The Pacific Sentinel - March 2022

March 2022 Mega Fest

Batsquatch!

Oregon's Mask Mandates to be Lifted

Tortillas A Mano, Tortillas Handmade

Emergency Funding Continues

On Decapitated

Contents Letter From the Editor 3

NEWS ANALYSIS Emergency Funding Continues 4 Oregon Mask Mandates to be Lifted by March 31st 5

OPINION Notes from Behind the Bar: Pulling Teeth 6 On Decapitated 8

ARTS & CULTURE Tortillas A Mano, Tortillas Handmade 10 Batsquatch! 12 PSU Student Feature: Claire Miles 14 Mega Fest 18

CREDITS EXECUTIVE EDITOR Vivian Veidt NEWS EDITOR Daniel Chilton ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR Sarah Samms OPINIONS EDITOR Saqif Maqsud PRODUCTION EDITOR Alison White DESIGNERS Alison White ILLUSTRATORS Astrid Luong, Aspen Crawford, Alison White, Mckinsey Carroll, Vivian Viedt FRONT COVER Tye Raymond BACK PAGES ARTIST FEATURE Camden Benesh (pg. 19-20) FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS Cicely Blackwell, Corry Hinckley, Daniel Bloomfield, Jesse Ropers ADS Alison White 2

Letter From the Editor Fellow Students, Friends, once again I address you during a tumultuous period.

Between the ongoing pandemic and the fatigue we all feel for this historical moment, there remains great anxiety in our constant company. Many of us have been startled by the encroachment of war in Ukraine and continue to act in solidarity with our peers in all embattled nations in the interest of peace in our time. We fear the accelerating hazards of climate change and the inaction of governments to combat it. We fear the instability of our domestic government and its continued abuses of people at home and abroad. We feel great upset over the housing crisis that forces us into greater strife and shuffles many every day into the uncaring streets of our city. Indeed, there are a great many fears and anxieties with us in our daily lives, but I wish to tell you that we need not be dominated by these emotions.

There is tremendous beauty in our world, existing naturally in spite of the bad. For all of the difficulties of our global society, the flowers yet bloom, the sun shines above our oft blanketed sky, and there is a calm that each of us can achieve in our lives. I, too, have seen many of the horrors present in our world. I have slept on snowy sidewalks, I have walked through the rubble of once great cities, I have felt terror for life in the midst of violence, and I will tell you here that it is because of those experiences, and the traumas we have all collected, that the good and wholesome shines in its daily glory.

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We need not be intimidated by our world. We have gathered in this setting to learn more of it, to better ourselves, and to follow a rugged path to our joy. I cannot deny hardship, but I can also not deny the fruits of precious life. May you find within these pages an assortment of expressions, words that will inform the way that you walk through the challenges of life. In this issue, we have assembled a variety of articles that speak both on the beauty of life, and its enduring ugliness. It is with appreciation for the variety of life and the need to embrace the difficulties we face that I have approved all of the articles in this issue.

In these pages, we will brush on the jovial and the intensely painful.

I invite you, dear readers, to review these pages and assess the emotions that may arise in you. Consider the following with sensitivity and commit to your own experiences in this diverse world as you see fit.

Kind Regards, Vivian Veidt Executive Editor The Pacific Sentinel

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NEWS ANALYSIS

Emergency Funding Continues Portland State to Continue Offering Emergency Funding Through 2021-22 School Year

THE PACIFIC SENTINEL

by Dan Chilton Illustrations by Astrid Luong At a student media press conference held during this quarter, Stephen Percy, Portland State’s President, confirmed that PSU will continue to offer emergency funding for students throughout the 2021-22 academic year.

At the beginning of the 2021-22 academic year, eligible students were automatically funded eight hundred dollars to their account for emergency related needs such as food, rent, tuition, or healthcare. It will come as a relief to many that this financial assistance will continue.

The money allocated for Winter term has already begun to be distributed and with a two hundred dollar addition, bringing the quarterly relief funds for this quarter to one thousand dollars—a significant help to many in need.

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These federal funds, allocated through the CARES Act: Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF), will continue to be automatically awarded to qualifying students in need. The parameters for automatic eligibility are as follows: • Pell-eligible or equivalent students with an Estimated Family Contribution (EFC) of 0 • Enrolled as of October 10, 2021 While HEERF did allow students to apply for emergency relief if they did not meet the requirements for automatic enrollment, the deadline for the enrollment application has since passed. If you do not qualify and are in need of emergency assistance in order to stay in school, there are options for you and you

should reach out to the Financial Wellness Center for help.

The CARES Act went into effect in March of 2020 and allotted $2.2 trillion to Americans negatively impacted by COVID-19. Of this, about $14 billion was given to the Office of Postsecondary Education for disbursement with another $21.2 billion added in January of 2021.

Portland State University has reportedly received $8.3 million of this allocated funding and distributed nearly all of that based on the CARES Act federal guidelines. These guidelines factor in student priority needs starting from housing and food to health and childcare.

NEWS ANALYSIS

Oregon’s Mask Mandates to be Lifted by March 31st On February 7, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) announced that the statewide mask mandate for indoor public spaces would be lifted no later than March 31.

This news comes after the Oregon Secretary of State extended the preexisting mask mandate, which expired on February 8. OHA says that this action was the “...only way health officials could extend the current temporary mask rule past its expiration date and until mask rules would no longer be needed to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—to save lives and prevent the Omicron crisis from further overwhelming Oregon’s health care system.”1 With the Omicron strain of the virus making waves through the country, surging both infection and death rates, OHA expects cases of infection and hospitalization to drop by late March to numbers similar to those

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observed prior to the Omicron variant. Due to Oregon’s relatively high vaccination status and adherence to mask mandates, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that the State of Oregon retains the “...third lowest cumulative COVID-19 case rate in the nation and the seventh lowest COVID-19 death rate…”2 Initial projections for the Omicron surge anticipated that it would top Oregon’s highest hospitalization rates (those during the Delta surge). Credited to the State’s compliance with mask mandates and vaccination recommendations by the CDC, those projections have not been reached.

The decision to end mask mandates by late March comes after reaching the lower end of the most recent surge; lasting from early to mid January when positive COVID cases were nearing 10,000 per day. Since the beginning of

February, reported COVID positive cases have been on a steady decline from 3,670 cases on February 1 to 471 cases on February 12.3 Portland State University’s Center for Student Health & Counseling (SHAC) has also continually updated their published data since the start of the academic year, reflecting a massive spike in cases since December.

Between December and January, SHAC reported that cases have surged from only 26 positive infection results to a staggering 558—a 2,000% increase.4 Yet, it appears that SHAC’s data also supports the idea of a decline with only 38 reported positive cases reported in February as of February 16. https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/ORDHS/ bulletins/3098e7d 2 https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home 3 https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/oregon.health.authority. covid.19/viz/OregonHealthAuthorityCOVID-19Data Dashboard/ COVID-19EPICases 4 https://www.pdx.edu/covid-19-response/dashboards 1

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THE PACIFIC SENTINEL

THE PACIFIC SENTINEL

by Dan Chilton Illustration by Mckinsey Carroll

OPINION

Notes from Behind the Bar Pulling Teeth

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“Ok… let ‘em in.”

Somebody moved to unlock the outside doors.

It was precisely 10:00 and I was standing next to the oven folding boxes as the bricks began to turn a hot white, almost to temp. As the doors were unlatched and swung open, a slow stream of curious tourists and tired locals flooded the lobby, filling up every conceivable space. The ones at the head of the torrent filed around to the front of the line where the new hire stood prepared to greet them, marker and order sheet in hand, presenting a plastic smile that displayed all too many teeth. The quiet before the storm was now replaced with the chattering of children accompanied by strung out adults and the collective sighs of half a dozen employees—overly caffeinated, hungover, and underpaid. It was another day working under the Space Needle.

I floated between folding boxes and manning the oven, the damp starch of my flour powdered jeans just beginning to crisp up next to its growing heat. The distance between Capitol Hill and the Seattle Center was noth-

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ing extraordinary yet in the eight months of constant rain and biting cold, it had certainly begun to feel that way. I told myself again that I should buy some proper rain gear but my bank account argued otherwise. The warmth of the pizza oven would have to do for now.

“Order’s up!”

The first of many pies for the day was slid across the table to me from the end of the line. Removing it from the mesh wire plate and sliding it into the oven, I used the metal spatula to shift it around in place, all too aware of the district manager hovering nearby with his clipboard and pen at the ready.

As another was placed on the table ready for me, I snatched it up and deftly tossed it in the oven next to the first. I was trying to look smooth for the corporate suit nearby, busy marking up all of my shortcomings in bright red ink to discuss in his next meeting with our store manager.

Two more on the table. I rotated the half cooked pies around to make room before

by Dan Chilton Illustrations by Aspen Crawford grabbing the newcomers and placing them carefully in the row. Taking a sip of my cheap coffee while I still had a chance, I winced at the electric pain that shot up from my molars as they were engulfed in hot liquid.

When this pain had first cropped up, dull and growing in intensity, I’d thought there was just a bit of food stuck between my teeth and had vigorously flossed until I was spitting globs of red. Yet with the pain failing to subside and with no health insurance nor any money for a dentist, I’d resorted to beer and weed—the anesthetics of poverty.

Yet another pie was placed on the table.

Placing it in the oven and rotating the others, I clenched my jaw to ease the pain shooting through my skull.

There are few things you need to master when working a pizza oven. The first is to understand heat distribution. Those white hot bricks in the center of the oven will burn your pies. Unless you want to deal with being accosted by an unsympathetic customer during

OPINION

a rush—the silent threats of management just behind them—you’ll usually want to avoid this section. The heat you want collects around the outside of this space where the bricks are that heated color white to black, clearly dividing the two spaces.

I was doing the tarried dance that cooks are known for. Grab a pie from the left, spin, put it in the open space of the oven, rotate, grab the last one or two that are ready to be served, spin, deposit them on the cutting table for someone else to deal with, spin, repeat, repeat, repeat.

The second: rotate your pies, constantly. In an industrial sized pizza oven, you can typically fit around a dozen personal pies, give or take a few. I like to work from left to right, but this will depend on you and your workspace. As the pies cook, always keep the most undercooked sides towards the center while never quite touching those white hot bricks. If you stay organized, you’ll know when to rotate and you’ll always be pulling one out and placing a new one in. Proper rotation means optimal usage and content management.

The aching between my molars then became unbearable. The pain, or maybe the caffeine or whisky last night, was building to a sharp headache.

The third and, to corporate, the most important thing to master is timing. Leave a pie in for a few seconds too long and it’s burnt; leave it in for not long enough and it’s doughy.

Either way, the customer and management is unhappy. This will vary from oven to oven, but as long as it’s up to temp, there should be a standard timing that you’ll eventually get down to a science. If not from your own ambition, then from corporate’s. For us, it was exactly eight minutes—480 seconds if you’re counting—this number likely decided on during one of their plush office meetings.

If you can master all three of these things, not to mention the exhaustion of working an oven during a rush, the constant blazing heat on your face and skin, the burn marks from the spatula that got too hot while you were moving too fast, standing on your feet for hours at a time in one place, then maybe management will offer you a raise. They didn’t for me, but hey, maybe your hard work could convince them where mine failed.

“Eighty-six Italian sausage!”

“Heard.”

“Spinach to the line!”

“I fuckin’ heard him the first time!”

The rush was now in full force and our welloiled minimum wage machine was chugging along with minimal hiccups. The oven was blazing hot and spitting out cooked pizzas at the precisely calculated time of eight minutes per pie.

I looked around in distress. My gaze was met with chaos: a packed line of hungry customers trailing off and around the corner of the store; all my coworkers frantically trying to keep up with an order count that was clearly meant for a much larger restaurant; the eyeballing of an inauspicious corporate manager who was looking forward to dealing out some write ups.

If I were to step away from the oven, someone would need to replace my position.

Seeing as we were constantly understaffed, this would throw a wrench into our machinery. So I did what I felt was being demanded of me, vocally or otherwise: I swallowed the bitter fragments of tooth that stained my tongue and got back to work.

“We’re closed, man.”

An older guy wearing a colorful Seattle Center shirt had wandered up to the half shuttered storefront, a toddler clutching his hand beside him. Despite the late hour, the metal shutter, and one of my coworkers out front mopping the floors, he somehow needed someone to explain to him that we were closed.

“What tooth?” I asked in return.

With a chuckle he fell silent, mouthing numbers between crooked and jagged teeth that slightly whistled as he spoke. Corporate was stringent about exact change counts down to the penny. Almost as if they knew that poor people steal out of desperation.

Without insurance and with no savings in my bank account, I wasn’t sure what I’d do, if anything. For now, the alcohol was slowly diluting the pain and after we were done closing up, I was hoping that the joint in my pocket would finish it off. Occasionally tonguing the teeth in question where sharp edges of bone bordered a hole previously occupied by a filling, I cursed myself for not being more on top of my dental health over the years and took another swig of the lukewarm beer, clearing the dregs.

I wondered how long it would be before an infection set in or another of my fillings popped out. If it would happen on the clock or in the comfort of our cluttered apartment, an apartment that cost most of my income despite being closet sized. Nobody I knew here could afford health insurance, let alone serious dental work. Many of my coworkers’ mouths were damaged beyond repair from too much drink, too much cheap food, and not enough toothpaste.

Here, my story was normalized.

“You want another beer, mate?”

I looked down at the glass in my hand, empty and sad, and again felt the throbbing pain of my exposed gum.

“Shit, yeah.”

With a look of confusion, he kept walking towards the other closing restaurants in the building.

“Some fuckin’ people, am I right?” asked my friend sitting across from me counting the day’s till.

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“And get some more spinach to the line.”

Between pies I placed the metal spatula in its holster and dug at the gum between the teeth. As I did something broke loose in my mouth—the bitter taste of amalgam on my tongue like a thousand dust particles.

looking up from the money laid out in front of him.

I took a sip of beer and washed it around the right side of my mouth, trying to dull the pain sprouting from the hole between my teeth, and mumbled something affirmative before placing my glass back on top of the fresh write up sheet with my name scribbled across it.

“How’s that tooth doing?” he asked, never

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OPINION

On Decapitated

The Perserverence of Rape Culture in Rock and Metal

by Dan Chilton Illustrations by Vivian Veidt

THE PACIFIC SENTINEL

Content Warning: This article includes details of sexual assault.

In September of 2017, all four members of the Polish death metal outfit Decapitated (Michał Łysejko, Wacław Kiełtyka, Rafał Piotrowski and Hubert Więcek) were arrested on charges of kidnapping and rape following a show they played in Spokane, Washington. The charges came from two women who were reportedly held against their will on the band’s tour bus after the show. One was able to escape. The other reported that she was then raped by all four members of the band in the bathroom of the bus—with police citing “significant bruising and abrasions on her arms that were consistent with being restrained.”

That October, while being held in the Los Angeles County Jail, they were all formally

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charged with rape. Awaiting their upcoming trial that was scheduled for that January, they left on bail of $100,000 each after spending a total of 96 days in jail. Come January 5, 2018, all charges against the band are dropped with the victim’s well being cited as the sole reason. Shortly after, Decapitated released a long winded letter expressing desire to “move forward” from this event and claimed complete innocence—even going so far as to call themselves victims of false accusations, saying that “[w]ords hurt. Words matter. Truth matters.”

Decapitated has since returned to the scene in full force. Touring all over the world with such acts as Napalm Death, High on Fire, Inferi, and Archspire, it seems that the community has been more than willing to look past the victim’s horror stories of sexual violence in the continual allowance of rape culture that has

long pervaded the rock and metal scenes since their inceptions.

One needn’t look far to find instances of this culture. Courtney Love’s reported sexual assaults at her own shows; The Scorpions’ pedophilic original artwork on their album flagrantly titled “Virgin Killer;” the countless reports of assault at both Woodstock events; the continued admiration for late womanizer, abuser, and pedophile GG Allin; Manowar’s Karl Logan’s recent arrest and guilty plea on possession of pornographic content of girls as young as four years old; the rape and murder of Mia Zapata (of The Gits) in 1993.

The list of transgressions goes on, with an untold number remaining unreported. Sexual assualt, pedophilia, murder, and other forms of violence against women, the queer and trans communities, and others, have long been an

OPINION

and religious officials, even past U.S. presidents such as George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump. All men who have gotten away with horrendous crimes due to how little value we place on the voices of victims in this society— especially non white, non male victims.

Women speaking out against these issues have also largely gone unheard, ignored, or vilified. For decades people like Dolly Parton, Courtney Love, Lauryn Hill, and Yoko Ono have spoken out against gendered violence within the industry. Yet bring up their names and you’ll often hear the common sentiments of vilification and fan conspiracies against them despite many of them being survivors of abusers who have gone on to become martyrs and legends.

It’s nothing new when I say that we need to listen to the voices of the women who have been speaking out against this allowance of rape culture within the rock and metal scenes for decades. As a lifelong member of the metal scene (especially here in the PNW), I’m profoundly disappointed by the continual ignorance being embraced. For a fringe community that touts such values as camaraderie, acceptance among the downtrodden, and critique of systemic power dynamics, there’s a serious disconnect between how this community perceives itself and how it actually is.

Until we disallow the presence of abusers in our community, as well as the arguments for their perceived innocence while condemning their victims, we will continually fail ourselves and all those around us.

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issue within the predominantly white and male centric rock and metal communities.

In the case of Decapitated, a band established in the metal scene since the mid 90s, during death metal’s heyday, there’s been a common sentiment among fans that the band itself are the victims—the women involved debased as liars stalking the wealth and attention of a relatively obscure death metal band. Many fans feel that the action of dropping all charges is enough evidence to suggest both the band’s total innocence and the woman’s total depravity.

Yet, there’s so much left to unpack beyond this simple dichotomy. Men often fail to comprehend the mental anguish and trauma affiliated with involving the law in a search for justice in sex crimes. Due to the law’s incredibly narrow definition of rape, placing the burden of proof on the complainant, and so many deeply rooted patriarchial cultural values that primarily serve to benefit wealthy white men, the insurmantable obstacles for victims of sex crimes often leave them without the justice that the law is supposedly there to provide.

What’s also often (and unsurprisingly) excluded from these echo chambers of fans assuring themselves that they aren’t supporting abusers is the public and private response that sexual assualt survivors often receive upon any sort of publicity: death threats, victim blaming, and shame from those closest to them as well as the general public. In what world would a woman put herself through what could only be a debilitating mental experience in order to gain what little this relatively obscure death metal band has to offer?

And what exactly do these people think she was after? Money? Attention? Some sort of sick fame?

The obvious answer to this situation is that the women involved were not simply liars seeking to exploit some B side death metal band.

Rather, the community at large has again chosen to side with the abuser rather than the victim, allowing rape culture to continue unabashed because men would rather listen to their favorite band without feeling the guilt intrinsic with their (in)actions than do the hard work of deconstructing these toxicly patriarchal values that we continue to uphold.

Powerful men throughout history have often been able to skirt responsibility for their (alleged) crimes, their fans doing the hard legwork for them and helping to destroy any hope for justice in the process. Chris Brown, Michael Jackson, James Franco, R. Kelly (until very recently), Pablo Picasso, countless priests

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ARTS & CULTURE

Tortillas A Mano, Tortillas Handmade Learning to make corn tortillas leads to unexpected discoveries.

THE PACIFIC SENTINEL

by Corry Hinckley Illustration by Mckinsey Carroll Packaged tortillas are ubiquitous in American society; only white bread is more popular, as bread products go. Occasionally, you can find them made in house at a Mexican restaurant, and it’s not uncommon to see local factory made tortillas nowadays. Most non Latin Americans, however, have never experienced a fresh corn tortilla. If you're lucky enough to have had the pleasure, you know how delicious this treat is. The first step for most people who want to try and make their own tortillas but don't have a tia who can show them the way, would most likely turn to Google, end up at Winco, buy a bag of Maseca and follow the instructions on the bag.

Without someone experienced to show you the way, these might not come out well. The directions on the bag are simple but imprecise.

“If dough feels dry,” as compared to what?!

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What is a tortilla press and where do people buy “thick plastic wrap?” Weird problems may arise like air bubbles that trap steam and leave undercooked and wet spots. The dough can stick everywhere – to the plastic, or to the pan.

They come out dry, burnt or mushy. Of course, this is a humbling result, and maybe it forces us to consider the complexities represented by ‘tortilla,’ to learn a little bit of her history.

Centuries of trial and error over two continents result in a nutritious, delicious, versatile bread that can be prepared with two ingredients: field corn and an alkalinity. Corn’s predecessor is teosinte (Zea perennis). It’s a little grasslike plant with a grain cluster about 1 inch long that grows in tiny hard casings. It is theorized that prehistoric Mesoamericans chewed on its grassy stalk while they walked and inadvertently spread its seed in their

travels. Then, beginning 9000 years ago, women on seasonal migrations experimented with collecting and planting certain seeds while men hunted, revisiting locations annually and continuing to select for desirable traits.

Humans throughout the planet use this boosted land race technique to increase palatability and nutritional availability. This has yielded all sorts of plants, but corn is unique in its remarkable transformation from a nearly inedible grass stalk into a starchy, sweet global staple.

Archeologists speculate that when ancient Amerindians heated chunks of locally abundant limestone in their fires and dropped them into pots of water and corn to cook it, the water alkalized in addition to boiling. This dissolved the hemicellulose in maize cell walls and made their food more nourishing. This process, called nixtamalization, can also be

ARTS & CULTURE

if you didn’t interact with the dirt that grew the corn, didn’t offer any prayers at planting, didn’t ask for permission to pick the ears of this ancient and societally foundational crop, would toss a burnt tortilla into the trash can without a second thought, well, you can benefit from searching, trying, failing, and reaching out for advice. These are the skills many of us have lost in our socially isolated lives. We’re taught to prioritize self reliance and we can be as selfish with our resources as we are greedy for direct answers.

As you tackle ‘tortillas,’ situate yourself in location. Find out for yourself which identities of class, gender, ethnicity, and location intertwine with personal memories and universal sensory experiences like digging in gardens, tasting salt, smelling dough become bread, or listening to see if water is boiling.

Notice whose expertise you’re drawn to. If you seek knowledge that never got passed to, contemplating the reasons why it wasn’t. Follow instructions and your own intuition to try something you don’t know how to do. Notice the way this type of engagement feels in your body. And then feed that body lots and lots of tortillas.

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produced by adding hardwood ash to cooking water, as was the custom in North America.

Powdered calcium hydroxide, called “slaked lime” in English or “cal” in Spanish, is the widely available product we use to nixtamalize corn today.

Masa harina is used by most home tortilla makers. These words literally translate to “dough flour” in Spanish. It’s made by drying ground corn that’s been pre-cooked with lime. There are lots of options online. Maseca is a popular brand that’s easy to find at a grocery store.

Bob’s Red Mill’s Masa Harina is a little more expensive and not as commonly stocked, but it’s fresh, local and arguably more delicious. Any masa harina will yield a stack of tasty tortillas in under an hour: just add hot water, allow the dough to hydrate for about 30 min, and cook on an ungreased, hot griddle. Alternatively, Three Sisters Nixtamal (co-owned by PSU’s very own faculty Pedro Ferbel-Azcárate) sells fresh ground nixtamalized corn dough and tortillas, no mixing or waiting required. Whether you mix it up from a bag of masa harina or buy it fresh from Three Sisters, a few pounds of masa in your fridge will keep you supplied with mouthwatering tortillas all week. Too busy to cook? Tortillería y Tienda de Leon’s on the Eastside and Sanchez Taquería y Panadería in Tigard are a couple of many establishments in the Portland area offering house made tortillas.

With all these options to satisfy your fresh tortilla cravings, there is no need to go any further down the tortilla rabbit hole, but some of us just can’t resist. If that’s you, and you‘re looking to buy dry field corn, a grain mill, and a bag of cal, heads up, you might be about to appraise your claims to Amerindian food science.

Your journey began on Google rather than in Grandma’s kitchen, accessing lots of free content created by people of Indigenous heritage, or based on their knowledge. The same European cultural standards and processes of colonization that influence relationships in the United States are ubiquitous throughout the Americas. Whether our touchstones are Hernán Cortez or Andrew Jackson, a pale complexion situates White people on the advantageous side of various American genocidal legacies.

This fact raises unique questions for each of us, but our intimate, philosophical, and historical relationships to culture on this piece of the planet are necessarily at play when we put our hands on ancient indigenous corn cakes.

The process of learning how to make tortillas will help you answer these questions. Because

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ARTS & CULTURE

Batsquatch!

A Brief History of a Local Cryptid

THE PACIFIC SENTINEL

by Jesse Ropers Illustration by Astrid Luong

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ARTS & CULTURE

vehicle’s hood. Canfield described the creature as standing nine feet tall, with a bat’s face and wings attached to a blue furred humanoid body. He noted the large fangs in the creature’s mouth and glowing red eyes. Here is what Canfield reported in an interview with The News Tribune in Tacoma, WA in 1994: “It was standing there staring at me, like it was resting, like it didn’t know what to think.

I was scared, it raised the hair on me. I didn’t feel threatened. I just felt out of place. It’s looking right at me like in a deep stare, like right through me. It’s standing perfectly still.

It stood for—how long?—a few minutes.

Several minutes. Then its fingers twitched and its wings began to unfold. Those wings were as wide as the road. It turned its head and looked back at me and started flapping its wings. A few minutes later the truck just started. I took off as fast as I could.”

CR Roberts of The News Tribune interviewed Brain Canfield on his experiences with the creature, and would later publish an article detailing his story. Using Canfields description Roberts would be the first to dub the sighted monstrosity “Batsquatch,” due to the combination of bat features with the already popular legend of Sasquatch. Canfield’s account would spread the story across the Pacific Northwest. Afterwards, more locals would step forward with their own sightings of Batsquatch, including local liquor store own Butch Whittaker. Whittaker claimed to have seen Batsquatch during a midday flight in his personal plane over the area Canfield had been driving. According to him, Batsquatch had flown beside him for several minutes, before turning and disappearing from view.

After 1994 sightings of Batsquatch slowed as the article that propelled the story into the public consciousness faded from memory.

Despite this, more stories have emerged in the years since. In 1998, an anonymous trucker hauling logs in northern Oregon claimed to have hit Batsquatch. The trucker contrasted Canfield’s original account by describing the creature as fifteen feet tall, with purple nose and eyes and tiny wings. In 2009, a group of hikers were making their way up Mt. Shasta when they reported seeing a flying humanoid creature with batlike features. They described what they saw as a man “stocky as Hulk Hogan, with leathery wings fifty feet from one end to the other and the face of a bat.”

Despite the conflicting details, both accounts have been added to the legend of Batsquatch as additional proof.

Batsquatch fits into a wider trend of winged

legends when examined alongside other stories found around the world. Mothman and the Jersey Devil are two more famous flying cryptids found here in the US. More batlike parallels can be seen in legends like Indonesia’s Orange Bati and New Guinea’s Ahool. The reason for these worldwide similarities in tales are unknown. Perhaps it’s due to a subterranean race of flying ape creatures lurking in primordial slumber until natural disasters knock them loose to fly through the night once more. Or, far more realistically there is some innate fear of monsters coming from the sky derived from predator birds. Either way, it’s fun to think of a bizarre, winged bat creature flying above the treetops like something out of a horror story.

Today, the tale of Batsquatch lives on in several venues. Fringe sections of the Internet still carefully catalog every whisper of flying monsters found in the Pacific Northwest, while dedicated cryptozoologists continue their theory crafting. More mainstream appearances of the creature can be found in Rogue Brewery’s IPA by the same name. On their website, they claim that they chose the name because “all stories of Batsquatch are a bit hazy on the details, so what better than to honor the legend with a hazy IPA?”. The most notable spotlight since the original 1994 article was found in the show “Monsters of America,” in which the hosts dissected the mystery.

Other than that, the story of Batsquatch crops up every now and again in local papers and magazines. He may not ever reach the acclaim of Bigfoot, but Batsquatch will always bring a special magic to the Pacific Northwest like none other.

THE PACIFIC SENTINEL

For many years now Bigfoot has been a staple of Pacific Northwest iconography. His furry face can be found on everything from cheaply printed t-shirts to keychains and magnets in countless gift shops throughout Oregon. However, Sasquatch is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to legends that make the Portland region what it is today. One of the more memorable and unique tales from the leftover cryptids is the winged horror dubbed the Batsquatch. In order to understand the origins of Batsquatch, we must go back several decades to an event that shook a generation.

At 12:37 on March 27 1980, the top of Mount Saint Helens exploded. A phreatic eruption sent a 10,000 foot plume of ash into the air, scattering debris as far as Bend to the south and Spokane to the north. March 27 would prove to be the dramatic beginning to a string of activity from St. Helens. Earthquakes, further eruptions, and lightning storms raged throughout the area for months. All these events culminated on May 18, when a magnitude 5.1 earthquake triggered part of the volcano into the largest landslide in recorded history. An avalanche of rock moving at 115 miles per hour poured over the land, covering some regions in 600 feet of stone. The corresponding eruption column rose 80,000 feet into the air, burying the surrounding area in 2-5 inches of ash. This time particles traveled far further, with half an inch of ash spreading across an area from North Mexico to Minnesota.

The 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens was the most destructive volcanic activity in the continental US since 1915. Fifty Seven people were killed, with hundreds left displaced and untold more left forever changed from the events. In this bed of trauma, with ash clouds still drifting through the air, stories began to emerge of a strange winged beast seen flying around the eruption site. Witnesses described an apelike body with large, leathery wings and a pair of glowing red eyes. Despite an abundance of sightings, there were no concrete encounters with the beast. Fourteen years would pass before the first close encounter was reported.

In April of 1994 Brian Canfield was driving home one night through the backwoods of Pierce County, Washington. He was miles from civilization when suddenly his car froze in place. Canfield tried to start the engine several times, but the old pickup refused to come to life.

He was on the verge of getting out to take a closer look when something swooped across his headlights. At first, he assumed it must have been some large bird. His hand was on the door handle when the monster landed on the

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ARTS & CULTURE

PSU Student Feature:

Claire Miles

by Cicely Blackwell

Claire Miles is the star of this month’s Portland State University student feature. Claire was raised in Portland, getting her start in photography here in the city before taking her passion on volunteer trips. Now she’s an avid travel photographer, as well as a fashion photographer. From speaking with her I found that she has a unique perspective on finding her own artistic roots, and that she has ambitious plans to foster growth within her art community.

CM: My name is Claire Miles and I’m a new student. I actually just transferred, this is my first term. I came from U of O. I just wanted to be in Portland, so I thought I’d come to this school instead.

who like to model, and I have a lot of friends who model.

CB: What kind of photography do you do?

CM: Yeah! So the difference between digital and film is that on the digital you have a screen and you can pull up the photos right away.

It takes them and you see it kind of like on your cell phone. Then with the film photos it processes on the film as a negative and then you’ve got to do the whole chemical process to bring it into a photo. It’s not just an automatic computerized motion. And I usually shoot on 35mm film, which is just the standard most people shoot on.

So I started with digital. Film is really really new for me but I’m completely smitten. I’m in love with it. But, I started with digital. I started pretty early. I think that I took my first class on photography when I was nine or ten. It was just a little class at a local university offered for kids over the summer. It was just an intro to digital photography. We didn’t really go out and do anything. You took pictures and then brought it into class and talked about it. Then when I was probably twelve or thirteen I took a class where we did go on field trips and take pictures. That was just so much fun. I met a whole bunch of people who also loved to do this thing. And it was just a really good way to network. Then I started doing it myself. My uncle would lend

CM: I dabble. I definitely do a variety of kinds.

I started out with a lot of nature. So I love that, that’s kind of where my base is. That’s where I started and it’s one of my favorite things to do.

But recently I’ve gotten into more human subject photography and photographing people, and that’s always interesting because you really get to see someone’s personality come through.

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CB: What inspired you to move towards photographing people?

CM: I did one of my friends’ senior photos and that was really fun. We all drove out to the beach and took his pictures. I’m really into fashion and I’ve been getting into fashion photography, and that’s super fun.

CB: Tell me about your fashion photography?

CM: I like styling too. So you put together an outfit and a set to go with it. Get a whole scheme going. Then you do photography, and that’s also a place you can do more interesting poses. So, it’s also more interesting for people

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CB: Could you give me an intro on digital and film photography?

me his camera, and I’d go around and take pictures of stuff. Then over the summer my mom and I would take road trips. So we love, I don’t know if you’ve seen the documentary, the docuseries Wild Wild Country?

CB: No I have not.

CM: It’s about the Rajneesh cult. That was a cult here in Oregon. So, one summer we decided to drive out to see the cult, like where it was, because it’s in Oregon. So we drove out.

It was supposed to be near the Oregon desert.

There were rusty old trucks, and broken down houses. It was just such a cool place, and it totally sparked my heart again. Then I started just to take pictures of everything. I started traveling and doing travel photography. I went to Peru when I was eighteen and got to see Machu Picchu. Taking pictures there was just incredible. When I was nineteen I went to Fiji, and at that point I had my own camera and I got to take all of these beautiful pictures of this beautiful tropical land. I met this girl there, she’s now a friend of mine, and she had a film camera. She was taking all of these pictures and I was just like “Oh, that’s so cool!” And she was actually from Utah. So, in December 2019 she came to visit me and we drove out to the Oregon coast and we spent a few days hanging out and catching up. She was showing me all the photos from Fiji, these film photos, and I was just like, “This is incredible. I wanna do this.” So I asked my mom, she had this old film camera, and I asked her, you know, “Could I borrow that? Are you gonna use it anymore?”

And she’s like, “No, you can just have it!” So, then we went on a family trip to San Francisco in January to visit with my mother’s godparents and my grandmother’s best friends, since one of them she’s known since she was thirteen and she’s now eighty-five. So [Claire laughs] long friendship! So we went to see them, ‘cause they were on a cruise. They like to cruise. They’re British, so we never get to see them because they live all the way across the pond. So, we met them there and I brought the film camera and I had some film and I started taking pictures.

Then everything shut down. So, I haven’t really

ARTS & CULTURE gotten to work with film as much as I wanted to but hopefully that’s gonna take off soon.

And I really wanna include that in my more human subject based photography. Because I think that’s something that doesn’t get done as much anymore.

CB: Include what in your human based subject photography?

CM: Shooting with film. There’s a lot of portrait photography and a lot of fashion photography happens digitally because it’s, you know, easier to edit and photoshop and advertise with.

So, I think it’s really kind of an art that’s been lost like portrait photography on film. I have an art minor, and I’m hoping to take a darkroom class at PSU. Because I really wanna to learn how to produce my own photos.

CB: What kind of camera do you use?

CM: I got my own for myself for my high school graduation. I took it to Peru and started doing all that. It’s a Nikon. I think it’s a 34 100.

It’s just a pretty common one. But it’s really nice and light. So it’s portable, and I got it refurbished with this whole kit, so it all came together. I haven’t used the tripod much but I do really wanna learn how to use those more because I think that would really enable me to do some more long exposure, and stuff like that.

CB: What’s the style you lean towards when you do photography?

CM: Well, since I do so many different kinds I don’t really have like one style that I like to do.

But I do often find myself drawn to black and white photography. It’s definitely one of my favorites, and it’s super simple and it just makes everything really tonal and poignant.

CB: Do you keep that in mind when you’re doing other types of photography?

CB: What are some of the most memorable photography sessions or photographs that

CM: I would say definitely Fiji was a big one for me. Because Fiji, . . So it started in Peru where I was signed up to do volunteering with animals. It was this sanctuary zoo. I didn’t end up staying there because I didn’t feel like it was really much of a sanctuary. It felt more like a zoo. So I was like, “I’m stuck in Peru for another five weeks, and I’ve paid for all this time to volunteer. So I’ve got to find something to do.”

So I said, “Why don’t I do something out of my comfort zone?” And I chose to do construction.

It really opened my eyes up and I learned a whole bunch of new skills. I got to work with my hands and that was really amazing. I took some pictures there and it was really fun, just to see a community come together. That was really special. But it wasn’t so much artistic, you know? It was really more of just memorable photography. We were working on a preschool, and because it was the only preschool they had while we were doing this super janky unsafe construction, ‘cause none of us were trained professionals, we’re all just volunteers, so we’re like, slabbing together bricks to make a wall to the best of our ability while there’s three and two year olds running around under us. And we just have to hope we don’t drop a brick on them. It’s just super unsafe. But, you know, it’s the best that we could do. And they could do. I wasn’t really a kid person, I was just like, “They’re kind of sticky and messy and clingy.”

But when I saw those kids they were just so cute and just making the best of it and never complaining. It just opened my heart. So the next summer when I decided to do a volunteer trip I decided to go to Fiji and volunteer with kindergarteners. And I did. I have all these photographs of these children and all their bright colors and their big smiles and it’s just so beautiful. I’m really proud of those photos.

I loved those kids, and it just makes it so much more emotional.

CB: What did the kids think about the photos? Did you give them the photos?

CM: Oh yeah! They loved it! They got to take some photos, I have some photos that they’ve taken of people’s feet and their eyes and of rocks and stuff. ‘Cause Chloe [Claire’s friend from Utah] was there too. She had a camera too, so we’d give them our cameras and just let them run around. But yeah, it was a ton of fun.

CB: Have you continued your photography while you’ve been at PSU? CM: Yeah I have. Recently I’ve been getting back into walking. I used to be this big avid walker. I’d walk around my neighborhood all the time, like two times a week. I’ve recently gotten back into it, and I’ve decided that while

I walk I’m gonna start taking photographs, because, you know, that’s one way to really get to know my neighborhood well. Is to photograph it, to see all these things from this time in my life just laid out there. So, I started to do that and I’m doing it on film, so I don’t have them developed yet. But I’m working on a roll right now, so, probably soon.

CB: How do you find your motivation for the photographs that you take? Where do you start?

CM: I take really subject based photos. I’m not the kind of person who’s like, “I’ll just take a photo of whatever, and I’ll see if I can make it into something.” I’m someone who really likes to take pictures of something as it is and make it special. I’m a super philosophical person.

I like to think about life’s big questions and stuff like that. One of the things that I believe is that reality is fleeting, and instantaneous. The second we start to process what’s happened, it’s subjective and the reality’s gone. I think that photographing things and taking pictures of things is really this magical way of capturing reality. You know like, if I have a picture of a flower that bloomed in the spring no one can tell me that flower didn’t bloom. I know it did, I have this photo of it. I think that that’s always what motivates me. Just seeing the reality of something as it is and being able to capture that and say that, “This was happening as this, at this time.” I think that it’s important to have philosophy and everything in your life. Because if you don’t have that then I feel like life tends to be a little shallow and hollow.

CB: Can you tell me about any inspirations or influences you have from other artists?

CM: Yeah, I have a lot of friends who do photography and that’s usually how I get my inspiration. That’s how I started doing film, and that’s how I started doing portrait photography and fashion photography. Someone’ll be like, “I’m doing this thing! What are you doing?” And I’m like, “Yeah I’ll try that out with you!” Or they have these things that they do and I’m like, “Wow can you teach me how to do that?” I’d say that peer support is number one for me. I just think it’s important to learn from your community and then give back to the community. I think that nowadays with social media, marketing, and branding everybody’s trying to set themselves aside and, you know, everything’s a competition and everybody wants to be the best and recognized for what they do. That’s just not realistic. It’s not rewarding, and it’s so much better to just have a small community of art and appreciate one another’s art and, you know, who says that art needs an audience? Does that even ruin the art if it’s performative? Why not make art for

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THE PACIFIC SENTINEL

CM: Yeah, I do. For a little while I worked with some friends who have a little photo studio setup, and we took some pictures of some people. With that one, having a nice neutral backdrop I was able to just take pictures and have it automatically put to black and white.

With portrait photography, I really like to be playing with shadows, stuff like that. It just makes it dynamic and it’s always more crisp and clean in black and white because, you know, we were a start up thing. It was kind of a pinkish gray background, and the lights were a little warm, so it wasn’t always super crisp if you put it in color. But black and white just made it look perfect. And it always does.

you’ve taken from your travels?

ARTS & CULTURE

yourself and for your community? I think that’s one of the best ways to learn, because if you just keep growing together the sky’s the limit, you know? There’s no stop to growing when growth is communal. But when you grow out of a community, you’re growing alone, and you’re not gonna grow as far.

CB: Just curious then, have you ever gone to photography galleries, or events? What has that experience been like if you have?

CM: Yeah, I’d say one gallery that really shifted my views on photography was right after I got home from Peru. It was probably three or four weeks into the term. The craziest thing happened when I was in Peru, where when I was doing construction I met this guy, and he was like, “Where are you from?” I’m like, “I’m from Oregon, gonna go to U of O.” He’s like, “Oh, there’s another kid here who goes to U of O!” And he introduced me to this guy, Will, and he grew up like fifteen minutes away from the school that I went to, and he knew a whole bunch of people that I knew, and we met each other in Peru! Then we both got back to U of O and we hung out a few times and he told me, you know I was new to campus, and he was a sophomore, and he was like, “There’s an exhibit at the museum.” It was a Cusco photography, which was the town we were in. Cusco, Peru.

It was these really beautiful photographs of Cusco throughout the decades. There were some really old ones and then there were some more recent ones. They were just really beautiful, and I had photos that looked just like those, you know, it was crazy! I had photos that looked just like the ones from 1928! It was this beautiful historic moment when I realized that I was a part of this, and then I was like, “I can make photos like these, and capture these moments and these communities and these cultures.” It was just this really poignant moment in my life when I realized that photography told such a story.

THE PACIFIC SENTINEL

CB: You mentioned a class you took when you were young, have you ever taken any other photography lessons?

CM: I actually haven’t gotten the chance to since, because I study sociology and doing that means that I don’t attend an art school.

So, without attending an art school I can only minor in general art studies. I really wanted to have specifically a photography minor but that’s not an option, so I’ve had to do the general art one. You have to get through all the prerequisites before you can start choosing what classes you’re gonna take. So there are photography classes for me to take, but I haven’t been able to access them yet. I just have to take one or two more classes I think, and then I should be

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able to go. But, once I do, I definitely want to take all the classes I can on film photography because I think that’s really a skill that deepens your relationship to photography, you know?

There’s just such a disconnect for me, as a photographer, to take a picture and click a button and just be like, “That was my art. Did it. Did my art.” A lot of people do that and then they do editing. They do hours of grueling ruthless editing and it’s a beautiful work of art.

But, I’m just not an editor. That’s just not my art. So I’m looking for something that I can really put some blood, sweat, and tears into. I think film photography is gonna be that thing, you know. It takes hours in the darkroom and sometimes you just totally fuck it up and lose a whole picture, and it’s just about the struggle.

I think that, nowadays, art has become really easy. And a lot of that is good. A lot of it saves time. A lot of artists are really really pressed on time. I think that’s a really magical thing.

I’m someone who has a lot of free time, and I wanna work for my art. And I wanna put in the effort and I want it to be a ‘work’ of art, and not just an art I ‘did’.

CB: Do you have any future projects in the works?

CM: Yeah, I do. I have a couple of things.

Right now, something I’m really trying to get together is a True Love collection about queer love. Because I think that it’s really kind of ridiculous that it’s 2021 and there’s still people who believe that queer people shouldn’t be able to have a family and raise a child. That’s just crazy! As you know, I’m someone who likes to think about the deeper meanings of things and back in ancient Greece there were queer couples. Same-sex couples were welcomed. It wasn’t perfect. There were these things called symposiums, women weren’t allowed, but men were. What would happen really was these older men who were philosophers, mathematicians, artists, and astronomers would come together.

They would bring their younger boyfriends to the symposium, and they would all drink and discuss life and art and deepen the profound connection that they had. The growth that they could make as a community, and the things that the ancient communities accomplished are myriad and incredible and we just don’t accomplish things at that same rate anymore.

One of the things that they really believed was that couples who were opposite-sex, and who had children, contributed people to the world.

They made human beings. But they considered that queer couples and same-sex couples that were together actually made contributions to society, and they really did. We have math sequences that are from ancient Greece that just haven’t been disproven and can’t be. There

are statues that still stand in perfect form.

These people were able to put their love and energy into other things and make that into something and I think that nowadays we have a very family centered world where everybody wants to have a kid. I think that’s great for a lot of people, and I definitely do want to be a parent at some point. I think that we need to come back to our roots of growing as a couple with love, and making something together. Because so many people, artists, find each other. But they never combine their art because they don’t wanna get into a fight or something, and I think that it’s so important to do that. I really want to celebrate that. I wanna celebrate queer couples and queer love because I think that they can make something so amazing. ‘Cause they’re such incredible, powerful people.

CB: You talked about collaborating on art, could you elaborate?

CM: Yeah, I mean there’s definitely the ‘opposites attract’ idea but I think more often than not artists find each other. They’re just like, wild souls. They seek each other out. I know a lot of couples who are both artists and are both creatives; are cerebrals. I just think that, when they can come together and make something together you just make something so much more powerful because there’s so much love there. It’s a result of that love. It’s a labor of the love. It’s like a child, you know, it is.

It’s a team effort, and it’s just so much more powerful to have a collaboration. Not that one person can’t create something incredible, because they can and they do all the time, but it’s just, learning to compromise. Art is something where you really don’t think you should compromise because it’s totally yours and it’s an expression, but it’s also a representation of life, and if you’re in a relationship where you cohabitate or you co-parent or whatever you do, you know, you’ve gotta be able to come together and learn how to compromise. I think art is a really good way to do that. Because as much as it is an expression, as much as I think it’s incredibly important to the world, it’s low stakes when you’re making art, you know, to compromise. Like if you want to put a flower on the painting and your partner doesn’t agree it’s low stakes. It’s not like, “Should we send our kid to public school or private school?” It’s a way to learn to see to your partner and to let them have something, and to learn when to fight for what you want in a relationship.

CB: Have you collaborated on pieces with other people?

CM: I have collaborated with friends. I definitely struggle to compromise, and it’s

ARTS & CULTURE

something that I’m still learning all the time.

I have things coming up that I want to work with my friends on and I’m going to try to learn to compromise because you really can’t get anywhere alone. It’s honestly insane to think that you can. ‘Cause, one, I have to be able to work with people. Even if I wanted to be, you know, a megastar author on my own who goes on book tours or something. I need a team. You need someone to plan your schedule.

You need someone to be your publisher, or you need someone to be in charge. You can’t get anywhere alone in this world. So it’s so much smarter, and especially for creatives, because the creative world has become so big and intricate that there’s so many nuances, there’s no way. Like one thing that I’m looking into right now with a friend is starting up a little magazine. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Like, I love photography, but I don’t know anything about making a magazine.

There’s such a huge gap there that I need someone to bridge with me. I found people and it’s great and we’re hopefully gonna put it together, but it’s just about finding the right pieces of the puzzle. I don’t know, I just think that art together is something that the world needs more of too.

CB: Will your photography be featured in your magazine?

CM: Yeah, I’m hoping to do a lot of the artistic styling. It would hopefully be a fashion magazine. Then the photography is just a cherry on top of getting to see how I want it to be portrayed, and see the message that you wanna send with it, and actually being the one taking the photos.

CB: Where can people find your work?

CB: Have you ever taken a photo that really left an impact on you?

CM: I definitely have had a couple, there are some that just stick with you. I have one that I took on that ghost town road trip where it’s a rusty mini windmill. It’s in motion. For some reason I always remember that one. It’s been just something that I look back on, and I’m like, “Is this photo as good as this photo though?” You know? Then when I was doing the portrait photography there are some that are some really good ones where I’m proud of how the model was able to play with shadows and they were able to really capture that mood.

Some of those I’m really proud of, and some of the film ones, just because I think it’s really impossible to screw up a film photo. It’s just, they’re just beautiful. So, some of those I do really love. There’s one with boats and the harbor that for some reason has just always really captured me.

CB: I was wondering, how do you approach working with a model?

CM: It definitely depends on the photo. If I’m doing a photoshoot for the model it’ll be all about what they want, and I’ll just give input.

But if I’m doing it for me, or as a collaboration, I think also it depends on how much experience they have. Like I have a friend who I’ve shot with several times and she’s an experienced model and I can just let her go, you know, and she’ll just do amazing-like things. Then with people who haven’t done it as much I’d say the only thing is people forget to change their face a lot. You know, you get so caught up in the poses and you just want to make sure your face looks good, but it’s so much more interesting if you’ll change up your face, and people who do that really get the good photos, because that’s when you get the emotion coming through and the story being told.

CB: Thank you again, so much! Thank you for speaking with me about your art, Claire.

I look forward to seeing your future projects!

You can find Claire Miles’ photography on Instagram @byandof.

THE PACIFIC SENTINEL

CM: Right now I’m going to change the name, because when I started it I was doing modeling and photography and I’ve since just moved into photography. So right now the name is Byandof, that’s my Instagram page. It’s been inactive for a little while because I’m getting things together right now, and with the pandemic it’s just been not very safe to do a lot of the human photography, but yeah. I’m putting it together, and that’s where you can find a lot of my work.

I’m going to be uploading hopefully more of my film photography and urban landscapes.

is gorgeous. Cathedral Park is just astonishing.

It’s a great subject.

CB: Where have you taken some of your favorite urban landscapes?

CM: I’ve done a lot in Portland, because it’s where I’ve lived for my entire life, and I just think it’s a beautiful city, you know? Even when you’re in deep industrial Portland we’ve got beautiful graffiti, beautiful train tracks, and just cool brick. We’ve got great parks, Forest Park

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ARTS & CULTURE

rare space for local portland hip hop artists held by black bulb magazine

THE PACIFIC SENTINEL

by Daniel Bloomfield Illustration by Astrid Luong On Friday December 3rd 2021, Black Bulb Magazine held Mega Fest at Alberta Street Pub, which provided a rare space for local Portland hip hop artists to perform for their fans. Five local Portland hip hop artists— Andy Breshears, Eso.XO.Supreme, Fountaine, Samuelthe1st, and YoungShirtmayne—and one electronic music duo—Pleasure Curses— were featured, reinvigorating the hearts and minds of all those attending both in the crowd and on the stage. Mega Fest offered a place for artists to perform after many months of not being able to play live during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. It carved out a space for a typically underserved community of Portland musicians and fans; the local hip-hop scene.

Mega Fest was the brainchild of Alex Moan, co-founder of Black Bulb Magazine and Studios. The idea came about during an interview with musician and owner of Alberta Street Pub, Redray Frazier after recording a musical session, something that Black Bulb started doing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which required new and strategic ways to connect the public with local musical artists safely. “We initially were doing hip-hop sessions because we didn’t have the equipment to do full bands and wanted to capture music.”

This led to a newly realized appreciation for the city’s hip-hop scene. When Ray, an acoustic soul musician, came on the show, they discussed putting on a live concert at his venue to showcase some of the artists who’d been featured on the Black Bulb sessions.

“That was kind of the idea behind Mega Fest, to get people together [and] share music [with] people who might not be listening to [hip hop] that much.” After confronting many

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challenges and setbacks related to the pandemic, the concert finally took place with safety protocols in place like checking vaccine cards at the door, “We had to do the concert a month after we set to make it happen because more restrictions were happening and we wanted to be safe.” Alex and another cofounder of Black Bulb, Joe Dimeo, also wanted to make sure that sponsors had an opportunity to be part of Mega Fest. Their intention was to have all the money from beer and liquor sales to go back to the artists, “We wanted to pay the artists at the end of the day.”

The show went off without a hitch and reinvigorated the creative energy and drive of the performers and stoked the flames of the hearts and minds of the fans of the local Portland hip-hop scene. One artist, Andy Breshears said that performing at Mega Fest, “Gave [him] more fuel to keep going and reminded me that I am on the right path with my music.” Andy, along with his twin brother, make up the Portland based hip-hop duo The Xamples. Andy said that he believes that, “Portland music is a hidden melting pot consisting of great talent of all genres,” and in particular, “the rap scene is heating up.” However, it hasn’t always been that way.

According to Google analytics, hip hop is among the least searched genres of music in Portland, and that there are very few venues that cater to the growing, yet still niche, hiphop scene.

Alex Moan, having grown up in the Portland area, has witnessed the changing landscape of the city’s music scene and noticed that there has been a shift from a focus on band-oriented musical groups to solo artists. He theorizes that

“It’s hard for bands to stay together because there’s so much input coming from so many different angles,” but though this phenomenon has given rise to solo artists, it’s more so in the arena of electronic music than hip hop and rap.

He hopes that Black Bulb can continue to play a role in exposing more Portlanders to local hip hop artists by recording more musical sessions and interviews, “We’re trying to plan a series where we bring in beatmakers specifically to show off how they construct their beat.”

Mega Fest created a buzz in the hip hop community. They hope to secure a consistent venue in which to hold more live events, so they can cater to local fans of every music scene and heighten the level of exposure of the growing hip hop scene. Though the pandemic has put a strain on people’s ability to see their favorite local musicians live, Andy Breshears remains optimistic, “People are more open now than ever to having music be a part of the city.

It’s as simple as that. Covid may have slowed things down, but the live music scene will be thriving in no time.”

Black Bulb Creative is Alex Moan, Joe Dimeo, Joe Criscola, Ben Ferguson, and Dakota Theim.

You can follow Black Bulb Magazine and the artists mentioned in this article on Instagram: @blackbulbmagazine @andybreshears @esoxosupreme @itsfountainebro @pleasurecurses @redrayfrazier @samuelthe1st @youngshirtmayne

Illustrations by Camden Benesh

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