WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY
“WHERE IS YOUR SOUL?” P. 7
ROOMS R E K O P ’S D N A PORTL CITY, E H T Y B D E S ARE LICEN —AND R A L U P O P Y L D WIL PA G E 1 1 . T S A L O T TOO ILLEGAL SS L J AQ U I BY N I G E
WWEEK.COM
VOL 43/21 3. 22 . 2017
RARE VINTAGE PORN COMES TO THE CLINTON STREET. P. 39
BLESS THESE BURGERS. P. 23
MAYOR WHEELER GOES APARTMENT HUNTING. P. 9
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Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
KIM HERBST
FINDINGS
PAGE 10
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 43, ISSUE 21.
After bartenders chased off the Nazis at Lucky Lab, some local Antifas showed up to chillax and drink beers. 6 Spirited local protesters have taken to calling Amanda Fritz “Miss Ratched.” She, in turn, has voted to pre-emptively ban them from public meetings. 7 A developer offered to build affordable housing at a fraction of the cost the city normally pays. The mayor barely responded. 9
ON THE COVER:
That dude Ian Karmel is still out there, doing live comedy and giving Blazers takes. 10 There’s an old movie called Rounders about shadowy underground poker clubs. 11 Women weren’t allowed to perform in English theater until the 1660s. 35 A long-lost Bettie Page movie called Strippers Paradise may or may not exist. 39
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
Photograph by Showers Wright.
Still the Nazis at Lucky Lab.
STAFF Editor & Publisher Mark Zusman EDITORIAL News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Martin Cizmar Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Rachel Monahan, Corey Pein Copy Chief Rob Fernas Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Nicole Groessel, Maya McOmie Stage Editor Shannon Gormley Screen Editor Walker MacMurdo Projects Editor Matthew Korfhage Music Editor Matthew Singer
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Media + Personalities
15, 2017]. I love how he denies being in the Ku I am disgusted by the Oregon Legislature’s Klux Klan, then threatens the story’s writer via House Bill 2927 [Murmurs: “Oregon Legislature Facebook, which has posts contradicting him not Weighs Electoral College Reform,” WW, March being in the KKK. 15, 2017]. —“US Guerrilla” It is nothing more than whining by House Democrats over losing the election via the Elec- “Knuckleheads”? So Randy Blazak, the point toral College. Oh, by the way, Oregon’s electoral person in Oregon on hate crimes, thinks this escalation in racist activity is no big votes went to Hillary Clinton anyway. thing? That’s more troubling than a In effect, all it does is discard visit from this Klan guy. opposing local votes and yield —JD Mulvey to the popular vote nationwide. Oregon wants to throw out my vote if I express a more rural perspective GRANNY FLATS FOR HOMELESS than the ultra-liberal urban centers. This program has the potential to The Electoral College was implesnowball into significant change mented for a reason—to more fairly represent the vote and perspective of [“Our House Is Your House,” WW, people in rural areas that are sparsely March 15, 2017]. The goal of 300 “Oregon’s populated. ADUs is a drop in the bucket, but constitutional Oregon’s constitutional workthe genius of this is integrating the homeless into neighborhoods and around is pure partisan BS. Stick to workaround is legislation that actually helps the giving them allies that aren’t social pure partisan greater good, rather than trying to workers and service providers. BS.” rig a future election. —“SamWell” —Darren Ward Northeast Portland
Outdoor
Support for a national popular vote for president is strong among Republicans, Democrats and independent voters, as well as every demographic in every state surveyed. Most Americans think it is wrong that the candidate with the most popular votes can lose. We don’t allow this in any other election in our representative republic. —“toto”
Cannabis
KLANSMAN ATTENDS LOCAL RALLY
Steven Shane Howard sounds like a real gem of a human being [“A Face in the Crowd,” WW, March
IRISH “SLUR” LEAVES SOUR TASTE
The ethnic slur of “there’s nothing more authentically Irish than getting piss-drunk…” wasn’t funny in the 1890s, and it certainly isn’t funny today [“The Green Zone,” WW, March 15, 2017]. I expected more from a paper that usually is a leader in covering and supporting anti-discrimination in all forms. —Suzanne Tamiesie Lake Oswego 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: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: mzusman@wweek.com.
Arts + Culture
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#BOP2017 wweek.com/BOP2017 4
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
There is a lot of talk lately about “calling our representatives.” But what if they already agree with me? Can I impersonate my parents and call their representatives? —Shaun W. What do you suppose the Donald Trump who swears that 3 million noncitizens voted illegally would do with the news that calls to congresspeople were being faked? Yes, every subsequent groundswell of citizen outrage would be dismissed as “fake Congress calls” from George Soros’ army of AI fembots. So for Christ’s sake, Shaun, do not do this. Money, on the other hand, is never fake, and it has a way of making itself heard across even the widest geographical divides. May I suggest a plan? Remember when they said there was no way Dems could win the House in 2016, because of gerrymandering? Well, the next gerry is in 2020, and whoever controls state legislatures is going to get to mander it. Now, everyone, watch how Shaun can make a difference. First, he finds a state legislative chamber that’s pretty close. How about…the Colorado State Senate! (Republicans currently lead 18-17.) Then, Shaun uses Ballotpedia to find a district
whose voting was close in 2014 (those senators will be up for re-election in 2018). May I suggest District 24 (the fightin’ 24th!), where GOP incumbent Beth Martinez Humenik won by less than 1,000 votes. Now Shaun has a race that matters, at a human scale that he can grasp. Can he manage to raise just $10,000 for Humenik’s opponent from his less-energetic friends? Ten grand is a lot of money in a state Senate race. With luck, it could swing the whole chamber. Maybe Shaun can even persuade a few of his friends to adopt their own swing candidates in other states. Sounds boring, you say? Maybe so. But this is how the church ladies of the GOP took over the country while you and I were smoking marijuana and having gay sex and expecting Obama to handle it. You want America back? Grab a pencil and get in the trenches. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
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Visit: nextadventure.net/portland-kayak-school Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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Threats and Support Follow Nazis to Lucky Lab
Staff at Northwest Portland’s Lucky Labrador Beer Hall kicked out a group of self-proclaimed “national socialists”—that is, Nazis— after a tense standoff March 12. Three days later, the same day WW published a story on the incident (“A Face in the Crowd,” WW, March 15, 2017), Portland police officers returned to Lucky Lab to follow up on the incident. Later that week, employees had their Facebook accounts hacked, and the bar received phone calls with what sounded like recordings of Hitler speeches, staffers tell WW. Portland Police Bureau spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson says there’s no investigation into the initial confrontation “as there was no criminal conduct articulated by anyone.” Antifa vigilantes also showed up to scope out the venerable beer hall. But mostly, Lucky Lab staffers say they were overwhelmed with good vibes from local patrons. “We will not tolerate any individual or group attempting to push any form of hate at our business,” Lucky Lab management wrote on its Facebook page. “We raise our glasses and toast our staff who do an excellent job of taking care of our patrons yet do not tolerate these idiotic behaviors.” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, Multnomah County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury and U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) all tweeted their support for the bar. “We should all stand up to Nazis and hate,” Blumenauer wrote. “Great job, Lucky Lab.”
Bottle Bill Expansion Could Get Crushed
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Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
On April 1, the Oregon deposit on returnable cans and bottles increases from a nickel to a dime. But this week, state lawmakers intro-
duced a bill that would slam the brakes on a plan to add new drink containers to the Bottle Bill. Next January, the list of redeemable products is scheduled to expand to include containers that hold coffee, tea and all drinks except wine, liquor and milk. But state Rep. Mark Johnson (R-Hood River), a strong supporter of the Bottle Bill, says the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative has failed to develop enough free-standing BottleDrop centers to help accommodate tens of millions of new containers and buoy the recycling rate (“Used,” WW,” Feb. 1, 2017). Johnson says the OBRC is only halfway to its goal of building more JOE RIEDL
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than 40 new BottleDrop centers, and he wants the expansion delayed until the co-op catches up. “You are going to see a tsunami of new containers next year,” Johnson says, “and there’s nowhere to put them in large swaths of the state.”
Granny Flats Plan Draws Enthusiastic Response
Multnomah County is getting a big response to a project that would build granny flats for homeless families in Portland backyards. After WW reported on the project last week (“Our House Is Your House,” WW, March 15, 2017), at least 580 homeowners officially expressed interest in taking part in the project. County officials hope to build as many as 300 small homes in people’s backyards, and are offering a major incentive: The county will cover the cost of building a 200-square-foot unit, up to $75,000 apiece, in return for homeowners agreeing to collect no rent for five years. “I believe, particularly in this community, that people want to help, but they don’t know how,” says Mary Li, director of the Multnomah Idea Lab, the county’s policy center.
NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
W H E R E W E ’ R E AT
Blessed Insurance
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Well,
OREGON’S UNINSURED RATE HAS SEEN A WELCOME DROP THANKS TO OBAMACARE. As congressional Republicans push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown warned last week that the bill would triple the percentage of
1 5
Oregonians without health insurance. (She predicted an increase from 5 to 15 percent.) Most of that increase would come from people losing Medicaid coverage. Under
Obamacare, each of Oregon’s five congressional districts has seen a larger drop in the uninsured rate than the national average (5.4 points). NIGEL JAQUISS.
1st Congressional District (U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici-D) Decrease in uninsured rate: 6.1 points
ASTORIA ST. HELENS HILLSBORO
3
3rd Congressional District (U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer-D) Decrease: 7.7 points
5th Congressional District (U.S. Rep Kurt Schrader-D) Decrease: 8.7 points
COOS BAY
MCMINNVILLE
SALEM
WALLOWA
HOOD RIVER
PORTLAND
CLACKAMAS
4
CORVALLIS
BEND DESCHUTES
4th Congressional District (U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio-D) Decrease: 7.6 points
2
BAKER CITY
2nd Congressional District (U.S. Rep. Greg Walden-R) Decrease: 9.3 points
we don’t want him to go out there.”
MALHEUR
ROSEBURG
KLAMATH FALLS
GRANTS PASS
MEDFORD S O U R C E S : U . S . C O N G R E S S , D E M O C R AT I C S TA F F M E M O
This Week’s Cries THE 5 MEANEST THINGS SAID TO THE CITY COUNCIL THIS WEEK. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is testing the limits of the First Amendment—because protesters are testing his patience. Nearly every Wednesday morning for two months, a ragtag band of gadflies has successfully shut down City Council meetings. The enraged shouting began in January, after four homeless people and a stillborn infant were found dead in the streets. The violent arrests of anti-Trump protesters and the police killing of black teenager Quanice Hayes have added fuel to the rage in council chambers. Last week, Wheeler led the City Council in unanimously passing an ordinance that allows the city to exclude protesters for up to 60 days if they repeatedly disrupt city business. The public wasn’t allowed to testify at the March 15 vote. But the council’s loyal enemies had their say anyway. TOM BERRIDGE and RACHEL MONAHAN.
“
WE’RE ALL ABOUT TO WITNESS SOMETHING THAT GOES DOWN. I HOPE THAT EVERYBODY ACROSS THE UNITED STATES AND ACROSS THE WORLD CAN SEE WHAT YOU GUYS ARE ABOUT TO DO.” —Mimi German, ostensibly during public comment about the city purchasing a new asphalt grinder.
“
THIS COUNCIL AND THE PORTLAND POLICE ARE A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.
”
—Cameron Stark
“
YOU GUYS ARE SOME OF THE WORST PEOPLE I THINK I’VE EVER SAT IN FRONT OF. CLEARLY YOUR HANDS ARE FULL WITH MURDERED BLACK CHILDREN AND HOUSELESS DYING ON YOU. HOW MANY BODIES SO FAR DURING YOUR TERM, MAYOR? YOU’RE CLEARLY OVERWHELMED AND UNFIT TO DO THE JOB.” —Star Stauffer
“
WE TOLD THEM IT WAS CLEARLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
”
—The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, on Twitter
“
WHEN YOU ARE RUDE TO US, WE GET PISSED, AND WHEN WE GET PISSED, YOU DON’T HAVE A MEETING. YOU ARE RUDE, MISS RATCHED [POINTING TO CITY COMMISSIONER AMANDA FRITZ]. YOU ARE ALL VULNERABLE, EVERY ONE OF YOU. WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? WHERE IS YOUR SOUL? WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU? YOU ARROGANT SON OF A BITCHES.” —Joe Walsh
—Multnomah County Circuit Court referee Monica Herranz on Jan. 27, after accepting a DUII guilty plea from Diddier Pacheco-Salazar and ordering him to complete a diversion program. Herranz had been informed Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents were waiting to arrest Pacheco-Salazar outside her courtroom at the Justice Center on Southwest 3rd Avenue. They didn’t that day, because Herranz let him exit through a side door (“The Great Escape,” WW, March 1, 2016). WW obtained the courtroom recording this week, which includes this suggestion from Herranz that PachecoSalazar not leave the courtroom through the main entrance. ICE later arrested Pacheco-Salazar when he showed up for another court appearance. He is no longer in federal custody, an indication he may have been deported. Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
CHRISTINE DONG
NEWS
Half Off A HOUSING DEVELOPER OFFERS 300 APARTMENTS TO MAYOR TED WHEELER—AT A DEEP DISCOUNT.
BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N
rmonahan@wweek
Last fall, as Portland voters pondered whether to pass an affordable housing bond, incoming Mayor Ted Wheeler pledged to build low-income apartments faster and cheaper than in the past. Now a developer has brought a proposal to the mayor to do just that—and was met with a month of silence. Rob Justus of Home First Development is Portland’s most vocal critic of the high cost of affordable housing. Justus, whose company has completed 200 units in East Portland and has projects underway in North Portland, Bend and Sisters, wants to build 300 apartments and sell them to the city for $100,000 apiece. That’s roughly half what the city projected it would spend per unit using the $258 million housing bond approved by voters in November. Justus and his business partner outlined their proposal in a Feb. 13 email to Maurice Henderson, Wheeler’s chief of staff, on which he copied the mayor. The proposal for the 300 apartments encompasses roughly 10 projects, with 375-square-foot units built close to public transportation. The email came with a three-page slide show that listed in bullet points the benefits to the city: “Rapid development,” “lower cost per unit, more units” and “reduced risk for the city.” “If we can build units at lower cost, you can create more units,” Justus says. “We need to get as many units as possible.” After a month of silence, and an inquiry from WW, Wheeler’s office replied to Justus on March 21 to request a meeting. The mayor’s spokesman, Michael Cox, was noncommittal. “Any proposal that promises more units at a lower cost should be treated with interest,” Cox says. “It must also be evaluated alongside other good proposals.” Justus’ idea tests Wheeler’s promise to spend public housing dollars more efficiently, even as the mayor prepares this month to appoint a committee to oversee projects funded by the bond. Justus has floated a development idea to the city before. In 2015, he offered to build 1,000 units for former Mayor Charlie Hales at $85,000 per unit if the city could come up with a $20 million down payment. Hales went so far as to mention the idea in a State of the City address two years ago, but that idea, as with many others under Hales, fizzled without follow-through. Justus, a for-profit developer, has in the past cut costs by building in less expensive parts of town, and reduces expenses by not paying union wages, or meeting energyefficiency standards or taking large development fees. He says the lower construction costs would help make his latest buildings affordable to people earning less than $20,000 a year, with rents no higher than $500 a month. That slice of the population—residents making 0 to 30
HOME IMPROVEMENT: The city has a chance to buy housing more cheaply, similar to this Home First project on Southeast 146th Avenue and Burnside Street.
percent of area median income—is the most in need of affordable housing, and the people most likely to be on the streets. “If we really want to see improvement in terms of homelessness, we have to focus our subsidies on very low incomes,” says Ed Blackburn of housing nonprofit Central City Concern. Blackburn and Justus agree: That could mean cutting costs by building smaller units. In the past decade, the city has paid up to $514 per square foot for government-subsidized apartments, in part because it chose projects in the central city that include social services managed by housing nonprofits (“Roofless,” WW, Sept. 28, 2016). Wheeler pledged that if voters passed a housing bond,
ney to evaluate what’s known as a “turnkey” approach: having private developers build housing to city standards and selling it on completion. And that’s what Justus is offering: He’ll build units without city subsidy, then sell the finished apartments to the Housing Bureau. Justus’ methods have drawn criticism. His proposed projects would be exempt from paying prevailing wages to unionized workers. But that would not be unique in the world of affordable housing. A 32-unit, low-income housing project in Southeast Portland’s Lents neighborhood built last year by housing nonprofit the Native American Youth and Family
“The big push is to focus on people who are at risk of homelessness and are living in substandard environments.” —Dave Carboneau, Home First he would get more apartments through public money. But the first deal after the bond passed gave no indication the city was serious about reducing the cost of projects it finances. In December, the Portland Housing Bureau agreed to spend $37 million in bond money to buy and restore the Ellington Apartments in Northeast Portland—a project that drew criticism from the bureau’s former director. A month after that deal, Wheeler halted any purchases using bond money so the city could set consistent standards for bond purchases. The Housing Bureau has already asked the city attor-
Center, funded in part by the Housing Bureau, was given an exemption from the prevailing wage standard. Dave Carboneau, Justus’ business partner, says Home First’s offer lets the city focus exclusively on lowering the cost of building affordable apartments—in part so the city can make them available to those needing them most. “The big push is to focus on people who are at risk of homelessness and are living in substandard environments,” Carboneau says. “That’s what we’re doing.” Staff writer Nigel Jaquiss contributed reporting to this story. Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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KIM HERBST
COLUMN
The Nurk Itch JUSUF NURKIC IS A BIG, BAD MAN—AND THAT’S GOOD NEWS FOR THE BLAZERS. BY COR B IN SMITH
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Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
@corbinasmith
This NBA trade deadline, the Portland Trail Blazers made the greatest deal in the history of the franchise. In February, Blazers general manager Neil Olshey traded center Mason Plumlee and a 2018 second-round draft pick to the Denver Nuggets in exchange for the glorious hero Jusuf Nurkic and a 2017 first-round pick. The swap looked at first like a drab deal that at best kept the Blazers running on a treadmill of mediocrity. But then, a twist! Plumlee has been the same player in Denver that he was in Portland: a Duke-trained minutes eater who occasionally gets kicked in the balls. Meanwhile, Nurkic, 22, has been fucking awesome, averaging 14 points, 9.6 rebounds, and a whopping 2.2 blocks a game. He’s hauling the team from a lost season into “Nurkic Fever.” It’s a deeply felt hotness of body and spirit caused by gazing upon a flaccid 7-foot Bosnian brawler who wins games by hitting twirling layups, blocking shots and breaking bodies. “Nurkic is as young as he is large,” says Los Angeles-based standup comic and Blazers analyst Ian Karmel. “Ever since the arrival of the Bosnian Beef Lord, I’ve found myself more hopeful.” This coming week offers your best chance to understand this feeling. Nurkic (Nurk to his friends) plays four home games before April 1, including a March 28 tilt with the Nuggets, who are racing the Blazers for the final playoffs seed, and whom Nurk hates with the rage of a jilted 280-pound lover—they dumped him in favor of his erstwhile teammate Nikola Jokic, a Serb. But before you buy a ticket, you might ask: What does this phenomenon mean? Is it a seasonal fling or an enduring love? The immediate reality is a team still fighting for the last playoff berth, and facing near-certain annihilation in the first round. But the possibilities are much bigger. A Jusuf Nurkic who plays like this, on a consistent basis, drags the Blazers out of total reliance on franchise
player Damian Lillard and fellow teensyweensy guard C.J. McCollum and into playoff contention for at least the rest of the decade. Dane Carbaugh, who covers the NBA for NBC Sports, says size matters. “Nurkic is a bigger body than the Blazers had,” Carbaugh says. “He’s harder to plow through.” Except for leaping ability, Nurk has pretty much all of Plumlee’s skills: He can score on a pick-and-roll and pass with surprising elegance, and he’s even better at rebounding. But there’s two extra dimensions to Nurk that Plumlee lacked. He’s five years younger than Plumlee, and he can defend! His feet are quick enough to follow on switches on the perimeter, he has active hands that create steals and chaos, and he does an effective job protecting the rim. Also, and this is just a bonus: He is enthusiastically nasty, just a big ol’ bad boy out on the court, a Blazer throwback I was worried we might never see again. The Blazers have mostly hewed boring, acquisition-wise, since Jail Blazers like Rasheed Wallace and Bonzi Wells were demonized. Nurkic is bound by no such conventions. He talks mad, accented trash, knocks dudes to the hardwood, sets beautifully dirty picks, and isn’t shy about contact or exhibiting bad manners. In his third game as a Blazer, he had a two crowns on his teeth knocked out of his mouth—and kept playing. Once, in Denver, he knocked Markieff Morris down before scoring on him in the post, then willingly took a technical foul by gently collecting the ball and laying it on Morris’ chest while he was still supine on the floor. That is the exact opposite of getting kicked in the nuts by Morris— which is what happened to Plumlee, in case you’re keeping score at home. Even skeptics are won over. “I was superbummed to lose Mason Plumlee, my favorite Plumlee,” says Seattle novelist Richard Chiem, a Blazers die-hard. “But then Jusuf got two of his teeth knocked out and became a beast. Now we’ve got a first-round pick, one of the easiest remaining schedules in the league, and Nurkic is knocking out career highs with fewer teeth.” And hey, all this, and he’s still just a six-pack or two out of shape! If Nurk, who is still coming off a foot injury, can get on the deadlift this summer, maybe get to resculpting his breadstick-textured arms, and learn the team’s offense, the Blazers might find themselves in the thick of the playoff field for the next few years. As anybody who remembers Sheed can tell you: It’s good to be bad.
N ATA L I E B E H R I N G
Willamette Week Cover Story
TOO LEGIT TO QUIT: Although Final Table, a poker club on Southeast 122nd Avenue shown here March 10, faces a city license suspension, players just want to play.
ARE PORTLAND’S POKER ROOMS LY LICENSED BY THE CITY, WILD TO LAST. POPULAR—AND TOO ILLEGAL BY NIG EL JA QU ISS
njaq uiss @w wee k.co
m
Evgeny “John” Ogai was a lousy poker player. Yet more than anyone, he established the game in Portland. After visiting Las Vegas nearly a decade ago, Ogai, a slight, intense Russian-born entrepreneur, saw an opportunity. And in October 2010, he opened the Encore Poker Club at Northwest 16th Avenue near Glisan Street. His wasn’t the first poker club in Portland, but it was the first to draw big crowds. “When poker clubs started, they were cruddy, lowrent spaces,” says Steven Harper, a longtime local poker player. Not Encore. Ogai went upscale. He leased a 5,500-square-footspace along the western edge of the Pearl District, renting it for $88,000 a year. Ogai told people he spent $30,000 on the restrooms alone. He bought padded leather chairs and stocked top-shelf liquor. He became the first in Portland to capitalize on tournament poker, attracting a large and regular group of players to Encore. “It was by far the most professional place in town,” says Grant Denison, a longtime Portland poker pro. “It was packed all the time.” Ogai’s success inspired competitors. More than a dozen poker rooms have operated in Portland since 2010—a little slice of Vegas in Stumptown. Although licensed, Encore and other poker clubs appear to have operated in violation of the law for years, thanks to inattentive regulators. But the clubs’ heyday is over. Portland poker faces extinction because of a lethal combination— aggrieved competitors across the Columbia River and energized government regulators who have finally mastered a legal framework more complicated than the permutations of Portland’s poker game of choice, Texas Hold ’em. CONT. on page 12
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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N ATA L I E B E H R I N G
PORTLAND MEADOWS
HOUSE RULES
Portland’s poker rooms are licensed and operating openly. Yet several of their practices appear to violate the law. NIGEL JAQUISS. The “house” cannot act as a bank. A 2010 Oregon Department of Justice opinion—requested by the Oregon Lottery, a competitor of poker rooms— found that “acting as a bank” meant “having any involvement in the financial aspects of the game, including selling, keeping, and redeeming chips even if the house makes no profit from doing so.” So, a player can’t even legally exchange cash for chips, a practice in place at every Portland poker club. The city of Portland’s social gaming ordinance says, “No player shall bet more than $1 in money or other thing of value in any one game.” In practice, players can’t bet less than $1 per hand and usually bet substantially more. Clubs are also prohibited by city code from making money “from the operation of a social game.” Portland poker clubs earn money in two ways: by selling food and drinks to players, and by charging an entry fee, typically $10 to $15. Yet the city says clubs cannot legally charge patrons a door fee if they are coming to the clubs only to play poker—doing so violates state law prohibiting “house income.” Poker clubs are not allowed to employ dealers. Dozens of dealers manage the games at Portland’s card rooms. Operators dodge the rule by declaring the dealers independent contractors. But the state disagrees—a big reason Encore Poker Club folded.
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Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
Unlike the shadowy underground clubs featured in movies such as Rounders, Portland poker clubs are licensed by the city and the Oregon Liquor Control Commission and operate out in the open. Yet officials say nearly everything about them regularly violates city ordinances and state law. Illogical as it may seem, the clubs are both legal and yet operating illegally. Maybe you’ve never played poker or hate gambling. But the issues facing Portland’s 13 licensed poker clubs illustrate the dilemmas of the “gig economy,” which is characterized by short-term contracts and freelance work. Like other businesses that operate in gray areas—such as cannabis before legalization, and Airbnb today—poker clubs’ existence raises a question: If companies operate outside the law, is that a reflection of poor enforcement or archaic laws? Competitors say the appropriate response is clear—shut them down. But lobbyist Geoff Sugerman, who helped Ogai derail a 2013 bill that would have killed poker outright, says laws prohibiting willing participants from competing against each other in a game of skill are the problem. “It makes no sense at all in the modern context of how poker really works,” Sugerman says. “The laws are completely outdated.” Next month, Portland poker goes on trial at a city hearing, where Portland’s two biggest clubs will for the first time formally address the conflict between what’s allowed and what’s actually happening. But Ogai, the man who did more than anybody to popularize poker in this town, won’t be there. He killed himself last year after losing a legal battle that put his club out of business.
A
cross Portland, a handful of the city’s licensed poker clubs are following Ogai’s focus on tournaments. They draw an estimated 500 to 600 hardcore players, and thousands more who play semi-regularly. The clubs are also—according to interviews with players, recent city inspections and a reporter’s observations—breaking numerous laws. A recent Friday night at Final Table, the biggest poker club in East Portland, illustrates the paradox. As the clock ticks toward midnight March 3, nearly 300 players fill a room that smells like a mixture of air freshener, fear and fryer grease. Located in a gritty strip mall on Southeast 122nd Avenue, just south of Division Street, between a Pizza Baron and an O’Reilly Auto Parts, Final Table is a long way from Vegas. Dusty curtains cover the windows, and worn linoleum covers the floors. There’s little decoration other than a framed poster of James Dean that reads, “The only greatness for man is immortality.” Menu choices include $5 Coors Light drafts, Rockstar and Red Bull energy drinks, and the $12 house special: tonight, a bacon-wrapped chorizo sausage with a side of mac ’n’ cheese and a soft drink, delivered right to the poker table. UFC brawlers battle silently on big screens lining the walls. A uniformed security guard watches the door, aware that there are tens of thousands of dollars in cash on the premises. Professional dealers shuttle from table to table, carrying their own decks and seat cushions. On this night, players are competing in a $20,000 prize tournament that will continue long after the sun rises. Dozens of others play in a cash game of no-limit Texas Hold ’em, in which pots for single hands can top $1,000. The players are ethnically diverse but nearly all male. They will lock in at the tables for eight hours or more, drifting away occasionally for a smoke, a restroom break or an ATM infusion. There’s grumbling among players—management posted a sign raising the cover to $15, after keeping it at $10 for
years. That’s painful if you’re a regular who comes in a dozen times a month, and many do. A sign on the door explains the price increase. “We have waited to raise our fees for as long as we could,” reads the message. “But it has become apparent that doing so is necessary if we are going to continue to keep our doors open.” The club is raising money for lawyers and its April showdown with the city of Portland. That showdown has been inevitable since the city began licensing clubs in 2008, because poker is in direct conflict with numerous city and state legal prohibitions (see “House Rules,” left). But John Ogai didn’t see it coming. AFTER GRADUATING FROM PORTLAND STATE University in 2001 with a degree in information technology, Ogai sold used computers online, brokered real estate, launched an internet startup for language translation, and tried to perfect a dating app. “He was constantly looking for investments,” said a friend, Chris Vetter. “He was looking at starting a soda company. He called the drink ‘Sex.’” (Vetter died of complications related to diabetes in February.) Ogai frequented high-end restaurants like El Gaucho and Andina. He spoke with an accent and was often blunt to the point of rudeness. “He liked vodka,” Vetter said. “He was Russian to the core—not very communicative or emotionally expressive.” Typical of Ogai’s bluntness was an email exchange with a former Encore waitress named Kristen Shull, who questioned his management style. She posted his reply on Facebook. “I work hard. I play hard,” Ogai wrote. “I spend my hard earned money however the fuck I please… so fuck off, Kristen.” In 2009, Ogai bought a North Portland bar called the Six Point Inn. That’s where he got his start in poker, running an
HAPPIER TIMES: The Encore Poker Club in Northwest Portland before it closed.
unlicensed game. (Ogai had no criminal record, although documents show Portland police investigated a rape accusation against him in September 2010. The case was dropped when the alleged victim stopped cooperating.) Ogai took what he learned about poker at the Six Point Inn and applied for a social gaming license in 2010, soon after the city opened the door to poker clubs. Televised coverage of the World Series of Poker had generated national interest, catapulting Texas Hold ’em beyond casual games and some illegal, big-money games between serious players. Although Oregon law prohibits non-tribal casino gambling, in 1973 state lawmakers passed a “social gaming” statute to allow nonprofits and private clubs to host poker games. Portland started licensing poker clubs in 2008. “Before the issuance of permits, poker was ‘underground’ and could be a dangerous activity,” Terri Williams, deputy director of the Portland Revenue Division, which licenses poker, says in a statement. Williams adds that her bureau expected the clubs to follow the law. “Business plans submitted did not indicate these violations would take place.”
The early Portland clubs were sketchy, attracted few customers and had a high failure rate. Numerous players say Ogai revolutionized the business when he opened Encore. Part of his success certainly stemmed from having an attractive club in a central location. But more important was his decision to organize bigdollar tournaments, which attracted hundreds of players. In tournament poker, dozens or even hundreds of players pay a fixed entry fee, say $100, for the right to play for a pot of $10,000 or $20,000. The enticement of those big pots—which Ogai would eventually increase to more than $100,000—brought players from all over the metro area and even from other states. Before Portland began licensing poker clubs, players seeking a legal game had to drive to card rooms in La Center, Wash., or to a tribal casino. Ogai offered the same experience, but right here in Portland. And, crucial to his success, he didn’t charge players a per-hand tax known as “the rake” (see “Raked,” page 15). He also opened Encore at just the right time. April 15, 2011, is known among serious poker players as “Black Friday.” On that day, the U.S. Department of Justice shut down the three biggest online poker sites, leaving players throughout the U.S. with fewer places to play. “It was a very dark day for poker players,” says Denison, who until Black Friday earned a living without leaving his couch. By 2013, Encore and other Portland clubs were booming. Online players migrated to the clubs, and Encore’s tournaments grew ever larger. Ogai had a steady flow of door fees and captive customers for his bar and grill. He told friends he was grossing $1 million a year. “It feels like I have won the biggest tournament of my life so far,” Ogai wrote on his LinkedIn page that year. “Luck was on my side all the way.” He was, perhaps, too successful.
ROYAL FLUSH: John Ogai, shown here at Encore in 2014, held Portland poker’s strongest hand until regulators stepped in.
OREGON LAW PERTAINING TO POKER IS COMPLICATED, but the upshot is pretty clear: Poker clubs can exist if they follow certain rules. One of them involves dealers. Poker clubs are not allowed to employ them. State law specifies that the game has to be “between players,” meaning there cannot be professional dealers like the ones casinos employ. For years, dealers at Encore and other Portland clubs were not paid by the clubs, but rather earned between
“These places are just
entirely illegal.
They just cannot exist.” —Thomas Rask, Portland lawyer
Portland clubs were taking business away from card rooms in La Center. George Teeny, who owns two La Center card rooms, hired Portland lawyer Thomas Rask and a team of lobbyists, who went to Salem and argued that the Portland poker clubs were breaking the law. “These places are just entirely illegal,” Rask says. “They just cannot exist.” Rask pleaded his case to state lawmakers. They introduced a bill to limit poker rooms to nonprofits, such as an Elks Lodge or American Legion chapter, but it went nowhere. Then Rask voiced concerns about the all-cash business to the Internal Revenue Service, the Oregon departments of Justice and Revenue, and city officials, including the Portland Police Bureau. He even sued the city for failing to enforce its ordinances but lost at the trial, appeal and Oregon Supreme Court level. Typical of the responses was a May 5, 2014, email from Capt. Mark Kruger, commander of the Police Bureau’s Drugs and Vice Division, to the City Attorney’s Office. “Gambling,” Kruger wrote, “is not within our priorities.” But the fact is, Rask was right. Ogai and his peers were regularly violating state laws that prohibit poker clubs from acting as a bank, allowing bets larger than $1, running cash games, or earning money from holding games. In the end, however, it wasn’t Ogai’s competitors that brought him down. It was his own dealers.
$20 to $40 an hour in cash tips. It was up to them whether they reported their income to the IRS. Encore had as many as 50 dealers working regularly at the club, records show. In 2015, one of them filed a complaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, claiming Ogai owed him back pay and overtime. Ogai said the dealers were volunteers who managed themselves. “We are a bar/restaurant that attracts its clientele through offering poker tournaments,” he wrote to a BOLI investigator on July 31, 2015. He said he’d scrupulously followed city rules, “including their explicit ban on hiring dealers as employees.” The dispute mirrors similar worker battles in Oregon—including fights waged by strippers, yoga instructors and Uber drivers. The question of who is and isn’t an employee is at the heart of the gig economy, in which workers enjoy more freedom but have fewer legal protections. When there’s a workplace dispute, BOLI decides the case. After the agency investigated the dispute at Encore, it concluded dealers were in fact employees. In June 2016, it notified Ogai it planned to fine him $59,000. BOLI acknowledged that dealers were not on the poker club’s
THE LONG GAME
Portland has a long and sordid history with gambling. Here are some key dates. 1904: The Evening Telegram reports, “Portland had five of the biggest gambling houses in the U.S.” 1948: Mayor Dorothy Lee attacks Portland’s organized crime, whose roots are “slot machines and punchboards.” 1956: After a massive corruption scandal, Portland voters outlaw pinball machines that pay cash prizes. 1973: Lawmakers legalize “social gaming,” i.e., nonprofit gambling for fun rather than money. 1984: State voters approve creation of the Oregon Lottery. Portland passes a social gaming ordinance that allows some card games. 1988: Federal law legalizes casinos on Native American reservations. 1994: The Cow Creek tribe opens Oregon’s first Indian casino in Canyonville. 2008: Portland begins licensing poker clubs. 2016: BOLI rules that Encore Poker Club’s dealers are employees. Encore closes.
CONT. on page 15
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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Anarghya Vardhana investOr at maverOn. A Portland native and venture capitalist whose firm was an early investor in Ebay, her focus is on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual and Augmented Reality.
Paige Hendrix Buckner teChfestnw emCee 20
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N ATA L I E B E H R I N G
RAKED
When Hold ’em players go to Las Vegas or La Center, Wash., or visit one of Oregon’s eight tribal casinos, to play a cash—i.e., nontournament— game, the house takes a per-hand charge that players call “the rake.” But at Portland clubs, there is no rake—just a door charge, after which players can play until they drop or run out of money. Jonathan Levy, a Harvardeducated autism consultant who made his living playing poker for the past decade in Portland and Las Vegas, says that, for regular players, not charging a rake is a “very significant” part of the appeal of Portland poker clubs. The rake acts as a per-hand tax that quickly diminishes winnings. A player might play 30 hands per hour and sit for eight hours. That’s 240 pots, and with the rake, the house gets a piece of all of them. Not in Portland. Jeremy Harkin, a local poker pro, travels widely for tournaments. “The beauty here is, they don’t take any money out of the pot,” Harkin says. “People all over the country are amazed when I tell them we play rake-free poker in Portland.” NIGEL JAQUISS. Here’s how the rake works: At a poker club in Portland, you pay $15 to get in the door and can play as long as you want, say, eight hours. If you played the same amount of time at a casino, where the house takes, for example, $4 from every pot, the math is much different: $4 times 30 hands an hour times eight hours divided by 10 players yields a cost of $96 per player for the same amount of poker.
FINAL HAND: The owners of Final Table and Portland Meadows poker clubs are mum on the legal strategy they hope will keep them in business.
payroll. But the fact that Ogai controlled who worked, into four clubs. when they worked and how much they got paid made Records show the investigators visited each club them employees under the law. three times and focused on the violation that took down BOLI’s ruling had an impact on the city of Portland. Ogai—professional dealers. Previously, city licensing staff had responded to comOn Dec. 16, the city proposed a penalty: The clubs would plaints about poker clubs in a piecemeal fashion, but now have to close for two weeks and begin complying with the they jumped on the issue of professional dealers. law. Two clubs accepted the suspension. Final Table and A month after BOLI’s ruling, Anne Holm, who issues Portland Meadows will fight the city at an April 17 hearing. social game permits for the city, issued an ultimatum. The owners of both clubs declined to comment, but “Designated dealers are not allowed,” Holm wrote to their attorney, Joe Mabe, says they are seeking a positive Ogai and other club owners on July 12, 2016. “The dealer resolution. must rotate among players.” In other words, Holm said “My clients remain committed to operating social clubs could not have dealers who weren’t also players. gaming clubs that are consistent with the city’s oversight Typically, poker players focus on playing, not dealing. and regulation,” Mabe says, “so that our community can Professional dealers manage what can be continue to enjoy poker at safe, secure locaa complex and contentious game without tions.” having a financial interest in who wins. The Revenue Division’s Williams says Ogai delivered the bad news on Face- “State-funded the best solution would be to simply shut book to his customers. down the game in Portland. “That would lottery is “This rule effectively puts all of the social eliminate the gray area,” Williams says. everywhere. gaming in Portland out of business,” he wrote “And then it would be a police issue.” on July 14, 2016. “In light of this, [Encore] is That would please Washington state’s closing its doors effective today.” card rooms. But players say it would simply force Portland poker underground, where it —Grant Denison, LITTLE MORE THAN A MONTH AFTER flourished before licensing. That would be a poker player Encore shut down, Vetter, Ojai’s friend, little bit like criminalizing marijuana again. delivered stunning news on a 1,500-mem“We’d go back to having what are effecber Facebook page for local poker players: tively illegal casinos,” says Mark Humphrey, Ogai was dead. Ogai’s attorney in the BOLI investigation. The report puzzled the poker communiDenison and Levy, who produce a weekly ty—Ogai was a trim and vigorous 38 years old. poker podcast, say that as with marijuana, the better A police report obtained by WW from the Washing- approach would be legalization, regulation and taxation. ton County Sheriff’s Office provided an explanation: On The players say the demise of Encore and Ogai reveals Aug. 29, 2016, Ogai fatally shot himself. a double standard. The Oregon Lottery promotes its prodOgai’s mother told a responding officer that for the pre- uct with the zeal of a carnival barker and is the state’s secvious month, Ogai had been severely depressed since “his ond-largest revenue source, bringing in more than $500 business, the Encore Poker Club, had been shut down.” million a year. Native American casinos across Oregon Despite the city’s letter and Ogai’s interpretation that it beckon gamblers. Horse and greyhound racing are legal, meant the end of legal poker in Portland, many of the city’s as is off-track betting. And every office tolerates gambling other poker clubs conducted business as usual. on fantasy football and NCAA Tournament basketball. In fact, just a few months before Ogai’s suicide, PortYet poker is effectively illegal. land Meadows started its own poker club. “From the player’s perspective, it feels like hypocIn the fall, the city licensing office decided to step up risy,” Denison says. “State-funded lottery is everywhere. enforcement, sending undercover private investigators Why not poker?”
Why not poker?”
EACH PLAYER PAYS
$96
AT CASINO AT PORTLAND POKER CLUB EACH PLAYER PAYS
$15
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The Hood Internet is not broken
up—the production duo has gone from mashing up R. Kelly with Broken Social Scene to mashing up Chance the Rapper with the Chicago Cubs’ fight song. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 503-239-7639, holocene.org, 9 pm Thursday, March 23. $12 advance, $15 day of show. 21+. A quarter-century after starting as a Boston bar band, G. Love & Special Sauce is still putting out records on Jack Johnson’s label. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE Cesar E. Chavez Blvd., 503-233-7100, h a w t h o r n e t h e a t r e .c o m , 8 p m Thursday, March 23. $25 advance, $30 day of show. 21+.
Pogo punk never dies, and so the Bouncing Souls have released 10 albums in 23 years. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE Cesar E. Chavez Blvd., 503-233-7100, hawthornetheatre. com. 8 pm Friday, March 24. Sold out. All ages. Social Distortion’ turns the big 4-0 next year, and will celebrate by playing those two good songs it recorded in 1990 during the encore of another tour. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-230-0033, roselandpdx.com. 8 pm Friday, March 24. Sold out. All ages. After three years of radio silence, STRFKR, the band formerly known as Pyramid with one D and also formerly known as Pyramiddd with three
D’s, returned in 2016 with Being No One, Going Nowhere. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-230-0033, roselandpdx.com. 9 pm Saturday, March 25. Sold out. All ages. A decade ago, Panic! at the Disco was one of the two or three best baroque-themed techno-pop bands in the nation. Today, not only is the Las Vegas group not broken up, it’s playing Moda Center. Moda Center, 1 N Center Court St., 503-235-8771, rosequarter.com. 7 pm Wednesday, March 22. $29-$40. All ages. Alt-country survivors the Old 97’s are still kickin’ and will be at Wonder Ballroom to pregame with a Texassized marg at Bunk downstairs. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell
St., 503-284-8686, wonderballroom. com. 7:30 pm Wednesday, March 22. $23 advance, $25 day of show. 21+. C o b ra S t a r s h i p — p e r h a p s b e s t known as the band that recorded the theme song for Snakes on a Plane—broke up in 2015. Pop rockers Fountains of Wayne had minor mainstream success with 2003’s “Stacy’s Mom,” a song about a young boy pursuing relations with his friend’s hot mom. You might remember the accompanying music video featuring Rachel Hunter. The band eventually disbanded to pursue different projects. A longtime staple of the fading poppunk scene, Motion City Soundtrack
finished its farewell tour in late 2016. In the band’s nearly 20 years of performing, it toured incessantly, playing to crowds of prepubescent tweens at the Vans Warped Tour year after year. Yellowcard, the band you still listen to ironically, will play its final show March 25 in Anaheim, Calif. The band enjoyed its highest level of success with 2003 release Ocean Avenue, an aggressively mediocre album we somehow took seriously. Electronic duo Crystal Castles is known for a brand of noisy dance pop that could just as easily be the soundtrack to an Atari video game. Crystal Castles has continued to record and tour, but the 2014 depar-
ture of singer Alice Glass effectively pulled the plug on its creative spark. The all-female punk trio Vivian Girls broke into the Brooklyn indie scene in 2008 with a self-titled debut album of reverb-heavy, harmonized tracks. The band broke up in 2014, and all the Girls now have new bands. After three albums and more than six years of performing, Smith Westerns came to an abrupt end in 2014, with frontman Cullen Omori announcing the “indefinite hiatus” of the Chicago trio known for its garage-y glam rock. Guitarist Max Kakacek and drummer Julien Ehrlich formed the band Whitney, which in 2016 released the critically acclaimed Light Upon the Lake.
Answers (flip the page) In 2003, when the postemo band Brand New was brand new, it dusted off an old Latin saying whispered into the ears of new popes during their coronation. “Sic Transit Gloria,” wasn’t otherwise papal—it was about a man getting date-raped by a woman when “all he wanted was to hold her.” Here’s the weird thing about Brand New: Even though the band members are old, they’re making music—like, professionally. So are many of their contemporaries. Did you know that? Color us impressed. Color us even more impressed if you can tap your memories of the era, when people said they should be colored metaphorically based on their emotions, so you can identify which seven of the 14 bands shown are broken up and which seven are playing Portland this week. JASON SUSIM.
(formerly Pyramids and Pyramiddds)
G. Love & Special Sauce
Fountains of Wayne
Motion City Soundtrack
The Bouncing Souls
Social Distortion
Yellowcard
Crystal Castles
Panic! at the Disco
STRFKR
Vivian Girls
Smith Westerns
The Old 97’s
Cobra Starship The Hood Internet
B AN DS THAT B ROKE UP!
CAN YOU IDENTIFY WHICH BUZZ BANDS OF YORE ARE BROKEN UP AND WHICH ARE PLAYING PORTLAND THIS WEEK?
B AN DS STILL PL AYIN G TODAY!
Breaking or Broken?
The Bump
#wweek
y p p a H Hour
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Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
Stree t
WHAT PART OF TOWN DO YOU LIVE IN? OUR FAVORITE LOOKS THIS WEEK.
Amelia lives in Southeast.
Ada, Anna and Natalie live in Southeast.
Oliver lives in Old Town.
Adrian lives in Northeast.
PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER GARCIA VALLE
Teresa and Brandon live in Northeast.
Frank lives downtown.
Frankie lives on Clinton Street.
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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STARTERS
The OHSU Brain Institute’s
BANDCAMP
B I T E - S I Z E D P O RT L A N D C U LT U R E N E W S
2 0 1 7 BR AIN AWARENESS LEC TURE SERIES
The Secret Life of the Brain MARCH 27
Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart and Mind David Linden, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
APRIL 4
Sleep, Memory and Dreams: Putting it all Together Robert Stickgold, Ph.D. Harvard Medical School
All lectures take place at The Newmark Theatre in Portland and begin at 7 p.m. To learn more, visit www.ohsubrain .com/ww or call 8 0 0 -273-153 0.
BLACKBALLED: Controversial Portland band Black Pussy was forced to remove itself from the kickoff show to its own tour due to complaints about its name. The deeply Googleunfriendly stoner-rock outfit was scheduled to play Kenton Club on March 17, but announced on Facebook it would have to cancel after the venue was allegedly “bullied” by “a motivated and insecure group.” This is not the first time Black Pussy, made up of five white men, has faced opposition to its name. In 2015, an online petition calling for the boycott of any venue that booked the group gathered 1,700 signatures. Since then, the band has been forced to cancel shows in North Carolina and Canada following threats of protest. “The moniker is a low-hanging entendre,” the band wrote. “We just happen to like Black Pussy without guilt or apology.” The band added it is open to discussion about the name, as long as the dialogue is “non-cunty.” Representatives of Kenton Club did not respond to requests for comment. WELCOME TO DRIZZLETOWN: This past weekend, rap superstar Drake surprise-dropped his new project, More Life, and one song in particular is relevant to Portlanders. It’s called “Portland.” You should downshift your expectations, though: While the Drizzler has expressed an affinity for our city in the past—last time he played Moda Center, in 2013, he visited Nike headquarters and announced a partnership with the Jordan brand—the song doesn’t appear to be about Portland, at least not directly. Portland does get a straightforward mention on the track, however, from guest star Travis Scott, who drops the line, “Out in Portland/Trying to get in her organs.” That might seem just a belabored sex pun, but the Houston rapper does appear to love it here, recently tweeting that Portland is his “fav place in America to find peace.” Scott will be back in town April 19 to play Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Protect your organs. SCALDED: Portland won’t be getting its first BDSM coffee shop, after all. And the breakup is getting messy. The MoonFyre Cafe was set to open in September in the Catalyst space on Southeast Foster Road that bills itself as “Portland’s place for sex-positive events and education.” Instead, MoonFyre abruptly vacated the space. Catalyst owner Shawn Grande says MoonFyre founder Pixie Fyre didn’t pay rent for 14 months, while Fyre says their agreement called for her to pay half the cafe’s door fees in lieu of rent, in addition to funding improvements to the space. Grande says when Catalyst gave Fyre a 30-day notice to either open or vacate, she vacated. “We left $11,000 of renovations in the space,” Fyre tells WW. “We reached a point where they threatened to pull the rug out from under me and behave in a way we didn’t feel was ethical.” Grande apologizes for “the issues and the drama.” “We’ve already received a lot of feedback that basically people weren’t coming because [Fyre] was involved,” he says, “and we’ll continue to do what we do: offer sex-positive events and education.”
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Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
BURGER CHAMP: Northeast Prescott Street gastropub Grain & Gristle holds the Burger Madness title as the best burger in Portland. After collectively trying burgers at more than 100 bistros, bars, brewpubs and casual burger joints in a weekslong bracketed tournament, our burger tasters awarded the crown to Grain & Gristle over runner-up Stoopid Burger in the championship March 20. The simple $12 burger includes a bun made by Grain & Gristle’s former house baker, Hereford beef house-ground each day, housemade aioli and house pickles.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22 Xiu Xiu Jamie Stewart is not OK, and judging by Xiu Xiu’s new album, Forget, he probably never will be. But if you’re among the legion of liberal arts grads who’ve developed a cult-like devotion to his quivering vocals and lyrics caught between a traumatic past and dismal future, perhaps his loss is your gain. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 503-239-7639, holocene.org. 8:30 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. All ages.
Jak Knight In the vein of Jerrod Carmichael, L.A. comedian and frequent Comedy Central cameo performer Jak Knight knows how to hit the sweet spot between non-PC shock comedy and genuine social commentary. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., 888-643-8669, portland.helium.com. 8 pm. $15-$23. 21+.
THURSDAY, MARCH 23
Cloud 9 Comics Birthday Party Clinton Street’s Cloud 9 Comics celebrates its second birthday with a huge sale, offering up to 50 percent off books, back issues, figurines and hardcovers through Sunday. Cloud 9 will also screen Joss Whedon’s cult space Western, Serenity,, which launched nerd-hunk Nathan Fillion’s career as the modern-day Han Solo. Cloud 9 Comics, 2621 SE Clinton St., 503-236-8113, cloudninecomics.com. 11 am-7 pm. Serenity screens at Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., at 7:30 pm. $5-$10 donation suggested.
FRIDAY, MARCH 24 James Chance & the Contortions If James Brown got sucked into the Upside Down and had his genes spliced with Lou Reed, James Chance is what would get spat back out. After a long period o f d o r m a n cy, t h e 63 -ye a r - o l d screamer-skronkophonist reassembled his old band for last year’s The Flesh Is Weak, and still plays funk and disco like he’s only ever heard them while high on paint thinner. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., 503-248-4700, startheaterportland.com. 9 pm. $14. 21+.
Annie Hartnett In Annie Hartnett’s debut novel, Rabbit Cake, precocious tween Elvis Babbitt would have been prepared if someone demanded she recite a Snapple-lid fact, but not for her mother’s fatal narcoleptic swimming accident. This is the darkly comedic Southern tale of a young girl trying to keep it together after tragedy. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323, powells.com. 7:30 pm. Free.
Get Busy WHAT WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT MARCH 22-28
SATURDAY, MARCH 25
Blow Pony 10th Anniversary Portland’s lack of a proper “gayborhood” is well-documented, so the fact that Blow Pony, one of the queer community's biggest monthly dance parties, is a movable feast of sorts makes perfect sense. This month, the party celebrates its 10-year anniversary, which organizers promise to be a night of “fierceness, faggotry, fuckery and buggery.” Bossanova Ballroom, 725 E Burnside St., 503-206-7630, bossanovaballroom.com. 9 pm. $19. 21+.
The Angry Brigade Opening Weekend The Angry Brigade explores the eponymous London-based leftist domestic terrorist group that orchestrated a series of bombings in the early ’70s, with a script from James Graham constructed to thwart comfortable categories like good and bad. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., thirdrailrep.org. 7:30 pm. $25-$42.50. Through April 15.
Cider Rite of Spring More than 30 cidermakers will serve up about 100 different Northwest ciders above a beer bar with 100 taps for local beer. Sheesh. Expect every damn local cider brand you’ve heard of and a couple boutique spots like E.Z. Orchards and Rack & Cloth, plus cart fish from Wasabi Sushi. The Evergreen PDX, 619 SE Alder St., nwcider.com. Noon-6 pm. $25, $40 VIP.
SUNDAY, MARCH 26
Winners and Losers In Winners and Losers Losers, show creators Marcus Youssef and James Long sit onstage and argue whether a cultural figure or topic is, well, a winner or a loser. But the conceptual dialogue quickly gets personal, and the two men end up arguing more about their own lives—who had the more difficult upbringing, who’s better at masturbating, etc. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 503-241-1278, artistsrep.org. 2 and 7:30 pm. $30. Opens March 24.
Alton Brown The dean of food science—who’s also a pilot, music video cinematographer and Iron Chef host—will be in town acting like a mad scientist onstage at the Schnitz, making food with balloons and snowblowers and hammers and shit, plus playing guitar for some reason. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 503-248-4335, portland5.com. 3 and 8 pm. $40-$125. All ages.
MONDAY, MARCH 27 The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains Jon Morris' book serves as a novelty history of the most bizarre comic-book crooks, such as Brickbat, wielder of “poisonous bricks,” and Swarm, a villain made of Nazi bees. With its erudite prose and midcentury print design, it’s as if M.F.K. Fisher wrote a biography of Captain Underpants for Mad magazine. Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 800-878-7323, powells.com. 7:30 pm. Free.
Decibel Magazine Tour Pre-eminent underground metal mag Decibel has been putting together one of the best annual tours in heavy music for a few years. Headlining this time are primeval German thrashers Kreator and death-metal masters Obituary—with fresh buzz bands Midnight and Horrendous in tow. Expect a packed house of sweaty dudes in studded denim jackets. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE Cesar E. Chavez Blvd., 503-233-7100, hawthornetheatre.com. 7 pm. $28 advance, $30 day of show. All ages.
TUESDAY, MARCH 28 Kate Tempest South London’s Kate Tempest makes music somewhere between spoken word, hip-hop and Shakespeare. Last year's Let Them Eat Chaos was a stream-of-consciousness slice of life, exploring seven characters at an hour when nothing good happens. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895, mississippistudios.com. 9 pm. $15 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
Blazers vs. Denver Nuggets A few weeks ago, no NBA fan would’ve had this game circled on the calendar. But that was before Portland caught Nurkic Fever, baby! Not only is this a revenge game for the Bosnian Beast, it has legit playoff implications, as both teams are battling for the opportunity to get swept in the fi rst round. Get hyped! Moda Center, 1 N Center Court St., 503-235-8771, rosequarter.com. 7 pm. $16-$77. Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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I
FOOD & DRINK
Shandong
W W S TA F F
DRANK
www.shandongportland.com
Shandong www.shandongportland.com
Spruce is Loose
WOLF TREE BREWERY’S JOE HITSELBERGER IS BECOMING THE KING OF SITKA SPRUCE BEERS. BY MA RTIN CIZMA R
Simple ApproAch
Bold FlAvor vegan Friendly
open 11-10
everyday
500 NW 21st Ave, (503) 208-2173 kungpowpdx.com
Fillmore Trattoria
Italian Home Cooking Tuesday–Saturday 5:30PM–10PM closed Sunday & Monday
1937 NW 23RD Place Portland, OR 97210 22
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
(971) 386-5935
mcizmar@wweek.com
If Joe Hitselberger had his way, he’d make only one beer at Wolf Tree Brewery. “Like Orval,” he says. “They just make one beer.” The beer he’d make? It’s nothing like Orval, the legendary Belgian Trappist ale in distinctive teardrop bottles. It’s also nothing like any yearround beer made in Oregon. Odd as it sounds, Hitselberger is obsessed with spruce tips. He got hooked on them while working in Alaska, and has since become the first Oregon brewer to make the style his flagship. The soft chutes that bud on Sitka spruce in the spring aren’t piney, in the way you expect of hops, but rather sweet, with citrus and strawberry notes—they make for a delicate, unique and very tasty beer. Hitselberger’s small brewery opened in 2013, making tiny batches for a few years before building a larger brewhouse. With a mild cotton-candy and strawberry sweetness, Wolf Tree’s barrel-aged spruce bud ale is the best I’ve had, and I’m not alone in my opinion. Earlier this month, Wolf Tree came out of nowhere to win a gold medal for best “Experimental” beer at the Oregon Beer Awards. Wolf Tree’s address is Seal Rock, a small coastal community between Newport and Yachats. But the brewery is actually 6 miles inland, in a barn on the Hitselberger family cattle ranch. On the ranch, Hitselberger experiments with spruce tips the way other breweries play around with hops—he makes a hopless gruit version, a barrel-aged version, a chocolate stout version, and he attempted a spruce tip IPA that didn’t meet his standards. “There’s a lot of educated drinkers to keep you honest,” he says. “We’re pretty strict on quality control. I’m not just moving stuff to move it.” At this point, Hitselberger pauses to appreciate a sip of his own barrel-aged spruce beer. “Mmmmm. That’s a damned good beer,” he says, laughing at his boast. Hitselberger’s late father, a California physician, set up the family on Wolf Tree’s ranch—a cow-and-calf operation where, when there’s a hole in the fence, a visitor may have to wait as three calves amble up the dirt driveway. It’s a remote spot connected by a series of gravel roads winding around Beaver Creek—in fact, I was the first writer to ever make the trek. (Wolf Tree’s beer will
become more accessible this spring, when Hitselberger plans to open a small tasting room on the south side of the Yaquina Bay Bridge in Newport, not far from the Oregon Coast Aquarium.) The ranch’s 100 head of cattle have the run of the acreage until they go to Eugene for auction. “Brewing works pretty well as a complementary business,” Hitselberger says, partly because of the schedule, and partly because he can take the spent grains about 50 feet and feed them to the cattle. “They can smell when we’re brewing, and they just come in and line up at the fence, waiting to be fed,” he says. “It’s like junk food for them.” The farm is also key to that spruce beer. “Wolf tree” is a forestry term for a big tree on a high ridge that can suffocate anything trying to grow under it. On this part of the central Oregon Coast, Hitselberger says, that’s often a spruce tree. “It all fits with what we’re doing,” he says. “This beer is something I think would be hard for other breweries to replicate.” That’s because he makes it by harvesting 3,000 pounds of fresh spruce tips in the spring, from trees on the farm, and then freezing them until it’s time to brew. Since the ranch is pretty much self-sustaining, Hitselberger is working to expand the brewery. His next project is almost as unusual as a full lineup of spruce beers: Wolf Tree recently built a coolship to produce spontaneously fermented beer, joining a handful of breweries in the nation making beer without pitched yeast. The wort is pumped into a cake-pan-shaped open fermenter housed in a plank-walled building made from cedar milled on the property. “This is the perfect spot,” Hitselberger says. “We have this little valley here, and all kinds of good stuff floating around. If we weren’t going with this style of beer, it’d be weird.” Those beers are still a ways off, though— spontaneously fermented beer requires a year or two in barrels, then back-blending to smooth out the rough edges. In the meantime, there’s the strawberry sweetness of that wonderful Wolf Tree spruce beer. “We make some IPAs,” Hitselberger says. “I think we make a good IPA. But I’m not going to tell anybody our IPA is the best. I think there are some breweries in Oregon that have that figured out. But when it comes to spruce beer, I think we’re unique.”
THOMAS TEAL
ROUNDUP
pickles, and the menu promises that someday on the premises you’ll be able to eat an OP pretzel and an unpeeled OP weisswurst; the restaurant just added an OP burger and that same OP charcuterie board you get at the fancy spots. But after two visits in the first week, my routine may already be set. Perfect classic dog: $5 at happy hour (3-6 pm daily). Perfect German hefeweizen: $5 anytime. Perfect damn day. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
FIGLIA
1100 SE Grand Ave., 503-477-6590, figliapdx.com. 8 am-3 pm Monday-Friday, 9 am-3 pm Saturday.
SOUTH IN YOUR MOUTH: The Bless Your Heart burger.
Counter Intelligence REVIEWING FOUR NEW CASUAL COUNTER-SERVICE SPOTS FROM BIG-NAME PORTLAND RESTAURATEURS.
If you’re cooking in a kitchen where one sauce takes a week to make, a burger joint probably looks like easy money. Restaurateurs should know better by now: From Ken Norris’ failed fancy hot dog spot to Micah Camden’s failed fancy hot dog spot to the failed fancy hot dog spot of Park Kitchen’s Scott Dolich, Portland is littered with proof that a highfalutin culinary pedigree is no guarantee you can make a better burger or dog than the old guy with the seasoned grill—and that it’s just as hard to make a great hoagie as a great sweetbread. Here are four new casual spinoffs in Portland—two that are wonderful, two not so wonderful.
BLESS YOUR HEART BURGERS
126 SW 2nd Ave., 503-719-4221, byhpdx.com. 11 am-10 pm daily. John Gorham knows burgers. We just picked his Toro Bravo burger as the best bistro burger in town after it advanced to the final four in our massive Burger Madness, which pitted 64 local burgers in a seeded tournament. At Bless Your Heart, he’s teamed with former employee Drew Sprouse to serve Carolina-style diner burgers ($6.50, same price as a single). What’s Carolina style? Well, it seems to involve a dark-brown meat chili that could pass for finely ground Manwich, yellow mustard, a dash of Texas Pete, and crisp slaw. The chili is good, but we’re most impressed with the basic double cheeseburger ($9) with American cheese that starts with an incredible bun—a Martin’s potato roll purchased in bulk from the Pennsylvania company and frozen until needed. When that bun is heated on the steampowered griddle, it becomes delightfully crisp with a great snap. The beef is a blend that’s one-third short rib, chuck and brisket and caramelized to juicy perfection and has a steaky character you’d expect from a burger cooked on an older, more well-seasoned grill. The Bless Your Heart burger is instantly one of our favorites in the city, and it’s even better with the animal-style fries
called “down and dirty” ($5), which are sopped with the house’s beer-cheese and barbecue sauces and topped with onions, peppers and mushrooms. MARTIN CIZMAR.
OP WURST
Maybe the saddest thing ever written by novelist William Gibson was a tweet. “This isn’t a cyberpunk future,” he wrote in December. “This is the Restoration Hardware version of a cyberpunk future.” Well, Renata spinoff Figlia is a Rejuvenation Hardware version of an Italian sandwich shop. It is, in fact, located inside one of the furniture chain’s stores. It shares with its host store a queasy sense of the ersatz—a cleanly upscale quotation of classic forms. Figlia’s Italian sandwich, for example, is sheathed in a pretty wedge of billowing, almost-pastry-topped house ciabatta—and its soppressata, mortadella and housemade prosciutto cotto are beautifully cured. But not only does the bread bury the thin layer of meat, the hyperacidic olive giardiniera and perplexing addition of mustard conspire to blast a jet of meaty air up one’s sinuses. On a roast beef sandwich, the peppadew and Mama Lil’s peperonata atop it was likewise so acidic it almost caused the meat to seem spoiled—and the mix of cotto salami and giardiniera in a cold pasta salad was downright post-digestive in texture and flavor. The beet salad, too, was almost vinegar in its sourness. Each item looked beautiful and luxuriant, casual cuisine for a life lived in sunrooms. And each tasted sour. I went back again and again, confused. There’s a blazing exception, however, among the savory dishes: The white bean, chili and tomato soups were all deep, rich, balanced, subtle and warming down to the heart’s cockles. It is a strange double bind to find such comfort where they ask you to do so much acid. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
3384 SE Division St., 503-384-2259, opwurst.com. 11 ammidnight Sunday-Wednesday, 11 am-1 am Thursday-Saturday.
POK POK WING
As a concept, OP Wurst is pretty much a no-brainer. Restaurant and salumeria Olympia Provisions makes sausages and hot dogs that could hold their own against any in the country. But until Elias Cairo and his sister, Michelle, opened their original fast-casual OP Wurst in Pine Street Market last year, you had to go to one of their two upscale restaurants to mow down on a frank. Not anymore. Pine Street may have been the proof of concept, but the new Division Street sausage bar—a whiteon-white shack once home to Honky Tonk Taco and Andy Ricker’s Sen Yai noodle house—will be OP Wurst’s flagship. On the restaurant’s walls, you’ll find what amounts to a menu cheat sheet. “BEER,” reads a sign on one wall. “SAUSAGES,” reads a sign on the other. There are stacked novelty dogs available—whether blue-cheese hazelnut or mac and cheese —but the classic OP dog ($7) is still the Portland Platonic ideal of frankfurter, the one God would grill in heaven’s backyard while cranking up the bass on Pachelbel. That meaty, smoky depth and sulfurous grill char is laid into a Franz bun and topped with the Heinz-French’s-relish-onion combo that fuels the beating heart of America. Take a $5 Ayinger Bräu-Weisse draft to the patio on a sunny day, and all else is wurst, as the Germans like to say. Sure, you can also get a lovely Day Wines pinot noir by the glass ($10), or a $10 “Lawrenceburg Blvd.,” a boulevardier cocktail livened up with cherry and sea salt. The full menagerie of excellent OP sausage is also in attendance—from stately, plump kasekrainer to herbal pecorino parsley. The pickled green papaya slaw on the Pok Pok dog ($10.50) is bracingly acidic, the fried pickles ($5) are fried
Pok Pok’s Andy Ricker has had a rough go of late. Earlier this month, the local restaurateur had to shutter his Los Angeles restaurant after diners rejected his upscale take on Thai cuisine and decided to stick with the mom-andpop shops of the Thai Town neighborhood. This followed the flop of Pok Pok Wing (and Pok Pok Phat Thai) in New York and the closure of Sen Yai in Portland. We hate to heap trouble on Ricker, but the new Pok Pok Wing he opened across from the Aladdin Theater in a former teriyaki spot is plagued with problems. It’s not a place you’ll want to linger long enough to eat a meal. The shiny, red-tiled floors and plastic-sheathed tables feel like they were reclaimed from a ’70s McDonald’s, and the room smells, for lack of a better word, schmaltzy. Worse, though, the food shows a sloppy hand you’re more accustomed to seeing at a fast-food place than at Ricker’s excellent flagship on Southeast Division Street. The spicy fish sauce wings lacked the umami punch of the ones you’ll find at the original spot, instead tasting how a hermit-crab tank smells. I’ve had Pok Pok wings many times, and enjoyed them every time but this one. Likewise, the green papaya salad here has the texture of jarred pickles, and tasted equally jarred. The Thai iced tea ice cream had a chalky texture, and was overly sweet with a weird prickle of bitterness. Now that Ricker’s empire is contracting geographically, let’s hope he brings the focus to this fast-casual outpost that made Ike’s wings famous in the first place. MARTIN CIZMAR.
3120 SE Milwaukie Ave., pokpokwing.com. 11:30 am-9 pm. Monday-Sunday.
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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Two Evenings of Joy & Justice
Inaugurada La Primavera
An all-star homage to the improv legends!
TICKETS: STARTHEATERPORTLAND.COM
STAR THEATER • PORTLAND, OR • DOORS 8PM // SHOW 9PM (21+)
W/ CLINTON FEARON (acoustic) THURSDAY, MAY 4, 2017
www.belovedfestival.com
TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
VIEUX FARKA TOURÉ
TICKETS: STARTHEATERPORTLAND.COM
DOORS 8PM // SHOW 9PM (21+)
THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 2017 STAR THEATER • PORTLAND, OR
WITH DJ ANJALI & THE INCREDIBLE KID AND GANAVYA
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Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
MUSIC PROFILE
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
EBRU YILDIZ
Prices listed are sometimes for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and socalled convenience charges may apply. Event lineups are subject to change after WW’s press deadlines. Editor: MATTHEW SINGER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, go to wweek.com/ submitevents and follow submission directions. All shows should be submitted two weeks or more in advance of event. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: msinger@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
Xiu Xiu, Force Publique, Mattress
[GLOOM POP] See Get Busy, page 21. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 503-2397639. 8:30 pm. $13 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.
The Old 97’s, Ha Ha Tonka
[ALT-COUNTRY] See the Bump, page 17. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 503-284-8686. 7:30 pm. $23 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.
THURSDAY, MARCH 23 Little Wings, Lee Gull & the Graves
[INDIE FOLK] There are certain sounds that are just indicative of the West Coast. Southern California has got Vitamin D-laced surf, while the stretch from the Bay Area to Seattle is filled with masters of indie rock, folk and grunge. Little Wings embodies all of these styles. Led by Kyle Field, the band takes the most gloomy of gray skies and blends it with hazy, sunset dreamscapes, with Field’s rich warm vocals meeting gentle guitar strumming. Each track on 2015’s Explains is a lullaby for the Best Coast. CERVANTE POPE. Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., 503-328-2865. 9:30 pm. $10. 21+.
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G. Love and Special Sauce, City of the Sun
[NEVERENDING BAR BAND] See the Bump, page 17. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE Cesar Chavez Blvd., 503-2337100. 8 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show. 21+.
The Hood Internet, DJ Battles, DJ Lamar Leroy
[REMEMBER MASH-UPS?] See the Bump, page 17. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 503-239-7639. 9 pm. $12 advance, $15 day if show. 21+.
Teenage Fanclub, Britta Phillips
[POWERFUL POP] What if the Byrds formed during the alt-rock era? That’s the eternal question at the heart of hundreds of nerdy record-store conversations about cult power-pop legends Teenage Fanclub. The Scottish
CONT. on page 28
Let’s Get Infinite RAOUL ORTEGA
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22
RITUALS OF MINE
FIVE OBSCURE ACTS YOU MUST SEE AT THE TREEFORT MUSIC FEST Rituals of Mine
This Sacramento duo is on the short list of Treefort acts on the cusp of a major breakthrough. The dark, minimal electro-pop of last year’s Devoted sulks and slithers effortlessly in the sonic realm triangulated by the XX, Chelsea Wolfe and Sylvan Esso.
2 Maszer With Can-inspired rhythms and swirling reverb for days, Maszer’s 2016 EP, Dreamsz, is like a hesher’s answer to the dream garage of the Kills, the Black Angels and the Raveonettes. 3 Stepbrothers There’s something impossibly endearing about the way Stepbrothers’ chaotic 2015 album, Why the Fuck Would Anything Nice Ever Happen?, teeters on the verge of falling apart at every turn. The undercurrent of chaos makes the Boise post-hardcore outfit’s melodies and breakdowns hit even harder. 4 Sculpture Club The fuzzy and brooding darkwave of Salt Lake City’s Sculpture Club absolutely nails the Buzzcocks-meets-Bauhaus approach to postpunk, but don’t write the band off as goth posers without first giving its live set a look. 5 Ghost Tours Referring to this Boise outfit as an “emo band” isn’t exactly fair, but there’s no question as to what kind of music fan would find its dreamy hodgepodge of moody compositions particularly appealing. The Warm Lights EP is a sleeper masterpiece just waiting to be discovered by slightly older punks who’ve graduated from the mall parking lot to the philosophy section of their local bookstore. PETE COTTELL. SEE IT: The Treefort Music Fest is Wednesday-Sunday, March 22-26, in downtown Boise, Idaho. See treefortmusicfest.com for complete schedule and ticket information.
VAGABON IS INDIE ROCK’S NEW OBSESSION, BUT SHE ISN’T LETTING IT GO TO HER HEAD.
BY CR IS LA N KEN AU
503-243-2122
Lætitia Tamko’s pretty slammed at the moment. It’s not really her fault. She’s in Austin experiencing the melee of South by Southwest for the first time, and getting her on the phone amid the countless distractions proves difficult. “I’m so, so sorry. Can I have another 15 or so?” she says once we finally connect. “I’m really almost close to being done with this craziness.” She’s not being bitchy or demanding, nor does she even sound flustered. In that brief exchange, it’s obviously that the girl behind Vagabon exudes a compassion and humility admirable for someone in her position. She’s already been written about by dozens of music journalists hungry for their 15 minutes with the rising star. Vagabon’s recent debut, Infinite Worlds, reveals an inimitable voice amid a smashed-up blend of recklessness and elegance. The album was bestowed an illustrious Best New Music tag from Pitchfork, alongside a profile that called her “an indie-rock game changer.” So yeah, she’s pretty busy these days. But then, “busy” is sort of her default setting. Before she was headlining the main stages of the biggest festivals in the U.S., Tamko studied at the Grove School of Engineering, a highly respected yet relatively affordable branch of City University of New York. While a student, Tamko abandoned her musical pursuits entirely, devoting herself instead to the intense dedication the program demanded. “You have to be focused to get through it, but not necessarily love the shit out of it,” she says. “It’s an incredibly difficult major, so you can’t really get by without being incredibly focused.” Upon graduating, Tamko continued her selfimposed regimen of learning all the instruments she required to perfectly build out the songs in her head. Eventually, those songs ended up on a Bandcamp page with low expectations, until a showcase at Brooklyn’s Silent Barn introduced her to a scene she’d otherwise been completely
unaware of, and which was unaware of her. After two years of quaint performances in small venues and opening slots in larger ones supporting the likes of Frankie Cosmos and Alison Crutchfield, Tamko moved up to such prestigious stages as the annual Pitchfork Festival in Chicago. It’s a sudden boost in audience, to be sure, but Tamko maintains that her intent remains steadfast, largely to the discipline and focus she acquired as a college student. “I can play a living room for eight people, and I’ve played for 1,500 at Webster Hall, and I pretty much do the same thing,” she says. “It’s not in my nature to say, ‘This gig is smaller so we can chill.’ I might win over 10 people, and that’s still a significant number to me.” Infinite Worlds is one of those once-a-year surprises that appears on the indie-nerd collective consciousness and becomes a seemingly overnight sensation. Tamko displays an uncanny ability to create an atmosphere of such morose, mournful clarity out of little more than undistorted, finger-picked chord progressions. Tamko’s restraint places volume and silence in precise moments that imply a dramatic action superseding the sum of its parts. In a runtime just under 30 minutes, Tamko encompasses Adderall-fueled goof punk, Weezer-esque sways of slushy fuzz and, most impressively, pin-drop-quiet reflections on lost love. It’s hard to imagine a recent engineering student of only 24 having the deftness to interpret such a wide array of sounds. But Tamko’s response to flattery proves a humility and humor that seems impossible to fake. “I don’t think I have a persona.” she says. “If we met up, you’d see very quickly that I’m just myself. I believe in being genuine and honest and real. That’s all I’m about. I’m just keeping it real.” SEE IT: Vagabon plays Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., with Allison Crutchfield and the Fizz, and Soar, on Sunday, March 26. 7 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+. Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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MUSIC INTRODUCING COURTESY OF MOPE GROOVES
quintet is simply the master of the genre—incredible songsmiths who paint with chiming and/or buzzing guitars, colorful threepart harmonies and a pure sense of melodic joy. Every Teenage Fanclub album is very good to great, and last year’s Here—the group’s 10th full-length release—is no different, with two or three instant classics that slot right in alongside “Sparky’s Dream” and “Start Again” on the greatest hits setlist. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 503284-8686. 7:30 pm. $20. 21+.
FRIDAY, MARCH 24 Paul Van Dyk, Gabriel Driscoll, DJ Wiggles
[LORD OF THE TRANCE] One of the very first celeb DJs, Paul Van Dyk rode his tumescent synths from ’90s residencies in Ibiza superclubs through a flurry of remixes and original works and relentless tours while sustaining an iconic glow eerily unaffected by the vices that ravage contemporaries. Sticking with his hallmark trance even as the more salable strains of EDM conquered the mainstream, Van Dyk had already become something of a religious figure among the faithful before his faintly miraculous recovery from a 20-foot fall from a stage last year. If still far from whole, the roiling crowds chanting his initials for decades require little more than his blessing to achieve sweaty rapture anyways. JAY HORTON. 45 East, 315 SE 3rd Ave. 10 pm. $25$35. 21+.
Bouncing Souls, AJJ, Get Dead
[POGO PUNK] See the Bump, page 17. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 503-239-7639. 8 pm. Sold out. All ages.
Cameron Avery, Omar Velasco
[CROONER] You probably know 28-year-old Australian multiinstrumentalist Cameron Avery as the touring bassist for psychrock outfit Tame Impala. But if you haven’t heard his solo stuff before, you might not realize these bittersweet serenades are by the same dude. Just-released solo debut Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams expresses romance in its various forms, both failed and idealized. Using his deep baritone, Avery delivers tender slow jams dripping with melancholy bitterness. Avery exudes a confidence that’s countered by an awareness of his own frailty and imperfection, exploring an age-old theme and giving it a thoroughly modern spin. MAYA MCOMIE. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 503-239-7639. 7 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
Why?, Open Mike Eagle
[BITTER BY THE BAY] Yoni Wolf is the kind of dude you’d find sitting alone at a party, blazed out of his mind and trapped in his own head. It’s a weird and frightening place to live, but any reason for concern about the Bay Area folk-rapper’s well-being is mitigated by just how hilarious and carefully orchestrated his self-deprecating tales of life as a depressed slacker can be. The most powerful moments on Moh Lhean, the latest under his moniker Why?, feel like the spiritual heirs to Beck’s “Loser,” with just enough technology-driven angst thrown in the mix to keep the dread and despair as fresh as possible. PETE COTTELL. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St. #100, 503-288-3895. 9 pm. $16 advance, $18 day of show. All ages.
Social Distortion, Jade Jackson
[PUNK ROCK] See the Bump, page 17. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-230-0033. 8 pm. Sold out. 21+.
James Chance & the Contortions
[NO WAVE FUNK] See Get Busy, page 21. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., 503-248-4700. 9 pm. $19. 21+.
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Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
Mope Grooves WHO: Stevie Pohlman, Jon Barron, Matt Radosevich, Joe Benassi, Nik Barnaby. SOUNDS LIKE: A war between terror and bliss. FOR FANS OF: Alex Chilton, the Feelies, Brian Eno. Stevie Pohlman thought the worst of the depression was over. But last year, while working on Joy, the debut LP from Pohlman’s band, Mope Grooves, darkness rushed in. “It really took me by surprise, and it was just as bad or worse than when I was a teenager,” the 27-year-old Pohlman says. “Like really bad, suicidal ideation.” The day after completing work on Joy, which features contributions from members of Honey Bucket, Woolen Men and Patsy’s Rats, Pohlman checked into Oregon Health and Science University Hospital and waited for a bed to open up in the psych ward. As Pohlman tells it, September 2016 was a peak month for severe depression in Portland. There weren’t any beds free. Pohlman eventually bailed, opting instead for a ’shroom-assisted camping trip on the Clackamas River. “It was so much better after that,” he says. Mushrooms aren’t a permanent cure, though. And making Joy, a quickening portrait of painfully alert despair and the sublime brightness at its border, did not provide much of an afterglow. Pohlman has been having a hard time again, though Mope Grooves’ upcoming North American tour might provide a routine to ward off the shape-shifting demon of depression. “To escape my head, I need to work,” Pohlman says. “I need to be really busy all the time.” Pohlman’s hard work has resulted in a poppy post-punk masterpiece, a perfectly sequenced album that lights up the spaces between Brian Eno, the Feelies and Dwight Twilley. Although it will surely bring more people into the Mope Grooves fold, the success of the band isn’t a priority for Pohlman. In fact, the band’s members didn’t want to release Joy on vinyl unless they were sure it would be useful for other humans. “I only want to justify the creation of these platters that go into people’s rooms if they come with some kind of meaning behind them that can be used as a tool in everyday life,” Pohlman says. “I only want to run this operation if it’s something that can give to the community.” While Pohlman’s vision of community is a global one—proceeds from cassette sales will be donated to Nuevo Leon Mental Health Institute in Monterrey, Mexico—the singer is especially committed to fostering safe spaces for people who turn to the music scene for solace and meaning. Pohlman sees Joy as an opportunity to destigmatize mental illness, and would like this project to play a small part in larger campaigns fighting for a more inclusive scene. “Having all these wonderful people in my life gives me something to grab onto when I’m sliding away,” Pohlman says. “If you have all these things to do with other people—people who care about things, people who take inclusive communities seriously and are concerned about what’s going on in the world—it can be a lot less scary.” CHRIS STAMM. SEE IT: Mope Grooves plays American Legion Post 134, 2104 NE Alberta St., with Honey Bucket, Marcy’s Band, Nick Normal, Super Hit, Toxic Slime Records and Cool Schmool, on Friday, March 24. 7:30 pm. $6, $10 includes copy of Joy. All ages.
SATURDAY, MARCH 25 Delicate Steve, Alex Cameron
[OUTSPOKEN GUITAR] In 2012, Delicate Steve released one of the best records of the decade in Positive Force. The intricate, outspoken guitar phrasing painted frontman Steve Marion as a millennial Jeff Beck, and the rhythms were distant, foreign and intriguing, as informed by African dance music as much as prog rock. Earlier this year, the New Jersey band dropped This Is Steve, its first LP in five long years. And while it’s not the masterpiece Positive Force turned out to be, it’s a dazzling display of mathrock, honky-tonk and percussive builds that fans of Ratatat will adore. MARK STOCK. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895. 9 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.
STRFKR, Psychic Twin
[SPACE POP] See the Bump, page 17. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-230-0033. 9 pm. Sold out. All ages.
SUNDAY, MARCH 26 Death Valley Girls, the Shivas, the Tamed West
[GARAGE] Bringing the badassery back into garage rock ’n’ roll, L.A.’s Death Valley Girls are like the in-your-face biker gang you’d probably buy some acid from. Their music reflects their aesthetic, exuding a hardened, rebellious sexuality as intimidating as it is intriguing. We finally got Glow in the Dark after months of coasting on previous release Electric High, and its unapologetic surfy proto-punk is enough to recruit masses of kids looking for a cool cult to join. Just make sure to come leather jacket in tow. CERVANTE POPE. The Liquor Store, 3341 SE Belmont St. 9 pm. $8. 21+.
MONDAY, MARCH 27 Decibel Magazine Tour: Kreator, Obituary, Midnight, Horrendous
[METAL PACKAGE] See Get Busy, page 21. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE Cesar E. Chavez Blvd., 503233-7100. 8 pm. $28 advance, $30 day of show. All ages.
Hand Habits, Mega Bog
TUESDAY, MARCH 28 Kate Tempest, Philip Grass
[RAP POET] See Get Busy, page 21. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895. 9 pm. $15 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
CLASSICAL, JAZZ & WORLD Oregon Renaissance Band
[RENAISSANCE] In this era of flavor-of-the-month buzz bands, consider one Heinrich Isaac. Dude croaked half a millennium ago, and they’re still playing Columbus’ prolific Flemish contemporary’s music. “They” includes the 11 members of Portland’s own Oregon Renaissance Band, who in true DIY fashion, not only play the music of Isaac and others on the instruments those composers wrote it for, but also often make the instruments themselves, everything from violins and recorders to bagpipes. Hear them sing and play Isaac’s love songs, battle songs and church songs, and ask yourself how many of your favorite bands will still be covered by musicians 500 years hence. BRETT CAMPBELL. Community Music Center, 3350 SE Francis St., communitymusiccenter.org. 3 pm Sunday, March 26. $12 advance, $15 day of show. All ages.
Quartet San Francisco with Alex de Grassi
[NONCLASSICAL STRINGS] What is it about the San Francisco Bay Area that makes string quartets go a little crazy? The ‘70s brought Kronos, and the ‘80s had Turtle Island Quartet. Since the early days of this century, Quartet San Francisco has featured jazz, tangos, Lennon/ McCartney, Gershwin and tunes by founder Jeremy Cohen influenced by all of the above. On this tour, the crowd-pleasing foursome, whose appeal transcends classical music fans, teams up with another Bay Area native, acoustic guitar wizard Alex de Grassi, a mainstay of the old Windham Hill acoustic Americana label, whose music embraces classical, jazz and folk. BRETT CAMPBELL. The Old Church 1422 SW 11th Ave., 503222-2031. 7:30 pm Sunday, March 26. $30-$52. All ages.
For more Music listings, visit
C O U R T E S Y O F M I N I VA N P H O T O G R A P H Y
[FOLK ROCK] With Hand Habits, fans of Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen can take in the same brand of muggy, nostalgic folkrock for a fraction of the price. The band is headed by upstate New Yorker Meg Duffy, who worked with Kevin Morby and current tourmate Mega Bog before setting out on her own project.
Her first solo release, Wildly Idle (Humble Before the Void), was issued via Woodsist earlier this year, and feels like a graceful release of bottled-up ability. MARK STOCK. High Water Mark Lounge, 6800 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-286-6513. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
GET BEHIND ME, SATAN: Death Valley Girls play the Liquor Store on Sunday, March 26. Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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MUSIC
DATES HERE
Reckless Eric At Portland Center Stage, during a positioning-focused tech rehearsal for its upcoming Wild and Reckless theater production, Blitzen Trapper guitarist Eric Menteer starts gyrating his hips. His whammy bar squeaks as it dangles and bounces. During any of Blitzen Trapper’s live concerts, the moment would have passed unnoticed—just typical rock-’n’-roll antics. But here, it was a collision of worlds. “Is there a way to silence that?” asks a voice over the sound system. For the band, Wild and Reckless: A New Concert Event With Blitzen Trapper, is at once a step into unknown territory and a return to familiar ground. The play has the band learning the language of theater, but its key themes and imagery are drawn from the Portland of old and provide a commentary on modern American society. It features classic Blitzen Trapper tunes like “Black River Killer,” along with new material. Singer and primary songwriter Eric Earley says the production—co-directed by Rose Riordan and Liam Kaas-Lentz and featuring professional actors Laura Carbonell and Leif Norby—bridges a gap between “low” and “high” art forms. “In theater, everything is so planned out,” Earley says. “At a rock show, we’re totally nonverbal.” Promotional materials bill the play as a “futuristic vision of Portland’s past.” Earley says the look of the play was inspired by sci-fi horror films of the ’80s, and Blade Runner specifically. The PCS creative team’s video-based set design displays a simulacrum of colorful graffiti and photos, including the underside of the Hawthorne Bridge. Beloved spots like Satyricon and Chopsticks are also part of the play. “It’s not really about Portland, it just takes place in Portland,” Earley says. “I’m still undecided as to what’s better, the Old Portland or the New Portland.” The story explores addiction and homelessness, and draws from Earley’s own experience with homelessness two decades ago. There’s a drug, called Lightning Dust, which seems inspired by black tar heroin. A set-design element called the Reaper features 1980s-era rusted street lights, broken glass and duct tape. It’s all meant to suggest a nation gone awry. “I’m trying to connect it with this society that we’ve created that seeks power as its No. 1 priority,” he says. “Like the addictions and the desperation are sort of this symptom.” The new songs written for the play will be included in a limited-edition LP sold at the show. Just before the whammybar incident, Earley and Carbonell, whose character is simply called “the Girl,” perform a duet on the title song, offering a spine-tingling moment of gorgeous harmonies. Playing youth unmoored, on the run and in love, the pair sings lyrics that get at a central theme: “Are these the best days of our lives?” Returning to that question later, Earley laughs. “Maybe not,” he says. “Exactly.” THACHER SCHMID. Blitzen Trapper’s new project connects rock ’n’ roll with theater, and Old Portland with Blade Runner.
SEE IT: Wild and Reckless: A New Concert Event With Blitzen Trapper is at Portland Center Stage, 128 NW 11th Ave., through April 30. See pcs.org for schedule. $25-$60. 30
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
C O U R T E S Y O F P O R T L A N D C E N T E R S TA G E
FEATURE
MUSIC CALENDAR WED. MARCH 22 Alberta Rose Theater
3000 NE Alberta St Portland Opera presents A Sondheim Celebration featuring Susannah Mars
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St Ice Kream Social, Erik Anarchy
Dante’s
350 West Burnside Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys, Wayne ‘The Train’ Hancock
Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St. The Dig
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Xiu Xiu, Force Publique, Mattress
LaurelThirst Public House 2958 NE Glisan St Sean O’Neill Band; Tenbrook
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Tallulah’s Daddy
Moda Center
1 N Center Ct St, Panic! At The Disco, Misterwives
PSU Smith Memorial Student Union
1825 SW Broadway Ave Elvis Depressedly, Erik Phillips (fka Cat Be Damned), Boreen, Clovver
Killingsworth Dynasty
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Harvey Brindell & The Tablerockers; Lewi Longmire & the Left Coast Roasters; Harvey Brindell & the Tablerockers
The Old Church 1422 SW 11th Ave Barbara Choltco
Turn! Turn! Turn!
8 NE Killingsworth St Awkward Energy, Bunnygrunt, Googolplexia, the Commercial Breaks
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St Casual Boyfriend
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. The Old 97’s, Ha Ha Tonka
THUR. MARCH 23 Alberta Rose Theater
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave. Sammy J
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. THE SOFT WHITE SIXTIES
1420 SE Powell Outlier (CA), True Form, Vigil Wolves, Penelope Clearwater [first show]
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St Rotties, Tig Bitty, Plastic Weather
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St Sneaky Bones and Friends
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. Teenage Fanclub, Britta Phillips
FRI. MARCH 24 Aladdin Theater
Alberta Rose Theater
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd. The Bouncing Souls
LaurelThirst Public House
Ash Street Saloon
Duff’s Garage
2530 NE 82nd Ave Orphan John
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd. G. Love & Special Sauce
Holocene
American Legion Hall
Dante’s
830 E Burnside St. Crow and the Canyon
Hawthorne Theatre
1001 SE Morrison St. Cameron Avery, Omar Velasco
1332 W Burnside St Dan + Shay
Doug Fir Lounge
2393 NE Fremont Street The Ballroom Thieves
1036 NE Alberta St Grasshopper
2104 NE Alberta Mope Grooves, Honey Bucket, Marcy’s Band, Nick Normal, Super Hit, Toxic Slime Records, Cool Schmool
350 West Burnside Japan Nite: CHAI/ Tokyo Chaotic!!! /Walkings
2530 NE 82nd Ave JumpTown Aces
Fremont Theater
Alberta Street Pub
Crystal Ballroom
Nick Hakim
Duff’s Garage
225 SW Ash St Raise the Bridges, Stolen Rose, Swim Atlantic, Matt Danger
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St Yonder Mountain String Band
Dante’s
350 West Burnside MICKEY AVALON
Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St.
2958 NE Glisan St Lynn Conover & Little Sue; Danver // Barna Howard
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave David Lane
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Kane Strang, Chastity Belt, Floating Room
Revolution Hall
1300 SE Stark St #110 Why?, Open Mike Eagle
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave Social Distortion, Jade Jackson
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave.
James Chance and the Contortions
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. UNDINES; SPILLER, NO MORE PARACHUTES
Kingdom Under Fire, Amerikan Overdose, Beyond Theory, Von Doom
Dante’s
The Firkin Tavern
350 West Burnside Strand Of Oaks
The Know
830 E Burnside St. Justin Townes Earle
1937 SE 11th Ave Collapsing Stars
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Usnea, Drouth, Diesto
The Secret Society 116 NE Russell St Pete Krebs and his Portland Playboys
Twilight Cafe and Bar 1420 SE Powell Slutty Hearts, Crush Hazard, DRC3
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St Lowlight, The Don of Division Street, Jaycob Van Auken
SAT. MARCH 25 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave Dead Man Winter
Alberta Rose Theater 3000 NE Alberta St Suzanne Westenhoefer
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St
Doug Fir Lounge
Duff’s Garage
2530 NE 82nd Ave BridgeCreek; Kris DeeLane
Fremont Theater
2393 NE Fremont Street Stray Dog Song and The Crenshaw
Fremont Theater
2393 NE Fremont Street Secret Agent 23 Skidoo and Mo Phillips
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd. Badfish: A Tribute to Sublime
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd. The Stein Project
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Petty Cash (all ages); The Yellers; Arthur & the Antics, Johanna Kunin, Lenore
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave STRFKR, Psychic Twin
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Alina Baraz
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Anita Margarita & the Rattlesnakes; Kung Pao Chickens
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Mr. Ben
Star Theater
1028 SE Water Ave. Gringo Star // The Hugs
13 NW 6th Ave. Modern English
Community Music Center
The Liquor Store
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave. The Afterlife Revival
Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St. JAIN
LaurelThirst Public House
2958 NE Glisan St Pagan Jug Band (all ages); Freak Mountain Ramblers
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Eddyville Band; Hungry Hungry Hip Hop: Fountaine, Dusty Fox & Gaspar, Studenets
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Allison Crutchfield and the Fizz, Vagabon
Rontoms
600 E Burnside St Merō, Aiden Ayers
Mississippi Pizza
Mississippi Studios
6800 NE MLK Ave Hand Habits, Mega Bog
Bunk Bar
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. COMMON STARLING
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Delicate Steve, Alex Cameron
High Water Mark Lounge
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Omni, Water Slice
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Karaoke From Hell; Passionfruit, DJ Mafu
Hawthorne Theatre
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd. Decibel Magazine Tour: Kreator, Obituary, Midnight, Horrendous
Mississippi Studios
13 NW 6th Ave. Psyclon Nine
3552 N Mississippi Ave The Alphabeticians
Maggie Rogers
225 SW Ash St The Dark Backward
Star Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave Keola Beamer & Jeff Peterson with Moanalani Beamer
Ash Street Saloon
1028 SE Water Ave. Little Wings, Lee Gull & the Graves
OLDER US: Around the 15th song in Japandroids’ set at Revolution Hall on March 17, someone in the audience yelled at singer-guitarist Brian King to play one more song. This would be a reasonable request of most bands, but Japandroids are not most bands. “Just one more?” King shouted back from behind a mop of sweaty hair. “We were gonna play more than just one more, if it’s OK with this guy!” Predictably, fans in the sold-out crowd lost their shit before they even knew what was about to him them. The blurry chords of “Young Hearts Spark Fire” followed soon after, and within seconds the torrent of dudes in their late 20s and early 30s resumed the circle pit they’d been casually committed to during the duo’s older cuts. Japandroids’ formula of blown-out guitars and a bevy of well-timed whoa-ohs is not complicated, but the task of maintaining that energy is a tall order when you’ve got to keep it up nightly. In that regard, the middling pace and sonic ambition of the band’s latest, Near to the Wild Heart of Life, makes a bit more sense live than it does on record. Between favorites like “The House That Heaven Built” and “Wet Hair,” new tracks like “In a Body Like a Grave” and the seven-minute road epic “Arc of Bar” served as much-needed pauses in the action. It’s doubtful anyone left the show wanting more. Japandroids may be at a crossroads, but the pair’s live show is still a clear indicator that they’re not yet ready to leave the diehards in the dust while they vanish into the sunset of maturity. PETE COTTELL.
[MARCH 22-28]
Ash Street Saloon
3350 SE Francis Street, Oregon Renaissance Band
The Goodfoot
3000 NE Alberta St Dervish
Bunk Bar
SUN. MARCH 26
8 NW 6th Ave The Growlers
3000 NE Alberta St Caitlin Canty • Rose Cousins
225 SW Ash St Guillotine Necktie
128 NE Russell St. Agnes Obel
Roseland Theater
Twilight Cafe and Bar
3341 SE Belmont St, Hurry Up, Wild Powwers, Moth Vision
Wonder Ballroom
8105 Se 7th Ave. The Horsenecks
The Know
The Liquor Store
836 N Russell St The Sindicate, Fortunes Folly, Cosmic Rose
Muddy Rudder Public House
The Secret Society
The Secret Society
White Eagle Saloon
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Pure Bathing Culture
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Boytoy // Ladywolf
116 NE Russell St The Ukeladies
1420 SE Powell Acid Teeth, The Ransom, Gun Party, The Cut 45
Mississippi Studios
The Know
The Secret Society
Twilight Cafe and Bar
3552 N Mississippi Ave Red Yarn
2845 SE Stark St Ty Alex, Jimmy Russel Blues Band
Jim Curry & the Band presents the Music of John Denver
116 NE Russell St The Pearls, The Low Bones, Junk Parlor
Mississippi Pizza
The Goodfoot
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. The Epoxies, Conditioner, Silver Kings
LAST WEEK LIVE
832 N Killingsworth St Meringue, Male/Female, Hex Vision
116 NE Russell St Thursday Swing featuring Doug & Dee’s Hot Lovin’ Jazz Babies, Stumptown Swing
2845 SE Stark St pigWar, Etta’s World
For more listings, check out wweek.com.
THOMAS TEAL
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
Editor: Matthew Singer. TO HAVE YOUR EVENT LISTED, send show information at least two weeks in advance on the web at wweek.com/submitevents. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: music@wweek.com.
The Analog Cafe
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St, Death Valley Girls, the Shivas, the Tamed West
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave Quartet San Francisco with Alex de Grassi
Twilight Cafe and Bar
3341 SE Belmont St, AAN, Hideout
Twilight Cafe and Bar 1420 SE Powell Pistols in Petticoats
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St An Evening Of Dream Tones, Zhalih, Meta Pinnacle, Holy Filament, we are parasols
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St March Global Folk Club
TUES. MARCH 28 Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St Waking With Roses, Kurt Gentle
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St Deaf Poets
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St Passenger
Fremont Theater
2393 NE Fremont Street The Fremont Theater Experience with Zoltan Kaszas
LaurelThirst Public House 2958 NE Glisan St Pistols in Petticoats // Pete Kartsounes; Jackstraw
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave Lewi Longmire
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Kate Tempest, Philip Grass
Star Theater
1420 SE Powell Sidewalk slam, Insignificunts, Vice minded, random axe
The Analog Cafe
Valentines
The Goodfoot
White Eagle Saloon
The Lovecraft Bar
13 NW 6th Ave. FORQ with DoveDriver 720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Ethos Music Center Concert; HELIOTROPES, BAD POP
The Firkin Tavern
1937 SE 11th Ave My Siamese Twin, Fian
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Trout Steak Revival w/ Jay Cobb Anderson Band
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Atomic Candles, We Are Parasols, Tony Dutcher
The Old Church 1422 SW 11th Ave
232 SW Ankeny St Tigers of Youth, Impulse Control, Neon Culpa 836 N Russell St Micah McCaw // Elle Carpenter // Arran & Co.
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Rose Room Swing Dance 2845 SE Stark St Grant Farm, Mama Magnolia 421 SE Grand Ave KITE, Abbey Death, Sandi Leeper
The Ranger Station
MON. MARCH 27 Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St Dwight Church, Dwight Dickinson, Eddie Kancer
Dante’s
350 West Burnside KARAOKE FROM HELL
Doug Fir Lounge
4260 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Bluegrass Tuesday
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St The Love Movement
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St Anthemtown Artist Showcase
830 E Burnside St.
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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MUSIC MEGAN HOLMES
NEEDLE EXCHANGE
Break Mode Years DJing: I bought my first pair of turntables and started DJing when I was 16. So I’ve been DJing half my life now. Jeez. Genre: I’m not a genre purist in any fashion. Working for K Records and throwing dance parties in Olympia before moving to Portland, being co-founder of Dropping Gems and now co-founder of Bed of Roses, I tend to involve myself in different musical scenes. I will say most of what I DJ is inspired by disco in one way or another. I also enjoy DJing outside of the club occasionally at a day party or something laid-back like that. It allows me to DJ less beat-centric tracks and more chill vibes. Where you can catch me regularly: The Bed of Roses crew and I throw a party called Club Tropicana where I am a resident DJ. I also recently started a party called Temptation, which is more specifically a disco party. Otherwise I DJ at friends’ parties around town pretty regularly. I’ve collaborated with Bridge Club for a couple of parties, and I love DJing at Moloko for Ben Skoch’s Salad Nights. Craziest gig: I DJ’d for two days straight on Vashon Island [in Washington state], and I went a little crazy. The scene is so beautiful there, and we had friends out in boats and dancing on the beach. Unfortunately, there was a microphone and I would greet every stranger whose boat passed by, saying, “Ahoy there!” Eventually, my friends took the mic from me, but they didn’t realize I still had headphones that I could plug into the mic input and use as a mic. I was unstoppable that weekend! My go-to records: Brass Construction, “Happy People”; Out Hud, “Put It Away, Put It Away, Put It Away Dad”; Jah Wobble, the Edge and Holger Czukay, “Hold Onto Your Dreams”; Wav Fuzz, “WVZ.” Don’t ever ask me to play…: “Sweet Home Alabama.” Maybe I’d feel different if I was from Alabama, but I don’t know. I really don’t like that song. NEXT GIG: Follow Break Mode at facebook.com/thegumar for show updates. White Owl Social Club 1305 SE 8th Ave East Taken by Force (rock ‘n roll)
FRI. MARCH 24 Century Bar
45 East
Dig A Pony
Black Book
The Lovecraft Bar
Moloko
Bossanova Ballroom
421 SE Grand Ave Event Horizon (darkwave, industrial)
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. Benjamin (international disco, modern dad)
722 E Burnside St. White Out 2017
Tube
Sandy Hut
1332 W Burnside St 80s Video Dance Attack
WED. MARCH 22 The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St, Tribe Vibe - A Tribute to Phife Dawg and A Tribe Called Quest
18 NW 3rd Ave. Easy Egg
930 SE Sandy Blvd. Return of the Mack (r&b) 736 SE Grand Ave. It Came From Africa
1430 NE Sandy Blvd. VJ Gregarious
The Liquor Store
THUR. MARCH 23 Black Book
20 NW 3rd Ave Ladies Night (rap, r&b, club)
32
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
3341 SE Belmont St, Gran Ritmos presents: CLAP! CLAP!
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Shadowplay (goth, industrial, 80s)
315 SE 3rd Ave Paul Van Dyk 20 NW 3rd Ave The Cave (rap, r&b, club)
Crystal Ballroom
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. DJ Nate C. (metal, 80)
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. SLAY
Killingsworth Dynasty 832 N Killingsworth St Twerk
SAM GEHRKE
Where to drink this week.
BAR REVIEW
TALK:
1. The Know
5am 7am – 2pm
3728 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-473-8729, the knowpdx.com. Well, the restroom at the new Know—the Knew, perhaps?—might need a little more graffiti to feel the same. But “EAT SHIT, KYLE” is a good start.
MUSIC:
2pm – 5am
2. NightCap 2035 SE Cesar E. Chavez Blvd., 503-477-4252. Brunch spot by day, Trinket turns into a lovely dessert-and-liquor place by night—with Mumbai margaritas and salted honey pie.
3. Breakside Brewery
1570 NW 22nd Ave., 503-444-7597, breakside.com. Breakside is open in Slabtown. It’s a tripledecker pub, with a rooftop bar planned for summer, and has an opening lineup that includes a killer plum gose and—gasp—a hazy IPA.
4. Mt. Tabor Vancouver
3600 NW 119th St., 360-696-5521, mttaborbrewing. Mt. Tabor, after finally moving back to its founding city of Portland, opened another spot in Vancouver—a pizza pub with voluminous, soft, pleasant dough.
5. No Bones Beach Club
3928 N Mississippi Ave., nobonespdx.com. The world’s second vegan tiki bar turns out to be delightful. Skip the mai tai for the piña colada, and get the Buffalo-sauced cauliflower “wings” that best most of this city’s sad set of Buffalo bones.
Moloko
NERD HERDERS: The two little girls were playing an action variant of Candy Land I hadn’t seen before, one that involved climbing on the table for each move. But this wasn’t a playdate for toddlers, it was a dad date for nerds bent on world domination—the kind that involves drinking Commons saison while hunching over a board of Twilight Struggle, a diabolically complicated successor to Risk as designed by branches of the secret government. Game Knight Lounge (3037 N Williams Ave., 503-236-3377, pdxgameknight.com), which opened two weeks ago in the former Wine Up on Williams, bills itself as Oregon’s first board game lounge. Fifteen-foot-tall wooden parapets rise from behind the hardwood bar. Portlandthemed board games, all versions of Monopoly, are tacked onto the wall as decoration. Every table is full. A couple on a date are busy sinking each other’s battleships next to a party crowd playing obscure card games that involve sex acts, while a crew of women is embroiled in a titanic struggle for control of American resources, in a variant of popular Euro game Settlers of Catan. At a bar stocked with a somewhat eccentric liquor selection, a decent six-deep tap list offering Breakside IPA and Heater Allen Pils, and a sandwich menu with joke names like Cluebano and Catanwich, just $2 a person will net you a day’s access to a vast game collection. They include childhood favorites like Stratego and Mastermind alongside rarities like a Big Trouble in Little China card game and a first-edition 1986 Blood Bowl, a board game combining football with the role-playing world of Warhammer. But unlike every previous Portland attempt to make a gamer hangout, Game Knight is a surprisingly functional bar as long as you avoid the complicated cocktails (please don’t put blackberry puree in a Pimm’s Cup, even at $6.50) in favor of a blessedly cheap $6 Medoyeff vodka tonic. Just make sure you check out the dot system coding each game. Some of them are so complicated the staff recommends you spend hours online watching tutorial videos. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. 11: Body Service (house, r&b)
The Analog Cafe
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. Monkeytek (the Jamaican regions of outer space)
Black Book
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. ANDAZ Bhangra Bollywood Dance Party
Quarterworld
Bossanova Ballroom
The Lovecraft Bar
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd VCR TV (heavy synth)
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Soul Stew (funk, soul, disco)
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St, Flight (house, techno, acid)
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Club Kai Kai (queer & drag)
Valentines
232 SW Ankeny St Decadent 80’s
SAT. MARCH 25 45 East
315 SE 3rd Ave Hyper Future Tour: Eptic, Must D!e and Gentlemens Club
Bit House Saloon 727 SE Grand Ave
20 NW 3rd Ave The Ruckus (rap, r&b, club) 722 E Burnside St. Blowpony 10 Yr Anniversary
Eastburn
1800 E Burnside St, Soulsa! (merengue, salsa)
Hawthorne Eagle Lodge 4904 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Gotham a Go Go 2017 (batdance)
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Main Squeeze Dance Party (house, disco, club)
Killingsworth Dynasty 832 N Killingsworth St Dynasty a Go-Go!
Moloko
3967 N. Mississippi Ave. Lamar Leroy & Roane
Saucebox
214 N Broadway St DJ Night Bear (indie, art rock)
421 SE Grand Ave Electronomicon (goth, industrial, dance)
Vendetta
421 SE Grand Ave Black Mass (goth, new wave)
TUES. MARCH 28
Kelly’s Olympian
20 NW 3rd Ave Flux (rap, r&b, club)
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Softcore Mutations w/ DJ Acid Rick (new wave, synth, hunkwave)
MON. MARCH 27
READERS’ POLL
The Lovecraft Bar
Whiskey Bar
Black Book
17
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Mambo/Salsa Social
Holocene
SUN. MARCH 26
20
The Analog Cafe
4306 N Williams Michael Jackson, Prince, George Michael Tribute Party 31 NW 1st Ave Mission Trance
RADIO IS YOURS
1001 SE Morrison St. Emo Nite 426 SW Washington St. Party Damage: DJ Jimbo
Sandy Hut
1430 NE Sandy Blvd. DJ Schneck Tourniquet
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave BONES (goth, wave)
The Paris Theatre
6 SW 3rd Ave Drumsound & Bassline Smith / Tantrum Desire
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Tubesdays w/ DJ Jack
Nominate your favorites from March 1—31 wweek.com/BOP2017 Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
33
GET ‘EM ON SALE SPOON
Hot Thoughts
$12.95-CD/$18.95-LP
Spoon finds a new sense of sonic exploration on their latest album Hot Thoughts. Limited-edition red vinyl available while supplies last!
REAL ESTATE
In Mind
$10.95-CD/$16.95-LP
More perfect pop songs and gorgeous melodies on the band’s 4th studio release.
DEPECHE MODE Spirit
$11.95-Reg.CD/$24.95-LP
New material from iconic Brit band, this time collaborating with producer James Ford (Foals, Florence & The Machine). Sale prices good thru 3/30/17
NEW RELEASES OUT NOW:
Conor Oberst • Chilly Gonzales & Jarvis Cocker • Milky Chance Paul Shaffer • Rick Ross • Obituary • Pitbull • adult.
FOR ANY & ALL USED CDs, DVDs & VINYL
OPEN 10 A.M.-10 P.M. EVERYDAY • WWW.EVERYDAYMUSIC.COM 34
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
PERFORMANCE JESSIE DRAKE
REVIEW
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Most prices listed are for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply, so it’s best to call ahead. Editor: SHANNON GORMLEY (sgormley@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: sgormley@wweek.com.
THEATER OPENINGS & PREVIEWS The Angry Brigade
James Graham’s The Angry Brigade explores the eponymous London-based leftists’ group who orchestrated a series of bombings in the early ’70s. Domestic terrorism is a dicey subject, one that could risk limiting a play by forcing it to subscribe to an ideology or otherwise draw a line between good and bad. But Graham’s script is constructed to make black and white judgements difficult: The first half of the play is from the point of view of Scotland Yard detectives investigating the radicals, the second focuses on the Angry Brigade themselves. SHANNON GORMLEY. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8 Ave., thirdrailrep.org. 7:30 Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, March 24-April 15. $25-$42.50.
Lauren Weedman Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Lauren Weedman Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is Weedman’s (of Date Night and HBO’s Looking) follow-up to her last one-woman show at Portland Center Stage, 2015’s The People’s Republic of Portland, which affectionately, and somewhat haphazardly, poked fun at Portland clichés. But this show is about about Weedman: With the help of her comedic sensibilities and her love of country music, Weedman will share personal stories and pontificate on her identity, including her alternate reality as Tammy Lisa (her birth name before she was adopted). SHANNON GORMLEY. Portland Center Stage, 128 NW 11 Ave., pcs.org. 7:30 pm Tuesday-Sunday, March 25-April 30. Sunday shows on March 26 and April 30 at 2 pm. Saturday shows on April 1, 22 and 29 at 2 pm. Thursday shows on April 6 and 13 at noon. No show Friday, April 7, Wednesday, April 12, Friday, April 14, Tuesday, April 18, and Wednesday, April 26. $25-$70.
Winners and Losers
In Winners and Losers, the next show in Artists Rep’s Frontier Series that imports national and international experimental performances, show creators Marcus Youssef and James Long sit onstage and argue whether a cultural figure or topic is a winner or a loser. But the show isn’t really interested in evaluating pop culture, it’s interested in a culture of masculine oneupmanship. So Youssef and Long end up arguing about their own lives just as much as their assigned topic: who had the more difficult upbringing, who’s better at masturbating, etc. If it continues on the trend of the Frontier Series so far, it will be conceptual in a way that’s still totally emotionally accessible to those who don’t spend time pondering the constraints of traditional theater. SHANNON GORMLEY. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., artistsrep.org. 7:30 pm Friday-Sunday, 2 pm Sunday, March 24-26. $30.
ALSO PLAYING Brontë
Although a public library wasn’t Bag & Baggage’s first choice for a venue— there’s a pending sale on their longtime home, the Venetian Theatre—it’s hard to imagine Brontë anywhere else. A poignant tale of ambition, isolation and ferocious creativity, Brontë beckons us into the lives of Emily, Charlotte and Anne Brontë during the creation of their legendary novels like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. But
the best reason to see the play is to witness director Michelle Milne’s ingenious navigation of the library. By allowing the audience to follow the actors from room to room as the action weaves through doorways, between bookshelves and even up a staircase, she has created a production that is less a staged drama and more an intricate piece of origami that beckons you into its folds. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Hillsboro Brookwood Library, 2850 NE Brookwood Parkway, 503-345-9590, bagnbaggage.org. 7:30 pm Friday-Sunday, March 24-26. $25-$30.
God of Carnage
When Alan and Annette Raleigh (Don Alder, Sarah Lucht) visit the home of Michael and Veronica Novak (David Sikking, Marilyn Stacey) to discuss a fight between their 11-year-old sons, it doesn’t take long for strained, awkward conversation (exemplified by Lucht’s brilliant facial expressions) to completely devolve into savagery—insults are hurled, hamsters are murdered, coffee tables are vomited upon. With each descent in civility, the characters become more dimensional, deserving of both sympathy and loathing in turn. Adapted from the original French play, God of Carnage depicts us at our worst and, perhaps, most honest. PENELOPE BASS. Lakewood Theatre Company, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, lakewoodcenter.org. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, through April 9. Additional shows 7 pm Sunday, April 2, 2 pm Sunday, March 12 and 26, April 2 and 9, and 7:30 pm Wednesday, April 5. $30-$32.
SQUAD: (Clockwise from lower left) Brenan Dwyer, Jacklyn Maddux, Lorraine Bahr, McKenna Twedt and Dainichia Noreault.
Centuries of Struggle PLAYHOUSE CREATURES DEPICTS ENGLAND’S FIRST FEMALE ACTORS. BY B R ITA N Y R OB IN SON
Golda’s Balcony
One-person shows are athletic feats, but the first words Wendy Westerwelle as Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir says is “I’m old, I’m tired, I’m sick.” But that’s the only hint of frailty that Westerwelle, who is 69 and recently underwent hip surgery, gives in the entire play. Moments later, she’s on the phone with fellow world powers, yelling orders about generals and fighter planes. Golda’s Balcony depicts Meir as her country plunges into the Yom Kippur War in 1973, a year before her resignation and five years before she died of lymphatic cancer. At this pivotal point, she reflects back on her life. It’s a life full of tough choices that often required Meir to chose the greater good over her family and occasionally the lives of individuals. Though the play doesn’t hide that Meir’s decisions required tremendous sacrifice, they’re portrayed almost unambiguously as sacrifices that had to be made. SHANNON GORMLEY. The Sanctuary at Sandy Plaza, 1785 NE Sandy Blvd., trianglepro.org. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, through April 1. $15-$35.
DANCE Skinner/Kirk Dance Ensemble
A limb of Portland contemporary dance giant BodyVox, Eric Skinner and Daniel Kirk don’t stage premieres that frequently. When they do, premieres of their works are wedged into BodyVox’s seasons. The newest pieces by Skinner/ Kirk explore ideas about relationships, and are choreographed entirely to Elliott Smith’s music, which will be played live onstage. Given the soundtrack, it will probably wrestle with a lot of heartbreak. SHANNON GORMLEY. BodyVox Dance Center, 1201 NW 17 Ave., bodyvox.com. 7:30 pm ThursdaySaturday, March 23-April 1. $19.20-$64.
CONT. on page 36
Before the late 17th century, all women in English theater were boys: It wasn’t until Charles II took power in the 1660s that it became legal for women to be actors. Playhouse Creatures, which is set just after the ban was lifted, explores the backstage lives and onstage performances of five actresses as they flex their freedom to be there. But something ugly is lurking behind the curtain of the stage within a stage. Even when they’re not performing, the women must always be on: We watch the intimate process of preparing their outfits as they adjust their wigs and tie their corsets, always preparing for the next play. The period costumes are elaborate and stunning, and there’s multiple costume changes between the shows performed within the show. The cast speaks in an English accents, and the dialogue references Restoration period speech more than replicates it—though there’s some Old World phrasing, it’s not like deciphering Shakespeare. Mrs. Farley (McKenna Twedt) is being courted by the king. Mrs. Marshall (Brenan Dwyer) is being harassed by a man who deceptively asked for her hand in marriage, before fleeing after consummation. And Mrs. Betterton (Lorraine Bahr), the eldest and most devoted to the craft, senses the crowd is there for the younger ones, not her. The safety of the theater collapses upon itself, as we’re given glimpses of outside male control, despite never seeing the men. Each character demonstrates her own unique approach to dealing with the challenges of womanhood in their time period. In their coping mechanisms, we see the roots of feminism and the age-old persistence of women, constrained
as it may be in their ever-tightening corsets. Nell Gwynn (Dainichia Noreault) is new to the theater and not yet aware of the games she must play to succeed. Noreault delightfully portrays Gwynn’s refusal to constrain her sexuality, with slightly slapstick, comedic flare. When Gwynn finagles her way into a part without an audition, she flubs her lines and humiliates another actress onstage—but quickly makes up for it by going off script with extra skin and dancing. The moment is at once empowering, and a disheartening glimpse of the perceived value of actresses. Female roles are finally theirs, but their bodies are not. The entire cast strikes an effective, emotionally charged balance between pride and self-loathing—the joys of the stage inspiring the former, and the hecklers and opportunistic men tugging them back toward the latter. Their stories are delivered with a duality of strength and helplessness that is frustratingly relevant today. The distant time period makes it extra frustrating that woman face so many of the same inequalities centuries later. In the most acute, albeit unplanned, parallel to the modern, we hear of a man who comes backstage to watch the women change—just like our former beautypageant-producing, backstage-ogling president. As Doll Common (Jacklyn Maddux) puts it, “While bears love to dance, they hate to do it for the whip.” Centuries have passed, but women can still sense that same whip of misogyny. SEE IT: Playhouse Creatures is at CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., cohoproductions.org. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, through April 8. $20-$28.
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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PERFORMANCE Sir Cupcake’s Queer Circus Goes Inside the Body
The narratives for Sir Cupcake’s circus tend to be non-traditional: Some of their past shows have involved time travel, and for this show, it’s a journey into Cupcake’s body. The clowns, contortionists and acrobats of the campy, arty circus will put Cupcake’s organs back in place and search for his lost heart. SHANNON GORMLEY. Echo Theater, 1515 SE 37th Ave., sircupcake.com. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, March 24-April 1. Additional show 3 pm Saturday, April 1. $22-$30.
COMEDY Jak Knight
L.A. comedian and frequent Comedy Central cameo Jak Knight knows how to hit the sweet spot between non-PC shock comedy and genuine social commentary. When he starts off a joke about hating cops, it devolves into being jealous of cops because they have “the only customer service job where they get to brutalize the customers they don’t like,” and to sardonically sympathizing with cops by wishing he could have treated middle-aged bougie white ladies the same way when he worked at Starbucks. SHANNON GORMLEY. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., portland.heliumcomedy.com. 8 pm Wednesday, March 22. $15-$23.
For more Performance listings, visit
In the vein of Jerrod Carmichael,
C O U R T E SY O F FAC E B O O K .C O M
REVIEW
ROLLIN’ UP: (From left) Samson Syharath, Jon Gennari and Pat Moran.
Kid Stuff
School Dance sounds like a play that’s wholly uninterested in emotional substance: Depicting the surreal adventures of three awkward teen boys trying to make it to the high school dance, it’s full of campy nonsense like a bike-riding montage set to “I Need a Hero,” adult men playing teens, and a parallel universe called the “Land of Invisible Teens” that’s haunted by Gizmo from Gremlins. But Australian playwright Matthew Whittet’s script, making its U.S. debut, balances unhinged camp with genuine emotion. Plus, it’s part of comedic and camp-inclined Action/Adventure Theatre’s new effort to produce plays that appeal to adults but target teenagers, a demographic whose cultural tastes are normally discredited. That dismissal is built into the plot: Before the dance, socially inept protagonist Matt (Pat Moran) becomes invisible, and his two best friends, Jonathan (Samson Syharath) and Luke (Jon Gennari), embark on a mission to make Matt visible again and teach him how to dance before the night is over. The narrator (Christy Bigelow) is the only non-teen character. With deadpan delivery, she pokes loving fun at the three boys, but she also throws some jabs at their self-esteem: She starts the play by introducing the three main characters as if they’re subjects in a nature documentary about losers. The boys begin to revolt against her control of the story. In one scene, Luke’s voice inexplicably becomes booming and dramatic, as if he’s doing the voice-over for a movie trailer (Gennari lip-synchs a track played over the theater’s sound system). The narrator accuses Luke of being “freaky,” but Matt and Jonathan are totally unfazed by their friend’s tendency to become somewhat possessed. In a weirdly touching display of supportive friendship and acceptance, they defend Luke against the narrator and encourage him to keep talking. Humor takes precedent in Action/Adventure’s production, occasionally at the expense of character depth. But the play is likable enough that you’re still willing to follow along: School Dance pokes fun at the teenage experience without making it seem trivial. SHANNON GORMLEY.
School Dance is a surreal look at the teenage experience.
SEE IT: School Dance plays at Action/Adventure Theatre, 1050 SE Clinton St., actionadventure.org. 8 pm ThursdaySunday, through April 9. $10-$15. 36
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
VISUAL ARTS COURTESY OF TIPTOLAND.COM
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By JENNIFER RABIN. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit show information—including opening and closing dates, gallery address and phone number—at least two weeks in advance to: Visual Arts, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: jrabin@wweek.com.
Angel City West
Photographer Mark Steinmetz gives us a series of his early black-andwhite photographs—never before printed—that capture the Los Angeles of the early ’80s. The images provide a nostalgic record of a place that continues to exist but at a time that is long gone. In this series, Steinmetz captures the culture of L.A.—with photos of leotard-clad rollerskaters in Venice and young kids gathered around a boombox—but he also captures the forgotten, derelict landscapes of empty parking lots, abandoned plots of fenced-off land, and palm trees bearing witness to nothing. Taken together, we get the true spirit of the city, both abiding and defiant. Charles A. Hartman Fine Art, 134 NW 8th Ave., 503-287-3886. Through April 1.
Extinction Anxiety
Conceptual sculptor Heidi Schwegler is interested in human ruin and the lifeless objects that tell the story of our discarded human existence. In the gallery you will find crushed TV-dinner containers and a suspended slaughterhouse meat hook. But it is Schwegler’s use of materials that function as commentary: The TV-dinner containers are cast in glass, and the hook, waiting for a carcass, is cast in ceramic. The artist gets us to look at the life of mundane objects— for which we show absolutely little to no regard—and how they may go on to represent us long after we’re gone. Upfor Gallery, 929 NW Flanders St., 503-227-5111. Through April 1.
Bloodsport: Bluebloods and Mudbloods in the Era of Magical Thinking
Ronna Neuenschwander’s sculptural series—featuring what looks, at first glance, like found ceramic figurines that you would discover in your grandmother’s curio cabinet— is a powerful example of conceptual ceramics. Some of Neuenschwander’s sculpted female figures, with their voluminous pre-revolutionary skirts made from broken commemorative plates and spent ammunition where the petticoats should be, have white heads on black bodies. Others have caricatured black faces on what we perceive, culturally, as white bodies. There is so much imagery and symbolism to unpack that I don’t want to give it all away here. But suffice it to say that the artist makes a strong and considered statement about colonialism, racism, and our country’s history. Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis St., 503-222-1142. Through April 1.
Testimony
Artist Tara Sellios starts out by creating intricate watercolor compositions of fragility and decomposition. She then translates the tableaux into sculptures, using real-life skulls, animal cadavers, and reconstituted bugs to make 3-D Bacchanalias of death, with chicken feet overflowing from wine glasses. Finally, she photographs the 3-D pieces using a large-format camera. The resulting large-scale photographic still lifes fool the eye by drawing the viewer in with images of beauty and abundance while delivering the realities of death. Blue Sky Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 503-225-0210. Through April 2.
Northwest Perspectives in Clay
The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) is holding its annual convention this month in Portland, so many galleries are tipping their hat to the organization by showing ceramic work; Russo Lee
Fool by Tip Toland, part of Northwest Perspectives in Clay is one of them. A disarmingly realistic human figure by artist Tip Toland— that seems like it couldn’t possibly be rendered from clay—waits for you in the front gallery, along with the work of other well-respected NW ceramic artists. It is worth a trip to the nonceramics back gallery, though, to see Samantha Wall’s large-scale ghostlike drawing that was last shown at the Portland Art Museum. Across the room, don’t miss Jo Hamilton’s largerthan-life-size crocheted male nude, complete with tattoos. These three artists, in particular, are pushing the boundaries of their mediums. Russo Lee Gallery, 805 NW 21st Ave., 503226-2754. Through April 1.
The Narrow View
In her series of paintings, The Narrow View, artist Zemula Fleming wrestles with the conservative Christian dogma in which she was raised, re-imagining images of Mary as a “strong, creative, nurturing Mother of us all, sustaining Earth.” Fleming adds intricate beadwork to many of her paintings, using a material most often associated with women’s crafts, to reinforce the nature of the feminine. In addition, Fleming has created a series of humorous smallscale, wall-hung sculptures incorporating the ubiquitous Mary figurines that are found everywhere from car dashboards to pants pockets. Her personal and, at times, subversive look into religious imagery and icons offers something for us all to consider. Wolff Gallery, 618 NW Glisan St., Suite R1, 971-413-1340. Through April 29.
Duet
This month, Eutectic Gallery acted as matchmaker between Christine Golden and Doug Jeck—two ceramic artists who had never met before. Eutectic arranged a shared residency for Golden and Jeck, who spent their time collaborating on a series of heads. A video in the gallery that shows their process is as engaging as the finished work: in the video, one artist offers a perfectly sculpted head to the other who takes a mallet to it, deforming the figure while the first artist cringes in the background. There is a constant push and pull between the two, a beautiful and at times painful collaboration that results in pieces that belong not to one or the other, but to both of them. The gallery displays one fullsize figure from each artist on either side of the space, with the collaborative works in between. Because each artist has a markedly different style, it allows you to see the influences of each in the shared works. Eutectic Gallery, 1930 NE Oregon St., 503-9746518. Through March 24.
Form Factor
Sculptor Emily Counts does things with ceramic that you’ve likely never seen before. Her highly tactile show incorporates 2-D mosaicked collages and large-scale sculptures that call to mind ritual objects like drums and talismans. Some of the pieces are threaded through with textiles, while others are strung together with large chains of ceramic beads, like umbilical cords between ideas. One interactive piece—a wooden box with ceramic buttons of different sizes, shapes, colors, and textures—looks (and behaves) like a sophisticated version of a child’s toy: Press the buttons and different sounds fill the gallery. If you get your timing right, you can conduct a ceramic symphony. Nationale, 3360 SE Division St., 503-477-9786. Through April 6.
Constructing Identity
Constructing Identity, which features over a hundred 2-D and 3-D works by 84 African-American artists, asks something important of us as viewers. It remains to be seen whether or not we are up to the task. In order to understand or evaluate this collection of work—or the work of any underrepresented artists—we need to expand our line of sight, retrain our eye and rethink our perspectives. It requires that we give up the dominant gaze, which will be difficult, because it will make us feel uncomfortable in the short term. But until we are willing to do so, we will not be able to appreciate or to assess the true contributions of marginalized artists to the canon of American art. So when you go to this show, read what is written on the wall, spend time with the work, let it challenge your perspective. Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 503-2262811. Through June 18.
Golden Age
Artist Adrian Landon Brooks’ paintings speak of folklore, oral histories, and pagan times. Gilded suns and crescent moons rise and set throughout his compositions, guiding his animal-human figures. Brooks’ use of rounded feminine forms combined with impossibly perfect geometric patterns provide the series with rare aesthetic balance. His linework is so precise that it appears to have been painted with a brush the width of a human hair. And in another gesture of balance, this precision is set off by the fact that in addition to painting on panel, he also paints on three-dimensional hunks of wood, rusted-out cans, and the tattered sides of wooden crates. You have to see and feel it for yourself to understand how it is one of the most calming shows in recent memory. Stephanie Chefas Projects, 305 SE 3rd Ave., Suite 202, 310-990-0702. Through March 31.
Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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BOOKS = WW Pick. Highly recommended. BY ZACH MIDDLETON. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit lecture or reading information at least two weeks in advance to: WORDS, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: words@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22 Michael Finkel
Christopher Knight left home at age 20, bound for the Maine wilderness, where he successfully lasted 27 years with no human interaction. Michael Finkel’s The Stranger in the Woods is the fascinating true account of a young man who thrived in unimaginably harsh circumstances with little shelter and few possessions, only to be removed from them like a bear at a campground that’s been raiding Winnebagos for treats. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm.
THURSDAY, MARCH 23 Game of Shadows
No, this is not the book about how national hero Barry Bonds tried to use steroids to salvage the dire, congenitally uninteresting game of baseball. This is a book about a kid from Los Angeles named Ethan who is forced to travel to an uncharted land to save his mother from the grips of an evil sorcerer. At 400 pages, Erika Lewis’ debut, Game of Shadows, takes about as much time to read as a baseball game takes to watch, but isn’t a bloodless waste of time. Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 800-878-7323. 7 pm.
Jonathan Rosenblum
Portlanders have attained some hope in the fight for fair wages with Senate Bill 1532 laying out a series of scheduled minimumwage increases that push toward a livable wage. Using the story of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport workers’ successful movement for a $15 minimum wage, Jonathan Rosenblum’s new book, Beyond $15, shows what victories have been made on the front of the labor rights movement. Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm.
Annie Hartnett
In Annie Hartnett’s debut novel, Rabbit Cake, precocious tween Elvis Babbitt would have been prepared for someone demanding she recite a Snapple-lid fact. She wasn’t prepared for her mother’s fatal narcoleptic swimming accident. This is the darkly comedic Southern tale of a young girl trying to keep it together after tragedy. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm.
FRIDAY, MARCH 24 Kathy Hepinstall
In The Book of Polly, the latest from multitalented writer Kathy Hepinstall, Polly is a wild Southern spark plug who enjoys equally the evisceration of varmints with her shotgun and the bracing grip of an ice-cold margarita. It only makes sense that her daughter Willow is a highly neurotic 10-year-old obsessed with the possibility of her mother’s death. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm.
SUNDAY, MARCH 26 Julie Scelfo
We’ve all been familiarized with a tale that might be called The Men Who Made New York City. It’s a history that conspicuously avoids what powerful women of the era were doing. Julie Scelfo’s The Women Who Made New York tells the stories of women such as Zora
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Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde and Fran Lebowitz, who were responsible for turning New York into the cultural capital of the United States. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm.
MONDAY, MARCH 27 Stories of Resistance to Japanese-American Incarceration and Discrimination
It’s been approximately 75 years since Franklin Roosevelt’s executive order that sent some 120,000 Japanese-Americans to internment camps. As part of the Oregon Historical Society’s History Pub series, George Nakata, who was himself imprisoned as a child, and local storyteller Linda Tamura will present personal stories and letters of protest from one of our nation’s most repugnant hours. Kennedy School, 5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503-249-3983. 7 pm.
The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains
Cataloging such figures as Brickbat, wielder of “poisonous bricks,” and Swarm, a villain made of Nazi bees, this book serves as a novelty history of the most bizarre comicbook crooks. Jon Morris’ The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains reads as if M.F.K. Fisher wrote a biography of Captain Underpants for Mad magazine. Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm.
Sarah Andersen
Sarah Andersen’s Sarah’s Scribbles was an early champion of Netflixand-chill dating, using “adult” as a verb, and the belief that mild, undiagnosed social anxiety is a fascinating abnormality. When future millennial historians look back to question why this generation was simultaneously loathed, feared and studied like a vivisected chimpanzee, Sarah’s Scribbles might be patient zero. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm.
TUESDAY, MARCH 28 Annie Jacobsen
The almost unbelievable new book, Phenomena, by Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen reveals the fascination with extrasensory perception and psychokinesis maintained by deep-state security apparatus organizations like the NSA, CIA and FBI. The U.S. government is run by spooky people. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm.
For more Books listings, visit
COURTESY OF IAN SUNDAHL
MOVIES G ET YO UR R E PS IN
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
Everyone rightly lost their minds about Benh Zeitlin’s stunningly beautiful, dreamy look at the life of a girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) and her father Wink on the outskirts of post-Katrina New Orleans. The opportunity to see it on 35 mm with Zeitlin’s short Glory at Sea should not be missed. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm Saturday, March 25.
The Road Warrior (1981)
It’s ludicrous to think how far George Miller has come with the Mad Max franchise, because this 35-year-old first offering is so batshit nuts that it’s basically an arthouse film. Worth watching solely for the Australian accents. Laurelhurst, March 24-30.
Serenity
(2005)
Clinton Street’s Cloud 9 Comics celebrates its second birthday with a huge sale, offering up to 50 percent off books, back issues, figurines and hardcovers through Sunday. They’ll follow it up with a screening of Joss Whedon’s cult space Western Serenity, which launched nerdhunk Nathan Fillion’s career as the modern-day Han Solo. Clinton Street Theater. 7:30 pm Thursday, March 23.
Shogun Assassin (1980)
There are something like 40 Wu-Tang Clan tracks that include samples from this ultra-violent Japanese samurai cult hit, so you’d better have Liquid Swords queued up on the way to the theater. Presented in a rare 35 mm print. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Tuesday, March 28.
Soylent Green (1973)
I just realized there hasn’t yet been a remake of this Charlton Heston-Edward G. Robinson dystopian sci-fi classic, there probably will be one within the next couple of years, and it’ll probably suck. Hollywood Theatre. 9:30 pm Friday, March 24.
ALSO PLAYING: Academy Theater: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), March 24-30. Clinton Street Theater: Labyrinth (1986), 7 pm Monday, March 27; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011), 7 pm Tuesday, March 28. Empirical Theater at OMSI: The Imitation Game (2014), 6:30 pm Tuesday, March 28. Hollywood Theatre: Ghost Rider (2007), 9:30 pm Saturday, March 25. Laurelhurst: Edward Scissorhands (1990), March 22-23. Mission Theater: Mean Girls (2004), March 26-30. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium: Dekalog, Parts 7 and 8 (1988), March 23-25; Le Déménagement and Le Jour Où (1993), 7 pm Friday, March 24; George Washington (2000), 7 pm Sunday, March 26; Dekalog, Parts 9 and 10 (1988), March 26-27.
Dirty Projectors WW, THE CLINTON STREET THEATER AND ONE OF PORTLAND’S FEW ADULT FILM COLLECTORS TEAM UP TO SCREEN A COLLECTION OF GOLDEN AGE PORN TRAILERS. BY WALKER MACMURDO
wmacmurdo@wweek.com
Some people collect vinyl. Some people collect art. Ian Sundahl collects films, and many of them feature a whole lot of sex. But not like what you would see if you happened to venture into the darkest recesses of today’s internet. During the 1970s, films like Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie and Gerard Damiano’s Deep Throat ushered in a new wave of mainstream and critical acceptance of films that just so happened to include full penetration. Today, that period from the ’70s through the early ’80s is considered the Golden Age of Porn. Sundahl hosts the Hollywood Theatre’s monthly Repressed Cinema series, an ode to the barebones B movies of an earlier age in Hollywood when with $10,000 you could make a feature-length film. Sundahl screens on film, but he is always on the lookout for new, local shorts on film or video to screen before his features. Alongside his screenings, Sundahl is a film trader and artist, publishing the quarterly Vision Quest comic book with Portland artist Tim Goodyear. To bid farewell to Erotica Awareness Month in the Movies pages—look for an erotica story on our Books page next week—Sundahl and Willamette Week teamed up with the Clinton Street Theater for an hourlong screening of rare trailers, on 35 mm, from the Golden Age of Porn: ultra-cult classics that’ll plunge you into the deep end of a seedier era of film whose
artistic merits are mostly forgotten. We’re calling it Erotica Awareness Month: The Climax. Ahead of our screening, we spoke to Sundahl about his massive film collection, Bettie Page and other people’s’ home movies. Read the full interview at wweek.com. WW: How did you get started collecting film? Ian Sundahl: I started collecting films when I was in high school, when you’d have to go to antique stores and hope to find something. I had a yearning to find grindhouse and exploitation films but just didn’t know where to look for them on film. I would find all sorts of great grindhouse movies at the video store, but when I was just starting out getting in 8 mm and 16 mm, it was all Abbott and Costello, Chaplin, etc. Finally I found a publication that had mail-order ads for used films, and that changed everything. I was now able to find 16 mm films that I had loved on video: Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood, The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant and later, obscure adult features. My first movie was the Abbott and Costello short Oysters and Muscles on 16 mm. I started collecting TV shows from my childhood, features I liked, and one of my favorite things was people’s strange home movies: vacation movies, skits they’ve made, things like that. I even found some stuff with drug use, nudity and drunken parties, pretty interesting stuff.
How did you get started collecting vintage adult films? What about the Golden Age movies appeals to you? At first I would come across an occasional listing for 8 mm stag loops [pre-Golden Age adult shorts] and risqué adult stuff. One of the first ones I remember was a condensation of a nudie film from the ’60s called Freakout. I took a chance on a mail-order listing of the film from a vague description, and it turned out great. The women were beautiful, and it was full of interesting scenes like people driving around Hollywood in a hippie ambulance, people hanging out in a dumpster, and pot parties in the park. I like the obscure movies. Porn shot on film came from a time when it was cheap to shoot these movies, and there were a bunch of very creative filmmakers given a lot of freedom in what they could do, as long as it included some sex. They are also time capsules. In outdoor shots, you can see the town and cityscapes, mainly of New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, often shot cinéma vérité style. I also like finding films so obscure there’s no mention of them anywhere. There were many produced rarities that still pop up. How big is your entire collection, and how big is your collection of adult films? I think I have about 1,500 spools of film that’s shorts and features. Adult and sexploitation are probably around 25 percent of that. What do you look for when acquiring a new film? I like getting films that are unique, where I may have the only copy, such as cool, amateur-shot home movies. Home movies are fun to collect of places I like, and oddball subject matter. Is there one particular film you’ve always been trying to find but haven’t been able to track down? There is. I’m a big fan of Bettie Page, and in the mid-’50s Irving Klaw made four burlesque features with Bettie: Varietease, Striporama, Teaserama and allegedly Bettie appears in Strippers Parade, which is lost. Some people say it was never released in theaters, but I have a copy of the press book, so there is hope a print may be out there waiting to be discovered. What is the crown jewel of your collection? I found an amateur-shot, 85-second clip of Bettie Page posing at a photo club shoot in black-and-white. It’s gotta be one-of-a-kind. I released some footage of that to the guys making the film Bettie Page Reveals All. It’s definitely my best film. Adult film is still fairly taboo. How do people react when you tell them you have a huge collection of these movies? I haven’t really had this as a problem, but I suppose mentioning it to some people could ruffle their feathers. I guess most of the people I hang out with are pretty easygoing. SEE IT: Erotica Awareness Month: The Climax screens at Clinton Street Theater. 10 pm Friday, March 31. $6 in advance, $8 day of show. Tickets are available at cstpdx.com. Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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ALL IN
K Y L E E S P E L E TA P H OTO G R A P H Y
MOVIES
Weekly Jazz with alan Jones
Wednesdays starting in april
8pm
2393 ne Fremont #wweek DONALD CRIED Editor: WALKER MACMURDO. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, send screening information at least two weeks in advance to Screen, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: wmacmurdo@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115. : This movie sucks, don’t watch it. : This movie is entertaining but flawed. : This movie is good. We recommend you watch it. : This movie is excellent, one of the best of the year.
STREET THE SHRIKE
SATURDAY, MARCH 25TH AT 6PM The Shrike blends crunchy riffs with dark melodies to create a hard-rocking immersive sound that captivates and transports you to the abandoned desert and the deep trenches of your own dreams and psyche.
KATHRYN CLAIRE
MONDAY, MARCH 27TH AT 6PM Kathryn Claire has spent years cultivating her own style and approach to music as a violinist, guitar player, singer, and songwriter. On her latest album “Bones Will Last,” Claire has created a unique collection of songs, weaving together stories and melodies rooted in her classical and traditional musical background.
MUSIC MILLENNIUM RECOMMENDS
THE XX I SEE YOU
4 years after the release of sophomore album Coexist, English trio The xx return to the indie pop atmosphere with a record akin to their creative instrumental roots.
1499 $999 CD $ 2499 $1699 LP $ 5999 $2999 MEGA DELUXE LP $
Sale prices valid through 3/28
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Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
OPENING THIS WEEK Airport Cinema Celebration Showcase
Want to watch the new Hollywood Theatre at PDX’s collection of local shorts but don’t want to pay for a plane ticket? You’re in luck: Catch its hourlong shorts program on Northeast Sandy Boulevard this Friday, with many of the filmmakers in attendance. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Friday, March 24.
PDX Film Fatales: Certain Women
Inspired by Portland director Kelly Reichardt’s film of the same name, Boathouse Microcinema’s new series is a collection of shorts by Portland-based women filmmakers. It’s worth attending for the excerpt from Cambria Matlow’s beautiful film Woodsrider alone. Boathouse Microcinema. 7:30 pm Wednesday, March 22.
CHIPS
American pop culture may have become a degenerate wasteland where we reproduce decades-old ephemera without context or purpose, but at least Michael Peña’s got a leading role. Not screened for critics. R. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Vancouver.
The Book of Jane
A screening of Portland filmmaker Antero Alli’s 2013 film about a professor (Marianne Shine) who befriends an older homeless woman (Luna Olcott) and brings her into her life with her partner Colette (Madeline H.D. Brown). NR. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Friday, March 24.
Donald Cried
This is a Will Ferrell man-child comedy gone horribly awry, and every second is deeply, deliciously uncomfortable. When hotshot Wall Street banker Peter Latang (Jesse Wakeman) returns after 20 years to his small, despised Rhode Island hometown to bury his grandmother, he immediately loses his wallet, forcing him to ask for help from the equally despised characters of his past. Cue Donald (Kris Avedisian): woolly, unbrushed teeth; chapped lips; weird bangs; a huge, gaping porn poster right above his bed, and a good-natured way of monopolizing conversations with awkwardly intimate jokes. What makes this 100 times better than a Will Ferrell movie is that Donald’s character really exists, and exists, in fact, in
most of our lives—the old high school friend with horrible arrested development who, inconveniently, loves you unconditionally. Throughout Donald Cried, we fall in love with the characters’ stunted friendship but are shown in equal measure how deeply they take advantage of each other, and in the end, we’re not sure which of them we like less. Donald Cried employs that darkly comedic, funny but almost unwatchable sensibility that is slowly becoming, à la Louie, Baskets and One Mississippi, the dominant vocabulary of modern funniness—but its sharp realism makes it a unique chunk of low-budget gold. NR. ISABEL ZACHARIAS. Kiggins Theatre.
HyperNormalisation
Mississippi Records presents a screening of cult documentarian Adam Curtis’ massive 2016 indictment of pop culture. Curtis argues that, from the mid-1970s, a concerted effort has been made in elite American society to construct a media narrative that prioritizes fiction over truth. NR. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Thursday, March 23.
The Last Word
What would Harriet Lawler (Shirley MacLaine), the formidably grouchy heroine of The Last Word, say about her own movie? Probably something like this: “You call that a movie? It was so cliché that even the scene where I became a radio disc jockey couldn’t save it! Is this what passes for entertainment these days?” Apparently so. The film’s plot, if it is fit to be called that, involves the dictatorial Harriet supervising the writing of her own obituary, which is being crafted by Anne Sherman (Amanda Seyfried), a glum journalist who discovers that Harriet’s bullying of nearly all the people she knows has been so ferocious that not one of them will drudge up a few sweet nothings about her. Fortunately for Harriet, The Last Word is a formulaic salvation fantasy, so she gets to reinvigorate her life by taking on the aforementioned radio gig and, in a subplot served with a hefty dollop of whitesplaining, mentoring a young black girl named Brenda (AnnJewel Lee Dixon). Viewers who sit through this nonsense will be rewarded with the film’s moving depiction of female solidarity, though they may also savor the irony that The Last Word is a mechanically sentimental film about a fiercely unsentimental woman. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Clackamas.
Life
In this new sci-fi horror film, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds star as astronauts who discover life on Mars. Review to come next week. R. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
Looking for Infinity: El Camino
A new doc about the El Camino de Santiago/Way of Saint James, the Spanish pilgrimage route that terminates at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Saturday, March 25.
Saban’s Power Rangers
Go go, Power Rangers! Go go, Power Rangers! Go go, Power Rangers, mighty morphin’ Power Rangers! Review to come next week. PG-13. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
S.M.A.R.T.
A new documentary following Los Angeles’ Specialized Mobile Animal Rescue Team, which rescues animals endangered in extreme circumstances. A discussion follows with director Justin Zimmerman, film subjects Armando Navarrete and Annette Ramirez, and others. Hollywood Theatre. 2 pm Sunday, March 26.
Wilson
Woody Harrelson stars as a quirky middle-aged guy who finds out he’s had a child by his estranged ex-wife. Review to come next week. R. Cinema 21, Clackamas.
STILL SHOWING 20th Century Women
There are moments when Mike Mills’ semi-autobiographical family drama is wittily revolutionary, especially when Abbie (Greta Gerwig) teaches her teenage son the basics of feminism and later galvanizes a dinner party by coaching the guests to say “menstruation” in unison. 20th Century Women has a frankness that is welcome and rare in American cinema. R. Fox Tower.
Arrival
Arrival inspires because of sorrowful linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams), who enters a spaceship hovering above Montana shrouded in grief but still has compassion for both aliens and humanity. PG-13. Academy, Avalon, Fox Tower, Joy, Kennedy School, Laurelhurst, Valley, Vancouver.
Beauty and the Beast
Did we need this remake? Probably not. Is is pretty good? Yes. PG. Bagdad, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinemagic, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Living Room Theaters, Lloyd, Milwaukie, Moreland,
Oak Grove, Roseway, St. Johns Twin, Tigard, Vancouver.
Before I Fall
A mean girl learns to play nice in this slick, soulless riff on Groundhog Day that isn’t half as heartfelt as it pretends to be. PG-13. Bridgeport, Clackamas.
Doctor Strange
Thanks to director Scott Derrickson’s confidently superficial storytelling, this film’s imagery has a dizzying power. PG-13. Vancouver.
A Dog’s Purpose
Filmgoers were barking mad when they thought the producers of A Dog’s Purpose had abused a canine on set. But this tale of doggy death and rebirth exploits every inch of furry adorability to blot out critical faculties and fan the sparks of true emotion. Who’s a good movie?! PG-13. Beaverton Wunderland, Clackamas.
The Eagle Huntress
Set in the wilderness of Mongolia, this astounding documentary follows a 13-year-old Kazakh girl who hunts with the help of a golden eagle. PG-13. Laurelhurst.
Fences
Denzel Washington swings for the fences with his adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a struggling African-American blue-collar family in 1950s Pittsburgh, hitting a home run and, uh, stealing third base? PG-13. Academy, Laurelhurst, Vancouver.
Fifty Shades Darker
With unguarded humor and sometimes even something verging on wit, Darker discusses consent, sexual boundaries, trauma and relationship autonomy with a frankness that honestly makes it, despite soapopera drama and predictability, a pretty good movie. R. Clackamas, Pioneer Place.
Get Out
Yes, this movie is as good as everyone says it is, enough so that it makes you ask why other horror movies aren’t better. R. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Tigard, Vancouver.
The Great Wall
This movie may have been engineered by Hollywood’s top scientists to make as much money as possible by bridging the gap between the Chinese and U.S. film markets, but it’s still a pretty fun, albeit messy, ride. Division, Empirical.
Hidden Figures
I Am Not Your Negro
A globAl tech conference on the upper left coAst
Raoul Peck develops an unfinished James Baldwin manuscript to eloquently tell the story of American racism. NR. Hollywood.
I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore
I’m not sure if this surprise Grand Jury winner at this year’s Sundance festival is supposed to be a black comedy or not, but it kind of plays out like what would happen if Napoleon Dynamite moved to Portland and got really into vest metal. NR. Netflix.
March 23-24 | Portland art MuseuM | techfestnw.coM
11 Things You Don’t Know
About TECHFESTNW
Jackie
Aided by Mica Levi’s ghostly string score, Pablo Larraín’s peppering in of archival news footage from the time, and Portman’s most spectacular performance yet, this film is less an isolated Jackie Kennedy biopic than a dark and conceptual statement on how the American people classifies, experiences and remembers historic tragedies. R. Laurelhurst.
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This may be the smartest, most beautifully shot film ever made that’s basically a montage of people getting shot in the head. R. City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
Kedi
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Kid Tech. What’s better than smart kids? We’ll show off the tiny future of tech at our Portland Exploration meetup sponsored by Concordia University.
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Senator Ron Wyden. Liberty + Security is an important topic in 2017 and we are not shying away from it at TechfestNW- Wyden will get the conversation started.
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We’re more inclusive than ever.
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More networking.
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Rodin Remix.
La La Land
Over 50% of our mainstage speakers are women or people of color We have created social environments to make sure you meet the best and brightest people in the tech community (hopefully with a beer in your hand — see #3). What do Rodin and Darth Vader have in common? Who knows? We’ll find out at our badge pickup party. There’s a 3D printer involved.
Land of Mine
This period drama about teenage prisoners who get blown into hamburger trying to disarm mines in post-World War II Denmark has a pun title, technically making it a romantic comedy. R. Living Room Theaters.
Beer. Digital Trends is hosting TechPop, the official TFNW party, PIGSquad will showcase great games and beer at Loyal Legion, and our badge pickup party has beer…it’s true, we heart beer.
Kong: Skull Island
*Sad_trombone.mp3*. PG-13. Bridgeport, City Center, Clackamas, Fox Tower, Living Room Theaters, Vancouver.
International Startups, they’re coming… We have startups from Hong Kong, Hungary, Japan, Canada, Peru
Kitty! NR. Cinema 21, Kiggins.
Following the original’s blueprint, Kong: Skull Island sends a boatload of explorers past the perma-storm covering that’s hidden the titular archipelago for millennia. The similarities end there. Shifting to Southeast Asia just after the fall of Saigon, Skull Island replaces Age of Discovery heroics with wartime ambience. PG-13. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Milwaukie, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Pub and Theater, Tigard, Vancouver.
Robots everywhere. Robots! Robots! Robots! One is a baby, seriously.
John Wick: Chapter 2
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Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence & Cybersecurity. David Ortiz, Jerry Kaplan and Nicole Perlroth, respectively.
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Job hunting help. We’re holding an incredible Career Center this year with free headshots, resume review, networking tips and beer + wine.
CONT. on page 42
PETER IOVINO
Why does Kevin Costner get the biggest racism-busting line in a movie about underappreciated black women who contributed to
TECHFESTNW
NASA’s Apollo 11 trip to the Moon? PG. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Fox Tower, Living Room Theaters, Tigard, Vancouver.
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Biketown. Did you really think we’d have an event in Portland and not have a bike ride? Come on.
CHIPS Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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present
COURTESY OF GKIDS
WILLAMETTE WEEK & CLINTON STREET THEATER
MOVIES
MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI
The Lego Batman Movie
Fast, funny and pleasingly drunk on the joys of mockery, The Lego Batman Movie is as fun as the 2014 original but stars Will Arnett as a petulant, preening goofball who rocks out on an electric guitar and showers orphans with cool toys from a merch gun. PG. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Tigard, Vancouver.
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h 31 c r , Ma e, y a rid vanc F , om c d . m a x p 10 ets $6 cstpd t k T ic lable a LY N i ava LTS O U AD
Logan
Turns out having Hugh Jackman and cute child Dafne Keen perform Mortal Kombat fatalities on robotarmed mercenaries is a cool idea for a movie. R. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin, Tigard, Vancouver.
Manchester by the Sea
How do you start over when your transgressions refuse to stay buried? According to director Kenneth Lonergan, you don’t, and that denial is one of too many reasons Manchester by the Sea, while admirably tough-minded, is also a drag. R. Fox Tower.
Moana
If you were curious whether Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson could carry a tune, Moana is a ringing affirmative. PG. Academy, Avalon, Beaverton Wunderland, Empirical, Jubitz, Kennedy School, Valley, Vancouver.
Monster Trucks
Monster Trucks is really good for a children’s movie about a kid named Tripp (Lucas Till) who has a monster living in his truck. PG. Vancouver.
Moonlight
I’ve listened to the chopped and screwed remix of Classic Man from this movie something like 50 times since I saw it. R. City Center, Lloyd.
My Life as a Zucchini
An unsparing glimpse of the life of a brutalized boy nicknamed “Zucchini” (Gaspard Schlatter), who is put in foster care after a horrifying accident kills his drunken mother. My Life as a Zucchini blossoms into an intensely moving tale of recovery about kids who realize the secret to their survival lies in holding onto the frayed but beautiful friendships they share. PG-13. Fox Tower, Kiggins.
Oscar Nominated Shorts
They go underappreciated and mostly unseen by mainstream audiences during the year, but this week the Oscar-nominated animated and live-action shorts make it to select Portland-area screens. Laurelhurst.
Passengers
When a malfunction in Chris Pratt’s hibernation pod leaves him awake and alone decades early on a
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Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
120-year space voyage, he decides to wake up Jennifer Lawrence for companionship, telling her that her pod malfunctioned as well. This is very creepy when you think about it. PG-13. Academy, Vancouver.
Personal Shopper
Director Olivier Assayas’ second collaboration with Kristen Stewart (after Clouds of Sils Maria) follows a medium who tries to commune with her deceased twin while intermittently perusing Paris boutiques as a celebrity model’s assistant. It fuses at least two movie genres— a haunting thriller by way of the muted tone of a character study. R. Cinema 21.
The Red Turtle
The first non-Japanese animation from Studio Ghibli is a simple fable on paper, but this heart-rending depiction of a man stranded on a desert island and the giant turtle that torments him is a tour de force in visual storytelling. PG. Cinema 21.
Rock Dog
This movie is about a dog who rocks. PG. Oak Grove.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
The best Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back, this gritty spinoff brings a depth of humanity to the galaxy that the series hadn’t ever seen. PG-13. Fox Tower.
The Sense of an Ending
This adaptation of Julian Barnes’ acclaimed novel is nearly the Jim Broadbent opus the world didn’t know it wanted. PG-13. Bridgeport, City Center, Fox Tower.
Sing
If you’ve been yearning for Seth MacFarlane to play a mouse who sings like Sinatra, this is your movie. PG. Academy, Avalon, Empirical, Kennedy School, Valley, Vancouver.
Split
James McAvoy stars as a guy with multiple-personality disorder who kidnaps a group of young girls, who must try to coax one of the good personalities to set them free. Is this problematic? PG-13. Clackamas, Vancouver.
A United Kingdom
The politically forbidden 1947 marriage of Botswanan prince Sir Seretse Khama to English typist Ruth Williams is a little-known anecdote of racial progress worthy of illuminating. The love is there; what’s missing is the care. PG-13. City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Laurelhurst, Living Room Theaters, Tigard, Vancouver.
XXX: Return of Xander Cage
Do we need another Fast and Furious franchise? The new Vin Diesel flick answers that question by flipping double birds while hitting a stoppie into a villain. R. Vancouver.
For more Movies listings, visit
HENRY CROMETT
end roll
techfestNW?
A globAl tech conference on the upper left coAst
Rukaiyah Adams Chief investment OffiCer at meyer memOrial trust. Oregon’s most prominent investor of public and private funds who has an inspiring message about corporate responsibility.
Eye in the Sky AFTER 30 YEARS, THE LEGENDARY THIRD EYE SHOPPE WILL CLOSE. WE TALKED TO OWNER MARK HERER ABOUT ITS HISTORY. BY M A RT I N C I Z M A R
mcizmar@wweek.com
Last week, Mark Herer announced he’s closing the Third Eye Shoppe on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. Herer isn’t beating around the bush about why. He says the business lost $600,000 last year, a victim of stiff competition from local cannabis shops, which have scattered paraphernalia sales across the city. Hours after that news broke March 13, the shop saw an influx of customers—some had heard about the closing, others hadn’t. “Unfortunately, we’re closing our doors at the end of the month. Yeah, a developer bought the building for $1 million cash,” Herer says, with a frankness uncharacteristic of Portland, betraying his Los Angeles roots. A man walks into the shop, near tears. “What’s the deal, brother?” he asks. “We lost a half a million bucks, so we put the building up for sale and got a cash offer the same day,” Herer says. “They’re gonna tear the whole thing down and put up condos.” It’s been just shy of 30 years since Mark’s father, Jack, flew up from L.A. to open this head shop in a big, century-old house in the city’s hippie neighborhood. If the name Jack Herer sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the namesake of one of the most popular and well-regarded strains in the world. Jack Herer passed away the day after he had a heart attack following a rousing speech at Portland’s 2009 Hempstalk rally, at age 70. That speech was a little taste of the way he’d pursued the cause of cannabis since his first smoke at 22. “There’s nothing fucking better for the human race than having marijuana morning, noon and night,” he said during the speech. “You’ve gotta be outta your mind not to smoke dope.” Since then, the shop has been run by Mark Herer, who arrived in Portland on Jan. 11, 1999, to take over for a local woman who’d been scared off by raids on other head shops and was stocking the store with jewelry, incense and mystical rocks.
“She got paranoid, so she slowly whittled everything away,” he says. “When I got here, we had white Zig Zags, brass screens and onyx pipes. I walked in, and I’m like, ‘Oh. No wonder we’re only doing $150,000 a year.’” With the reintroduction of bongs, the shop became successful again. “We got the shop up to $1.6 million just before Mellow Mood came in,” Herer says. “From there, things started to slowly decline. I’m talking to the crew, and I’m like, ‘What do you think is happening?’ They’re like, ‘I think business is just declining, it’s just the economy.’ This is right after Obama got elected. Are you fucking kidding me? There’s a fucking gallery of a head shop over there! They wouldn’t stay in business if they weren’t doing $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 per day. There’s three head shops in three blocks! You’re all fucking high!” In the end, Third Eye couldn’t weather the onslaught of competition wrought by legalization. Herer has been a medical grower for years— something that made his father very proud. After closing the shop with a raucous party— everything in the building is for sale, so make an offer if you want a souvenir—Herer will move to Southern Oregon to be a full-time grower. He will dedicate himself full-time to Herer’s Victory Garden, an outdoor grow, which will get an influx of investment from cannabis kingpins who Herer met at a bowling tournament. It’ll be in Kerby, Ore., due west of Ashland. He’ll arrive in another place that’s been disrupted by a competitive market—Southern Oregon sun growers have been hammered by the legalization that Mark Herer and his father pushed so hard for. “The beauty of legalization is every one of them gets to have a real job now, and not be afraid anymore,” he says. “Granted, the price of a pound went from $3,500, wholesale, to less than $1,000, overnight. But none of us are afraid to go to prison anymore.”
Nicole Perlroth CyberseCurity repOrter fOr the new yOrk times. At the center of the most thrilling beat in Global affairs, she is the author of the upcoming book “This is how they tell me the World ends”.
Anarghya Vardhana investOr at maverOn. A Portland native and venture capitalist whose firm was an early investor in Ebay, her focus is on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual and Augmented Reality.
Paige Hendrix Buckner teChfestnw emCee
Founder of startup Client Joy, Paige is both an educator and entrepreneur.
...This is TechfestNW techfestnw.com
GO: The Going Away Bonanza at Third Eye Shoppe, 3950 SE Hawthorne Blvd., is at noon Saturday, March 25. Willamette Week MARCH 22, 2017 wweek.com
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BY N a t e Wa g g o n e r
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JOBS
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Sangam-Hindustani Flute & Carnatic Mandolin Featuring Pt. Ronu Majumdar (Flute) & Vidwan U. Rajesh (Mandolin) Accompanied by Maestro Harshad Kanetkar (Tabla) & Vidwan SV Ramani (Mridangam).
Friday, March 31, 2017 at 7:30 pm
First Baptist Church
909 SW 11th Avenue, Portland, OR 97205
ACTIVISM LATINO NETWORK IS HIRING for a Director of Finance and Operations, please visit www.latnet.org for a complete job description. Compensation; $72,900 - $91,100 annually
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES AGRICULTURAL FIELD WORKERS (WINE GRAPES & APPLES) Martinelli Vineyard Management, located in Windsor, California, is seeking 45 temporary Agricultural Field Workers (Wine Grapes & Apples) to work with grape & apple crops in the field & at harvest. Contract period is from April 18, 2017 to October 21, 2017. Must have 3 months work exp. w/apples & wine grapes in vineyards & orchards, pre and post-harvest. Work exp. must include 3 months exp. apple pruning. Wage offered of the highest of $12.57/hr or applicable piece rates depending on crop activity. Piece rates apply during harvest. 3/4 of the work hrs. guaranteed. Tools & equipment are provided at no cost to the worker. Free housing is provided to workers who cannot reasonably return to their permanent residence at the end of the work day. Transportation & subsistence expenses to the worksite will be provided or paid by the employer upon completion of 50% of the work contract or earlier. Apply for this job at the nearest Oregon State Employment Department (SWA), or directly in person at the Klamath Falls office of the OR State Empl. Dept., 801 Oak Avenue, Klamath Falls, OR, 97601. Please reference this ad or CA Job Order #15228620.
Tickets at www.kalakendra.org Adults: $25 ($30 at door) Children (3-12 yrs): $12.50 ($15 at door), Students (with ID): $15 Admission is FREE for 2016-17 Members and Friends of Kalakendra
CLASSICAL PIANO/ KEYBOARD ALL AGES. STANDARDS, CLASSICAL, MUSICALS. EUROPEAN TRAINED. PORTLAND 503-227-6557
MISCELLANEOUS THE SECRET SOCIETY OF MAGICAL CREATURES Discover your magical creature & magical quest: tiny.cc/SECRET CHERRY STONES Did Vikings set Cherry Stones in Japan? What did they produce? Details? Write: CHERRY STONES, 4230 SE King Road #291, Milwaukie, OR, 97222 USA
LEARN PIANO ALL STYLES, LEVELS Beginners welcome.
With 2-time Grammy winner Peter Boe 503-274-8727
RENTALS APARTMENTS NW HUGE 1890 NW 23RD HOME 5 bedrooms, 2 baths, fireplace, wash/dry, dwasher, $4400/mo 2325 NW Hoyt 503-827-7163
APARTMENTS SE HUGE LOWER BURNSIDE VINTAGE DUPLEX Beautiful, 2 Bedroom, Remodeled, Fireplace, Wash/Dry, Dishwasher $1695/month 406 SE 10th 503-827-7163
PETS LOST AND FOUND
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JOBS EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES PAID IN ADVANCE! Make $1000/week mailing brochures from home. No experience required! Helping home workers since 2001! Genuine Opportunity - Start Immediately! www.TheIncomeHub.com AIRLINE CAREERS BEGIN HERE Get trained as FAA certified Aviation Technician. Financial aid for qualified students. Housing and job placement assistance. Call Aviation Institute of Maintenance 800-725-1563 AUTO PROCESSORS Drive new cars Men and Women 18 yrs up Must drive stick Full & part time day and swing 360-718-7443
REWARD $500 FOR LOST DOG (CHIHUAHUA) Our brown chihuahua went missing 1/25 in Portland. Please call if seen rather than approach him - he is likely very scared and skittish. There is a $500 reward for his safe return, no questions asked. If seen, please call 503-621-7975.
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CHATLINES
JONESIN’
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“Ego Trips”-state your name.
61 CEO painter? 63 Often-spiked drink 65 Frozen food bag bit 66 Met highlight 67 Christian who plays the titular “Mr. Robot” 68 Blow it 69 Atmospheric 1990s CD-ROM puzzle game 70 “Chappelle’s Show” character who’s always scratching
Portland 503-222-CHAT Vancouver 360-314-CHAT
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Across 1 2009 film set in 2154 7 Backs of boats 11 A.D.A. member’s degree 14 “Everybody Loves Raymond” star 15 Grade 16 Down Under hopper 17 “Mean ___” (recurring Jimmy Kimmel segment) 18 Frozen kids? 20 ID for a taxpayer 21 Aptly named card game 23 Witty criticism
24 “Entourage” actress Mazar 25 Like some weekend “sales events” 27 Leader of a Russian Doors tribute band? 32 “Look!” to Dora the Explorer 33 It’s a question of time 34 Plucks unwanted plants 38 Took those plums from the icebox (that you were probably saving for breakfast) 39 Lindsay of “Mean Girls”
41 Bank acct. transaction 42 Go down without power 45 Actor Spall of “Life of Pi” 46 One’s in a lifetime? 47 Mineral-fortified red wine? 50 Head shop patron, presumably 53 Fargo’s st. 54 Cyrano’s protrusion 55 Like Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve specials 58 “Foucault’s Pendulum” author
Down 1 Cultural interests 2 They’re often exchanged for rituals 3 “Absolutely!” 4 ___ Bo (workout system that turns 25 in 2017) 5 Spain’s has no official lyrics 6 Big game on January 1 7 “The Kite Runner” protagonist 8 The 100% truth (accept no imitations!) 9 Clandestine meetings 10 If it’s blue, it doesn’t mean you’re pregnant 11 Priest of Stonehenge days 12 Disco diva Summer 13 How some people like their cereal 19 O3 22 Loud sound effect for rappers and morning radio shows 24 “It’s in my ___” 26 “Where do I even begin ...” 27 Computer since 1998 28 Corleone patriarch
in “The Godfather” 29 8, for a two-byfour? 30 It’s supposed to be a sobering experience 31 Low 35 Hagman’s “I Dream of Jeannie” costar 36 Beyond reinflation 37 Full of life 40 Most likely to squee over a Pi Day pie 43 Bone-to-muscle connection 44 Cool with Green Day 46 Sound of a belly laugh 48 Planetarium model 49 Clumsily tall 50 Long-billed marsh bird 51 Cartridge stuff 52 His first line was “Don’t bang on my can!” 56 Milo’s canine pal 57 Socialize in cyberspace 58 Prefix with parasite 59 Either “Barton Fink” director 60 Grimm guy 62 Sweet potato lookalike 64 Long-jawed freshwater fish last week’s answers
©2017 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 #JONZ823.
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Week of March 23
ARIES (March 21-April 19)
The dragon that stole your treasure will return it. Tulips and snapdragons will blossom in a field you thought was a wasteland. Gargoyles from the abyss will crawl into view, but then meekly lick your hand and reveal secrets you can really use. The dour troll that guards the bridge to the Next Big Thing will let you pass even though you don’t have the password. APRIL FOOL! Everything I just described is only metaphorically true, not literally.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20)
According to legend, Buddha had to face daunting tests to achieve enlightenment. A diabolical adversary tempted him with sensual excesses and assailed him with vortexes of blistering mud, flaming ice, and howling rocks. Happily, Buddha glided into a state of wise calm and triumphed over the mayhem. He converted his nemesis’s vortexes into bouquets of flowers and celestial ointments. What does this have to do with you? In accordance with current astrological omens, I hope you will emulate Buddha as you deal with your own initiatory tests. APRIL FOOL! I wasn’t completely honest. It’s true you’ll face initiatory tests that could prod you to a higher level of wisdom. But they’ll most likely come from allies and inner prompts rather than a diabolical adversary.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20)
Since I expect you’ll soon be tempted to indulge in too much debauched fun and riotous release, I’ll offer you a good hangover remedy. Throw these ingredients into a blender, then drink up: a thousand-year-old quail egg from China, seaweed from Antarctica, milk from an Iraqi donkey, lemon juice imported from Kazakhstan, and a dab of Argentinian toothpaste on which the moon has shone for an hour. APRIL FOOL! I deceived you. You won’t have to get crazy drunk or stoned to enjoy extreme pleasure and cathartic abandon. It will come to you quite naturally -- especially if you expand your mind through travel, big ideas, or healthy experiments.
CANCER (June 21-July 22)
Hire a promoter to create gold plaques listing your accomplishments and hang them up in public places. Or pay someone to make a thousand bobble-head dolls in your likeness, each wearing a royal crown, and give them away to everyone you know. Or enlist a pilot to fly a small plane over a sporting event while trailing a banner that reads, “[Your name] is a gorgeous genius worthy of worshipful reverence.” APRIL FOOL! What I just advised was a distorted interpretation of the cosmic omens. Here’s the truth: The best way to celebrate your surging power is not by reveling in frivolous displays of pride, but rather by making a bold move that will render a fantastic dream ten percent more possible for you to accomplish.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)
Endangered species: black rhino, Bornean orangutan, hawksbill turtle, South China tiger, Sumatran elephant, and the Leo messiah complex. You may not be able to do much to preserve the first five on that list, but PLEASE get to work on saving the last. It’s time for a massive eruption of your megalomania. APRIL FOOL! I was exaggerating for effect. There’s no need to go overboard in reclaiming your messiah complex. But please do take strong action to stoke your self-respect, self-esteem, and confidence.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)
Race through your yoga routine so you have more time to surf the Internet. Inhale doughnuts and vodka in the car as you race to the health food store. Get into a screaming fight with a loved one about how you desperately need more peace and tenderness. APRIL FOOL! A little bit of self-contradiction would be cute, but not THAT much. And yet I do worry that you are close to expressing THAT much. The problem may be that you haven’t been giving your inner rebel any high-quality mischief to attend to. As a result, it’s bogged down in trivial insurrections. So please give your inner rebel more important work to do.
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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)
Research shows that a typical working couple devotes an average of four minutes per day in meaningful conversations. I suggest you boost that output by at least ten percent. Try to engage your best companion in four minutes and 24 seconds of intimate talk per day. APRIL FOOL! I lied. A ten-percent increase isn’t nearly enough. Given the current astrological indicators, you must seek out longer and deeper exchanges with the people you love. Can you manage 20 minutes per day?
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)
In a way, it’s too bad you’re about to lose your mind. The chaos that ensues will be a big chore to clean up. But in another sense, losing your mind may be a lucky development. The process of reassembling it will be entertaining and informative. And as a result, your problems will become more fascinating than usual, and your sins will be especially original. APRIL FOOL! I lied, sort of. You won’t really lose your mind. But this much *is* true: Your problems will be more fascinating than usual, and your sins will be especially original. That’s a good thing! It may even help you recover a rogue part of your mind that you lost a while back.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)
You say that some of the healthiest foods don’t taste good? And that some of your pleasurable diversions seem to bother people you care about? You say it’s too much hassle to arrange for a certain adventure that you know would be exciting and meaningful? Here’s what I have to say about all that: Stop whining. APRIL FOOL! I lied. The truth is, there will soon be far fewer reasons for you to whine. The discrepancies between what you have to do and what you want to do will at least partially dissolve. So will the gaps between what’s good for you and what feels good, and between what pleases others and what pleases you.
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CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
You should begin work on a book with one of the following titles, and you should finish writing it no later than April 28: “The Totally Intense Four Weeks of My Life When I Came All the Way Home” . . . “The Wildly Productive Four Weeks of My Life when I Discovered the Ultimate Secrets of Domestic Bliss” . . . “The Crazily Meaningful Four Weeks When I Permanently Anchored Myself in the Nourishing Depths.” APRIL FOOL! I lied. There’s no need to actually write a book like that. But I do hope you seek out and generate experiences that would enable you to write books with those titles.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
If you were a passenger on a plane full of your favorite celebrities, and the pilot had to make an emergency landing on a remote snowbound mountain, and you had to eat one of the celebrities in order to stay alive until rescuers found you, which celebrity would you want to eat first? APRIL FOOL! That was a really stupid and pointless question. I can’t believe I asked it. I hope you didn’t waste a nanosecond thinking about what your reply might be. Here’s the truth, Aquarius: You’re in a phase of your astrological cycle when the single most important thing you can do is ask and answer really good questions.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20)
You now have an elevated chance of finding a crumpled one-dollar bill on a sidewalk. There’s also an increased likelihood you’ll get a coupon for a five-percent discount from a carpet shampoo company, or win enough money in the lottery to buy a new sweatshirt. To enhance these possibilities, all you have to do is sit on your ass and wish really hard that good economic luck will come your way. APRIL FOOL! What I just said was kind of true, but also useless. Here’s more interesting news: The odds are better than average that you’ll score tips on how to improve your finances. You may also be invited to collaborate on a potentially lucrative project, or receive an offer of practical help for a bread-and-butter dilemma. To encourage these outcomes, all you have to do is develop a long-term plan for improved money management.
Homework
Carry out a prank that makes someone feel good. Report results at Truthrooster@gmail.com.
check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes
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