Willamette Week, November 23, 2022 - Volume 49, Issue 3 - "Will Merritt Paulson Prune the Thorns?"

BY ANTHONY EFFINGER. PAGE 14

VOL. 49, ISSUE 3

Residents of Dallas and Oklahoma City also believe unhoused people are migrating there. 4

The Portland Police Association demanded to see any documents related to gambling activity by Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty. 8

A Lyft driver may ask what tasks your service animal performs. 10

R.B. Pamplin Corp. pensioners now own a stake in the “Swan property.” 12

Merritt Paulson is in talks to sell the Thorns to a group of women owners. 16

Former Goldman Sachs head Hank Paulson is an avid birdwatcher who launched the Bobolink Foundation. 19

Looking for a real-life Hallmark movie experience (without Candace Cameron Bure)? There is a farmers market. 29 Uptown is releasing its reserve

of rare bottles from Beer Jail for one day only this week in honor of Black Saturday. 29

A new local podcast devoted entirely to poetry will debut in January 2023. 29

A phin is a traditional filter used to make very strong yet very smooth Vietnamese coffee. 30

Looking for a twist on the classic hot toddy this season?

Masala Lab’s chai version should do the trick. 31

If your Thanksgiving ambitions include nothing besides eating and napping , pregame with Monster Cookies. 32

Guitarist Steve Vai got his start as a teenage transcriptionist for Frank Zappa 33

Dear Nora’s new album was inspired by an obscure Australian synth-pop single, a Frank Ocean song, and the soundtrack to The Wages of Fear 34

The critical consensus on Gregory Gourdet’s luxe Haitian restau rant Kann is that it is one of the best new restaurants in Portland, if not the nation. In recent weeks, it’s received such superlatives from The New York Times, Portland Monthly and Esquire. Our reviewer, Michael C. Zusman, disagreed. He found Kann’s dining room oppressively loud, the dishes monotonously spiced with habanero, and the preparations uneven (“The Wrath of Kann,” WW, Nov. 16). His dissent was met with an immediate outcry. Here’s what our readers had to say:

BILL MILLIONS, VIA WWEEK. COM: “Printing a review like this absolutely ruins the credibility of this newspaper. The writer may get off on trashing a popular restaurant, but why does this make it to print? This review sounds like it was written by a cranky grandpa. Calling the cre ation of a menu open to all diets ‘limiting’ and not ‘appetizing’ is embarrassingly antediluvian thinking. I’ve eaten there twice and it has been wonderful both times; I’ve tried about 12 dishes (sharing with friends) and 11 of them were outstanding. Every one I know who has eaten there has loved it, including many of this critic’s more accomplished professional colleagues.

“But the problem isn’t so much that the writer didn’t enjoy the restaurant that others liked, it’s the nature of the complaints. There is a bias evident through out, calling Departure ‘lightly regarded’ (it regularly received raves), calling people supporting Gourdet ‘local sycophants,’ calling a national rave in The New York Times ‘behind the scenes machinations,’ saying that what is missing here is ‘subjugated egos’? This is not a restaurant review, it’s a hit piece. It’s beyond ridiculous. Kann is deservedly keeping Portland on the national food scene. I won’t

take any future food review from this paper seriously.”

JASON NOTTE, VIA TWITTER: “This is the single worst review this publication has produced since the [Martin] Cizmar era. Seven paragraphs before the actual review, nine before a mention of food, none indicating familiarity with the cuisine. I couldn’t show up at my high school the next day if I’d written this.”

REZZONE, VIA REDDIT: “My god, man, were you not expecting a lot of bonnet peppers? Your twice deep fried plantains were oily? Heaven forbid someone serve actual Haitian food.”

ERIC RIVERA, VIA TWITTER: “How fucking absolute dare you write some shit about plantains. Go to hell.

“This fucking area is so fucking white, then you have dipshits like this dragging down a chef because they are uncultured ass holes wanting everything to have Eurocentric cooking techniques applied.

“This is about to be a really widely read review. You should pull it soon and issue an apology to the chef, their restaurant, and anyone else that feels hurt by this bullshit you hit print on.”

CLEOPETE, VIA WWEEK.COM: “I used to say the only reason to read Willamette Week was for the restaurant reviews. Appar ently even that’s no longer true.

“I was not familiar with Gregory Gourdet and went the first time with some misgivings, knowing nothing about Haitian cuisine. I’ve dined at Kann and its adjacent bar, Sousol, twice now and surely will again as it easily ranks with establishments like Tercet, Jacqueline, and even…Lang Baan/Phuket.

“The Akra made me appreciate taro in a whole new way, the muffins disdained in this review paired perfectly with what may be the finest soup I’ve ever tasted. The red herring and smoked cabbage still haunts my dreams.…Everything about this piece is a complete detachment from reality.”

CASEY HOLDAHL, VIA TWITTER: “Haven’t been and it’s hard to figure it’s actually THIS bad, but arts and culture reporting tends to be so fawning that it’s refreshing to read a review that is basically ‘Yeah, this sucks.’”

PURSENBOOTS, VIA REDDIT: “Wait, really? I went to Kann with three friends the other night, didn’t know it was a celeb chef, wasn’t aware of the hype, just had an appetite and good company…and I think I saw the face of god on that first bite of humongous smoked beef rib.”

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

taken hold—and that includes such liberal bastions as Dallas and Oklahoma City.

BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx

I read in WW that the city will be constructing villages capable of accommodating 1,500-plus houseless campers. That’s great, but won’t it be self-fulfilling? Won’t the word get out that Portland is a Shangri-La for those without a home, exacerbating the problem? —Perpetually Pursuing Paradise

I’ve heard plenty of knocks on Mayor Ted Wheeler’s $27 million plan to warehouse the city’s street-dwell ers in massive tent cities, Pursuing, but I must say you’re the first to worry that conditions inside these camps may be too delightful. Call me a Negative Nancy, but I’m more concerned about a Mad Max meets-the Black Hole of Calcutta scenario than I am with creating a real-life Big Rock Candy Mountain so plush that the unhoused will have to fight Kardashians to get in.

Still, your premise—that supporting people experi encing homelessness will just attract more of them—is a common one. In an (admittedly unscientific) survey of news from other cities, I was unable to find a single one in which the “homeless are flocking here to take advantage of our generous services” myth had not

Probably some people do comparison shop for a city in which to pitch their tents. Some people put metal rods in their urethras for fun, too; it’s a big world. But the most seductive part of the homeless ness migration myth—that all these inconvenient people came from somewhere else and therefore shouldn’t be our responsibility—doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Of 1,448 unsheltered people surveyed in the 2022 point-in-time homeless count, Multnomah Coun ty says the vast majority were homegrown—they were either born here or had a home when they arrived.

Still, that leaves some people who could, in theory, have chosen Portland because of its generous ser vices. But what, precisely, are these superior services? Soup kitchen meals? Every city offers those. Drug and alcohol treatment? If only more folks wanted it. Ample shelter beds and generously subsidized housing? Apparently not, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Sure, it’s nice of Portland to offer a leg up to the downtrodden, but it’s not like every other city has a policy of roasting the unhoused alive on sight. Most offer a short list of underfunded amenities quite similar to ours. Are we really going to be mobbed by hordes itching to experience the Rose City’s quirky take on a North Korean labor camp? I’ll believe it when I see it.

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

Harry’s House is the third solo studio album from Grammy award-winning global superstar Harry Styles.

PORTLAND’S DISTRICT ATTORNEY FIGHTS

BACK: Mike Schmidt is on the defensive. Earlier this month, Portland Monthly published a less than flattering profile of the Multnomah County district attorney—title: “Schmidt Show”—not ing that his office has been making efforts to “change the narrative” as his race for reelection approaches in 2024. How does a progressive dis trict attorney survive in a city where the specter of rising crime is dominating political debate? Schmidt’s response: some old-fashioned finger pointing. He’s taking aim at public defenders, who, citing overwork, are refusing to take on some new cases. “From this day forward, my of fice will publish every case dismissed or set over as a result of this crisis weekly until it is resolved,” his office said in a statement Monday. The re lease listed 300 cases. It follows on the heels of last week’s data dump showing that his office is prosecuting property crime at a similar rate to his predecessor. Another statistic included in the dump: Portland cops’ property crime clearance rates are plummeting.

SENATE ELECTION TRIGGERS PUSHBACK:

Following the retirement of Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem), who has led the upper chamber of the Oregon Legislature for 20 years, Senate Democrats last week elected Senate Majority Leader Rob Wagner (D-Lake Oswego) to succeed Courtney and tabbed state Sen. Kate Lieber (D-Portland) to be the new majority lead er. Courtney made bipartisanship a byword in his two decades of service. Wagner is less likely to do so—at least judging by the reaction to his pick from the GOP side of the aisle. The choice of Wagner, who came to the Legislature in 2018 after a decade as a lobbyist for the American Federation of Teachers union, inflamed Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp (R-Bend). Knopp’s party grabbed one seat from Democrats on Nov. 8, depriving them of a three-fifths supermajority (Dems still hold 17 of 30 seats). Wagner’s presi dency must still be ratified by the entire Senate in January, and Knopp said in a statement he can forget about getting any Republican votes. Knopp said Wagner is “untrustworthy, deeply partisan, and doesn’t have the necessary skills to run the Senate in a bipartisan fashion.”

RIGHT: As WW reported earlier, the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners moved right on Nov. 8 and, although nonpartisan, now includes four Republicans among its five commission ers. The county’s party apparatus moved even further right—into extremism. In party elections last week, Daniel Tooze, a self-proclaimed Proud Boy from Oregon City, who came up short in his bid for the Republican nomination in House District 40 in May, won election as vice chairman. And for party chair, members selected Rick Riley, who is associated with the county chapter of the group Take Back America, which denies the results of the 2020 presidential election and es pouses an “America first” policy. Tooze and Riley could not be reached for comment.

POLICE BUREAU’S PLANE HELPS NAB TEEN

WEED BURGLARS: Portland police used one of their two single-engine Cessnas to round up three teenagers suspected of breaking in to a string of marijuana dispensaries in Southeast Portland in the early hours of Nov. 21. The spree began at 1:30 am, when the teens pulled up to a Nectar location on Southeast Woodstock Bou levard in a stolen car. They grabbed some weed and fled in a second getaway car. Within the next two hours, they hit two more dispensaries, driving their stolen silver Kia Soul into the doors of the second before fleeing. AIR1, a Portland police “air support unit,” was tracking the car from above, and police pulled it over shortly af terward. The three kids, all between the ages of 14 and 15, were booked in the Donald E. Long Ju venile Detention Home. The chase shows police deploying resources to crack down on burglaries and armed robberies that have plagued cannabis shopkeepers for two years (“Grass at Gunpoint,” WW, July 27). Police Chief Chuck Lovell praised the effort, noting that cops “were able to record video of the capture, which is being provided as an illustration of our officers’ great work and [the air support unit’s] value as a tool in fighting crime.” The provided four-minute video was shot with an infrared camera and uploaded to You Tube. It shows the teens hiding behind a shed, tossing the bag of loot over the fence, and then running—all as the plane radios their location to officers on the ground.

CLACKAMAS COUNTY REPUBLICANS MOVE

MULTNOMAH COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY MIKE SCHMIDT

Zero Sum Game

BY SOPHIE PEEL speel@wweek.com

City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty lost her reelection bid this month. But on another front, her battle continues: Her lawsuit against the Portland police union has reached the discovery phase, and both sides are demanding records that could prove explosive.

The case: On Dec. 13, 2021, Hardesty sued the city of Portland, the Portland Police Association, its former president Brian Hunzeker, and Officer Kerri Ottoman, alleging they leaked information to The Oregonian in the spring of 2020 that falsely implicated Hardesty in a hit-and-run.

She sued them in Multnomah County Circuit Court for discrimination and retaliation, intentional interference with economic relations, false light, and public disclosure of private facts. She seeks $5 million in damages.

The latest filings: Both sides demand that records be pro duced by the other as part of discovery. And they’re both going for the jugular.

Hardesty’s attorneys asked June 8 that Judge Benjamin Souede compel the defendants to produce over three years of communications relating to Hardesty to and from Hunzeker and Ottoman and a third officer, Ken Le. They also sought “text

NO ROOM

Gov. Kate Brown’s former coun sel gets bounced from three high-profile cases involving the Oregon State Hospital.

In October, the Oregon Department of Justice took an unusual step: It told a prominent lawyer he could not represent the state’s largest hospital systems in three interlocking cases at the heart of the state’s dysfunctional mental health system.

The lawyer, Misha Isaak, a partner at Perkins Coie LLP, has carved out a prominent practice since stepping down as Gov. Kate Brown’s gen eral counsel in 2020.

The unusual flap over Isaak’s role shows the high stakes of the three overlapping lawsuits re garding overcrowding at the Oregon State Hospi tal. That overcrowding has led to the emergency

messages, email or social media activity regarding Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, defunding the police and the [Portland Police Bureau] budget.”

Ottoman and the PPA argued through their attorneys it was unduly burdensome to require them to disclose communications received from others over a three-year period, and also claimed such communications would be exempt from disclosure because of union privilege.

“Defendants argue that discovery seeks their private commu nications never meant to be disclosed in public,” PPA attorney Andrew Campbell wrote in a reply. “Defendants argue that they would be embarrassed if Plaintiff used their communications in her reelection campaign.”

Hardesty’s attorneys argued there was no such privilege for the documents they requested. Matthew Ellis wrote: “Because the individual Defendant’s motives with respect to the Plaintiff are squarely at issue, communications sent, or received, by Hunzeker or Ottoman regarding the Plaintiff are a prime source of evidence regarding Defendants’ motives.”

Meanwhile, attorneys for the PPA asked Judge Souede on June 7 to compel Hardesty to produce and all documents related to gambling activity in order to gain “a picture of Plaintiff’s gam bling activity since 2016 and her current financial status.” It is unclear any such records exist and what they would contain. Hardesty has been known to visit casinos in her spare time,

release of patients. The cases will determine who gets OSH beds and could force the state to add more capacity.

In a frosty Oct. 20 letter, a senior DOJ lawyer withdrew earlier consent for Isaak to work on the cases.

“ We ask that you withdraw as counsel in these matters, due to the conflicts that are raised by your representation,” wrote Sheila Potter, DOJ’s deputy chief trial counsel.

Isaak says his role in the litigation is insignif icant.

“Litigation should be about the litigants and the issues, not the lawyers,” Isaak says. “That’s especially true for a case as important as this one. What’s at stake is the state’s role in providing appropriate mental and behavioral health care for civil commitment patients.”

WHO’S THE LAWYER?

Isaak gained prominence in 2014, when he successfully argued the case for same-sex mar riage. Earlier this year, he represented Nicholas Kristof in his unsuccessful bid to determine he met Oregon’s residency requirements to run for governor and, later, the University of Oregon in a high-profile lawsuit brought by a former football player who said excessive workouts permanently damaged his health (that case was settled).

and in 2020 was in a dispute with a Lyft driver giving her a ride home from Ilani Casino Resort in Ridgefield, Wash.

Hardesty’s attorneys argued that such records had nothing to do with her claims of racial discrimination. The PPA’s attorneys argued that because Hardesty is also suing for reputational damages, “defendants are entitled to explore the possibility that Plaintiff’s real motive is not the vindication of any sort of legally cognizable injury, but instead an attempt to enrich herself; or at a minimum rescue herself from unpaid debts. In other words, Defendants are entitled to explore whether Plaintiff is feigning or embellishing her reputational and non-economic ‘injuries’ because she needs the money.”

The ruling: Judge Souede ruled Sept. 21 that Hardesty must produce the documents the PPA wants, but only from after Jan. 1, 2018. The defendants must produce the records requested by Hardesty as well. That ruling has not been reported until now.

However, both parties may file documents as “confidential” if they provide reason for doing so; the confidentiality of such documents may be challenged by the other party. That would mean discovery documents filed as confidential would not be available to the public.

Hardesty’s attorney, Matthew Ellis, did not respond to a re quest for comment.

On Nov. 16, Judge Souede set a trial date of Sept. 26, 2023.

In late September, Isaak filed suit in U.S. Dis trict Court against the Oregon Health Authority on behalf of Legacy Health, Providence Health & Services, and PeaceHealth, as WW first reported Sept. 28.

WHAT’S AT ISSUE?

The hospitals want the court to force OHA to take responsibility for patients who have been civilly committed, rather than dumping them on private hospitals.

At the heart of the lawsuit: the allocation of scarce beds at the Oregon State Hospital. Two pending federal cases also relate to OSH capacity: Oregon Advocacy Center v. Mink and Bowman v. Matteucci, which concern, respectively, patients unable to aid and assist in their own criminal de fense (Mink) and those guilty except for insanity (Bowman).

WHAT HAPPENED?

In the spring, documents show, Legacy asked Isaak for advice on how to deal with its patient crunch.

Isaak asked Gov. Brown’s office to waive any potential conflict of interest regarding OHA. Isaak wanted Brown to consider whether he might have acquired knowledge while working for the state that could be used against it.

Brown granted the waiver. Isaak then sued the

state in September on the hospitals’ behalf. The hospitals also sought to intervene in the Mink and Bowman cases.

Having previously granted him a waiver, the state now objected.

“The governor’s office has decided to revoke the April 2022 conflict waiver,” Potter wrote Oct. 20, saying Isaak’s earlier request for a waiver “did not adequately specify the litigation” Isaak might bring against the state.

Isaak pushed back in a letter to Potter, noting he’d fully discussed the rationale for the waiver with Brown’s current counsel.

“My work with respect to matters involving the OSH capacity issues was very limited,” Isaak added in his Nov. 2 letter.

But his explanation fell on deaf ears

Michael Kron, special counsel to Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, says it’s “pretty un common” for an ex-state lawyer to seek a waiver to sue his former employer.

And for the state to withdraw the waiver? “That’s even more uncommon,” Kron says. WHAT NOW?

The Legacy case is now proceeding without Isaak, and a federal judge will soon rule whether to consolidate it with the other two OSH cases.

NIGEL JAQUISS.

Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty and the Portland Police Association are asking for discovery that neither party wants to put in the public record.

LAWYERS

CHASING GHOSTS WILL RETURN

5 FOR 5

When Clackamas County finished counting votes Nov. 18, Hoa Nguyen, the Democratic nominee in House District 48 (parts of Southeast Portland, Sandy and Damascus) could finally celebrate her victory over Republican John Masterman.

Nguyen defeated Masterman by 2.8 percentage points, a difference of 657 votes. Her victory made it a clean sweep for the five Vietnamese Americans (all Democrats) seeking House seats Nov. 8.

As WW reported earlier this year (“Represent,” June 29), the election held out the promise that Oregon would have the nation’s largest group of Vietnamese American lawmakers in the country.

Last week, it happened.

The newly elected representatives are Dr. Hai Pham, a Hillsboro dentist; Dr. Thuy Tran, a Northeast Portland optometrist; Hoa Nguyen, a Portland Public Schools attendance officer; and Daniel Nguyen, a Lake Oswego restaurateur. Hoa Nguyen is also an elected member of the David Douglas School District board, and Daniel Nguyen is a Lake Oswego city councilor.

The four newcomers join state Rep. Khanh Pham (D-Southeast Portland), who won election in 2020, in the House Democratic caucus in January.

“It’s a testament to the resilience of refugees and their children, as well as an inspiring story of the evolving meaning of what it means to be American,” Khanh Pham says of the election results. “I hope that this inspires other potential candidates who come from historically underrepresented groups to consider running, and to recruit others.”

Pham continued that it would a mistake to overgener alize about the five. “Each of us have very different back grounds—from business to health care to education and climate justice,” she says. “Our election wins demonstrate that Vietnamese people (as with other communities of color) are not a monolith, and cannot be reduced to a sim plistic or narrow agendas. We are as broad, diverse, and complicated as any other community.” NIGEL JAQUISS.

Every week, WW examines one mysteriously vacant property in the city of Portland, explains why it’s empty, and considers what might arrive there next. Except this week. We’re taking a Thanksgiving

break. We’ll make it up to you with an update on a previously examined property. Look for that story at wweek.com. Got questions about a vacancy? Send addresses to newstips@wweek.com.

Oregon will have the largest caucus of Vietnamese American lawmakers in the U.S.

MAPPED

HERE ARE THE DISTRICTS AND RESULTS FOR ALL FIVE CONTESTS:

Hai Pham

House District 36 (Hillsboro, Beaverton) Won 61.4% of votes cast

Daniel Nguyên House District 38 (Lake Oswego) Won 67.9% of votes cast

Thuy Tran House District 45 (outer Northeast Portland) Won 84% of votes cast

Khanh Pham House District 46 (Southeast Portland) Won 87.3% of votes cast

Hoa Nguyên House District 48 (outer Southeast Portland, Damascus) Won 51.2% of votes cast

Zero Stars

BY SOPHIE PEEL speel@wweek.com

Courtney McRae-Alston suspected the small dog in a pet carrier was no service animal.

“Service animals aren’t normally in carriers,” McRaeAlston says. But her Lyft pickup, a woman seeking a ride to the airport at 3 am that August morning, insisted otherwise.

So McRae-Alston, 54, asked the woman the two questions that drivers for ride-hailing services are legally allowed to ask: Is your animal required for a disability? What task does it perform?

“If you won’t answer it, I won’t accommodate you,” McRae-Alston recalls saying. “The woman said, ‘How dare you.’”

McRae-Alston woke up the following morning to a notification from Lyft: She’d been deactivated from the platform.

Drivers for ride-hailing services are contractors, not employees. That means they don’t have a lot of recourse if Lyft or Uber kicks them off its app. But three years ago, the city of Portland established a program that’s supposed to help mediate such disputes. So McRaeAlston went there to contest the deactivation, like 73 others have between late 2019 and February of this year.

It did her no good. The Portland Bureau of Trans portation’s TNC Drivers Advisory Committee and its ombudsperson are toothless watchdogs—because they can’t compel access to the data underlying driver sus pensions. Uber and Lyft say much of that information is proprietary.

A policy that would set clear standards for what documentation ride-hailing services must share about incidents and how quickly is itself stuck in limbo, leav ing an advisory body that’s supposed to advocate for drivers—many of whom are immigrants and people of color—mostly powerless.

Alma Raya, a former chair of the advisory committee, saw the policy stagnate for two years.

“The committee would pass recommendations, the bureau goes to talk to [Uber and Lyft], it gets watered down and, years down the road, now they’re trying to

implement it,” Raya says. “What is the point?”

The city contends it’s near a resolution.

“ We’ve been working back and forth with [Uber and Lyft] staff and the ombudsperson to really nail down what those lines are, in terms of balancing privacy and safety for riders and getting all of the information we need to advocate for drivers,” says PBOT spokeswoman Hannah Schafer. “There’s a little more to be done, but we are very close.”

Uber notoriously bulldozed its way into the Portland market in 2013. It argued that it didn’t fit into exist ing regulations, and all but wiped out the city’s taxi industry.

City regulators were rocked back on their heels and have been trying to course-correct ever since.

In 2019, late City Commissioner Nick Fish estab lished the TNC (Transportation Network Company) Drivers Advisory Committee to help advise the city on ride-hailing policy. The city also contracted with an outside law firm to set up an ombudsperson position— someone who could help drivers contest suspensions. This is a first-of-its-kind program, though Seattle does have some procedural regulations in place. (Drivers can’t go to the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry, which does not typically regulate contractors.)

Drivers can be deactivated for any number of rea sons: alleged offensive comments, physical touching, unsafe driving, chronically low ratings, app glitches or refusing to transport a service animal.

No matter the reason, drivers for ride-hailing ser vices have little recourse to contest a deactivation if they dispute an allegation because they’re given little information from the companies about the incident that led to the suspension. Sometimes, they’re given no details at all.

Raya remembers how quickly she and her fellow committee members noticed a demographic trend in riders filing complaints with the ombuds office.

“A lot of people that drove their own cab or taxi ended up switching to Uber and Lyft. That’s a lot of immigrant communities and drivers of color,” Raya recalls. “We say ‘deactivation’ very lightly, but this translates to

Where can drivers go if Uber or Lyft suspends or deactivates them? To a toothless city watchdog.

FIGHTING BACK: Former Lyft driver Courtney McRae-Alston has decided to fight her August deactivation from the platform.

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

literally being fired from your job.”

Beginning in 2019, Raya and the TNC Drivers Advisory Commit tee began advocating that the city adopt a policy that would require ride-hailing services to divulge more information about deactivations and suspensions—such as the rider’s complaint; all documents, state ments and evidence presented by the rider; and documentation of the company’s internal calculus to arrive at a deactivation.

The idea: With more information, the ombudsperson could better advocate for the driver.

The policy’s been stuck in a draft version—toggling between ride-hail ing services’ attorneys, PBOT staff, city attorneys and the ombudsper son—for over two years. During that time, 74 drivers have contacted the city about being deactivated or suspended.

Sally Lajoie, the ombudsperson, says most drivers filing complaints “lack the resources to pursue arbitration,” and describes the program as “the last stop.”

Raya resigned as committee chair last fall, partly because the policy was going nowhere.

Uber and Lyft argued to the city that furnishing the ombudsperson certain information about alleged incidents would put riders’ safety and privacy at risk.

In April 2020, a public affairs executive for Uber emailed PBOT di rector Chris Warner about the draft: “While incidents involving sexual assault or misconduct or physical violence are extremely rare, we must follow best practices in responding to any and all reports of critical safety incidents, and use the power of our platform to help address this broader societal challenge.”

A year later, a Lyft executive named Elizabeth Gallagher argued in an email to a PBOT official that the program did its job already. She argued that the policy would allow access to “a wide swath of personally iden tifying and sensitive information as well as proprietary business data” that wouldn’t be necessary to resolve complaints.

Gallagher wrote that drivers, if given information about riders, could retaliate.

Mohammed Azharuddin, 31, seems an unlikely driver to retaliate. He began driving for Uber in 2019 and sent most of the income to his mother in India to pay for her cancer treatment. He was deactivated in late 2020 over allegations that he made offensive comments regarding the George Floyd protests. (He denies the allegations.)

He went through the ombuds program but said information provided about the incident was so vague he couldn’t present any evidence to dispute it.

“It absolutely made me feel like shit. I lost the opportunity to make money,” says Azharuddin, who also received an eviction notice last week. “It’s been a really difficult two years.”

Haris Rashid, 35, moved from Pakistan to the United States in 2010 and recorded more than 5,000 rides for Uber before he was deactivated in late 2019. Uber shared that suspension with Lyft, where he was also deactivated—and where he had given over 4,000 rides without any complaints. A rider alleged he’d touched their leg.

He was floored by the allegation, which he vehemently denies: “If something like that really happened, it should be more than just a de activation. It should be investigated by law enforcement.”

Rashid took Uber to small claims court in August of this year. The parties settled and the case was closed.

“I am not interested in activation anymore,” Rashid says. “I don’t feel safe now to have someone in my car who can put any kind of allegation on me.”

Both Azharuddin and Rashid went to the ombuds program. Their deactivations were upheld.

PBOT’s Schafer says the yearslong delay in adopting a useful policy is due to the pandemic, the longevity of lawyers tweaking policy language, staff turnover at Uber and Lyft, and the slow pace of bureaucracy.

In August of this year, according to records obtained by WW, a Lyft attorney wrote, “If these changes were put into place, they would conflict with the Federal Arbitration Act,” therefore the “proposed changes to the Ombuds program would be preempted by federal law, limiting Lyft’s ability to participate in the program.”

As recently as this month, emails show, Uber and Lyft were sending suggested edits to the city.

McRae-Alston isn’t waiting. Last week, she became the first driver in Portland that went through the ombuds program to demand arbitration. She’s given up on driving—taking a job with the federal government—but wants a settlement. That’s all she can get: Drivers sign contracts with ride-hailing services that bar them from suing.

“An arbitration ruling doesn’t change the law, whereas the court rul ing sets a precedent and that impacts how they’re going to treat other drivers,” she says. “But with arbitration, you’re only talking money.”

Retirement Plans

A new federal filing shows Dr. Robert Pamplin sold even more company-owned real estate to pensioners in 2021.

BY NIGEL JAQUISS njaquiss@wweek.com

On June 9, 2021, the roughly 2,300 pension beneficia ries of the R.B. Pamplin Corp. became part owners of something called the “Swan property.”

On that day, the $105 million R.B. Pamplin Corpo ration and Subsidiaries Pension and Trust bought a parcel of real estate from an affiliated Pamplin com pany, paying $1.62 million for a fractional interest in the land.

It’s not clear where the Swan property is located. Its size and address aren’t disclosed in the fund’s annual filing, made last month.

What’s more important, however, is that a company selling property to its own pension fund is something federal pension regulators prohibit. It’s a practice the R.B. Pamplin Corp. has engaged in before, as WW first reported last winter (“Trader Bob,” Feb. 23).

But in the past year, R.B. Pamplin Corp. began making land deals with its pension fund at an extraordinary rate and scale.

Over the next six months, the fund would purchase 14 more fractional interests in the same property, me morializing the transactions with a new deed in each case. The sales of the Swan property transferred $10 million in cash from the pension fund to a Pamplin operating company.

In all, the Pamplin pension fund bought real estate from affiliated Pamplin-owned companies in 30 sep arate transactions during 2021, for a total of $16.97

million. In effect, the Pamplin operating companies exchanged unwanted real estate for cash—at a blister ing rate.

In the years 2019 and 2020 combined, for example, there were 14 such transactions with the pension fund, fewer than half the number reported for 2021.

The new details come from federal disclosures the pension fund filed with the U.S. Department of Labor in late October, and they shed new light on the troubles of Dr. Robert B. Pamplin Jr.

Pamplin, 81, is president of R.B. Pamplin Corp., a firm his father founded that grew to include Southern textile mills and, in Oregon, Ross Island Sand & Grav el, an 81,000-acre cattle ranch, two vineyards and 24 newspapers, led by the Portland Tribune.

In the 1990s, Pamplin occupied a spot on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, but his fortunes have since suffered a steep decline.

“Dr. Pamplin is an amazing person, and he had his fingers in a lot of businesses,” says Steve Law, a reporter and editor who retired from the Tribune in 2019. “His ghost town Shaniko, Christian music business, his radio stations, Ross Island Sand & Gravel, the textile mills… one by one, they seem to be falling apart. It’s kind of a reverse Midas touch.”

U.S. Department of Labor regulations say a pension fund should not hold more than 10% of its assets in real estate acquired from related parties. At the end of 2020, the Pamplin fund held 24% of its assets in such

NEWSPAPER MAN: Robert B. Pamplin Jr.

real estate. The new filings show that share had moved up to 36% by the end of 2020, and with additional transactions reported in the audited financials for 2022, it is now well over 40%.

Robert Pamplin owns and runs the R.B. Pamplin Corp. He is also the sole trustee of the Pamplin pension fund. That means when a Pamplin operating company sells real estate to the pension fund, Pamplin is acting as both the buyer and the seller. That puts him in a position of inherent conflict because, on behalf of his company, he wants to sell at the highest possible price while, on behalf of the pension fund, he wants to buy at the lowest possible price.

“In lay terms, it’s self-dealing,” says James Ambrose, a Portland pen sion lawyer who reviewed the new federal filings. “Pamplin is on both sides of the transaction. That is particularly concerning when the plan is purchasing property.”

The Department of Labor classifies sales of real estate from an oper ating company to a related pension fund as “prohibited transactions” because they are risky and subject to abuse. The agency requires pension trustees who wish to enter into such transactions to apply for and obtain a waiver for each transaction.

lay

DOL spokesman Michael Petersen told WW earlier this year that, despite all the prohibited real estate transactions from 2019 through 2021, Pamplin had never sought a waiver. (Failure to obtain a waiver can result in financial penalties and the cancellation of transactions. Petersen declined to comment on whether his agency is investigating the Pamplin pension fund.) DOL declined to comment for this story.

Some of the properties Pamplin companies have sold to the pension fund are un- or underused industrial properties that the operating companies then lease back from the fund.

Although the real estate transactions appear questionable, the good news for pensioners is, the fund holds nearly enough assets to cover its obligations—if the real estate is worth what the fund values it at.

Fund documents say the real estate prices were based on third-party appraisals, but those have not been made public. WW has reported the values of two prominent parcels that the Pamplin subsidiary Ross Island Sand & Gravel transferred to the pension fund—a defunct concrete plant on the waterfront and Ross Island itself—appear to have been significantly overvalued.

As WW has previously reported, Pamplin companies have struggled in recent years to meet their financial obligations, including property and withholding taxes.

What looks like a cash crunch may explain the pension transactions. Prior to 2018, the pension plan’s written contribution policy called on the parent company, R.B. Pamplin Corp., to contribute cash every year to fund its obligations to beneficiaries. In 2018, records show, that policy changed to allow “cash contributions or property contributions.” Since then, the parent company has rarely contributed cash.

A Pamplin spokesperson previously told WW that all pension fund transactions are legal and prudent and that Pamplin operating compa nies are in strong financial shape. A spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

On Nov. 1, the Tribune, which was distributed free for 20 years, moved to a subscription-only model, a sign of how tough the newspaper business is for all publishers.

Ben Jacklet, a former Tribune reporter, says he feels for his old col leagues and other Pamplin staff and pensioners.

“I am so glad I cashed out of the Pamplin pension when I had my chance,” Jacklet says. “I feel bad for all the employees and former em ployees who are stuck in the middle of this mess.”

“In

terms, it’s self-dealing. Pamplin is on both sides of the transaction.”

Glendon Pullen

I began reading WW while in college in 1975. A good friend and roommate of mine worked as a proof reader for WW from 1975 to 1976. When away at grad school, I would read WW as a way of keeping in touch with Portland. I’m a long time reader dat ing back to the days when one had to pay for it. My favorite part is the cover story, original reporting on matters of significant public interest.

So much of the internet is one big echo chamber, with news feeds and tweets passing along stories and information drawn from other sources. Some body has to underwrite those original sources, jour nalists with boots on the ground doing the original reporting from which those replicated stories are drawn. I want to contribute to local news reporters getting paid to report on significant local events, which are ultimately connected to significant na tional and world events.

“Local” matters because as they say “all politics is local,” and your stories about events that impact Portlanders we wouldn’t find elsewhere. “Indepen dent” matters because Americans’daily informa tion diet is so dominated by corporate media and political advocacy interests that there needs to be journalism not dependent on outside interests but answerable to its readers and the local community.

My father-in-law, Ed Rynerson, who will turn 100 in four months, spent his career as a whole sale news distributor. An acquaintance of Mr. Fred Meyer himself, he was instrumental in getting Willamette Week into Fred Meyer’s stores when the paper first started. He also included WW in his newspaper distribution runs to Salem and Eugene back in the 1970s. My wife and I make it a point to bring him a copy when we visit him each week. At age 99 and a half, he is still an avid reader.

Friends of Willamette Week are readers who support independent, local journalism. Here’s Glendon’s story about why they became a reader and Friend.

SCAN ME!

Become a Friend of Willamette Week today!

BY ANTHONY EFFINGER aeffinger@wweek.com

Merritt Paulson has spent the past two months bargaining to keep his Portland soccer dynasty.

Paulson, arguably the most ambitious team own er in Major League Soccer, has tried to appease players, fans and city officials who nevertheless want him to pay for a sexual abuse scandal that he covered up and downplayed for years. They want him to sell the Timbers and the Thorns, the soccer clubs he built from almost nothing into championship squads that are the envy of their leagues.

The big question remains: Can Paulson hold on as owner?

On Oct. 3, U.S. soccer’s top regulator reported that, among other things, Paulson had hidden the record of a former coach who sexually harassed two Thorns players in 2015. In addition, investigators said Paul son’s executives stonewalled their 2022 inquiry after pledging total transparency.

Two days after the report dropped, Paulson fired his top two deputies, general manager Gavin Wilkinson and president Mike Golub. Six days after that, Paul son himself resigned as CEO of both teams—while retaining control. He stayed home Oct. 29, when the Thorns traveled to Washington, D.C., to win a record third championship.

None of those moves may be enough—especially for the Timbers Army and the Rose City Riveters, the hardest-core Thorns supporters, many of whom have endured sexual violence and harassment themselves as members of queer communities.

“Portland was the ideal,” says Gabby Rosas, president of the 107 Independent Supporters Trust, or 107IST, a nonprofit that represents the Army and the Riveters. “Fans support a club not because it’s winning, but be

cause it reflects our values. That’s what’s heartbreaking about this. That idea has been shattered.”

Now, Paulson, 49, has a different plan to keep own ership of the Timbers: WW has learned he is in talks to sell only the Thorns, according to people with knowl edge of the negotiations, while keeping the Timbers.

One prospective buyer is a group of women led by Melanie Strong, a former Nike executive who left the sportswear giant to start an investment company called Next Ventures VC with disgraced cyclist Lance Arm strong. (The Oregonian named Strong and, separately, a group of fans called Onward Rose City as two possible buyers for both teams last month.)

Strong acknowledged the negotiations but declined to say if they only concerned the Thorns. “Nothing we can talk about yet, but I will share everything I can soon,” she said in a text message.

The Thorns and Timbers are owned by Peregrine Sports LLC, controlled by Paulson and his father, for mer U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, 76.

Peregrine is seeking $30 million to $50 million for the Thorns alone, two people familiar with the talks say. Merritt Paulson is betting that a sale of the Thorns to a group of women would take the heat off him as owner and allow him to keep the Timbers, the stadium deal, and media rights.

Sexual harassment on a women’s soccer team would be a story in any city, but nowhere more so than in Portland, a city that celebrates diversity and has em

braced the Thorns with a fervor seen nowhere else. American soccer leagues have also benefited from Portland’s passionate support for Paulson’s teams. That success, as well as the involvement of Hank Paulson, who is closely wedded to big league soccer officials, could mean Portlanders are not so easily rid of him.

And as we enter the holiday shopping season, some observers say the sale Paulson is discussing is a lesson in being careful what you ask for.

“The worst thing that could happen is selling the Thorns out from under the Timbers,” says Chris Hen derson, a professor at the University of Rhode Island who lives in Portland at times and has been studying the Timbers Army and the Riveters for the past few years. “If that happens, the Thorns would be in trouble. They are more vulnerable than they are as a package with the Timbers.”

Henry Merritt Paulson III, who, unlike his father, goes by his middle name, grew up in a wealthy suburb of Chicago, spent winters at a chalet in Keystone, Colo., and studied English at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., then got his MBA at Harvard.

After graduation, he managed HBO’s on-demand service, then did marketing at the National Basketball Association. He started hunting for a sports franchise to buy in 2004. His father agreed to help.

Paulson zeroed in on Portland and three years later bought the Timbers, then a minor league soccer team,

“The worst thing that could happen is selling the Thorns out from under the Timbers.”

and the Beavers, a AAA baseball team, for a reported $16 million. He tussled with skeptical members of the Portland City Council for months before winning $12 million in public money for a $36 million stadium renovation. At the time, Portland Monthly ran a profile of him called “The Player.”

“He’s ridiculously good looking,” it began. “He’s got a Harvard M.B.A. His father is the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Last May, Henry Merritt Paulson III bought the Portland Timbers and the Portland Beavers.”

Two years after his 2007 purchase, Paulson decided to focus on soccer instead of baseball and take the minor league Timbers into Major League Soccer. MLS required owners to have deep pockets and access to a soccer-specific stadium. Paulson had both, thanks to his dad. He paid MLS’s $35 million expansion fee and joined the league in 2009.

Paulson’s company leases Providence Park from the city and also guarantees a minimum share of ticket revenue. In 2022, the city is contracted to receive at least $1.94 million from Peregrine, according to the 2010 operating agreement.

When Paulson and his wife, Heather, moved to Port land in 2007, they settled in Lake Oswego. Three years later, they moved upmarket to Dunthorpe and got a $1.4 million loan from Paulson’s father and mother, Wendy, to buy a six-bedroom, 7,000-square-foot house on Southwest Iron Mountain Boulevard, county records show. They moved again in 2017, paying $3.4 million for a slightly larger house a mile north.

Heather Paulson, 46, was first in the class of 1999

at Cornell University, where she studied industrial and labor relations. She went immediately to Harvard Law School and graduated cum laude, according to her LinkedIn profile.

In 2002, Paulson and her law school roommate be came contestants on The Amazing Race 3, the reality TV show in which 12 teams of two raced around the world. They placed ninth. She became an antitrust lawyer in 2003 and married Paulson two years later.

In a 2016 interview with The Winged M, the in-house magazine of the Multnomah Athletic Club, where the Paulsons are members, Merritt said Heather was a “big part” of the decision to invest in the new National Women’s Soccer League in 2012 and form one of the first eight teams.

“ We felt it was the right thing to do, and if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right and not mar ket it as a niche product,” Paulson told the publication.

People who know Paulson (he declined several requests by WW for an interview) say he’s fidgety when he’s not at work. In conversation, he doesn’t seem to be listening but, rather, waiting to talk, said two people who have dealt with him.

He’s prickly, too, once tweeting to Timbers fans upset by a loss to “stfu.” Soon after, he deleted the tweet and apologized.

The vibe at Timbers headquarters was odd, says a person who worked there. The offices are in old skyboxes at Providence Park. They’re freezing in the winter and sweltering in summer, with no space for

large groups to meet on that level. Golub, the former president, really ran the business, several people say.

“Merritt would get bored and start popping into people’s offices,” one person says. “I think he has a good heart. He’s just got this weird tic. He makes bad decisions and says stupid things.”

Even so, Timbers and Thorns fans could do much worse than Merritt Paulson. By all accounts, he kept his cool in 2008 when the city of Portland demanded all sorts of provisions to protect its stadium investment.

“He was annoyed that we wanted so many guaran tees,” says former City Commissioner Randy Leonard, a working-class former firefighter who led the nego tiations with Paulson. “But I found him to be earnest and above board. He’s an unlikely person for me to grow to like so much.”

Behind the scenes, Paulson has worked hard to keep the NWSL together. When the Boston Breakers and FC Kansas City folded in 2017, Paulson convinced other owners to stand firm, keeping the eight teams the NWSL needs to qualify as the nation’s top women’s league, a team owner familiar with the negotiations says.

“He made his staff available like a strike force to go sit with leaders at other clubs,” the owner says. “If Merritt hadn’t pulled those people back from the brink, the NWSL would’ve folded.”

And, importantly, his teams are winners, especially the Thorns. This year, they became the first NWSL team to win three championships. The Timbers have been in three finals, winning one.

ZUMA

NOT SO SILENT

“The devil you know might be better than the devil you don’t,” says Henderson, the Rhode Island profes sor. “What if Elon Musk were to buy the teams?”

In the year after a journalist at The Athletic revealed sexual abuse and harassment by former Portland Thorns soccer coach Paul Riley, no one was fired at Peregrine.

Riley, while at another club, coerced one player,

president of the 107IST, the nonprofit that oversees the Riveters.

One year later, the U.S. Soccer Federation released a report prepared by former U.S. Attorney and deputy attorney general Sally Yates that confirmed the allega tions in The Athletic. It showed Paulson had fired Riley in 2015 but didn’t raise alarms about his behavior. To the contrary, after the Western New York Flash hired Riley in 2016, Paulson emailed Flash president Alex Sahlen and said, “Best of luck this season and congrats on the Riley hire. I have a lot of affection for him.”

In 2022, Yates said, her team of investigators were thwarted by Thorns managers who “interfered with our access to relevant witnesses and raised specious legal arguments in an attempt to impede our use of relevant documents.” They did so after Paulson himself pledged to “fully cooperate” with any investigation and to be “transparent” going forward.

While Pauslon would not talk to WW, a Peregrine spokesman says the Thorns produced more than 300 documents for the investigation, and executives sat for multiple interviews.

The reaction has been intense: “Paulson is a dis graced owner. And he will be until the day he becomes a disgraced former owner,” Oregonian columnist Bill

The Yates report “was a real crisis for Thorns fans,” Henderson says. “It’s particularly hard for people who are survivors. It’s uncomfortable to be in Providence Park because it brings up stuff from their past.”

For some fans, it was the last straw.

“The reason the teams have been successful is fan support,” says Chris Bright, co-founder of Onward Rose City, a group that’s raising money from fans to buy the teams, a similar structure to the Green Bay Packers. “The soccer culture here is wide and deep and goes beyond one person.”

So far, Onward Rose City says it has commitments for $9.2 million.

Adding pressure on Paulson to sell: Several sponsors have stepped back from Peregrine.

Union Wine Co. said it would “no longer participate as an official sponsor of either team.” Directors Mort gage said it was “deeply disheartened” by the behavior described in the Yates report and was also ending its sponsorship.

Alaska Airlines, the Timbers’ biggest sponsor, has been hedging a bit by comparison. Last month, Alaska said it was redirecting ad funds for this quarter to an emergency fund set up in December by the NWSL

PARTNER: Hank Paul son is majority owner of Peregrine Sports and sits on the MLS board.

ORJAN ELLINGVAG / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Players Association to help women players—who are notoriously underpaid—with living expenses and men tal health care costs in the wake of the scandals.

Meanwhile, politicians are piling on. All three can didates for governor, including now-Gov.-elect Tina Kotek, called for a sale. Mayor Ted Wheeler and all four members of the Portland City Council have said Paulson should sell the teams.

None of the city officials WW contacted, however, were aware of the negotiations to sell just the Thorns.

Told about this, Commissioner Carmen Rubio was supportive: “I would love to see a women-led group come forward and successfully purchase the Thorns. That would be a moment to celebrate.”

Commissioner Mingus Mapps, however, said selling the Thorns was not enough: “I think both teams should be sold.”

Even though the city owns Providence Park, pol iticians probably couldn’t force a sale. The 25-year lease, signed in 2010, contains no provisions that would permit the city to evict Peregrine over the sex abuse scandals.

A half-dozen people tell WW that little is likely to happen until a joint investigation by the women’s league and NWSL Players Association concludes its work. They began their investigation in October 2021, the same month Yates and U.S. Soccer did, and their report is expected before year’s end.

Technically, U.S. Soccer trumps the NWSL because it regulates all men, women and children playing the game in leagues across the country. But the NWSL report carries special weight because the players as sociation is a partner in the investigation.

“It’s incredibly important that the joint investiga tive team, with the full participation of the players association, has the opportunity to finish their work, unimpeded,” NWSL spokesman Mark Jones said in a

statement. “That is the league’s focus, and any correc tive actions will follow that joint report.”

Further complicating matters is that any decision is certain to involve Paulson’s multimillionaire father. A former head of both Goldman Sachs and the U.S. Trea sury Department, Hank Paulson ponied up $40 million in 2009 to help his son buy the Timbers, then a minor league team, and get them into Major League Soccer.

He and Wendy are the majority owners of Peregrine Sports LLC, not Merritt, and he sits on the board of Major League Soccer, along with his son.

“Hank is way more involved in the club than people think,” says a person who’s dealt with the club.

It’s easy to imagine Hank Paulson blanching at sexual abuse scandals at a team he owns. He’s an Eagle Scout and a Christian Scientist who relies on prayer over medication for his ailments. He’s an avid birdwatcher who gives away millions every year through his con servation-oriented Bobolink Foundation (named for a migratory songbird). Unlike many Wall Street titans, he’s remained married to Wendy, whom he met during his senior year at Dartmouth College.

Hank Paulson is also close with Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber. The two are fly-fishing buddies. They discussed their mutual passion on the podcast Straight Talk with Hank Paulson in January 2021.

“I’m getting my captain’s license,” Garber said on the show. “The next time we go out, you might have to call me Captain Don!”

Then, in February 2022: “I have great faith in the Paulson family,” Garber said on a video call with re porters, according to The Oregonian

At an event Nov. 3, Garber said he saw nothing in the Yates report that would require the Paulsons to sell the Timbers. He said nothing about the Thorns.

If selling the Thorns alone appeases fans, sponsors, politicians—and, perhaps, his father—Merritt Paulson could hold on to the team he cherishes.

The Thorns are not bound by the 2010 operating agreement to play at the city-owned Providence Park if they are sold. They could play anywhere. The city would have to approve a transfer of the team to another owner, the agreement indicates.

But selling the Thorns is a risky move for Paulson, and for the club.

Of the 12 teams in the National Women’s Soccer League, six are affiliated with men’s teams of some kind. The Thorns are accustomed to benefiting from econ omies of scale with the Timbers, including a shared stadium that is the envy of the league.

Cutting away the Thorns may not appease fans, es pecially the Riveters.

“If he’s unfit to own one team, why should he be fit to own the other?” asks Rosas at 107IST. “You can’t tell me that one half of the club is broken and the other is fine.”

Sophie Peel contributed reporting to this story.

“I would love to see a women-led group come forward and successfully purchase the Thorns.”

F T G U I DE

Shopping local is a way to show you care; not only for those you are shopping for, but for your community. This year, we hope that while hunting for the perfect gifts, you will choose to put holiday spending back into our hometown . We’ve worked with some of our favorite Portland shops and brands this year to present you a list of gifts that all help to lift spirits in the winter months. We encourage you to support these local retailers this holiday season!

New Deal Ginger Liqueur, $29.95 New Deal Distillery & Bottle Shop

Gifts for the Curious Drinker

Tanglewood Party Pack, $50 Tanglewood Beverage Company

All our favorite Tanglewood concentrates in one box. Just add people and your favorite milk for a party! This set is also perfect for birthday and holiday gifts. Box includes: Turmeric Tea, Lavender Fog, Hot Buttered Yam w/ Maldon Chocolate Cinnamon Salt, Ginger Spiced Chai and our newest addition, Coffee Soda Concentrate. tanglewoodbevco.com

It’s a ginger lover’s dream come true! With nearly a pound of hand-crushed ginger per bottle, New Deal Ginger Liqueur captures the bold spice of fresh, organic ginger root, while adding zip to cocktails and punches. You’ll love it in a Hot Toddy, Whiskey Ginger, or Moscow Mule. newdealbottleshop.com 900 SE Salmon St

Live Resin Cannabis Beverages, $4-$96 Magic Number

Nitro Espresso Martini, $23.95 / 4 Pack Straightaway Cocktails

Liven up the holidays with Or egon's most delicious live resin beverages and tasty tinctures. Brewed in Bend and made with all natural ingredients and sin gle-strain cannabis, we can be found in dispensaries throughout Oregon. Celebrate life, experi ence the liquid revolution and discover your Magic Number. drinkmagicnumber.com

Invented in London, perfected in Portland: the Espresso Martini has kept folks abuzz since its inception in the 1980s, when it was concocted for a model who sought a bit of latenight pep. In our rendition, we’ve created a velvety sipper rich with housemade coffee liqueur - crafted with cold brew from our neighbor, Stumptown Coffee Roasters. Local Meadowfoam honey adds a toasted marshmallow flavor to ensure this drink is truly buzzy!

straightawaycocktails.com 901 SE Hawthorne Blvd

Gifts for the Aspiring Photographer

Nikon Z 5 Mirrorless Camera with Z 24-50mm f/4-6.3 Lens, $1,299.99

Pro Photo Supply

Give the budding photographer in your life this compact full-frame mirrorless camera kit with all the innovative tools they'll need to push the limits of their creativity in both photo and vid eo. Save $400 off the regular price of $1,699.99 until Nov. 28th, 2022!

prophotosupply.com | 1112 19th Ave

Canon EOS Rebel T7 with 18-55mm & 75-300mm Double Zoom Lens Kit, $549.99

Pro Photo Supply

Perfect for beginners, the EOS Rebel T7 two lens kit offers the essential tools you need all in one convenient package to up your photogra phy game. No matter where the next photogra phy adventure takes the photographer in your life, they’ll be able to count on the EOS Rebel T7!

prophotosupply.com | 1112 NW 19th Ave

Nikon Z 30 Mirrorless Camera w/ 16-50mm Lens + Creator Kit, $849.99

Pro Photo Supply

Shopping for the creators in your life? The Nikon Z 30 Mirrorless Camera with 16-50mm Lens and Creator Kit is packed with the features they’ll need to quickly and easily start creating the high-quality content they desire to make!

prophotosupply.com | 1112 19th Ave

Canon RF 50mm f/1.8 STM Lens, $149.99

Pro Photo Supply

The RF 50mm f/1.8 STM lens is a compact lens that allows you to get a great shot anywhere and anytime. Help the photographer on your gift list be creative in a variety of scenarios from snapshots to portraits, landscapes to low-light situations and more with this lens!

prophotosupply.com | 1112 NW 19th Ave

Sony Alpha a7C

Mirrorless Digital Camera with FE 28-60mm f4-5.6 lens Kit, $1899.99

Pro Photo Supply

The Sony A7C is for creators who demand fullframe quality and performance in a lightweight compact camera they can take anywhere. This camera offers hybrid abilities for still photo and video creation alike without compromise. Normally priced at $2,099.99, save $200 on this camera kit until Dec. 18th.

prophotosupply.com | 1112 NW 19th Ave

Sony Alpha 7R IV Mirrorless Camera, $2999.99

Pro Photo Supply

The Sony Alpha α7R IV Mirrorless Camera is a powerful camera with incomparable image quality, top-notch processing speed, advanced connectivity, and enhanced reliability - all qual ities demanded by professional image makers. Normally priced at $3,499.99, save $500 on this camera until Dec. 18th.

prophotosupply.com | 1112 NW 19th Ave

Gifts for a Perfect Night In

Mushroom Cats! is an adorable card game about a mushroom hunt gone awry. Players compete to gather, steal, and magically trans mute the most valuable collection of mush rooms they can before the picking is done and a winner is declared. Designed by Ben Lindstrom and illustrated by Kayla Carlson of PaperPuffin.

craftywonderland.com 2022 NE Alberta St. & 808 SW 10th Ave

Spartacus Vegan Flogger, $26 She Bop

Leave your mark on your partner’s body with this vegan “leather” flogger from Portland’s family-owned company, Spartacus. Combining features that’ll make you swoon, this stylish and functional flogger delivers a range of sensa tions, from silky strokes to spine-tingling slaps. Perfect for this holiday season in festive green or red!

sheboptheshop.com 909 N Beech St & 3213 SE Division St

This adorable 12 oz mug has a tiny Shiba Inu dog on the front, a matching lid, and a dog spoon complete with a paw print on the end. The gift set also includes a Tea Chai Tea tea tin trio of your choice and stainless steel infuser ball. Lil Tea Tasting Notepad and Tasting Wheel are included. Available color options are: green, black & white; the Tea Gift Set is available online only. teachaite.com| NW 23rd Ave teachaite.com| NW 23rd Ave

Nirvana - Nevermind 30th Anniver sary Box Set, $239 Everyday Music

Four children are lost and have to find their way back to their neighborhood, street and final ly home. Be careful, a city can often change! An imaginative game from French company Cinqpoints that teaches kids how to understand and read a city map while developing critical thinking and observation skills.

grasshopperstore.com 1816 | NE Alberta St.

Stress & Pain Relief CBD Starter Combo, $20 Mendi

This Super Deluxe edition contains 8 LPs on 180-gram vinyl showcasing the newly remas tered album from the original analog tapes along with 4 complete concerts & 40-page hardcover book with unreleased photos. everydaymusic.com | 1313 W. Burnside

Enjoy a week’s supply of plant- based pain and stress relief essentials for $20. This one-two punch starter combo includes our best-selling topical for pain relief (Salve Stick Mini) and ingestible for stress and sleep support (10ct No THC Gummies).

themendico.com 522 N Thompson St, Ste 8

Mushroom Cats! Card Game, $24 Crafty Wonderland

Shiba Inu Mug & Tea Gift Set, $45 Tea Chai Te

Labyrinth Board Game by Cinqpoints, $29 Grasshopper

Gifts for the PNW Enthusiast

Beaver State Market Mountain Decanter, $45

Highway 33 Tee, $28

ASYLUM

Inspired by classic state highway signs, this graphic tee features an osprey, Oregon’s official state raptor, atop a shield emblazoned with the number 33, to recognize Oregon’s entrance to the union as the 33rd state. Shirt made in USA / Art created in Forest Grove / Screen printed in Portland.

beaverstatemarket.com 1327 SE Tacoma St. #202

Mushroom Kisslock Hand Bag, $36 Presents Of Mind

This crystal liquor decanter pays homage to the lofty peaks of the Pacific Northwest with a hand-blown, dimensional mountain base. Lead-free crystal. Designed in Seattle. Matching tumbler sets are also available! pdxasylum.com 3713 SE Hawthorne Blvd

Stumptown Coffee Holiday Trio, $55 Stumptown Coffee Roasters

This stylishly crafted mushroom handbag with two-strap options is available now at Presents of Mind, a Hawthorne district staple since 1989. This is just one of the many charming items available this season at Portland's favorite onestop gift shop, where you will also find locally crafted jewelry, beautiful housewares, bath and body treasures and so much more! presentsofmind.tv 3633 SE Hawthorne Blvd

Stumptown’s Holiday Trio box set features three bags of whole bean coffee including wintertime favorite Evergreen blend, and single-origin cof fees Honduras El Puente and Ethiopia Duromi na. The Trio is available at Portland Stumptown Cafes, select grocery stores and online. stumptowncoffee.com

Oregon Wild Membership Package, $75 Oregon Wild

Oregon Wild works to protect and restore Oregon’s wildlands, wildlife, and waters. Get outside, explore Oregon, and support Oregon Wild with the Membership Package! What’s included: one-year membership to Oregon Wild, Oregon’s Ancient Forests: A Hiking Guide by Chandra LeGue, and an Oregon Wild T-Shirt. oregon-wild.square.site

Gifts for a Fun Night Out

Give the gift of dance with White Bird’s holiday pack for the 2nd annual WE ARE ONE Festival. Both Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE and Ballet Hispánico will bring their powerful performanc es to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall while A.I.M by Kyle Abraham will grace the stage of the Newmark Theatre. whitebird.org | Downtown

ZooZoo Show Tickets, $19.50 - $37.50 Imago Theatre

Give the Gift of a Cruise! Portland Spirit Cruises & Events

ZOOZOO

Theatre -

ing accordions, penguins and much more fill the stage with wonder and awe. A rare theatrical event - a family friendly entertainment, lively, inventive, remarkably acrobatic... mysterious, deeply satisfying, sensation, thrilling, hysterical... truly goofy fun ...now, that’s entertainment! The Boston Globe "a supremely theatrical specta cle.." — New York Times imagotheatre.com | 17 SE 8th Ave.

Portland Spirit operates year-round and fea tures brunch, lunch, dinner and sightseeing cruises. See the city in a whole new light as you travel upriver to the historic Milwaukie Wa terfront. With ever changing views and fresh Northwest cuisine, this experience is perfect for special occasions. giftshop.portlandspirit.com

is Back at Imago

Bugeyes, hippos, anteaters, frogs, polar bears, self-tout

The perfect gift for dog lovers, the Haflinger Jack slipper is sure to become a new best friend. These cozy slippers made of soft, boiled wool, will keep feet warm in the cold, and cool in warm weather. Shop local and fetch these before they’re gone at Footwise today!

footwise.com | 1433 NE Broadway

Thick enough to stay toasty on chilly days but light enough for all-season wear, this cloud-soft sweatshirt is one you’ll never want to take off. And because our ultimate vision is to reduce textile waste for good — all of our circular apparel is made with 100% recycled and recyclable materials.

looptworks.com | 2410 SE 11th Ave

You’ll never have a wedgie again with Thunderpants! Designed not to ride up or roll down with Organ ic Cotton here in Portland, OR. A Woman-run company focused on sustainability and transparency. Join the comfy bum club and you’ll never go back!

thunderpantsusa.com

Custom Photo Slates, $35-$75

Gifts Anyone on Your List Will Appreciate

Custom Ornaments, $18 Pro Photo Supply

STEELPORT American-Forged Carbon Steel Knives, $250-$450 Kitchen Kaboodle

Locally printed in our lab, these photo slates are your photos printed on natural, hand-cut mate rials with a smooth stone surface on the reverse side. Due to inconsistencies in shape, size, and coating each slate is a unique piece of art. Each photo slate includes tabletop display hardware. prophotosupply.com | 1112 NW 19th Ave

Holiday Scratch-its

Oregon Lottery

SM

Give a double-sided, designer ornament printed with your own photo and text! Choose from wood, metal, or glass. Made locally at our Lab in NW Portland, share captured moments with your friends and family this holiday season. prophotosupply.com | 1112 NW 19th Ave

Windsor Rocking Chair, $50 Hoot-n-Annie Home

Oregon Lottery Scratch-its are easy to buy, and great to receive. They're perfect for spicing up holiday cards, topping off stockings, or giving as a nice tip to anyone who makes your life a little easier year-round. If they win, it will be one of the most fun gifts they ever exchange. Check them out!

oregonlottery.org

We may have decided to feature our Bow Back Windsor Rocking Chair, but we have a lot more, like textiles, lighting and home decor, to offer. Our items are curated from consignors all over Portland just for you! The most fun part of the holidays is walking around to see what reminds you of someone...then getting that special thing for them that completes their space!

shophootnanniehome.com 6970 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy

STEELPORT heirloom quality carbon steel knives are handcrafted right here in Portland using premium American materials and rigorous attention to detail. Combining time-tested tra ditional forging and knife making methods with modern innovations, STEELPORT is celebrated as the “Best Made-In-USA Kitchen Knife”. See the full lineup at Kitchen Kaboodle.

Four Portland-area stores | kitchenkaboodle.com

Pro Photo Supply

On

Illustration by McKenzie Young-Roy

Instagram: @mckenzieyoungart

Winter Wonders: Relax and add some color to your holidays!

Wednesday, Nov. 23

DANCE: Group Hug Trio Special

For anyone looking to let off some steam before spending an entire day stuck with family, No Requests is the European-style dance haven you need in advance of Thanksgiving. The downtown club’s open floor and door policy means that all are welcome—even folks who lack coordi nation but love house music. Group Hug Trio will spin until the early morning hours. Consider it a radical form of dance thera py. No Requests, 326 SW Broadway, 503868-2588, norequestspdx.com. 10 pm Wednesday, Nov. 23. $12-$14 in advance, $15 at the door. 21+.

Friday, Nov. 25

when it’s not raining. Bonus: Every Friday, Helvetia Farm Market’s wine specialist takes a break from the vino to focus on mixing specialty cocktails for visitors. Hel vetia Farm Market, 23137 NW West Union Road, Hillsboro, 503-928-4428, mariona cres.com. 3-6:30 pm Friday, Nov. 25. Free entry. Cocktail prices vary.

LAUGH: Ismo: Finnish Comedy Show

like Ex Novo, Level and StormBreaker. In all, there will be 20 beers on tap, and Up town has even promised to unlock its Beer Jail: a reserve of aged and rare bottles for attendees to purchase and take home. Uptown Beer Co., 6620 SW Scholls Ferry Road, 503-336-4783, uptownbeer.co. 6-9 pm Saturday, Nov. 26. $30, includes a commemorative pint glass, stickers and five tasting pours. 21+.

big-studio films. Bring your crew and settle in for a mimosa trio and a fresh cin namon roll with cream cheese frosting or the fried chicken and waffles. After you’ve had your fill of brunch staples, order a tub of gourmet popcorn and watch Wakanda Forever for the third time because Sunday Funday! Studio One Theaters, 3945 SE Powell Blvd., 971-271-8142, studiooneth eater.com. 11 am-2 pm Sunday, Nov. 27. Reservations recommended.

WATCH: The Amazing Bubble Man

Head to Clinton Street Theater this week end for square bubbles, bubbles inside bubbles, people inside bubbles, fog-filled bubbles, enormous bubbles, bubble volcanoes…wait, bubbles aren’t really your thing, you say? You might want to recon sider—the bubble expert on hand is Louis Pearl, who has had 11 years of sell-out performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where he’s obviously a fan favorite.



LISTEN: Plotting Poetry

Live Podcast



DRINK: Friday Night Autumn Cocktails

If the start of the holiday season gets you in the mood for Hallmark movie vibes, Helvetia Farm Market at Marion Acres in Hillsboro might just scratch that itch for you (with significantly less Candace Cameron Bure). The property boasts an adorable store complete with farm-grown foods, giftable items and things to drink. Take your beverage of choice for a stroll around the 47-acre plot of land or take a seat near the cozy fire pit, which operates

If the shorter days are starting to get to you, take yourself to Nordia House for a heavy dose of Finnish happiness. Ismo Lei kola, who made his U.S. debut in 2014 at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood and won the title of “Funniest Comic in the World,” is making his Portland debut. And if you’re not fluent in Finnish, don’t worry. Leikola performs in English, so there’s no need to bring along a translator. Nordia House, 8800 SW Oleson Road, 503-977-0275, nordicnorthwest.org. 7 and 9 pm Friday, Nov. 25. $5-$40. 18+.

Saturday, Nov. 26

DRINK: 6th Annual Dark Beer Festival

In honor of Black Saturday, Southwest Portland’s Uptown Beer is celebrating dark local beers made by breweries from across the West, including Denver’s Epic Brewing, Washington’s Matchless and Georgetown, as well as Portland favorites,

Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., 503-808-3331, cstpdx.com. 11 am and 2 pm Saturday and 2 pm Sunday, Nov. 26-27. $10-$17.

Sunday, Nov. 27

EAT & LISTEN: Jazzy Brunch

Channel your inner beatnik and become a part of Portland poetry history by joining the audience at the recording of the podcast Plotting Poetry, which launches in January 2023. Igor Brezhnev, co-found er of Lightship Press and contributor to Nailed Magazine, hosts the program, which will feature Morgan Paige—a poet and visual artist whose recent album, Lick the Psychic, explores psychedelia, femi ninity, mortality and rebirth. The 4th Wall PDX, 1445 SE Hawthorne Blvd., the4th wallpdx.com. 6-8:55 pm, Sunday, Nov. 27. Free.

FUNNY FINNISH: Ismo Leikola, the Laugh Factory’s 2014 Funniest Comic in the World, comes to Portland for the first time ever.

Billie Eidson and her jazz ensemble make Sunday brunch extra special at Studio One Theaters. That’s right: The venue offers much more than screenings of the latest

FOOD & DRINK

Editor: Andi Prewitt Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

BY THOM HILTON

Something magical is happening in a strip mall at Southeast 119th Avenue and Division Street: In a corner space previously occu pied by a Starbucks, some of the most boldly flavored coffee and tea drinks in Portland are being crafted with patience and love. Phin Caphe gets its name from the Vietnamese phin, a tra ditional filter used to make cà phê sua dá—extremely strong and smooth dark roast drip coffee, which serves as the base for many of the shop’s drinks. The space is a bit bare bones, with scattered seating in shades of gray and white, yet it still feels family friendly and welcoming. Couples with kids, solo parties seeking respite, and groups of friends were chatting and chilling around me as I sampled my way through the menu on a recent Thursday afternoon. A shelf by one wall is stacked with prepacked Vietnamese snacks, and a case on the counter offers a selection of glossy pastries, including custard buns ($4.50)—spongy rolls with a sweet yellow filling reminiscent of dim sum egg tarts. Most of the coffee drinks come layered, with that fabulous cà phê on the bottom and a thick, often colorful, and very flavorful foam on top. The ube coffee ($6.50), with its signature purple color, is already the most popular item, eliciting huge smiles from me and surrounding customers, its sweet yam taste complement ing the dark roast. The pistachio coffee ($6.50), a seasonal item, was my personal favorite—clearly inspired by ice cream, it made me dream of a spumoni affogato. The pandan coffee ($6.50) is pastel green, with a tropical floral flavor that feels both playful and mature.

The standout fruit tea drink was the lemongrass peach ($6.25), which comes garnished with slices of the eponymous stone fruit. The initial expected punch of super-sweet peach tea is balanced by the slow-build herbal lemongrass flavor—again, a mix of fun and unexpected depth. The Milo cacao milk tea ($7) and taro coconut smoothie ($6.50), however, are pure whimsy—the former tastes like milk left over from a bowl of Cocoa Puffs and comes adorned with the cereal, boba and a hunk of flan; the latter has

30 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 23, 2022 wweek.com

a softly sweet coconut flavor, but lacks the vivid intensity of some of its menu neighbors. I suppose it should be noted that while the prices on these beverages may seem high, they are all enormous and incorporate so many unique elements the costs feel justifiable. With their elegant presentation and vibrant colors, they’re also all very Instagrammable.

The small kitchen at Phin Caphe is also pumping out a couple of excellent Vietnamese street food options, with bánh tráng trộn ($11, $17), a rice paper salad, being the specialty of the house. The dizzyingly complex and flavorful dish includes threads of dry rice paper, peanuts, hard-boiled egg, crispy shrimp, fried red onion, mango, beef jerky, sa te (lemongrass chile sauce) and your choice of beef jerk or pork belly (opt for the gems of crispy pork). The minty flavor of Vietnamese coriander cuts through the noise and makes the whole dish coalesce, like the vocalist of a great band. The dry, crisp rice paper softens while chewing, a textural experience that started out a bit unusual for this newcomer, then quickly became compelling. The pork belly created a bacon-and-eggs situation that worked so well

with the coffee, I suddenly realized that I was eating one of the best Portland brunch combos I’ve had in ages. Cuon ($11, $17), a different take on the same ingredients and flavors, are also available: soft and chewy cut rice rolls stuffed with all those aforementioned goodies and dressed with kewpie mayo.

Cold desserts offer a subtle end to the wild ride of flavor you’ve been on. A syrupy but not too sweet caramel flan ($6) served with coffee jelly has a silky texture and is crucially not eggy. And the che khoai deo ($7), purple-and-orange sticky rice and taro balls served with boba and caramel jelly, are nicely chewy, with a fun flavor contrast offered by salted coconut cream.

Phin Caphe will be destination dining and drinking for me and many Portlanders, but the journey to outer Southeast is worth it. For those that happen to live close, take advantage—how lucky you are.

DRINK: Phin Caphe & Boba, 11906 SE Division St., 503-9543287. 9 am-8 pm Monday-Thursday, 10 am-9 pm Friday-Satur day, 10 am-8 pm Sunday.

COURTESY

CAPHE & BOBA

Top 5

Hot Plates

WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.

1. PACIFIC STANDARD

1.

Buzz List

WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.

MASALA LAB & MARKET

5237 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 971-340-8635, masalalabpdx.com. 9 am-3 pm Thurs day-Tuesday. The recently opened Masala Lab just extended its hours of operation and added new items to the menu after the team had several weeks to perfect recipes. While everything coming out of the gluten-free kitchen sounds appealing—from the saagshuka to the chaat hash—we might be most excited about the lineup of new cocktails, boozy brunch classics with an Indian twist. As we head toward December, at least one chai hot toddy should accompany your meal.

2. ABIGAIL

HALL

813 SW Alder St., abigailhallpdx.com. 5-11 pm Tuesday-Wednesday, 5 pm-midnight Thursday-Sat urday. When Mariah Carey, aka the Queen of Christmas, says it’s time to start celebrating the Yuletide— whether or not we’ve had our Thanksgiving feast—you oughta listen. And what better way to get into the holiday spirit than by drinking cocktails inspired by the season? Abigail Hall’s bev erage director, Derek Jacobi (formerly of New York’s Dead Rabbit and Black Tail), has created a new cocktail menu with some Christmaslike drinks, including a Brûleevardier (a take on crème brûlée) and Walnut Olivetto (a nod to lemon meringue pie).

3. WONDERWOOD SPRINGS

8811 N Lombard St., 971-242-8927, wonderwoodsprings.com. 8 am-8 pm Tuesday-Sunday. Mike Bennett’s new cafe is mostly about the art: 400 hand-painted pieces, ranging from cute woodland creatures to a sleeping dragon. However, this isn’t just another of the prolific artist’s pop-up exhibits. You really can eat and drink at Wonderwood Springs. Expect to find two custom coffee blends personally selected by Bennett, along with a regular hot chocolate and another made with mushrooms.

4. SISSY BAR PORTLAND

100 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., kexhotels.com/eat-drink/pacificstandard. 3 pm-midnight daily.

Some restaurants switch off the burners on Thanksgiving, but Pacific Standard has got your back if you’re hoping to avoid cooking for the holiday. In fact, Kex Hotel’s ground-level bar is open 365 days a year—so count Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve among the holidays you can celebrate here. This Thursday, there will be a special turkey plate on the menu with mashed potatoes, stuffing and cranberry sauce. No reservations needed. Easy breezy, the way Thanksgiving should be.

2. JOJO

902 NW 13th Ave., 971-331-4284, jojopdx.com. 11 am-10 pm daily.

A stationary version of the much-loved Jojo food cart has arrived in Northwest Portland. As with the truck, the highlights are smash burgers and multiple permutations of fried chicken, plus the eponymous deep-fried potato wedges, served with a side of sauce of which there are 10. A small order of jojos is ample for two. But go ahead, gild the lily and get one of the loaded versions, with different combinations of cheeses, sauces and alliums.

3. MATT’S BBQ TACOS AT GREAT NOTION BREWING

2204 NE Alberta St., #101, 503-548-4491, greatnotion.com. Noon-9 pm Sunday-Thursday, noon10 pm Friday-Saturday.

One of the city’s most popular smokehouses is now officially in charge of the kitchen at Great Notion’s flagship. Matt’s BBQ Tacos moved into the brewery in early November—a change that will allow Great Notion’s owners to focus on continued expansion. You can expect all of Matt Vicedomini’s greatest hits at the pub, including tender slices of pork belly, chopped brisket, and smoked ground beef served on housemade, lard-infused flour or vegan corn tortillas.

4. BAG O’ CRAB

3255 NE 82nd Ave., 971-716-8888, thebagocrab.com. 3-10 pm Monday-Friday, noon-10 pm Satur day-Sunday.

Looking for a good time? Call Bag O’ Crab. There is no way to feel serious about anything—ex cept, perhaps, demolishing a large bag of Cajun-sauced crustaceans—the moment you step through the doors at this new restaurant, thanks to details like the giant lobster mural and a robot waitress. Keep the fun vibes going by ordering Combo 4: a lobster or Dungeness crab, shrimp, crawfish, clams, corn, potatoes and sausages. Use an order of garlic bread to sop up the spicy, buttery boil.

5. URDANETA

3033 NE Alberta St., 503-288-1990, urdanetapdx.com. 5-10 pm Tuesday-Sunday.

If you’ve been waiting for chef Javier Canteras’ Bikini to return to the menu, your patience has just been rewarded. Urdaneta’s take on the classic ham-and-cheese sandwich is back and part of a seasonal offerings shake-up. A toasted brioche bun stuffed with jamon serrano, American cheese and sofrito béchamel is what we’ve been longing to bite into once it actually felt like fall instead of a prolonged August.

1416 SE Morrison St., 503-206-4325, sissybarportland.com. 4 pm-midnight Wednesday-Thursday, 4 pm-2 am Friday-Saturday, 4-11 pm Sunday. There’s no dance floor or recurring drag shows at Sissy Bar, which tend to lure customers to other gay bars in town, but the new video lounge does offer a space for unapologetically queer company and the pop music sustaining the community. Open since June, the venue is heavy on moving images for aesthetics, illuminated by both YouTube videos of recording artists and col ored cubes reminiscent of the electronic memory game Simon. Order a Will Smith Punch, which here happens to be a drink, not a blow to the head.

5. BAD HABIT ROOM

5433 N Michigan Ave., 503-303-8550, saraveza.com/the-bad-habit-room. 4-10 pm Wednes day-Friday, 9 am-2 pm and 4-10 pm Saturday-Sunday.

Bad Habit Room has technically been around for about a decade but previously opened only for weekend brunch and special events. After staying completely shuttered for two years due to the pandemic, it’s back and caters to a different crowd in the evenings. Cocktails take their inspiration from the pre-Prohibition era, and our current favorite is Moon Shoes, made with marshmallow-infused vodka, lemon, orgeat and a splash of Son of Man harvest vermouth that acts as a grounding agent.

AARON LEE

The Hunger Strains

Not all cannabis cultivars trigger the munchies, so here’s what you want to smoke to build up an appetite on Thanksgiving.

BY BRIANNA WHEELER

Whether you’re “walking” with your cousins before the turkey is served or medicating throughout your Thanks giving meal, the right strain of cannabis can dial up your holiday cheer and help you develop an appetite suitable for our most gluttonous holiday.

Despite cannabis’s reputation as a munchies-triggering substance, not all cultivars are bred to stimulate hunger in users. Some cannabinoids and terpenes can even sup press appetites, and since endocannabinoid receptors can respond in so many different ways to cannabis, depending on the individual, pregaming with weed on Thanksgiving can be too much of a crapshoot. But we’re here to help.

This year, before paying respect to Portland’s tradition al custodians, the people of the Chinook Indian Nation, consider using one of these strains to not only kick-start your gratitude and rose tint your outlook, but also activate your Hoover.

Monster Cookies

This cultivar has a reputation for activating powerful munchies. A cross of Girl Scout Cookies and Granddaddy Purple, this potent nug is high in THC and often features the snoozy cannabinoid CBN. If you intend to eat-napeat-nap, one milky dab of Monster Cookies can facilitate that plan, no problem. Expect a sweet vanilla funk in the nose and a flowery, berry-sweet exhale.

BUY: Green Gratitude, 10322 SE Holgate Blvd., 503-444-7707,greengratitude.us.

Head Cheese

This strain is a highly effective appetite stimulant for pa tients struggling with calorie intake as well as those over coming eating disorders. The cross of 707 Headband and UK Cheese also tends to make users euphoric and chatty, which might be perfect for keeping the conversation going around the dinner table. Expect a stanky cheese perfume and a pungent, sweet cheese exhale.

BUY: Eden Cannabis, 128 SE 12th Ave., 503-477-9998, edencraftcannabis.com.

Girl Scout Cookies

Famous therapeutic cultivar Girl Scout Cookies, or GSC, has a reputation for not only percolating an appetite but also delivering a calm, cool head high that inspires mellow introspection rather than straightforward sedation. If gratitude is your first order of Thanksgiving business, this might be the right strain to start the festivities with. Expect an earthy, sweet fragrance reminiscent of cookies and gas, and a commensurately doughy-wood exhale.

BUY: TJ’s on Powell, 7827 SE Powell Blvd., 503-719-7140, visittjs.com.

Candyland

For users who prefer an upbeat high, Candyland is a peppy, euphoric cultivar that delivers munchies from the outset without sidelining its users with a sedative hunger. This

might be the cultivar to indulge in before putting on your holiday apron and focusing on some stoner cooking. By the time dinner rolls around, the munchies will arrive, and you can feel simpatico with all the cousins as they come back in from their “walk.”

BUY: Kush Cart Delivery, 971-229-1281, kushcartpdx.com.

Purple Kush

Named one of the world’s most powerful strains by High Times, Purple Kush is more than just a legendarily dank bud; it’s also a holiday standard. This deeply relaxing cul tivar is a panacea for all manner of disorders, from anxiety to chronic pain. Though its therapeutic benefits may be sometimes overshadowed by its deeply stoney recreational reputation, you can benefit from both during a potentially stressful holiday. Consider this as much a medicine cab inet strain as a stash box staple. Expect a spicy stank and a grassy, botanical-sweet exhale.

BUY: The Green Planet, 17332 SE Powell Blvd, 503-9121144.

Dolato

Dolato, a cross between popular strains Do-Si-Do and Gelato #41, typically delivers a cottony, uplifting head high and a calm but not quite sedative body buzz. Many users report the head and body highs dissolving into a velvety chill before giving way to strong munchies, so if spacey and syrupy are how you’d like to feel this Thanksgiving, consider this cultivar your holiday go-to. Expect a piney perfume and spicy, sweet exhale.

BUY: Budlandia Woodward, 8135 SE Woodward St., 503412-8447, budlandiapdx.com.

Ice Cream Cake

This rare cross of Gelato #33 and Wedding Cake is a mind-quieting, chakra-opening, euphoric cultivar that users say is highly effective at treating appetite loss as well as chronic pain and insomnia. Stoners looking for quiet, introspective head effects and cashmere-cozy body effects might enjoy a greasy dab or juicy preroll of this strain, gluttonous holiday or nah. Expect a stinky, cheesy nose and a nutty-sweet exhale

BUY: Cookies Portland Dispensary, 2404 SE 79th Ave., 503-832-6580, cookies.co.

Mimosa

Another perky phenotype for users who prefer snazzier highs is Mimosa, a wake-and-bake strain that’s as sunny as its name implies. Users with a holiday to-do list requiring a modicum of focus might appreciate Mimosa’s uplifting genetics and clearheaded cerebral effects. And if you pair it with an actual Champagne mimosa, well, you do you, boo. It is a holiday, after all. Expect an aggressively citrus profile with undertones of wet wood and earth, and an orange juice exhale.

BUY: The Dispensary on 52nd, 4452 SE 52nd Ave., 503420-8000, thedispensaryon52nd.com.

An Ambient Legend Lives On

Back to the Woodlands takes the late Portland-based ambient music pioneer Ernest Hood deep into the Northwestern woods.

BY DANIEL BROMFIELD @bromf3

In 2019, one of Portland’s great cult-classic albums was the sub ject of a much-needed reissue and remaster.

Ernest Hood’s 1975 Neighborhoods has long been cherished in the experimental music world as one of the best early albums of ambient music (beatless, atmospheric music designed to reward both background listening and close attention). A onetime Port land jazz guitarist and KBOO co-founder, Hood lost his ability to play guitar after being struck by polio and made Neighborhoods with a unique palette of zithers and early synths.

Hood pressed only 1,000 copies of the record, and for years, the only way most people could listen to it without shelling out triple digits on a vinyl copy was through a muddy YouTube rip that obscured the album’s sonic richness and tactile detail. Russ Gorsline’s remaster and Freedom to Spend’s reissue deserve all the Grammys in the world for bringing an almost-lost classic back to vivid life.

On Nov. 11, Freedom to Spend and the Brooklyn label RVNG Intl. released Back to the Woodlands, the second album from Hood (who died in 1995). Comprising archival recordings cut between 1972 and 1982, Woodlands is a much more immediate album, one I suspect newcomers will enjoy even more than Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods devoted long stretches to field recordings Hood made around West Linn and other Portland suburbs. Replete with mundane conversations and distant natural and animal noises, the recordings opened up a portal into Portland’s past.

Woodlands also makes use of field recordings, including idyllic birds on “Noonday Yellows” and a familiar Northwestern shower on “Rain,” but they’re worked into the fabric of the music itself. While only about 60% of Neighborhoods actually consisted of music, Woodlands is a total immersion into Hood’s idiosyncratic

sound. For just over 30 minutes, zithers arc across the stereo field like a bird unfurling its wings as rushing water and crickets murmur gently in the distance.

These field recordings are a little less specific than the ones on Neighborhoods. On one track on that album, you could hear an old-timer talk about the wreck of a boat still sitting at the bottom of the Columbia River. The old man’s memories were interwoven in the fabric of the album along with Hood’s, and it was hard not to wonder if the wreck was still there—and who the old man was and what his childhood was like.

Meanwhile, the rain on “Rain” could’ve just as easily been recorded in Wisconsin. The dark mystery of the Cascadian forest has been an inspiration to artists, from bands like Agalloch and Wolves in the Throne Room to indie-rockers like Phil Elverum to filmmakers like Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy), Rob Reiner (Stand

By Me), and Scott Cooper (Antlers). These creators capture the primeval, pagan, threatening quality of the Northwestern woods, whereas Woodlands evokes a pleasant walk in the park.

The whole thing has a Bambi-ish, Thomas Kinkade-style qual ity that offers a harmless and tame vision of nature. The music doesn’t suggest any vastness, danger, awe or mystery. It simply exhales with appreciation at how beautiful everything is, as if perpetually in the midst of sniffing a flower.

Few artists can combine such unconventional instrumentation into something so natural and consonant-sounding, and the arcing zithers and primitive synths make it sound a lot wonkier than your average New Age healing shop tape. It just sounds plain great, and it’s hard to imagine anyone enthralled by synth curiosities (like Mort Garson’s recently reissued Mother Earth’s Plantasia) won’t fall in love with it.

Woodlands is a doozy of an archival find, and it works great if you’re trying to simply bliss out. But a true evocation of the Oregon woodlands it is not.

WHAT TO SEE AND WHAT TO HEAR

BY DANIEL BROMFIELD @bromf3

WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY, NOV. 23 AND 25:

Boise’s Built to Spill is one of the most revered indie-rock bands ever to come out of the North west. And unlike many bands that turn amateur ism into a virtue, they’re led by a bona fide guitar innovator in the form of Doug Martsch—even if he himself would tell you he isn’t that great of a musician. That mixture of innovation and old-fash ioned garage-rock humility is crucial to why Built to Spill records like Perfect From Now On and There’s Nothing Wrong With Love remain touchstones for young bands to this day. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St., 971-808-5094, revolutionhall.com. 8 pm. $30. 21+.

MONDAY, NOV. 28:

That Steve Vai started as a teenage transcription ist for Frank Zappa should give you an idea of the level of his skill, even if you’re never heard him play guitar. The 62-year-old is nearly synonymous with virtuosity on his instrument—and though he’s most associated with the ’80s tradition of hair-metal histrionics, he’s still an in-demand session player and an inspiration for up-and-coming shredders. His Roseland show is an opportunity to see one of the all-time masters of fretboard fireworks in his element. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave. 8 pm. $39.50. 21+.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 30:

Whether as Grouper or with collaborative proj ects like Mirrorring and Slow Walkers, Astoria’s Liz Harris has spent nearly two decades as Oregon’s resident master of hazy, haunting ambient music. Helen, her group with bassist Scott Simmons and drummer and Freedom to Spend label co-boss Jed Bindeman, lets her weld her gauzy guitars to a rock-band chassis. If you love Grouper but wince at the idea of spending one of her soporific shows on your feet, here’s a Harris project you can actually move around to. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St. 9 pm. $15. 21+.

Dear Nora’s Human Adventure Is Just Beginning

The Portland cult band unites the modern and primeval worlds in their latest album, Human Futures.

BY DANIEL BROMFIELD @bromf3

Katy Davidson happily agrees with the perception that Dear Nora is a “cult” band. The Portland singer-songwriter’s ’90s and ’00s recordings under the name enjoy a small but fierce following among indie-rock fans and musicians, with artists like Joyce Manor and Girlpool—hardly household names, but titans in certain corners of the rock world—citing them as an influence. And if the reception to Dear Nora’s recent East Coast tour is any indication, their new work—including Human Futures, released Oct. 28 on Orindal Records—is shaping up to be just as beloved.

“I think I would feel stifled if we showed up to our shows, played our new songs, and if it just landed with a thud,” Davidson says. “But people were singing along with the songs from the new albums just as much as the songs I wrote when I was 19. I was so heartened by that.”

Though Davidson is from the “tail end of Gen X,” they ob serve that “the front row was all basically, like, 22 years old.” This speaks, perhaps, to how Dear Nora’s music predicted the latter-day era of quiet, folky, observational, plainspoken indie rock. One of the band’s first engagements after reuniting in 2017 following a 10-year hiatus was performing with Big Thief, the popular New York roots-rock band whose earthy, elemental music has a good deal in common with Davidson’s.

Davidson’s songwriting has often acutedly captured the milieu of the times. 2004’s Mountain Rock, one of their most beloved albums, was wracked with post-9/11, early Bush-era dread. And Human Futures is filled with playful references to Airbnb, Ins tagram Live, Lady Gaga, Flume, and hazy IPAs.

“ You walk out onto the street, you look around, everyone’s on their phone, it’s the world now,” Davidson says. “And so when songwriters don’t even acknowledge that or try to write lyrics that sound like they’re from another era, it’s just like, what world are you living in?”

These references coexist with primal imagery of mountains, fog, forest, insects. Davidson has lived in Portland, San Francis co, and Arizona at various points in their life, and the extreme landscapes of the Western United States are a crucial influence on their music.

“ You can’t live in the Western states without being confronted with extreme landscapes,” Davidson says. “In Portland, you can

see a huge volcano from various parts of the city. You just don’t see things like that when you’re in Connecticut or something.”

Human Futures is the first Dear Nora album recorded in a professional studio, but Davidson “cannot roll with a pristine studio space—it’s just not who I am.” Thus, the band recorded in Glendale, Calif., with engineer Phil Hartunian, who cultivates a low-key vibe at his Tropico Beauty studios.

“It’s painted these warm colors; it’s an orange and yellow and brown space,” Davidson says. “There are lamps, you instantly walk in and are warmed by the energy there. That’s kind of the only way I would’ve done anything in a ‘professional’ space like that.”

Davidson describes Human Futures as the most collaborative Dear Nora album, with Davidson taking on the duties of both a producer and a singer-songwriter. They presented the band— drummer Greg Campanile, keyboardist Nicholas Krgovich, and multi-instrumentalist Zach Burba—with a handful of songs that reflect the sound they had in mind. These included an ob scure Australian synth-pop single, a Frank Ocean song, and the soundtrack to the ’50s French thriller The Wages of Fear

“I was like, this is where my head is—now let’s go in the room and write some music,” Davidson says.

The result, though distinctly of a piece with 2018’s excellent post-hiatus comeback album Skulls Example, represents a strang er and more synth-based sound for the project. Eccentric key board squeaks and pitter-pat drum machines define the sonic palette, and Davidson often created vocal melodies on the spot rather than bringing them to the band at the beginning of the session.

“I love my band,” Davidson says. “I trust them. They completely understand my vision and enhance it.”

Though the contrast between the modern and the primeval world is the most immediately striking element of Davidson’s songwriting on Human Futures, Davidson is keen to emphasize the “slow-burn” theme of the album, and the more personal meaning of the title: one’s journey in a lifetime from childhood to death.

“ You’re a child, but what are you gonna be in the future?” Da vidson asks. “What hopes and dreams did you have? Which ones worked out and which ones did not? What’s your relationship like with your parents? What are you gonna regret when you’re on your deathbed for not doing, and what are you gonna be glad you did?”

It’s an incredible amount of thematic weight for an album that only just surpasses the half-hour mark and carries itself with such levity and goofiness. Yet that good humor is fundamental to Davidson, whose most cherished influences include Joni Mitchell and folk-rock vocal trio the Roches—both artists who have juxtaposed surreal humor and earthy jokes with moments of almost overwhelming awe and beauty.

“ We’re trying to make you laugh, but we’re also trying to make you cry at the same time,” Davidson says. “But we’re having fun and we’re kind of punk and we kind of don’t care if it’s bad or really good—just go on this journey with us.”

SEE IT: Dear Nora plays the Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 503-231-9663, dougfirlounge.com. 9 pm Wednesday, Dec. 7. $15. 21+.

BANDING TOGETHER: Zach Burba, Nicholas Krgovich, Greg Campanile and Katy Davidson.

COURTESY OF DEAR NORA / PHOTO BY LESLIE LECHNER

MOVIES

She Called the Shots

STREAMING WARS

YOUR WEEKLY FILM QUEUE

BY BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON @thobennett

BY ALEX BARR

“I never thought of it until recently, honestly, that I was creating a path,” Joyce Chopra tells WW. “I was so busy just trying to get ahead and get funded for films.”

Yet with directing credits dating back to 1963, Chopra did help to forge a path for women in the film industry. With few contemporaries to look to and even fewer his torical examples to follow, she learned to navigate a pa triarchal industry across decades—and in her recently released memoir, Lady Director: Adventures in Hollywood, Television and Beyond (City Lights, 232 pages, $17.95), she details her journey.

From the inception of Hollywood through the era of silent films, women enjoyed a great deal of agency and op portunity in the film industry. At the dawn of the “talkies,” film suddenly became a booming industry, and production teams and performers pushed to unionize. These unions, however, barred women from membership, restricting their access to work.

Entrepreneurial women managed to find jobs in the industry as “cutters,” what we now call editors. Men of ten found the work of cutting and rearranging frames from mountains of footage to be trite and tedious; in their minds, the work was more similar to knitting or needlepoint than directing.

Chopra, an editor of features and shorts, relays a similar sentiment. “It’s painstaking,” she says. “It’s like taking a piece of fabric and you keep cutting it, and cutting it, pasting and pasting.”

Editing is just one strand in the tapestry that is Chopra’s career. In Lady Director, she retells her impressive life story without a hint of arrogance, from allowing a 17-yearold Joan Baez to perform at Club 47 (the jazz bar Chopra co-founded) to making documentaries with the iconic film group Drew Associates alongside the legendary D.A. Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back, The War Room).

Riding the French New Wave, Chopra helped to define the motifs and practices of modern documentary film making. “This all started with the revolution in handheld cameras…and with transistors, everything lightened up so you could suddenly walk anywhere and follow people,” she says.

Drew Associates helped to usher the French filmmaking style known as cinéma vérité into American documenta ries. At its core, cinéma vérité strives to capture a story in its naked truth, without unnecessary staging. However, Chopra recognizes the inescapability of authorial bias.

“I choose what to film,” she says. “I choose what to put in my movie. There’s no such thing as filming the truth.”

Chopra came to understand the elusiveness of truth when she and Richard Leacock co-directed Happy Moth er’s Day, her first film for Drew Associates. Commissioned by The Saturday Evening Post, it was a documentary short about the Fischers, the first surviving U.S.-born quintu plets.

“They sent Ricky Leacock and me to go and do a docu mentary film about this extraordinary thing,” Chopra says. “Except, when I got there, there was a photographer from the Post already there, taking photos and manipulating the events that weren’t actually how they were.”

Born in Aberdeen, S.D., the Fischers were commodified by the community, which sought to maximize income from tourists (Mary Ann Fischer, mother to the quin tuplets, refused a request to hold public showings of her children twice a day). Chopra empathized with the family finding themselves in the midst of a media frenzy, and she and Leacock quickly realized that this was their story.

“The fools that we were, we couldn’t resist making that story,” she says. “And, of course, The Saturday Evening Post rejected it and they cut their own version, which I’ve never seen.”

Chopra’s documentarian background shines through in her fiction work, notably her 2001 television adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ Marilyn Monroe-inspired novel Blonde, which was recently adapted by Andrew Dominik for Netflix. While critically panned at the time, many have looked back to Chopra’s Blonde as a more accurate adaptation of Oates’ book.

“The book is fantastical, and part of the problem that people are having, even looking at the film [as] I did, is that they have ownership of Marilyn,” Chopra says. “They don’t like people to fool around with it. It’s not even real to them anymore. She’s a goddess.”

As Chopra details her pioneering journey into film pro duction, correlations surface between the two women’s lives. Both she and Monroe faced constant discrimination and sexual harassment from male collaborators, but found success in a male-dominated industry while staying true to their convictions.

Chopra may be a long-unrecognized artist, but Lady Director illuminates her lifetime pursuit to legitimize women’s place in the entertainment business. Her hon esty and insight compel the turn of every page, gradually revealing the path she laid out that others would follow.

Peter Weir may have called his directing career “extinct,” but his movies remain irrevocably alive. One of his best is Witness (1985), about a detective defending an Amish boy (Lukas Haas) from a league of corrupt cops. The violence is haunting, but so is the sexual tension between Ford and Kelly McGillis (playing the boy’s mother), which gives rise to a subtle but scorching star-crossed romance. Paramount+, Showtime.

INDIE PICK 1:

To a lot of people, Vin Diesel will always be the dude who pa tronizingly called the Rock his “little brother Dwayne.” But Die sel proved his tangible talents when he starred in and directed Multi-Facial (1995), his funny, rueful short about a mixedrace actor making his way through a series of dehumanizing auditions. Asked to embody both Black and Italian cultural stereotypes, he decides to use the most dangerous weapon in his artistic arsenal: honesty. Free on YouTube.

HOLLYWOOD PICK 2:

After Hours (1995) is a Martin Scorsese movie for Scors ese agnostics. It doesn’t go for the mythic grandeur of Goodfellas; it simply entertains with wit and verve. Griffin Dunne stars as an office drone vexed that either God or the universe is determined to prevent him from going home after work. His countless misadventures include be ing pursued by a vigilante mob, a delightfully silly climax that sets up the perfect punchline to the entire cosmic joke. Paramount+, Showtime.

INDIE PICK 2:

The trailer for Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Don Jon (2013) made it look like a moralizing rom-com about forsaking pornography to please your partner. Yet the actual film is something more complex: a meditation on porn addiction that is also remarkably sex positive. Gordon-Levitt stars as an iron-pumping Lothario who dates an affluent young woman (Scarlett Johansson), only to fall into a deeper, messier and more adult relationship with his classmate (Julianne Moore) at a community college. Hulu, free on Amazon Prime.

In her memoir Lady Director, Joyce Chopra recounts her groundbreaking career in Hollywood.

COURTESY OF CITY LIGHTS BOOKSELLERS AND PUBLISHERS

HOLLYWOOD PICK 1:

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

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Weaving several gritty vignettes together—the most memorable of which centers on a gangster (John Travolta) tasked with entertaining a restless mob wife (Uma Thurman)—this hard-boiled odyssey through Los Angeles is widely referred to as Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece (even though Inglourious Basterds exists). Academy, Nov. 23-24.

Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

Cut from the same gothic cloth as a My Chemical Ro mance music video, this genre-bending dystopian rock opera is set in a future where organ failures and trans plants are commonplace—and Repo Men, assassins who reclaim the organs of those who can’t pay up, are a terri fying threat. Screens in 35 mm! Clinton, Nov. 26.

Touch of Evil (1958)

Orson Welles writes, directs and stars alongside a stacked cast (Janet Leigh, Charlton Heston, Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor) in this acclaimed noir. The 1998 restored version screens as part of Cinema 21’s “Film Noir in the 50s” series, hosted by film programmer Elliot Lavine. Cinema 21, Nov. 26.

The Beyond (1981)

After a woman inherits a hotel in rural Louisiana that was the scene of a brutal murder (never an auspicious start), she stumbles upon what just may be a gateway to Hell. This 4K restoration features nearly double the music heard in the original, thanks to composer Fabio Frizzi’s 2015 rediscovery of his original score in a Roman recording studio. Hollywood, Nov. 26-27.

Solomon King (1974)

A priceless document of early ’70s Black culture in Oak land, Jack Bomay and Sal Watts’ long-lost independent crime film follows an ex-Green Beret (Watts) seeking revenge on the hit man who killed his former lover. Fi nally available thanks to a new restoration by UCLA Film Archive. Hollywood, Nov. 29.

ALSO PLAYING:

Academy: The Big Clock (1948), Nov. 23-24. This Gun for Hire (1942), Nov. 23-24. ParaNorman (2012), Nov. 25-Dec. 1. The Night of the Hunter (1955), Nov. 25-Dec. 1. Cinema 21: The Room (2003), Nov. 25. Clinton: Manne quin in Red (1958), Nov. 23. Derby (1971), Nov. 28. 5th Ave.: The Traveler (1974), Nov. 25-27. Hollywood: Blood Rage (1987), Nov. 25. Nosferatu (1922), Nov. 26. Les Blank Celebration, Nov. 27.

BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS

Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) clambers atop a mountain of corpses and faces Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who decimated the Aztec empire. Then, someone calls, “Cut!” Turns out we’re on a set where Silverio, a filmmaker and journalist, is creating a work of docufiction. Is he a visionary artfully confronting evil? Or a pretentious egomaniac using genocide as a vessel for his genius? You might wonder the same thing about Bardo’s director, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, whose devotion to extreme filmmaking (from the ultra-long takes in Birdman to the snow-and-blood brutality of The Revenant) has earned him a reputation as a brilliant showboat. Still, haters and adherents alike should agree that Bardo puts on an intoxicating show. With its wild flourishes of fantasy, tragedy, absurdity and sex, it is, blessedly, a movie that can barely be contained by the big screen. Silverio may wonder whether fame has leached the authenticity out of his activism, but Iñárritu never gets his feet stuck in existential mud. Like Cacho in the film’s ecstatic opening shot in the desert, he leaps and soars, carrying us through both the mortal world and the afterlife. Death always looms, but Bardo has air in its lungs and blood pumping through its heart, especially in the tender moments Silverio shares with his family. Just watch as he chats with his daughter Camila (Ximena Lamadrid) in a swimming pool whose light blue waters seem to extend to eternity. It’s a scene at once ordinary and wondrous, conveying the film’s defining belief: Dreams are the stuff of life and life is the stuff of dreams. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Hollywood.

AFTERSUN

There’s no such thing as a cool dad, confesses Aftersun through oblique heartbreak— even if that dad shoots doubles pool with his daughter and is played by Paul Mescal (the budding heartthrob of Normal People and Phoebe Bridg ers-dating fame). As another character in the film does, you might mistake Calum (Mescal) and 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) as age-distant siblings when you first see them on their budget-resort vacation in Turkey. She’s calm and self-possessed for her age; he’s chaperoning very loosely for his. First-time director Charlotte Wells memorializes the singular, unreal and entirely fleeting feeling of a vacation bond shared with one’s irregular guardian (Calum lives separately from Sophie and her mother), and Aftersun ’s constant use of camcorder footage as a looking glass for the characters is no innocent nostalgia document. Calum keeps checking the tape as if evaluating whether they’re having a good time, and Gregory Oke’s elliptical cinematography pays off when we understand that what we’re witnessing is not so much a golden or stolen father-daughter moment. It’s that crossroads where an immature parent and a mature child meet in the middle all too briefly. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Liv ing Room.

THE MENU

have to don a fur coat. The film stars Anya Taylor-Joy as Margot, who’s not the type to frequent an extravagant and highly exclusive restaurant that serves tiny-portioned abstract concepts as courses. Nonetheless, she happily obliges her date, Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), and his nonstop musings about the culinary arts. As the couple joins the other diners on a small yacht heading toward a restaurant on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, the chaotic plotlines woven throughout the story ignite. In short, The Menu skillfully subjects White Lotus-type characters to a Willy Wonka-style comeup pance. Ralph Fiennes, as Chef Slowik, is the most spellbinding psychopath since Anthony Hop kins’ Hannibal Lecter; composer Colin Stetson’s eerily dissonant instrumentals (reminiscent of his Hereditary score) punctuate each cleverly constructed scare; and writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy unleash a gripping argument about the consumption of art in the age of content. Mix these ingredients together and they equal a movie that will devour your attention from start to fin ish. R. ALEX BARR. Cedar Hills, Cinema 21, City Center, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Lake The ater, Laurelhurst, Lloyd Center, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard.

THE WONDER

compelling the audience to lean toward an ordinary character. That character is English nurse Lib Wright, who’s called to an Irish village in 1862 to scrutinize a potential miracle: Anna, an 11-year-old girl who’s allegedly fasted for four months, surviving only on invisible “manna from heaven.” And scrutinize her Wright does, with Hippocratic seriousness, while surrounded by gawkers and pundits (including Toby Jones’ ineffectual doctor, Ciarán Hinds’ self-serving priest, and Tom Burke’s prodding journalist). While others de bate miracles and conspiracies, Wright is after empirical evidence as to whether Anna is a saint-inthe-making or a fraud, leaning into The Wonder novelist and co-screenwriter Emma Dono ghue’s pet themes of child peril and liberation (she also wrote Room). Director Sebastián Lelio (Gloria Bell, A Fantastic Woman) reflects thoughtfully on how practicality might exist between cynicism and zealotry, while overinflating a metafocus on the tired “power of story” trope via nonsensical voice-over. Obvi ously, though, this fable carries its own import. Whether we take myths literally or not, they form a language we must all speak.

R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Netflix.

: 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.

A horror comedy with a nuanced social commentary emerges as often as a snowball freezes in hell, but when Satan sees Mark Mylod’s The Menu, he’ll

At last, a movie for which Florence Pugh will do a press tour. In The Wonder, her fol low-up to Don’t Worry Darling, Pugh tamps down her charisma and returns to Lady Macbeth (2016) mode—earthy and re strained, with her deep timbre

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Journalist Hadley Free man interviewed Aries actor William Shatner when he was 90. She was surprised to find that the man who played Star Trek's Captain Kirk looked 30 years younger than his actual age. "How do you account for your robustness?" she asked him. "I ride a lot of horses, and I'm into the bewilderment of the world," said Shatner. "I open my heart and head into the curiosity of how things work.” I suggest you adopt Shatner's ap proach in the coming weeks, Aries. Be intoxicat ed with the emotional richness of mysteries and perplexities. Feel the joy of how unknowable and unpredictable everything is. Bask in the bless ings of the beautiful and bountiful questions that life sends your way.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Of all the objects on earth, which is most likely to be carelessly cast away and turned into litter? Cigarette butts, of course. That's why an Indian entrepreneur named Naman Guota is such a revolutionary. Thus far, he has recycled and transformed over 300 million butts into mosquito repellant, toys, keyrings, and compost, which he and his company have sold for over a million dollars. I predict that in the coming weeks, you will have a comparable genius for converting debris and scraps into useful, valuable stuff. You will be skilled at recycling dross. Meditate on how you might accomplish this metaphorically and psychologically.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Tips on how to be the best Gemini you can be in the coming weeks: 1. Think laterally or in spirals rather than straight lines. 2. Gleefully solve problems in your day dreams. 3. Try not to hurt anyone accidentally. Maybe go overboard in being sensitive and kind. 4. Cultivate even more variety than usual in the influences you surround yourself with. 5. Speak the diplomatic truth to people who truly need to hear it. 6. Make creative use of your mostly hidden side. 7. Never let people figure you out completely.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In my dream, I gathered with my five favorite astrologers to ruminate on your immediate future. After much discussion, we decided the following advice would be helpful for you in December. 1. Make the most useful and inspirational errors you've dared in a long time. 2. Try experiments that teach you interesting lessons even if they aren't completely successful. 3. Identify and honor the blessings in every mess.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "All possible feelings do not yet exist," writes Leo novelist Nicole Krauss in her book *The History of Love*. "There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact." I suspect that some of these novel moods will soon be welling up in you, Leo. I'm confident your heart will absorb the influx with intelligence and fascination.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo author Jeanette Winterson writes, "I have always tried to make a home for myself, but I have not felt at home in myself. I have worked hard at being the hero of my own life, but every time I checked the register of displaced persons, I was still on it. I didn’t know how to belong. Longing? Yes. Belonging? No." Let's unpack Winterson's complex testi mony as it relates to you right now. I think you are closer than ever before to feeling at home in yourself—maybe not perfectly so, but more than in the past. I also suspect you have a greaterthan-usual capacity for belonging. That's why I invite you to be clear about what or whom you want to belong to and what your belonging will feel like. One more thing: You now have extraor dinary power to learn more about what it means to be the hero of your own life.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): It's tempting for you to entertain balanced views about every subject.

You might prefer to never come to definitive conclusions about anything, because it's so much fun basking in the pretty glow of prismatic ambiguity. You LOVE there being five sides to every story. I'm not here to scold you about this predilection. As a person with three Libran planets in my chart, I understand the appeal of considering all options. But I will advise you to take a brief break from this tendency. If you avoid making decisions in the coming weeks, they will be made for you by others. I don't recommend that. Be proactive.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpio poet David Whyte makes the surprising statement that "anger is the deepest form of compassion." What does he mean? As long as it doesn't result in violence, he says, "anger is the purest form of care. The internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect, and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for." Invoking Whyte's definition, I will urge you to savor your anger in the coming days. I will invite you to honor and celebrate your anger, and use it to guide your constructive efforts to fix some problem or ease some hurt. (Read more: tinyurl.com/AngerCompassion)

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarian come dian Margaret Cho dealt with floods of ignorant criticism while growing up. She testifies, "Being called ugly and fat and disgusting from the time I could barely understand what the words meant has scarred me so deep inside that I have learned to hunt, stalk, claim, own, and defend my own loveliness." You may not have ever experienced such extreme forms of disapproval, Sagittarius, but—like all of us—you have on some occasions been berated or undervalued simply for being who you are. The good news is that the coming months will be a favorable time to do what Cho has done: hunt, stalk, claim, own, and defend your own loveliness. It's time to intensify your efforts in this noble project.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The bad news: In 1998, Shon Hopwood was sentenced to 12 years in prison for committing bank robberies. The good news: While incarcerated, he studied law and helped a number of his fellow prisoners win their legal cases—including one heard by the US Supreme Court. After his release, he became a full-fledged lawyer, and is now a professor of law at Georgetown University. Your current trouble isn't anywhere as severe as Hopwood's was, Capricorn, but I expect your current kerfuffle could motivate you to accomplish a very fine redemption.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): "I stopped going to therapy because I knew my therapist was right, and I wanted to keep being wrong," writes poet Clementine von Radics. "I wanted to keep my bad habits like charms on a bracelet. I did not want to be brave." Dear Aquarius, I hope you will do the opposite of her in the coming weeks. You are, I suspect, very near to a major healing. You're on the verge of at least partially fixing a problem that has plagued you for a while. So please keep calling on whatever help you've been receiving. Maybe ask for even more support and inspiration from the influences that have been contributing to your slow, steady progress.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): As you have roused your personal power to defeat your fears in the past, what methods and approaches have worked best for you? Are there brave people who have inspired you? Are there stories and symbols that have taught you useful tricks? I urge you to survey all you have learned about the art of sum moning extra courage. In the coming weeks, you will be glad you have this information to draw on. I don't mean to imply that your challenges will be scarier or more daunting than usual. My point is that you will have unprecedented opportunities to create vigorous new trends in your life if you are as bold and audacious as you can be.

Homework: What do you like a little that you might be able to like a lot? Newsletter. FreeWillAstrology.com

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