiple courses and lectures on pairings, Snackdown revs up the action. At this wrestling-themed food competition, eight of the city’s best chefs pair with eight Oregon brewers, who together serve their greatest snack-and-beer combos. Guests then choose who wins the much-coveted WWEstyle championship belt. Expect participants to prepare for battle by dressing up like pro wrestlers, spandex and all. The Evergreen, 618 SE Alder Ave., pdxbeerweek.com. 1-4 pm Sunday, June 19. $49 includes eight small plates, eight 5-ounce beer pours and a collectable glass. 21+.

WATCH: Goodfellas

Ray Liotta was more than an actor—he was an ever-evolving icon who could fuse menace, tenderness and goofiness in a single film. Celebrate his life and legacy by checking out this screening of Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic from 1990, in which Liotta invests the doom and delusions of Henry Hill with gloriously vulgar humanity. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.org. 2:30 and 6:30 pm Sunday, June 19. $8-$10.

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FOOD & DRINK

Editor: Andi Prewitt Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

Top 5

Hot Plates WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.

1. PIZZA THIEF

2610 NW Vaughn St., 503-719-7778, pizzathief.com. Noon-9 pm Wednesday-Monday. Mondays are slow at most bars and restaurants, but not at Slabtown’s Pizza Thief. During its de facto service-industry night, you’ll find a growing number of brewers, distillers and cidermakers who’ve made this spot their regular hangout. And they’re not just there to drink. Pizza Thief has found a way to tap into our city’s vast fermentation labor force and put members to work baking pies and pouring beers. The new collaboration series is called Meet the Maker Mondays, which features a different Sicilian-style pizza created by a craft beverage company every week.

2. DAME

2930 NE Killingsworth St., 503-227-2669, damerestaurant.com. 5-10 pm Thursday-Sunday. Dame may be the most wonderful, underpublicized restaurant in Portland. The intimate Italian meals served there 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. 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.

3. YES PLEASE SMASH BURGER

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. POLLO BRAVO

1225 N Killingsworth St., 503-477-8999, pollobravopdx.com. 11:30 am-9 pm daily. During the pandemic, Pollo Bravo stuck it out for a while with takeout and delivery from Pine Street Market, but without downtown’s tourists and office workers, co-owners Josh and Sarah Scofield eventually decided to go on hiatus. Now the beloved brand is back in a stand-alone restaurant with its signature chicken and stalwart sides (radicchio salad, patatas bravas), as well as select tapas and a rebooted Bravo burger. And nearly everything on the menu is ready to be dipped in Pollo Bravo’s decadent sauces.

5. RINGSIDE STEAKHOUSE

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 June just happens to be National Steakhouse Month, giving you another excuse to drop in.

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

DUMPLING GANG: At $8.95, the Berkshire-Duroc pork-and-shrimp steamed dumplings are a steal.

A Bao Time Dough Zone manages to inject new life into the former Lucier space on the South Waterfront thanks to its affordable prices and decent flavors. BY A N D R E A DA M E WO O D

You’ll never go to a haunted house so open and bright as the one that holds the new Dough Zone on the South Waterfront. The eye-popping 7,657-square-foot space, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking onto the Willamette River, was once home to the most high-profile flop in Portland dining history: Lucier. Investors sank $4 million into the operation, which was universally panned and then closed just seven months after it opened in 2008. Successive ventures there in the decade since have also collapsed. Dough Zone, a Seattle dim sum darling with its first Portland outpost, must have come in with some industrial-sized sage sticks:

Early on, it seems to have what it takes to lift the yearslong funk at 1910 S River Drive. It starts with that huge main room, designed with sleek lines, wood-paneled walls and dramatic, spiraling light fixtures. It’s an environment suited for a $200 prix fixe meal, but instead menu items run about $6 to $12, making it an uncanny cafeteria. It’s best if you keep in mind that this is still a casual business—a place to go with friends and order a smorgasbord. Fill a table with spicy beef pancake rolls, flaky grilled dough wrapped around shredded beef and lettuce that’s somehow hearty and light, and throw in some Berkshire-Duroc pork-and-shrimp steamed dumplings, which arrive six to a steamer with the shrimp tails emerging from

Top 5

Buzz List WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.

1. PAPA HAYDN SELLWOOD C O U R T E S Y O F PA PA H AY D N

THOMAS TEAL

5829 SE Milwaukie Ave., 503-232-9440, papahaydn. com. 11:30 am-10 pm Wednesday-Sunday. Papa Haydn is best known for its desserts—and its cafe on Northwest 23rd Avenue—but the original location across the river boasts both a charming patio and a long list of cocktails for those days when you want to end (or start) your meal with a liquid confection. Opened in 1978, the restaurant and its shaded terrace are a hidden Sellwood gem—the perfect place to sip on the Secret Garden (citron vodka, strawberry purée, muddled basil) while seated in an actual secret garden.

2. 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.

3. BACKYARD SOCIAL

It’s best if you keep in mind that this is still a casual business—a place to go with friends and order a smorgasbord. the chewy dumpling wrapper like a sail. You’ll need to learn how to properly time your first bite into Dough Zone’s signature Q Bun ($8.95 for four). Steamed and then pan fried till crispy on the bottom, the bao contains pork and juices similar to a xiao long bao: If you sink your teeth in too soon, you’ll burn your mouth; wait too long and that juicy goodness is absorbed by the dough. Get it right and you’ll have one of your best bites of the day. Dumplings, overall, are the star, from a succulent chicken pot sticker with a crispy laced bottom (don’t go for its veggie counterpart, which was sadly bland), to classic wontons in chile oil that hit the right textural mark, if not quite reaching a level of true spiciness. The xiao long bao are the best deal in the city: Score an order of six for $7.95. They are well seasoned, filling, and not too chewy. Do others do it a smidge better? Sure, but Dough Zone is a worthy entry to Portland’s growing XLB market. Make sure to adequately tour the menu’s other offerings. A spiralized sweet-and-sour cucumber appetizer ($5.75) is a refreshing

counterpoint to the heavier stuff, and lightly blanched broccoli with a seafood sauce for dipping ($5.95) was strangely simple yet compelling. Dan dan noodles with pork ($6.25) and the cold Szechuan noodles ($6.25) are both solid; again, neither is spicy enough, yet they are flavored well otherwise and perfectly chewy. Skip the underseasoned kale salad ($5.95) with thick stems left in the mix, as well as the zha jiang mian ($6.50), an underwhelming bowl of boiled noodles and veggies. Still, even the misses so far at Dough Zone feel low stakes thanks to the low prices; go a few times and find your own personal favorites. Take a walk on the waterfront while you inevitably wait (this place is popular) for a table. Food will arrive fast and piping hot; finding someone to flag down to pay your check will take several minutes. Get a milk tea to go. In cities that revere both Dough Zone and Taiwanese behemoth Din Tai Fung, there’s a spirited debate about which is better. With plans for DTF (now with a location in Tigard’s Washington Square) to open a massive 11,000-square-foot restaurant in Pioneer Place, we’ll soon be spoiled by the riches of downtown dumplings from both businesses. I’m personally looking forward to hanging with the ghosts of dim sum future. EAT: Dough Zone, 1910 S River Drive, 503-446-3500, doughzonedumplinghouse.com. 11 am-10 pm daily.

1914 N Killingsworth St., 503-719-04316, backyardsocialpdx.com. 4-9 pm Monday-Tuesday, 4-10 pm Wednesday-Saturday. Names don’t lie: Counting its previous incarnation as the Hop & Vine, Backyard Social has been one of Portland’s best outdoor spots for over a decade, and its verdant, could-be-a-neighbor’s-garden charm is hard to resist now that temperatures are warming. It’s also a real restaurant, with duck leg confit, crispy fingerling potatoes, and a perfect, tavern-style burger that comes off a mesquite charcoal grill you can see and smell from your table. The list of about a dozen cocktails also includes two shots: Jell-O and pudding.

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. PORTLAND CIDER CO.

3638 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 971-888-5054, portlandcider.com. 3-9 pm Wednesday-Thursday, 1-10 pm Friday-Saturday, 1-9 pm Sunday. 8925 SE Jannsen Road, Building F, Clackamas, 503-744-4213. 3-9 pm Wednesday-Thursday, 3-10 pm Friday, noon-10 pm Saturday, noon-9 pm Sunday. Back by popular demand, Portland Cider’s Tangerine Dreamsicle was designed to trigger summertime notalgia, with its bright, tangy fruit juice swirled together with rich vanilla from Singing Dog in Eugene. It’s one of the brand’s most requested small-batch beverages ever, and it’s only available for a limited time. Drink up. Summer is too short.

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

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Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

POTLANDER

For the Pot-Lovin’ Pops From a stylish water pipe to hyper-organized stash trays, here are 11 gifts the cannadads in your life will appreciate this Father’s Day. BY B R I A N N A W H E E L E R

Being a cannamom is a very fashionable topic. Mother’s Day weed gift sets now rival those for the established wine-obsessed moms, midday talk shows giddily dish about the benefits of stoned parenting, and the most famous momfluencers in the world are shilling CBD bath bombs and gummies. But what about cannadads? While reveling in discourse about how cannabis makes for more effective mothering, we sometimes overlook the fact that fathers might parent more patiently and effectively as well when responsibly using cannabis products. Keeping that in mind this Father’s Day, skip the typical mug, slippers and tie and instead shower your herb-loving dad with the latest gadgets, gizmos and, of course, hella good weed. Because, let’s be honest: If you’re lucky enough to have a present, engaged, tender-loving cannadad in the first place, well, honey, that’s worth celebrating all year round.

FOR THE CANNA-WELLNESS DAD East Fork Cultivars Oil Tinctures Established as one of the most aggressively holistic cannabis brands in the Oregon market, East Fork is firmly dedicated to full-organic processes that set the gold standard for therapeutic cannabis cultivation. Its new tinctures, made with an avocado oil base, are a testament to the company’s commitment to producing extraordinary, high-quality products. Use these as part of a daily wellness regimen and expect robust results. BUY: Hemp Bar, 6258 SE Foster Road, 503-477-7183, hempbarportland.com.

Caps by Cookies Is it just me or are all the dads really into functional mushrooms right now? Caps by Cookies are cannabinoid-mushroom-blend capsules formulated to produce either restful sleep or relaxed focus. The Bed Head blend features CBD and CBN as well as chaga, maitake, reishi, shiitake, and turkey tail mushrooms, while the Clarity variety includes lion’s mane and cordyceps along with CBD and CBG. BUY: Cookies, 16102 NE Halsey St., 503-764-9863, cbd.cookies. store.

High Desert Pure Mimosa Aloe Gel Dads who include skin care in their wellness regimen may

appreciate this aloe vera-based, cannabis gel moisturizer. The citrus fragrance is bright but not overly sweet, and the gel is absorbed cleanly, leaving skin moisturized rather than greasy or sticky. Bonus: Though this product is primarily for skin care, I have used it to moisturize my hands during bouts of tendinitis and felt the same marginal relief I might get from any other quality topical. BUY: Somewhere Dispensary, 2128 NW Overton St., 503-3842466, somewherepdx.com.

FOR THE GAMES AND GADGETS DAD Blazy Susan This reimagined stash tray is a must-have for any dad who struggles with organization. Modeled after a lazy Susan, these trays feature spaces to roll, prep dabs and hold (almost) all types of smoking accessories and supplies. Finishes include dark and light woodgrain, deep pine green, black, and bubble-gum pink if your dad’s into a stoned Barbie aesthetic. BUY: blazysusan.com

Suddenly Stoned We reviewed this simple, straightforward card game earlier this year and found it to be something of a necessity for fun-loving potheads. The stakes are crazy low: Players take turns drawing cards and completing tasks, points are noncompulsory, rounds are elective, and game play can be as earnest or as flippant as you’d like. BUY: breakinggames.com

Rogue Paq Ritual Case For the fanny-pack father, consider this sleek, contemporary cannabis carrier as a Daddy Day gift. These lambskin cases feature scent suppression, a water-resistant protective lining, and a removable internal pouch. The whole thing is graspable with one hand, which means it also fits easily into a daybag or roomy hip pack. Plus, if you’re looking to make Dad feel fancy, the cases can be monogrammed. BUY: roguepaq.com .

FOR THE COLLECTOR DAD Heir Waterpipe

on a bookshelf. The mouthpiece and downstem screw apart easily from the body, making cleaning—arguably the most obnoxious thing about smoking from a bong—as simple as rinsing with hot water. The wide, brass bowl holds enough flower for deep-lunged varsity smokers to toke solo, or for a pair of stoned parents to happily share. BUY: smokeheir.com

Vessel Helix Pipe Every stoner dad needs a one-hitter of his very own, and Vessel’s Helix pipes have a masculine vibe that make them perfect for Father’s Day. The devices hold just enough flower for a single user to sneak a toke, and its double-helix design filters and cools hits. Precision crafted in pure, nontoxic brass, the gunmetal gray housing says this is very much for dudes by dudes. BUY: vesselbrand.com

FOR THE STRAIN-HUNTER DAD Sugar Daddy This indica-dominant strain features a sweet, lemony exhale and a rich, herbal bouquet. Users report bold euphoric highs that taper into relaxation. THC percentages average below 25%, but you should still expect a potent high and eventual couchlock. BUY: Belmont Collective Dispensary, 2036 SE Belmont St., 503-477-8953, belmontcollective.com.

Mac Daddy This rare cultivar delivers heavy, body-soothing effects alongside a potent, cottony head high. Users report experiencing everything from feeling energetic to soupy, depending on their resting state, so puff slowly and with caution. BUY: Oregrown Portland Cannabis Dispensary, 111 NE 12th Ave., 503-477-6898.

The Godfather Another heavy-hitter with strong indica genetics is Godfather, a cross of XXX OG and Alpha OG. Expect a pungent skunk perfume and gassy exhale that delivers a sleepy, cashmere-soft body high and gently relaxed head space. BUY: Lemonnade PDX, 6218 NE Columbia Blvd., 971-279-2337, cookies.co.

Heir’s water pipes are designed to produce clean, smooth hits, but aesthetics were not overlooked. The ceramic, stainless steel and soda-lime glass devices are stylish enough to display

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

BOOKS

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

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Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

Embodying Love Portland writer Jules Ohman delights with her debut novel, Body Grammar. BY S A R A G I Z A

Finishing your first novel is a massive achievement that anyone should be proud of, but Portlander Jules Ohman’s Body Grammar (Vintage, 320 pages, $17) is more than a perfect beginning to her career. It’s a story so captivating from start to finish that it’s difficult to believe it’s a debut. Set partly in Portland, Body Grammar follows its protagonist, Lou, and her friends through the summer between high school graduation and whatever lies on the other side. Intent on making the most out of a perfect summer day, they undertake an adventure that is anything but, forcing them to try to make sense of their lives. For Lou, that means confronting how she is perceived. Continuously scouted by modeling agents for her androgynous look, she takes each card with no interest, often feeling that clothes are wearing her, rather than the other way around. She prefers to be behind the camera, spending most of her time taking photographs of her close friend Ivy. Body Grammar is a coming-of-age story so refreshing and realistic that it is easy to imagine yourself there in each moment with Jules and Ivy. You don’t just picture them as characters—you picture them as people from your own life. While some novels build to a climax only to slowly taper off, Body Grammar quickly sets a steady pace that it maintains through its final pages. Ohman craftily weaves together both the delicate and the dense, allowing the reader to feel the currents of its defining themes, including queerness, first love, grief, identity, healing and acceptance. For those who identify as queer or LGBTQ+, there is an inner knowing as a teen that there is something

within that is different, but the ability to identify or articulate what exactly that is remains just out of reach. Body Grammar excels when it explores that idea, particularly in this excerpt (page 29): “...[A]nd all she felt was sorry: Sorry that she didn’t have a song, the words, or a firm hold on any of what she felt, which was so enormous, so physical, that sometimes it was like she was lost in the dense branches of a tree so high up she couldn’t even imagine reaching the top, let alone looking down. Sorry that Ivy was so much, the most of anyone, already up there at the top, and Lou was just herself, climbing.” As Body Grammar progresses, we follow Lou into the shimmering world of high-profile, fast-paced fashion shows and photo shoots in New York City and Rome. In Lou’s attempt to have purpose, there is a crisp juxtaposition. The more she tries to find it, the more she starts to lose herself and whom she loves. It’s a journey defined partly by a tragic accident that occurs on a hike. Through Lou’s struggle to understand her identity, Ohman shows the ways in which tragedy and trauma can change us—and what it’s like to live for someone other than yourself. Although we’re watching a queer character learn to navigate life throughout Body Grammar, its themes are universal. Thanks to the breadth of its ideas and the quality of Ohman’s writing, the novel is a true gem that seems to exist beyond time, seeing humans as holistic beings with multiple dimensions. However many hours Ohman spent on Body Grammar, one thing is clear—each one was worth it. SEE IT: Jules Ohman appears in conversation with Kimberly King Parsons at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323, powells.com. 7 pm Thursday, June 16. Free.

MUSIC

COMEDY IAN WHITMORE

WHAT TO SEE AND WHAT TO HEAR BY DANIEL BROMFIELD @b r o m f 3

FRIDAY-SUNDAY, JUNE 17-19:

Jake Silberman: I kind of put it out of my mind. For the first year, I didn’t even know when comedy was going to come back in any real indoor way. But once we kind of crested that hump of, OK, the vaccines are out, that’s when I started to play it again in my brain. I was debating the timeline—when New York reopened at first, I was like, maybe I should go sooner, and then another wave hit and I was glad I didn’t. But I think moving to New York now, unless some crazy new strain or catastrophe happens, I’ll be able to hit the ground and start doing comedy immediately.

Why did you decide to start touring, particularly outside of Oregon, last year? I’m not huge on social media, so the way to get my name out there is just to physically go to all of these different scenes, do well, meet people. It’s kind of the old-school way, just shaking hands and like, I’m this guy. You can’t expect to sit in one city and blow up anymore. You have to get big on the internet or you have to do it the old-school way: “Oh, I’ve seen this guy in Chicago and I’ve seen him in Denver. Like, he’s a name. He’s out there.” JAKE EVERLASTING: Jake Silberman.

Most LGBTQ+ people know the events that make Pride worth it aren’t the mainstream family-friendly ones, but the ones off the beaten path, where queer culture and history don’t have to look good for corporations or the casually bigoted. Luckily, PDX Underground Pride: Dollapalooza is calling “all dolls, baes, faes, theys, daddies, baddies, mothers, partyboys, material girls, and allianas” for an absolutely massive three-day rave celebration featuring several RuPaul’s Drag Race winners and dozens of mostly lesser-known Pacific Northwest DJs. The North Warehouse, 723 N Tillamook St. $15-$250. 21+.

SUNDAY, JUNE 19:

Of the musicians who picked up on John Fahey’s American primitive guitar style in the ’60s and ’70s—think country blues, but with a Western art-music attitude—Leo Kottke is the most popular. He’s an adept singer-songwriter (albeit with a voice he’s described as sounding like “geese farts”), but the core of his talent lies in his guitar playing, which is virtuosic without ever seeming to make a big deal about it. His upcoming Aladdin Theater show is a great opportunity to watch one of the most gifted and beloved guitarists in the American roots tradition in action. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. 8 pm. $42.50. All ages.

MONDAY, JUNE 20:

La Femme is one of the most popular rock bands in France, where their co-ed vocals and coolly ironic take on French youth culture has made them ubiquitous. Despite the potential language barrier, their sound isn’t impenetrable to Americans—their upbeat, sophisticated mix of disco, psych rock, and punk should appeal to anyone whose taste straddles the mainstream and the indie-verse. Besides, much of their most recent album, Paradigmes, is written in a mangled French-English hybrid, so you can shout along with 30% of what they’re saying. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St. 8:30 pm. $18. 21+.

Exit Interrupted Comic Jake Silberman is finally leaving Portland for New York City two years after the pandemic halted his initial planned move. BY A N D I P R E W I T T

Travel became an integral part of your growth, then? For the most part, any comic eventually has to cut their teeth on the road. To be good in the way I want to be good, you have to perform in front of a lot of different people. Because Portland people, generally speaking, have certain things that they’ll find funny. But then you go down to Molalla or Dallas—smaller, conservative towns—and they have a completely different frame of reference. They’re not going to get some of your jokes that might really do well in Portland. They might even find those offensive and vice versa. It’s also good for you as a person to get out and meet a bunch of different types of people.

Did the last two years change your approach to comedy at all? I think once we got comedy back, it was really appreciating it, not taking it for granted. Even bad shows, I was like, it’s still a show. It’s better to have a bad set than not get to do comedy at all. And then traveling so much helped me realize how much bigger comedy is than just Portland. I think that when you’re in whatever scene you started in, that’s kind of your little world. It really opened my eyes: There are funny people everywhere. You have to stand out amongst those funny people.

aprewitt@wweek .com

Jake Silberman’s #VanLife has been anything but glamorous. The comic—who was voted WW’s Funniest Person in 2018—bought the bare-bones, banged-up vehicle last year from a disbanding catering company in order to hone his skills on the road as economically as possible. So, yes, there’s now a bed in the rear, but the setup is more Frances McDormand in Nomadland than a bohemian-inflected Instagram account documenting the journeys of a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. As the 35-yearold puts it, the van is “a tool to do comedy,” and it’s been a pretty effective one at that. “The money you make in comedy is not great,” Silberman explains. “Some of these gigs you’re doing, like maybe you get a few hundred bucks, but you don’t get a hotel.” Turning his ride into a bedroom means he’s been able to save some cash by not paying for lodging while traveling across the U.S.. Hitting the road also allowed him to transition to full-time professional comedian—no day job—a status most standups simply dream of. “I’m not on TV, but this is how I make my living—as a comic,” Silberman says. “It takes a lot more discipline on the business side, which I really had to learn on the fly.” And after living and performing in Portland for nine years, the Minneapolis transplant will leave town for good in his trusty van by the end of June. He’s setting out on another cross-country tour that will end in his next hometown: New York City. The move has actually been in the works for years. In March 2020, Silberman’s bags were all but packed. He gave notice to his employer. Then, two weeks later, the nation shut down, wiping out every show on Silberman’s schedule. Rather than follow through and relocate to New York anyway, which quickly became the epicenter of that initial COVID surge, he hunkered down for an extended stay in Oregon. Now that waves of severe illness seem to be subsiding and we’ve learned to live in a world that’s adapting to this disease, Silberman is bidding farewell to the city where he cultivated his standup and became known for his razor-sharp crowd work that made no two performances alike. WW caught up with Silberman just before his going-away showcase June 19 to ask the elder statesman about the evolving local comedy scene, why he thinks touring is critical to his growth, and one career goal he had but didn’t achieve.

WW: Did you ever reconsider your original plan to move to New York during the last two years?

How was your experience with the downtime when you couldn’t perform? A lot of the comics I talked to in some way did appreciate the break. I can’t tell you how better my mental health got in the pandemic because [pre-COVID] I was working 40 hours a week, biking to and from work, biking out doing two or three spots a night, coming home, repeat. I didn’t even realize how exhausted I was. I turned that into my lifestyle, so I got used to it.

Now that you’ve been in the comedy scene here for nearly a decade, how has it changed? When I started, there was a lot more talent up top. Ian Karmel was still here, Shane Torres was still here. And the hierarchy was a little more formed. You were like, these are the people above me, and anytime one of those people moved, you moved up a rank. And more and more of that talent has peeled off to L.A. or New York, so the scene now is so much newer.

How do you think you’ve grown as a comic? I’ll try to think more about what I’m doing onstage and also be as loose as possible, so it’s kind of this weird tension. When I first started, I would come off as a very angry person. I don’t think that was good, because I don’t think people could relate to me. I was in my 20s, like, “What the fuck are you angry about? You haven’t even seen the world yet.” And now I definitely try to present, hey, I’m having fun up there! And also being more conscious of the things I need to get better at, which I don’t think I was always super aware of.

Are there any goals you made that you didn’t accomplish in Portland? Yes. One hundred percent. One thing that I never got to do that I’ll definitely leave with a bit of a chip on my shoulder is, open for someone at one of the theater shows. I got to open for some of my heroes at Helium. But when someone did the Aladdin or Revolution Hall, I always wanted to be the opening comic outside of a comedy club, and for whatever reason, it never happened. But you can’t get everything, and honestly, I don’t think it’s bad, because I kind of like always having something to prove. I’ll leave this city and be like, I’ve gotta get better. I have to be undeniably funny to get to that next level. That’s a good goal to have. SEE IT: A Silby Send-Off takes place outside Desert Island Studios, 645 N Tillamook St., eventbrite.com. 7 pm Sunday, June 19. $10. Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

MOVIES

STREAMING WARS

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

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PORTLAND PICK:

RAY OF LIGHT: Liotta as Henry Hill.

A Good Fella Ray Liotta’s secret to giving the performance of a lifetime in Goodfellas? Not showing off. BY C H A N C E S O L E M - P F E I F E R

@chance_ s _ p

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SEE IT: Goodfellas plays in 35 mm at the Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd, 503-493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.org. 2:30 and 6:30 pm Sunday, June 19. $8-$10.

INDIE PICK:

Calling all Terrence Malick worshippers! There are new whispers that The Way of the Wind, the master’s long-awaited film about Jesus, will finally debut this year. If you’re feeling impatient, check out Knight of Cups (2015) and Song to Song (2017), which complete an unofficial (and underrated) trilogy of contemporary romances that began with To the Wonder (2012). Christian Bale, Rooney Mara, Ryan Gosling and Michael Fassbender play spiritually adrift souls seeking enlightenment. Free on Roku, Tubi, YouTube.

HOLLYWOOD PICK:

If you survived (and enjoyed!) last week’s screening of Star Trek: Nemesis at the Hollywood Theatre, there are enough delightfully terrible Trek flicks to fill a Klingon Bird of Prey. The bizarrest of the bunch is Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), which was directed (and co-written!) by Capt. Kirk himself, William Shatner. It’s about the Enterprise crew’s exceptionally ill-fated search for God, which culminates with Kirk’s most unforgettable exclamation: “What does God need…with a starship?!” Paramount+.

INTERNATIONAL PICK:

Zhang Yimou’s 1991 masterpiece Raise the Red Lantern is maddeningly hard to find (step up, Criterion!), so watch it while you have the chance. Gong Li plays a young woman who becomes a concubine during China’s Warlord Era— and gets lost in a maze of friendship and rivalry that will leave you exhilarated, mesmerized and shattered. Free on Amazon Prime.

ORION CLASSICS

Once Goodfellas’ opening act begins in earnest, we get our first proper introduction to Ray Liotta—starting with his alligator loafers. From the concrete, the camera ascends, climbing up his silk slacks, knit button-down, perfect chin, cigarette exhale and lazy pompadour. “Objectification” isn’t strong enough a word for the meal director Martin Scorsese’s camera makes of his star. Liotta’s Henry Hill is an avatar of underworld seduction, drawing us into the mob, but also demonstrating he’s fully bought in himself (gangster glamour is required even to loiter around Idlewild Airport pondering cargo theft). Ever since Henry can remember, Liotta famously narrates, he’s wanted to be a gangster—and when we first see Liotta, he’s arrived. When Liotta died in his sleep last month at age 67, his introductory image in Goodfellas filled my mind. With all due respect to Liotta’s intense, otherworldly Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams (1989) and his unblinking menace in Something Wild (1986), the late actor was never in a movie that meant so much to the world and to him as Goodfellas (for more on the film, see Get Your Reps In, page 31). Still, Liotta’s centrality in Scorsese’s fact-based film, which was released in 1990, is curious. One could argue that a dozen different elements have historically drawn more attention than his portrayal of Henry turning from protagonist to antihero to shit heel. Goodfellas jolted Scorsese’s second directorial act, proved his bankability, and forever linked him to crime epics. It won Joe Pesci an Academy Award, minting him as the unlikeliest movie star of the ’90s. It garnered Lorraine Bracco an Oscar nod. The Copacabana tracking shot became a cinematic totem. Pesci’s “Funny how?!” bluff is familiar even to those who’ve never seen the film. But then there’s Liotta, ushering the audience through every detail of wiseguy culture, embodying a scumbag Nick Carraway whose DNA interlaces with the film’s. His cocksure testimony explains why you’d want to be a gangster (“treated like movie stars with muscle”), backed by the intoxicating fusion of his inner monologue and

James Kwei and Thelma Schoonmaker’s iconic freezeframe editing. Even so, Liotta’s performance is a model of humility. He plays Henry as a willing sidecar to the film’s showier actors—a vessel that the movie fills and then drains of appeal. He’s always the junior half of his relationships, standing in the shadow of men like Pesci’s Tommy DeVito (who kills Billy Batts over an insult) and Paul Sorvino’s Paulie Cicero (who epitomizes fading “Godfather” wisdom, but remains formidable). Within his marriage to Bracco’s Karen Hill, Henry is at his most human and ghoulish (he’s a philanderer and an addict absent any justification). Despite all the talk of Mafia codes and conduct, their marriage is the story’s true partnership, albeit a perverse one. In Bracco’s Twitter eulogy for Liotta, she wrote: “I can be anywhere in the world & people will come up & tell me their favorite movie is Goodfellas. Then they always ask what was the best part of making that movie. My response has always been the same…Ray Liotta.” It’s worth recalling, too, what Liotta is actually doing in the shot that opens on his loafers. When the lens finally reaches his face, he’s staring into the distance. Henry Hill, it seems, spends his whole life looking, gazing, coveting, visually absorbing the criminal lifestyle. We witness young Henry’s dilated pupils as he peers from his bedroom window at the mob-run cab stand across the street. In the preceding cold open, Kwei and Schoonmaker freeze on a shot of Liotta slamming the trunk containing Billy Batts’ corpse, then staring into the dark, terrified and doomed. And in the final act, Henry, in a cocaine flop sweat, peers skyward at circling helicopters as though he expects to be smitten from on high. In the end, of course, Liotta shatters the fourth wall with his stare, indicting those who’ve enjoyed being tourists in mob life as much as Henry has. In the final seconds, Liotta is no longer an object, but the silent voice of every artist involved in the film. Ray’s eyes—narrowed to slits—say it all. And just who the hell are you, watching me?

Jon Garcia is well known for directing scrappy, emotionally intelligent films like the Falls trilogy. But during the pandemic, he pulled off what is perhaps his greatest creative coup yet: filming Love in Dangerous Times (2020), a romance that unfolds in the age of COVID. Ian Stout plays a writer who, from a distance, bonds with a woman (Tiffany Groben) he meets on a dating app. Free on Tubi and Vudu.

MOVIES G ET YO U R R E P S I N A24

GENESIUS PICTURES

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

The Lighthouse (2019)

GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE Good Luck to You, Leo Grande deconstructs expectations with fascinating storytelling that speaks to our fluid modern age. Director Sophie Hyde and writer Katy Brand begin by gender-swapping the traditional May-December romance, focusing on Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson), a widow who hires Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) for an evening of intimacy she hopes can make up for a lifetime of sexual neglect. Nancy and Leo’s story is told through a series of three encounters that gradually expose their true selves. There are fully nude sex scenes, but the movie shines during quiet, chemistry-building conversations that take us to unexpected (and sometimes uncomfortable) places. Despite offering few glimpses beyond the hotel room where most of the story unfolds, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande presents a compelling contrast to the scores of coming-of-age movies. Because it’s not about misguided youth blossoming into self-actualization. It’s about self-actualization being reached after a life of regret. R. RAY GILL JR. Hulu.

MAD GOD

From Star Wars to Jurassic Park to RoboCop, visual effects master Phil Tippett’s creatures and contraptions have captured millions of imaginations. Now a 70-year-old director, he’s back to turn all your clay dreams into cataclysmic nightmares. For three decades, he labored over Mad God, a barely narrative steampunk fantasia of a stop-motion world laid waste by a wrathful Levitical deity. We follow a masked soldier in the post-apocalypse descending into a realm of beasts, golems and reapers so textured they’d make Dante Alighieri and James Blake envious—the film is epic and scummy, like Ray Harryhausen taken to a psychedelic extreme. There are also traces of Metropolis’ socio-industrial brutality and Eraserhead’s gawky viscera, but while Tippett impressively sweeps the camera across his practically animated 3D worlds, anyone who argues Mad God is just corpses and critters being intermittently squished would be mostly right. Yet behind the mayhem lies Tippett’s conviction that true creation is an act of unrelenting authority, solipsism and propagation. Why else would one work for 30 years to render an exquisitely hopeless night terror? Mad God believes that hell is worth not only seeing, but assembling—entrail by entrail. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Cinemagic.

LIGHTYEAR

Four months ago, Disney punted Turning Red, Pixar’s panda-as-puberty allegory, to streaming. It was an audacious

movie that should have been seen on a massive screen—unlike Lightyear, a helping of middle-tier Pixar with only a touch of the acclaimed animation studio’s signature emotional gravity. Buzz Lightyear, formerly a plaything voiced by Tim Allen in the Toy Story tetralogy, is now a very alive astronaut voiced by Chris Evans. Marooned on a backwater alien world, he dreams of leading his crew home, but pays a poignant price for meddling with space and time. Like most animated films for children, Lightyear packages lessons about teamwork as snuggly as the contents of Lunchables. “You don’t need to save us! You need to join us!” one character tells Buzz, perfectly summing up the film’s rote wholesomeness. For messier and more entrancing ideas, look to the question that loosens Buzz’s impossibly firm jaw: What is home? As Buzz struggles to make peace with life in the unknown, Lightyear invokes Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film about a father and a daughter separated by a swirling wormhole. Lightyear may be lightweight for Pixar, but in its most transcendent moments, it merges the human and the cosmic into a movingly seamless whole. PG. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain 8, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza, Wunderland Milwaukie.

JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION

In a sensible universe, this disastrous franchise compendium from director Colin Trevorrow

would’ve become two wholly separate projects. The first would have been the popcorn-churning blockbuster finale of the current Jurassic trilogy, featuring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard and DeWanda Wise on a nonsensical mission to rescue the cloned granddaughter of Jurassic Park’s founding patriarch. The second would have been a bittersweet affair about Sam Neill and Laura Dern rekindling smoldering tensions—and Campbell Scott (as the super-locust-spawning lord of a Monsanto-style corporate empire) and Jeff Goldblum debating environmental collapse amid a furious duel of mannered tics and daft cadences. Yet Dominion splices its two storylines together, resulting in awkward, perfunctory introductions that make even the irrepressible Goldblum seem desiccated. Worse, in order to keep visual track of all the famous faces, the sweeping vistas that defined the first Jurassic Park film have been chopped up into ’80s TV-styled midrange shots, leaving a gazillion-dollar production looking cheap. Even directors far more talented than Trevorrow (who made The Book of Henry, one of the most infamous films of the past decade) would find the sheer mathematics of the project untenable. But isn’t that the ultimate message of these films? Like life, sequels— however ruinous—find a way. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Academy, Bagdad, Cedar Hills, City Center, Eastport, Empirical, Fox Tower, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, St. Johns, St. Johns Twin, Studio One.

This claustrophobic chamber horror stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as two lighthouse keepers whose assignment to tend the light on a remote New England island goes awry when a mystical storm maroons them. Swirling with salty secrets, spiteful seagulls, and one seductive siren, director Robert Eggers’ sophomore film may just be his masterpiece. Screens as part of Cinemagic’s A24 Studio Showcase. Cinemagic, June 15.

Moonlight (2016)

Also screening as part of Cinemagic’s A24 Studio Showcase is Barry Jenkins’ stunning Best Picture Oscar winner, which chronicles three stages in the coming of age of a shy Black boy. Refuge from his abusive mother (Naomie Harris) comes in the form of a supportive couple (Mahershala Ali and Janelle Monáe) who help him grapple with his sexuality, identity and masculinity. Cinemagic, June 16.

Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Working-class teenager Tony Manero (John Travolta) finds escapism from his bleak home life in the form of disco dancing in this ’70s time capsule, which is known for catapulting both Travolta and the Bee Gees’ original hit “Stayin’ Alive” (written for the film) to international fame. Featuring an introduction and film insight from film programmer Elliot Lavine. Cinema 21, June 18.

Goodfellas (1990)

“As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a gangster.” Screening in 35 mm as a tribute to the late Ray Liotta, Martin Scorsese’s crime drama staple chronicles the rise and fall of mob associate Henry Hill (Liotta) and his rocky relationship with his wife (Lorraine Bracco) and his wiseguy mob partners (Robert De Niro and a scene-stealing Joe Pesci). Hollywood, June 19.

Sebastiane (1976)

Set in A.D. 300 and notable for being one of the few films in Latin, this X-rated historical drama from legendary gay filmmaker Derek Jarman (known for his 1993 avant-garde piece Blue) follows St. Sebastian’s exile to a remote Roman garrison. There, pain and pleasure intertwine, as the oft-nude men cope by indulging in homoeroticism and torture. Clinton, June 21. ALSO PLAYING: Clinton: The Dog (2014), June 20. Hollywood: Psychotronic TV Oddities in 16 mm, June 21.

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. Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

FREE WILL

B Y M AT T J O N E S

2022 MATT JONES

ASTROLOGY ARIES

(March 21-April 19): Aries actor Marilu Henner has an unusual condition: hyperthymesia. She can remember in detail voluminous amounts of past events. For instance, she vividly recalls being at the Superdome in New Orleans on September 15, 1978, where she and her actor friends watched a boxing match between Leon Spinks and Muhammad Ali. You probably don't have hyperthymesia, Aries, but I invite you to approximate that state. Now is an excellent time to engage in a leisurely review of your life story, beginning with your earliest memories. Why? It will strengthen your foundation, nurture your roots, and bolster your stability.

TAURUS

(April 20-May 20): Poet Elizabeth Bishop noted that many of us are "addicted to the gigantic." We live in a "mostly huge and roaring, glaring world." As a counterbalance, she wished for "small works of art, short poems, short pieces of music, intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things." That's the spirit I recommend to you in the coming weeks, Taurus. You will be best served by consorting with subtle, unostentatious, elegant influences. Enjoy graceful details and quiet wonders and understated truths.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In the coming weeks,

Across

47. _ _ _ Khan

the office

1. Swimmer's stroke

48. S'mores need, traditionally

25. Terribly

49. Reason your 1990s Hypercolor shirts might work later in the decade?

29. Summoning, as at an airport

6. Monastery superior 11. Las Vegas's _ _ _ Grand Hotel 14. Cabinetmaker's machine 15. City served by Dallas/ Fort Worth Airport 16. Dove sound 17. Book lover who focuses on insects? 19. _ _ _ Talks

51. 1964 Hitchcock thriller 53. Brain activity meas. 54. Star player of an old flipphone game? 56. Issa of the upcoming "Vengeance"

20. Music system

57. "Slithy" creatures in "Jabberwocky"

21. Time before someone becomes a best friend?

58. "Hello" singer

23. Twosome on "Everybody Loves Raymond" or "Friday Night Dinner"

60. ABBA member, e.g.

59. '60s activist org. 61. Portended

28. Lion lair

30. Most confident 31. Paper that now owns Wordle, for short 33. "Saturday Night Live" alien 34. Scandalous acts 35. Lot to park and stay overnight, maybe 36. Service station offering 37. They may tap a percentage 40. Central positions

24. Wanna-_ _ _ (pretenders)

Down

41. Webpage option under an invoice

26. Exceed

1. Stylish

43. Fell from grace

27. '98 and '99, but not '100

2. "Jurassic World: Dominion" classification

44. Maryland state bird

28. "Slumdog Millionaire" actor Patel

3. Site of the first modern Olympics

47. Solicited

29. Last period of the Paleozoic Era

4. Rotor noises

30. Venus's sister

6. "Bored" NFT character

32. She, in Rome 33. The art of hand-drawing national outlines? 37. Sightseeing trip 38. "All in the Family" in-law Mike 39. Without slowing down or speeding up 42. Co. that makes ATMs and introduced LCDs

5. Bury the _ _ _ 7. Tells all 8. Grammy winner Erykah

45. Appeared to be 48. Brother of Michael and Sonny Corleone 50. Building projection 52. Melville mariner 55. Ending for Japan or Sudan

9. Anxious 10. Lethargic state 11. Graham of "The Hobbit" and "Preacher" 12. Handles gently, with "on" 13. Pfizer alternative

43. Palindromic plea at sea

18. Pattinson of "The Batman"

46. Iran, long ago

22. Desktop not meant for

©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.

last week’s answers

you will need even more human touch than usual. Your mental, physical, and spiritual health REQUIRE you to have your skin in contact with people who care for you and are eager to feel their skin against yours. A Tumblr blogger named Friend-Suggestion sets the tone for the mood I hope you cultivate. They write, "I love! human contact! with! my friends! So put your leg over mine! Let our knees touch! Hold my hand! Make excuses to feel my arm by drawing pictures on my skin! Stand close to me! Lean into my space! Slow dance super close to me! Hold my face in your hands or kick my foot to get my attention! Put your arm around me when we’re standing or sitting around! Hug me from behind at random times!"

CANCER

(June 21-July 22): Author John Banville wrote what might serve as a manifesto for some of us Crabs: "To be concealed, protected, guarded: that is all I have ever truly wanted. To burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky’s indifferent gaze and the harsh air's damagings. The past is such a retreat for me. I go there eagerly, shaking off the cold present and the colder future." If you are a Crab who feels a kinship with Banville's approach, I ask you to refrain from indulging in it during the coming months. You're in a phase of your long-term astrological cycle when your destiny is calling you to be bolder and brighter than usual, more visible and influential, louder and stronger.

LEO

(July 23-Aug. 22): "We wish to make rage into a fire that cooks things rather than a fire of conflagration," writes author Clarissa Pinkola Estés. That's good advice for you right now. Your anger can serve you, but only if you use it to gain clarity—not if you allow it to control or immobilize you. So here's my counsel: Regard your wrath as a fertilizing fuel that helps deepen your understanding of what you're angry about—and shows you how to engage in constructive actions that will liberate you from what is making you angry.

VIRGO

(Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo author Jeanette Winterson was asked, "Do you fall in love often?" She replied, "Yes, often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all." Even if you're not usually as prone to infatuation and enchantment as Winterson, you could have many experiences like hers in the coming months. Is that a state you would enjoy? I encourage you to welcome it. Your capacity to be fascinated and captivated will be at a peak. Your inclination to trust your attractions will be extra high. Sounds fun!

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran lexicographer

Daniel Webster (1758–1843) worked hard to create his dictionary, and it became highly influential in American culture. He spent over 26 years perfecting it. To make sure he could

Willamette Week JUNE 15, 2022 wweek.com

properly analyze the etymologies, he learned 28 languages. He wrote definitions for 70,000 words, including 12,000 that had never been included in a published dictionary. I trust you are well underway with your own Webster-like project, Libra. This entire year is an excellent time to devote yourself with exacting diligence to a monumental labor of love. If you haven't started it yet, launch now. If it's already in motion, kick it into a higher gear.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): "Shouldn’t the dis-

tance between impossible and improbable be widened?" asks poet Luke Johnson. I agree that it should, and I nominate you to do the job. In my astrological view, you now have the power to make progress in accomplishing goals that some people may regard as unlikely, fantastical, and absurdly challenging. (Don't listen to them!) I'm not necessarily saying you will always succeed in wrangling the remote possibilities into practical realities. But you might. And even if you're only partially victorious, you will learn key lessons that bolster your abilities to harness future amazements.

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

ist George Eliot wrote, "It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings—much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth." I believe you will be exempt from this rule during the next seven weeks. You will be able to speak with lucid candor about your feelings—maybe more so than you've been able to in a long time. And that will serve you well as you take advantage of the opportunity that life is offering you: to deepen, clarify, and refine your intimate relationships.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Author bell hooks

(who didn't capitalize her name) expressed advice I recommend for you. She said, "Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape." As you enter a phase of potential renewal for your close relationships, you'll be wise to deepen your commitment to self-sufficiency and self-care. You might be amazed at how profoundly that enriches intimacy. Here are two more helpful gems from bell hooks: "You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself" and "Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself."

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In April 2005, a

64-year-old Korean woman named Cha Sa-soon made her first attempt to get her driver's license. She failed. In fairness to her, the written test wasn't easy. It required an understanding of car maintenance. After that initial flop, she returned to take the test five days a week for three years— and was always unsuccessful. She persevered, however. Five years later, she passed the test and received her license. It was her 960th try. Let's make her your role model for the foreseeable future. I doubt you'll have to persist as long as she did, but you'll be wise to cultivate maximum doggedness and diligence.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In the eighth century,

Chinese poet Du Fu gave a batch of freshly written poems to his friend and colleague, the poet Li Bai. "Thank you for letting me read your new poems," Li Bai later wrote to Du Fu. "It was like being alive twice." I foresee you enjoying a comparable grace period in the coming weeks, Pisces: a time when your joie de vivre could be double its usual intensity. How should you respond to this gift from the Fates? Get twice as much work done? Start work on a future masterpiece? Become a beacon of inspiration to everyone you encounter? Sure, if that's what you want to do. And you could also simply enjoy every detail of your daily rhythm with supreme, sublime delight.

Homework: Homework: Tell a story that imagines what you will be like a year from now. Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

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Steve Greenberg Tree Service

Pruning and removals, stump grinding, 24-hour emergency service. Licensed/Insured. CCB#67024. Free estimates: 503-284-2077

Sunlan Lighting

For all your lightbulb fixtures & parts 3901 N Mississippi Ave. | 503.281.0453 Essential Business Hours 9:00 to 5:30 Monday - Friday | 11:00-4:00 Saturday

TRADEUPMUSIC.COM

Sunlan cartoons by Kay Newell “The Lightbulb Lady” Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Google

sunlanlighting.com

Buying, selling, instruments of every shape and size. Open 11am-6pm every day. 4701 SE Division & 1834 NE Alberta.

Get Busy Tonight

O U R E V E N T P I C K S , E M A I L E D W E E K LY.

SkIP LOVE

THE FIRE Your lungs

WOOD SMOKE IS A HEALTH HAZARD AND MAKES IT HARD TO BREATHE.

multco.us/WoodSmokeStatus

Inclusive Oregon - Let’s grow together. Come celebrate heart work with us at Portland’s Pride Festival at Waterfront Park on June 18th & 19th from noon to 6 PM. Lots of fun will be had along with great giveaways, and you can enter to win a beach getaway. See you there!