Willamette Week, March 1, 2023 - Volume 49, Issue 16 - "Revolving Door"

NEWS: Luxury Hotels Fear Homeless Shelter. P. 10

DRINK: Cowboy Up at Fools and Horses. P. 22

FILM: Benicio del Toro vs. the Hawthorne Bridge. P. 27

REVO LVING DOOR

The aftermath of a stabbing spree highlights problems at Oregon State Hospital. By

Lucas Manfield Page 12

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER

VOL. 49, ISSUE 16

Parking is a subjective construct. 4

The police sergeant who pepper-sprayed an Occupy protester in the mouth was suspended for glorifying violence against protesters. 6

The only two Walmarts closing in Oregon are within Portland city limits. 9

Employees at UnderU4Men each wear a mini pepper spray canister hooked to a belt loop.

11

Four out of 10 Oregonians with serious mental illness are not getting treatment. 13

Sixty percent of beds in the state psychiatric hospital are filled by people who cannot assist in their own criminal defense. 16

Portland filmmaker Dawn Jones Redstone’s eerie social

drama Mother of Color is based on a real-life candidate for Multnomah County commissioner. 21

Portland Dining Month is dead. Long live Portland Brewery Dining Month! 21

Fools and Horses is a Hawaiian cowboy-themed bar 22

Koffee Cake the weed strain will actually put you to sleep, not perk you up. 24

Evil has a new name: Norm 25

Young Nudy is surfing toward Portland on a wave of stars and gold coins. 25

William Friedkin added a Hawthorne Bridge chase to The Hunted after being impressed by the “imposing piece of architecture.” 27

With very small powers come no real responsibilities. 28

ALL 21/22 SPLITBOARDS ARE

SUPER SAVER SNOWSHOE KIT! INSTORE ONLY Saphirose Snowshoes + 3 Piece Adjustible Trekking Pole.

RED

ALBERTA ROSE THEATRE

MAR 4

24th annual

Portland Clowns Without Borders

MAR 24

MAR 26

JOHN MCCUTCHEON

SHANE KOYCZAN spoken word artist + author

MAR 3

+ Red O’Hare

Lu’kas Porter has a roof over his head, but he can’t get out of the rain. That’s because squatters keep flooding the apartment above him on Southeast Clinton Street, as WW reported last week (“Indoor Rain,” Feb. 22). Porter has little recourse: The owner of the condo above his place has ghosted, the homeowners association says it’s powerless, and the fire bureau told him to stop calling. But what makes Porter’s plight resonate is his fear that, on his salary as the birthday party manager at KingPins bowling alley, he can’t afford anything better. That got our readers talking:

JETSETTER, VIA REDDIT: “This article cites an extreme case, but I suspect people all over (not just Portland) are suffering from lack of real competition in providing housing.

“I see it in the vacant homes with sky-high rates, and in rented homes at still-high rates that have seen little to no maintenance.

one of the last great authentic folksingers

RAMBLIN’ JACK ELLIOTT + Lewi Longmire

MAR 11

iconic Irish fiddle

MAR 16

weaving funk, soul, rock, & blues

KEVIN BURKE VANESSA COLLIER

MAR 18

a genderbending burlesque cabaret

UPCOMING SHOWS

3/31 - DRUNK HERSTORY 4/1 - THE TRIALS OF CATO 4/5 - TOM RUSSELL

MAR 10

“Hopefully, the pendulum swings away from this; it is a rough time out there.”

MICHAEL ANDERSEN, VIA TWITTER: “When someone tells you a new home shouldn’t be allowed to exist unless it features X, your question to them should be whether it’d be better than this home.”

OREGONJIVE, VIA WWEEK. COM: “I nominate this ‘Most Portland Story’ for 2023. It is still early, so there may be another story that out-PDXes this one, but this one has the whole ‘I live surrounded by filth, vagrancy, disorder and crime, and no agency or entity really cares but, you know, why move? The rent is

reasonable, you know? And as a part-time birthday coordinator at the local bowling alley, why aim higher? Keep Portland Weird!’”

SCOTT KERMAN, VIA TWITTER: “Blanchet House supports housing solutions that are dignified because unsafe, unhealthy, unsanitary and barely habitable housing is insecure housing and leads to more homelessness. This story is extreme but sadly not unique.”

MARYSUE HEALY, VIA WWEEK.COM: “Dude just needs to have good documentation, contact an attorney and threaten to sue the owner and HOA. If he’s in the right and there’s a case, an attorney will take it on contingency and he might get a nice settlement amount or win bigger in court. There’s plenty of attorneys out there who take on cases exactly like this on contingency. And tenants, by law and by lease, have certain rights that appear to be in severe violation here.

“That said, he also has choices.

There are many other jobs in the service industry that pay much more than a ‘party manager at KingPins bowling alley,’ and he does have a choice to move.

“That said, he could move and still sue for the costs, time, emotional distress.

“ Whining about it to WWeek, who is grasping to make this into some kind of exposé about an age-old tale of cheap rent and subpar living conditions, doesn’t really solve this gentleman’s problem.”

THROWAWAY92715, VIA

REDDIT: “HOA sounds just like renting but with more lawyers.”

SMOLBUTDEDLY, VIA WWEEK.

COM: “I’m really tired of people having no compassion. ‘Just move’ isn’t that easy for everyone. Most places want a deposit of two months rent. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck. Unless you can pay the deposit, mind your business. Whether it be an eviction, an illness, or some other hardship, you don’t know what is going on in someone’s life.”

CORRECTION

Due to an editor’s error, we incorrectly identified Lu’kas Porter’s neighborhood as Montavilla. It’s Powellhurst-Gilbert. WW regrets the error.

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

Kanekoa

‘Ukulele Jam Band

MAR 20 + Steve Berlin

a celebration of women in song

Dr. Know

MAR 25

SHE’S SPEAKING

Arietta Ward | Naomi LaViolette

Liz Chibucos | Lisa Mann

Bre Gregg | LaRhonda Steele

Beth Wood | Kristen Grainger

MAR 28

4 Willamette Week MARCH 1, 2023 wweek.com DIALOGUE

BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx

My question is about drivers abandoning vehicles in snowstorms. Where do they go after leaving their vehicles when TriMet, cabs, Lyft, etc., might not be available? —Tom W.

Funny you should mention it, Tom—I received your question just hours after abandoning my own vehicle (something I rarely do now that high-speed police chases are a thing of the past). As I drove home in last week’s blizzard, I found myself drifting sideways into a snowbank. Thinking quickly, I rebranded this maneuver as “parking” and undertook the last, brutal leg of the journey—a perilous three blocks—on foot. True story!

I say this not to invite comparisons to Admiral Byrd (though if the mukluk fits…), but to embody one answer to your question: A lot of these drivers simply go home. People do most of their driving near where they live, so when you ditch your car, you may well be within walking distance of the crib. Failing that, you can either swallow your pride and call your

4-by-4-owning brother-in-law (or whomever) or do as the Portland Bureau of Transportation recommends: Park your car and take public transit, which is usually available even in severe weather.

Of course, when your car is wallowing and your wheels are spinning impotently, you may find yourself wondering: What IS parking, really? Isn’t parking just a name we give to a car whose journey we no longer wish to share? If I got out right now and took the keys, could any man say I was not parked?

It’s an interesting point. That said, if you can’t get your car’s chakras out of the travel lane, you’ll almost certainly find that towing is a word we give to a car whose journey is about to cost us $300. Both PBOT and the Oregon Department of Transportation were firm on this subject: Block traffic, get towed.

If you can get out of the flow of traffic, however, not only will you avoid a tow, you probably won’t even get a ticket: PBOT suspends overtime parking citations during winter weather events. Of course, the authorities would vastly prefer that you not get stuck in the first place, ideally avoiding all driving in months with an r in their name. If that sounds like a tall order, don’t worry: No one’s going to remember a word of this advice by the time it snows again.

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

TWO-PERSON FIRE VEHICLES COULD BE ELIMINATED: Facing higher call volumes and severe short-staffing, Portland Fire & Rescue could soon confront yet another problem: the elimination of four “rapid response vehicles” that answer low-acuity calls so engines and trucks can respond to more severe emergencies. For years the bureau has relied on those vehicles to take a portion of the calls where an engine or truck isn’t necessary, such as senior tumbles. The City Council approved a budget note in 2021 that warned the RRV program funding would be eliminated in the 2023-24 budget.Former Fire Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty wrote to Wheeler last fall that such a cut would “cause significant disruption and undercut the gains we are making…to meet service demands. Eliminating this program will degrade our service significantly [and] worsen our already critical staffing issues.” But when the fire bureau received its budget guidance in December, it included the $2.7 million reduction. “We recognize that this program would require new funds to be restored if all other station operations remain the same,” says mayoral spokesman Cody Bowman.

OLCC DISCLOSES DATA BREACH: When it rains on the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, it pours. The agency is already reeling from Gov. Tina Kotek’s recent firing of OLCC director Steve Marks, the resignation of commission chair Paul Rosenbaum, and a pending criminal investigation into the diversion of rare bourbon. Then, on Feb. 21, the agency notified employees of a data breach serious enough to warrant a criminal investigation. The OLCC initially discovered the breach Aug. 1. The notice to employees says an OLCC staffer improperly exported private information, including, in some cases, Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers, to the employee’s personal email account. It is unclear why. The notice to employees says there is no evidence the personal information has been misused and there was “no malicious intent.” Nonetheless, the OLCC is offering employees identity theft protection and recovery services, including a $1 million insurance reimbursement policy. OLCC spokesman Mark Pettinger says the breach affected some retirees and job applicants but fewer than 500 people in total. The criminal investigation ended without charges, but a personnel investigation into the matter continues.

DRIVER WHO WILLFULLY RAN OVER THREE PEOPLE SENT TO STATE HOSPITAL, AGAIN:

A 65-year-old man who intentionally drove his Mazda SUV onto a sidewalk at Portland State University campus in 2018, seriously injuring three women, has pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree attempted murder and guilty except for insanity to a third. Greg Porter was sentenced to 15 years in prison, although he’ll spend at least the beginning of that stretch in a locked psychiatric ward at Oregon State Hospital. Porter was homeless and had been in and out of rehab at the time of his arrest in May 2018, and police believed at the time he was suicidal. While in custody, he spent three years at OSH undergoing treatment to regain his sanity. A judge ruled he was finally competent to stand trial last April. In a 2018 jailhouse interview, Porter told KGW he was living on the street with all his belongings in his car after a suicide attempt the prior year. “The day that this happened, I guess I just lost it because I called the bank and I’m $200 in the hole and I mean, problem after problem after problem,” he said. Over the past two years, Oregon lawmakers have scrambled to increase funding for the state’s woefully underdeveloped mental health care system. Last year, Oregon ranked worst in the country for prevalence of mental illness—a problem that has leaked out onto the streets as a result of a concurrent affordable housing crisis.

TIMBERS TV DEAL BEFUDDLES SOME SPORTS

BARS: On paper, the new deal between Major League Soccer and Apple TV looks fabulous. For $99 per season, fans get every game, replays of classic matches, player profiles, and lots of other soccer content. And there are no blackouts. If the game is on, you can see it, anywhere. But at least one Portlander is pissed off. After driving around looking for a bar where he could watch the Timbers home opener Feb. 27 without success, Portland man Grant Mooney started a petition on Medium asking MLS to pay for Apple TV in every sports bar in all 29 MLS cities. For 10 sports bars per city, Mooney says, it would cost MLS $66,120 total, including the Apple TV box. That’s a drop in the bucket compared with the $2.5 billion that MLS got from Apple for a 10-year broadcast deal, Mooney says. A Timbers spokesman says the Apple deal is great for everyone, especially bars. And even with the change, bars with DirecTV can still show MLS games. They need to pay the $99, but at today’s prices, that amounts to selling about 14 beers—an easy feat, especially if the Timbers are winning.

HOSED: Portland Fire & Rescue could soon lose two-person rapid response vehicles.

A Prayer for Jeff McDaniel

BY LUCAS MANFIELD lmanfield@wweek.com

A yearlong investigation into how an image glorifying violence against protesters made it into Portland police training materials has finally produced results—and more questions.

Last week, the city suspended Portland Police Sgt. Jeff McDaniel for 10 days without pay after concluding he was “more likely than not” responsible for inserting the meme, which shows a man in a helmet and body armor beating a “dirty hippy” and is titled “Prayer of the Alt Knight,” into a training presentation on crowd control.

The Portland Police Bureau initially attempted to fire McDaniel, but Police Chief Chuck Lovell ultimately decided to suspend him instead. McDaniel denied inserting the meme, and his union argued the city couldn’t prove he was lying.

Advocates say it’s too little too late. “Too often, when officers are aware of problems within the bureau, there’s only silence—and that silence does not allow for accountability,” says Juan Chavez, an attorney for the Oregon Justice Resource Center who has filed many lawsuits against the Police Bureau.

Despite the yearlong investigation, it remains unclear how many people viewed the offensive slide. Only one other person interviewed by investigators admitted to having been aware of it.

That was Cmdr. Craig Dobson, who told investigators he found the slide “during his presentation at the 2018 Oregon Basic [Rapid

Response Team] training,” according to the Feb. 21 disciplinary letter released by the city. Dobson told investigators he confronted McDaniel, who oversaw the training. McDaniel told him the slide “was for humor,” Dobson told investigators.

The bureau’s crowd control policies have been under scrutiny in recent years. A decade ago, the city settled a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice over Portland’s history of police using excessive force against people with mental illness and, more recently, protesters. The city hasn’t abided by the settlement agreement, the DOJ alleges, and the case is ongoing.

On Monday, OJRC’s Chavez filed legal documents in that case, raising questions about the slide investigation, notably: Why didn’t the commanding officer who said he became aware of the slide in 2018 report it to his superiors? And why, if it thought McDaniel was lying, didn’t the Police Bureau fire him?

“The city’s primary concern appears to be avoiding litigation, either from the community or by [the Portland Police Association], not in creating or upholding a true accountability system,” Chavez wrote Feb. 27 in that court filing. “The outcome [of the investigation] will do little to change the parts of the system and police culture that allow the pattern and practice to persist.”

In a statement, Mayor Ted Wheeler defended the decision not to fire McDaniel—pointing to PPA’s formidable track record for getting officers’ firings overturned during arbitration

HOUSE BILL 3243

CHIEF SPONSORS: State Reps. Nathan Sosa and Hai Pham (D-Hillsboro) and Sen. Wlnsvey Campos (D-Aloha).

WHAT IT WOULD DO: Give insurance company customers the right to sue for damages by including the insurance industry under Oregon’s Unfair Trade Practices Act. A com-

panion bill would specifically allow Oregonians who believe their insurers have treated them unfairly to seek compensation for damages beyond the face value of their insurance policy.

PROBLEM IT SEEKS TO SOLVE: There’s no better illustration than the case that caused Oregon courts for the first time to award dam-

(“Winning Record,” WW, Feb. 8).

“I believe that we have imposed discipline that recognizes the reality of the legal framework we must operate within,” Wheeler said. “Discipline imposed by the chief and myself has been overturned by arbitrators far too often because our recommendations are perceived as being too harsh.”

The PPA applauded the bureau’s “very thorough investigation,” arguing that although McDaniel had kept a copy of the offending presentation, there was no evidence to prove he’d created it. “Police officers are human beings and are not perfect,” the union said in a press release. ”When they make mistakes, they are entitled to the same due process rights and standards of evidence as all other American citizens.”

What is noteworthy about Sgt. McDaniel, however, is how often Portland protesters have taken him to court, alleging actions in keeping with “Prayer of the Alt Knight.” Those lawsuits, all filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, have had limited success. Here’s what happened:

WHEN: Nov. 17, 2011

WHAT HAPPENED: An Oregonian cameraman captured McDaniel pepper-spraying Liz Nichols in the mouth during an Occupy rally. RULING: Nichols lost. A federal jury ruled McDaniel’s use of force wasn’t excessive.

WHEN: Oct. 12, 2016

WHAT HAPPENED: Again, McDaniel was accused of pepper-spraying a protester. This time by Allyson Drozd, who was at City Hall to protest the ratification of a new police labor contract.

RULING: Again, the jury wasn’t convinced McDaniel was at fault. A video played at trial didn’t show the spraying.

WHEN: Jan. 20, 2017

WHAT HAPPENED: Matthew McGaugh was peacefully protesting President Donald Trump’s inauguration when he was tackled, tear-gassed and arrested by Portland riot police, according to the legal complaint. McDaniel was one of the officers alleged to have ordered his arrest.

RULING: McGaugh demanded $100,000 in damages. He got a $15,000 settlement.

WHEN: June 4, 2017

WHAT HAPPENED: Police used nonlethal munitions and herded protesters into a tight group after hundreds of Portlanders arrived downtown to protest a Patriot Prayer rally. Two sued the city and responding PPB officers, including McDaniel.

RULING: Judges threw both cases out, saying officers had “reasonable suspicion” to detain the counterprotesters.

ages against an insurer.

In July 2017, Steven Moody died of an accidental gunshot while camping in Lane County. When his wife attempted to collect on a $3,000 life insurance policy from Federal Insurance Company of Indiana, the company refused to pay, citing the presence of traces of cannabis in Moody’s blood and an exclusion that allowed it to void the policy if the death was caused by or resulted from “being under the influence of any narcotic or controlled substance.”

Christine Moody sued, seeking the $3,000, plus $47,001 for “emotional distress and anxiety.” The company paid her the $3,000, but the trial court ruled Oregon law didn’t allow non-economic damages—exactly the issue the bill addresses. The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed that decision in January 2022, but the Federal Insurance Company is appealing,

so the matter remains unsettled.

Sosa, a personal injury lawyer, says the Moody decision shows the need for his bill. “What that case says to insurance companies is, if you drag a family through the mud, you must pay,” Sosa says. He adds that all of Oregon’s neighboring states, even Idaho, already allow people who’ve been wronged by their insurers to collect damages.

“Insurance companies by design seek to take in money, hold it as long as it can, and pay out as little as possible,” Sosa says. “Sometimes they take that to extremes, and it’s time we ended the special privilege that allows them to do so.”

WHO SUPPORTS IT: The Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, public and private

unions and various public interest groups.

A police sergeant suspended for glorifying violence against protesters was repeatedly sued for his use of force.

BILL OF

THE WEEK

Snow Tows

Stranded drivers left their cars on the road—and now have to pay $300. Here’s where.

What a week for towing companies. At least 600 drivers abandoned their vehicles on Multnomah County roads during the Feb. 22 drivetime snowstorm, according to numbers compiled by the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

Three hundred forty-nine of those vehicles were towed to impound lots between 4 pm Wednesday, Feb. 22, and 4 pm Monday, Feb. 27.

That figure includes cars abandoned on city streets, state highways and the federal interstate system. PBOT administers a contract with private towing companies that state, county and city agencies can summon to haul off cars blocking area roads.

City transportation officials waived fines, up to $270, for people who abandoned their vehicles during the snowy commute. But those drivers still had to pay to get their cars out of impound—a cost that can run upwards of $300. That sparked some outrage from drivers who felt blindsided by road conditions, although motorists, snowplow drivers and meteorologists alike were surprised by the storm’s severity.

PBOT spokesman Dylan Rivera says more than a third of the 609 vehicles scheduled for tows were recovered by their owners before tow trucks arrived.

“ We estimate there were about another 230 canceled tows,” he says, “which is where an agency called for a tow truck but the vehicle owner arrived and moved their vehicle before the tow truck arrived.”

Another 30 cars were either intercepted by owners while the tow was in progress, or moved to the side of the road. “Some portion of those were simply moved from a dangerous spot on a hill to a safe place out of the way at the request of the public agency,” Rivera says. “In those cases, the vehicle owner would have come back to find the vehicle located nearby, with no sign of a tow truck or a police officer or anyone else. They hop in and go with no fee.”

Somewhere in these latter categories was the Portland man who left his car on Interstate 205 on Wednesday and returned Friday to find it broken into and stripped for parts. That intense distillation of Portland in 2023 was first reported by KGW-TV.

PBOT doesn’t have numbers for vandalism, but it can break down the towed cars by geographic area. The largest concentration, by far, was on the west side of the Willamette River— an area that includes both the West Hills and Interstate 405. AARON MESH.

Have Mercy

WHO OPPOSES IT: Insurance companies— including The Standard, based in Portland—and their agents.

Going back to the 1970s, when Oregon first passed the Unfair Trade Practices Act, two industries enjoyed exemptions: banking and insurance. Banks’ grace period ended after the Great Recession, which came about in part because of shoddy lending practices. Lawmakers placed that industry under the UPTA in 2009. They ’ve long tried to do the same with insurers. Beginning at least as early as 2011, Democrats have introduced bills that would end insurers’ exemption. But the insurance lobby has regularly mobilized an army to defeat versions of this bill. Insurance lobbyists say the industry is already heavily regulated by the state and that the specter of lawsuits from clients will result in fewer insurance products and policies

and higher costs. “This is unnecessary ‘double regulation’ of one of the most thoroughly and comprehensively regulated industries in the state,” says Kenton Brine, president of the NW Insurance Council.

The group that might get a more sympathetic hearing in Salem because of its size and propensity for being small-town pillars is individual insurance agents.

“These policies negatively impacted insurance rates in other states that adopted them,” Lana Butterfield, a lobbyist for the Professional Insurance Agents of Oregon, said in written testimony. HB 3243 “would undermine the existing strong protections we have for consumers already in Oregon.”

The bill gets its first hearing in front of the House Committee on Business and Labor on March 1. NIGEL JAQUISS.

A new report by the Portland nonprofit Dollar For carries a blunt title: “Pointless Debt.” The group looked at whether Oregon hospitals complied with a 2019 state law requiring them to evaluate whether patients can pay their bills before turning them over to collections. The short answer, according to the group’s analysis of court records: no.

WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN?

The idea behind House Bill 3076 was to reduce medical debt for the poorest Oregonians. The premise: People who either lacked insurance or the ability to meet out-of-pocket expenses would apply to hospitals for financial assistance. Patients with income below 200% of the federal poverty level ($13,590 for an individual or $27,750 for a family of four in 2023) would have all out-of-pocket costs forgiven. Those earning between 200% and 400% of the poverty level would be eligible for a discount.

WHAT DID HAPPEN?

Dollar For, whose mission is to help eliminate medical debt, found that with one exception, hospitals focused on debt collection, not forgiveness. In fact, 42 of the state’s 60 hospitals gave less financial assistance after the law went into effect than they did before. “Many Oregonians meant to be protected by HB 3076 were sent to debt collectors and sued in Oregon small claims courts, a venue where the overwhelming majority of defendants do not have lawyers and lack the means to defend themselves,” the report says.

DID ANY

HOSPITAL DO THE RIGHT THING?

There was one major exception. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was Oregon Health & Science University. Its board is appointed by the governor, it still gets some financial support from the Oregon Legislature, and its workforce is heavily unionized. “In 2019, the year before HB 3076 went into effect, OHSU granted $24.3 million in financial assistance,”

Dollar For found. “In 2020, it granted $39.2 million. In 2021, that number jumped to $72.6 million…all while net patient revenue at OHSU continued to climb.”

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Dollar For’s analysis of more than 34,000 cases filed in Oregon small claims courts in 2022 offered some context. “Given that medical debt makes up more than half of all recorded debt on credit reports, it is highly likely that the majority of these small claims collection lawsuits are for medical debt,” the report says.

Most of the defendants never responded to the lawsuits, and only a fraction of 1% had attorneys. Most defendants were then saddled with judgments they could not afford to pay—and, in many cases, wouldn’t have owed had hospitals followed the law. In addition, draconian collection practices didn’t appear to provide material financial benefit to hospitals’ bottom lines. They only compounded pressure on struggling Oregonians, who researchers found collectively carry at least $390 million in medical debt.

“Self-pay revenue is a borderline irrelevant line item on hospital spreadsheets,” Dollar For found, “but it is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States.”

WHAT DO THE HOSPITALS SAY?

Despite the report’s findings, Lisa Goodman of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems says, “Oregon hospitals are committed to community benefit and have been active participants in the implementation of the first-in-the-nation community benefit program created through HB 3076.” OHSU spokeswoman Sara Hottman says her hospital simply followed the law: “Starting in early 2019, we worked to remove barriers for patients most in need by providing a quick screening for financial assistance. If they are eligible, OHSU proactively writes off the debt.” NIGEL JAQUISS.

A new report shows that despite a 2019 law, most hospital collection practices are still hurting patients.

BAD DEBTS: Hospitals pursue low-income patients.

Green Thumbs

As City Hall budgets for next year, some bureaus are squeaking, but the Portland Clean Energy Fund is overflowing with money.

BY ANTHONY EFFINGER aeffinger@wweek.com

It’s budget time in Portland and, in some bureaus, things are looking rough.

Freshman City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez just slapped a hiring freeze on the fire bureau. Portland Parks & Recreation is removing 243 light poles from 12 city parks. Money is tight, the parks bureau says, so only two parks will get their poles replaced, and that will take 16 months.

As bureaus jockey for dollars for the fiscal year that begins July 1, one very new part of the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is instead scrambling to spend an embarrassment of riches: the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund.

For the three fiscal years ending June 30, for example, PCEF will have raked in $344 million. And although officials are allocating it as fast as they can, they will begin next year with $275 million in the bank—making PCEF one of the largest loosely restricted pots of money in the state.

PCEF emerged from a 2018 ballot measure, charged with cutting climate-altering emissions by funding climate projects that train and employ people of color and benefit low-income neighborhoods.

Back then, the focus was weatherization of existing housing and building clean energy job skills. As passed by voters, PCEF could only make grants to projects led by local nonprofits.

In October, the Portland City Council made big changes to the rules governing PCEF, allowing city agencies and for-profit companies to apply directly for climate contracts. The council also fast-tracked $40 million to plant more trees in

Portland and $60 million to make low-income housing projects more energy efficient so they produce fewer emissions—projects shepherded by the parks and housing bureaus, respectively. Those changes were no secret, and planting trees is a laudable goal. Indeed, the October reforms to PCEF placated some of the fund’s harshest critics. But it has also turned the fund into a keg that other city bureaus can tap.

PCEF is beginning to allocate the fast-tracked money to affordable housing projects like Alder 9 on the eastside, which is getting $3 million from PCEF to install 159 mini-split heat pumps.

New construction must already meet stringent environmental codes—whether subsidized by PCEF or not. Some tax advocates say the fund’s overflow could be better spent—on desperately needed housing, say—if it weren’t walled in by rules created by voters.

John Calhoun, of all-volunteer Tax Fairness Oregon, says PCEF is an advertisement for why tax policy shouldn’t be made through citizen initiatives. And Calhoun isn’t an anti-tax Fox News fan. His organization lobbies to make the rich pay their fair share.

“Dedicated funds are a problem,” Calhoun says. “We don’t have a way to say, ‘We raised more money than we anticipated, let’s use it for something else.’”

Part of the problem is, PCEF continues to have far more money than it ever expected. The measure’s chief petitioners said in their November 2018 Voters’ Pamphlet statement that the proposal “will bring in $30 million every single year to clean energy projects, home energy efficiency weatherization, and green infrastructure.”

Voters approved that concept 65% to 35%. The fund raised money through a 1% surcharge on

sales at large retailers, like Walmart and Target, but receipts have been far above expectations.

All that cash has become a lightning rod. It’s piling up in part because PCEF has been hamstrung by startup woes and mistakes. Early on, PCEF gave $11.5 million to a nonprofit led by a woman with a checkered history and had to rescind the grant. Then, the city auditor called out the fund for not adequately tracking and reporting its performance.

To be sure, PCEF is trying to do something new, and hard. There is no other fund like it in the country. Not only is it trying to tackle climate change, but it’s trying to do it while empowering the disadvantaged communities most affected by the crisis.

Sam Baraso, PCEF’s program manager since 2019, has heard all the criticism, and he’s working hard to manage the cash pouring into PCEF.

“ We’re either going way too slow, or we’re going way too fast,” Baraso says. “We’ve seen both those arguments come at us within the span of a year.”

To help PCEF get money out the door, the City Council changed what voters approved. The October amendments allow PCEF to contract with city agencies and for-profit enterprises, not just make grants to nonprofits. The city also took control of PCEF’s funding priorities, starting with increasing Portland’s tree canopy and cutting emissions from low-income housing. There are more focus areas to come.

Before the changes, PCEF let grant applicants drive its funding, and its nine-member board of citizen volunteers decided which ones to send along for City Council approval. But that proved to be inefficient, Baraso says, so the council gave PCEF staff the power to approve them.

The PCEF committee will instead guide the

CASH FLOW: The Portland Clean Energy Fund has earmarked $60 million to cut greenhouse gas emissions from new affordable housing projects.

Photo by Paula Lobo

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, EDUARDO VILARO

“Powerful dancers bound togetherbyintensefocus anddistinctiveclarity.” - The LA Times

creation of a five-year climate investment plan that, in turn, will define priorities for grants and contracts.

The result is that PCEF looks more like a city agency and less like a fund guided by citizens, as described in the initiative that created it.

The Voters’ Pamphlet from 2018 read: “Measure creates new Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund Committee; will exclusively recommend to mayor distributions of fund proceeds as grants to private, Oregon nonprofit organizations.”

Whether the October changes that the City Council approved will speed up the spending remains to be seen. When PCEF’s leaders describe why the fund exists, they talk in stark, apocalyptic terms about global warming.

“The climate crisis that is upon us is not a future state,” Donnie Oliveira, director of the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, told the City Council in October. “It’s here. We keep seeing lost lives, lost livelihoods, and billions of dollars in damages.”

But so far, PCEF has awarded just $130 million. Even much of that money hasn’t been spent yet because it’s tied up in multiyear contracts.

Jillian Schoene, chief of staff to Commissioner Carmen Rubio, who oversees PCEF and spearheaded the changes, says the fast-tracked housing money will start to flow by July 1, with the tree cash coming soon after.

For the rest, it might be a while. PCEF is holding open meetings around town to get input from Portlanders on the climate investment plan. Baraso aims to have a draft plan by May, get more public comment, then take it to the City Council by September. Only then will PCEF put out a third request for grant applications. PCEF gave out $8.6 million in the first round of grants and $118 million in the second.

One—previously venomous—critic is satisfied with PCEF’s new direction. Last March, Andrew Hoan, head of the Portland Business Alliance, excoriated PCEF for its errors and recommended that its spending be halted for the year. The city should use PCEF money instead to fund homeless shelters and build a new firefighter training facility, Hoan said then.

This week, a PB A spokeswoman declined to make Hoan available and instead forwarded glowing October testimony from PBA vice president Jon Isaacs. The changes proposed by Rubio were “transformational,” Isaacs said. “We are now genuinely optimistic about the work ahead to meet our decarbonization goals.”

Isaacs had one request: “more engagement and collaboration with the companies that actually pay the tax. This is a very small number of some of our nation’s largest employers, such as Amazon and Walmart.”

Walmart won’t have to pay the tax for much longer. Last week, without specifying why, the giant retail chain said it would close both its stores within Portland’s city limits, the only two of its 45 stores in Oregon to get the ax.

“We don’t have a way to say, ‘We raised more money than we anticipated, let’s use it for something else.’”

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

A familiar fight between businesses and county officials over homeless services plays out in Portland’s hotel district.

BY SOPHIE PEEL speel@wweek.com

Steve Herring pleaded with Multnomah County commissioners for help, his voice quivering.

“Our existence is on the line in terms of our continued place in downtown Portland,” the CEO of Living Room Theaters told them. “We’re in dire, dire straits.” Herring was speaking last month of the county’s new Behavioral Health Resource Center on Southwest Park Avenue between Oak and Harvey Milk streets. Two blocks east of Herring’s fiveplex cinema, it offers homeless Portlanders a place to shower, eat, wash laundry, browse the web, patch up wounds or just hang out. It opened Dec. 5.

Every morning, a line stretches for a block before the center opens at 8 am, down-and-out Portlanders awaiting entrance to a squat building located among the

Dossier, the Hyatt and, soon, the 35-story Ritz-Carlton, by far the most expensive hotel Portland has ever seen.

And those business owners are asking the county to do more to keep the neighborhood around the center free from some of what its clients bring with them, including threats of violence and drug use. They’ve requested security patrols, police drug stings, and a fundamental alteration of the center’s operating model.

The tensions underlie a more complicated question: How do officials serve homeless Portlanders in the heart of downtown without deterring the customers businesses desperately need?

Business reps painted a bleak picture.

“Staff members have been held at gunpoint, clients that we’ve relied on for years have turned away from downtown,” Matthew

Skelton, manager of Hotel Lucia, a block east on Southwest Broadway, told the board Feb. 16. “Clients have been robbed.”

The county says it won’t change the center’s walk-in model because it’s meant for Portlanders for whom even a phone call to schedule an appointment can pose an impossible barrier.

“ We have heard time and again that an appointment-based model will not work for those suffering from behavioral health challenges and living on our streets,” says Sara Guest, spokeswoman for County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson. “So we are striving for a system with no wrong doors. We will continue to uphold that model.”

The four-story center is the brainchild of former County Chair Deborah Kafoury, who helped haul the first-of-its-kind project across the finish line before she left office. It

CLOSE CALL: Wes Bateman says the county’s new center impacts employee safety at the underwear store he manages.

MICK

serves more than 1,100 Portlanders a week, according to county officials. In a week’s time, 200 people scrub themselves in showers. Washing machines spin 140 loads of laundry. Since mid-January, center staff has referred 207 people to mental health services.

The county hired M ental Health & Addiction Association of Oregon to run the center. It’s staffed by more than two dozen peer specialists who themselves once struggled with addiction or homelessness.

Lockers keep visitors’ few possessions safe. There’s no pressure to leave until closing time at 8 pm. A woman told staff on Monday that the shower she took on the second floor of the center was the first she’d had since she became homeless, says center director Zach Harrell.

That’s the success story, among numerous others Harrell could tell. Surrounding shopkeepers tell another tale.

Rewind to the months prior to the center’s December ribbon-cutting and a familiar story arc played out behind closed doors: Business owners were anxious that the center would be a magnet for drug dealing, tent camping, and erratic behavior. They say Kafoury’s staff blew off their concerns.

“The building is where the need is,” says Christa Jones, the county’s community mental health program manager. But she acknowledges it’s not ideal for surrounding businesses: “I have all the compassion for them. It’s not conveniently placed for them. I understand that.”

And those businesses say their fears have come true.

Employees at the UnderU4Men underwear store down Park Avenue from the center now each wear a mini pepper spray canister hooked to a belt loop. The owner purchased them after a sidewalk brawl tumbled into the store.

“ We have a store Taser, and we have a larger, 40-burst pepper spray for the store,” says store manager Wes Bateman. “Three times a day, we have people outside doing drug deals. I feel like the dealers knew this is an easy market.”

Operators of the Union Bank Tower kitty-corner from the center, on Southwest Washington Street, have kept a log to trace a correlation between the center’s opening and incidents of loitering, property damage and drug use outside. Security staff recorded seven incidents in the first week of November, before the center opened; it recorded 55 incidents last week.

Earlier this month, the owners of the Union Bank Tower hired armed security guards from Ech-

elon Protective Services to patrol.

Nearby businesses and government officials are approaching yet another draft of a nonbinding “good neighbor” agreement that sets mutual expectations for the two parties. County officials say one item is nonnegotiable: The center’s walk-in model will remain.

But the county insists it’s made small tweaks to improve conditions outside the center. Plainclothes security guards that once roamed inside the building and around the block now wear uniforms, for instance, after center visitors responded overwhelmingly in a survey that they’d feel safer with uniformed guards.

Director Harrell says the center tells visitors they won’t be allowed to come inside if they pitch tents within two blocks of the center.

“It feels icky and harsh,” he says, “but we really want to respect our neighbors.”

Harrell says he’s confronted several suspected drug dealers inside the center, telling them, “We won’t allow you back in.” And Harrell lowered the center’s capacity from 150 people down to 75 just weeks after it opened. (It’s now back up to 100.)

Some onlookers are skeptical that businesses and a behavioral health center can ever coexist without one sabotaging the other.

“I’ve been listening to this for three years, and it’s ridiculous,” says George Schweitzer, an executive with the company that owns the Benson Hotel, around the block from the center, on Broadway. “It’s all happy talk.”

Jones, the county’s mental health manager, says she’s hopeful there’s a scenario where both businesses and the center can succeed.

“If there’s an assumption that the [center] is the central cause of what we’re seeing, then I don’t know what the appetite is to have a center like that even on the best days,” Jones says. “But we’re getting needs met. This was exactly what it was intended to do.”

In late spring, two new types of residents will move into the area. Nineteen people will take up beds on the fourth floor until the county finds them permanent housing. Another 33 people will take turns staying overnight on the third floor.

Just a block and a half away, 130 people will begin moving into the Ritz-Carlton, where condos run from $2 million to $9 million. The hotel will also open 250 rooms, starting at $518 per night.

That means Portland’s 1% will live steps away from the city’s most downtrodden. No one knows how the two worlds will affect one another.

The aftermath of a stabbing spree highlights problems at Oregon State Hospital.

BY LUCAS MANFIELD lmanfield@wweek.com PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIAN

ne morning, a week before Christmas 2019, Salvador Martinez-Romero arrived at Murrayhill Marketplace in Beaverton.

The tidy suburban shopping center, set amid towering Douglas firs, oozed a holiday peacefulness.

That disappeared in a heartbeat.

Martinez-Romero, broad-shouldered with a mustache and patchy beard, still shy of his 21st birthday, came to Murrayhill Marketplace on Dec. 18 not to spend money—but to get it. He brought a chef’s knife into the Wells Fargo Bank branch and robbed it. Inside the bank, he stabbed two women, injuring 53-year-old Debra Thompson and killing her 72-year-old mother, Janet Risch.

He then walked outside, clutching fistfuls of cash. He encountered Ian Day sitting in his car. Martinez-Romero stabbed Day twice, then stole his Chevy Impala and drove into the residential neighborhoods of Tigard, where he stabbed another woman and ran, chased by police.

When police finally caught up with him, Martinez-Romero barked at their K-9 dogs. A judge later said there was evidence he was high on methamphetamine at the time.

Terrible crimes occur everywhere, even in well-manicured suburbs. But what happened that day at Murrayhill Marketplace would launch Martinez-Romero on an odyssey that highlights the deep dysfunction of Oregon’s mental health system.

Oregon’s number of residential psychiatric treatment beds per capita is about average compared with other states. But the state also has one of the highest rates of mental illness. The result: Four out of 10 Oregonians with serious mental illness are not getting treatment, according to analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

After his arrest, Martinez-Romero sat in the Washington County Jail for two months. During that time, his attorney says, he was not of sound mind and, at least once, attempted suicide.

In February 2020, a judge deemed Martinez-Romero unable to assist in his own defense and sent him to Oregon State Hospital, the state’s locked psychiatric facility in Salem. The goal: that he be “restored to competency” to stand trial.

Last month, he was sent back to Washington County after spending three years at the state hospital, which is so strained by the skyrocketing number of mentally ill criminal defendants sent there that it recently limited patients judged incompetent to stand trial to a maximum stay of one year.

BURK @bpburk

NO RELIEF: Criminal defendants awaiting a bed at Oregon State Hospital were projected to drop rapidly after the hospital began discharging patients years early last fall.

The state hospital is the tentpole at the center of Oregon’s mental health system. Records show it is overburdened and wildly expensive. Martinez-Romero’s three-year stay at the hospital, for instance, cost around $1.5 million. He made little progress and occupied a scarce treatment bed for which nearly 100 other severely mentally ill patients languished on a waitlist.

Doctors failed to eliminate Martinez-Romero’s persistent self-reported delusions, according to court testimony, and nurses suspected he was malingering. Prosecutors argued Martinez-Romero was sufficiently competent to face trial. On Feb. 2, a judge agreed, sending Martinez-Romero back to jail to await trial set for next year.

In other words, his hospitalization provided little benefit at great expense.

Cases such as Martinez-Romero’s and overcrowding at the state hospital have created a crisis of epic proportions. Although the Oregon Legislature is now rushing to fund improvements, critics say state leaders have allowed the situation to deteriorate for too long.

“It’s a human-made problem,” Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton says of the forced release of patients. “The state hospital is inadequate to meet the need. The hospital has known that for years. The Oregon Health Authority has known that for years. And now we’re paying the consequences.”

To find a time when Oregon’s mental health system actually worked, Jason Renaud, co-founder of the Mental Health Association of Portland, says you need to go back to the beginning.

In 1861, Dr. James Hawthorne opened the Oregon State Insane and Idiotic Asylum in what was then the standalone city of East Portland. “He recognized that these were illnesses and that people can be treated with compassion,” Renaud says. “It’s been going downhill since.” Lawmakers eventually moved Hawthorne’s patients to a new hospital in Salem in 1883. That facility, Oregon State Hospital, is the primary treatment center for “aid and assist” patients such as Martinez-Romero—people who

Waitlist Length

are charged with crimes but deemed too mentally ill to stand trial.

Over the years, the state hospital weathered criticism for keeping patients in inhumane conditions and applying abusive treatment methods. The 1950s saw the beginning of a nationwide movement to “deinstitutionalize” the mentally ill, placing patients in community programs that experts say are more effective, more humane— and much cheaper.

But Oregon’s investment in community programs didn’t keep up with the need—leaving few alternatives to the locked-down psychiatric hospital it has repeatedly downsized. The Oregon Health Authority reported in early 2022 that the state was short 480 licensed residential treatment beds, about a quarter of the capacity needed in community programs. The state has funded less than half of that 480-bed deficit.

At its peak in the 1950s, when the state’s population was less than half what it is now, Oregon State Hospital held more than 3,500 patients. But that number plummeted thanks to civil rights-era reforms, and has hovered at 600 to 700 for more than a decade.

The state considered expanding the hospital’s capacity when it rebuilt the Salem campus and added a Junction City satellite in the early 2010s, but advocates convinced lawmakers not to, arguing the money was better spent on community-based services.

The state then failed to invest sufficiently in those community services, which allow patients to receive care nearer their homes and in less restrictive surroundings.

Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem), who championed rebuilding the hospital and retired last year, says state leaders failed to prioritize the issue after building the new facility. “We got complacent,” he tells WW Oregon has the nation’s highest prevalence of mental illness, according to a 2022 report by Mental Health America. And its access to care ranks in the bottom half of states.

As a result, the state hospital is overflowing. As of January, there were 98 criminal defendants await a bed. Greg Roberts, superintendent of the state hospital at the time the new Salem and Junction City campuses opened, tells WW nobody should be surprised at the current state of affairs.

“To the extent that your community mental health system is robust, then you can rely less on a state hospital,” Roberts says. “But to the extent

SOURCE: OREGON STATE HOSPITAL

##BPD##AWAITING TRIAL: Salvador Martinez-Romero

BEAVERTON POLICE DEPT.

OREGON STATE HOSPITAL: The hospital’s new Salem flagship was completed in 2011 at a cost of nearly $500 million.

that your system is not robust, the state hospital starts to become the only game in town.”

Administrators say one answer to the hospital’s overcrowding would be to add more beds. But lawmakers have repeatedly rejected that solution, focusing instead on community services that rarely materialize.

State. Rep. Rob Nosse (D-Portland), who chairs the Oregon House Committee on Behavioral Health and Health Care, says community facilities are less expensive, closer to patients’ families and, unlike the state hospital, often covered by Medicaid. “We need to ensure that when people are ready to leave OSH,” he tells WW, “they have somewhere to go.”

Nosse has also noted that the state hospital is struggling to recruit and retain staff, a problem that also limits community programs’ capacity.

Last fall, the shortage of beds at the state hospital and in Oregon communities reached a breaking point. Under pressure from judges and advocates, the state resorted to releasing more defendants from the hospital before they were sane enough to go to trial.

“This revolving door of people offending, being held, released and reoffending is taking a toll,” Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner told lawmakers in December.

Originally, Oregon State Hospital existed to serve three groups of patients: those who had been tried for a crime and found guilty except for insanity (GEI); patients charged with a crime but unable to aid and assist in their own defense because of mental illness; and patients who had not committed a crime but had been civilly committed because a judge found that they presented a danger to themselves or others or were unable to take care of their basic needs.

During the past decade, “aid and assist” patients such as Romero-Martinez have outstripped all patients in the other two categories.

In 2000, less than 10% of the state hospital’s beds were taken by aid-and-assist patients. Now, it’s nearly 60% (see “OSH Average Daily Population,” below). It’s such a daunting figure, people who have been civilly committed now often go to emergency rooms instead. That is overwhelming local hospital systems, which aren’t equipped to serve such patients.

The state’s housing shortage has exacerbated the challenge of providing community mental health resources. And the pandemic ratcheted up the stresses both on patients and the state’s

mental health workforce. All of those factors increased pressure on the state hospital. “It’s kind of a perfect storm,” says Bob Joondeph, who ran the nonprofit advocacy organization Disability Rights Oregon for 30 years before retiring in 2018. Joondeph remembers when the state bused people with mental illness back to Old Town from a state hospital campus in Wilsonville. Now, that campus is closed and Portland’s cheap housing

Prosecutors agreed. “It’s like squeezing a balloon,” Barton, the Washington County DA, told WW. “The hospital has been squeezed, and it’s popping out at our end. But there’s nowhere to put these people.”

Barton, along with DAs in Lane and Marion counties, has spoken out forcefully against the early release of patients from Oregon State Hospital. It’s a tricky position in a state dominated

WHO’S THERE: “Aid and assist” patients at Oregon State Hospital have risen dramatically in the past two decades, while civilly committed patients have plummeted to near zero.

has largely disappeared. As new condos replace single room occupancy apartments, many people struggling with mental illness now live on the streets.

“It’s reverted to the way it was 40 years ago,” Joondeph says. “Except now, there’s even less housing.”

By 2022, Oregon’s mental health system was a tinderbox. Last September, a judge in U.S. District Court in Portland threw a match on it.

As part of federal litigation suing the state’s mental health system, Disability Rights Oregon pointed to a 20-year-old court order requiring that people with mental illness who were charged with a crime should stay in jail no longer than seven days before they were sent to the state hospital. State officials admitted they were failing to meet that standard.

“We’ve run out of good ideas,” then-Oregon Health Authority director Patrick Allen told lawmakers in December. “We’re left with which bad idea satisfies the need.”

Senior U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman brokered a compromise that’s come to be known as “the Mosman order.” Patients charged with violent crimes like Martinez-Romero who would have once been given three years of treatment at the state hospital would now get kicked out after one, thereby making more room for people on the waitlist.

Critics say the policy ignores reality.

“[The] recommendations assumed the existence of a functioning mental health system with adequate capacity, which Oregon has not had for years,” wrote attorneys for the community hospital systems in response to Mosman’s order.

by progressive politicians who support deinstitutionalization and alternatives to incarceration.

A Jesuit High School grad who rowed for Gonzaga University, Barton went on to a career prosecuting violent crimes in Washington County before taking over as district attorney in 2018.

While many Oregon DAs’ offices are moving left, Barton has twice beaten well-funded progressive challengers and is now leading the fight against simply discharging state hospital patients to solve overcrowding.

Renaud, the mental health advocate, says he disagrees with Barton on many things, but he admires the prosecutor’s willingness to take on a broken system. “He’s super smart and he’s on this problem,” Renaud says.

Barton has suggested creating “restoration to competency” programs in jails, a strategy being employed in dozens of states from California to Georgia.

These mental health treatment programs operate out of specialized units in jails and offer an alternative to shipping inmates to overcrowded state hospitals. Barton tells WW it’s the “least horrible on a list of horrible choices.”

But his own county’s sheriff, Pat Garrett, bristled at the idea.

“The answer is a resounding NO,” he told the county’s presiding circuit judge, Kathleen Proctor, in a December letter, arguing such a program wasn’t feasible—and plainly illegal under state law.

Barton has joined the federal litigation between the state and mental health advocates and the hospital systems, along with two other DAs and five judges, as friends of the court, arguing that Mosman’s order to release patients after one year is only compounding an existing problem. Washington County has so few community treatment centers that the only way to get treatment for people with severe mental illness is to wait for them to commit a crime and then send them back to the state hospital.

The revolving door is simply spinning faster. One man, Piseat Thouen, was sent back to Washington County from the state hospital on Oct. 25 after he’d attacked a woman in her car with a spear. Three days later, the judge ordered Thouen to go to Providence St. Vincent Hospital where doctors quickly determined he didn’t pose an immediate threat and released him back to the street.

In the case of Martinez-Romero, Barton won a different outcome. His team convinced a judge that Martinez-Romero is now competent to stand trial, now set for September 2024. In the meantime, he sits in Washington County Jail.

“I hope he goes to prison. I don’t think he should get off easy,” says Ian Day, who was stabbed twice by Martinez-Romero outside the

“ There’s nowhere to put these people.”

Murrayhill Planet Fitness. “He killed someone in front of her daughter.”

For advocates, Martinez-Romero’s case demonstrates the flaws in Oregon’s mental health system, which spends so much money on criminal defendants but so little on community services that might have prevented the crimes in the first place.

“ We end up looking at the person at the end of the road, at the jail door or in the institution—which is just really tragic,” says Kevin Fitts, executive director of the Oregon Mental Health Consumers Association. “So many of these things could have been averted.”

Barton has won court approval to prosecute Romero-Martinez’s case. He expects many similar rulings. “We’re getting more and more concerning people,” he says, ticking off a list of names, each charged with murder or attempted murder.

Although the hospital is releasing more patients, the waitlist to get into the hospital isn’t shrinking (see “Waitlist Length,” page 14).

In September, the state projected 74 aid-andassist admissions a month until February. In January, there were 101.

Making those defendants wait in jail, where they rarely get effective treatment for their illness, is a constitutional crisis, says legal director Emily Cooper of Disability Rights Oregon. “Jails have been the de facto mental health provider for decades now.”

Some patients are admitted to the state hospital on low-level charges that wouldn’t result in prison time. About 1 in 6 aid-and-assist patients currently at the hospital face only misdemeanor charges. Keeping them locked up at the hospital longer than their presumptive sentences amounts to criminalization of a disability, Cooper argues.

Allen, then the director of the Oregon Health

Authority, attempted to reassure lawmakers at a hearing in December. He had one foot out the door—newly elected Gov. Tina Kotek had promised his ouster during her campaign.

Allen alluded to the need for more beds at the state hospital and ran through statistics showing the state was building hundreds of new beds at community facilities, thanks to more than $1 billion in new spending that lawmakers approved last year.

“The system needs more investment,” Allen added. “It probably needs a similar investment to what you just made.”

As for Martinez-Romero, his fate will now be decided by the courts. If convicted, he could be sent to prison—or, if ruled guilty except for insanity, right back to the overflowing state hospital.

“He needs to be institutionalized,” Renaud says. “The question is, just what institution is he going to be in?”

ONWARD ROSE CITY

Sporadic sleet and near-freezing temperatures greeted the Soccer City faithful as thousands packed into Providence Park on Monday, Feb. 27, for the Portland Timbers delayed 2023 home opener. Juan Mosquera (No. 29) scored his first Major League Soccer goal in the sixth minute— the 600th overall in the team’s MLS history—and the Timbers managed to outlast Sporting Kansas City’s professional dominance to secure a 1-0 win. It was also head coach Giovanni Savarese’s 69th victory with the club, making him the winningest coach in Timbers history.

Photos by Blake Benard

On Instagram: @blakebenard

GET BUSY

WATCH: Mother of Color

Portland filmmaker Dawn Jones Redstone’s eerie social drama Mother of Color returns to the cinema this month following its world premiere at the Tacoma Film Festival in October. The film tells the story of a single mother of two named Noelia who dreams of running for office and begins receiving messages from her ancestors as she prepares for a potentially life-changing job interview. The character was inspired by the actor playing her, Ana del Rocío, a real-life candidate for Multnomah County Commissioner District 3, and the only person of color currently in the race. Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 503-2234515, cinema21.com. 6:30 pm Wednesday, March 1. $12.

WATCH: My Fair Lady

Lincoln Center Theater’s production of Lerner and Loew’s beloved My Fair Lady (winner of 10 Tonys, five Outer Critics Circle Awards, five Drama Desk Awards, and three Drama League Awards), will grace the Keller Auditorium stage this week and tickets are selling fast. The classic songs will transport you to the world of Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower seller, and Henry Higgins, a phonetics professor determined to sculpt her into that society’s idea of a “proper lady.” But this reexamination of the musical will have you wondering who’s truly undergoing change. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 503-248-4335, portland.broadway.com. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, 1 and 6:30 pm Sunday, though March 5. $29.75$139.75.

EAT: Portland Brewery Dining Month

March kicks off 31 days of celebrating our city’s amazing breweries and their dedication to creating food menus as stellar as the beer. Portland Brewery Dining Month picks up where Portland Dining Month, which last took place in 2019, left off. The model is essentially the same: For $35, diners can enjoy a three-course meal. However, the breweries are sweetening the deal by throwing in one beer, house wine or non-alcoholic beverage and a $10 voucher for use between April 1 and June 30. Participating pubs include Backwoods, Ecliptic, Gigantic Hawthorne, Grand Fir, Migration, Old Town, Steeplejack, StormBreaker and Von Ebert. Multiple locations. Wednesday-Friday, March 1-31. $35 for three courses, gratuity not included.

LISTEN: Live Wire Radio with Luke Burbank

Spend a raucous evening with Emmy Award-winning Live Wire Radio host Luke Burbank at a taping of the fastest-growing entertainment show on public radio. By now, most Portlanders know the program features a variety of entertainment, including music, comedy and conversation. This episode will feature writer Joseph Earl Thomas, singer-songwriter Stephanie Anne Johnson, writer-musician Dessa, and podcaster Dana Schwartz. Described as a lineup with “Oscar Wilde wit and the charisma of Ferris Bueller grand marshaling a parade,” you’re not going to want to miss out. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 503-719-6055, albertarosethe-

atre.com. 7:30 pm Thursday, March 2. $30 general admission, $45 preferred seating.

WATCH: The Invitation

The Clinton Street Theater screens this 2015 psychological thriller by Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body) free of charge. Bravely dive into this Hollywood Hills dinner party with Will, who endures a night filled with tension, mysterious house guests, and paranoia. Take comfort in the fact that you’re simply a virtual guest and get to sit back and enjoy the ride. Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., 971808-3331, cstpdx.com. 7 pm Friday, March 3. Free, RSVP to attend.

GO: Mary Szybist & Laurel Nakanishi

Enjoy an evening of artistic sharing with poets Mary Szybist, author of Incarnadine (winner of the 2013 National Book Award in Poetry), and the writer, educator and author of Ashore, Laurel Nakanishi. The two will engage the audience with an interactive presentation that focuses on the concept of place. After a discussion and readings, attendees are invited to write a response to a series of poetry-inspired prompts, so pack a journal and your favorite pen. Literary Arts, 925 SW Washington St., 503-227-2583, literaryarts.org. 7 pm Friday, March 3. Free.

DANCE: Emo Nite

Emo Nite founders T.J. Petracca and Morgan Freed started the event in 2014 at a small dive bar in Los Angeles in order to showcase alternative music that wasn’t

played at the venues they frequented. Nine years later, their DJ sets and singalongs have clearly acquired a fan base since Emo Nite now takes place across the country. “We’ve always tried to make our events cool and current and something you want to go to because it’s the coolest place to be,” Petracca explained. This week, that place is Holocene, so snag your tickets now. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 503-239-7639, holocene.org. 9 pm Friday, March 3. $16. 21+.

EAT & DRINK: The 17th Annual Portland Seafood & Wine Festival

Dungeness crab season is in full swing, coinciding perfectly with the Portland Seafood & Wine Festival, which will also pour craft beer, cider and spirits. You can expect more than 40 wineries to be present, along with 20 other beverage makers offering free samples as well as larger swigs for purchase. And a festival wouldn’t be complete without live music, face painters, balloon artists, and craft vendors, so that means there’s plenty to keep the kids occupied while parents day drink. Portland Expo Center, 2060 Marine Drive W, 503-736-5200, pdxseafoodandwinefestival.com. 2-9 pm Friday, noon-9 pm Saturday, March 3-4. $13-$125.

LUCK BE A LADY: The revival of My Fair Lady still has the classic songs you love but also manages to reexamine old themes.

Buzz List

WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.

1. LLOYD ATHLETIC

FOOD & DRINK

CLUB

815 NE Halsey St., 503-287-4594, lloydathleticclub.com. 5:30 am-9:30 pm

Monday-Friday, 7 am-8 pm Saturday-Sunday.

Purchasing a gym membership just to gain access to its bar may sound a bit indulgent; however, there are few watering holes outside of an airport that open as early as the Lloyd Athletic Club’s. Almost pointedly dated yet obsessively maintained, the overlit tableau feels like a set for a Reagan-era sitcom. You’ll be drinking with thick-necked chuckles who stop by for an après-lift tipple, but craft beers are only $6.50 a pour and, again, the potential for finagling an early morning hair of the dog intrigues.

2. PORTLAND CIDER COMPANY

3638 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 971-888-5054, portlandcider.com. 3-9 pm Wednesday-Thursday, 1-10 pm Friday-Saturday, 1-9 pm Sunday. 4005 SW Orbit St., Beaverton, 503-626-6246. 3-10 pm Wednesday-Friday, noon-10 pm Saturday-Sunday.

Portland Cider Company ushers in 2023 with a sunny new seasonal cider: Mango Mimosa. Like its name suggests, the medium-sweet beverage with a bubbly finish pairs best with brunch foods, like huevos rancheros and banana pancakes, but its tropical fruit notes also make it a good match for spicy dinner entrees— think Thai curry or carne asada tacos. Or just drink it solo any time the gloom of a Pacific Northwest winter gets to be a little too heavy.

3. WORKSHOP FOOD AND DRINK

1407 SE Belmont St., 971-229-1465, fermenterpdx.com. 5-10 pm Thursday-Sunday, 5-11 pm Friday-Saturday.

Aaron Adams, the chef behind the selfdubbed “beneficial bacteria emporium” Fermenter, has launched a late-night lounge right next door to that house of fermented foods. Small plates at Workshop Food and Drink are all vegan and inspired by Adams’ Cuban roots, but we’re most excited about the deep list of cocktails. Many use kitchen byproducts to help offset waste, like Yes Whey, a classic milk punch with a housemade cashew yogurt whey.

4. MCMENAMINS 23RD AVENUE BOTTLE SHOP

2290 NW Thurman St., 971-202-7256, mcmenamins.com. 10 am-10 pm daily.

For the second year, McMenamins has partnered with Great Notion Brewing so that each can make the other’s beer recipe while giving it a unique spin. This time around, the industry old timer has produced two different Great Notion beers: What’s Colder Than Cold, a double IPA inspired by Juice Box fermented with lager yeast for a crisp finish, and an even bolder 13.9% ABV Ice Cold Triple IPA. The latter could only be bottled because McMenamins has a distilling license. Drink with care.

5. PACIFIC STANDARD

100 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 971-346-2992, kexhotels.com/eat-drink/ pacificstandard. 3 pm-midnight daily.

At Pacific Standard, the bar by bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler and longtime colleague Benjamin “Banjo” Amberg anchoring the Kex hotel, you won’t find any of the drinks the two men became known for at their former posts, Clyde Common and Pépé le Moko. But there are nods to those past hits in the all-new cocktail menu, like the summery rosé Negroni, the zesty All-Day Bloody Mary, and the Palm Desert Date Shake that’s decadent but not too boozy. “I just have no shortage of drink ideas,” Morgenthaler says. A gift and a curse we’re all thankful for.

Editor: Andi Prewitt Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

Saddle Up

A new Pearl District bar pays tribute to the Hawaiian paniolo.

BY THOM HILTON PHOTOGRAPHS BY AARON LEE

There’s a new cowboy in town.

Next door to Pink Rabbit, the hip, neon-illuminated cocktail bar taken over by Collin Nicholas in mid-2021, is his new spot with a unique theme. From the décor in the former Vault space to nearly every ingredient on the menu, Fools and Horses takes inspiration from paniolos—Hawaiian cowboys whose cuisine is influenced by immigrants from Mexico, Portugal and Japan.

If that sounds a bit busy, it is, and so is Fools and Horses, but that’s all part of the fun. Stepping inside, visitors instantly know they’re in for a special experience. As if the Venn diagram of “Hawaii” and “cowboy culture” weren’t enough, it becomes clear there are not just two but three overlapping circles thanks to the art deco interior design. The space is about as dark as a haunted mansion’s basement, with lighting set to “almost none” and custom-patterned, gold-accented wallpaper a shade of green so inky it’s almost black. One corner booth sits on a giant circular stage that overlooks the dining room. Another, which I sat at, is L-shaped, with one seat plopped in the center, like an ottoman or, perhaps, a witness stand. On the way to the restroom, I turned on my flashlight to reveal— wow!—an old-timey wooden phone booth!

The above description should be taken as lightheartedly as possible: It isn’t criticism or befuddlement, but giddy observation from this queer reviewer. There’s something inherently campy about the proceedings. The intersection of hide rugs and skulls with Gatsby cosplay vibes means a (seemingly) unintentional silliness pierces the sophistication, making the chameleonic space both playful and sexy, gay and straight, both great for a date or an evening with friends.

The enormous and very shiny bar, stocked with sauces and syrups all made in house, churns out some of the best new cocktails in town, all served in gorgeous and distinctive glassware. The Five Longhorns ($14) with bourbon, amaro, fig, and makrut lime rules hard—it’s a smoky and very slammable treat.

The stunningly named Cash & Curry ($14) is a mix of gin, sherry, lychee, curry leaf and a coconut-rice-miso horchata, resulting in a

shake-level creamy and vegan alternative to a clarified milk punch.

Its zero-proof replicant, Shoots! and Ladders ($10), is pale white and comes in a teeny, adorable dessert wine glass, like a stunning potion from an evil queen. It’s simply one of the best drinks I ever dang drank, and I wish I’d had three.

Fizzy highlights included the punchy, umbrella-topped Fools Gold ($12) with rum, Cointreau, and guava jelly; and the N/A Guess Who ($10), with Seedlip Grove and housemade POG juice, its strong perfume working as a tropical resort transportation device.

Fools and Horses’ cocktail menu is divided in two: “Spirit Forward” and “Refreshing.” Given personal tastes, I opted for choices from the latter. The food menu seems to adhere to that hard-line split in a similar way, with heartier

dishes to accompany a more spirit-forward experience, and produce and seafood-focused options that sing alongside the more playful bevvies. While Fools and Horses is a cocktail bar first and foremost, dinner really is something I’d encourage—the paniolo theme thrillingly weaves its way through the snacks and entrees, thanks to the strong perspective of chef and

Oahu native Alex Wong.

The Paniolo Range ($21) is a gorgeously presented, gussied-up charcuterie board that looks like it could be served at the Oscar party thrown by the richest, most perfect person you know. Slices of baguette, assembled with passion-fruit butter, manchego, pickled peppers, and pipikaula (a house-cured dried beef rib jerky), is

FAIR SHAKE: While Fools and Horses is primarily a cocktail bar, it’s worth having dinner here thanks to the menu’s playful paniolo theme.

sweet and spicy lima bean and linguica cassoulet ($18), reminiscent of Mom’s chili. Confit tarot and potato ($19) with spicy piri piri sauce are mega-crispy-crunchy on the outside and give way to a steamy, fluffy interior. The short ribs ($27) were good, though perhaps oversalted due to a heavy hand with soy sauce, and served with a slightly less intriguing interpretation of the crispy potatoes from before. Either food pathway would be nicely complemented by the salad ($16), with papaya seed dressing, macadamia nuts, and red onion—a palate cleanser that pushes back against so many intense flavors.

Hot Plates

WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.

1. PELICAN BREWING SILETZ BAY

5911 Highway 101, Lincoln City, 541-6144216, pelicanbrewing.com. Noon-10 pm daily.

Pelican Brewing’s new gleaming waterfront property in Lincoln City has opened the final portion of its pub that you won’t find at any of its other locations: a seafood market. In February, the Siletz Bay property launched Phil’s Nest Crab Boil Experience, an indoor-outdoor dining space that sells items for on-premises consumption and to go. We recommend ordering a crab cocktail before sinking into an Adirondack chair on the expansive patio overlooking the water. It’s the best place to wait for a table (and there will be waits come summer).

2. STREET DISCO

4144A SE 60th Ave., street-disco.com.

5-10:30 pm Thursday-Monday.

Two things to know about the menu at Street Disco is that it changes frequently and nearly everything is sharable. Start by diving into a few of the items that you could consider appetizers, like salt cod fritters, which capture the essence of fish and chips in a bite, or The Original Not Lobster Roll, a very Northwest combination of Dungeness crab and bay shrimp. Then conquer one of the entrees: A whole grilled branzino delighted on one visit, though the grilled pork ribs are sure to become a sleeper hit.

3. HEAVENLY CREATURES

2218 NE Broadway, heavenlycreaturespdx.com. 5-10 pm Monday-Saturday.

The food is just as strong a pull as the drink at this wine-focused bar founded by longtime Portland sommelier Joel Gunderson and chef Aaron Barnett. Plates are mostly small and meant for sharing and tilt seafood heavy. But one way we’d like to experience Heavenly Creatures would be to come alone on a rainy weekday with a book, order a lush French blend from Domaine Pignier, and snack on the most perfect plate of hearty slices of young yellowtail, served raw on thick toast with tonnato.

4. MASTER KONG SE 32ND

1522 SE 32nd Ave., 503-384-2184, masterkongor.com. 10:30 am-9 pm Monday-Friday, 10 am-9 pm Saturday-Sunday.

one of those balanced salt-fat-acid bites you dream about, boosted by the herbal freshness of edible flowers, which decorate almost every dish.

The mahi mahi ($29), crusted in toasted coconut and sesame, made my eyes widen in delight at its fabulosity, especially when paired with a bite of tender baby broccoli, with more melted

passion-fruit butter finding its way into all of the nooks and crannies. The cod ($22), cooked in lemon-scented milk and served on simple, crisp toast with warmed tomatoes on the verge of bursting, flakes apart elegantly, a challenging texture to achieve with a fish that all too easily dries out.

Dishes with a little more gravitas include the

Dessert is not to be missed. The soft coconut milk ice cream ($6) with macadamia and almond bark is like a Hawaiian-themed Dairy Queen dipped cone. The malasada ($11), a Portuguese doughnut filled with piping hot jam and custard, made me exclaim “Oh my effing God!” Served in a bowl, it was a bit challenging to eat without some teamwork and leverage from other silverware, which resulted in hunks of the pastry being mixed into the ice cream like some sort of chaotic evil sundae. Order them together and do exactly this. Pew pew! Yeehaw!

EAT: Fools and Horses, 226 NW 12th Ave., 503-894-8473, foolsandhorsespdx.com. 4-11 pm Sunday-Tuesday, 4 pm-midnight Wednesday-Saturday.

A few months back, Jade District dumpling darling Master Kong quietly opened a location just off of Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, bringing its xiao long bao, wonton noodle soup, and congee closer in. The menu is the same, but ordering is done through a screen at the entrance. Shortly thereafter, piping hot bowls of its signature brisket noodle soup and “meat folders,” aka homemade steamed dough folded around pork belly, green onion and herbs, are whisked out to your table. It’s been pretty quiet at the new location, so head there soon to make sure it stays put.

5. FORTUNE BBQ

NOODLE HOUSE

18 SE 82nd Ave., 503-265-8378. 9:30 am-7 pm Wednesday-Monday. It’s been less than six months since Corina Wang opened Fortune BBQ Noodle House in a Southeast Portland strip mall, and the place is thriving. The longtime server at Kenny’s Noodle House launched the business last September, bringing along the savory congee and soups from her previous employer, and joined them with Cantonese barbecue classics, all for super-reasonable prices. The roasted pork belly is the standout. Arrive at opening and order by the pound to ensure you get your haul.

Cozy Cultivars

Spring

BY BRIANNA WHEELER

Bundling up and hunkering down with the right strain of cannabis can make a weekful of aggressively frigid, snowy days feel like less of an obnoxious hazard and more of a delightful Pacific Northwest perk. Which is why, depending on how you do your bundling and hunkering, preparing for another week of chilly temps often means padding your stash box.

Case in point: After a long day of not being stoned, bookish blanket burrowers might not be shopping for the same type of energy-boosting weed as a midnight movie snuggler. Likewise, smokers who take advantage of combative weather by leaning into weekend housework or crafternoon projects might avoid sleepy cultivars that produce space-cadet lethargy.

No matter where you might fall on the stoner spectrum, getting high at home while the rain beats at your windows is the vibe to consider while restocking your supply this week. Besides, a few more weeks of cold toes is a perfectly legitimate reason to snag a few cultivars that make you feel as though you’ve slipped on comfortable cashmere-wool blend slippers. Here are a few to get you started:

Sundae Driver

Sundae Driver is a very apt name for this chilled-out cross of Grape Pie and Fruity Pebbles that delivers a serene, lazy buzz that develops at a comfortable pace and crescendos without too much fanfare. Users describe mild euphoric, dreamlike highs and tingly body effects that ease smoothly into slumber or some semblance of physical downtime. Tightly wound insomniac potheads: This could be a great cultivar to use to attempt hibernation. Expect a flowery, sweet nose and grassy, nutty exhale.

BUY: Potland, 1761 NE Dekum St., 503-432-8629, thepotland.co.

Blueberry Muffin

Another cultivar known for its mild sedative qualities is Blueberry Muffin, a cross of Blueberry and Purple Panty Dropper. This hybrid is favored by users as an end-of-day, cool-off strain. Reported effects include hazy euphoria, blissed-out creativity, and a mollified body buzz that effectively quiets chronic pain and anxiety. Expect an earthy, berry-sweet perfume and a rich, botanical exhale with notes of vanilla and berry.

BUY: Urban Farmacy Dispensary, 420 NE 60th Ave., 503-9577832, urbanfarmacypdx.com.

CBD Kush

Cannathusiasts looking for something to brighten up their winter mood without putting them directly to bed might con-

sider CBD Kush, a low-THC, high-CBD strain that, despite a powerful therapeutic reputation, is an excellent recreational strain for low-tolerance smokers or top-shelf CBD aficionados. CBD Kush is a Kandy Kush phenotype that soothes chronic pain and inflammation while easing stress in a very low-stakes way. Expect a floral aroma and woody, grassy exhale.

BUY: Green Gratitude Marijuana Delivery, 10322 SE Holgate Blvd., 503-444-7707, greengratitude.us/cannabis-delivery-portland.

Purple Cotton Candy

Though Purple Cotton Candy’s genetics skew sedative (it’s a cross of sleepy cultivars Grandaddy Purple and Cotton Candy Kush), this strain reportedly delivers effects that, while relaxing and soothing, are mildly euphoric and, for some, even a bit peppy. Users report astral-brained head highs and syrupy tingles in the bod. Munchies are an often-reported effect, so if Purple Cotton Candy makes it into your stash box, prepare the pantry accordingly. Expect a candy sweet, skunky nose and funky, flowery exhale.

BUY: Green Goddess Remedies, 5435 SW Taylors Ferry Road, 503-764-9000, greengoddesspdx.com.

Horchata

Stoners who prefer evenly balanced effects might appreciate the blissful creative vibes Horchata delivers. This cross of Mochi Gelato and Jet Fuel Gelato delivers a powerful onset, followed by a cerebral high supported by a mellow, effervescent body buzz. Recreational users describe this strain as excellent for daytime use, turning their thoughts inward without flying too far away, and keeping their bodies engaged without becoming too sedative or electric. Bonus: It legit tastes like Horchata. Expect a rich, botanical nose and sweet, spicy exhale.

BUY: Power Plant, 2384 NW Thurman St., 971-803-7970.

Koffee Cake

Despite the name, this is a seriously sedative strain whose effects bear little resemblance to actual coffee. Bred from a cross of Fire Alien Kush and Koffee, this relaxing hybrid has a knockout reputation. Users report potent, powerfully calming creeper effects that bloom over time rather than exploding all at once. Therapeutic smokers report Koffee Cake’s efficacy in treating chronic pain, fibromyalgia, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and appetite loss.

BUY: The Dispensary on 52nd, 4452 SE 52nd Ave., 503-4208000, thedispensaryon52nd.com.

doesn’t begin for a few more weeks, so snuggle up with the cashmere softness of strains that are perfect for chilly temperatures.

Norm as Novel

Andy Shauf discusses the narration and story editing of his latest album, Norm.

BY MICHELLE KICHERER IG: @MichelleKicherer

Disturbed, deeply flawed individuals who may or may not be capable of change are the lifeblood of many great novels. Such a character is the soul of the novelistic Norm (ANTI-), Andy Shauf’s eighth and most sophisticated album, sonically and narratively (for more on Shauf’s singular style, see Shows of the Week).

Norm is told from the perspective of three alternating narrators, including the title character, a loner-turned-stalker who ultimately drives the story down a dark road. As with many classic novels, Norm plays with the biblical theme of man battling God. You can hear God narrating certain songs, trying futilely to coax Norm from his evil ways.

At first, Norm sounds rather sweet—it’s easy to be captivated by the lovely melodies, the way he says, “I would live on the telephone/If I was listening/To you talk about your day.” But listen closer and you’ll hear Norm confess to calling his neighbor and saying nothing, just watching her through a window until she hangs up and closes her blinds.

Later, we’ll see Norm going unnoticed as he creeps behind trees, movie theaters and stores. Yet as the narrative shifts darker, God tries again to save Norm, giving him multiple chances for redemption.

“Any form of empathy we have for this character is from the way he is slowly introduced,” Shauf tells WW, referencing relatable human touches, like Norm’s clumsiness when he locks himself out of his car. “You see his flaws, but they’re introduced gently… the darkest parts come at the end of the record.”

Since the story is told from several points of view and isn’t necessarily delivered chronologically, Shauf wanted to be sure listeners would get just enough of the story to see that Norm is a creepy dude. He references George Saunders’ use of shifting narration in his stories, noting that he “probably picked up a little of that.”

“The hardest part of the story in general was trying to get it so that the three narrators work. And I don’t really know that I got there,” Shauf adds. “I wanted a lot of the story to happen in the listener’s head, but I wasn’t sure where the crucial details

were missing.”

So he contacted friend and writer Nicholas Olson—and asked if he could provide lyrical feedback from a storyteller’s point of view. As story editor, Olson advised on details like how to use the pronoun “you” to effectively demonstrate which narrator is talking. “Or on the actual lyrics sheet I suggested using capitalization on certain pronouns to offer a little bit more of a hint in who the narrator was in that situation,” Olson says.

As for how much empathy listeners should feel toward Norm, Olson explains, “The album looks at love in broader ways than love is often considered in contemporary music.”

Feeling empathy toward a disturbed character like Norm is complicated. “I could maybe feel for him if his idea of love came from problematic upbringing regarding love,” says Olson.

Does Norm change by story’s end? “Well,” Shauf ponders. “what he wants, happens…and there was an easy way to end the story, but I didn’t want to do that….It took me a long time to figure out that I didn’t need to write the ending. Not exactly in the lyrics.”

The rest of the story’s details are answered in the silence of lyrical breaks, where the orchestral melodies inform the mood and intent. But the story is told subtly enough that if listeners don’t want to fuss with figuring it out, the listening experience is just as compelling.

Norm has a modern sophistication, thanks in part to Grammy Award-winning audio engineer Neal Pogue, who has worked with Outkast and Tyler the Creator and came onboard to mix the album. Shauf references his other albums as having a throwback vibe, but Norm was created not to invite listeners into another era, but into a dark and nuanced story that investigates power and love in all their complicated forms.

“ We have all these amazing technologies,” Shauf says. “We can make a record sound like anything. So why am I trying to transport people into another decade? Why not just transport them elsewhere?”

SEE IT: Andy Shauf plays Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St., 971-808-5094, revolutionhall.com. 8 pm Tuesday, March 7. $30. Minor seating in balcony only.

WHAT TO SEE AND WHAT TO HEAR

BY DANIEL BROMFIELD @bromf3

SATURDAY, MARCH 4:

Colin Stetson plays his gigantic saxophone as if he’s wrestling it to the death, and the raw physicality of his music doesn’t just come from his inhuman lung capacity and penchant for circular breathing. Clicking the keys to sound like fluttering bats, growling into the reed to sound like a wild beast, Stetson is less a one-man band than a vessel for the howling spirits of the night. No wonder he’s had a lucrative side career scoring horror flicks; if you’ve watched The Menu or Hereditary, you’ve heard his work. The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave., 503-222-2031, theoldchurch.org. 8 pm. $25. All ages.

TUESDAY, MARCH 7:

Few singer-songwriters since Joni Mitchell have been more incisive than Andy Shauf at deconstructing the bizarre social rituals in which humans engage every day. Like Joni, he’s a Canadian who writes as if he participates in these endless machinations, but he sings with a bemusement that suggests he stands slightly outside them—not to mention a bizarre accent that can’t simply be chalked up to his Saskatchewan origins. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St., 971-808-5094, revolutionhall.com. 8 pm. $30. Seating for minors in balcony only.

TUESDAY,

MARCH 7:

Atlanta has long been a breeding ground for some of the most off-the-wall, futuristic, and experimental hip-hop in the world, from André 3000’s pith helmets and blond wigs to the surrealistic humor of Gucci Mane and the star-child funk of Young Thug. Thirty-year-old Young Nudy follows in this tradition, and he’s become a low-key star thanks to his irrepressible confidence, expressive Southern drawl, and ear for beats that make him sound as if he’s surfing toward you on a wave of stars and gold coins. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE 39th Ave., 503-233-7100, hawthornetheatre.com. 8 pm. $25. All ages.

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

Power Exchange

In Corrib Theatre’s production of Trade, a sex worker and his client engage in the most intimate action of all: talk.

BY MORGAN SHAUNETTE PHOTOS BY DAVID KINDER COURTESY OF CORRIB THEATRE

In a motel room somewhere in Dublin, an 18-yearold rent boy (Orlando Reyes Cabrera) meets with his middle-aged punter (Damon Kupper). This isn’t their first dalliance, but this time the john has shown up with bruises on his face and blood on his shirt. Perhaps strangest of all, he doesn’t want to get right down to business—he just wants to talk.

So begins Mark O’Halloran’s Trade, produced by Corrib Theatre and performed at 21ten Theatre. It’s a small story, to be sure, but in that smallness, we find awkwardness, heartbreak and, above all, an unspeakable yearning neither party can bring themselves to define.

The order of the day is intimacy, both in terms of staging and the story itself. For its one-hour runtime, Trade takes place entirely within the confines of the motel, as the two men share cheap beer and trade personal stories. It plays out as a date, but the underlying pretext of what brought them together is unavoidable; despite what one party may want, the transactional nature of their relationship defines how they interact with one another.

Trade is a story that lives and dies by the strength of its script and the quality of its actors, and luckily both hit their marks and deliver with aplomb. Kupper has the heavier lifting to do as the client; his awkwardness grows to outright desperation by the time the lights go

down, but his struggles are what keeps the momentum of the story going and makes sure the emotional stakes are real and felt. Reyes Cabrera is the more restrained of the two, but the way he subtly works to keep control of the situation is unmistakable and provides a fantastic counterpoint to his counterpart.

In their notes for the play, director Tamara Carroll asks the audience to consider why the show is called Trade. The story is ultimately about the limitations of its characters’ connection: The prostitute and his client are in a purely transactional relationship, and although one is clearly seeking more intimacy, more emotional support, the two can never truly relate as equals because of the power imbalance inherent in what they do.

Trade is a story about the need for human connection, about men incapable of putting their desire for understanding and genuine emotional intimacy into words, and how those limitations are stifling and, in the worst instances, destructive. It’s an anguished wail of loneliness disguised as an uncomfortable conversation, and one of the more impactful theatergoing experiences you’ll find in such a surprisingly small space.

SEE IT: Trade plays at 21ten Theatre, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 503-389-0579, corribtheatre.org.

7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, through March 12. $15-$35.

MOVIES

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Contact: bennett@wweek.com

INTO THE WILD

STREAMING WARS

YOUR WEEKLY FILM QUEUE

BY BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON @thobennett

Twenty years ago this month, Tommy Lee Jones pursued Benicio del Toro through the wilderness of Portland in The Hunted.

BY CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER @chance_s_p

“It’s a wilderness,” mutters FBI master tracker and knife fighter L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones), dolefully gazing at downtown Portland sidewalks from a courthouse window. It’s one of the most knowing lines in The Hunted (2003), in which Bonham tails a fugitive Benicio del Toro through our cityscape as though it were a forest.

It’s also a line of import coming from a filmmaker, William Friedkin, whose fame originated with one of the greatest concrete-jungle pursuits ever: The French Connection (1971).

“For Friedkin, the chase is the essence of cinema,” says Steve Choe, associate professor of critical studies at San Francisco State University’s School of Cinema and author of ReFocus: The Films of William Friedkin, which considers his filmography from stone-cold classics (The Exorcist) to gradually appreciated masterpieces (Sorcerer) to late-career cap feathers (Killer Joe).

In The Hunted, which is 20 years old this month, Bonham is conscripted to apprehend a wayward super-soldier and former trainee (del Toro) who’s afflicted with such pervasive PTSD that he’s taken to living outdoors and ritually murdering Oregon hunters.

Their first encounter, filmed at Silver Falls State Park, is the cat-and-cat thriller at its best. Behold two men, reduced to the shape of their violence, saying next to nothing and trying to dice each other into pieces with the Filipino blade-wielding art of Sayoc Kali.

While the fights are intricately and brutally choreographed, the Portland-set second act was more or less improvised in the spirit of The French Connection’s famous permit-free car chase.

Indeed, the script contained no scene involving the Hawthorne Bridge until Friedkin laid eyes on the “imposing piece of architecture.” Soon, and without storyboarding (according to Friedkin’s account from a making-of featurette), del Toro was climbing the bridge lattice while Jones ran down a MAX train on foot.

“[Friedkin] kind of knows where things are going but then will create scenes based on what he sees—like a tracker in a way,” Choe says. “This is the kind of filmmaking he likes: immediate, almost instinctual.”

That improvisation also guided KOIN newscaster Jeff Gianola’s appearance in The Hunted. After noticing Gianola’s face all over MAX decals, the production asked him to “report” on an overturned prisoner transport truck outside Northwest Portland’s Cornell tunnels. The four-decade stalwart of Portland journalism remembers Friedkin as gregarious, encouraging Gianola to riff freely about the film’s crash site.

“I was thrilled to be in William Friedkin’s presence,” Gianola says. “He puts his arm around my shoulder and says, ‘Jeff, do these lines. But after that, just go, baby!’”

During on-set downtime, Gianola remembers delighting the director with his imitation of Regan’s backward demon wailing from The Exorcist—something the anchor had memorized as a San Diego Cinerama doorman in 1974.

Despite a 3.5-star rave from Roger Ebert, The Hunted failed to break even, was drubbed as a Rambo rip-off, and faded all but immediately. Except maybe in Gianola’s household, where he still gets 12-cent residual checks from Paramount and his family passes around a photo of del Toro next to Gianola’s KOIN advertisement as a Christmas gag gift.

A proper reclamation seems unlikely, but The Hunted still retains levels of resonance. For one, it’s a true-blue Oregon movie. The images of the ferns and moss of Silver Falls offer arguably the most vibrant and immersive portrait of Oregon nature on the big screen—enfolding the meanness and leanness of the men who realize their true purpose only when consumed by their environment.

Even more, Choe views The Hunted, with its tested faith, fateful violence and masculine obsession, as a thematically faithful distillation of a storied American film career.

“The film is this collection, sometimes awkwardly put together, of [Friedkin’s] obsessions, themes and how these themes have developed over the last 30 years,” says Choe, who interviewed the filmmaker in 2017 and found the now-87-year-old director vocally proud of The Hunted. Does the film lack the atmosphere or intensity to even sniff The French Connection? Sure, but all that falls away when Jones and del Toro commence carving and Friedkin’s intentions are made manifest with unflinching precision.

Beyond the realm of reason, characters and artists alike gravitate toward expertise. They’ll forge both knives and films out of found material. In that act, life has meaning. All else is wilderness.

SEE IT: The Hunted, rated R, streams on AMC+.

In Sight and Sound magazine’s once-a-decade poll of the greatest movies of all time, Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (1994) recently rocketed from 144 to 88 on the list. It should have been a moment of celebration, but plenty of Wong fans probably wondered: Why wasn’t it even higher?

Famously championed by Quentin Tarantino, Chungking Express plays like a gleeful assault on screenwriting manuals everywhere. Only a filmmaker as audacious as Wong would essentially tell the same story—heartbroken Hong Kong cop finds new love—twice in one movie, creating revelatory new harmonies by playing a familiar melody in a new key.

The first half of the film stars Takeshi Kaneshiro as Cop 223, whose brooding over his ex-girlfriend is at once tragic and comical, leading to an obsession with expired cans of pineapple and jogging. (“The body loses water when you jog, so you have none left for tears,” he explains.)

While Kaneshiro is a melancholy delight, Chungking Express arguably ascends to masterpiece status in its last half, set largely at the Midnight Express take-out food stand where Faye (Faye Wong, aka “the Chinese Madonna”) works. It’s there that she falls in love with Cop 663 (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), the film’s second lovelorn officer.

Like a flirtatious fairy godmother, Faye woos Cop 663 by sneaking into his apartment and giving his life a makeover. She puts out a clean tablecloth, leaves a fresh bar of soap in his bathroom and even rearranges his impressive collection of giant stuffed animals (and, presumably, inspires the future schemes of Amélie Poulain).

What an idea: that true love is being attuned to the smallest details of a person’s life. Faye may be shy around Cop 663, but she communicates by caring. There are none of the expected emblems of romance in Chungking Express—no bouquets, no rings—but there is Faye standing in Cop 663’s doorway, holding a plastic bag of new fish for his tank.

In time, Cop 663 begins to understand how lucky he is that out of all the doorways in Hong Kong, she picked his. And when she asks, “Where do you want to go?” he answers the only way a sane man could: “Wherever you want to take me.” HBO Max.

Shadows (1959)

John Cassavetes forever changed the course of American independent moviemaking with films like Faces Husbands and A Woman Under the Influence. But his first film, Shadows (1959), finds the famously raw director at his rawest, scraping the vibe off the walls of midnight diners and backroom ragers with overstressed microphones and guerrilla 16 mm camera setups.

Set in late-1950s Manhattan, Shadows traces the bonds and divergences of three Black siblings, two of whom sometimes pass for white, as they scramble through the music and dating scenes of the Beat Generation. The characterization is loose but always expressed with acuity: Lelia (Lelia Goldoni) seeks a fragile romantic freedom, Ben (Ben Carruthers) is a party fly who exudes misery when he gets there, and Hugh (Hugh Hurd) is a nightclub singer whose artistic values are stymying his career.

The commentary on race (while regrettably expressed via two white actors) is shockingly subtle in an era dominated by loud, values-forward polemics. “The film you have just seen was an improvisation,” claims one of Shadows’ closing cards. That’s not entirely true, as the film was rescripted and reworked from a 1957 version. But the feeling sure remains. 5th Avenue, March 3-5.

ALSO PLAYING:

Academy: Princess Mononoke (1997), March 3-9. Pet Sematary (1989), March 3-9. Cinema 21: Double Indemnity (1944), March 4. Cinemagic: Drive (1997), March 3. Clinton: The Invitation (2015), March 3. Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), March 4. Lost in Translation (2003), March 5. Le Bonheur (1965), March 6. Suburbia (1983), March 7. Hollywood: Foxfire (1996), March 2. Tank Girl (1995), March 3. Videodrome (1983), March 4-5. Eve’s Bayou (1997), March 6. Lady Dragon (1990), March 7.

ONE FINE MORNING

No one ever says that Sandra (Léa Seydoux) is spread too thin in One Fine Morning, writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve’s follow-up to Bergman Island, but it’s obvious when you observe the Parisian single mother’s daily routine. Through weariness and without complaint, Sandra dotes on her young daughter and cares for her dementia-ridden father, struggling to imagine how a new romance could fit into her life. But it’s not just the contents of Sandra’s plate that suggest a put-upon person; it’s how Hansen-Løve allows all the other characters to monologue. Sandra’s love interest (Melvil Poupaud) is a verbose chemist, her mother (Nicole Garcia) a remarried political advocate, her daughter (Camille Leban Martins) a bright young student. Even Sandra’s career as a translator deemphasizes her perspective. That’s a fascinating challenge for Seydoux, a movie star (best known for Bond films and Blue Is the Warmest Color) inhabiting an everyday person decentralized in her own life. It’s a frustratingly subversive, perhaps overly thorough approach to making the audience constantly hope that someone else will put Sandra first. Maybe that day will come some fine morning. Maybe the reprieve will last five minutes. Maybe this is just the thankless labor for too many women. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Cinema 21

CREED III

Boxing legend Marvin Hagler once quipped that it’s hard to get up at 5 am “when you’ve been sleeping in silk pajamas.” That’s the comfort predicament for Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan). He’s now a gladiator in quiet detente, surrounded by fineries: a beautiful family (Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Mila Davis-Kent), a robust knitwear collection, and a promising post-boxing career as a gym owner. But his bliss is interrupted by Dame Anderson (Jonathan Majors, cementing himself as 2023’s Biggest Bad after playing Marvel’s Kang), a childhood friend and veritable shadow of Adonis, locked up as a teenager and now hulking toward a title shot. With a posture and wardrobe modeled on Mike Tyson’s Spartan intimidation, Majors enriches the character with bonedeep anxiety and loneliness. Like all the Creed films, III reimagines its Rocky forebears in better taste: empathy for “villains,” better roles for women, honest conversations between Black heroes and antiheroes. Does it toss the electricity and breakneck pacing of Rocky III out with Mr. T’s bathwater? Regrettably. Do the scenes of men learning how to cry outshine the combat that Jordan himself now directs? Also yes. But pity the franchise that, unlike this one, refuses to work on itself. PG-13. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, Studio One, Tigard.

EMILY

From its opening, a question of selfishness pulses within this Emily Brontë biopic. How could Emily dare write a novel so rife with “selfish” char-

acters as Wuthering Heights, her older sister Charlotte implores. Actor-turned-director Frances O’Connor’s debut film then flashes back to Emily’s teen years to consider the pain, passion and self-focus necessary for a young woman to pen an all-time-great novel in a culture deadening to her inspiration. Emma Mackey (star of Netflix’s Sex Education) plays Emily as a proverbial middle child, rebellious with a sly remove. She employs her senses as a sponge, soaking in the ghostly vigor of the West Yorkshire moors despite the Anglican influence of her father (Adrian Dunbar) and hunky new local preacher William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). O’Connor’s script largely invents a web of Brontë family dynamics, positing her path to becoming the lit-loving clan’s simultaneous North Star and black sheep. That’s a welcome alternative to depicting staunch Victorian manners and Emily glued to a writing desk. Still, one wonders if a slightly bloodier performance (think Keira Knightly, circa 2007), as opposed to Mackey’s inherently modern-feeling cool, could have elevated the sensuousness. But as an act of risk-taking imagination, Emily gives a legendary novelist and the power of selfishness their rightful flowers. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Fox Tower, Living Room.

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA

After cringing through a full trilogy of nobody’s favorite superhero, it may be impossible to differentiate the gibbering insufferableness of Paul Rudd from the cornball inanity of his character, Scott “Ant-Man” Lang. Admittedly, the Ant-Man oeuvre was never expected to spark casual fan interest in such an eminently second-tier figure, but at

least the first movie maintained just enough anarchic frisson from original director Edgar Wright’s abandoned treatment to breeze through the drearier aspects of Marvel Cinematic Universe world building. The third installment, conversely, serves as a de facto origin story for Marvel’s next archvillain. Turns out far-future warlord Kang (Jonathan Majors) was once loosed upon Ant-Man trilogy matriarch Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) during her lost years in the universe known as the Quantum Realm, a revelation that brings our heroes back Quantumville way. In its best scenes, the film lets Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas (returning as Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man) clash with the always-captivating Majors, trade quips with an aging lothario (Bill Murray), or just pose iconic amid gorgeous imagery ripped from vintage sci-fi digest covers. Scott, meanwhile, loses his daughter (Kathryn Newton) yet again—a fated incompetence that may be the character’s true legacy. With very small powers come no real responsibilities.

PG-13. JAY HORTON. Academy, Bagdad, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Fox Tower, Joy Cinema, Lake Theater, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, St. Johns, St. Johns Twin, Studio One, Tigard.

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.

by Jack Kent

JONESIN’

BY MATT JONES

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In 1993, I began work on my memoirish novel *The Televisionary Oracle*. It took me seven years to finish. The early part of the process was tough. I generated a lot of material I didn't like. Then one day, I discovered an approach that liberated me: I wrote about aspects of my character and behavior that needed improvement. Suddenly everything clicked, and my fruitless adventure transformed into a fluidic joy. Soon I was writing about other themes and experiences. But dealing with self-correction was a key catalyst. Are there any such qualities in yourself you might benefit from tackling, Aries? If so, I recommend you try my approach.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Two Taurus readers complained that my horoscopes contain too much poetry and flair to be useful. In response, I'm offering you a prosaic message. It's all true, though in a way that’s more like a typical horoscope. (I wonder if this approach will spur your emotional intelligence and your soul’s lust for life, which are crucial areas of growth for you these days.) Anyway, here’s the oracle: Take a risk and extend feelers to interesting people outside your usual sphere. But don't let your social adventures distract you from your ambitions, which also need your wise attention. Your complex task: Mix work and play; synergize business and pleasure.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): If you are not working to forge a gritty solution, you may be reinforcing a cozy predicament. If you're not expanding your imagination to conjure up fresh perspectives, you could be contributing to some ignorance or repression. If you're not pushing to expose dodgy secrets and secret agendas, you might be supporting the whitewash. Know what I'm saying, Libra? Here's a further twist. If you're not peeved about the times you have wielded your anger unproductively, you may not use it brilliantly in the near future. And I really hope you will use it brilliantly.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Storyteller Martin

Shaw believes that logic and factual information are not enough to sustain us. To nourish our depths, we need the mysterious stories provided by myths and fairy tales. He also says that conventional hero sagas starring big, strong, violent men are outmoded. Going forward, we require wily, lyrical tales imbued with the spirit of the Greek word *metis*, meaning "divine cunning in service to wisdom." That's what I wish for you now, Scorpio. I hope you will tap into it abundantly. As you do, your creative struggles will lead to personal liberations. For inspiration, read myths and fairy tales.

ACROSS

1. Cherished ones

6. Suspicious

11. Biopsy processor

14. Plumed bird

15. Suffix similar to "-ish"

16. "And now, without further ___"

17. MY THEORY, PART 1

20. "We're on!"

21. Jazz Masters org.

22. Check deposit spots, for short

23. Video doorbell brand

25. "And ___ Davis as Alice" (end of "The Brady Bunch" opening credits)

27. MY THEORY, PART 2

34. "Cloud Shepherd" sculptor Jean

35. Senator Klobuchar

36. Reggae proponent

37. 151 in Roman numerals

38. MY THEORY, PART 3

41. Pugilistic wordsmith

42. "47 ___" (2013 Keanu Reeves film)

44. Dark-hued juice brand

45. "Kenan & ___"

46. MY THEORY, PART 4

51. Express mail carrier?

52. Heavy book

53. Dull pain

56. Round figure?

58. "I can't hear you!" sound

62. PART 5 (FOLLOW-UP

TO THE THEORY)

65. Org. that lets you e-file

66. Like some mouthwash

67. First name in late-night

TV

68. Relieved sigh

69. Got in the game

70. Cause of slick roads

DOWN

1. Half of an early TV couple

2. 2023 achievement for Viola Davis

3. "A Farewell to ___"

4. Gain anew, as trust

5. Cigar, in slang

6. "30 Rock" creator Tina

7. "This one ___ me"

8. Mouse sound

9. Earthlings

10. Confirming vote

11. ___ person standing

12. Driver around Hollywood

13. Word after Backstreet, Pet Shop, or Beastie

18. French-Italian cheese that's milder than its similarly named relative

19. Part of Fred Flintstone's catchphrase

24. Like pheasant or venison

26. "Traffic" agent?

27. Mother-of-pearl

28. Russian count who lent his name to a veal dish

29. State your views

30. Kind of node or gland

©2023 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JNZ990.

31. Japanese city home to Panasonic

32. Former Phillies great Chase

33. Call at a coin toss

38. "Hold ___ your hats"

39. Frost or Dove

40. "You got my approval"

43. How checks are signed

47. Strand, as a winter storm

48. Despot

49. Spam, for example

50. "Sunny" 1990s Honda

53. Setting of Shanghai and Chennai

54. "Iron Chef America" chef Cat

55. Meat-and-potatoes concoction

57. Computer data unit

59. Real estate measurement

60. Debussy's "Clair de ___"

61. "Second prize is ___ of steak knives" ("Glengarry Glen Ross" quote)

63. 1950s singer Sumac

64. Former Pink Floyd guitarist Barrett

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Astrologer Jessica Shepherd advises us to sidle up to the Infinite Source of Life and say, "Show me what you've got." When we do, we often get lucky. That's because the Infinite Source of Life delights in bringing us captivating paradoxes. Yes and no may both be true in enchanting ways. Independence and interdependence can interweave to provide us with brisk teachings. If we dare to experiment with organized wildness and aggressive receptivity, our awareness will expand, and our heart will open. What about it, Gemini? Are you interested in the charming power that comes from engaging with cosmic contradictions? Now’s a favorable time to do so. Go ahead and say, "Show me what you've got” to the Infinite Source of Life.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): "Only a lunatic would dance when sober," declared the ancient Roman philosopher Cicero. As a musician who loves to dance, I reject that limiting idea—especially for you. In the upcoming weeks, I hope you will do a lot of dancing-while-sober. Singing-while-sober, too. Maybe some crying-for-joy-while-sober, as well as freewheeling-your-way-throughunpredictable-conversations-while-sober and cavorting-and-reveling-while-sober. My point is that there is no need for you to be intoxicated as you engage in revelry. Even further: It will be better for your soul’s long-term health if you are lucid and clearheaded as you celebrate this liberating phase of extra joy and pleasure.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Poet Mary Oliver wondered whether the soul is solid and unbreakable, like an iron bar. Or is it tender and fragile, like a moth in an owl's beak? She fantasized that maybe it's shaped like an iceberg or a hummingbird's eye. I am poetically inclined to imagine the soul as a silver diadem bedecked with emeralds, roses, and live butterflies. What about you, Leo? How do you experience your soul? The coming weeks will be a ripe time to home in on this treasured part of you. Feel it, consult with it, feed it. Ask it to surprise you!

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): According to the color consultant company Pantone, Viva Magenta is 2023's color of the year. According to me, Viva Magenta is the lucky hue and power pigment for you Virgos during the next ten months. Designer Amber Guyton says that Viva Magenta "is a rich shade of red that is both daring and warm." She adds that its "purple undertone gives it a warmth that sets it apart from mere red and makes it more versatile.” For your purposes, Virgo, Viva Magenta is earthy and exciting; nurturing and inspiring; soothing yet arousing. The coming weeks will be a good time to get the hang of incorporating its spirit into your life.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Many astrologers don’t give enough encouragement to you Sagittarians on the subject of home. I will compensate for that. I believe it’s a perfect time to prioritize your feelings of belonging and your sense of security. I urge you to focus energy on creating serenity and stability for yourself. Honor the buildings and lands you rely on. Give extra appreciation to the people you regard as your family and tribe. Offer blessings to the community that supports you.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): If you are like 95 percent of the population, you weren't given all the love and care you needed as a child. You may have made adaptations to partly compensate for this lack, but you are still running a deficit. That's the bad news, Capricorn. The good news is that the coming weeks will be a favorable time to overcome at least some of the hurt and sadness caused by your original deprivation. Life will offer you experiences that make you feel more at home in the world and at peace with your destiny and in love with your body. Please help life help you! Make yourself receptive to kindness and charity and generosity.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The philosopher Aldous Huxley was ambitious and driven. Author of almost 50 books, he was a passionate pacifist and explorer of consciousness. He was a visionary who expressed both dystopian and utopian perspectives. Later in his life, though, his views softened. “Do not burn yourselves out,” he advised readers. “Be as I am: a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.” Now I’m offering you Huxley’s counsel, Aquarius. As much as I love your zealous idealism and majestic quests, I hope that in the coming weeks, you will recharge yourself with creature comforts.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Piscean author and activist W. E. B. Dubois advised us to always be willing to give up what we are. Why? Because that's how we transform into a deeper and stronger version of ourselves. I think you would benefit from using his strategy. My reading of the astrological omens tells me that you are primed to add through subtraction, to gain power by shedding what has become outworn and irrelevant. Suggested step one: Identify dispiriting self-images you can jettison. Step two: Visualize a familiar burden you could live without. Step three: Drop an activity that bores you. Step four: Stop doing something that wastes your time.

Homework: What’s something you’d be wise to let go of? What’s something to hold on to tighter? Newsletter.FreeWillastrology.com

"Sports Roundtable"--it rings true.