41 01 willamette week, november 5, 2014

NEWS IGNORING AIRBNB RULES. OUTDOORS FIRST ASCENTS IN ALASKA. MUSIC BEST NEW BAND 1974, PLEASURE. P. 7

P. 45

“WE’RE ALL POLITICIANS, WE’RE ALL LOBBYISTS—DEAL WITH IT.” P. 53 WWEEK.COM

VOL 41/01 11.05.2014

P. 51

WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY

MOMENTS THAT MADE PORTLAND. PAGE 10

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

JEFF DREW

FINDINGS

PAGE 66

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 41, ISSUE 1.

Hefty fines did not change the color of MICHAEL JORDAN’S SHOES , but they did help keep Nike in business. 18 Wieden+Kennedy’s most important advertisement was great for the agency but not THE POOR BASTARDS TRYING TO SELL SCOOTERS . 20 Vera Katz’s plywood flood wall probably would not have kept THE SWOLLEN WILLAMETTE FROM SUBMERGING DOWNTOWN ,

but it did make her a very popular mayor. 27

A 1999 DVD did more for PORTLAND’S LITERARY SCENE

than any book. 30

This paper’s editor apparently answered to “Z MAN” back in 1992. So it is again. 43 If you want to be THE FIRST PERSON TO CLIMB A

PARTICULAR MOUNTAIN, you

should probably go to Alaska. 45

Strokes singer Julian Casablancas is THE LAST CRUST PUNK READY TO OCCUPY WALL STREET. Haters gonna

hate—our music editor included. 54

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK: There are wolves again in Eastern Oregon.

Folks there are mighty agitated about this.

Speaking of this paper’s critics: They HATED STAR WARS but loved Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. 66

STAFF Editor-in-Chief Mark Zusman EDITORIAL Managing Editor for News Brent Walth Arts & Culture Editor Martin Cizmar Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Aaron Mesh, Beth Slovic Copy Chief Rob Fernas Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, James Yu Stage & Screen Editor Rebecca Jacobson Web & Projects Editor Matthew Korfhage Music Editor Matthew Singer Books Penelope Bass Dance Kaitie Todd

Visual Arts Richard Speer Editorial Interns Gabriella Dunn, Shannon Gormley, James Helmsworth, Miller Resor, Dakota Smith CONTRIBUTORS Nathan Carson, Rachel Graham Cody, Pete Cottell, Jordan Green, Jay Horton, AP Kryza, John Locanthi, Grace Stainback, Mark Stock PRODUCTION Production Manager Dylan Serkin Art Director Kathleen Marie Graphic Designers Mitch Lillie, Xel Moore Production Intern Daniel Cole

Our mission: Provide Portlanders with an independent and irreverent understanding of how their worlds work so they can make a difference.

Willamette Week is published weekly by

Though Willamette Week is free, please take just one copy. Anyone removing papers in bulk from our distribution points will be prosecuted, as they say, to the full extent of the law.

Main line phone: (503) 243-2122 fax: (503) 243-1115

City of Roses Newspaper Company 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210.

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ADVERTISING Director of Advertising Scott Wagner Display Account Executives Maria Boyer, Michael Donhowe, Kevin Friedman, Bruce Greif, Rich Hunter, Kyle Owens, Matt Plambeck, Sharri Miller Regan Classifieds Account Executive Matt Plambeck Advertising Coordinator Iris Meyers Marketing & Events Manager Steph Barnhart Give!Guide Director Nick Johnson Special Assistant for Promotions and Give!Guide Sam Cusumano DISTRIBUTION Circulation Director Mark Kirchmeier

WWEEK.COM Digital Director Ben Kubany Web Production Brian Panganiban MUSICFESTNW Executive Director Matthew McLean Associate Director Matt Manza OPERATIONS Accounting Manager Chris Petryszak Credit & Collections Shawn Wolf Office Manager/Receptionist Sam Cusumano A/R Credit Assistant Ashley Grether Associate Publisher Jane Smith Publisher Richard H. Meeker

Willamette Week welcomes freelance submissions. Send material to either News Editor or Arts Editor. Manuscripts will be returned if you include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. To be considered for calendar listings, notice of events must be received in writing by noon Wednesday, two weeks before publication. Send to Calendar Editor. Photographs should be clearly labeled and will be returned if accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Questions concerning circulation or subscription inquiries should be directed to Mark Kirchmeier at Willamette Week.

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

3

INBOX WOLVES IN OREGON

Thanks for your piece on wolves and the brave Rob Klavins in Wallowa County [“The Howling,” WW, Oct. 29, 2014]. Hang in there, Mr. Klavins.

A question for ranchers up there and throughout Eastern Oregon: Who buys your beef? I think it’s mostly folks who live in cities.

More and more, your customers would like to enjoy—in addition to burgers, steaks and roasts— wide-open spaces with real predators around: cougars, bears and, yes, wolves.

It’s best to just consider the presence of these critters as a cost of doing business and learn to live with it. It may be that some ranches should be returned to their natural, wild state.

The so-called “rural-urban” divide is a myth.

Since the days of the beaver, the enterprising folks harvesting the bounty of the wilds have had really only one market…and it’s an urban one.

Ranchers may not like the views of city folks when it comes to predators, but they need to recognize that we are your customers.

Lenny Anderson Northeast Portland State and federal taxpayers spent $45.9 million subsidizing ranchers and farmers between 1995 and 2012 in Wallowa County alone. Getting paid by the government is a time-honored tradition in the West, and I don’t think it is too much to ask that they not shoot our wildlife in return.

—“Deschutes Redside”

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

We have lived with wolves for several years now and have lost numerous cattle to them. If your sweet horse was ripped open by wolves and had her guts partially eaten and was still alive when you found her, you may feel different.

We have worked diligently on non-lethal ways to combat this. The wolves figure things out very fast and move past the road blocks.

—“Angie Nash” The solution is to lethally remove every last wolf from Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Introducing these non-native predators here was a crime.

—“Russell Morgan” Great article. I’m grateful to see so many fighting to protect the wolf in Oregon by educating the public.

—“Sandy”

CORRECTION

In last week’s cover story (“The Howling”), it was incorrectly reported how many cattle were killed by wolves in Oregon in 2013. Wolves were responsible for five cattle kills, not 13, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Put your money where your mouth is. Bring a couple of wolves into your household and let them kill and eat your cats and dogs.

Then pull out your checkbook and send sev-

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.

Fax: (503) 243-1115. Email: mzusman@wweek.com.

Why is there an optional ballotsecrecy envelope in Oregon? Was there some nefarious tampering or spying in the past that warranted its development?

—Enveloped in Curiosity

that wears a little top hat and talks in an English accent. Neither scenario has any basis in fact.

Until the late 19th century, voting was a quite public affair. Political parties printed their own pre-filled-out ballots, easily identifiable by color, and passed them out to partisans. This system was abandoned not because of threats against innocent voters, but rather because plenty of not-so-innocent voters were happy to sell their votes to the highest bidder. Vote-buying probably swung the result of the 1888 presidential election, and the ensuing scandal led U.S. states to begin adopting an Australian (!) innovation known as the secret ballot.

Once voting was private, party bosses couldn’t be sure they were getting their money’s worth, forcing them to find other furrows for their political-corruption plow. Thus, the secret ballot owes its existence to Americans’ willingness— nay, eagerness—to give up their right of selfdetermination in exchange for a fast buck.

I don’t mean to impugn your grasp of the electoral process, Enveloped, but the secret ballot is one of the better-known principles of American democracy, right behind “One man, one vote” and “Money talks.” The secrecy envelope merely adapts this concept for mail-in balloting.

Since your ballot envelope has your name and address on it, the intervening secrecy envelope keeps the person who opens your ballot from knowing who you voted for, thus maintaining the ballot secrecy so cherished by our forebears.

It’s easy to imagine the Founding Fathers, haunted by the prospect of shady pols intimidating the electorate, enshrining this principle in the Constitution. It’s also easy to imagine an egg 4

eral thousand dollars a month to the local cattlemen’s association to cover their livestock losses.

Typical urban folks making the rules for the rural folks.

—“Joe Sixpack”

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

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The next stop for Portland’s apartment boom?

Neighborhoods east of 82nd Avenue. A new report from the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability predicts commercial districts in East Portland will see 11,600 new apartment units built in the next 20 years. The projected apartment growth would hit neighborhoods such as Parkrose, Lents and Gateway, where residents have long complained about a lack of basic city services and amenities (“The Other Portland,” WW, Oct. 12, 2011). In the past decade, only 1,005 permits have been issued for multifamily residences in East Portland. The projected growth would double its share of the city’s apartment construction. Many areas also lack the easily defined business districts of inner-Portland neighborhoods that have witnessed an apartment-building frenzy (“Block Busters,” WW, Sept. 19, 2012). The report introduces new commercial zones, such as the “Jade District” along Southeast 82nd Avenue, and “Midway” along outer Southeast Division Street.

Residents of Hayden Island long frustrated by the concentration of video lottery retailers in their area—a dozen in a single strip mall—have asked for an investigation into the relationship between one retailer and Elisa Dozono, chairwoman of the Oregon Lottery Commission. The Hayden Island Neighborhood Network (HINooN) has asked Secretary of State DOZONO Kate Brown to order an audit into the potential “conflict of interest and appearance of impropriety” of Dozono, whose law firm, Miller Nash, represents Dotty’s Deli, one of the biggest video lottery retailers. In 2012, the Oregon Government Ethics Commission said Dozono doesn’t have a conflict because she is a “non-equity” partner of Miller Nash—that is, an employee, not an owner. HINooN chairman Jeffrey Geisler, who says that distinction is “sophistry,” wants the state Audits Division (which answers to Brown) to investigate. Dozono says she’s done nothing wrong and is “disappointed” with HINooN’s action.

How many words of instructions should a third-grader have to wade through before getting to an actual test question? If it’s a Smarter Balanced practice exam, the answer is a lot—more than 700. Portland parents and teachers have been complaining on Facebook, as first reported on wweek.com, about the overly complicated English exam. This spring, Oregon students will be tested for the first time on Common Core State Standards in English and math using Smarter Balanced assessments. So we’re wondering, parents and teachers, what examples of Common Core nuttiness have you seen? Send them to bslovic@ wweek.com. We’ll publish the best of the worst.

Read more Murmurs and daily scuttlebutt.

6

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SAFETY LAST THE CITY HAS NO SYSTEM TO ENSURE AIRBNB RENTALS UNDERGO INSPECTIONS.

BY GABRIELLA DUNN

gdunn@wweek.com

You can go on Airbnb right now and rent a basement room with wall murals in a house in Southeast Portland. Or you can rent one in Southwest that looks like a hotel suite. You can even check into an attic room in a Victorian for $40 a night, if you don’t mind climbing a ladder to get to it.

These offerings are among more than 1,600 rentals in Portland available through Airbnb, the online broker that allows people to offer short-term rentals in their homes.

This summer, Airbnb got the city to put new rules in place that legitimize its ongoing operations and bring many rentals into compliance with city code.

But these basement and attic rentals may still not be legal. Photos of these and other rentals on Airbnb show tiny

TODD SAUCIER

NEWS

basement windows, windows with bars over them, narrow staircases, and attics that have only one way in and out—all potentially fire code violations.

To find properties that could be illegal, all you have to do is click. A brief check of Airbnb’s website by WW turned up more than 10 properties that might fail inspections.

There’s no way to know for sure. Records obtained by WW show only 67 Airbnb hosts—or 4 percent of those operating in the city—have applied for a permit since the city’s Bureau of Development Services began accepting applications Aug. 30. The permit requires a city safety inspection.

“This requirement ensures that basic safety measures are in place through an inspection by the Bureau of Development Services,” said a city report accompanying the rules the City Council adopted.

Since then, city officials have made virtually no effort to enforce the rules, even though many rentals remain unsafe.

Right now, the city’s approach to enforcement: Wait until someone complains. If the city finds a host operating without a permit, that person has 30 days to buy a permit or cease operating.

Veteran neighborhood activists say the city’s complaintdriven system of regulation is essentially no regulation at all.

“The ones that give it some thought may figure out that the city is not up to the task of shutting everybody down,” says Dean Gisvold, land-use committee chairman for the Irvington Community Association—the fifth-largest Airbnb listing area in Portland.

The City Council approved the new short-term rental rules July 30, brokering a deal between Airbnb and neighborhood groups that objected to homeowners turning their extra bedrooms into businesses.

Existing bed-and-breakfast establishments, which have long operated under city rules, were angry that Airbnb rentals didn’t have to pay hotel taxes or undergo fire and safety inspections.

The city’s resulting deal included the requirement for permits and allowed Airbnb to begin collecting hotel taxes

through its website.

In the middle of the debate, Airbnb announced in March it would open a 160-employee call center in Old Town.

The city has been far more accommodating to Airbnb than to other sharing-economy operations, such as Uber, a ride-sharing app that allows users to offer their cars as taxis.

The debate over the Airbnb rules got widespread publicity over the summer. Still, Dana Haynes, a spokesman for Mayor Charlie Hales, says the city isn’t worried about the low compliance numbers.

“It’s a new regulation,” Haynes says. “And frankly, most people don’t pay close attention to the actions the city takes.”

City Commissioner Amanda Fritz oversees the Bureau of Development Services. Her office didn’t respond to phone calls seeking comment.

Michael Liefeld, enforcement program manager for the Bureau of Development Services, says he doesn’t know why so few Airbnb hosts have obtained city permits. “Our enforcement process is to try to go out and educate people,” Liefeld says.

He says he has asked Airbnb to require hosts to prove they have a city permit, but the company has not responded to his request.

An Airbnb spokeswoman declined to say why the company continues to offer properties that have not been inspected.

Robert McCullough, president of Southeast Uplift, a consortium of 20 neighborhood associations, says the city should be less concerned about boosting the sharing economy and more concerned about protecting guests.

“Would you stay at a hotel that has never been inspected by the fire inspector?” McCullough says. “Most people would say no.”

Gisvold says he’s frustrated with City Hall’s lack of interest in making Airbnb hosts follow the law.

“They seem to be enforcement-averse,” he says. “I don’t think they have the political will to do it.”

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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My favorite—and most challenging—college professor, Theodore Baird, had an exercise he did with students.

He’d ask if we’d like to be able to see into the future. Then, once he’d gotten even the most skeptical to agree, he’d roar: “How can you think that? If I knew what was going to happen next—but couldn’t do anything about it—I THINK I’D GO CRAZY!” I n s c r I b e d o n t h e wa l l I n o u r o f f I c e

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VOL 40/38 07.23.2014

more than 335,000 readers

m

Financially, 2014 is going to turn out better than 2013.

Our revenues are up slightly, and we’re projecting a small profit. Our challenge has not been with the Internet but with an economy that continues to be tough for smalland medium-sized businesses—our treasured advertisers. It’s been the case since 2008, and we’re seeing signs the economy is better. With a little luck—and no global jolts—2015 looks to be a better year still.

So who says newspapers are moribund? Certainly not this ragtag outfit.

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

EE

T

IZ

EN

TL

A

GIVE GUIDE OF POR

2014

giveguide.org

November 5, 2014

WW give guide

1

nearly $2.5 million in 2013

One last matter: That Give!Guide I mentioned earlier. It’s inserted in each copy of this week’s paper—and can be viewed online at giveguide.org.

This is the 11th year of our annual effort to instill the year-end giving habit in our readers, especially those under the age of 36.

Please take a moment to read about the incredible Skidmore Prize winners before reviewing the 136 local nonprofits participating this year. Then go to the website and set your debit or credit card free for a few moments. You’ll be glad you did.

Thanks again for another great year together,

more than 350,000 viewers

Richard H. Meeker Publisher over 10,000 downloads

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METTE W

2014

This issue of Willamette Week marks birthday No. 40 for our newspaper. It provides a moment to reflect on where this journalistic ship has been and where it’s headed.

But let’s start with a look at the present. Just consider the past couple of months, during which we have: • Interviewed practically every candidate and ballot measure representative in the Portland area, published some of the most intelligent—and respected—political endorsements in the state, and broken the most important political news of the year; • Held our second annual—and wildly successful — Pro/ Am Beer Festival; • Published a terrific Restaurant Guide and held a Secret Supper for readers at our Restaurant of the Year, Kachka; • Produced our 11th annual Give!Guide (more about that later) and this week held a kickoff party and Skidmore Prize celebration at the Leftbank Annex; • Nearly completed a mammoth digital archive of all 2,000-plus back issues; • Installed a special new Art Box, designed and executed

by Ivan McLean, to distribute copies of WW outside the Portland Art Museum; • And—in an effort that began last spring—brought you this remarkable special 40th anniversary issue.

LA

K

To our readers:

IL

I

By RICHARD H. MEEKER rmeeker@wweek.com

W

C

PUBLISHER’S REPORT

I was here in the fall of 1974, when WW published its first issue. If I had then possessed the power to look 40 years into the future, I’d have gone more than crazy.

It was nearly unthinkable that this plain vanilla burg could become as creative and energized as it is today—a paradigm for food, bicycles, beer, coffee, distilled spirits, effective mass transit, organic agriculture, and an incredible DIY culture spawning everything from food carts to local designers’ shops. Nor could any but the wildest dreamer have imagined f ledgling Nike and Columbia Sportswear would become world-beaters, or that we’d have a burgeoning tech sector. And the sharing economy? Huh? If you’d told me what lay four decades ahead when it came to the media, I’d have thought you were the crazy one. Desktop computers? We wrote on manual typewriters back in 1974; mine was an Olivetti 32. The Internet?

Smartphones? Tablets? Really?

In those early days, WW was a mere flea next to the town’s journalistic elephant, The Oregonian. To think, 40 years later, that our print readership among 18-to-54-yearolds would exceed The Oregonian’s would have seemed utterly impossible. Or that this fall, fully 36 percent of adults in the tri-county area would say they “regularly read or look at Willamette Week.” (That’s according to a market survey recently performed by Davis Hibbitts Midghall Research). Simply unimaginable!

We might have once found joy in the suffering of a longstanding antagonist. But no longer. The Oregonian’s rapid decline over the past year poses our most serious challenge.

By reducing frequency, size and staffing, Portland’s former daily is losing readers at a dizzying clip. I’ve always thought of The Oregonian as the city’s center of public debate. Now, Portland’s most prominent public square is decaying, and we are all the worse for it.

So what are we as proud Portlanders to do? More specifically, what should WW do, given available resources and our philosophy of journalism?

If you count liberally, we have just 10 full-time employees in our newsroom, aided by a healthy number of freelancers. More to the point, we have always thought of ourselves as an alternative to the daily—both in coverage and viewpoint. Our philosophy is to serve as an agent of change and engagement. Now, Portlanders increasingly turn to us while the city’s newspaper of record fades. That creates plenty of new challenges—and new opportunities.

We don’t aspire to play the role of a daily—that’s not in our DNA. How we conduct ourselves in this changing landscape will be the subject of much internal discussion and debate these next six to 12 months.

What we will not lose sight of is this: You are our reason for being.

So I ask you: Assuming we can expand our print and digital offerings, how can we be more useful? And what can we do to get you more engaged in Portland’s public life? Please email me at rmeeker@wweek.com, or write me c/o WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland OR 97210. Your thoughts and suggestions will be taken seriously.

D

P. 7

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NEWS

N

NEWS A GANG EPIDEMIC? NOT SO FAST. DRANk YOUR bEER FEST CHEAT SHEET. MOVIES LINkLATER’S bOYHOOD.

2014

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS MOMENTS THAT MADE PORTLAND.

By WW STA F F

243-2122

P

Feb. 4, 1974

Portland kills the Mount Hood Freeway...

Every great civilization has an origin story.

For modern Portland, it is an exodus from Moses.

That’s Robert Moses, the master builder of New York City’s grid of expressways and bridges who brought the Big Apple its car commuters, smog and sprawl.

In 1943, the city of Portland hired Moses to design its urban future. Moses charted a highway loop around the city’s core with a web of spur freeways running through neighborhoods. The city and state embraced much of the plan. The loop Moses envisioned became Interstate 405 as it links with I-5 south of downtown and 10

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

runs north across the Fremont Bridge.

Local planners during the 1960s modified Moses’ idea by adding freeways that would run through neighborhoods—slicing up the city like a tray of brownies. One freeway would run through Sellwood and up Southeast Johnson Creek Boulevard.

Another would travel along Northeast Prescott Street. Two more would cut north and south along 20th and 52nd avenues.

The biggest of all was called the Mount Hood Freeway, an eight-lane ribbon that would have peeled off the Marquam Bridge, and run east in a 40-foot-deep trench where Southeast Clinton Street is now, cutting down to Powell Boulevard and running beyond I-205.

Planners thought all these freeways would allow commuters easy access to downtown. What they really would have done is isolate the city’s neighborhoods that weren’t

jasoN McHuFF

ortland was a very different place in 1974.

Pioneer Courthouse Square was a parking lot, hookers prowled the South Park Blocks, and storefronts stood deserted as shoppers flocked to swanky new suburban malls like Washington Square. The MAX was still only a dream in the minds of idealistic planners. A big night out meant surf and turf at the Hilton, then a brisk walk back to your car. The city’s counterculture consisted of leftover hippies and barstool poets. The hot new pub was Produce Row, and the only local brewery was Blitz-Weinhard.

Into that dim scene came a new weekly newspaper. The first issue of Willamette Week hit the street on Nov. 13, 1974. It ran 20 pages and cost 25 cents.

The front page featured stories about soaring health care costs and tough new restrictions on sex shops—both written by a young reporter named Richard Meeker.

This week’s issue isn’t about us, though.

Certainly, WW has helped shape this city. But we decided to mark our 40th birthday not by recounting our greatest hits. Instead we’re zooming back to look at 40 moments in the past 40 years that made Portland the place it is today.

Only a few of those city-shaking events involve ballots—such as the stunning election of a populist barkeep as mayor. Some involve the law: One relentless man’s effort to stop nuclear power in Oregon, and a landmark ruling protected the right of strippers to drop their G-strings. Some had an immediate impact— such as the moment things turned for the Portland Trail Blazers. Others— including the death of James Chasse at the hands of Portland police—burned for years. And some events were barely noticed at the time, such as the opening of a new coffee shop on Southeast Division Street and the DVD release of a theatrical flop based on a local author’s little-known novel.

While some of these moments leave us shocked and angry still today, it’s startling how much has changed for the better over the past four decades. That includes the cost of a crisp new WW. You can keep that quarter, Portland. And thanks again for making us part of your city.

MAX FACTOR: In the 1970s, Mayor Neil Goldschmidt rerouted $500 million in federal funds from the Mount Hood Freeway to building Portland’s light-rail system.

cont.

AARON MESH.

PORTLANd TiMBERS

the crowds turned away, and the original team folded in 1982.

By then the soccer phenomenon was long underway. The explosion of youth leagues, the dominance of the University of Portland’s teams—especially the women’s squads, coached by legendary Timbers defender Clive Charles—and the Major League Soccer version of the Timbers today all rise from this time.

Orr says the Timbers’ victory over Seattle before its first sellout crowd was the turning point.

“Without that season there probably wouldn’t be a Timbers team here now,” Orr says. “And that one game encapsulated it. It sent the Timbers from being this niche thing to being the dominant sports event in town. It just swept people up.”

BRENT WALTH.

Oct. 27, 1975

MikE gRiPPi

A Vietnam vet decides to stop Oregon’s nuclear plants…

Lloyd Marbet came home to Portland from the Vietnam War in 1970, shaken by the destruction he witnessed while patrolling the Mekong River. He sunk into every library book he could find, seeking meaning and direction.

His wife handed him a new book she had just finished, Perils of the Peaceful Atom, a harrowing account of the dangers posed by the nuclear power industry. cO u RT E Sy O f L LOy d M A R B E T

razed during the freeways’ construction.

Grassroots opposition to the Mount Hood Freeway had been growing in Southeast neighborhoods since 1969, as the state began buying properties in the highway’s right-of-way. More than 1,700 homes sat in the path. The federal government had approved the money, the state was on board, and no one knew how to stop it.

“At the time, the odds seemed impossible,” recalls architect George Crandall, who worked at Sk idmore Ow ings & Merrill on the freeway’s environmental impact study.

A legal aid lawyer named Neil Goldschmidt saw the threat posed by the Mount Hood Freeway and other highway projects. He also saw a campaign issue.

In 1970, he won a seat on the City Council and, two years later, won election as mayor while making opposition to the freeway a centerpiece of his platform.

The Mount Hood Freeway plan took a hit in 1973, when the environmental impact study showed that it would dump more traffic into downtown than existing roads could handle and would be obsolete by the time it was finished.

Goldschmidt knew that simply turning down the project and losing the $500 million in federal funds was unacceptable.

His alternative: If the goal was to bring people into downtown, the feds’ money could be spent on something else—public transit. Goldschmidt favored dedicated bus roads until his staff convinced him of a better idea: light rail.

The Portland power structure howled at the idea of building a commuter train line between downtown and Gresham.

“Americans would sooner abandon their spouses than their cars,” the editorial page of The Oregonian, one of the freeway’s biggest boosters, said in 1974.

The turning point came on Feb. 4, 1974, when U.S. District Judge James M. Burns ruled the state highway division had failed to follow its own rules when deciding where to locate the freeway. The ruling left state officials and freeway boosters scrambling for their next move.

The Portland City Council voted in July to kill the freeway. The victory did more than stop one road from tearing up quiet residential streets. Light rail became the region’s primary answer for transportation. Neighborhood associations emerged as the power blocs of Portland politics.

Most of all, the victory over the Mount Hood Freeway created the story of Portland exceptionalism, and the fight helped define us as an urban model for the nation.

The heady days following the freeway’s death gave many at City Hall the conviction there was more that could be done, that a progressive movement was about to overtake a stodgy Portland. With the morning newspaper hostile to innovative ideas, they needed someone to tell the story. A former Wall Street Journal reporter and Goldschmidt aide named Ron Buel decided to launch a newspaper to chronicle the Portland experiment.

He n a me d it Willa m e t te We e k .

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

ORIGINAL GREEN AND GOLD: The 1975 Portland Timbers (top) celebrate a victory at civic Stadium; the Timbers Army (above) in 2012.

July 26, 1975

A crowd gathers to watch an exotic game…

Of all Portland’s nicknames—from the Rose City to Stumptown—there’s only one that inspires passion, arguments and singing: Soccer City, USA. The nickname’s most impressive manifestation is the Timbers Army, the serenading clutch of 3,000 supporters at Providence Park’s north end for every Portland Timbers’ home game. When the TV networks cover Timbers games here, they refer to Portland as Soccer City USA as they pan across the Army’s ranks.

But even the Army—seen by many a s overly choreog r aphed a nd sel fabsorbed—is a pale ref lection of the spontaneous excitement that forged Portland’s soccer identity.

In May 1975, the original Portland Timbers of the North American Soccer League first took to the ratty turf at the old Civic Stadium. A new pro team, in a league few had ever heard of, was a long shot. Soccer was an afterthought at most schools, and many of the 6,913 curious spectators who showed up to watch

the first match, a 1-0 loss to the Seattle Sounders, didn’t understand the rules.

In his history, The 1975 Timbers: The Birth of Soccer City, USA, Michael Orr describes how the Timbers endeared themselves to a small but growing base of fans. The team brought in young players, mostly from the U.K., who bunked in an apartment complex called the Tall Firs and partied with supporters at the Benson Hotel after home games.

Mostly, the Timbers won and the crowds grew. The team sold out Civic for the first time on July 26, 1975, for a rematch with Seattle. The day before the game, Don Paul, the Timbers general manager, coined the city’s new nickname: “Tomorrow, we’ll really be able to call Portland ‘Soccer City.’”

Timbers striker Peter Withe, the team’s top scorer, buried two goals in the 2-1 win in front of 27,310, the biggest attendance in the league’s history. Afterward, the players took an impromptu lap around the field and waved to the crowd— establishing what is now a tradition.

The Timbers reached the leag ue championship match and lost 2-0 to the Tampa Bay Rowdies. After that, the Timbers slogged through losing seasons,

PULLING tHE PLUG: Anti-nuclear activist Lloyd Marbet in 1976.

The book alarmed Marbet. He knew Portland General Electric would soon open its Trojan Nuclear Plant in Rainier, 41 miles to the north.

“If Trojan gets built in Oregon,” he told his wife, “we’re leaving for Canada.”

Marbet then saw the title of the next chapter: “Don’t Bother Running.”

Marbet became the state’s foremost anti-nuclear power activist and did more than anyone to end the madness of atomic energy proliferation in Oregon.

Trojan couldn’t be stopped, but the 40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS cONT. on page 13 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

region’s utilities wanted to build at least seven more plants. Marbet took on PGE’s plans for two more at the Eastern Oregon site called Pebble Springs.

He hardly seemed a formidable foe.

The Ohio native had failed to finish community college and before the war had sold handmade art supplies to local school districts. “Part of Lloyd’s uniqueness,” says Marbet friend and attorney Greg Ka four y, “was he didn’t have enough formal education to know that what he wanted to do was supposed to be impossible.”

The grandson of two Presbyterian ministers, Marbet with his unruly beard and burly physique looked and sounded like a ferocious Old Testament prophet.

He thundered at government officials and utility executives at the first state hearing on Pebble Springs, impervious to condescension, compromise and co-option.

“The whole process was confrontational,” Marbet says. “I saw that to win I needed to learn the procedural ins and outs.”

In April 1975, a state siting panel, st acked to ser ve pr ivate ut i l it ies, approved permits for the Pebble Springs plants. Marbet, through an organization he called Forelaws on Board, sued on Oct. 27, 1975, to stop them. PGE waged a major legal fight, but two years later the Oregon Supreme Court sided with Marbet, ruling that the siting council hadn’t required PGE to provide adequate safeguards.

Marbet also seized upon public unease after the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in 1979. He championed a successful 1980 ballot initiative setting tougher standards for Oregon nuclear plants. The measure effectively killed Pebble Springs.

iMplODiNG: Taking down the shuttered Trojan nuclear plant’s cooling tower, 2006.

Marbet waged three unsuccessful ballot measure campaigns to close Trojan before the plant broke down and PGE shuttered it in 1993. Years later, PGE executives told Marbet his fight against Pebble Springs and Trojan saved the utility from its own financial folly.

Today, Marbet, 67, advises Japanese activists on closing the Fukushima nuclear plants. “Persistence powered our ultimate victory,” Marbet says. “We just came back again, again and again at them.” MARK KIRCHMEIER.

I M M I g R AT I o N & R E f U g E E C o M M U N I T Y o R g A N I z AT I o N

cont.

A SecOND HOMe: Churches trying to help a growing refugee population from Southeast Asia launched the Indochinese Cultural and Service Center in the Hollywood neighborhood in 1976.

April 21, 1976

Waves of refugees arrive in portland…

The refugees arrived at Portland Internationa l A ir por t holding their few possessions in plastic bags. Their home countries—South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos—were falling to Communist forces, and those lucky enough to get out flooded into the U.S., the nation that had helped unravel their world.

Often, Ed Ferguson greeted them as they got off the plane. “They looked exhausted, cold and stunned,” he says.

Ferguson worked for Lutheran Family Services, helping the church create a resettlement program for the refugees.

He had no experience in this kind of work. Lutheran officials at the group’s New York headquarters had heard Ferguson once worked as a church volunteer in Japan. The new refugees came from Asia.

“So I seemed viable for the job,” he says.

The sheer number of refugees overwhelmed the services offered by other denominations, which pulled together behind Ferguson and put up $25,000.

On April 21, 1976, Ferguson bought an old house in the Hollywood neighborhood formerly used by the Church of Scientology, and opened the Indochinese Cultural and Service Center.

The center soon provided job placement, counseling services, women’s and children’s programs, health classes and child care. Ferguson quickly learned that Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian immigrants all had different cultural needs and old grudges.

“Diplomacy was a high priority,” he says. “All of our clients were refugees, but political rivalries came with them.

We made sure that desks were the same size for all.”

He landed government grants and leveraged donations. When Ferguson left in 1983, the center had an annual budget of $1.1 million.

Before t he a r r iva l of Sout hea st

Asian refugees in the 1970s, only one in 20 people who lived in Portland was foreign-born. Today it’s one in seven. In East Portland, where many immigrants have settled, nearly a quarter of residents were born in another country, and they have come from all over the world.

Ferguson’s legacy is now at the center of Portland’s international heart. The organization he started is now called the Immigrant and Refugee Community Center. Located at Northeast 103rd Avenue and Glisan Street, IRCO last year served more than 24,000 immigrants.

The organization’s staff comes from 43 different countries and speaks 60 different languages.

“Every time we drive through Portland, I see Vietnamese restaurants and other Southeast Asian businesses,” Ferguson says now. “It’s a very good feeling for me to see that people who were in such difficult situations have prospered over time.” SAMANTHA MATSUMoTo and BRENT WALTH.

Dec. 25, 1976

A trip home for christmas forever alters Oregon’s economy…

No company keeps more people working in Oregon than Intel Corp. Its sprawling Hillsboro campus employs 17,500, with an annual payroll of $2.8 billion. A 2012 ECONorthwest study found that nearly one in six jobs in Washington County is tied to Intel.

No wonder political leaders hardly blinked this summer when they extended Intel’s tax subsidies, worth $2 billion, over the next three decades.

Intel’s dominant role here started when executives wanted to find a place outside of Silicon Valley where they could design what the company believed would be a revolution in computing.

The iAPX 432 wasn’t just a set of faster chips. Intel believed the new processor architecture could put the functionality

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

of a mainframe into a desktop computer.

As Intel’s project manager, Bill Lattin tells WW today, “It was a vision for a major breakthrough.”

As first documented in 2003 by a Portland State doctoral student, Heike Mayer, Intel’s employee surveys found many workers were concerned about livability in and around the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif. Future Intel CEO Andrew Grove told Lattin to find a new city in which the iAPX 432 could call home.

Lattin and his family flew to visit his parents in Richland, Wash., for Christmas in 1976, and on the way home he stopped in Portland and toured Intel’s Fab 4 site in Aloha.

Lattin saw some drawbacks. “The Portland area lacked a major university, which was a problem for engineers working on their master’s and Ph.D.s,” he says. “And there was an undercurrent of an anti-California attitude we had to overcome.”

But the Aloha site met other criteria: The f light to the Bay Area didn’t take much more than an hour, housing prices were relatively low, and it looked like a better place to raise families.

Besides, Lat t i n t houg ht , t he move would put him closer to his relatives.

“It all clicked,” he says.

cHippeD: The design team for the Intel iAPX 432 in 1976 helped set off the company’s massive growth in oregon.

The i A PX 432 was a commercial failure. But more Intel design teams followed Lattin’s lead to Oregon, and the company’s Washington County site became a center of innovation. “That shifted a critical mass of the right people here,” Lattin says. “That’s when everything took off.”

Lattin, 74, an investor who has served on several corporate boards, still lives in Portland. He recalls that there was no major announcement when his team came to Oregon in March 1977, but a year later Intel decided to expand to Hawthorn Farm in Hillsboro and held a big press event.

From t he st age, Lat tin watched local officials slapping each other on the back, believing they had scored big with Intel, but unaware of the scale of what was to come.

“I was sitting there thinking that only a few of us understood what would happen,” Lattin says, “and that these people had no idea what they were unleashing.”

REBECCA TURLEY and BRENT WALTH.

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS CoNT. on page 15 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

cont.

HANK STERN.

Hank Stern was managing news editor at Willamette Week from March 2005 until April 2011. He has been a Trail Blazers fan since the team’s inception in 1970 and assiduously saved his money from lawn-mowing and babysitting to afford part of a seasonticket package during the 1977-78 season.

July 11, 1979

A boycott threat ends busing in Portland schools...

thAt’s A WrAP: An injury-plagued Bill Walton played his last game for the Trail Blazers in 1978.

Feb. 28, 1978

bill Walton asks his coach for a seat on the bench…

In February 1978, the Portland Trail Blazers appeared on their way to repeating as NBA champions.

Future Hall of Famer Bill Walton starred at center for the Blazers as they dominated the league for three-quarters of the 1977-78 season with a 50-10 record.

A second consecutive championship— and with it, a legitimate claim to a dynasty—seemed possible.

But on Feb. 28, 1978, Walton decided the pain that plagued his feet and legs was too great. He took himself out of a game against the Philadelphia 76ers, whom Portland had defeated to win its 1977 championship, after playing just 13 minutes and scoring five points.

He sat out the final 22 games of the regular season. The Blazers went 8-14, limping into the playoffs.

“ W it hout h i m, a br i l l ia nt tea m became a less-than-ordinar y team,” David Halberstam wrote in The Breaks of the Game, his seminal 1981 book about the Blazers’ 1979-80 season.

Walton would never play another regular-season game for Portland. And Portland would win no more championships.

The Blazers’ loss to the Seattle SuperSonics in the 1978 Western Conference semifinals wasn’t the worst of it. Walton, who had been shot up with painkillers, sued the team doctor, demanded to leave Portland and irreparably shattered a unit that Halberstam considered a “team of destiny.”

The Blazers and their fans have endured many accursed moments since— the collapse of Brandon Roy, the disastrous decision to draft Greg Oden over Kevin Durant in 2007, and the choice of Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan in 1984.

But Bill Simmons’ encyclopedic The Book of Basketball puts the Walton injury in its proper context. He sums it up as

Few Portlanders knew of the Black United Front before the group invited reporters to a news conference at the King Neighborhood Center in Northeast Portland on July 11, 1979.

Black parents and community members had been calling on the Portland Public Schools for years to address racial disparities in schools.

To integrate its schools, PPS had scattered African-American students throughout the district and closed predominantly black schools, including all middle grades in inner North and Northeast Portland. The district in effect put all the burden for integration on black students, leaving whites’ schools largely untouched.

Ron Herndon, an activist and education advocate, called PPS’s approach “the most racist form of integration I’ve ever seen.”

Portland’s all-white, all-male school board, which along with Superintendent Robert Blanchard had strong support in the business community, seemed immune to protests.

So at the news conference, the Black United Front pushed a radical idea, calling on 7,400 African-American students enrolled in PPS to boycott their schools when classes started in September.

The district declared the boycott illegal, and Blanchard said he was confident “responsible black leadership would not participate.”

Blanchard and the board misjudged the organization behind the boycott, as it became clear that July night. At the King Center, a reporter asked, “Are you all prepared to go to jail for this?”

Herndon got ready to answer until the Rev. John Garlington kicked him under the table. “It was like he was saying, ‘Let me handle this,’” Herndon says.

Ga rling ton, pastor of the nondenominational Maranatha church and president of the A lbina Ministeria l Alliance, was a prominent figure white officials assumed would not condone radical action. Garlington had a different message.

“Jail is not a scary possibility for us,” Garlington said, as Herndon recalls it.

“Most of the Old Testament was written in jail.”

The Black United Front represented

an unprecedented level of cooperation and coordination with 15 Albina churches, the local NAACP and eight neighborhood associations. Leaders had arranged for alternative schools to be ready for the children who took part in the boycott.

Herndon knew the boycott had to work until October, when schools took the official head count that determined how much state support they received.

If the boycott could affect the district’s finances, that would get the board’s attention.

It was a level of political threat and organization white Portland had not expected, and by the end of August, PPS gave in to most of the demands. The Black United Front called off the boycott.

WWEEK ARCHivES

NANCY HOGuE

“the drive-by shooting of the Blazers” and writes, “Walton was blessed with a gift and cursed with a body that couldn’t handle that gift. The curse trumped the gift.’’

Blazers fans have suffered since.

Suffering, in fact, has come to define us.

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

ron herndon

The group called a successful oneday boycott in April 1980 a f ter the district didn’t move fast enough on its reforms. Three new members had been elected to the board that spring, and they built a narrow majority to fire Blanchard in June.

Some things changed over the next few years. More black teachers were hired, and for the first time they were allowed to teach in majority black schools. PPS established magnet schools in black neighborhoods and tried to make the curriculum more culturally inclusive.

PPS continues to struggle on racial issues. The district eventually closed or consolidated some of the schools the Black United Front fought to keep open.

The graduation rate for black students is 19 percentage points lower than for white students, and African-American students are four times more likely to be suspended and expelled than whites.

“We stopped busing cold. That was our crowning achievement,” says Herndon.

“Black children and black employees of PPS would have the same priorities and same opportunities as white children and white employees. It set in place the structure for other changes. And it was done by this community, by the black community.” RACHEL GRAHAM CODY. 40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS CONT. on page 16 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

15

cont.

lAnd hAwk: David and Diana Lett at their vineyard, which proved to be ideal land for pinot noir.

One dAy in 1979

Becky wasserman takes home two bottles from an upstart Oregon winery…

Oregon’s wine industry wouldn’t be what it is today without Becky Wasserman.

In 1979, Wasserman, a French wine exporter, paid a visit to David and Diana Lett at their then-little-known winery in McMinnville. The Letts gave her a couple of bottles to ta ke home, and from those two bottles sprang a billiondollar industry.

T he s t or y of how O r egon w i ne became world famous is, of course, more complicated. It begins with the singular vision of the man now remembered as “Papa Pinot.”

David Lett was born in Chicago in 1939 and grew up in Utah. His parents wanted him to be a dentist, so in 1962 he traveled to California to visit schools.

On one of those trips, he went to Napa and met the legendary Lee Stewart at Souverain Cellars. Something about the growing of grapes and the making of wine captivated him. His son, Jason, today his father’s successor at the winery, has joked that his dad was “hit by a cosmic brick.”

Instead of dent a l school, Dav id entered the programs for viticulture and enology at UC Davis, where he fell in love with the pinot noirs of Burgundy. He came to believe California was no place to grow that fragile varietal; a cooler, more marginal environment was needed. A f ter graduation, Lett traveled throughout Europe’s w ine regions, talking to winegrowers about climate and variety selection, and concluded the Willamette Valley would be the best place outside of Burgundy to grow his beloved grape. He arrived in northern Oregon in early 1965, armed 16

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

with 3,000 vine cuttings from selected growers and the ampelography collection at UC Davis.

That February, his widow recalls, he planted the cuttings in a little plot of land near Corvallis so they could start rooting while he began the hunt for proper land for his vineyard. And that summer, Lett tasted his first Marshall strawberry. Diana Lett says the experience convinced him he’d picked the right place for his grapes: “He loved the delicacy and all the layers of flavor that Willamette Valley berries express.”

To support himself in those early years, Lett sold college textbooks from Northern California to Alaska. Wherever he spied land he thought might work for his grape stock, he took soil samples with an auger he carried in the trunk of his car. The Jory clay loam of the Dundee Hills won out, and in 1966 he purchased 20 acres of an old prune orchard about a 45-minute drive southwest of Portland at $450 an acre. He named it “Eyrie” for the nesting places of the red-tailed hawks that inhabited the fir trees above the vineyard. He also met Diana. They spent their honeymoon year transplanting and tending those 3,000 baby grape plants.

In 1970, Let t produced his f irst vintage, and in 1975, produced his first “reserve” pinot noir, comprised solely of wine from 10 rows of Wädenswil clone pinot noir planted in the south block of the vineyard.

Two of those bottles were the ones spirited away by Wasserman. Without the Letts’ knowledge, she entered them in Gault-Millau’s 1979 Wine Olympiades the following October. Eyrie scored in the top 10—the first time an American pinot had made such a showing. But outside a small circle of wine cognoscenti, no one paid much attention.

Then the Letts received a request from Gault-Millau for more of their

1975 South Block Reserve. There was to be a challenge tasting in the heart of Burgundy, featuring wines from the most famous house in the region, J. Drouhin. When the Letts’ wine came in second in this rematch—just two-tenths of a point behind a 1959 Drouhin Chambolle-Musigny—the world took notice, and a struggling local industry took off, so that today we now have hundreds of new commercial wineries and a billiondollar agriculture business.

In the following years, I visited the Letts’ winemaking facility a few times during Thanksgiving weekend openings and was surprised to discover how much I enjoyed Eyrie’s pinot meunier.

What I didn’t appreciate at the time was how David Lett’s success—and, more important, his holistic approach to wine: picking grapes early, storing them in neutral casks, and not being too fancy about any of it—was the catalyst for a major new industry, carrying with it great global cachet. RICHARD H. MEEKER.

Aug. 3, 1982

Oregon’s Supreme Court determines that the state constitution protects free expression of “any subject whatsoever…”

On a recent Friday afternoon at Mary’s Club, I was entertaining a 30-something doctor in the table-dance area. He was from Houston and looked it.

“Have you ever been to the Rothko Chapel?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “It’s OK, but they have to wear pasties there.”

I figured he’d misheard me. But maybe not. Maybe there is a strip club called the Rothko Chapel—which would be awesome. But in the vast majority of places outside Oregon, ladies probably gotta wear pasties. And G-strings. And maybe stand 3 feet away from their clientele.

AnotHER BELIEVER

CouRtESy of DIAnA LEtt

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

prOteCted frOm pAStieS: A meeting house for free-speech advocates.

And make sure the area is lighted like an operating room. Or forgo their liquor.

Sexy as hell, right?

We are so lucky to live in Oregon, if for no other reason than its extreme protections—the most super-heroic in the country, if not the world—of free speech. Including speech in the form of fully nude dancing.

Oregon’s constit ution is la rgely responsible for this luxury of liberty.

Like the constitutions of many late-tothe-game Western states, ours stridently

protects individual freedoms: “No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write or print freely on any subject whatever.”

However, constitutions are open to interpretation. We were exceedingly fortunate that Oregon Supreme Court Justice Hans Linde interpreted ours in the case of State v. Robertson on Aug. 3, 1982.

Linde and his colleagues concluded that Oregon’s constitution absolutely forbids government from passing laws directed at the content of what residents ex press, no matter how unpopula r.

Shortly thereafter, “A bar owner on Sandy Boulevard had his dancers go nude, and that started the legal challenge locally,” says Vicki Keller, owner of Mary’s Club. “Some dancers quit, but not for long as everyone was doing all-nude.

The number of strip bars multiplied within weeks.”

While Portland’s preponderance of strip clubs and sex shops is not necessarily trumpeted by tour guides or splashed across glossy “Visit the Beaver State” brochures, I think it should be.

After all, it’s cultures in which women are required to cover up where their rights are most curtailed. I love Oregon’s disregard of the Eden-old rubric that the naked (and, especially, female) human body is somehow dangerous, dirty, or degraded; it’s a notable experiment that has yielded favorable results—results we should be proud of and boast about so that more of the world follows suit.

Until it does, thank God we live here.

(And Hans Linde gets free table dances for life.) VIVA LAS VEGAS. Viva Las Vegas moved to Portland in 1996 to write, act and play music. She still does all those things, and strips, too. In 2015, look for an opera by Christopher Corbell based on her first book, Magic Gardens, a feature-length documentary about her from Blacktop Films, and a day-in-the-life segment on the Travel Channel. She lives in a 1910 foursquare on Mount Tabor and is working on her third book, Niagara.

Sept. 4, 1982

the Oregon Journal shuts down…

The Saturday, Sept. 4, 1982, edition of the Oregon Journal, Portland’s second daily newspaper, left no doubt it would be the last.

“FINAL EDITION,” the headline blared. The spin from the Journal was it wasn’t really closing, it was being merged with The Oregonian. The move, the dying paper said, “can serve the readers with greater resources than either newspaper has had before.”

The afternoon Journal had for 80 years provided competition with the morning Oregonian. “The Oregon Journal served as the feisty younger brother,” says Ken Doctor, who served as editor of the Willamette Valley Observer in Eugene in the late 1970s. “You had your coffee with The Oregonian. You came home and had a beer with your Oregon Journal.”

In reality, the fight between the Journal and The Oregonian turned decades before when newspaper magnate S.I. Newhouse took control of both papers.

The Journal was started in 1902, and the founding editor, C.S. “Sam” Jackson, took immediately to warring with The Oregonian’s hidebound editor, Harvey Scott.

“The truth of the matter is that Mr. Scott has a pine burr under his crupper, and is ‘rattled,’” Jackson wrote in a typical early editorial. “The more he swishes his tail, the more irritation is set up, and Mr. Scott is hardly responsible for his own shrieks, shouts and emissions.”

The Journal always scrapped as the city ’s runner-up paper. In 1947, the Journal gained a brief advantage with a helicopter nicknamed “The Newsroom Dragonfly”—an experiment that ended after Jackson’s grandson died when the whirlybird crashed into a golf course.

Newhouse bought The Oregonian in 1950. His cost-cutting sparked a typesetter’s strike at both papers. As WW publisher Richard H. Meeker recounts in his biography of Newhouse, Newspaperman, the Journal agreed to collude with Newhouse and not to interfere with his efforts to break the union.

The Journal, meanwhile, struggled f i na ncia l ly. W i l l ia m K n ig ht , Ni ke co-founder Phil Knight’s father, was publisher for a time and tried to buy The Oregonian from Newhouse. When that effort failed, Newhouse bought the Journal for $8 million in 1961.

FROM THE MUDDY BANKS OF THE WILLAMETTE: Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain performing at Satyricon.

“T he Oregonian wa nts to get to younger readers,” says Doctor, who went on to run Newsonomics, a news industry analysis company. “It’s a mixed result, but I don’t think there’s any going back.”

AARON MESH.

ONE DAY IN MARCH 1984

ANOTHER VOICE: A street edition of the Oregon Journal, 1941.

When it folded, the Journal merged its staff with The Oregonian’s, and the lack of competition lulled the morning paper into a moribund time. In 1992, the newspaper failed to report allegations of sexual misconduct by U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood—even though the newsroom knew about his behavior, and the lascivious senator had planted a kiss on one of its own reporters. The Washington Post got the scoop, humiliating The Oregonian and eventually forcing Packwood’s resignation.

The O rebounded from that embarrassment by hiring Sandra Mims Rowe as editor in 1993 and embarking on a long run during which the newspaper won five Pulitzer Prizes.

The Oregonian since then has laid off employees, slashed costs, dropped daily home delivery and switched to a tabloid format. Its circulation has collapsed, but the paper’s “Web first” strategy on OregonLive draws millions of hits every month.

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS D AV I D A C K E R M A N

CONT.

Local punk promoters, desperate for any venue, beg the owner of a just-opened Northwest Portland bar to let a few bands play inside...

As told by Ed Jones, the original booker at Satyricon, the legendary Portland club where Kurt met Courtney and where Foo Fighters played their first show: “Portland was in a recession in the early ’80s, and musicians had a hard time.

There were Top 40 clubs, and there were a few jazz clubs and a few blues clubs, but there were no real clubs for our kind of underground punk music.

“I met a guy who owned a coffeehouse called the 9th St. Exit, and the guy told me if I could get enough tickets sold, he’d let me use the adjoining venue for free.

We realized we could rent halls, get a bunch of bands and do one-off shows. I always had ambitions of grandeur, of doing bigger productions and not just playing in somebody’s basement, and that was the only real way.

“My friend Scott Olson and I formed a production company called New Total

Productions, and we were renting the Northwest Service Center on 18th and Everett. We had a show booked one night in March of ’84. That evening, the security for the building says, ‘We need a $250 deposit,’ which we didn’t have.

“George [Touhouliotis] had opened the Satyricon within the last month. He had been doing poetry readings there.

There was a little dinky stage, and there was a bunch of cocktail tables in the back room where the band area was. It wasn’t really set up for music, but we needed a last-minute spot to do it, and George says, ‘Sure, bring them on down here.’

“The scene was small, y’know. You’d be rolling through town on the TriMet bus and go, ‘There’s a guy with a leather jacket. I know that guy!’ We had about 100 people, and it came off well. George was really excited. He had everything in place, in that his brother owned the building, so there were no problems with noise complaints, and he was into artistic, radical music. He never went in the back and listened to it, but he thought it was cool. George had been a student at Portland State in the ’70s, and he’d been around for the war protests and things like that, so he was a leftist in the old tradition. He liked radical politics, and he was into it without having much of a connection to the musical part, just the ideas behind it.

“We didn’t make much money, the bands played for free, but it was such a success that, within a week or two, there was a second show, a third show, then it became pretty much every night of the week.

“All the musicians who used to play

at those other traditional venues, it became a rite of passage to play Satyricon. Carlton Jackson was a jazz guy in town, and he was telling me about the thrill they got playing at Satyricon, because it was so free, loose and crazy.”

MATTHEW SINGER.

MAY 16, 1984

A saloon owner shocks City Hall...

The morning after a big election, reporters usually hunch over their coffee, sift through the returns and try to make sense of the results. But this sunny Wednesday morning, they instead found themselves on the riverbank watching the mayor-elect arriving to his first postelection news conference in a canoe.

Portland had awakened May 16, 1984, to learn it had ousted a longtime city insider and instead elected a tavern owner as mayor. Bud Clark came by canoe just to show how different a mayor he would be.

Clark, a longtime neighborhood activist, had the night before beaten Mayor Frank Ivancie by 13 percentage points, a victory few saw coming. His victory tested the idea that an everyday guy could step into City Hall and bring its power closer to citizens.

Ivancie had been one of the last conservatives in City Hall, gaining his political support from police and fire unions 40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS CONT. on page 18 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

CONT.

STEVE MORGAN CC 3.0 BY SA

GOTTA BE THE SHOES: The Air Jordan saved stagnant Nike.

the successful 1986 campaign to build the Oregon Convention Center.

“Bud was transparent, collegial and collaborative,” says then-Commissioner Mike Lindberg, “and became a good mayor.”

At 80, Clark still frequents the Goose Hollow Inn, where recently he said he considers the city’s focus on community policing and homelessness the lasting differences he made.

“If we keep our neighborhoods strong,” he says, lifting a beer glass, “our city will be strong.” MARK KIRCHMEIER.

OCT. 24, 1984 NOT JUST A BARKEEP: Bud Clark served two terms as Portland mayor.

trying to mate.)

Clark beat the overconfident Ivancie with an impressive grassroots campaign that few people took seriously. (One exception was WW, which endorsed Clark’s candidacy.)

Clark made national news, mugged with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and in 1985 declared a “Dress as You Please Day.” Clark, wearing rainbow sandals and shorts held up by green suspenders, turned the event into a parade. More than 2,500 people showed up.

Not everyone liked the lighthearted style. Clark hired mostly unexperienced staff and soon went off the rails. His hiring of the first woman to run a big-city police force ended badly (see the April 20, 1985, entry), and he burned through four more police chiefs during his two terms.

“Bud Clark was a breath of fresh air,” wrote historian E. Kimbark MacColl, “but when he got to City Hall, he was like a steamboat captain who suddenly gets put in charge of the Queen Elizabeth.”

But Clark forced the city to confront the problem of homelessness, forever making housing and social services a centerpiece of the city’s political agenda. He turned around a city budget depleted by Ivancie’s generous contracts to police and fire unions. He personally intervened to avert a TriMet drivers strike. And he led 18

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Rob Strasser gets the third pick of the NBA draft to set aside his Converse court shoes and try on his first pair of Nikes…

In 1984, Nike was floundering. Reebok had captured the aerobics shoe business, and the running shoe market was flattening. Nike’s earnings were off, the stock price was in the tank, and there was a sense the company was stalled. Then, an obnoxious, overweight lawyer from the company’s marketing department had the idea that saved what is now Oregon’s largest company.

The line of shoes and apparel Rob Strasser created for a rookie shooting guard playing for the Chicago Bulls became the most successful single brand in Nike’s history. “A whole lot of people are responsible,” Nike co-founder Phil Knight told WW in 1985, “but Rob is the MVP.” The Air Jordan made the Nike we know.

Michael Jordan was originally signed by Nike to a five-year, $2.5 million deal. Last year, 10 years after Jordan retired from the NBA, the line had retail sales of $2.7 billion. Beyond sales, the shoes cemented Nike as a backboard-shattering force of marketing.

Then-N BA Commissioner Dav id Stern in 1985 levied a $5,000 fine every

time Jordan wore his black-and-red Air Jordan 1’s on the court, a violation of the league’s dress code. Jordan, it’s worth noting, originally didn’t even like the shoes’ design. But he honored his contract with Nike, which happily paid the fines, reaping priceless publicity for their outlaw shoes.

Before Air Jordans, shoe-endorsement deals were considered to be a minor piece of Nike’s strategy. Today, more than 300 NBA players are represented by Nike divisions, more than three times as many as represented by Adidas. Nike also controls about 90 percent of the U.S. basketball shoe market.

Before Air Jordans, Strasser was simply a loud guy whose nickname was “Rolling Thunder,” a man who screamed at this reporter when he was asked why he didn’t sign Czechoslovakia-born Ivan Lendl, then the No. 1 tennis player in the world, to an endorsement contract: “BECAUSE HE’S A FUCKING COMMUNIST!” But with Air Jordans, Strasser became “The Man Who Saved Nike”—the headline of a story that appeared in WW in 1985.

Strasser died of a heart attack in 1993 at age 46, after taking a job running Adidas America—a move that infuriated Nike.

On his gravestone is a verse that captures the spirit of his work at Nike: The way ahead is clear Be honest about the battlefield Throw out the old rules that don’t make sense Get out of the comfort zone Go to the front of the fight And stay there And most importantly Cut out all the bullshit MARK ZUSMAN.

APRIL 20, 1985

Portland’s first female police chief falls from grace…

The Ruby Dragon sells crystals, chakras, sage for smudging rituals—everything to meet your metaphysical needs. The

owner of the Morro Bay, Calif., shop is a trained crystal healer, color therapist and Reiki master teacher. She also was a cop once, best known as the first female police chief in Portland—or any large American city, for that matter.

It’s been a winding road for Penny Harrington.

The city hailed Harrington as a hero for knocking down gender barriers when Mayor Bud Clark named her chief in January 1985. He pushed her out 17 months later after one of the most tempestuous periods in the Portland Police Bureau’s history.

Harrington, then 42, had fought her way up to the rank of captain, in part by filing sex-discrimination cases against the male-dominated bureau.

As chief, Harrington called for longoverdue changes. She cut back the drug and vice squads to increase neighborhood patrols, and introduced the idea that officers should spend less time responding to calls and more time talking to citizens.

(Her strategy didn’t have a name then, but today it’s called community policing.)

Harrington also wanted the bureau, with its history of tension with the black community, to cut down on the use of excessive force.

The national media loved Harrington, and Hollywood vied for the rights to her story.

It didn’t take long to unravel. On April 20, 1985, Lloyd “Tony” Stevenson, a 31-year-old security guard, former Marine and father of five, went to play video games at the 7-Eleven at Northeast 3rd Avenue and Weidler Street. When a shoplifter fled the store, Stevenson helped two CITY OF PORTLAND

NIKE

and right-leaning precincts in East Portland. He had spent years spitting on the reforms Mayor Neil Goldschmidt brought to the city. In 1980, Ivancie won election as mayor. He fought innovations such as Pioneer Courthouse Square. He proposed anti-crime ordinances his own lawyers called unconstitutional. He often was petty and fearsome, and no one of any political weight was willing to take him on as he sought re-election.

Enter John Elwood “Bud” Clark Jr., 52, a joyful and at times goofy owner of the Goose Hollow Inn. Clark chafed that people described him as “just a bartender” when he saw himself as a cost-conscious small businessman. He was mainly known for having flashed a nude statue in the 1978 “Expose Yourself to Art” poster and for shouting out his trademark “Whoop! Whoop!” (The cheer was Clark’s imitation of a male guinea pig

OUSTED: Portland Police Chief Penny Harrington, the first woman to hold the rank, lasted 17 months in the job.

clerks collar the thief. Stevenson then got into a fight with a witness. When the cops arrived, they zeroed in on Stevenson, who was black.

Officer Gary Barbour wrapped his arm around Stevenson’s neck from behind.

The so-called carotid artery, or “sleeper,” hold cuts off circulation to the brain. Stevenson passed out and died.

The death stunned the city. And then it got worse. The day of Stevenson’s funeral, two white officers, Paul Wickersham and Richard Montee, sold T-shirts to fellow cops from the East Precinct 40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS CONT. on page 20

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19

mercial on the gritty streets of the Lower East Side, filming cabbies, saxophone players, and people almost getting run over. The soundtrack was “Walk on the Wild Side,” but without the words.

The film was so grainy you’d think somebody had shot it on an early camcorder, and editor Larry Bridges clipped it fast and blurry and used cut-reel outtakes, with techniques culled from the French New Wave. The one-minute ad didn’t even allow a glimpse of the scooter until the final shot, when Lou Reed— leaning cool as gelato on that scooter— says, “Hey, don’t settle for walkin’.”

It was all hip feeling, followed with a cornball sales pitch from the guy who wrote Metal Machine Music and a bunch of songs about heroin.

Bridges called it a meta-advertisement. The New York Times has since called it the first postmodern ad. And according to historian David Halberstam, it was this spot that made Nike switch to Wieden+Kennedy without even a call for competition.

Wieden+Kennedy, of course, grew up along with Nike, creating not only the shoe giant’s iconic slogan but also most of its memorable ad campaigns, starting with a series of spots starring then-underground director Spike Lee. Portland became known as an offbeat design center housing not just Wieden+Kennedy but countless little boutique ad and marketing shops, a hub for the creative class that author Richard Florida thought would save America, one Pearl District loft at a time.

But while it made Wieden+Kennedy’s name, the ad apparently didn’t sell scooters. “For all its impact on the

FRESH HORSES: The book that began Oregon’s comic industry.

and BRENT WALTH.

MAY 6, 1985

Lou Reed encourages people not to walk…

It all goes back to Lou Reed.

Otherwise, Bo wouldn’t have known Diddley. Nike wouldn’t have just done it. Spike Lee’s Mars Blackmon wouldn’t have placed all his bets on those Air Jordans (see Oct. 24, 1984, entry).

Portland ad company Wieden + Kennedy is giant now—offices in London, Delhi and Beijing—but back in 1985 it was a second-string shop, the local kids Nike used on small stuff when they didn’t want to pay Chiat/Day, the New York megafirm that made those “1984” spots for Apple.

Then along came Lou Reed.

Wieden had landed an account for some silly, midsize Honda Elite scooters.

But instead of showing the scooters blazing down country roads in the middle of wheat fields, the company shot the com20

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

DARK HORSE

headquarters parking lot. The shirts featured a stencil of a smoking handgun along with the message “Don’t Choke ’Em, Smoke ’Em.” Harrington called for firing Wickersham and Montee over the T-shirt incident, and Clark agreed. (The two cops eventually got their jobs back. An inquest found Stevenson’s death criminally negligent homicide, but Barbour and another officer involved were never charged.)

The rank and file turned against Harrington. She eventually gave her enemies all they needed to get rid of her.

In March 1986, Harrington revealed that her husband, Gary Harrington, himself a Portland cop, was under investigation for tipping off a suspected Old Town cocaine dealer about an ongoing drug case. (The Harringtons denied the allegations.)

Under pressure, Clark ordered an independent review. A three-member panel, all men, concluded Gary Harrington had tipped off the drug suspect.

But the panel went further, and on June 2, 1986, released a report that ripped Penny Harrington for many of her management decisions as chief.

Clark, who had lost control of the situation, told Harrington he was going to demote her. She quit instead. As he left their meeting, Clark saw she was crestfallen and tried to think of something to say that would lift her spirits. “Tits up,” he told her.

Harrington sued the city and lost. She went on to lead the National Center for Women in Policing and write a memoir.

She divorced Gary, eventually settled in Morro Bay and opened her crystal shop.

She says her interest in the metaphysical came as part of her own healing.

“It was really hard as the first woman chief to fail,” Harrington says. “But what happened in Portland gave me more credibility elsewhere. People understood what happened to the city’s first female chief and that they had put me through the political meat grinder.” SAMI EDGE

CONT.

W+K

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

RIDE ON THE WILD SIDE: Lou Reed pitches for Honda.

advertising industry,” Randall Rothenberg wrote in his book Where the Suckers Moon, “the Lou Reed commercial did little for Honda.” Wieden +Kennedy lost the Honda account in 1987.

MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

JULY 1, 1986

A local comic-book publisher introduces the world to Black Cross...

In the golden age of comic books, blockbuster characters seldom walked alone.

Superman was the cover boy for Action Comics when he first appeared in 1938, but he was accompanied in the anthology by a precocious athlete named Pep Morgan and a two-bit crook named Stickymitt Stimson. Batman’s debut a year later, in Detective Comics, found him sharing the spotlight with a musclebound hunk named Slam Bradley.

When Oregon’s own Dark Horse launched in 1986, native son Mike Richardson chose the long-abandoned anthology-comic format to make its presence known. And while the cover boy for Dark Horse Presents No. 1—Black Cross, who bore equal resemblance to the Punisher and Bono—never found Superman-level stardom, Dark Horse Presents debuts like Paul Chadwick’s whip-smart Concrete and Frank Miller’s edgy Sin City changed the landscape of comics, and made Portland a center of the industry.

“Dark Horse in general, I think, is the reason Portland is such a comics town,” says Jason Leivian, owner of Floating World Comics. “It was the attractor that brought so many artists out here.”

In an era when Marvel and DC were still living in the shadow of one-dimensional superheroes and Cold War-era censorship, Dark Horse, headquartered in Milwaukie and now the third-largest

publisher of comics in the country, was something new.

“It was a place where a quirky indie strip like Bob the Alien could run alongside a mainstream thriller like Aliens, and I fell in love,” says Philip Simon, who discovered Dark Horse Presents in grade school and is now an editor there. The diversity was no accident: Dark Horse gave creators complete freedom within their comics and let them retain ownership of their characters. The formula worked: The company had gigantic hits with The Mask, Hellboy and Sin City even as Marvel struggled, making only one movie in eight years.

By the time Sin City debuted in 1991, Simon says, “Comics hit a moment when a creator at his prime met a company that could finally give him the freedom he needed to produce his best work.”

“Dark Horse Comics is a huge presence in the comics market,” says Ron Randall, whose Trekker series was a rarity for its strong female protagonist. “I first moved back home here from the East Coast just as Dark Horse was starting. There were maybe a half-dozen comic professionals in the area. Now there are dozens and dozens of us. That influx began as a trickle just as Dark Horse opened shop and has turned into a flood of writers and artists

C O U R T E S Y O F O R E G O N B R E W E R S F E S T I VA L

CONT.

BOARDWALK AND PARK PLACE: OBF organizers love their waterfront location.

CASEY JARMAN.

Casey Jarman is a Portland writer and editor who has worked at Willamette Week and The Believer magazine. He is a cofounder of Party Damage Records.

THE THIRD FULL WEEKEND OF JULY 1988

A couple guys rent a tent and host a kegger down by the river…

Why does Portland have more breweries than any city on the planet?

Why is beer a $1.2 billion industry in Oregon?

Why is there a beer festival every week of the year here?

Many reasons, obviously, but if you had to pick the moment when Portland first attained the status of Beervana, it was probably July 17, 1988.

There was beer here before that, of course. Portland still had the century-old Henry Weinhard’s. Across the river in Vancouver, Wash., Lucky Lager operated until 1985. Portland got its first proper craft brewery, Cartwright Brewing Company, in 1980, though it closed in 1981 after a tough year and lots of bad beer. In 1984, the modern brewpub—small breweries selling pints at their own bar—was legalized after lobbying by the Widmers, McMenamins and Ponzi family, who all started breweries. Oregon’s fourth brewery, Portland Brewing, followed, opening

in 1986, under the ownership of Art Larrance and Fred Bowman.

In July 1987, Larrance and Bowman cut a deal to sell beer at a blues festival on the Waterfront. Sales were quadruple what they expected—the brewery was tapped out. The blues festival wanted to move to a different weekend for 1988, so Larrance and Bowman bought the dated permit, rented tents and called 22 upstart breweries from the region to come pour beer—many familiar names like Anderson Valley, Red Hook and Sierra Nevada.

Plastic festival mugs were $1 and $2 to fill.

The second festival was an even bigger success, establishing Portland as beer mecca in the minds of drinkers and brewers.

“Nobody was running around saying ‘we’re going to set the bar,’ but that’s what we were doing because we were so early in the process,” says Larrance, who today owns Cascade Brewing. “When we started, there were only four breweries in the state [and we wanted to] show people in Portland that we were making pretty damned good beer.”

Today, the Oregon Brewers Festival draws 80,000 people and brags of being the “largest outdoor beer festival on the continent,” distinguishing it from the oldest and largest beer festival in the country, Denver’s Great American Beer Festival. Every time GABF made a move— awarding medals, offering unlimited pours—OBF did the opposite. The OBF way became the Oregon way—today, most local beer festivals follow its formula. The city’s beer culture has grown up around it, and its fame has spread around the world.

“Next year we’re bringing brewers from New Zealand to OBF; this year we had 11 from the Netherlands and one from Germany,” he says. “It’s always

been the same thing, to try to bring the best beers to Portland drinkers. And we thought it was Portland people coming, until we did the surveys and found out that half the people there are tourists.”

MARTIN CIZMAR.

NOV. 13, 1988

as Ken Death. Mieske had become a local star in late 1987 in an experimental semi-documentary, “Ken Death Gets Out of Jail,” by an up-and-coming filmmaker named Gus Van Sant.

The killing forced Portlanders to confront the white supremacists in their midst. “It pulled the curtain back about Portland’s racial reality,” says Randy Blazak, a Portland State sociology professor and chairman of the Coalition Against Hate Crimes.

Mieske and his two co-defendants took plea bargains. But the real court fight was just starting.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate-group watchdog, filed suit in Multnomah County Circuit Court against a California white supremacist named Tom Metzger. Metzger, a TV repairman, had been recruiting Portland skinheads to his organization, White Aryan Resistance, in hopes of sparking a race war.

In October 1990, a jur y decided Metzger had i ncited t he Por t la nd skinheads and awarded Seraw ’s family $12.5 million. The verdict bankrupted Metzger’s organization. The verdict also helped set the legal precedent that hate groups could be held liable for inciting violence, even if they hadn’t directly committed the assault.

For Portland residents, the verdict reassured them the threat came from the outside. The actual lessons from Seraw’s murder are less clear.

In her 2003 book, A Hundred Little Hitlers, Elinor Langer wrote that Mieske committed the murder fueled as much by drink and a culture of street fighting as by white supremacist ideology. “Like certain noxious sulfurs bubbling up at times from beneath our Northwest volcanoes,” Langer wrote, “it was a spontaneous erup-

Three skinheads kill Mulugeta Seraw…

The skinheads had been hanging around Southeast Pine Street for months. Groups with names like the Preservation of the White American Race and East Side White Pride had been recruiting teenagers from Portland’s metal-music scene throughout 1988.

Skinhead culture blended nearly unnoticed into the punk aesthetic. A few skinheads had been charged with assaults early in the year. But the city’s refugee coordinator told WW that spring that the racist gangs didn’t pose a threat to new immigrants.

Then skinheads went after Mulugeta Seraw.

Seraw, 28, had come to Portland from Ethiopia to study business at Portland Community College. He sent money he made as an Avis airport bus driver to his family.

In the early hours of Nov. 13, 1988, skinheads brawled with Seraw and two friends, also Ethiopians, outside Seraw’s apartment at Southeast 31st Avenue and Pine Street.

Steven Strasser and Kyle Brewster kicked Seraw and the other two with steel-toed shoes. A third swung a bat into Seraw’s skull: Twenty-three-year-old Ken Mieske, a metal-band frontman known

C O U R T E S Y O F S O U T H E R N P O V E R T Y L AW C E N T E R

from all over the comics landscape.”

Dark Horse Presents ended its first run in 2000, after 14 consecutive years of publication. It has returned multiple times.

The latest volume, a compact 48-page monthly comic, debuted in August.

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

“RACIAL REALITY”: The killing of Mulugeta Seraw focused national attention on Portland’s skinheads.

tion. The death of Mulugeta Seraw did not need an ‘outside agitator’ to explain it.”

Mieske died in prison of hepatitis C in 2011. Brewster is out of prison, still proclaiming racist beliefs. Strasser quit the white supremacist movement while serving his sentence.

James McElroy, the SPLC lawyer who led the fight against Metzger, adopted Henock Seraw, Mulugeta’s son. Henock 40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS CONT. on page 23 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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40 YEARS

CONT.

MISKOWIEC.COM/ D R U G S T O R E C O W B O Y. P H P

became a commercial airline pilot.

“His father came here to go to junior college,” McElroy says. “Henock ended up coming to this country and walking in the footsteps of his father’s dreams.” AARON MESH and RAVLEEN KAUR.

SEPT. 7, 1989

Old Northwest Portland homes fall, and new rowhouses burn…

Northwest Portland, long before the boutiquing of 23rd Avenue, had a grit to it.

Many blocks had shuttered storefronts or saloons where pensioners sipped 40-cent Hamms.

In the mid-1980s, residents saw gentrification coming, but they couldn’t yet see what it really meant until Phil Morford arrived.

Morford was a Lake Oswego developer, which alone made the residents of Northwest look on him as a disease-carrying colonizer. Morford saw, presciently, the potential for new homes in Northwest, even though his idea was charmless: He would buy up a string of old homes to level them and put up rowhouses in their place.

Metropolitan Homes, Morford’s firm, had already built more than 70 rowhouse units in the Portland area. He told The Oregonian in 1988 his properties appealed to an “increasingly cosmopolitan attitude.” His developments fit within the city’s strategy of encouraging more density. But the shock in Northwest of seeing grand old houses brought down by bulldozers was too much.

Morford had bought homes along Northwest Overton and Pettygrove streets, and when renters were told to get out, they sounded the alarm. In May 1989, police arrested 23 people who tried unsuccessfully to block the demolition. “[Morford] was perceived as having the attitude that the architectural heritage of Northwest Portland wasn’t important,” says Cathy Galbraith, executive director of the Architectural Heritage Center. “And it was so unimportant that he was going to tear them down.”

On the morning of Sept. 7, a Morford development under construction on Northwest Thurman Street burned, and the fire caused $250,000 in damage. Fire officials suspected arson, and federal agents later raided two eastside homes in an attempt to link the arson with Earth First! and other eco-terror groups. No one was ever arrested.

Morford agreed to save four houses targeted for demolition; two were moved to the corner of Northwest 23rd Avenue and Overton Street, where they now serve as offices. His rowhouses otherwise went up as planned.

No one has torched a building lately, but the militant attitudes remain—from resisting the apartment boom along Southeast Division Street to the outrage in wealthier enclaves such as Eastmoreland or Willamette Heights, where this summer neighbors successfully shamed a Google exec to abandon his plans to level a $1.3 million mansion.

DRUGGED UP: The Northwest Irving Street apartment in Drugstore Cowboy (left) and today.

“There’s a balance between what’s old and what’s new, and that’s always a struggle,” says Northwest Portland architect Steve Fosler, who was involved in the Morford battles. “The rallying cry became saving the older houses, no matter what their condition.” ERIN CAREY.

OCT. 6, 1989

Matt Dillon removes a crowbar from under his trench coat...

It’s weird and maybe a little sad to look back on Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy, given how much of what it describes is now gone. But for those of us who don’t recognize ourselves in Portlandia—or who don’t want to admit it if we do—Van Sant’s first big feature shows us what the real Portland looked like. The story, about a quartet of thieving junkies, is everything the city was in the 1970s and ’80s: funny, tragic, morally complicated, cheap, beautiful and seedy. Even today, despite enormous changes in the urban landscape, you can still catch glimpses of the scrappy, dirty Old Portland depicted here—including that Nob Hill Pharmacy sign now hanging on the side of what’s now a sports bar.

Portland’s most successful homegrown director has gone on to make some wonderful films set elsewhere while still living here. But Drugstore Cowboy, more than any other film ever shot in the city, shows what made Portland unique. Not just physically—Benson Bubblers, Tom Peterson commercials, Union Station, Multnomah Falls—but in spirit. Van Sant’s crew of addicts in Drugstore Cowboy, led

by Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon), operates according to a strict code. They’re not slackers or half-employed hipsters. They put in the hours, including overtime, as Bob points out, to maintain their high, and they take pride in being skilled at what they do. There’s an element of rigor and craftsmanship to Bob’s lifestyle—he just happens to apply himself in a nontraditional line of work. Classic Portland.

Released on Oct. 6, 1989, the movie is dressed in the vintage threads of 1971. Its characters care about their appearances.

They keep up their houses. Meanwhile, the cops range from useless to menacing.

But on top of all the ways in which it captures the city, Drugstore Cowboy is just so good. It’s hilarious and terribly sad, and it has those goofball hallucinatory floating-hats-in-the-sky moments that should be embarrassing but instead are somehow perfect. Plus, William S. Burroughs.

Like Portland itself, Van Sant seems unwilling to choose between embracing and abandoning commercial success; he jumps back and forth between studio movies and personal projects, just as Portland can’t help basking in mainstream recognition even as it mourns and clings to its grittier days.

Did Van Sant define Portland, or was it the other way around? Who knows, but in Drugstore Cowboy, their fates merged. BECKY OHLSEN. Becky Ohlsen writes guidebooks for Lonely Planet and is the author of Walking Portland.

SEPT. 14, 1990

A new restaurant opens at the corner of Northwest 21st Avenue and Glisan Street...

Indulge me a moment. It was 1990, and I was reviewing Zefiro for the paper. My first line was: “This may be THE place.” I meant not only that this restaurant heralded something novel in town, but that it could just make something utterly new of Portland itself. That was a prescient gamble, for I realized at the time that while it might turn out to be true, it might not.

Looking back now, it’s fair to say that before Zefiro there was no culinary “scene” in Portland. And, in hindsight, I’d also venture that Zefiro was also a catalyst for the radical transformation of the city and not just its gastronomical centerpiece. Portland’s transcendence into an increasingly sophisticated urban food experience dates from both the establishment of a particular urbane kitchen—wine-poached pears in a corn-

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS meal crust, risotto of the day, and the first truly excellent Caesar salad the city had seen—and the cosmopolitanism it brought with it, at first a bit self-consciously and tentatively, then gradually becoming natural and comfortable in its own skin.

When Zefiro closed a decade later, some life breath whooshed out of the city.

And yet not entirely so, because Zefiro started a whole catalog of restaurant legacies and more vitally so, a spirit, a way of being that has indelibly marked Portland and its gastronomy.

By that phrase, I don’t mean the fancy cars parked out front on Northwest 21st, the occasional celebrities in the dining room, nor the Danny Meyer-like polish of Bruce Carey’s suave hosting. I mean the spirit of seasonality, freshness and locavorism (though that word hardly existed during Zefiro’s heyday), inspired

by Carey but more crucially by the great cooking of chef Chris Israel and dessert maven Monique Sui—each of whom has gone on to other wonderful restaurants including Grüner and Castagna.

Though Zefiro’s cuisine was Mediterranean—French, Italian, Spanish, Moroccan—and it tried hard to render the dishes from those sea-girt regions as faithfully and authentically as possible, the main ingredients were sourced from local growers, fishermen and other purveyors. It wasn’t quite time for menus to pay tribute to those suppliers of field and forest and nearby waters, but that would come. We didn’t yet see Israel cooking dishes over camp stoves at a nearby farm for Plate & Pitchfork, but that too would come for other restaurants that inherited Zefiro’s heart, soul and marrow.

ROGER PORTER.

Roger Porter teaches English at Reed College. After leaving Willamette Week, he was a restaurant reviewer for The Oregonian for five years. He has co-edited, with Sandra Gilbert, The Norton Anthology of Food Writing, due out next year.

NOV. 6, 1990

Voters approve Measure 5…

Barbara Roberts should have been celebrating.

She had scraped by as a single mother and raised an autistic son. She also won election to school boards, the Oregon House and eventually secretary of state.

On Nov. 6, 1990, voters elected her the first female governor of Oregon. Her supporters at the victory party at Montgomery Park hugged, laughed and partied.

But when the governor-elect came to greet the media, Roberts looked as if she were sticking her head out the window of a car speeding over a cliff.

Voters had chosen her, yes, but this night they had also approved a property tax limit known as Measure 5.

Few major political shifts in the state’s history have had such lasting consequences as the one voters triggered that night.

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FLUSHED: The so-called Big Pipe project—shown here under construction on the eastside in 2011—has stopped virtually all raw sewage from flowing into the Willamette River.

Roberts lasted one term, but Measure 5’s legacy continues.

For more than a decade, Oregonians had complained their property taxes were too high and growing too fast.

In 1978, California had set off a property tax limitation movement by passing Proposition 13. Oregonians had rejected five property tax measures since then, often because the cuts they would cause seemed too drastic.

In 1990, the backers of Measure 5 had returned with a measure that didn’t appear so extreme. The limit would steadily drop over 5 years until it capped property ta xes at $15 per $1,000 of assessed value.

A quarter-century later, the impact is clear in three ways.

First, Measure 5 did reduce taxes.

Oregonians’ property taxes today would be 40 percent higher without the limit, according to an analysis the Legislative Revenue Office conducted at WW’s request.

Second, Measure 5 forced the state to make schools more equitable. Because schools relied so heavily on property taxes, where you lived often dictated how good an education you received.

Wealthier districts, such as Portland, were comfortable while some rural districts scraped by. After Measure 5, the state made sure districts got essentially the same amount of money per student.

Estacada benefited. Portland suffered.

Third, Measure 5 effectively ended local control of school finance. While school funding was more equitable, there was a lot less money to go around. Some schools cut programs and laid off teachers, and there was little parents could do about it.

The state’s budget, fueled by income

taxes, long ago absorbed the costs of Measure 5. But those costs still squeeze everything else in the state’s general fund budget, such as social services, colleges and public safety. Today, Oregon’s budget shifts about $1.9 billion a year to schools beyond what it would have pre-Measure 5, WW’s analysis of legislative revenue figures shows. That’s enough money to cover tuition for every student at Portland State University and the University of Oregon.

What Measure 5 did not do was usher in the immediate calamity its critics predicted. “If this measure passes, I must send out pink slips to everybody in the school district,” then-Portland Public Schools Superintendent Matthew Prophet said in a televised debate three days before the 1990 election. Portland Mayor Bud Clark said voting for Measure 5 was like supporting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Roberts, only a few weeks before she took office, added to the rhetoric of anxiety when talking about the state’s first post-Measure 5 budget. “More people will die because of what we have done here,’’ she said.

Roberts got beat up by critics for sounding the alarm, but Measure 5 did have real costs. She hoped at the time to put some wind in the sails of an effort that many governors had already tried and failed: to pass a sales tax and stabilize Oregon’s method of financing schools. If the state were going to be more responsible for school funding, it either had to raise more funds or reduce other services. Roberts’ sales tax plan failed, and she carried out the necessary cuts.

Many people had hoped Measure 5 would shock Oregon into pursuing real tax reform. Even Measure 5’s authors saw the tax limit as a half measure. “Even

if the measure does create chaos,” wrote WW in endorsing Measure 5, “it’s a necessary sort of chaos that will eventually lead to support for an alternative source of revenue.”

That never happened. Measure 5 did not turn out to be a temporary way station on our path to a better way of paying for schools. It was the Roach Motel of tax reform: We checked in and did not check out. MARK ZUSMAN and BRENT WALTH.

FEB. 4, 1991

Someone finally has enough of all that crap in the Willamette…

Not a lot of people went swimming in the Willamette River.

Portland’s century-old sewers had been designed to let rainwater running off streets mingle with what gets flushed down toilets. Even the lightest drizzle could overf low the system and send excrement shooting through outfall pipes and into the Willamette.

Decades after the state had declared the Willamette clean, events called combined sewer overflows continued.

By 1991, the state Department of Environmental Quality had come down hard on towns that had the same problem. But the biggest and baddest, Portland, had used its political power to resist the DEQ. The state environmental agency had let the city operate under a largely toothless permit for years before letting it expire.

City officials knew fixing the sewer system could cost more than $1 billion.

And no elected official at City Hall had the guts to take on a project that could double sewer bills.

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS Nina Bell was then in her last year of law school at Lewis & Clark College. She had worked for a group called Northwest Environmental Advocates since the late 1970s, when she had dropped out of Reed College to help the group’s anti-nuclear power efforts.

Bell now ran the organization. She had turned its focus to clean rivers and saw the city’s sewer overflows as an obvious target. “The city was a huge source of pollution that was supposed to be regulated,” she says. “And it wasn’t.”

On Feb. 4, 1991, Bell announced that Northwest Environmental Advocates would sue the city for violations of the federal Clean Water Act. Only after the legal threat, Bell says, did the city scramble to cut a deal with the DEQ to keep sewage out of the Willamette.

A federal judge tossed the suit, concluding the city’s deal with the DEQ was good enough, but Bell appealed. The city spent a small fortune in attorneys’ fees to fight her. But she won in the U.S. Court of Appeals, setting a legal precedent that allows citizens to bring suit to enforce environmental laws. Seven years after Bell first went to court, the city finally signed a binding consent decree requiring it to keep its word to stop sending raw sewage into the Willamette.

Portland cut off several river outfalls and launched a campaign to disconnect drainpipes from storm sewers; the less water running in the system, the smaller the chance of an overflow. Most of all, the city built what’s become known as the Big Pipe. It’s actually three giant eastside and westside pipes that increased the system’s capacity. The eastside pipe is 22 feet in diameter and is almost 6 miles long.

Since the $1.4 billion project’s completion in 2011, the city has seen only nine sewer overflows, including 62 million gallons that spilled Oct. 22 after heavy rains.

The cost, however, is something we bear every day. The annual household sewer bill is $65.25 a month, about 30 percent of which comes directly from the Big Pipe project.

Rising utility bills have ignited anger among Portland’s ratepayers. A handful of companies that use lots of water forced a May vote whether City Hall should lose control of setting water and sewer rates.

The measure lost, but the frustration endures.

Bell says the costs were inevitable. “If Portland hadn’t done it after we went to court, it would be doing it now,” she says.

“It was time to stop living in the last century.” BRENT WALTH.

MARCH 8, 1995

Cyclists sue the city over the Blazers’ new arena...

In July 1993, the city of Portland broke ground for the arena now known as the Moda Center. Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen and then-mayor Vera Katz wielded backhoes to begin construction of the 40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS CONT. on page 27 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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MARTIN CIZMAR.

FEB. 8, 1996

Vera Katz builds her wall…

It was Mayor Vera Katz vs. the Willamette River. That night, Katz won.

In February 1996, a sudden blast of

ONE TOUGH MAYOR: Serving three terms in City Hall, Vera Katz helped increase public access to the Willamette River.

warm air and heavy rains melted the Cascade Mountains snowpack and set loose flooding all over Oregon. Swollen rivers submerged houses and swamped whole towns. Gov. John Kitzhaber declared 14 counties disaster areas.

In Portland, the churning Willamette River inundated the walkways at RiverPlace and nearly rose to the deck of the Hawthorne Bridge. The river threatened to overrun the seawall at Tom McCall Waterfront Park and submerge downtown Portland.

Three years into her first term as mayor, Katz called on city workers and volunteers to build a bulwark along the seawall.

Citizens responded as well, helping erect a plywood scaffold covered in plastic sheeting and anchored with sandbags that ran for a mile, between the Steel and Hawthorne bridges. Katz, wearing a purple raincoat, strode along the wall, thanking volunteers.

Marty Smith—later to become WW’s Dr. Know—described the Waterfront Park scene as feeling like a town barnraising. “People were actually enjoying this,” he reported.

“Vera’s Wall” proved unnecessary.

The Willamette’s waters stopped inches short of topping the seawall. Had the waters risen any higher, the river could have run around Vera’s Wall, which probably couldn’t have withstood the Willamette’s force.

But Katz’s decisive action earned her praise and gratitude. “It was the visible display of the Vera Katz that happened every day,” recalls Sam Adams, who was Katz’s chief of staff and later became mayor. “It showed her gutsy style of leadership.”

When she was 7, Katz and her family escaped Nazi Germany by crossing the Pyrenees on foot. She got into politics to support Bobby Kennedy in 1968, entered the Oregon House in 1973 and served as speaker for eight years.

She could be motherly at one moment, blunt the next and fearsome to anyone

who took her on. The 1992 race for Portland mayor was to be an epic battle between her and then-City Commissioner Earl Blumenauer. She crushed him.

In her three terms, Katz held back the damage that property-tax ballot measures could have wreaked on public school budgets by sending city money to schools. She oversaw a dramatic drop in crime rates. And her strongest legacy remains city planning, especially the transformation of gritty Northwest Portland into the Pearl District. Without Katz, we wouldn’t have the South Waterfront, the aerial tram or the floating bike paths of the Eastbank Esplanade, where her bronze statue now sits.

“I guess my approach was to think about what a city should look like, feel like—what a city should become,” Katz says. “How you make it a place where people feel safe, a place where you educate young people, a place that attracts what I call ‘the young and the restless.’

How do you grow gracefully?”

But Vera’s Wall also symbolized the ways in which Katz’s legacy made little difference against powerful forces. She did little to confront rapid gentrification in North and Northeast Portland that priced out African-Americans. She didn’t face up to a runaway police and fire pension system or keep in check a police chief, Mark Kroeker, whose bureau intensified its reputation for excessive force.

W hen Katz mulled a third term, then-City Commissioner Charlie Hales berated her for complacency. “If we went into the 1970s with the city stalled under a cloud of smog,” he told WW, “we’re going into the next decade stalled under a cloud of smug.”

Before leaving office in 2004, Katz revealed that she was battling cancer for a second time. It was no match for her. She beat the diagnosis both times.

Now 81, she is weakened by the dialysis required because of her chemotherapy.

“People admired her, because she was tough,” says Beverly Stein, who chaired the Multnomah County Com-

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS mission while Katz ran the city. “She demonstrated that women could do the job as well as anybody.”

Katz wants that verdict amended.

“Better,” she says. “Not as well as. Better! So you can take your negative crap and shove it.” AARON MESH.

MARCH 18, 1996

Portland’s gay youth culture comes of age in the fight to save its only home...

When Lanny Swerdlow opened Portland’s only all-ages gay nightclub back in the late ’70s, he figured he was doing the city a favor. The only place for young gay people to congregate at the time was the cruising spot on the corner of Southwest 3rd and Yamhill. After Swerdlow established his club, the cruising spot cleared out practically overnight.

Instead of receiving a medal of commendation, Swerdlow was vilified. He was accused of indoctrinating teens into the homosexual lifestyle and hounded by church groups. The worst thing he did, though, was undercut the Police Bureau’s ability to bust kids for curfew violations.

“That began the war between me and the cops,” Swerdlow says.

The conflict would play out over the next two decades, in several different locations and iterations and it would culminate in a protest march to City Hall. In 1989, Swerdlow moved the club, by then called the City, into a warehouse in the pre-Pearl District, and began drawing crowds of 2,000 on weekends. Swerdlow enjoyed antagonizing the authorities: He ran TV ads boasting of “violating traditional family values” and sold shirts declaring “I Had Sex in the Bathroom of the City Nightclub.” But for regulars, the club wasn’t just a staging area for wild 40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS CONT. on page 29

COURTESY OF DANIEL SCHAFER

glitzy new arena.

Most of the city was excited at creating a new home for Portland’s only major-league sports team—but bicycle advocates were chafed.

Hard to imagine now, but the original plans for the area had no bike lanes. The green boxes that carry cyclists across the Broadway Bridge and up to the Vancouver-Williams corridor weren’t in the plans, and neither was the bikeway on the lower deck of the Steel Bridge.

Portland’s nascent Bicycle Transportation Alliance wanted to change that, and thought it had a trump card in the Oregon Bicycle Bill, a 1971 law that requires the inclusion of facilities for pedestrians and bicyclists wherever a road is built or rebuilt.

The BTA asked city commissioners to update the plans, and were rebuffed. Commissioner Earl Blumenauer, now a bowtied U.S. congressman who makes bikes part of his shtick, told the BTA the project was exempt from the Bicycle Bill. According to BTA co-founder Rex Burkholder, Blumenauer attempted to dissuade the BTA from pushing the issue further.

Katz also opposed updating the plans to include the bikeway that now connects to the floating esplanade named for her. According to Burkholder, she said, “So, sue us.”

The BTA did just that, filing the landmark lawsuit Bicycle Transportation Alliance v. City of Portland. On March 8, 1995, the BTA won in the Oregon Court of Appeals, and the plans were redrawn.

The area, which became a crucial connection point to North and Northeast Portland, currently gets 3,000 to 4,000 daily bike trips, numbers rivaled only by the Springwater Corridor and Hawthorne Bridge.

And it’s not just about bikes: Try to imagine the gentrification of North and Northeast Portland if bike-loving hipsters had to cross all the way down at the Burnside Bridge.

“It put the state and other cities on notice that if you wanted to construct or reconstruct any individual roadway, you were going to have to provide bicycle paths,” says BTA spokesman Gerik Kransky.

Kransky cautions against celebrating the Bicycle Bill or court judgment too much.

“It was incredibly progressive and visionary legislation, but it’s over 40 years ago, and right now we lack for that visionary approach,” he says. “We aren’t growing our investment in those types of transportation infrastructure. The last thing I want is for the current city of Portland to get credit for something that was done 40 years ago, and not challenge itself to do the next big thing.”

JAMES REXROAD

CONT.

CLUB KIDS: A crowd at the City Nightclub.

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40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS BRUCE FORESTER PHOTOGRAPHY

nights out. It’s where they learned to feel comfortable in their own skin.

“I longed for the weekends so I could escape to the city, to see and meet more fun, young, alive people, gay youth my own age,” says Kevin Cook, known in the Portland drag community as Poison Waters. “I craved it: the dark club, the pulsing beat of the music, the stench of clove cigarettes—all of it. The club represented my rebirth.”

At its height of popularity, the City was the focus of constant police scrutiny, under the pretext of pervasive drug use on the property. In 1996, the city attempted to use its drug-house ordinance to shut down the club. On March 18, nearly 500 supporters marched from the club to City Hall, waving signs and chanting, “Save the City!” Even MTV covered the protest.

By year’s end, though, Swerdlow was too exhausted, financially and mentally.

He closed the City and later moved to Palm Springs. Today, the club has faded as an icon of Old Portland. But for those who were empowered by those nights on its dance floor, and politicized by the battle to keep the doors open, the club’s legacy is part of them.

“I can’t imagine my life without the experiences of the City nightclub,” Cook says. “My life is exciting and plentiful, and I doubt it would be such had I not walked into that club almost 30 years ago.” MATTHEW SINGER.

ONE DAY IN 1996

Michael Powell tells Jeff Bezos, “Thanks, but no thanks…”

In 1996, Amazon nearly swallowed Powell’s Books.

Sometime that year—Michael Powell of the venerable Portland bookstore, doesn’t remember so much as which season—Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos called a meeting in Seattle. He had a simple but potentially massive proposition.

Amazon, then a 2-year-old company that sold only new books, wanted to expand into the used-books market—and Bezos wanted Powell’s to be its sole supplier.

He estimated it would translate to $200 million in sales annually.

There was a catch.

“The condition was that we couldn’t do it under our name,” Powell says. “It had to be under the Amazon name. We would in effect have been a warehouse distribution center for A mazon. We wouldn’t be Powell’s.”

Powel l, a long w it h t h ree of h is employees, spent about five hours with Bezos that day. But it took a fraction of that time to reject the offer. “We discussed it in the car on the way back, and we all chipped in and said it just didn’t feel right,” Powell says. “Yes, it was a lot of money, but we’re proud of who we are. We did not want to share ourselves as some kind of adjunct to another company in Seattle.”

“I don’t regret the decision,” Powell says. “Amazon has proved to be a big and

BOOMTOWN: The Pearl District in February 1997 (top) and in April 2011.

sometimes rather ruthless company.

I’m sure at some point they would have decided they wanted a bigger field to plow than what we could provide them, and we’d wake up to discover we were no longer the sole provider.”

Amazon has since swelled into the world’s largest Internet company, with $75 billion in total yearly revenue, about 7 percent of that from books. And Powell’s now sells some used books through Amazon, under its own name. But more than anything, the past 18 years have cemented Powell’s as the model for independent bookselling and as one of this city’s most important cultural touchstones.

W hen Stephen Colbert wanted to protest A mazon’s battle against the publisher Hachette in June, he urged viewers to buy elsewhere, making Edan Lepucki’s debut novel, California, a bestseller. Colbert’s choice of bookstore?

Powell’s. REBECCA JACOBSON.

SEPT. 8, 1997

The city agrees to tear down the old viaduct and sell the rail yards…

Only 20 years ago, inner Northwest Portland was a tangle of dirt streets, railroad tracks and warehouses. Train traffic contaminated much of the land with lead and creosote. A few people lived in the area, but zoning called for only 15 housing units per acre. Portlanders were wary of crossing West Burnside Street.

On Sept. 8, 1997, the city of Portland made an agreement with Hoyt Street Properties to develop 34 acres between the Willamette River, West Burnside, Northwest Broadway and Interstate 405.

Today, the Pearl District is overflowing with blocks of chic puppy boutiques and gleaming condos.

That deal also sealed the destruction of the Lovejoy viaduct, an approach to the Broadway Bridge that deposited traffic at

Northwest 14th Avenue. The ramp would be rebuilt, with Lovejoy Street reaching grade at Northwest 9th Avenue. The Lovejoy columns, made so iconic in Gus Van Sant’s breakout film Drugstore Cowboy (see Oct. 6, 1989, entry) would go, and development would rush in.

“The agreement—that one action— codified these two key events: the deal with the railroads, and the deal to get the Lovejoy ramp torn down and rebuilt,” says Bruce A llen, then-development manager for the Portland Development Commission. “You couldn’t have done anything without those acres, and you couldn’t have done much without tearing down that ramp.”

In the early ’90s, the city envisioned the neighborhood would grow to 5,500 housing units and 15,000 residents by the 2040s. There’s still a ways to go, but the Pearl’s population has already quadrupled from 1,500 in 1990 to nearly 7,000 in 2012.

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40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

CONT. city’s writing scene than anything before or since. Palahniuk has since released a dozen successful novels and Portland’s all-time greatest guidebook, Fugitives and Refugees. Three different members of his writing group have recently had their books optioned for high-profile projects. Monica Drake’s novel Clown Girl was picked up by comic actress Kristen Wiig, while Chelsea Cain’s Heartsick series was optioned by the FX network as a TV show. Wild author Cheryl Strayed is having wine brunches with Reese Witherspoon and Oprah Winfrey—who, in 2012, bested Jimmy Kimmel in a round of “Book Club Fight Club.”

Chuck Palahniuk is working on a sequel to Fight Club. It will be released as a 10-volume series of graphic novels by Milwaukie’s Dark Horse Comics (see July 1, 1986, entry). MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

CACOPHONY CC 3.0 BY

NOV. 11, 1999

Brad Pitt’s theatrical dud is released on DVD...

Nobody had to be told not to talk about Fight Club when it came out.

Portland author Chuck Palahniuk’s darkly satirical novel about fistfights, manliness and—spoiler alert!—split personalities sold a mere 5,000 copies in its first run in 1996, and the hardcover quickly went out of print. When movie people started showing interest in it—David Fincher, director of the 1999 film adaptation, was apparently an avid member of that 5,000—Palahniuk didn’t even have a literary agent.

Despite some critical raves, the film performed similarly. When the Brad PittEdward Norton vehicle hit theaters, it promptly nose-dived after starting atop the box office, pulling a mere $37 million gross against its production budget of $63 G R E G WA H L

SEPT. 21, 2000

FRESH ROAST: Stumptown changed how people in Portland and beyond approached coffee.

NOV. 1, 1999

A new coffee shop opens on Southeast Division Street…

Portland has long fancied itself a coffee town, but it wasn’t until a chilly November day in 1999 that it became the coffee town. That’s the day a young heavy-metal-loving stoner from Washington opened the doors to the first Stumptown Coffee Roasters on a sleepy stretch of Southeast Division Street. Of course, few Portlanders registered yet another neighborhood coffeehouse at the time, but within a few short years, Stumptown’s coffee was fueling the city, and Duane Sorenson was the buzz of the coffee world.

When Stumptown opened, Sorenson had one employee, a small vintage Probat roaster and a Ford Pinto for deliveries. Fifteen years later, the company has hundreds of employees, more than 1,000 wholesale accounts and 10 shops in four cities.

It isn’t Stumptown’s size or finances that have shaped the city. Coffee Bean International roasts far more beans, and Dutch Bros. has far more locations. But Sorenson turned Portland into a town of insufferable coffee snobs—in the best way.

From its early days, scrappy Stumptown stood out not just for the punk rock on its stereos and punk rockers behind its counters, but for its obsessive pursuit of quality. The company became known for going to great lengths—and even greater expense—to secure the best beans in the 30

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world. On the other side of the supply chain, cafes hoping to fill their portafilters with Hair Bender had to survive a barista boot camp and invest in approved equipment before they were deemed worthy of displaying an artfully printed “Stumptown” sign in their window.

A nd the obsession dripped down (sorry) to the customers. Coffee drinkers may have come for the superior product and hip environs, but they received an education in the unique qualities of different origins and processing styles, thanks to geeky, in-depth detail on the packaging. Farms like Hacienda La Esmeralda in Panama became recognizable brand names. Local palates became partial to light roasts. We learned how to pronounce “Yirgacheffe.”

Moreover, roasters across the country adopted Stumptown’s style and technique. In Portland, a wave of new roasters brought restrained roasting, obsessive sourcing and hip styling to the forefront, leaving Starbucks’ charred roasts and faux Italian verbiage for suburban strip malls. Other Portland roasters have taken the baton and run with it, but the next time you’re enjoying a pourover micro-lot from an organic nano-roaster powered by unicycle and located inside a hollowed-out Douglas fir tree, toast a demitasse to Sorenson, the guy who made it all possible. RUTH BROWN. Ruth Brown is a former Willamette Week Web editor now working at The Brooklyn Paper in New York City. She is the author of Coffee Nerd, out in January.

TIKI CULT: Chuck Palahniuk hanging out on North Interstate Avenue.

million. At the Venice Film Festival, Pitt told Entertainment Weekly, he remembered that he and Norton were the only ones laughing at the screening. “It gets to one of Helena [Bonham Carter’s] scandalous lines,” Pitt said, “‘I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school!’—and literally, the guy running the festival got up and left.”

But Palahniuk’s book thrived in its afterlife, with a fan base that passed the DVD around dorm rooms and watched the film over and over, divining hidden meanings on the Internet. What the movie did not achieve on the large screen, it demolished on the small one.

As of 2013, according to Fincher, the film has sold 13 million copies. This success transferred to Palahniuk’s subsequent novels. He hovers in the top 50 bestselling contemporary literary authors on Amazon.com, and the debut that made him famous has received two reissues.

His rabid fan base calls itself “The Cult,” treating the novelist as a prophet of the disaffected.

Palahniuk’s success brought a focus on Portland’s literary scene it had never before encountered. In a way, the success of the Fight Club DVD did more for the

The feds shut down Jeff Grayson’s Capital Consultants…

The star wall in Jeff Grayson’s downtown office featured autographed photographs of Grayson’s powerful friends and acquaintances, including former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt, President George H.W. Bush and Trail Blazers legend Clyde Drexler.

Grayson sat at the center of Portland’s circles of power. At its peak, Grayson’s company, Capital Consultants, managed $1 billion in investments, most of it in union pension funds. Multiple sclerosis put him in a wheelchair at 42, but his disability didn’t slow Grayson. He was a prolific fundraiser for a variety of causes, including the University of Oregon, where he headed the university’s foundation and for a time had his name on the former law school building. In a town filled with bumper-stickered Volvos, Grayson traveled in a chauffeur-driven Bentley.

Most pension-fund managers find relatively conservative places, such as stocks and bonds, to put their investors’ money.

Grayson invested in unconventional assets, such as financing a Portland shipyard and lending money against a fleet of nonfunctioning airplanes.

“We don’t take collateral that eats or shits,” Grayson told WW in 1999. “But we’ll take just about anything else.”

For years, there were whispers about whether his deals were legitimate, but his outsized personality and relationships with the state’s power structure kept doubters at bay.

“He was a pillar of the community, and as a result he got the benefit of the doubt far longer than he should have, the same way Bernie Madoff got the benefit of the doubt,” says Portland lawyer Stephen English, who would later sue Grayson on behalf of numerous investors.

In 1998, WW published the first story linking Grayson to a youthful financier 40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS CONT. on page 32

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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CONT.

NIGEL JAQUISS.

I have no recollection of a moment where we were saying to each other, “What do you think is funny?”

That was never a discussion…. There were never any moments of having to change for the other person—a sense of humor, or a sense of style. We never said, “Why are we doing this?”

BROWNSTEIN: We’re really protective of the friendship. We nurture that first.

And then the creative output from that stays vital and inspired.

ARMISEN: Sometimes I’ll think, “This is what the friendship is,” and then another week goes by and another month, and it grows. At the risk of sounding dramatic, it’s what makes me happy to be alive.

AR M IS E N :

COURTESY OF CARRIE BROWNSTEIN

named Andy Wiederhorn, who specialized in buying bad debts and squeezing money out of them. With his slicked-back hair, cufflinks and private jet, Wiederhorn looked like he’d gotten lost in Portland on his way to Wall Street. His stake in just one of his companies, Wilshire Financial Services Group, was worth more than $140 million by the time Wiederhorn turned 32.

Grayson’s company loaned another Wiederhorn firm more than $160 million.

When Wiederhorn’s business schemes left him unable to pay the money, Wilshire collapsed into bankruptcy. A federal investigation quickly led to Grayson.

On Sept. 21, 2000, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shut Grayson down, alleging he’d been engaging in a Ponzi scheme for years. The story federal investigators unraveled included widespread bribery, exotic hunting trips to Africa and Asia used to inf luence pension-fund trustees, and increasingly desperate bailout schemes featuring shady car dealers and the Miami mob.

“I was sitting in the office at Local 290 the day he called to say, ‘It’s all over,’” recalls Ron Murray, then an official of Plumbers and Steamfitters, whose union had $159 million invested with Grayson.

“Nobody could believe it.”

The feds charged Grayson with what was then the largest union pension fraud in U.S. history—more than $350 million was missing.

Grayson pleaded guilty in 2002 but soon after suffered a stroke. He lived the rest of his life in a rehab facility, dying in 2009. Eight others, including Wiederhorn, also pleaded guilty to various crimes related to Capital Consultants.

Wiederhorn spent 18 months in federal prison, and after he got out, took over as CEO of Beverly Hills-based fast-food chain Fatburger.

English and other lawyers spent years fighting on behalf of union pension funds, clawing back most of the money Grayson looted. English has pursued other high-profile con men but says the Capital Consultants case remains the most memorable of his career.

“People refused to comprehend the enormity of the fraud that was going on,” English says. ”There were a number of opportunities when that could have been stopped, but people simply refused to believe what was happening.”

OCT. 21, 2003 NERD CHIC: Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen in a 2005 Web skit.

crous playground for pourover coffee and privilege.

Portland had been called “the place where young people go to retire” before— WW alum Taylor Clark described a similar saying as a chestnut in 2007, while also calling the Rose City “America’s indie-rock theme park.” But Brownstein and Armisen threw open the gates.

Their creative pairing also transformed them: Brownstein went from Sleater-Kinney’s riot-grrrl guitar goddess to Portland’s anointed cultural balloon-popper, and Armisen turned from droll Obama impersonator into the patron saint of milquetoast. (It’s hard to say if men on the streets of Portland always looked like Fred Armisen, or if Armisen has started to look like men on the streets of Portland.)

Their meet-cute, however, has been difficult to pinpoint. For years, the two maintained they could not remember where they first locked eyes. It was, in fact, the day after Valentine’s Day. AARON MESH. BROWNSTEIN: We used to disagree on the story, but we have come to terms with the fact that there’s only one truth: the Internet. We met at an SNL after-party

in 2003. Jennifer Garner was the host.

Beck was the musical guest. Sleater-Kinney played a show in New York that day.

A R M I S E N : The after-parties at SNL, they’re not like big, crazy parties. It’s almost like a big dinner party. It’s at a restaurant. It almost feels like a wedding.

BROWNSTEIN: At the time, Sleater-Kinney had little buttons with our faces on them. Fred was wearing mine.

ARMISEN: She had this energy that was calm and in the moment. Sometimes situations like that, like a party, it brings out the, “Hey, I’ve got to run around the party.” As much as this word is overused, she was very cool.

BROWNSTEIN: I thought that Fred was very funny, warm, effusive. He had an unwavering optimism that’s infectious.

Fred was shooting a video for some group of John Kerry supporters in 2004, and he asked if I wanted to be a part of it and he flew to Portland. We ended up calling it, “Boink!” Fred played Saddam Hussein, which was someone he was doing an impression of at the time, and he played him like an aging British rock star, like Paul Weller or Pete Townshend. And I played Cindy Overton, who had gotten the first post-bunker interview with Saddam Hussein for her cable-access show.

JOANNA BOLME

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

FEB. 15, 2003

Fred meets Carrie...

Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen have gone on some memorable dates.

They’ve investigated the life history of a free-range chicken they were about to consume, fled zombie hordes of moonlighting DJs, and turned “cacao” into their bedroom safe word.

Everywhere they went, they defined 21st- cent u r y Por tla nd. T hei r comedy sketches on Portlandia, the cable TV series that debuted in 2008, cemented this city’s national notoriety as a ludi32

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

INFINITE SADNESS: Elliott Smith at a 1996 photo shoot for Larry Crane’s Tape Op magazine.

A singer-songwriter commits suicide...

On the morning of Oct. 22, I was startled awake by a ringing phone. It was my editor calling to tell me that Elliott Smith had killed himself.

We were bumping the upcoming issue’s big feature, she said, and replacing it with an extended eulogy to Smith, Portland’s native son whose sad songs had both propelled him to unlikely success and predicted his tragic crash.

Staff writer Zach Dundas was already calling friends and family for comment.

How quickly could I come in? I hung up the phone, dug out my copy of Smith’s album XO and played “Pitseleh” as I brushed my teeth. And I cried. Then I headed into the office.

When I had started my job as music editor a few months before, I might have told you that I would someday pen a cover story about Smith—his music was one of the reasons I moved to Portland. But I didn’t think it would happen so soon, or that I would be writing about his death.

Five years prior, during the broadcast of the Oscars, I, along with millions of other viewers, first saw Smith. Dressed in a wrinkled white suit and holding a filthy acoustic guitar, he played a song called “Miss Misery,” the melody of which was on everyone’s lips thanks to its placement in the Gus Van Sant film Good Will Hunting. Smith eventually followed his fame away from Portland, first to New York, then to Los Angeles, but that didn’t change his status as a Portlander.

To the friends and family interviewed for our story, his death was devastating.

And even for his fans—many of whom had come to Portland to be musicians themselves—the loss felt personal.

That was a dark time in the local music scene. A couple months before Smith ended his own life, three members of the Exploding Hearts—a band that seemed destined for bigger things—died in a van crash. This was just a few weeks after two members of the Spooky Dance Band were struck and killed by a carwhile riding their bikes. Also that year, two clubs—the long-running Satyricon, where Smith had played, and the upstart Blackbird—shut down. Those closings were less-tragic events, sure, but they

CONT.

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS STEPHEN VOSS

added to the sense that the music scene was cursed, that it was disappearing.

It wasn’t true, of course. Just a couple months after Smith’s death, a hopeful force would emerge. Citing an abundance of great and underappreciated music coming out of the city—including recent debuts by the Thermals, the Decemberists, and Lifesavas—a group of musicians and fans began organizing the inaugural PDX Pop Now, a free, all-ages music festival that would help fuel a boom in the music scene still felt today. It was a turning point for this city. And while no one ever officially attributed this burst of light to the darkness that preceded it, it’s impossible for me to recall one without the other coming to mind. MARK BAUMGARTEN.

Mark Baumgarten is the author of Love Rock Revolution: K Records and the Rise of Independent Music. He currently serves as editor-in-chief of Seattle Weekly.

MARCH 3, 2004

Multnomah County unleashes gay marriage…

Kara Bertsch and Christine Pearson picked out wedding rings at Saturday Market in 2001, six months after meeting at a lesbian bar, the Egyptian Club.

In those days, the idea of two women getting hitched struck many people as incomprehensible. “We were still having to argue with people about why it was important for us to get married,” Bertsch says. She and Pearson wondered whether the government would ever allow them to marry.

Then, for a brief moment, Oregon did. It ignited hopes of gay couples everywhere, stunned even the most progressive citizens, and so alarmed many Oregonians that voters slammed the door on marriage equality for a decade.

In early 2004, four Multnomah County commissioners hatched a plan to make same-sex marriage legal. Roey Thorpe, the then-executive director of Basic Rights Oregon, had asked county officials what would happen if a same-sex couple applied for a marriage license. County Chairwoman Diane Linn and Commissioners Lisa Naito, Serena Cruz and Maria Rojo de Steffey consulted county counsel Agnes Sowle. Sowle concluded the Oregon Constitution required the county to grant licenses to same-sex couples.

Emboldened by this opinion, the four commissioners met in secret to discuss how to roll out the change. (They excluded the county’s fifth commissioner, Lonnie Roberts, who opposed same-sex marriage.)

But the commissioners rushed into it March 3 after word of their plan leaked to the media. Couples lined up outside county headquarters before dawn. The county issued 400 licenses that first day—including one to Bertsch and Pearson. They got married on the sidewalk outside by a minister offering to perform ceremonies on the spot.

“It was raining, but no one really cared,” Bertsch says. “It was like a big party.”

SEALED WITH A KISS: Kara Bertsch (left) and Christine Pearson celebrate their marriage outside Multnomah County headquarters on March 3, 2004. The celebratory atmosphere was short-lived.

Protesters also descended on the county building, and commissioners got death threats. “There was incredible jubilation and incredible stress,” Linn says.

Oregonian columnist Steve Duin crystallized sentiment among a hesitant public blindsided by the commissioners.

“Four women on the Multnomah County board just declared war,” he w rote.

“Not just on the opponents of gay marriage, but on the undecided, unsolicited, unnerved mass in the middle.”

In April, a Multnomah County circuit judge declared the county couldn’t issue same-sex marriage licenses without the Oregon Supreme Court or Legislature weighing in.

By then the backlash was in full force.

Polls showed a majority of Americans opposed same-sex marriage. President George W. Bush, seeking re-election and looking for a conservative rallying cry, had earlier called for a ban in the U.S. Constitution. In Oregon, the Defense of Marriage Coalition was already pushing a ballot initiative that would put a samesex marriage ban in the state constitution. Seven months later, voters approved the ban, Measure 36, by 57 percent to 43 percent.

“We were on the right side of history,” Linn says today, “and the wrong side of politics.”

For Bertsch and Pearson, history has come full circle. They were on vacation in Hawaii on May 19 when they heard a federal judge had overturned Oregon’s ban.

Their destination that day? A Hawaii marriage license bureau. Four days later, in a ceremony on Maui, they got married for the second time.

“We don’t think it’s going to go away now,” Bertsch says. BETH SLOVIC.

MAY 6, 2004

Goldschmidt exposed…

In January 1990, then-Gov. Neil Goldsch m idt st u n ned Oregon w ith the announcement he would not seek a second term.

Goldschmidt, a Democrat, was the golden boy of Oregon politics. He’d won election as Portland mayor in 1972 at the age of 32. In City Hall, he persuaded Nordstrom to build downtown. He led the fight to stop the proposed Mount Hood Freeway and instead built the city’s first MAX line. And he converted an expressway along the downtown seawall into Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter named Goldschmidt as his U.S. secretary of transportation.

He won the governorship in 1986 after years as a Nike executive. All along the way, Goldschmidt exhibited an ability to bring talented people from the private and public sectors together in ways that other politicians could only dream about.

“He was dynamic, charismatic and a real dealmaker,” says Carl Abbott, an emeritus professor of history at Portland State University.

In 198 8 , m idw ay t h roug h G oldschmidt’s term, then-Washington Post columnist David Broder singled him out for praise.

“Few governors,” Broder wrote, “have more impressive records in their past and present jobs.”

That’s why his sudden abandonment of the governorship in 1990 made little sense. He claimed he wouldn’t seek reelection because his marriage was breaking up. But Goldschmidt had never been one to relinquish power.

The real reason: While mayor of Portland, Goldschmidt had repeatedly raped the 13-year-old daughter of a neighbor, a girl named Elizabeth Dunham, whose mother worked for Goldschmidt.

Goldschmidt continued the assaults for at least three years. Dunham’s friends say Goldschmidt’s treatment scarred her. She went from being an honor-roll student at St. Mary’s Academy to a federal convict who suffered from substance abuse and mental illness for decades. According to what she told people later, Goldschmidt maintained a sexual relationship with her over the years, including during his time as governor.

Many people around Goldschmidt knew his secret and helped him keep it to protect him and their own careers.

In 1990, Dunham, then 29, talked to friends about the possibility of suing Goldschmidt over the abuse that had taken place more than a decade earlier.

With that threat hanging over his head, Goldschmidt left the governor’s office.

He then established himself as the state’s leading power broker, building a multimillion-dollar consulting business and representing clients such as Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen, Bechtel Corp., Weyerhaeuser and PacifiCorp.

In 1994, he reached a private settlement with Dunham, paying her $350,000 in damages and requiring she remain silent about his abuse.

Goldschmidt avoided the public spotlight until two major events took place in 2003.

First, then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski, a Goldschmidt protégé, na med Goldschmidt to the State Board of Higher Education—as its president, of course.

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS CONT. on page 35 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

33

It’s time to support Portland, Portland!

Give!Guide is HeRe! giveguide.org 34

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

And in the fall of 2003, the Texas Pacific Group, a private equity firm, tried to buy Portland General Electric. Texas Pacific knew the transaction would present political and regulatory challenges that only somebody of Goldschmidt’s influence had a shot at overcoming. Goldschmidt was named chairman of the corporation that would take over PGE. Goldschmidt’s re-emergence caused his secrets to bubble to the surface.

In March 2004, WW started an investigation into rumors that Goldschmidt had been involved with a young girl. By May, the newspaper had established his long-term abuse of Dunham.

In the face of WW ’s findings, Goldschmidt abruptly announced on May 6, 2004, that he was quitting the higher-ed board because of health problems. WW quick ly repor ted that Goldschmidt had actually resigned as a result of the newspaper’s investigation. Goldschmidt rushed to spin his version of events to The Oregonian. Six days later, WW laid out the story, including his efforts over the years to keep the crime covered up.

By the time Goldschmidt ’s secret came to light, his crimes were well beyond the statute of limitations. He closed his consulting firm, resigned all his public positions, quit the state bar and was forced out of the Multnomah Athletic Club. The Legislature took down his portrait in the state Capitol.

Dunham died in 2011.

Over the past decade, Goldschmidt, 74, has divided his time between Portland and France, keeping a low public profile, even as the city he helped convert from a sleepy, Republican-dominated backwater has risen to national acclaim.

“For historians, the question is, how do you deal with the legacy of a flawed individual?” Abbott says. “How do you measure that positive impact he had while acknowledging the bad behavior that led him to do terrible things?”

OCT. 9, 2004

Someone finally puts real money behind the eastside’s arts scene...

It looked as if somebody had plunked down a ski lodge in the middle of Oakland.

In 2004, when John Plummer, Jeff Kovel and Mike Quinn built the modswank Doug Fir Lounge—a plush 1870s log cabin with the interior of a 1970s coke den—the East Burnside neighborhood was better known to police as a prostitution corridor. There was no Rontoms. There was no Le Pigeon. Even Union Jack’s strip club seemed a little ritzy for the neighborhood, despite being parked under a ghastly unpainted wreck of a building that looked like a haunted house.

The eastside had been home to iconic rock clubs before the Doug Fir, of course.

The skuzzy, all-ages Pine Street Theater and La Luna had hosted some of the most legendary shows of the ’80s and ’90s. But the Doug Fir signaled something brand new: Someone was actually investing real money on the eastside’s rock scene.

Skylab Architects completely gutted and rehabbed a once-terrifying motor lodge next door, making it into one of the city’s hipper hotels. What’s more, somebody actually invested in the club’s sound system.

“Can this overhyped love affair last?” we wrote at the time, noting that the nightclub restaurant’s “half-finished benches were still sluttily flashing their foam innards at East Burnside’s bums.”

It was strange to see Wieden+Kennedy account execs drinking upper-shelf liquors on the “wrong” side of town, where artists and musicians had been pushed by skyrocketing Pearly rents.

After that, it was like playing dominos in reverse, with new spots popping up every year. In 2005, Simpatica—the parent company of Burnside’s Laurelhurst Market—moved into the old La

AXING THE TREE: Quasi plays the firstever show at Doug Fir Lounge.

Luna space two blocks south of the Doug Fir. The next year saw the openings of Rontoms nightclub and Beard-Awardwinning Le Pigeon, two blocks to the east.

Biwa opened next to Simpatica in 2007.

The neighborhood will soon receive futuristic apartment buildings that look like sword blades pointed at God. The eastside condo boom kicked off, meanwhile, with the Clinton Street Lofts in 2005—one year after Doug Fir was completed—from which the founders of House Spirits, Stumptown and Pok Pok all hatched plans for their eastside empires.

And so when you gaze in bewilderment at the vast restaurant- and condoscape of the eastside, just look over at those logs that contain the best sound system in Portland and remember: It started here.

MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

SEPT. 17, 2006

Police beat James Chasse to death...

The chilling image is now iconic: James Chasse, a slight, 42-year-old man with schizophrenia, lies hogtied and face down in a Pearl District crosswalk. Portland police officers, firefighters and paramedics stand over his broken body. Chasse is still breathing, but not for long.

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

It took 106 minutes from the time officers confronted Chasse on Sept. 17, 2006, to the moment he died. It took years for the truth to come out about how police beat to death an unarmed, mentally ill man who posed no threat. His killing outraged the city and sparked calls for police reform and improved mental health services. That also took years— and it’s still not clear the reforms have produced meaningful change. Chasse’s death remains a touchstone.

“The amount of br uta lit y raised people’s consciousness,” says Portland Copwatch co-founder Dan Handelman.

Chasse went to the alternative Metropolitan Learning Center in Northwest Portland for high school, where he thrived on punk-rock music and wrote and illustrated his own zine. In 1979, Chasse inspired a song called “Alien Boy” by seminal Portland punk bad the Wipers. “Cause he’s an alien,” the song went, “they hurt what they don’t understand.”

(The song inspired the title of the 2013 documentary Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse.)

On the day he died, Chasse had been off his meds for weeks, perhaps months. Officers confronted him for, as they later said, “doing something suspicious.” Frightened, he fled. One officer, Christopher Humphreys, tackled Chasse.

Multnomah County sheriff’s deputy Bret Burton and Portland police Sgt. Kyle Nice, joined Humphreys in punching and kicking Chasse and shooting him with a Taser while trying to pin him to the ground.

By the time they cuffed Chasse, the officers had broken 16 of Chasse’s ribs in 26 places and punctured a lung. The officers later said they assumed Chasse was high on drugs.

The officers didn’t tell paramedics what had happened, so the ambulance didn’t take Chasse to the hospital. The cops tried to book Chasse into the Multnomah County Detention Center (the 40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS CONT. on page 37

JAMIE MARQUEZ, THE PORTLAND MERCURY

NIGEL JAQUISS.

TOM OLIVER

CONT.

MAN DOWN: On Sept. 17, 2006, police, firefighters and paramedics surround an injured James Chasse in a Pearl District crosswalk.

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CONT.

P H O T O B Y C H R I S R YA N

DEC. 13, 2008

The fanciest restaurant in Portland’s history crashes in only seven months…

charges: resisting arrest and assaulting an officer). Two jail nurses refused to admit Chasse because of his injuries.

Burton and Humphreys loaded Chasse back into their patrol car and headed for Portland Adventist Hospital. Chasse died on the way.

A state medical examiner later ruled Chasse had died of “blunt-force chest trauma” but said he would have survived if taken to a hospital sooner.

Three years later, after the Police Bureau finally concluded its internal investigation, City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who then oversaw the bureau, ordered a two-week suspension for Nice and Humphreys. In July 2012, an arbitrator dismissed the suspensions and ordered the city to award Nice and Humphreys back pay.

Chasse’s family received settlements worth more than $3 million from the city, the county and ambulance company American Medical Response.

In 2011, as a result of Chasse’s death, Multnomah County opened the Crisis Assessment and Treatment Center, a 16-bed facility to help stabilize patients suffering a mental health crisis. Mayor Charlie Hales proposed cutting the city’s share of funding to the center last year.

He reversed course after county officials

howled.

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice found Portland police had a pattern of using excessive force against people with mental illness. The city negotiated a settlement with federal authorities that calls for more police training and accountability.

Humphreys made news aga in in 2009, when he fired a beanbag round at a 12-year-old girl on the 148th Avenue MAX platform. Wheeler County elected him sheriff in 2012. Nice was temporarily assigned to a desk job after he was involved in a 2010 incident of road rage while off duty in Washington County.

Burton, the sheriff’s deputy, joined the Portland police and in 2013 was assigned to the mobile crisis unit that works with the mentally ill.

“It ’s def initely something that ’s changed my life,” Burton then told KGWTV of Chasse’s death, “and changed the way we do police work here in the city.”

Mental health advocate Jason Renaud, co-producer of Alien Boy, isn’t so optimistic.

“What killed Chasse was not a lack of training,” Renaud says. “What killed Chasse are three police officers who still have badges.” BETH SLOVIC.

of its titular Thai rice dish—better, perhaps, than Keller himself could manage.

Portland’s restaurant scene has, in the six years since Lucier bombed, become even more what it was—bountifully casual, full of well-done comfort fare, reclaimed barnwood and local beer.

The Lucier space, meanwhile, was briefly home to a “five-star” restaurant called Quartet, which also failed. The second-fanciest new restaurant of the past decade, Noisette, a self-described “fine-dining oasis in Portland’s sea of casual gastronomie,” closed after a short run. Genoa, “Portland’s ultimate specialoccasion restaurant,” also closed last year.

The Lucier team has adapted, too.

Chef Chureau’s team included Doug Adams, who now manages the wood-fired oven at the rustic-chic Imperial, and Kristen D. Murray, who runs Maurice, a twee dessert bistro with a butcherpaper sign and a menu made entirely at her whim. Chureau himself is currently doing a pop-up series at area farms.

MARTIN CIZMAR.

JAN. 19, 2009

Mayor Sam Adams admits his relationship with Beau Breedlove…

For a long time, the political ascent of Sam Adams seemed to have no ceiling.

Adams started as an intern for thenLane County Commissioner (now Congressman) Peter DeFazio in 1984. He dropped out of the University of Oregon to pursue politics full time. As a legislative staffer and campaign manager in Salem, he proved sav v y enough that then-House Speaker Vera Katz took him with her to City Hall when she was elected Portland mayor in 1992.

As Katz’s chief of staff for more than a decade, Adams was Katz’s gatekeeper and her hatchet man. He immersed himself in the intricacies of city finances and rode herd on projects such as the renovation of the decrepit Civic Stadium (now Providence Park) and the development of South Waterfront and the aerial tram.

With his boundless energy, encyclope40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS CONT. on page 40

BYRON BECK

NEW SPAGHETTI FACTORY: The South Waterfront’s Lucier was the most opulent restaurant space in Portland history.

Of course Lucier was doomed.

In May 2008, at the height of the Bush recession, a scion of the Old Spaghetti Factory empire rented prime space on the South Waterfront and spent $4 million building an opulent dining room with two-story windows and a little river of water flowing through gold-tiled channels crossed by glass bridges.

WW’s review credited it with “pizazz,” saying it “makes every other restaurant in Portland look like somebody’s frumpy first wife.” (The Oregonian’s critic called it “Dining in Dubai, or 1980s Vegas.”)

The chef, Pascal Chureau, claimed to have worked at French restaurants with three Michelin stars. (This was later revealed to be untrue.) The fare was boldly season-agnostic, serving airfreighted ingredients, including Japanese Wagyu beef for $25 an ounce. “[The menu] seems to have been written by feeding a swarm of trendy food buzzwords in several languages into some kind of random computer recipe generator,” our reviewer wrote.

“Ravioli, harissa, picholine olives, micro greens, ice cream, jus, emulsion, cacao nibs, cromesquis, reduction, kumquats, gastrique, yuzu, lemongrass, griottes, guanciale, cappuccino, white anchovy....”

And then there was the wine list, which ambled on for 30 pages.

Everything about Lucier was beautifully, hilariously wrong.

So wrong, in fact, that it taught us what was right.

At the time, The Oregonian asked, “Can Portland, the Land of the Modest, create the level of vaulting ambition found in other culinary strongholds, a food destination on a par with, say, Thomas Keller’s French Laundry?”

The answer was already across the river, where the Cartopia pod had opened a few weeks before Lucier, in April 2008.

A year later, it was clear that Portland’s most exciting food came from places like the just-opened Nong’s Khao Man Gai, which made only a gobsmacking version

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

BEFORE THE STORM: Then-City Commissioner Sam Adams (left) and Beau Breedlove in October 2008.

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CONT.

dic Rolodex and deep grasp of city issues, Adams had amassed all the tools to run for office himself. In 2004, he faced off against lawyer Nick Fish for a vacant City Council seat. Fish nearly knocked Adams out in the primary, beating him by 11 percentage points. But Adams outworked Fish to win the council seat in the November runoff.

It helped Adams that he was an openly gay candidate in an election year when voters were being asked to ban same-sex marriage. Adams took a leading role in fighting the ban. The measure passed statewide, but a big Portland turnout helped lift Adams to victory.

On the City Council, Adams made clear he wanted to be mayor. In September 2007, rumors circulated Adams had become involved with a legislative intern named Beau Breedlove when Breedlove was 17. When WW and The Oregonian questioned him about it, Adams insisted he was only a mentor to Breedlove. “I have been the target of a nasty smear,” Adams said in a Sept. 18, 2007, statement.

“I didn’t get into public life to allow my instinct to help others to be snuffed out by fear of sleazy misrepresentations or political manipulation.”

He won the mayor’s race in 2008, trouncing travel agency owner Sho Dozono, and he took office in January 2009 as the first openly gay mayor of a major American city.

But Beau Breedlove was talking, and the stor y he told W W contradicted Adams’ version. Breedlove said their relationship was sexual. Confronted with Breedlove’s account, Adams continued to say he had only mentored the young man.

Only as WW prepared to publish the story did Adams admit he had lied. He insisted, however, he and Breedlove only had sex after Breedlove’s 18th birthday.

Adams had been in office only three weeks. The city was split between outrage over Adams’ lie and anger over what some saw as an unfair intrusion into his private life. An Oregon Department of Justice investigation found no evidence of any crimes.

Adams had arrived as mayor with a mandate but now stood humiliated and damaged politically. “It was like the first stage of a rocket sputtering out,” says veteran lobbyist Len Bergstein. “A tremendous waste of political talent.”

To his credit, Adams never gave up.

He brought the streetcar to the eastside, passed an arts tax, and increased the city’s investment in bicycle infrastructure. He also brokered the deal that turned what was PGE Park into the home of the Portland Timbers and made possible the city’s food-cart frenzy.

Adams’ attempt to strike a deal for a hotel next to the Oregon Convention Center flopped, as did his plans for an eco-friendly and expensive Oregon Sustainability Center.

In 2011, polls showed Adams could not win re-election, and he announced he would be a one-term mayor.

Now 51, he’s executive director of the Portland City Club. He’s lost 40 pounds and is still working to have an impact— he’s especially proud of a January City 40

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

VIVIAN JOHNSON

40 YEARS IN 40 DAYS

UNOCCUPIED: Police face a lone protester while clearing the Occupy Portland camps on Nov. 13, 2011.

Club report on the plight of 340,000 adult high-school dropouts in Oregon.

“It ’s inv igorating to ta ke a ll the knowledge I have of the city and state and make connections between people,” Adams says, “and to make it easier for people to plug in and make a difference.”

NIGEL JAQUISS.

NOV. 13, 2011

Occupy Portland makes its last stand…

For 39 days, Occupy Portland turned two downtown parks into a revolutionary campout. In one helter-skelter night, the protesters took over the streets. Then came the dawn, the cops, and the eviction of a movement.

The takeover began Oct. 6, 2011, when 10,000 people marched through downtown Portland in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York.

Occupy Portland expressed sympathy with the East Coast organizers’ aims to shed light on economic inequality and corporate greed.

The march stopped in front of City Hall, and a couple of dozen die-hards— mostly students and recent college grads—refused to leave. Mayor Sam Adams allowed the Occupiers to pitch their tents in Chapman Square.

Within days the camp had spread to adjacent Lownsdale Square. Occupiers had blocked Southwest Main Street, at the landmark elk fountain. “We are the 99%,” read a sign lining Southwest 3rd Avenue. “The entire world is watching.”

Another poster showed an extended middle finger and read, “Put a bird on it.”

Tension spiraled between the growing presence of the Occupiers and a city

running out of patience. An Oct. 13 editorial in The Oregonian prayed for rain that might drive protesters away, intoned about the illegality of the camp, and called on Adams to evict the Occupiers.

Adams at first refused. The city reopened Main Street, but the camp grew until 500 people made the parks their home. Occupiers established a kitchen that fed 1,500 people a day. The camp had its own medical clinic, trash collection, security force, day care center and a library, all nestled under a canopy of plastic tarps hung from the parks’ huge elms.

The social services proved the Occupation’s undoing. They made the camps a magnet for the homeless and mentally ill.

Street kids took over part of the camp.

The Occupy leaders who had begun protesting the top 1 percent of the economy now found themselves caretakers of the bottom 1 percent. Organizers—many of whom went home at night to sleep— argued over how to handle troublemakers. “The homeless are guarding the homeless,” one organizer told WW at the time. “It’s just not working.”

Occupy leaders never articulated a clear protest message, and they expended their energy trying to control the camps as the parks became mud pits that stank of rotting food and sewage.

Adams, who resisted evicting the campers, fought to keep control. Police Chief Mike Reese was mulling a run for mayor (Adams was not seeking re-election) and had his Police Bureau media office release constant alerts about how crime was rising in downtown. When someone threw a Molotov cocktail at the World Trade Center on Nov. 8, Adams had little choice but to order the camps cleared by 12:01 am Sunday, Nov. 13.

Occupiers declared they would hold the parks. Protesters wore gas masks and

bandannas soaked in vinegar to resist tear gas, and built wooden forts around their tents.

The streets around Chapman and Lownsdale squares transformed into a massive block party Saturday night, Nov. 12. As many as 5,000 people flooded downtown—some out of support, others out of mere curiosity. Occupiers banged drums and scrambled atop the Main Street elk statue to kiss, pose for pictures and play a French horn. “Whose streets?” they chanted. “Our streets!”

The midnight deadline passed. Police in riot gear showed themselves at about 1:30 am and then retreated just before dawn. Occupiers cried and hugged. The crowds went home. And the cops returned two hours later to clear out the parks, now largely abandoned. A few dozen anarchists battled for their tents. WW said at the time the conflict represented “the movement’s incoherent defiance.” Riot cops arrested more than 50 people, and had fences up around the emptied parks by midafternoon.

The police won praise for their strategy of wearing down the Occupiers, but Reese, who should have seen a political boost, saw his mayoral ambitions implode.

Four days after the eviction, the police chief claimed Occupy’s demand on police resources had kept officers from responding to a rape in a timely way—a claim the bureau later admitted wasn’t true.

For a time, the ca mp forced liberal Portland to face up to economic and social injustice. But for the most part the movement faded away. Some activists moved on to other issues, such as affordable housing or open drinking-water reservoirs, and now ask that they no longer be associated with the term “Occupy.”

AARON MESH.

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Willamette Week has built a time machine. digital archives available November 5 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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BLEACHERS In store signing with Jack Antonoff

FRIDAY, 11/07 @ 6PM

Channeling the experiences of growing up in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood just outside the reaches of the big city, Jack Antonoff wanted to create a record that spoke to the influences of 80s pop music and John Hughes films, and a youth spent feeling like a bit of an outsider looking in. Bleachers’ new album, ‘Strange Desire’, does just that, bounding with energy, feel good fun spirit, and optimism for a future that might just be better than the past.

GREENSKY BLUEGRASS SATURDAY, 11/08 @ 2PM

From seemingly irreconcilable elements, the five members of Greensky Bluegrass have forged a defiant, powerful sound that, while rooted in classic stringband Americana, extends outwards with a fearless, exploratory zeal.

KELLI FRANCES CORRADO

SUNDAY, 11/09 @ 5PM Coupling bittersweet, ethereal vocals with grandiose violins, cellos and autoharp, underscored by a sinister metronome of pulsing drums and loops, Corrado’s tracks are dark, atmospheric and enchanting

For more info or to purchase tickets visit: www.oregon.tie.org

RUN THE JEWELS

In store signing with El-P & Killer Mike

SATURDAY, 11/15 @ 6PM El-P and Killer Mike, two of the most distinctive and celebrated names in rap, subverted and pulverized all expectations with their critically lauded ‘Run The Jewels’ collaborative LP last year. They return with a vengeance on ‘Run The Jewels 2’, out now on Mass Appeal Records

DAVID VIRELLES - MBOKO CD SALE PRICE: $14.99

With ‘Mbókò’, pianist-composer David Virelles —now based in New York but born and raised in Cuba - has taken the folkloric rhythms of Afro-Cuban religious ritual and transmuted them into a 21st-century music resonating with mystery and meaning.

MARCIN WASILEWSKI TRIO W/ JOAKIM WILDER - SPARK OF LIFE

CD SALE PRICE: $14.99

Though still in their 30s, pianist Marcin Wasilewski, bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz have been together for more than 20 years. Spark of Life is another stellar collection from a trio predicated on the value of longevity.

GREYLAG - GREYLAG CD SALE PRICE: $11.99

Like the wild goose that the Portland-based trio are named after, the members of Greylag have all undertaken amazing journeys, migrating as if by homing instinct from different parts of the US, to create a self-titled debut album that’s the latest must-have slice of verdant, far-reaching Americana.

Expires December 3rd

44

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

JESS ROSKELLEY

CULTURE

JOHN FRIEH THIS PORTLAND MOUNTAINEER SPECIALIZES IN FIRST ASCENTS. John Frieh’s foot was the first ever to leave a boot print on the upper northwestern ridge of the West Witches Tit. The peak, which sits on Alaska’s Stikine Icecap, is one of eight successful first ascents that Frieh has made since 2009—often-dangerous climbs up routes that have never before been attempted.

All the while, Frieh held a full-time job at Intel, meaning he’d often leave early on a Friday to fly from Portland to Alaska, where he’d then hire a private pilot to drop him off on an isolated mountain far from the nearest town. He’d complete his climb, then return in time for work on Monday morning.

Happily, Frieh quit his job at Intel early this year and has a mysterious job “helping” a billionaire “with some things,” which he says allows him to have a more flexible schedule.

Frieh, 36, a Eugene native, started climbing when his parents signed him up for the Boy Scouts. Frieh steadily became more involved in climbing, eventually tackling peaks that took two days to travel to from Anchorage, a journey that required three different planes plus a six-hour drive.

Frieh and four other climbers will lead seminars as part of the Portland Alpine Festival this week. The festival, hosted by Mazamas, Oregon’s 120-year-old climbing club, includes film screenings, presentations from the five climbers on some of their most difficult ascents, and classes on climbing techniques and planning. WW talked to Frieh about the draw and dangers of first ascents. SHANNON GORMLEY. WW: What’s it like to go somewhere no one else has ever been?

John Frieh: It’s pretty intimidating. The remoteness and the loneliness—you know when you go camping and you think the stars are a little brighter and you notice how quiet it can be when you’re not in the city? It’s a similar feeling for me, that reminder that if something does happen out here, it’s all on us.

Maybe it’s fulfilling some childhood idea of maybe someday I can be an astronaut.

But it’s definitely a unique feeling.

NU CHUTZ: John Frieh makes his most recent first ascent in southeast Alaska.

“WE JUST BARELY MADE IT BACK TO CAMP AND CRAWLED INTO THE HELICOPTER AS THE WEATHER WAS CHANGING AND GOT REALLY LUCKY ON THAT ONE.” —JOHN FRIEH How do you plan for a first ascent?

A lot of it is just honestly standing below it and looking at it and trying to understand what you’re seeing. And that also comes from years of climbing smaller things that might look similar to what you see in Alaska. There’s a lot of strategy that you might try and put in place on the ground, but a lot of times it’s problemsolving in real time as you work your way up the mountain.

Have you been in situations you’ve been unprepared for?

Yeah. I’ve had some falls on mountains— which even though you use the ropes and the safety equipment, falling through the air with sharp objects attached to yourself—not recommended. I’ve had some routes that we thought we could get off the face a certain way. We got to where we thought we were going to get off the face, and it turned out it was actually pretty unsafe. So we had to find a different way off the mountain, and we had to climb through some pretty scary stuff. It worked out, obviously, but I had to start conserving food because I didn’t know how much longer it would take to get off the face. This last one in May, we were on the go for 36 hours without sleep. We stopped a couple times to melt water, but it was more or less continuous movement. We just barely made it back to camp and crawled into the helicopter

as the weather was changing and got really lucky on that one. Because if not, we probably would have had to sit in there for like a week before he had been able to pick us up.

What is it about first ascents that’s so addicting?

I like that the most important muscle is probably the one in between my ears. I like to see: Am I capable of this? Can I deal with not only the physical stresses but maybe the mental challenge of it?

That feeling, you might get it on routes that have been done before, but it’s greatest on first ascents.

I imagine that climbing a mountain that can throw a bunch of curve balls at you is pretty humbling.

It’s pretty simple: Mountains can kill you. If anyone thinks otherwise, then they’re fooling themselves. People get all excited about their fitness like, “I can bench press this much.” Mountains don’t care how much you can bench press. You have to be very humble, or your climbing career will probably be very short.

GO: John Frieh hosts multiple events as part of the Portland Alpine Festival, including “Training for Weekend Warriors” at 2 pm Wednesday, Nov. 5, and “Planning an Alaskan Expedition” at 8 am Thursday, Nov. 6. The festival ends Saturday, Nov. 8.

ALPINE FESTIVAL PICKS EXPLORATIONS IN ALASKA

Graham Zimmerman will give a presentation about his seven years of experience climbing in uncharted areas of Alaska. Mazamas Mountaineering Center, 527 SE 43 Ave. 7 pm Wednesday, Nov. 5. $10.

THE PURSUIT PREMIERE

The film follows climber Aaron Mulkey’s exploration through the Fjords of Norway, during which he and his team made multiple first ascents. Mulkey, who will also be leading lectures and clinics for the festival, will be in attendance for a Q&A. Mazamas Mountaineering Center, 527 SE 43 Ave. 7 pm Friday, Nov. 7. $10.

PORTLAND ICE COMP

The five athletes featured this year at the festival will participate in Portland Rock Gym’s annual climbing competition and demonstrations. Portland Rock Gym, 21 NE 12th Ave. 10 am-4 pm Saturday, Nov. 8. $30 for participants, free for spectators.

THE SUMMIT

The Alpine Festival ends with the Summit, which includes a vendor fair and presentations of awards from Ice Comp and Mazamas. Ticket price includes food. Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. 8 pm Saturday, Nov. 8. $37.

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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FOOD: Joe vs. the Bonniecano.

MUSIC: Best New Band 1974.

THEATER: Worst shows of the past 40 years.

MOVIES: Reviewing our most off-base reviews.

49 51 61 66

SCOOP

MIKE MERRILL

WE HARDLY FEEL A DAY OVER 39.

PERSON IS CORPORATION: Back in 2008, Portland tech entrepreneur Mike Merrill decided to sell shares of himself on the open market. Now his stunt will become a movie, directed by and starring Jason Bateman. Fox Searchlight announced last week it had acquired a 2013 Wired article about Merrill, who divided himself into 100,000 shares and set an initial public offering price of $1 per share. The Wired story detailed how Merrill’s stockholders voted on various life decisions, such as whether he should invest in a Rwandan chicken farmer, become a vegetarian, move in with his girlfriend (he did) or get a vasectomy (he didn’t, but he did break up with the MERRILL girlfriend). “As a publicly traded person, I believe in delegating tasks to the people who do them best, so I have been uninvolved in how the deal came about and the terms of the deal,” Merrill tells WW. “I can’t think of a better person to play the role. Almost everyone has expressed a positive reaction, except for a few of my more anti-capitalist shareholders.” The movie, IPO Man, will be written by Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue, both writers for Amazon’s Transparent. No timeline has been set.

NO NUKES: In other movie news, Portland filmmaker Matt McCormick is making a new documentary called Buzz Feed Four, about a B-52 bomber loaded with two thermonuclear bombs that crashed in 1964 about 100 miles from Washington, D.C.; the pilot of the plane was McCormick’s grandfather.

The film had a successful $25,000 Kickstarter campaign.

McCormick’s résumé includes experimental films and a fulllength movie, Some Days Are Better Than Others, starring the Shins’ James Mercer and a pre-Portlandia Carrie Brownstein.

Buzz Feed Four will come out “sometime in 2015.”

GETTING THE SHAKES: McMenamins is making itself a cocktail bar on Northwest 23rd Avenue. The Ram’s Head pub at 2232 NW Hoyt St. will transition into a craft cocktail joint beginning this month; they’ve already bought the shakers and glassware and doubled their liquor selection, say staffers, and will be partly redecorating the interior. In addition to a cocktail list that centers on the McMenamins Edgefield and Cornelius Pass distillery product—including their 12-year brandies and four-year whiskeys—they’ll have a second menu using other craft spirits, and have plans for an aged cocktail program. >> Portland’s best macaron-maker, Farina Bakery, will open its first storefront at 1852 SE Hawthorne Blvd. on Thursday, Nov. 6. Head baker Laura Farina once baked at Pearl District macaron bar Nuvrei.

The new storefront will also serve other treats, including pumpkin cinnamon sticky buns, cheddar chive biscuits, orange cranberry scones, and coconut pastries.

WILLAMETTE WEB: In honor of our 40th anniversary, WW is rolling out digital versions of our complete archives, decade by decade. You can now peruse every issue from 1974 to 1984 at wweek.com.

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

1974

40 YEARS

FOR NOVEMBER 5 THROUGH 11

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 5 Ken Jennings We’ll take take “Outer Space” for $200 as certified smarty pants Ken Jennings comes to Beaverton. The most successful contestant ever on the popular TV game show Jeopardy!, Mr. Jennings has now authored a children’s trivia book about the cosmos. Wow your friends and teachers with facts from out of this world.

Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 228-4651. 7 pm. Free.

Slowdive with Low

PAU L S U T H E R L A N D

If you see young folks spending an inordinate amount of time staring at their Keds, don’t fret. It’s just the newest musical trend from across the pond, shoegazing, courtesy of five nice kids from suburban London. It’s just as loud as heavy metal, but not quite so violent. A Mormon couple from Duluth, Minn., opens.

Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 2250047. 8 pm. $25 in advance, $30 day of show.

Portland Trail Blazers vs.

Dallas Mavericks

Polar Express Train Ride on Mount Hood

Our team contends with a Mavericks squad led into battle by a big German fellow named Dirk and newly signed small forward “Handsome” Chandler Parsons.

Moda Center, 1 N Center Court St., 7979619. 7:30 pm. Tickets start at $17.

Put on your pajamas and get ready for some family fun. Mount Hood Railroad gets in the Christmas spirit by recreating the popular children’s story with a festive train ride.

Mount Hood Railroad, 110 Railroad Ave., Hood River, 800-872-4661, mthoodrr.com.

11:30 am, 2 pm, 4:30 pm, and 7 pm through Dec. 14.

Water Law Oregon Seminar Attend useful seminars on about law in the modern workplace. The seminar covers up-to-date laws and current topics such as social media.

Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 235-7575. 8 am Thursday, continues Friday. Private event.

Registration required.

FRIDAY, NOV. 7 Die Fledermaus

Holiday Food and Gift Festival

The legendary jazz vocalist comes to town.

An American icon, Bennett has released over 70 albums, won 17 Grammy Awards, and even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His hits include “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and “Because of You.” His latest project is an album with controversial pop singer Lady Gaga.

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 923 SW Washington St., 248-4335. 7:30 pm. Sold out.

With hundreds of unique vendors, Portland’s Holiday Food and Gift Festival is the perfect place to start your holiday shopping for your loved ones while treating yourself to all the gourmet food that will be available for purchase.

Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 235-7575. 10 am-6 pm Friday through Sunday. $10 adults, $9 seniors, children under 12 free.

Also:

Also:

Mad Marquis’ Sip N Strip Happy Hour at Analog Cafe Simplified Maps at Annie Bloom’s Books

Maiden NW (Iron Maiden tribute) with Axecrack at Hawthorne Theatre Dan Reed Network anthology party at Star Theater

This lovable play based on the popular newspaper cartoon will be performed at Portland’s Brunish Theater.

Brunish Theater, 1111 SW Broadway, fourth floor, 248-4335. 7:30 pm ThursdaySaturday, matinee performances 2 pm Saturday and Sunday, through Dec. 7. $30.75-$44.75.

SATURDAY, NOV. 8 Margaret Cho Popular Asian-American comedian performs her ribald new material. Ms. Cho’s socially aware brand of comedy has made her a thought leader as well as a teacher to those with open minds and open hearts.

Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., 888-643-8669. 10 pm. $27.50.

MONDAY, NOV. 10 Med Monday Every Monday is Med Monday at Plew’s Brews, with medicinal marijuana-friendly live music.

Plew’s Brews, 8409 N Lombard St. 9 pm.

Free. OMMP card required.

Also: Food Services of America at Oregon Convention Center Jelly Roll Jamboree! at Jade Lounge

TUESDAY, NOV. 11 GWAR

Daphne’s Dog-utante Ball at Hotel Monaco Bureau of Labor and Industries at Oregon Convention Center

Tony Bennett

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

Youngsters can work on their literacy skills by reading Fitzgerald to Fido or Gravity’s Rainbow to Rover.

Midland Library, 805 SE 122nd Ave., 988-5392. Noon.

Also:

Strauss’ opera tells the titillating tale of Gabriel von Eisenstein, sent to prison for eight days for insulting a public official.

His friend Falke schedules a ball during his stint as revenge for leaving him drunk and dressed as a bat in the middle of town the year before. A fittingly madcap way to top off 50 wild years of Portland Opera.

Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 248-4335. 7:30 pm through Nov. 15. Tickets start at $25.

THURSDAY, NOV. 6

Read to Dogs

John Bennett Jazz Quintet in Concert at St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church GreyDogz at White Eagle Saloon

Also:

Popular rock group GWAR combines heavy metal sounds and elaborate costumes. Shouldn’t somebody tell these goofs Halloween was last week?

Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-230-0033. 8 pm. $20.

Portland Youth Philharmonic opening night Bye Bye Birdie! at Winningstad Theatre The No. 1 Hillsdale Knitting Society at the Hillsdale Library

SUNDAY, NOV. 9 Lincoln City Chowder Cook-Off This fun-filled event features a “Best Chowder” competition, local beers and wines (Saturday only), live music, kids activities, a Native American heritage celebration and much more.

Tanger Outlets, 1500 SE Devils Lake Road, Lincoln City, oregoncoast.org/chowdercook-off. 11 am Saturday-Sunday. $5.

Making Lotions and Balms Take it easy on your wallet and your skin this winter with a homemade lotion. The owners of two local companies, Sellwood Soap Company and ENSO, will lead a class that shows you how to make lotion and balm formulas.

Woodstock Library, 6008 SE 49th Ave., 988-5399. 1 pm. Registration required.

RV Show Who says camping can’t be done in comfort? With Portland’s RV show, you can tour stylish traveling homes and plan on experiencing the outdoors in mobile luxury.

Portland Expo Center, 2060 N Marine Drive, 736-5200, expocenter.org. 11 am-6 pm. $9 adults, $7 seniors, children 15 and under free.

Herb Alpert Born March 31, 1935, in Los Angeles, Herb Alpert began playing the trumpet at age 8. One of the most successful instrumental performers in pop history, Alpert co-founded the A&M label, among the most prosperous independent record companies ever established.

Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm. $42.50-$45.

Julian Casablancas and the Voidz Plucked fresh from the Big Apple, the popular singer backed by the Voidz, a gang of scruffy, leather-bedecked fellows whose appearance might shed some light on that spelling boner.

Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 8 pm, $30.

Also:

Also:

Portland Trail Blazers vs. Denver Nuggets at Moda Center

Portland Trail Blazers vs. Charlotte Hornets at Moda Center Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

47

FOOD & DRINK = WW Pick. Highly recommended.

By MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Editor: MARTIN CIZMAR. Email: dish@wweek.com.

See page 3 for submission instructions.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 5 Grocery Outlet Wine Sale

For a few days every year, Grocery Outlet knocks an additional 20 percent off wines that are already steeply marked down. The smart shoppers receive email bargain alerts, write down their wines in advance, and then go early with a very clear plan. Others speed through the aisles. Once a year, it’s like an alcoholic version of the Bins. Multiple locations, groceryoutlet.com. Through Nov. 9.

The Pollan Family Table

Corky and Lori Pollan—notable as family of famous writer Michael— arrive at Powell’s to tout their book detailing recipes and “kitchen wisdom” from their “warm, inspiring kitchens.” This will likely mean hearing stories about recipes and then the weird, sinking, seething shame you feel as the Pollans talk about the amazing fresh, local food their family has cooked for “generations.” Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323. 7:30 pm.

THURSDAY, NOV. 6 Departure Vegan Dinner

Asian-inflected Departure’s already got one of Portland’s better known high-end vegan menus—but for one night a year vegan takes over the whole restaurant. This year the six-course “autumn harvest” meal will include a mushroom and onion tart, fried Brussels sprouts and sunchokes made with yuzu and shiso, spice-roasted squash and a persimmon-and-berry cheese cake.

Departure, 525 SW Morrison St., 802-5370. 7 pm. $65.

You get what you vote for For several years now my husband and I have operated the Medical Marijuana Card Services Clinic at 4911 NE Sandy Blvd., which has become Portland’s Medical Marijuana Dispensary Row since former Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schrunk announced he could no longer afford to waste our taxpayer money on enforcement of marijuana teetotalitarianism. At first, U.S. Attorney Dwight “The Blight” Holton, with all Oregon’s other county officials, threatened to take over enforcement. In fact, The Blight ran for Oregon Attorney General on a Marijuana Prohibition platform.

His campaign hyped the dangers of marijuana and called the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program a “Trainwreck!”

Medical Marijuana patients flocked to the campaign of Ellen Rosenblum, where we marched, questioned, picketed and raised money here, there and everywhere to defeat prohibition, stand up for our medical marijuana and elect a real Peoples’ Lawyer for a change.

Attorney General Rosenblum 48

convinced the Oregon Legislature to give us this Medical Marijuana Dispensary Program. We thought we had it made!

But Governor Kitzhaber had a different idea. Perhaps, with his jeans and cowboy boots, he thinks he is Governor of Texas. Perhaps he was afraid his fiancée was going to open a dispensary. Perhaps he just doesn’t feel comfortable with a woman in the Attorney General job.

Whatever the reason, Governor Kitzhaber made every effort to hamper and hinder the development of a viable medical marijuana dispensary licensing program.

Let me put that a different way.

Governor Kitzhaber saw that medical marijuana patients, ourselves, had built a dispensary system for patients in Multnomah County that was working beautifully. He was determined to ruin it, wreck it, throw out the visionaries and entrepreneurs who had created this orderly, safe underground railroad of marijuana to patients.

He stacked the deck with a director and assistants who knew nothing

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

PAID ADVERTISEMENT but NOTHING about growing, using or selling marijuana.

Tom Burns, Governor Kitzhaber’s director of the Medical Marijuana Dispensary Licensing Program, makes up rules as he goes along (because they don’t have many rules in place) to basically extort dispensary owners he doesn’t like out of their businesses. A proper State –run program would have procedures and forms in place, but this one is being run like the Wild West.

So, Governor Kitzhaber, as you relish your fourth and final term as Governor, consider this: Multnomah County still has the best, shiniest, sparkliest, most safe and fair medical marijuana dispensary system in the state – the underground system, that is. One thing you and Tom and Keith and Margaret should have learned from this is YOU CAN’T STOP US. Also, stay informed at DispensaryInspectorsExposed.com.

Margaret, one of the inspectors, is scheduled to inspect my closed dispensary in Aloha (since Washington County is under a moratorium). Does this sound like a witch hunt?

SATURDAY, NOV. 8 McMenamins Autumn Ale Fest

McMenamins’ seasonal beer fest at Old Church & Pub has an interesting twist: They’re showcasing not just autumn beers from eight breweries in the Portland area, but also seasonal beers from six alumni of McMenamins who’ve gone on to brew elsewhere. The biggest name here is John Harris—maker of Hammerhead and Black Butte Porter—but other invited alums include Jack Harris

of Fort George, Jason McAdam of Burnside and Mark Goodwin of Cascade. McMenamins Old Church & Pub, 30340 SW Boones Ferry Road, Wilsonville. 2-10 pm.

Where to eat this week.

1. Broder Nord

2240 N Interstate Ave., 282-5555, broderpdx.com.

Forget brunch. Suppertime’s 20-minute chicken arrives ridiculously tender and brined with a tarragon-infused vinegar, wet with its own juice as well as a bit of salsa verde and capers. It’s like escabeche made of meat but served as a hearth-style broiler.

2. Bamboo Izakaya 1409 NE Alberta St., 889-0336, bambooizakaya.com.

The menu seems to still be in flux, but pray they don’t lose that whole salted mackerel. It’s delicately charred, fresh, sweet, salty and goddamn great.

3. Kachka

720 SE Grand Ave., 235-0059, kachkapdx.com.

You get the idea with one dish, “herring under a fur coat,” a stratified butte of a salad with pretty pink beets over layers of vegetables leading down to a base of herring. It’s Russian coffee-table fare rendered jaw-gapingly tasty.

4. Old Salt

5027 NE 42nd Ave., 971-255-0167, oldsaltpdx.com.

This Cully neighborhood butcher shop and restaurant takes sustainability-focused, whole-animal butchery to a new level in town, doing what they can with two cows and three or four pigs, then freestyling the rest.

5. BTU Brasserie

5846 NE Sandy Blvd., 971-407-3429, btupdx.com.

This is the first brewery that’s ever been included in our Restaurant Guide’s annual top-100 list. Taste the tempura-battered walnuts in a sweet-hot glaze, or the nutty hot bowl of cellophane noodles called Ants Climbing a Tree, and see why.

DRANK

THE CONVERSION (LOGSDON FARMHOUSE ALES) Dave Logsdon has forgotten more about yeast than most brewers will ever know. Dubbed “the most important figure in Oregon beer that you’ve never heard of ” by Beervana blogger Jeff Alworth, Logsdon was a founder at Full Sail Brewing before leaving to focus on Wyeast Laboratories, which grew into one of the country’s top yeast sellers. His farmhouse brewery outside Hood River—it looks just like the label— is a retirement project, and has made a number of remarkable beers, including our 2011 Beer of the Year, a fresh-hop saison. The Conversion is an ambitious new project that hints at what’s to come. This winey brew was inoculated with mildly fruity wild yeast strains to take on a clean tartness that hints at blackberry skin, cranberry and cherry. It’s subtle stuff compared to most wilds, which get aggressively sour or funky. And it’s part of a wider vision, as Logsdon is now installing an open fermentation tank in his loft, where it will pick up yeast from surrounding orchards. There’s no rush, though. Logsdon spent about a year with this beer, which is still on a few shelves, including the Abbey Bar on Northwest 21st Avenue, and figures it might take another year until his next wild ale is available. It’s worth the wait, and the hefty $25 price tag. Recommended. MARTIN CIZMAR.

FOOD & DRINK THOMAS TEAL

REVIEW

AN INTERNATIONAL MARKETPLACE A simple and hearty asian dish for those cold and damp winter days.

SLOW COOKED RAMEN NOODLE SOUP Ingredients:

• No-Stick Cooking Spray • 1 pkg (8 oz each) sliced fresh mushrooms • 1 can (14 oz each) Chop Suey Vegetables, drained • 2 tablespoons Soy Sauce • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh ginger • 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes • 1 pkg (3 oz each) chicken ramen noodle soup, divided • 5 cups water • 1 pound thick cut bone-in pork chops

Directions:

Spray inside of 4-quart slow cooker with cooking spray. Stir together mushrooms, chop suey vegetables, soy sauce, ginger, red pepper, seasoning packet from ramen noodles and water in slow cooker. Place pork chops on vegetables in slow cooker.

Cover; cook on LOW 8 hours or on HIGH 4 hours or until pork is tender. Remove pork from slow cooker. Separate into small pieces with 2 forks; discard bones. Return pork to slow cooker. Break ramen noodles into pieces. Add to slow cooker and stir. Cover; cook on LOW 10 minutes more or until noodles are tender.

BATTLE OF 21ST: A look inside Joe’s (left) and Bonnie’s.

JOE VS. BONNIE SAY YOU WAKE UP UNDER A BRIDGE IN SLABTOWN. DO YOU EAT BREAKFAST AT THE GAS STATION OR THE DIVE BAR?

BY M AT T SI N G E R

msinger@wweek.com

Come fall, Portland is cold and brunch lines are long. That’s true year-round, of course, but this is when people start getting surly. It’s wet, it’s windy, and the asshole ahead of you on the list who is waiting on a table for 17 just took the last of the half-and-half.

It often seems there’s no respite from the tyranny of patience where toast and egg scrambles are concerned. But that’s just because you’re not looking hard enough. For instance, instead of the new Pine State Biscuits window, have you thought of trying the nearest gas station?

Last month, Bonnie’s, the burger and teriyaki joint that shares space with the Astro gas station on Northwest 21st Avenue and Marshall Street, began serving breakfast, putting it in direct competition with the Slabtown ’hood’s hottest brunch spot, Joe’s Cellar Which is better? We visited both to fi nd out.

And we didn’t have to wait for a seat at either.

LOCATION Joe’s: Next to Joe’s Cellar (1332 NW 21st Ave., 223-8825), a windowless blue-collar watering hole favored by Willamette Week staffers for post-deadline brain-numbing.

Bonnie’s: Inside the snack shop of a bright yellow Astro gas station (1111 NW 21st Ave.,2248438), which also serves burgers and teriyaki for lunch (and has also proven popular with this paper’s employees).

DÉCOR Joe’s: If the bar is a cellar, the café is a sunroom as decorated by your grandmother: long and narrow, with sky-blue walls, a soda-fountain-like counter and estate-sale decorations. Think photos of old-time Portland and framed portraits of shaggy dogs wearing Scottish golf caps.

Bonnie’s: Like somebody built a lunch counter inside an office break room, then added some Goodwill flower art just to spruce things up a bit.

OREGON’S LARGEST ASIAN MALL

ONE STOP SHOPPING Groceries · Housewares · Gifts · Jewelry · Restaurants Interested in leasing space at Fubonn Shopping Center? email leasing @ fubonn.com

2850 S.E. 82nd Ave.

www.fubonn.com 503-517-8877

9am-8pm seven days a week

CONGRATULATIONS ON

40 YEARS

*Restaurant Hours may vary from mall hours

COFFEE Joe’s: $2 for a mug of Farmer Brothers.

Bonnie’s: $1.50 for a paper cup of Caffe Umbria’s Arco Etrusco blend.

OMELET Joe’s: Medium-sized but dense. Choices include a traditional Denver, Pap Pap’s Mexican Omelet (chorizo and onion) and the Portland (bacon, caramelized onion, pepper jack).

Bonnie’s: There’s only one style, stuffed with the usuals. The sausage looks like Jimmy Dean’s own, and the overall texture is the bad kind of gooey.

OTHER MENU HIGHLIGHTS Joe’s: The Divide and Conquer is basically Joe’s version of the KFC Famous Bowl: two buttermilk biscuits topped with everything in the building, including bits of chicken fried steak, onions, jalapeños, mushrooms, onions, gravy, three eggs and bacon. And yes, you are allowed to bring beer and cocktails from the bar into the cafe.

Bonnie’s: Other than bagels and a basic breakfast burrito, there isn’t much else, unless you count the candy rack.

OVERALL EVALUATION Joe’s: A perfectly acceptable greasy spoon, suitable next to that first whiskey of the morning.

Bonnie’s: You’re eating eggs in a gas station.

If you can get past that mental hurdle and appreciate the meal objectively, you’re more Zen than I. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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NOV. 5–11 PROFILE

= WW Pick. Highly recommended.

YEARS

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.

COURTESY OF MARLON MCCLAIN

MUSIC

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.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 5 Fog Father, Coco Columbia, LEO

[PDX POP NEXT] A bill of rising local talents, highlighted by Fog Father’s bleary-eyed Beach Boys harmonies and singer-songwriter-drummer Coco Columbia’s spacey, hip-hop informed exotica. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 8:30 pm. Free. 21+.

Siren Nation

[FESTIVAL] The annual Siren Nation Festival, showcasing female artists in a variety of disciplines, kicks off five nights of great shows, beginning with singer-songwriter Meiko at Doug Fir. Other highlight performers include Afro-Cuban alchemists Melao de Cuba, energetic pop trio Swan Sovereign (formerly Dirty Martini), Portland gospel singer Liz Vice and future-R&B producer-vocalist Natasha Kmeto.

Multiple venues. Wristbands are $50, individual ticket prices vary. See sirenation.org for more information and a complete schedule.

THURSDAY, NOV. 6 Frankie Rose, Cold Beat, Ephrata

[SYNTH PUNK] Frankie Rose has a résumé that would cause a lot of people to salivate. She’s been a founding figure in shapeshifting groups like Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls. Tonight, she’s at a small venue, playing selections from her own futuristic pop-rock catalog, including cuts from 2012 standout Interstellar and last year’s edgier, garage-rocking Herein Wild. Rose manages to partner her punk-rock prowess with metallic, synthetic elements that make for a frayed, chilly and memorable sound. MARK STOCK. Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., 894-9708. 10 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.

The Wytches, Us Lights, Talk In Tongues

[HOWLING PSYCH] It’s refreshing to see a band take its time developing a personality before issuing a slew of albums. Having taken about three years to release its first fulllength, Annabel Dream Reader, the U.K.’s Wytches arrive as a self-assured psych trio. Easy hallmarks are apparent: There’s an occasional Black Lips jangle on some of the faster-paced tracks, and it’s difficult to ignore a ’90s disaffection in singer Kristian Bell’s delivery. Songs like “Summer Again,” though, belie a broader interest—something slower and more persistent, pointing to the possibility that all the gut-wrenching howling accompanying the track serves as the beginning to a long career. DAVE CANTOR. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 8 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.

Digitalism, Evan Alexander, Tourmaline

[TRANS-INDIE DANCE] German duo Digitalism already rebuffs its “Idealism era.” The pair’s 2007 debut album was a flood of tech-house bangers significantly harder than anything else previously released on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl of electronic labels, Kitsuné.

In 2007, Idealism guided plaid-shirted arms past LCD Soundsystem to Juan Atkins and beyond. In 2014, though, both of Digitalism’s singles, “Second Chance” and “Wolves,” feature enough road-trip synth lines and posi-vibe lyrics to make electro house an electro home. That is to say, the duo now fit the label, not the other way around.

MITCH LILLIE. The Whiskey Bar, 31 NW 1st Ave., 227-0405. 10 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.

FRIDAY, NOV. 7 Tedeschi Trucks Band, Greyhounds

[BLUES COUPLE] Sadly, outside the occasional collaboration at the Crossroads Guitar Festival, there are few supergroups in modern blues these days. The Tedeschi Trucks Band comes close to being one, though, given Susan Tedeschi and husband Derek Trucks each have respected bands of their own. Although the Southern rock outfit’s sophomore LP, Made Up Mind, displays beefier drums and squealing solos set to Staxlaced strings, it’s far too clean and reserved given both artists’ pedigrees.

Tedeschi’s vocals still come off like Janis Joplin, but Trucks, who’s arguably a better slide guitarist than his father, only occasionally shows the full breadth of his talent. BRANDON WIDDER. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 8 pm. $48.50-$80.50. All ages.

Bleachers, Wild Cub

[POP PSYCHOLOGY] Lord only knows the neuroses that accompany writing songs for Taylor Swift, planning a future with Lena Dunham, and playing guitar for Fun—which we’ll just assume is just the opposite of playing guitar for fun—but, as the all-conquering single for his solo project triumphantly reminds, Jack Antonoff wants to get better. Recorded piecemeal while touring with the day job, Bleachers’ debut, Strange Desire, redoubles their anthemic urgency within a stylized ’80s sheen so candied and gleaming one almost ignores the lyrical therapy sessions. But if the shameless preoccupation with selfie-help platitudes feels a bit masturbatory, any man named Jack Antonoff has surely heard all the jokes before. JAY HORTON. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 2250047. 8 pm. $18 advance, $20 day of show. All ages.

JD McPherson, the Cactus Blossoms

[RETROBILLY] Taking inspiration from long-gone genres is one thing. Then there’s JD McPherson, who seems to actually wish he were born in the ’50s. But McPherson is more than just an Elvis impersonator, and his love of rockabilly and early rock ’n’ roll isn’t just a gimmick. His songs are catchy and fun to dance to, and my mom really likes him, so take that is a ringing endorsement. SHANNON GORMLEY. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $16 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.

Deltron 3030, Kid Koala, Tope

[TOMORROW PEOPLE] Fourteen years ago, the first and, until last year, only album from indie-rap supergroup Deltron 3030—producer Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, turntablist Kid Koala and rapper Del the Funky Homosapien—sounded well ahead of its time. The trio’s embrace of sci-fi themes also presaged nerdcore, predicted Gorillaz and, in a way, laid the groundwork for the rise of geek culture in general. In hip-hop terms, though, 2000 is an even more distant time than 3030. As such, Event 2, the group’s long-delayed follow-up, comes off as sort of quaint. Still, Nakamura’s production remains vividly cinematic, and when it comes to rhyming in nonsensical technobabble, there’s no better MC than Del. MATTHEW SINGER. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038. 8 pm. $22. 21+.

CONT. on page 52

Marlon McClain (second from left) and Pleasure at the Pittock Mansion, circa late ’70s.

WHAT’S YOUR PLEASURE? FORTY YEARS AGO, PORTLAND’S BEST BAND WAS A FUNKY SOUL ORCHESTRA FROM THE STREETS OF THE NORTHEAST.

Gangsters, another group made up of people from the neighborhood. We always kept our focus on trying to become known around the country. Once we got Wayne Henderson interested, we really focused on getting out and touring.

BY MATTHEW SIN GER

What were Portland crowds like?

I think because we played colleges early in our career, we always had a mixed audience. The group was a mixed group, plus we played a little bit of jazz, rock and R&B. Because of that, we had a wide audience.

msinger@wweek.com

In 1974, Portland was a much funkier place.

Though still primarily a rock town, one of the most popular and successful groups to emerge in that era was Pleasure, a nine-piece, jazz-tinged disco-soul ensemble made up of childhood friends from Northeast Portland. The band had a record deal before many of its members were out of high school, a strong regional following and, by the end of the decade, a national hit single, the bassthumping groover “Glide,” which took them across the country, opening for the likes of Cameo and Kool & the Gang.

Guitarist Marlon McClain helped form Pleasure in the early ’70s. After the group disbanded in 1981, McClain went on to play with the Dazz Band and produce records for a host of Portland artists, including Nu Shooz and Curtis Salgado. McClain, 59, now lives in Los Angeles, but much like Don Cornelius when the U-Krew (another ’80s act McClain produced) appeared on Soul Train, we wanted to know: What was it like getting funky in Portland?

WW: What venues were available for a band like Pleasure back then?

Marlon McClain: The main place we performed at was called the Downstairs Lounge on Union Avenue [now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard].

That was the place where most people found out about the band. How we got our record deal was the saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. came and saw us there, and he loved the band so much he talked about us wherever he went, and he told Wayne Henderson, the leader of the Jazz Crusaders, about us. That’s how we got into the business.

Was there a lot of competition?

There were always lots of bands. Our biggest competition at that time was a group called the

Did you play on a lot of mixed-genre bills?

That was a really healthy period for music, only because you could go down to the Paramount [now Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall] and see an artist like Billy Cobham, and the Average White Band would be opening. You just don’t see that crosspollination of acts performing together anymore.

Were you treated like celebrities around Portland?

I wouldn’t say celebrities. The band was an earthy band, so I don’t think the guys even looked at it like that. Portland, as a whole, embraced the group.

You had people who were really proud of the group coming from the neighborhood. Portland raised us in a lot of ways.

Did you know “Glide” would be a hit?

That was a song the bass player, Nathaniel Phillips, brought to the band, and as soon as we heard it, we said, “That’s a great song.” It was funky, it was technical, and it was just really different. The whole concept of what the band was all about came together on that Future Now record. It sounds really tight and in your face, and that was part of the group growing into that particular moment.

Does it surprise you that Portland has now become such a magnet for artists?

It’s always been a great place. People there always tend to have good attitudes. Portland has always been a progressive city, so it doesn’t surprise me at all.

MORE: Marlon McClain’s most recent solo album, TBC, is out now.

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MUSIC

FRIDAY–SATURDAY

Year of No Light, Take Over and Destroy, Eight Bells, Barrowlands

[POST-METAL] Year of No Light is from France’s wine country, but no one could blame you if you had guessed its hometown were Norway or Astoria. There’s something in the band’s ominous, droning tones that evokes a dark, wet, rocky place. Its instrumental songs start in a soft and ethereal fog before crashing against the hard, grinding rhythm section.

The sustained guitar textures recall strings, the toms resonate as timpani. Unsurprisingly, 2013 album Vampyr began as a soundtrack for the 1932 film of the same name. With a quote from Genesis about the destruction of man emblazoned on its Bandcamp profile, evil and mysterious are clearly what Year of No Light is going for. JAMES HELMSWORTH. Rotture, 315 SE 3rd Ave., 234-5683.

9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.

The Dan Reed Network

COURTESY OF HIGH ROAD TOURING

[RIFF CITY] Portland’s would-be ’80s kings—once described in this paper as “the long-lost missing

link between Boston and the Dave Matthews Band”—reunite to mark the release of a new two-disc anthology. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave. 9 pm. $22. 21+.

SATURDAY, NOV. 8 Adrian Belew Power Trio, Saul Zonana

[PERFECT PROG] Whatever his individual accomplishments amount to—and it’s surely something significant—guitarist Adrian Belew has been a major player in rock history, contributing to David Bowie’s Lodger, a batch of King Crimson recordings, a handful of Frank Zappa discs and some of the better-loved Nine Inch Nails albums. While the guitarist is set to showcase his work in a trio here, summoning significant skills to render prog-rock grandeur in a small setting, there are sure to be references to his notable career that reaches back to the late 1970s. Just be prepared for substantial noodling— there’ll be a point to most of it.

DAVE CANTOR. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694.

PRIMER

BY MICHAEL MANNHEIMER

A MILLENNIAL’S GUIDE TO SLOWDIVE WTF is “Slowdive”?

Slowdive is a pioneering shoegaze band from Reading, England.

They formed in 1989 and split after just six years and three records, including landmark 1993 album Souvlaki. The band deserves a spot on the shoegaze Mount Rushmore alongside My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Swervedriver.

Wait, “shoegaze”? IDK what that even is.

It’s a genre of alt-rock spawned in the U.K. in the late ’80s by a bunch of bands whose onstage demeanor—standing still and playing with dozens of effects pedals on the floor—led onlookers to believe they were staring at their shoes. Shoegaze is characterized by loud, reverb-drenched guitars, dreamy vocals and a detached, aloof rock-star cool.

And the band sounds like what again?

That moment in every space epic when the craft enters orbit for the first time as the astronauts stare in wide-eyed wonder at the sheer beauty and enormity of Earth. Replace the clunky dialogue of a film like Gravity with the music from Souvlaki and the band’s 1995’s ambient swan song Pygmalion, and watch as the YouTube hits come rolling in.

Who do I know that’s down for them?

Deerhunter, M83, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Beach House’s ethereal sound and languid guitar reveries wouldn’t exist without Slowdive as its guiding spirit. Tumblr rapper Lil B even sampled “Catch the Breeze” on 2011 mixtape cut “Open Thunder Eternal Slumber.”

Whoa, they were sampled by Lil B? I know, right? Slowdive has no opinion in the ongoing Lil B-Kevin Durant feud, but the band’s guitar tones are nearly as pretty as KD’s jump shot, so I’m guessing they’re firmly #teamdurant.

So why should I GAF about this show?

This reunion is actually a pretty big deal—the band was one of the headliners of this summer’s Pitchfork Festival in Chicago and Primavera Sound in Barcelona. Slowdive is perfect background music for car rides, potlucks and late-night study sessions. Your mom might even like them. Plus, this is really great make-out music.

Wait, what’s Pitchfork?

Just stop.

SEE IT: Slowdive plays Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., with Low, on Wednesday, Nov. 5. 8 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show. All ages.

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7 pm. $30 advance, $35 day of show. Under 21 permitted with legal guardian.

MUSIC

PROFILE

All Your Friend’s Friends featuring the Chicharones, Xperience, Iame & Goldini Bagwell, Karl Blau & Poeina

[NORTHWEST HIP-HOP] Legendary Olympia, Wash., indie label K Records celebrates the release of All Your Friend’s Friends, a compilation of Northwest hip-hop artists spitting over samples pulled exclusively from the K catalogue. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 345-7892. 9 pm. $8. 21+.

JAMES PETROZZELLO

SATURDAY–SUNDAY

Hiss Golden Messenger, Phil Cook

[FOLK] Hiss Golden Messenger’s fourth LP, this year’s Lateness of Dancers, is more upbeat than the group’s previous releases—MC Taylor and Scott Hirsch might be working through hardships, but they’re also celebrating with a little whiskey on the weekend, as Taylor sings in the swinging, hopeful opener, “Lucia.” Mixing classic folk and country influences with tones of hard rock, the album adopts a lighter, borderline bouncy feel.

Guitars weave and roll through and atop each other, alternating from acoustic picking to reverb-soaked chords, often accompanied with bright piano melodies, mandolin and occasional bouts of banjo throughout, all complementing Taylor’s rough, rugged vocals. KAITIE TODD. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.

Arch Enemy, Kreator

[METAL] It’s never an easy thing for a band to change lead singers.

When Angela Gossow left Swedish melodic death-metal act Arch Enemy earlier this year, many wondered if the band could soldier forward. But Gossow was not a founding member to begin with, and despite the significance of her tenure, the show goes on, with Canadian vocalist Alissa White-Gluz of the Agonist filling Gossow’s hightop sneakers. In tow for this gig is Germany’s greatest thrash export, Kreator, a band that never fails to devastate and is worth the price of admission alone. NATHAN CARSON. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE 39th Ave., 233-7100. 8 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show. All ages.

Rhett Miller, Salim Nourallah

[OLD 97] Alt-country marksman Rhett Miller is best known for his work as frontman for the Old 97s, when he helped preserve countryand saloon-style alt-rock at the time most of the music world was going grunge. The Texan has flirted with a solo career most of his life, his latest effort being 2012’s The Dreamer. It’s a stiff and tantalizing cocktail made from bits of Jeff Tweedy, Casey Neill and Justin Townes Earle. Those who side with a rootsy, old-age brand of rock ’n’ roll ought to be in attendance, and probably will be. MARK STOCK. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 7 pm. $15. 21+.

SUNDAY, NOV. 9 Shovels and Rope, Willie Watson

[FRAYED AMERICANA] The married couple collectively known as Shovels and Rope is the epitome of what a functional, loving couple should strive for—to a certain extent. They share their instruments and chat with each other onstage, often peering at one another as they churn through the intense revivalist blues tunes they’ve crafted together. Swimmin’ Time, the headstrong follow-up to their breakout debut, carries on the duo’s musical tradition. It’s a collection of R-rated murder ballads outfitted with brass and charming harmonies that stutter where they once shined,

CONT. on page 54

UNITED NATIONS FRIDAY, NOV. 7 United Nations’ Geoff Rickly is not to blame for emo’s crimes against humanity. Historians might use his old band, Thursday, as a punching bag for the punk subgenre’s unseemly shift from heady introspection to a macabre MySpace circus of bad haircuts and bird tattoos, but Rickly deserves some credit for being self-aware throughout the ordeal. As a bumper crop of posers popped up in the wake of Thursday’s explosive second album, Full Collapse, Rickly revolted by writing heavier material—much of which didn’t sit well with the rest of the group.

“After 2001, when Full Collapse was really blowing up and Taking Back Sunday and a bunch of other bands were sort of doing what we were doing, only more in a pop-punk way, we thought we were going to go darker and do something a little different,” he says. “Then 2003 came around, and bands like the Used and Story of the Year were getting big by trying to be heavier. Then the moshcore bands started getting bigger, and we thought we didn’t really want to do that, either. So we pushed toward a more experimental sound we thought people might not follow us into.”

In 2005, Rickly formed United Nations as a mysterious side project set to function as a back-to-basics clearing-house for ideas—song-related and otherwise—too incendiary for his day job. Among them is a fluctuating lineup whose unifying concept is hardcore as a theater of absurdity. Anticipating the media latching onto a group that’s employed members of Converge and Glassjaw as a “screamo supergroup,” Rickly wrote intentionally obtuse lyrics that are an outright piss-take on everything the punk and hardcore community views as sacred.

“We tried to be the opposite of an ‘emo supergroup’ by making it kind of an anonymous thing where we swapped members and had different singers,” Rickly says. “Also, it wasn’t very emo-sounding. It was parody. We write from an alternate vantage point that promotes everything opposite of what we believe in so people will see the inherent greed and hypocrisy in the things we’re talking about.”

Last year, Rickly teamed up with members of Baltimore posthardcore group Pianos Become the Teeth to record The Next Four Years, a grating blast of anti-punk that blends the ferocity of powerviolence with the nervous energy that first put Thursday on the map over a decade ago. Rickly still has a thing or two to say about the hypocrisy of a world in which punk music is more commonly defined by aesthetics than politics, even though the caterwauling of blast beats and tremulous guitar shredding shrouds the message in a black cloud of aggression.

“Rather than saying, ‘We think this is messed up,’ we take it from the point of view of that being who we are,” Rickly says.

“We’re all politicians, we’re all lobbyists—deal with it. This is how shit should be, as if we were super-powerful and had a lot to tell you about what you should be doing with your life rather than pointing out how twisted and surreal modern life is. No matter what side of an issue you’re on, you’ll usually do anything to defend it, and you don’t care who gets hurt in the process. Instead of saying how fucked up that is, we’re going to tell some stories, and if you think they’re fucked, well then, thank God, you’re not brain-dead yet. But we’re not going to tell you what to think.” PETE COTTELL. Geoff Rickly slaughters punk’s sacred cows— including himself.

SEE IT: United Nations plays Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., with Silver Snakes and Sick Feeling, on Friday, Nov. 7. 7 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.

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MUSIC

SUNDAY–MONDAY

and the sense of Southern-fried spontaneity makes it all worthwhile. BRANDON WIDDER. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 2250047. 8 pm. $18 advance, $20 day of show. All ages.

Nils Frahm, Dawn of Midi

[MINIMALIST TRANCE] In performances far more overtly emotional than much robotic ambient electronica, German pianist Nils Frahm uses acoustic piano, Juno, Rhodes and Moog synths and drum machine to improvise glittering melodies over simple repetitive chords, pulsating grooves and spacey, ethereal electronic washes.

Disdaining even Frahm’s simple melodies and harmonies, Brooklyn trio Dawn of Midi (on its second visit since its breakthrough 2013 album, Dysnomia) usually start with a simple stubborn repeating figure, over which the three members weave percussive polyrhythmic textures drawn from various African drum styles into chilly, lowkey, danceable grooves. BRETT CAMPBELL. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895.

8 pm. $20 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.

Blonde Redhead, Hungry Ghost

[INDIE ROYALTY] The first time I saw Blonde Redhead in Portland, the band was playing support to Unwound at La Luna in 1997. Few, if any, people in the room had heard

the New York trio, but they blew the crowd away with a cathartic blend of noise and melody.

Fast forward to the present, and Blonde Redhead is back, promoting its contemplative ninth studio album, Barragán, and celebrating its 21st year as a band. And since the band has apparently not forgotten its introduction to Portland, former Unwound drummer Sara Lund’s Hungry Ghost project opens. NATHAN CARSON. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 2848686. 8 pm. $22 advance, $23 day of show. 21+.

MONDAY, NOV. 10 Burning Palms, Is/Is, Fine Pets

[ROCK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN] Burning Palms sound sort of like the Bangles, if the Bangles were a coven of witches. The psych-fuzz band, fronted by Simone Stopford and Julia DeConcini, is heavily inspired by ancient Egypt, namely human sacrifices and mysticism. The obsession with the supernatural goes far beyond a casual motif: It pervades every corner of the group’s music.

It’s hard to tell how serious they are, but Stopford and DeConcini’s dark, distorted guitars and synchronized vocals certainly make it sound like they’re casting a spell or conjuring demons. SHANNON GORMLEY. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., 4738729. 8 pm. Call venue for ticket information. 21+.

C O U R T E S Y O F C U LT R E C O R D S

PREVIEW

Julian Casablancas + the Voidz, Connan Mockasin [RUNDOWN MACHINE] In its review of Tyranny, the debut from Strokes singer Julian Casablancas’ new project the Voidz, Pitchfork called the album a flirtation with career suicide.

That’s a bit extreme: A decade of underwhelming efforts from Casablancas’ main gig has damaged his reputation more than this excursion into noisy abrasion likely will. But if the record ends up alienating what’s left of the Strokes faithful and kills off any belief that there’s another Is This It? left in him once and for all, you get the sense he’d hang a “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” banner in his living room as soon as he returns from tour. Maybe that’s reading too much into the pseudo-avant-garde mess he’s made, but unmet expectations can become an albatross, and Casablancas has been carrying his around since 2001. If Phrazes for the Young, his sorta-weird but still tuneful 2009 solo album, wasn’t enough to free him from the pressure of living up to his previous achievements, surely dressing like a homeless street punk, recruiting five session musicians with questionable facial hair and recording an hour-plus of dense, garbled “protest songs” might just to do the trick. Tyranny is a vomitorium of ideas—8-bit horror-movie synths colliding with grating guitars and dissonant white noise—all piled atop each other and captured with the fidelity of a flooded basement. Like MGMT revolting against its commercial success, or Alex Chilton abandoning all hope of success post-Big Star, it reeks of an artist desperate to reformat his image, and that makes it hard to take as a genuine creative misstep. An honest failure is noble. This is trolling disguised as art. MATTHEW SINGER. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 8 pm Tuesday, Nov. 11. $30. All ages.

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TUESDAY/CLASSICAL, ETC.

TUESDAY, NOV. 11 Gwar, Decapitated

[METAL VAUDEVILLE] GWAR has always placed theatrics (namely spraying the audience with fake bodily fluids) above music, which is why the schlock-metal cult favorites barely missed a beat when frontman David Brockie (a.k.a. Oderus Urungus) died of a heroin overdose earlier this year. The band simply shoved someone else into a grotesque alien-viking costume and kept moving. At least the group hired a woman to replace him: Kim Dylla, a.k.a. Vulvatron, whose gimmick is spewing blood from giant prosthetic breasts. That’s a kind of feminism, right? Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-8499. 8 pm. $20. All ages.

RAC, The Knocks, Speak

[DE-REMIXED] Once a collaborative project including producer Karl Kling and Ra Ra Riot’s Andrew Maury, Remix Artist Collective hasn’t really been a collective since 2012.

Portland-via-Portugal producer André Allen Anjos is this band’s one man, whose infectious indie dance melodies aren’t limited to the incestuous blogosphere, or to mere remixes. The two-part Strangers, released early this year, represents a big risk for Anjos, but he’s already reaping the rewards. Though it includes some regurgitated singles, Strangers is as fresh and fun as any release this year. MITCH LILLIE. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 284-8686. 8:30 pm. $10. All ages.

CLASSICAL, JAZZ & WORLD Project Trio

[BEATBOX CLASSICAL] Although these “recovering classical musicians” have performed with major orchestras, Brooklyn’s Project Trio, featuring the world’s greatest beatboxing flutist, a DownBeat awardwinning jazz double bassist and an orchestral cellist, dumps the classical stereotypes in favor of fun, informal, high-intensity performances of jazz and other improvisational idioms.

BRETT CAMPBELL. The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave., 222-2031. 7:30 pm Friday, Nov. 7. $20-$40.

Mozart’s Requiem

[CHORAL CLASSIC] One hundred forty voices accompanied by the Portland Sinfonietta promise a largescale presentation of Mozart’s final work. The Requiem was commissioned shortly before the composer’s death in 1791 and completed posthumously. Ranging from stretches of bleakness to glimpses of triumph, there is no doubt that this music resonates with the spirit of a dying genius. Following the Requiem is a decidedly modern take on similar themes, Tarik O’Regan’s Triptych. NATHAN CARSON. St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1739 NW Couch St. 7:30 pm Saturday, Nov. 8, and 1:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 9. $10-$55. All ages.

Dans Les Arbres

[NORWEGIAN MOOD] Smoke, vapor, ether, fog, mist…the track titles of Dans Les Arbres 2012 album, Canopée, describe the misty music of PDX Jazz’s latest import from Scandinavia’s surprisingly sizzling new jazz scene. But while this latest ECM-label ensemble, led by Norwegian prepared-pianist and harmonium master Christian Wallumrød, certainly improvises, it sounds nothing like conventional jazz, producing a moody miasma more akin to Morton Feldman or John Cage’s music than Mingus or Satch.

BRETT CAMPBELL. The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave., 222-2031. 7 pm Monday, Nov. 10. $15 advance, $20 day of show. All ages.

For more Music listings, visit

MUSIC

ALBUM REVIEWS

THE SHIVAS YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO (K) [BEACHY FEEDBACK] There are about six minutes in the middle of the Shivas’ new album when the band almost sounds gentle.

The dreamy, Pet Sounds-styled instrumental “Beach Heads” leads into the surprisingly sweet “Strokin’ Off,” and it could fool you into thinking the Portland surf-rockers have mellowed out for album No. 4. But it takes only the 90 seconds of “Manson Girls,” with vocalist Jared Wait-Molyneux howling through the lyrics like he’s in a race against the similarly fastpaced guitar, to make you realize the band is as wild as ever. Still, those moments when the Shivas slow things down are definitely welcome. On You Know What to Do, the band spreads out sonically more than on previous records. “You Make Me Wanna Die” and “Big Mama Casio” clear the lo-fi haze, while the title track and “Do the Crocodile” pile fuzz atop handclaps, tambourines and quickly picked guitars. Even when the tempos slow, the songs maintain a danceable energy. For the most part, though, what you’re getting is more of the infectious, solid surf songs that fans have come to expect. SHANNON GORMLEY. SEE IT: The Shivas play Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., with Jollapin Jasper and Moon by You, on Saturday, Nov. 8. 9:30 pm. $7. 21+.

ATRIARCH AN UNENDING PATHWAY (RELAPSE) [MACABRE METAL] If time is indeed a ceaseless circle, as the opening track on An Unending Pathway posits, then Atriarch’s latest album makes a great deal of sense. Pulling from Christian Death’s antipathy toward humanity, black-metal tropes and Eastern music, the Portland metal band casts an album of familiar sources. But the way it combines these sundry forms manages to be utterly enthralling. The band’s fourth album opens and closes with a snatch of bizarrely matched throat singing and twisting sitar drones, a surprising bookend for such a domineering ensemble. But foisting a circular historic model on listeners, Atriarch embarks on a campaign to sift through ghouls, grief and the illusion of death via various metal subgenres. However disturbing the perspective, “Rot”—which is clearly about decaying flesh—slowly wends its way through instructions for burial, further elucidating the belief of life’s futility that Atriarch revels in. And if grotesque hopelessness isn’t one’s preferred lyrical approach, there’s still more than enough shredding to go along with all the cerebral consideration.

DAVE CANTOR. SEE IT: Atriarch plays Tonic Lounge, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., with Usnea and Muscle & Marrow, on Monday, Nov. 10. 9 pm. $8. 21+.

FUTURE HISTORIANS PORTRAIT OF SELF (SELF-RELEASED) [SHIMMERY FOLK] When Future Historians’ Dave Shur set out to put together his band, he had a single quote in mind: “It’s actually very difficult to make something both simple and good.” It’s attributed to Paul Simon, and though the alt-folk group has issued three albums prior to Portrait of Self, this is the first time it has truly lived up it. The album is a subtle display of pop prowess, owing to wispy acoustics and flowing keys that are punctured with thrilling bouts of energy. The shuffling maritime tale “Sea” is awash with sporadic chords and a bubblegum chorus, while raved-up gems such as “Bus,” with torrid electric guitar and a basic backbone of drum and bass, scrutinize the way we perceive ourselves. Shur’s nimble, plainspoken phrasing—his baritone resembles Simon circa The Graduate soundtrack—is the album’s defining trait. “Hold me three, four more hours,” he sings on “Insomnia,” before a lovely mandolin solo. The album is occasionally marked by such moments, when the jangly demeanor of the music contrasts the heartbreak of Shur’s words, and it only adds to the record’s unassuming appeal. BRANDON WIDDER. SEE IT: Future Historians play Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., with the Weather Machine, on Tuesday, Nov. 11. 9 pm. $5. 21+.

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MUSIC CALENDAR

[NOV. 5-11] The Know

= WW Pick. Highly recommended.

Editor: Mitch Lillie. 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.

DANIEL G. COLE

For more listings, check out wweek.com.

1422 SW 11th Ave. PROJECT Trio

The Secret Society

The Tonic Lounge

116 NE Russell St. Amanda Breese, Lewi Longmire & The Left Coast Roasters, Lowlight, Jacob Miller And The Bridge City Crooners

The Whiskey Bar

3100 NE Sandy Blvd.

The Misfits and Rendered Useless, Toxic Zombie, CBK

116 NE Russell St. Trashcan Joe & Endangered Species, The Oregon Trailers 3100 NE Sandy Blvd.

Mysticism Black, Nekro Drunkz, Arachnid, Grim Ritual, Christ Killer 31 NW 1st Ave Digitalism

White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Like a Rocket, Chris Baron & Friends

FRI. NOV. 7 Al’s Den

303 SW 12th Ave. Barton Carroll

Alberta Rose Theatre

1028 SE Water Ave. All Them Witches, The Well

303 SW 12th Ave. Barton Carroll

Aladdin Theater

3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Johnnyswim: An Acoustic Performance

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

1037 SW Broadway Tony Bennett, Antonia Bennett

Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St. Greyman Clinic

Crystal Ballroom

1332 W Burnside Street Slowdive, Low

Dante’s

350 W Burnside St Wanderlust Social

Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St. Meiko

Duff’s Garage

2530 NE 82nd Ave Suburban Slims Blues Jam, Woodlander

EastBurn

1800 E Burnside St. Asher Fulero

1507 SE 39th Ave. New Found Glory, We Are The In Crowd, Fireworks, Better Off

Holocene

Valentine’s

232 SW Ankeny St Nolon Ashley

THURS. NOV. 6

1001 SE Morrison St. Fog Father, Coco Columbia, LEO

Al’s Den

Jimmy Mak’s

Alhambra Theatre

221 NW 10th Ave. The Christopher Brown Quartet, Mel Brown Quartet

LaurelThirst Public House

2958 NE Glisan St. Matt Takiff, Josiah Payne, Julio Appling, Sam Weiss, Austin Quattlebaum (9 pm); Love Gigantic (6 pm)

Mississippi Pizza Pub.

3552 N. Misssissippi Ave Superluminous

Mississippi Studios

3939 N Mississippi Ave. Spirit Lake, Holy Ghost Tent Revival

Roseland Theater

8 NW 6th Ave. Black Veil Bridesand Falling In Reverse, Set It Off, Drama Club

The Know

2026 NE Alberta St. Lubec, Couches, Arlo Indigo

303 SW 12th Ave. Barton Carroll 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd.

The Early Bird Project, DMLH, Diction UNO, DJ Zone

Analog Cafe & Theater 720 SE Hawthorne Blvd.

Wednesday 13

Bunk Bar

1028 SE Water Ave. Frankie Rose, Cold Beat, Ephrata

Doug Fir Lounge

830 E Burnside St. The Wytches, Us Lights and Talk in Tongues

Duff’s Garage

2530 NE 82nd Ave James Grant, Tough Love Pyle

Hawthorne Theatre 1507 SE 39th Ave. A Distant Calm, How The West Was Won, The Diggers, To Die Elsewhere

Hawthorne Theatre Lounge

1503 SE Cesar E Chavez Blvd.

Pediment, the New Not Normals and the Everyday Life

Holocene

1001 SE Morrison St. Lyrics for Literacy: A Benefit Concert for SMART

Jimmy Mak’s

221 NW 10th Ave. Bad Luck and Theoretical Planets

LaurelThirst Public House

2958 NE Glisan St. Nick Peets, the Resolectrics (9:30 pm); Lewi and the Left Coast Roasters (6 pm)

Mississippi Studios

3939 N Mississippi Ave. Federale, Immigrant Union, Brush Prairie

North Star Ballroom 635 Killingsworth Ct Finding Fela! Portland Premiere and Benefit

Star Bar

639 SE Morrison St. Piss Test, Mongoloid, Denizens

31 NW 1st Ave Autoerotique

White Eagle Saloon

836 N Russell St. Liz Vice, My Brother and I, Reverb Brothers

Wonder Ballroom 128 NE Russell St. Greensky Bluegrass, Polecat

Crystal Ballroom

1332 W Burnside Street Bleachers, Wild Cub

Dante’s

350 W Burnside St Scorpio Birthday Bash: Acoustic Minds

Doug Fir Lounge

830 E Burnside St. JD McPherson, The Cactus Blossoms

Duff’s Garage

2530 NE 82nd Ave Radio Giants

Hawthorne Theatre

1507 SE 39th Ave. Maiden NW (Iron Maiden Tribute), Axecrack

Holocene

1001 SE Morrison St. United Nations

Jimmy Mak’s

221 NW 10th Ave. The Norman Sylvester Band

LaurelThirst Public House

SAT. NOV. 8 303 SW 12th Ave. Barton Carroll

3000 NE Alberta St. Natasha Kmeto, Lemolo, The Cabin Project

Alhambra Theatre

2026 NE Alberta St. C Average, Prizehog, Polst

The Tonic Lounge

3100 NE Sandy Blvd.

Fornicator, Sacrament Ov Impurity, PANZERGOD, Infernus, Zorakarer

White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. The Working Stiffs, The Brothers Jam, Soul Saturdays with DoveDriver

128 NE Russell St. Greensky Bluegrass, Polecat

SUN. NOV. 9

MON. NOV. 10 Al’s Den

303 SW 12th Ave. The Lowest Pair

Doug Fir Lounge

830 E Burnside St. The Features, Chappo

Jimmy Mak’s

221 NW 10th Ave. The Dan Balmer Trio

Mississippi Studios

3939 N Mississippi Ave. The Kin

The Know

2026 NE Alberta St. Burning Palms, Is/Is

The Old Church

303 SW 12th Ave. The Lowest Pair 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Omaha Diner

Alberta Rose Theatre

Wonder Ballroom

TUES. NOV. 11 Aladdin Theater

3000 NE Alberta St. Nancy King and Dan Tepfer

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Alberta Rose Theatre

Ash Street Saloon

Ash Street Saloon

1037 SW Broadway Portland Youth Philharmonic Fall Concert

Ash Street Saloon

225 SW Ash St. Candy Machine Wrecker, Chris Baron & the Mighty Meek, Fun With Dynamite

Branx

320 SE 2nd Ave. Intronaut

Bunk Bar

1028 SE Water Ave. The Shivas, Jollapin Jasper & Moon By You

Club 21

2035 NE Glisan St. Rabbits, Hungers, Humours

Dante’s

350 W Burnside St All Your Friend’s Friends, The Chicharones, XPERIENCE, IAME & Goldini Bagwell

Doug Fir Lounge

Hawthorne Theatre

The Know

116 NE Russell St. The Jenny Finn Orchestra, The Libertine Belles

4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd.

Death in June

Ponderosa Lounge

13 NW 6th Ave. Dan Reed Network

The Secret Society

Wonder Ballroom

128 NE Russell St. Blonde Redhead, Hungry Ghost

128 NE Russell St. Boyce Avenue

2530 NE 82nd Ave Rae Gordon, Stacy Jones

Star Theater

2026 NE Alberta St. Herkemer, Gladness

Aladdin Theater

Duff’s Garage

315 SE 3rd Ave. Year of No Light, Take Over and Destroy, Eight Bells, Barrowlands

The Know

232 SW Ankeny St. Itasca, Desert of Hiatus, DJ Felisha

Alberta Rose Theatre

3939 N Mississippi Ave. Swan Sovereign, Crushed Out, Fault Lines

Rotture

Valentines

13 NW 6th Ave. British Re-invasion!

Al’s Den

Mississippi Studios

8 NW 6th Ave. Deltron 3030, Kid Koala, Tope

Star Theater

2026 NE Alberta St. Memory Boys, Half Shadow, Black Belt Eagle Scout

3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Adrian Blew Power Trio, Saul Zonana

830 E Burnside St. Hiss Golden Messenger, Phil Cook

Roseland Theater

The Know

1716 NW Davis St. Mozart Requiem: Portland Symphonic Choir

1422 SW 11th Ave. Dans Les Arbres

2958 NE Glisan St. Baby Gramps (9:30 pm); Tree Frogs (6 pm)

10350 N Vancouver Way Wade Hayes, Breaking Midnight

St. Mary’s Cathedral

Wonder Ballroom

Aladdin Theater

Bunk Bar

Hawthorne Theatre

The Whiskey Bar

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

225 SW Ash St. Echo Pearl Varsity, Olivia Awbrey, Perfect Families, Lance Andrew Leonnig

WED. NOV. 5

The Tonic Lounge

Al’s Den

Ash Street Saloon

Al’s Den

The Secret Society

3000 NE Alberta St. Melao de Cuba, Luz Elena Mendoza & Edna Vazquez

1037 SW Broadway Tedeschi Trucks Band

A LOUDER SHADE OF BLUE: The Black Keys’ new album, Turn Blue, is big. The Moda Center is also big. A little bigger than was needed for the band, at least on Halloween.

And yet, the arena proved a pretty good fit for the Keys’ newest material, with the title track, “Fever” and “Gotta Get Away” getting some of the best receptions of the night.

There were a few misfires, too. An otherwise stellar “Gotta Get Away” was marred by an awkward bit of stagecraft, when the roadie brought out a standing-height lap steel for a 30-second solo, then hustled it off stage, an ill-fitting bit of preciousness. Also—and I may be mistaken, but perception is as important as reality here—it appeared Dan Auerbach whistle-synced the start of “Tighten Up.” I doubt anyone took note—certainly not the middle-schooler sitting in a haze of weed smoke in front of me. That’s the thing about the arena-sized manifestation of the Keys, and the arena-ready album they’re touring in support of: Maybe they’re not too big to fail, but they’re certainly big enough to get friendly odds. MARTIN CIZMAR.

The Old Church

2026 NE Alberta St. Tender Age, Blackstone Rangers, Ah God

1507 SE 39th Ave. Arch Enemy, Kreator, Huntress

Jimmy Mak’s

221 NW 10th Ave. Andy Stokes: A Tribute to Marvin Gaye

LaurelThirst Public House

2958 NE Glisan St. Denim Wedding, Hearts of Oak (9:30 pm); Water Tower (6 pm)

Mississippi Studios

3939 N Mississippi Ave. Rhett Miller, Salim Nourallah

Roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave. Relient K, Blondfire

1037 SW Broadway Pirates!

3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Herb Alpert & Lani Hall 3000 NE Alberta St. A Hawaiian Evening with Makana

225 SW Ash St. EngraveD, Open Fate, Toxic Rock Syndrome

225 SW Ash St. Uglyhead, Aux78

Bunk Bar

1028 SE Water Ave. Water Liars, Bed

1028 SE Water Ave. Old Light, Strawberry Smog

Crystal Ballroom

1332 W Burnside Street Shovels and Rope, Willie Watson

Doug Fir Lounge

830 E Burnside St. A Tribute to Linda Hornbuckle: Old Time Gospel Hour Band and Guests

Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St. The Oh Hellos

Duff’s Garage

2530 NE 82nd Ave Djangophiles

Edgefield

2126 SW Halsey St. Lewi Longmire

LaurelThirst Public House

2958 NE Glisan St. The Sam Chase, the Crux (9 pm); Freak Mountain Ramblers (6 pm)

Bunk Bar

Crystal Ballroom

1332 W Burnside Street Julian Casablancas and The Voidz

Dante’s

350 W Burnside St Who’s the Ross?

Doug Fir Lounge

830 E Burnside St. Streets of Laredo, Max Jury

Duff’s Garage

2530 NE 82nd Ave Wingtips

Hawthorne Theatre 1507 SE 39th Ave. Lagwagon, Swingin’ Utters, This Legend

Holocene

1001 SE Morrison St. Arohan, Audioelectronic, Barham Beireis, Joseph Valentino & Bryan, Zentz, Minigorille

Jimmy Mak’s

Mississippi Studios

221 NW 10th Ave. Mel Brown Septet, David Haney, Six Jazz Stories

Roseland Theater

3939 N Mississippi Ave. Future Historians

3939 N Mississippi Ave. Nils Frahm, Dawn of Midi 8 NW 6th Ave. Citizen Cope

Slabtown

1033 NW 16th Ave. Grand Style Orchestra

St. Mary’s Cathedral

1716 NW Davis St. Mozart Requiem, presented by the Portland Symphonic Choir

Star Theater

Mississippi Studios

Roseland Theater

8 NW 6th Ave. GWAR, Decapitated

White Eagle Saloon

836 N Russell St. Less Cash, S.S. Curmudgeon, GreyDogz

Wonder Ballroom

128 NE Russell St. RAC, The Knocks, Speak

13 NW 6th Ave. Tim Reynolds Trio, Marcus Eaton

CONT. on page 59 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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Antoinette

Estate Jewelry

2328 NW Westover Road AntoinetteJewelry.com

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NOV. 5–11

MUSIC CALENDAR N ATA L I E B E H R I N G . C O M

BAR REVIEW

Where to drink this week.

1. The Pines

1 N Center Court St., 797-9619.

Welcome back, Trail Blazers. Goodbye, thirdfloor smoking patio at the Moda Center. The new 300-level bar has 10 Barrel to go with the usual Widmer, Pyramid and Laurelwood, pulled from a glass-walled keg closet that draws as many looks as the view out the window.

2. The Big Legrowlski

812 NW Couch St., 206-6481, biglegrowlski.com.

Mostly this is an understated little tap nook on the edge of Chinatown. The Chinatown crowd is not the issue—no rich fucks, no fucking strumpets waltzing around, just a black-andwhite rendering of the rug that tied the room together and Bowling Nixon in the restroom.

3. Bar Bar

3939 N Mississippi Ave, 288-3895, mississippistudios.com.

It’s dark, cold and wet again—weather secretly cheered by some of us—and Bar Bar’s covered deck and constant campfire make it one of the best wintertime patios in town.

4. Prettyman’s General

2637 SE Hawthorne Blvd., prettymansgeneral.com.

This dandy little pub and market has all the trappings of contemporary Portland culture: antlers, sheepskinadorned leather sofas, oil landscapes, Courtney Barnett records, super-fancy tuna salad sandwiches.

5. There Be Monsters

1308 SE Morrison St., 971-319-6983.

The bar is slowly aging into its ragtag neighborhood: The lights are dimmer, the biker crowd mixes in with music fans, and the smoking patio is a beautifully makeshift holding tank barely roped off from the sidewalk. Now for some shuffleboard.

HOME ON THE RANGE: As the Portland Tribune’s longtime food critic, Anne Marie DiStefano spent her fair share of time in bars, compiling a long list of peeves. In the negative space around entries like weird hours, multi-page cocktail lists and annoying Internet jukeboxes, she built the new Lucky Horseshoe Lounge (2524 SE Clinton St., 954-1606). Taking over the space previously occupied by the Workshop Pub, Lucky Horseshoe loosely follows a Western theme. A neon-red horseshoe hangs in its window, and it keeps its bottles in a metal tub perched on the bar.

A more abstract and apt theme might be “comfortable and affordable.”

The night after the bar opened, the glowing horseshoe cast a pleasantly spooky hue on the crowd crammed into its smallish quarters, a surprising mix of young, cool people and middle-aged neighbors. All wore flannel (I did, too). The draft beers include offerings from Laurelwood, Gigantic and Occidental, sold at a reasonable $4 per pint. The spirit of generosity extends to the snacks. Another $4.50 buys you a veritable mountain of tater tots sprinkled with Old Bay. They’ve got cocktails, too, all listed on a single page, including a Celery Collins made with Portland Potato Vodka. They’re good, but they’re $7. Take it easy, Rockefeller.

JAMES HELMSWORTH.

SAT. NOV. 8

Cadigan’s Corner Bar

Crush Bar

Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade

720 SE Hawthorne Blvd.

Andaz: DJ Anjali & The Incredible Kid

WED. NOV. 5 Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade 511 NW Couch St. TRONix

Moloko Plus

3967 N Mississippi Ave. King Tim 33 1/3

Star Bar

639 SE Morrison St. DJ Baby Dracula

The Lovecraft

421 SE Grand Ave. Event Horizon, Industrial Dance Night

THURS. NOV. 6 Moloko Plus

3967 N Mississippi Ave. DJ Sahelsounds

The Lovecraft

421 SE Grand Ave. Shadowplay

FRI. NOV. 7

MON. NOV. 10

Analog Cafe & Theater

1400 SE Morrison St. Body Heat, DangerZone

5501 SE 72nd Ave. Fight Church TV, Jessie

320 SE 2nd Ave. Rage Friday: Herobust, Alesia, Bennyrox, Wolfkin, Optikos

Holocene

511 NW Couch St. Metal Mondays, Metal Kyle and DJ Shreddy Krueger

Holocene

Mississippi Studios

421 SE Grand Ave. Departures, DJ Waisted and Friends

Branx

1001 SE Morrison St. Ecstasy: UNiiQU3, Beyondadoubt, Tyler Tastemaker, Massacooramaan, DJ Rafael

Moloko Plus

3967 N Mississippi Ave. Hans Fricking Lindauer Rhythm and Soul Review, Weiss Cube

Star Bar

639 SE Morrison St. Uncontrollable Urge: DJ Paultimore

The Lovecraft

421 SE Grand Ave. Death Trip & DJ Tobias

1001 SE Morrison St. Verified: Arnold, Gangsigns, Quarry, BennyRox, DVST 3939 N Mississippi Ave. Mrs.: DJ Beyonda

The Lovecraft

421 SE Grand Ave. Musick for Mannequins, Volt Divers Synth Party

SUN. NOV. 9

The Lovecraft

TUES. NOV. 11 Crush Bar

1400 SE Morrison St. Bi Bar, Bi/Pan/Fluid/Queer Dance Party

The Know

Star Bar

2026 NE Alberta St. Magnetic

The GoodFoot Lounge

6605 SE Powell Blvd.

DJ Easy Finger

639 SE Morrison St. DJ Scary Jerry

The Lodge Bar & Grill

2845 SE Stark St. MOM (Motown on Mondays) on Sunday

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CONGRATULATIONS ON

40 YEARS

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

40

nov. 5–11 FEATURE

= 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.

YEARS

Editor: REBECCA JACOBSON. Theater: REBECCA JACOBSON (rjacobson@wweek.com). Dance: KAITIE TODD (dance@wweek.com).

TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: rjacobson@wweek.com.

THEATER OPENINGS & PREVIEWS Bat Boy: The Musical

Funhouse Lounge presents the perennially popular, cult-hit musical based on a tabloid story about a half-boy, half-bat. Funhouse Lounge, 2432 SE 11th Ave., 841-6734. 7 pm ThursdaysSaturdays (and 2 pm Sunday, Nov. 22) through Nov. 29. $15-$25.

Bye Bye Birdie!

Metropolitan Performing Arts Academy stages the classic musical about the clash of small-town America and rock ‘n’ roll rebelliousness. Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335.

7:30 pm Saturday and 2 pm Sunday, Nov. 8-9; 7:30 pm Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday and 2 pm Sunday, Nov. 14-16. $18-$21.50.

Die Fledermaus

Portland Opera opens its season with an operetta by Johann Strauss II that the New York Times has called “operatic André: bubbly, sweet and syrupy.” The show, filled with mistaken identities and intricate romantic plots, is a fittingly celebratory show for the company, which 50 years ago launched itself into existence with a production of Die Fledermaus in the Madison High School auditorium. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 241-1802.

7:30 pm Friday, Nov. 7; 2 pm Sunday, Nov. 9; 7:30 pm Thursday, Nov. 13; 7:30 pm Saturday, Nov. 15. $30-$270.

Play On

Tigard’s Mask & Mirror Community Theatre opens its fourth season with a backstage farce—about, fittingly, a small community theater—by Rick Abbott. Calvin Presbyterian Church, 10445 SW Canterbury Lane, Tigard, 333-1139. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturdays and 2 pm Sundays through Nov. 23. $7-$15.

She Loves Me

Lakewood Theatre Company presents the oh-so-sweet 1963 musical about feuding perfumery clerks in ‘30s Budapest who don’t realize they’re infatuated pen pals. Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, 635-3901. 7:30 pm ThursdaysSaturdays; 7:30 pm Wednesdays, Nov. 19 and Dec. 10; 7 pm Sundays, Nov. 9, 16, 23; 2 pm Sundays, Nov. 16, 30, Dec. 7, 14, 21. Through Dec. 21. $37.

Sometimes You Have To Be Your Own Hero

Four performers—Maura Doherty, Avery Hill, Pearl Steinberg and Barb Fankhauser—tell stories about women who make life-changing decisions.

Hipbone Studio, 1847 E Burnside St., 358-0898. 7:30 pm Saturday, Nov. 8. $8-$10.

Story Swap and Potluck

An evening of free-form storytelling hosted by the Portland Storytellers Guild. McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 NE 33rd Ave., 249-3983. 6:30 pm every first Friday. Free.

True West

Profile Theatre closes its season of Sam Shepard with the playwright’s 1980 study of two brothers—one Ivy League-pedigreed and fussy; the other a sticky-fingered, beer-swigging vagabond—who’ve long been separated and wind up wrangling over screenplay ideas in suburban L.A. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278. 7:30 pm WednesdaysSaturdays and 2 pm Sundays through Nov. 23. $15-$30.

JOHN KLICKER

PERFORMANCE

Urban Tellers

Portland Story Theater showcases personal, unscripted yarns from six tellers.

Alberta Abbey, 126 NE Alberta St., 8977037. 8 pm Saturday, Nov. 8. $15-$18.

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

Aaaand another ’60s musical: Stumptown Stages throws its hat in the ring with this 1967 show about the Peanuts characters. Brunish Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Fridays; 2 and 7:30 pm Saturdays; and 2 pm Sundays through Dec. 7. $30.75-$50.

ALSO PLAYING BioGRAYph: Why Theatre? Why Suicide?

Matthew Mathis performs an original monologue about Spalding Gray, the tortured actor and writer who died in 2004 of an apparent suicide.

As a monologist, Gray was lauded for his singular, deeply personal narrative style, and Mathis says he sees his one-man show as “a postmodern seance.” Black Door #1, 3324 SE Waverleigh Blvd., 971-207-5804. 7:30 pm Fridays-Saturdays through Nov. 8. $10.

Bob: A Life in 5 Acts

Born and abandoned in a restroom stall of a White Castle in Louisville, Ky., Bob (Nathan Crosby) insists he’s going to be “a great man.” His confidence comes from his adoptive mother (Holly Wigmore), who raises him in a beige Chevy Malibu, driving across the country and teaching her son about famous historical figures.

And Bob certainly does end up a great man—just not in the way he imagined.

Bob: A Life in Five Acts is a classically American rags-to-riches story, reinterpreted through the lens of absurdity. This Theatre Vertigo production boasts airtight timing and a chameleonic ensemble, both of which help boost Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s lackluster script. The show’s humor is testament to the talents of the cast. But despite the polished cast and jokes, the plot is a bit predictable. If you’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life, you know Bob’s final message. Bob grows—Crosby’s transition from cloyingly ambitious to bitter and middle-aged is stark—but no one else does. The other characters never get more than a few minutes onstage before they, too, are whisked from Bob’s life, their absurdity never soaking into the tired story. JAMES HELMSWORTH. Shoebox Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., theatrevertigo.org.

7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 pm Sundays through Nov. 15. $20; Thursdays “pay what you will.”

The Homecoming

Harold Pinter never revealed what his plays were about. Indeed, the British dramatist would probably have chafed at the mere suggestion that his plays were “about” anything.

For Pinter, the stage was a place for ambiguity—and for combat. His characters use words less to transmit meaning than to launch ammunition, which often renders them less-thanpleasant company. That’s the case in The Homecoming, Pinter’s landmark 1964 play about a man who, after six years in America, brings his wife to his North London home and introduces her to his working-class family.

It’s a man cave, and not in any charmingly schlubby way—these are mean brutes, whether it’s the patriarch slinging “slut” and “whore” at his daughter-in-law, or slimy Lenny leering at his brother’s wife from across the room.

This Imago Theatre production—the company’s third Pinter play in the past year, following up on excellent renditions of The Lover and The Caretaker—

CONT. on page 62

a Pile of HorsesHit: in 1991, sro Productions cast film actor russ tamblyn in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. then-WW theater critic terry ross called it “a stinking little show.”

WORST. SHOW. EVER. THE MOST PAINFUL SHOWS IN PORTLAND THEATER HISTORY. There’s something singularly awful about sitting through a bad theater production—the eye contact, the vicarious embarrassment, the creeping sense of physical pain, the certainty that you will run into that actor at Fred Meyer next week, after you’ve filed your withering review.

Over the last 40 years, WW theater critics have endured a lot of dreck. To mark our 40th anniversary, we asked former critics to recount the worst stuff they saw, and did some archive hunting of our own.

“Many of the 600-some shows I reviewed for WW were bad, but most of those were just incompetent efforts from ambitious newbies who were in over their heads. Others were passable productions of miserable material—Dogs! The Musical and Reefer Madness (also a musical)—or victims of lousy luck: Artists Rep built a pool for Mary Zimmerman’s watery Metamorphoses, then learned the building couldn’t support the weight of the water and had to perform it dry. But the really ghastly shows insulted the people who paid to see them, and the worst of that lot was another Artists Rep production, a worldpremiere adaptation of Uncle Vanya in 2007 starring the film actor William Hurt. The casting coup backfired: Hurt was good, but he convinced the theater it should cast his then-girlfriend, an Australian soap star named Krista Vendy, as Yelena, the idle young beauty who drives the play’s men to distraction and attempted murder. Vendy had the looks, but she couldn’t shake her accent, and performed the role as a surly, whinging brat, driving the tragedy close to farce. Sadly, Portland’s theater producers are still too-often seduced by star power when it comes to casting and booking. Who’s excited for Lauren Weedman’s return to Portland Center Stage next spring?” —Ben Waterhouse (2005-2012) “Being tasked to describe the worst theater production during my tenure at WW is tough. Where to begin?

I think I’ll cheat and nominate an entire company, whose absence cannot, and should not, be missed. It was difficult to know whether the Tygres Heart Shake-

speare Company was a troupe of professional amateurs or amateur professionals. They would occasionally cast fine actors to fill out a play’s cast, but the production concepts (except for a few by Jon Kretzu) were invariably midbrow, if not ferociously moronic. The final straw was when the company’s board turned down the renowned Charles Marowitz as a possible artistic director, as he was seen as ‘too difficult,’ thus consigning the rest of its mercifully brief existence to its own trademarked mediocrity. When Tygres Heart’s end finally arrived in the winter of 2002, a ‘fan’ called and accused me of killing the company. ‘Good,’ I replied. ‘I can live with that.’” —Steffen Silvis (1997-2005) “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas may not be the worst musical ever—not in a universe that contains Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar—but the late-’70s show (like the 1982 Burt Reynolds-Dolly Parton movie based on it) is a stinking little show all the same.

Whorehouse’s rancid glorification of prostitution epitomizes the reactionary Reagan ’80s as blatantly as Hair and Superstar’s crappy spaciness flaunts the intellectual poverty of the ’60s.… Not even a shitkicking, rambunctious, glitzoid production could make this horror palatable, but [theater company] SRO’s pallid little effort makes one wonder what all the bitching was about last year when Music Theatre Oregon dared to cast out-of-towners in starring roles.

If [director Greg] Tamblyn’s Whorehouse represents the best that Portland…can put together, no wonder MTO bought all those airline tickets.” —Terry Ross, in a 1991 review titled “Stinking Up the Place” “Artists Repertory Theatre’s current production, Same Boat, Brother, conceived and directed by Lyn Tyrrell, falls slam-bang into this ‘must miss’ category.

Subtitled ‘The Earl Robinson Musical Revue,’ it is neither a revue (which promises satirical ditties and witty skits) nor a musical (which implies tunefulness). It is a set of uninventively staged songs composed by Robinson, with lyrics by himself and others, sung badly by a cast of seven. Except for location and lighting, it bears no relation to theater.” —Cate Garrison, in a 1991 review titled “A Yankee Doodle Dud” “I’m afraid I’ve repressed all that. Good luck with the others.” —Bob Sitton (1975-1985) Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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nov. 5–11

discomfited me so greatly it took me weeks to realize how powerful and successful it truly was. REBECCA JACOBSON. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 231-3959. 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays and 2 pm Sundays through Nov. 9. $21$27.

In the Forest, She Grew Fangs

High school is a jungle—and in Defunkt Theatre’s In the Forest, She Grew Fangs, sometimes literally so. Stephen Spotswood’s play follows two teenage girls, Lucy Maggard (Marisol Ceballos) and Jenny McConnick (Tabitha Trosen), both haunted by social media at a high school in an unnamed small town. For Jenny, a California transplant whose brain is overlooked for her body, it’s a topless picture of her on the Internet.

She expects to be ridiculed at her new school but isn’t. Instead, the kids’ cruelty is directed at Lucy, a quiet weirdo nicknamed “Maggot,” whom they torment not only for her withdrawn behavior but for a porn video they’ve found of her mother. While walking in the woods one night, Jenny saves Lucy from drowning and then quickly becomes obsessed with her, as does shy jock Hunter (Gabriel Isaac Lakey). Shortly thereafter, townsfolk begin finding gutted deer. Dogs start to go missing. And the show, directed

by Andrew Klaus-Vineyard, takes a Carrie-style turn. The rapidly shifting power dynamics, coupled with snappy dialogue, mirror the widening gyre of teenage life, and prove an apt reminder: In the scariest stories, you never discover who’s the real monster.

JAMES HELMSWORTH. The Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 4812960. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Sundays through Nov. 15. “Pay what you can” Thursdays and Sundays; $15-$25 sliding scale Fridays and Saturdays.

Ivy + Bean: The Musical

Oregon Children’s Theatre kicks off its season with a musical based on Annie Barrows’ bestselling book series about two mischievous friends. Best for ages 4 and up. Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 2 and 5 pm Saturdays and 11 am and 2 pm Sundays through Nov. 23. $15-$30.

Mars One

It’s 2026. Two years ago, a group of astronauts established a base on Mars, but now they’ve let it fall into horrible disarray. Steve Riley (Matt Hopkins), the mission’s doctor, leaves piles of detritus all over the station. Mark Fleer (Sam Burns) sleeps incessantly. Marritt Friedricksen (Katie Michels) is too happy to play along. And never mind that the station’s plants aren’t growing.

When two new Mars colonists, the type-A Ryan Aldridge (Brett Mustard) and the self-critical botanist Tabitha Thompson (Noelle Eaton) arrive, this order—or what passes for it—is threatened. Action/Adventure’s Mars One is a very funny, serialized satire of interstellar drama. “Mars drunk is way cooler than Earth drunk,” quips Tabitha, a novelty beer helmet attached to her regular space helmet. Moments like these abound, and they’ll vary at each performance: Like Action/Adventure’s previous serialized shows, Mars One is unscripted. The players instead have a set of plot points for each weekend, around which they improvise a slightly different show each night.

Action/Adventure makes an effort to catch people up, so don’t let missing an installment or two stop you from going. JAMES HELMSWORTH. Action/ Adventure Theatre, 1050 SE Clinton St. 8 pm Thursdays-Sundays through Nov. 9. $12; Thursdays “pay what you will.”

Masque of the Red Death

Shaking the Tree’s Masque of the Red Death confirms director Samantha Van Der Merwe as one of the most creative minds in Portland theater, able to take tricky material and forge work that’s immersive, captivating and alive.

It’s something of an anthology play, braiding together stories (and one poem) by Edgar Allan Poe. The connective tissue is the titular story, about a prince named Prospero (Matthew Kerrigan) who invites a thousand nobles to his abbey to elude a plague.

In Poe’s original “Masque,” the guests are met with rooms of different colors, each containing a unique oddity. Here,

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that conceit translates to a series of highly atmospheric mini-plays, all adapted by members of local collective Playwrights West. In an early piece, Andrew Wardenaar’s adaptation of “The Pit and the Pendulum,” we occasionally see actor Joseph Gibson in a cone of light. Often, though, we’re plunged into total darkness. Deprived of sight, all we can do is listen to Gibson’s whispery rasp as he describes what’s around him: rats, rotting meat, a swinging blade. It’s spooky and disorienting in its restraint. Which makes the next scene, Steve Patterson’s take on “The Fall of the House of Usher,” all the more striking in its sensory overload. We’re brought into a small room cast in a sickly green light, where a raving Andy Lee-Hillstrom swigs laudanum and Nicole Accuardi has cataleptic fits. The downside to the format is that what’s intended as a through line—Prince Prospero’s party—becomes more of a sideline. Kerrigan is a nimble and magnetic performer, and it’s a shame he doesn’t have more stage time. I could have watched an evening-length version of “That Smell,” Ellen Margolis’ meta riff on Poe’s life and legacy. Kerrigan’s monologue— antic, funny, incisive—draws some of its timing from standup, just with the expertly deployed double takes and winking knowingness of the theater.

As he exits, he calls out: “Don’t let me spoil the party!” Impossible.

REBECCA JACOBSON. Shaking the Tree, 1407 SE Stark St., 235-0635. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays and 5 pm Sundays through Nov. 22. $20-$25; $5 for ages 19 and under.

’Night, Mother

Do not enter Coho Theater for ‘Night, Mother expecting to be anything but emotionally wrecked. Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer-winning drama centers on the aging Thelma, content with watching TV for the rest of her days, and Jessie, the 30-something divorced daughter who cares meticulously for her, right down to filling her candy jar each night. The play opens with a sudden and shocking profession from Jessie: She plans to kill herself by the end of the evening. The next 90 minutes follow the conversations between a daughter so determined to leave and a mother coming to terms with why. Jacklyn Maddux deftly captures Thelma’s confusion and heartbreak, with alternately sly and sharp reactions. Dana Millican offers an equally strong performance as Jessie, shifting from solemnly determined to calmly logical to raw and emotional. Gavin Hoffman, in an excellent directorial debut, focuses more on emotion than on what’s right or wrong. It all makes for an uncomfortable and absorbing look into an everyday relationship, and one that is likely to make for a very quiet ride home from the theater. KAITIE TODD. CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 220-2646. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 pm Sundays through Nov. 8. $15-$25.

¡O Romeo!

If nothing else, ¡O Romeo! is incredibly charming. Miracle Theatre’s original, bilingual production finds Shakespeare on his deathbed, with his characters brought to life and trying to persuade the playwright not to destroy his life’s work. Director Olga Sanchez is most interested in having some campy fun. Most of the characters are from Hamlet, even though Polonius and the Danish prince himself make only brief appearances, which feels like a missed comedic opportunity. Jake Wiest’s Yorick and Sofia May-Cuxim’s Rifke—a Spanish-speaking nurse invented for the purposes of this show—are two of the most energetic and amusing characters, though Rebecca Ridenour also plays a convincingly crazyeyed and skittish Ophelia. At one point, Shakespeare’s characters tell him about his centuries-long cultural legacy, eventually breaking into a rendition of “Jet Song” from West Side Story. It’s all a little cheesy, but the opening-night audience roared with laughter—and who doesn’t love that tune? SHANNON GORMLEY. Miracle Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., 236-7253.

7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 pm Sundays through Nov. 9. $16-$24.

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

The Piano Lesson

August Wilson used to talk about what he called “blood’s memory,” the collective history of American blacks that forever brings the past back into the present. In Wilson’s Pulitzer-winning The Piano Lesson, currently receiving a stirring production at Portland Playhouse, the relationship between blood and memory is more than figurative: The titular piano is a family heirloom that has been stained and polished with the blood and tears of enslaved ancestors.

Time passes. Ghosts drift through the house. History hulks in the living room.

Like most of the works in Wilson’s Century Cycle, The Piano Lesson is set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. It’s 1936, and Boy Willie (Bryant Bentley) aims to buy a plot of land in Mississippi that his ancestors once farmed. His ticket to riches? A truckful of watermelons— and that piano. One of the challenges of staging a Wilson play (and the Playhouse knows, as this is its sixth) is balancing the exalted language and folksy humor. Director Kevin Jones nails the rhythms—lyrical and heady but utterly natural. Best of all is the production’s harmony between the muscular and the musical. There’s a moment when the men, gathered around the kitchen table, break into a prison work song. Eyes closed, they stomp their feet and beat their fists, moving from jauntiness to anguish to euphoric relief. It’s transcendent, nextlevel stuff, and one of the most moving things I’ve seen onstage. REBECCA JACOBSON. Portland Playhouse, 602 NE Prescott St., 488-5822. 7:30 pm Wednesdays-Saturdays and 2 pm Sundays through Nov. 16. $20-$48.

Pieces of the HART: A Night of Original One-Acts

HART Theatre stages a program of original one-acts written and directed by local playwrights. HART Theatre, 185 SE Washington St., Hillsboro, 6937815. 7:30 pm Fridays-Saturdays and 2 pm Sundays through Nov. 9. $15.

The Rocky Horror Show

Watching The Rocky Horror Show in the World Trade Center Theater is kind of like watching a sex scene with your parents. It might be something you want to see, but the setting makes it weird and uncomfortable. The rock musical, an homage to ‘50s drivein fare, tells the story of Brad (Matt Brown) and Janet (Leah Seligman), an all-American couple who happen across the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Nartan Woods). Somewhere between Dr. Frankenstein and David Bowie, Frank’s castle is full of debauchery and depravity both sexual and scientific.

The revelry that has long characterized midnight screenings of the 1975 film— lines shouted from the audience and props flung about—is proportionally subdued in Live On Stage’s production. Exacerbating this strange sense of restraint is the minimal set, which can leave the stage feeling very empty.

The B movies projected onstage during the opening number and the fog and strobes throughout suggest director John Oules could’ve jazzed (er...rocked) things up a bit more. Still, there’s a reason Rocky Horror is a classic, and that’s because the story’s fun and the songs are great. Seligman nails Janet’s stuffy beginnings and her sexual awakening, and she has an incredible voice to boot. Woods is a fiery Frank, whether seducing the young couple or driving them insane with a pelvic thrust. Just pretend Mom and Dad aren’t there. JAMES HELMSWORTH. World Trade Center Theater, 121 SW Salmon St. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays through Nov. 8 (also 2 pm Saturday, Nov. 8). $25-$35.

The Typographer’s Dream

In The Typographer’s Dream, by Portland Center Stage mainstay Adam Bock, your job is the source of all your being. A stenographer can hardly say the word “I,” while a geographer does nothing but chart flaws. And the typographer? She can barely get a word in. Set up as a panel discussion among representatives from those three professions, The Typographer’s Dream has a dreamlike quality: The characters do nothing but talk over

PREVIEW M E I R AT z

PERFORMANCE

good as gold: Katherine longstreth and Mike Barber.

TOGETHERNESS (DANIELLE ROSS AND STACEY TRAN) Uniting the melodramatic and the mundane.

How would you move if you were a Greek god?

That’s just one question posed during Togetherness, a new dance piece by choreographer Danielle Ross. In the piece, dancers strike iconic poses of duos throughout history. Ross says she drew from classical paintings and statues of such figures as Athena and Zeus, as well as from modern-day images and writing.

“I’m interested in this duality of how something can be so melodramatic and then so ethereal and subtle,” says Ross, a 28-year-old native Portlander. “So you see this statue of Athena and it’s so grandiose, and then I imagine, what if one piece of her fabric was moving?”

Her primary inspiration, Ross says, came from images of performance artists Marina Abramovic and Frank Uwe Laysiepen. Abramovic and Laysiepen—the latter was better known by his stage name, Ulay—began working together in the mid-1970s. For more than a decade, they explored the relationship between the body, the audience and themselves as a romantic couple. The two attempted to lose their sense of self in order to become one being, in such pieces as Breathing In/Breathing Out, in which they locked mouths and breathed until they filled each other’s lungs with carbon monoxide, passing out after 17 minutes. Ross says she was influenced by images of the two artists with their hair braided together, or of the two on the Great Wall of China.

Ross and poet Stacey Tran, whose work blends performance with the written word, began collaborating during a Studio2 residency in spring 2013. They eventually assembled a group of five dancers and brought on sound artist Jesse Mejia to compose a floating, ethereal score. Performed as a series of episodes between coupled and grouped dancers, Togetherness uses Tran’s writing and research as a spokenword narrative, woven between moments scored by Mejia and music by experimental duo Golden Retriever. Ross says the development process has been very collaborative, with the final product in large part shaped by the dancers: Mike Barber, Erin Kraemer, Katherine Longstreth, Ruth Nelson and Vanessa Vogel.

“They all have such different dynamics and personalities, and they all come from such different experiences,” Ross says. “I was like, ‘I want us to pull out their melodramas and their narratives.’” To do that, the performers pictured themselves as the couples in the melodramatic images and wrote stories about their visions.

The result features minimal lighting, movements that are alternately fluid and buoyantly athletic, and gold mylar streamers throughout.

The dancers are often still and statuesque—at one point, they strike a pose and then move only their eyes, or shift their stances slightly. As a viewer, you have the feeling that time has slowed down.

“If you watch the clouds for an hour and there’s a snapshot at 2 pm and a snapshot at 3 pm, the images look different, right?” Ross asks.

“But everything is moving slowly. You don’t always know exactly what’s happening. A lot of the composition is like that. There are a lot of little shifts happening.” KAITIE TODD.

see it: Togetherness is at BodyVox Dance Center, 1201 NW 17th Ave., daniellerossdance.com. 8 pm Friday, 4 and 8 pm Saturday and 8 pm Sunday, Nov. 7-9. $16-$18.

NOV. 5–11 one another in their urge to explain their professions, hardly interacting or even noticing each other except to huff and sigh. And so when it’s revealed they’re friends of long acquaintance, it comes off as bizarre and implausible.

What had been Beckett or Brecht becomes merely alienating, despite moments of comedy and insight.

As played by Laura Faye Smith and Sharonlee McLean, respectively, the geographer and typographer speak with intense rage disproportionate to what’s being said, so when they raise their volume still further in moments of duress, it reaches grating parody. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Sundays; 2 pm SaturdaysSundays; and noon Thursdays through Nov. 16. $25-$55.

COMEDY & VARIETY Am I Right, Ladies?

This monthly showcase, produced

by Jen Tam, positions itself as a counterbalance to the misogyny and sexism in the world of standup comedy. Ford Food and Drink, 2505 SE 11th Ave., 236-3023. 8 pm Saturday, Nov. 8. $3-$5.

Entertainment for People: New Shit Show

For each installment of her monthly variety show, mastermind producer B. Frayn Masters tosses together a salad of comedy, music, film, storytelling and whatever other wacky stuff her performers brings to the stage. Action/Adventure Theatre, 1050 SE Clinton St. 8 pm every second Monday through Feb. 9. $8.

Fly-Ass Jokes

ence members’ dreams via a variety of methods, including—but not limited to—finger painting, experimental poetry, freestyle rap, keytar and cookies. Vie de Boheme, 1530 SE 7th Ave., 360-1233. 7:30 pm Saturday, Nov. 8. $5-$30.

LightBox Ensemble

The improv troupe presents a twopart show called Gel, Jam, and Preserve. In the first half, the performers stage a monoscene, which is essentially an improvised one-act play that takes place in a single location. They follow that up with a fast-paced, cartoon-like satire.

Lightbox Kulturhaus, 2027 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd. 8 pm Saturday, Nov. 8. $7.

Margaret Cho

The personally and politically outspoken comedian—whose act incorporates stories about drugs, LGBTQ rights, sex toys and her mom—takes the Helium mic. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., 888-643-8669. 8 pm Thursday and 7:30 and 10 pm Friday-Saturday, Nov. 6-8. $27.50. 21+.

Open Court

Team-based, long-form improv open to audience members and performers of all stripes. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 477-9477. 8 pm every first and third Thursday. $5.

Random Acts of Comedy

Curious Comedy puts on a freewheeling show that brings together sketch, standup and improv. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 477-9477. 9:30 pm Saturdays through Dec. 27. $7-$10.

Script Tease

Five comics from Portland and beyond perform at this twicemonthly standup showcase. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 2242227. 9:30 pm every first and third Friday. $8.

Using unfinished works by Portland playwrights, performers launch into staged readings—and then improvise once the scripted pages run out. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 7:30 pm Saturdays through Nov. 22. $9-$12.

Funnier Than You

Standup at the Corner Bar

The Late Now

The ever-charismatic Leo Daedalus returns with another installment of his“avant-variety talk show,” an intellectually anarchic blend of interviews, music and comedy.

Tonight’s show features drag clown Carla Rossi and self-proclaimed “gonzo dream journalist” Jason Squamata, as well as a radio play exploring epistemological questions posed by Lewis Carroll. A variety of guests will also interpret audi-

Andie Main hosts a twice-monthly standup showcase featuring a handful of comedians performing 20-minute sets. Rialto Corner Bar, 401 SW Alder St., 228-7605. 10 pm every second and fourth Saturday.

Free.

Test Tube with Steven Wilber

For this standup showcase hosted

by Steven Wilber, comics are encouraged to bring their strangest material to the stage. Expect weird stuff from Nick Walker, David Mascorro, Nariko Ott, Tynan DeLong, Whitney Streed and Phil Schallberger. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., 888-643-8669. 8 pm Wednesday, Nov. 5. $10-$17. 21+.

DANCE BalletBoyz

Dance presenter White Bird’s third show of the season brings British ballet dancers to the Schnitz.

Established in 2001 by former Royal Ballet dancers Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, BalletBoyz began as a community project for young men of different experience levels. The current incarnation of the company has been around since 2010 and features 10 men with varying dance backgrounds—one had no formal training before joining the group, while others have been dancing in ballet schools across Europe for years. The company is set to perform two numbers by British choreographers Liam Scarlett and Russell Maliphant. Scarlett’s Serpent adopts a modern idiom rather than classical ballet technique, as the dancers weave around each other like slowly moving statues.

Maliphant’s work, Fallen, centers around militaristic and mechanical themes. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 245-1600.

7:30 pm Tuesday-Wednesday, Nov. 11-12. $26-$64.

Burlesque S’il Vous Plait

This edition of the monthly burlesque show features performances by established locals Ivana Mandalay and Wanda Bones. It also welcomes fire tassel twirler Lady Monster and Vancouver, Wash., burlesque performer Paige Rustles.

Zed Phoenix hosts. Crush, 1400 SE Morrison St, 235-8150. 9 pm Friday, Nov. 7. $10. 21+.

Burlynomicon

Burlesque with a dark twist, this month’s edition of Burlynomicon features performances by an alllocal cast, including Tana the Tattooed Lady, Vanity Thorne, Machking Birdė, Prys Séphonê and belly dancer Nagasita. Expect a macabre evening with amusing surprises throughout. The Lovecraft, 421 SE Grand Ave., 971-209-2748. 9 pm Tuesday, Nov. 11. $10. 21+.

BABETTE

Starlet Showcase

Local burlesque and boylesque newcomers show their stuff while established dancers try out new acts. This edition of the showcase features an entirely new program of performances by Miz Chaos, Fleur de Sel, Jaxin Yoff, Lacy Knickers, Copper Van Doon and Ophelia Bouche. Kelly’s Olympian, 426 SW Washington St., 228-3669. 8 pm Friday, Nov. 7. $10-$14. 21+.

THE MANY LIVES, TWO DEATHS AND DOUBLE KIDNAPPING OF DR. ELLSWORTH

For more Performance listings, visit PA N AY I O T I S S I N N O S S M A L L

Richie Stratton hosts a monthly standup showcase featuring five local comedians. Sky Club at Ankeny’s Well, 50 SW 3rd Ave., 2231375. 10 pm Friday, Nov. 7. Free. 21+.

PERFORMANCE

DOMINO EFFECT: British dance company BalletBoyz will perform Nov. 11-12 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

Slideshow, lecture Taken as an infant from and book signing Yakima, raised in with author occupied France during Ross Eliot, WWII, involved with sponsored by the notorious Rajneesh the Queer Resource Puram, East German communists and the Center at PCC Catholic Church, November 20th Dr. Ellsworth, 10-11:30am (1928-2002) Rock Creek Campus was Portland’s most Student Center unique professor, as Building 3 documented in this local Room 128 memoir, recently shortlisted for non-fiction by the 2014 international literary www.profellsworth.com Rainbow Awards Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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VISUAL ARTS

NOV. 5–11

= WW Pick. Highly recommended.

By RICHARD SPEER. 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: rspeer@wweek.com.

CMYKRGB BY AKIHIKO MIYOSHI

Akihiko Miyoshi: Pigment Migrations & Suspended Refraction

Akihiko Miyoshi’s inkjet prints have a deliciously low-fi appeal. With their garishly colored lines, squares and spirals, they look like a screen save from a 1980s video game.

Miyoshi likes playing in the gray area where current and retro technologies intersect: the place in our collective memory where analog wanes and digital begins. The 10 large-scale photographs and one light-based installation in this show seem to show a perverse pleasure in toying with our notion of the “futuristic,” which in many cases is as quaintly anachronistic as Space Invaders and Ms. Pac-Man. Nov. 6-29.

Upfor Gallery, 929 NW Flanders St., 227-5111.

Amjad Faur: Sun Kings

Digital technology, especially Photoshop, has elevated the “camera trick” to new highs—or new lows, if you prefer your imagery unfiddled-with. But artist Amjad Faur is dedicated to creating photographs that are resolutely real in every way.

He spends hours setting up elaborate stage sets, then takes one and only one exposure, imbuing the finished print with a sense of deliberateness and rarity. As for his subject matter, Faur is partially Palestinian in heritage and addresses Middle East political themes in his immaculately composed works. Through Nov. 29.

PDX Contemporary Art, 925 NW Flanders St., 222-0063.

Bennet Norrbo: Nice & Naughty

Beloved Portland artist Bennet Norrbo died last year at 83. A year later, his friend and artistic executor, gallerist Marilyn Murdoch, is mounting an affectionate retrospective of his work, spanning many media and decades, and including pieces never seen before by the public. Half the proceeds from the sale will benefit P:ear, a local nonprofit that offers art-centered therapies to homeless and transitional youth. Norrbo was famously eccentric (he never left the house without $500 in cash and a stash of airplane liquor bottles in his pockets) and was too shy to attend his own art openings. He painted in two styles, the first under his real name (brightly colored images of Portland landmarks and personalities), the second under the pseud-

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onym Joe Hatt (grittier depictions of prostitutes and gangsters). This retrospective offers a comprehensive overview of an artist who is overdue for a thorough reconsideration. Through Nov. 30. Murdoch Collections, 2219 NW Raleigh St., 284-1960.

Forbidden Fruit: Chris Antemann at Meissen

In a long-overdue follow-up to her delightful installation at the 2011 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, Chris Antemann stages a rococo bacchanal in the Portland Art Museum. Her porcelain figures fill a mirrored antechamber, engaging in all manner of languid frivolty. In the sprawling sculpture Love Temple, they sit around—and in some cases, crawl on—a lavishly appointed dining table, some of them naked, some clad only in the skimpiest suggestion of diaphanous fabric. Antemann accents the figures’ white skin with delicate golden lines. Although her revelers, with their powdered wigs and rouged cheeks, are a little too onenote in their appearance to sustain the viewer’s attention, perhaps that is on purpose. After all, 24-hour party people, whether in the 18th century or the 21st, begin to all look the same after the ninth or 10th flute of champagne. Through Feb. 8.

Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 226-0973.

Gregory Grenon and Margaret Shirley

There’s a trend afoot at Laura Russo Gallery. Last month, gallery director Martha Lee paired Sherrie Wolf’s floral still lifes with Eric Franklin’s abstract sculptures in a satisfying counterposition of representation and abstraction. This month, a similar strategy yields equally intriguing results. In the realm of figuration, artist Gregory Grenon brings the latest iterations in his career-long obsession with the female form and face. The show celebrates 35 years of Grenon exhibiting his work in Portland. On the abstract side of the continuum are Margaret Shirley’s artworks, which read as opulent nonrepresentational patterns, although many pieces are based on plants and other motifs from the natural world. Grenon’s childlike images and Shirley’s organic vignettes make for a wellbalanced double bill. Nov. 6-29.

Laura Russo Gallery, 805 NW 21st Ave., 226-2754.

Stu Levy: Recent Landscapes— In Search of “What Else” If you learned to take pictures from legendary master Ansel Adams and were paying attention, chances are your photographs aren’t going to suck. That’s certainly an understatement in the case of Stu Levy, the gifted photographer whose ecstatic landscapes are featured at Augen this month. What Levy is able to extract from earth, sea and sky is the stuff of which epiphanies are made. These vistas show us the world as it would be if every sunset were filtered through a diamond and every mountainside a tapestry woven by God. In an aesthetic climate dominated by nihilism, this is a refreshingly idealistic and uplifting show. Through Nov. 29. Augen DeSoto, 716 NW Davis St., 224-8182.

Through the Lens: Portraiture & Self-portraiture

Art history is filled with famous selfportraits—think Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Van Gogh, just for starters. But the self-portrait is still thriving in contemporary art, and so is portraiture in general. That’s thanks to many of the artists featured in Through the Lens, the new portrait show at Elizabeth Leach.

While the late provocateur Robert Mapplethorpe is best known for his nudes and floral studies, he also took soul-searching self-portraits and routinely turned his lens on his friend and muse, singer Patti Smith.

Chuck Close has made a distinguished reputation, not to mention a fortune, from churning out portrait after portrait, not only of his own dour visage, but also of celebrity friends like composer Philip Glass and supermodel Kate Moss.

Nan Goldin famously chronicled the lower Manhattan social milieu in the 1980s, resulting in enduring and often harrowing images. In addition to these three photographers, nine other artists will be showcased in the exhibition. Nov. 6-Jan. 3.

Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417 NW 9th Ave., 224-0521.

For more Visual Arts listings, visit

BOOKS

NOV. 5–11

= WW Pick. Highly recommended.

By PENELOPE BASS. 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.

photos from space. Following his best-selling book An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Hadley’s You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes offers a perspective on the planet that few of us will ever personally witness. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800- 878-7323. 7:30 pm.

SATURDAY, NOV. 8 Group Reading

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 5 “Simplified Map” Reading

A decade ago, three Portland authors in the same writing workshop challenged each other to include some version of a Rand McNally classroom world map in their writing. The result is Carry the Sky by Kate Gray, A Simplified Map of the Real World by Stevan Allred, and the forthcoming Not So Simple by Joanna Rose. Each of the authors will read from their work. Annie Bloom’s Books, 7834 SW Capitol Highway, 246-0053. 7 pm. Free.

Elizabeth Lopeman

In her debut collection of short stories, Trans Europe Express, Elizabeth Lopeman follows her characters—all expatriates— through love, work, art and a search for meaning abroad.

Joining her in conversation about fiction and travel will be Mary Rechner, author of Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women. Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, 284-1726. 7 pm. Free.

THURSDAY, NOV. 6 Chris Dixon

Anarchist movements can be fun, but they often lack solid organization. Writer, educator and political organizer Chris Dixon explores the increased cohesion and shared politics and practices among movements of anti-authoritarian radicalism and activism. He’ll discuss the trend and read from his new book, Another Politics: Talking Across Today’s Transformative Movements.

Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union, 1825 SW Broadway. 6 pm. Free.

Steve Cleveland

Portland musician Steve Cleveland will release his new book of poetry, The Gold That Falls Onto the Table, with a reading hosted by the Oregon Writers Colony. At turns whimsical and humorous, Cleveland’s poems range from life lessons to simple musings, such as Christ and his disciples discussing the quality of the bread. Rain or Shine Coff ee House, 5941 SE Division St., 946-8081. 7 pm. Free.

Local anthology The Night, and the Rain, and the River, edited by Portland writer Liz Prato, presents 22 stories from writers across Oregon. Each entry explores, either directly or indirectly, the theme of loss and how it shapes our lives. Gathering for a reading from the book will be contributors Victoria Blake, Christi Krug, Ellen Davidson Levine and Gregg Kleiner. Another Read Through Books, 3932 N Mississippi Ave., 208-2729. 1:30 pm. Free.

SUNDAY, NOV. 9 Sci-Fi Authorfest 8

With enough manpower to operate a not-yet-fully-functional battle station, more than two dozen sci-fi and fantasy authors will be sharing their work, signing books and forging dark alliances at Sci-Fi Authorfest 8. Expect to see folks like Daniel H. Wilson (Robopocalypse), Irene Radford (The Glass Dragon) and Dean Wesley Smith (Star Trek novels).

Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 800-878-7323.

4 pm. Free.

CONGRATULATIONS ON

40 YEARS

The Studio Series

Taking the stage for the monthly poetry reading and open mic the Studio Series will be Clark County poet laureate Christopher Luna (Shaking Hands). Joining him will be Brittney Corrigan (Navigation), the poetry editor of online journal Hyperlexia. Stonehenge Studios, 3508 SW Corbett Ave., 224-3640.

7-9 pm. Free.

MONDAY, NOV. 10 Garth Stein

In his new novel, A Sudden Light, best-selling author Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain) unravels the story of a son discovering long-hidden secrets of his prominent Northwestern family. With empathy and beauty, Stein once again proves his knack for illuminating human motivation. Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, 284-1726. 7 pm. Free.

J. Robert Lennon

Praised for his imaginative style that manages to be as hilarious as it is unnervingly bizarre, J. Robert Lennon’s new collection of short stories, See You in Paradise, covers such comic topics as suicide, sexual dysfunction and career stagnation. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800878-7323. 7:30 pm. Free.

FRIDAY, NOV. 7 Chris Hadfield

Among such accomplishments as being the first Canadian to walk in space and recording a bitchin’ zero-gravity cover of “Space Oddity,” astronaut Chris Hadfield also took more than 45,000

For more Books listings, visit

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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WILLAMETTE WHOOPS

YEARS

REMEMBERING 40 YEARS OF MISGUIDED FILM CRITICISM. Everyone’s had opinions they regret. Part of being a critic means having those opinions published and preserved.

No one nails every review, especially when overnighting a challenging movie. Even Roger Ebert muffed A Clockwork Orange and Unforgiven. Still, once consensus has calcified on what belongs in the canon and what’s crap, there’s a share of learned opinions left looking either hopelessly naive or obnoxiously contrarian. During the 40 years Willamette Week has published film criticism, we’ve printed a few double facepalms and super-itchy head-scratchers. Here are some favorites culled from our archive.

The Godfather: Part II (1974) “Godfather II is lots of style with not much substance. It’s full of period costumes and beautiful crowd scenes. The acting is competent to excellent, but Godfather II is essentially two movies within the same movie and they conflict more than they illuminate each other…. The end result is a letdown from the precision and polish of Godfather I.” —Catherine Wood Tommy (1975) “This opera of the rock age is important both morally and musically. No one in music has attempted to produce such a coherent, beginning-to-end show using the rock medium.” —Kevin Mulligan Jaws (1975) “Jaws has flaws. It apparently works on the premise that if fear is raised to a high enough pitch, you don’t have to account for character motivation.” —Stephanie Oliver Taxi Driver (1976) “Getting enthusiastic about Martin Scorsese’s new film Taxi Driver is like grooving over vomit. It’s all there with such graphic recall that the sight and stench of it makes your eyes burn…. The double ending (unconvincing if taken as reality, too straightforward if fictitious) is like Dickens’ ambivalence in Great Expectations. If you don’t like the first ending, go to the second. It’s a cop-out.”

—Stephanie Oliver Star Wars (1977) “Three hundred and sixty-three special effects do not mean that Star Wars is a better movie than 2001: A Space Odyssey, any more than superb production capacities at McDonald’s mean you get a better cut of meat than you do at Ringside…. Star Wars is a putdown of fairy tales and a send-up of science fiction.” —Stephanie Oliver Slap Shot (1977) “Surely the foulest piece of garbage to be flung against the screen in a long time.” —Stephanie Oliver Grease (1978) “Grease cops a feel of the ’50s but never goes all the way.”

—Catherine Peters

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Alien (1979) “The toughness of [Ridley] Scott’s vision is no match for the tenacity of commercial innovations, and Alien emerges as an uneasy confrontation between genuine filmmaking talent and crass commercialism…[with] ominously photographed but mind-bogglingly tacky sets—composed, for all appearances, of plastics, petroleum waste, and clearly manmade materials, and constructed to resemble crude phallic growths and cavernous, womblike interiors.”

—Roger Margolis, in a review titled “Cash Registers That Go Bump in the Night” The Shining (1980) “The Shining is a formless, seething, bubbling, vaporous mess…. There are a lot of things this movie doesn’t have, including much in the way of special effects or anything in the way of a sensible plot.” —Roger Margolis Back to School (1986) “Rodney Dangerfield is not what you would call a sex symbol, what with eyes that protrude like a squeezed Obie doll, a face that twitches like aerobics exercises from the neck up and a hopelessly dumpy body. Dangerfield’s quick wit and congeniality, however, could catapult the comedian into the ranks of such unlikely sex gods as Dustin Hoffman and Don Knotts.” —D.K. Holm Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) “[John] Hughes is artistically hamstrung by his pandering to the biases of the teen audience, especially in his treatment of Bueller’s school principal.” —D.K. Holm Do the Right Thing (1989) “[Spike] Lee is doing so much, however, that the nature of the ‘right thing’ to do is left unclear.” —D.K. Holm The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) “Others may find that the Danny Elfman score sounds like one long tuneless song.” —D.K. Holm Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) “This decade’s Tootsie is an embarrassingly sappy tale of a flaky dad…. The entire ridiculous story culminates in saccharine messages about family diversity.” —D.K. Holm The Lion King (1994) “A few, though certainly not all, of the music sequences are fine.” —Kathleen Wilson

The Matrix (1999) “[Keanu] Reeves brings an innocent, boyish quality to Neo that is essential to the film’s believability.” —Brian Libby American Pie (1999) “It’s shocking we had to wait this long for a film that dominates what’s on the minds of most adolescent males: getting laid. American Pie is straight up, unabashedly, a teenage sex comedy…with a heart.” —David McCoy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) “Kevin Smith has finally managed to pull off a consistently strong film, turning his weaknesses into strengths to deliver a solid good time. And most important, he’s finally given his legion of dorky fanboys a film worthy of their worship. The rest of us can just sit back and be entertained.” —David Walker Seabiscuit (2003) “Seabiscuit is not just the story of an undersized horse and an oversized jockey conquering the tracks. It’s a metaphor for how America rose from the depths of the Great Depression to unprecedented heights.” —David Walker The Brown Bunny (2004) “By the time the brief credits roll, The Brown Bunny has turned into a movie more soul-searching than self-indulgent, and far more sad than sexy. [Vincent] Gallo, egomaniac though he may be, has pulled off an admirable feat: He’s managed to make cinematic onanism tragic instead of annoying.” —Becky Ohlsen The Dark Knight (2008) “It is atrociously edited, with each individual scene bearing no casual relationship to the next. The Joker is supposed to be a wily escape artist, but that’s difficult to confirm since The Dark Knight loses track of nearly all of its characters for long stretches.” —Aaron Mesh The Wrestler (2008) “A mushy hunk of cornpone that has become a sensation for facilitating Mickey Rourke’s professional comeback.”

—Aaron Mesh

jeff drew

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MOVIES

NOV. 5–11

The Book of Life

= WW Pick. Highly recommended.

Editor: REBECCA JACOBSON. 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: rjacobson@wweek.com.

Fax: 243-1115.

22 Jump Street

B+ The hilarious 22 Jump Street

is essentially the same movie as 22 Jump Street, only bigger and explodier. R. AP KRYZA. Academy, Kennedy School, Mission, Valley.

20,000 Days on Earth

A Nick Cave is one of rock ’n’ roll’s

great liars. He admits as much in 20,000 Days on Earth. The way he sees it, the truth is a sea serpent that exists below the surface of a song, and his goal is to conjure it into the shallows just enough to expose its humps. An honest documentary would only do him a disservice. Fortunately, directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard aren’t interested in capturing the man as much as perpetuating his myth. At one point, Cave visits his “archive” and reads from a last will and testament he claims to have written in the ’80s, which decrees that all his assets go to creating a Nick Cave Memorial Museum. “I was always an ostentatious bastard,” he laughs.

Don’t tell Cave, but his humps are showing. R. MATTHEW SINGER. Laurelhurst.

ABCs of Death 2

B- [TWO NIGHTS ONLY] Horror

anthology films are like campfire tales: Their effectiveness depends wholly on the storyteller. Much like the recent V/H/S series, ABCs of Death 2 improves on its predecessor. But when your whole presentation rests on the independent efforts of 26 different filmmakers, each tackling a different letter of the alphabet, you’re looking unavoidably at a mixed bag. Luckily, with so many films crammed into 120 minutes, all are blessedly short, allowing their creators to focus on the good stuff, which more often than not involves being as gross as possible. And there are some gems here. Cheap Thrills director E.L. Katz kicks things off with a hyperstylized inversion of macho action cinema, while Bill Plympton lends his trademark hand-drawn animation to a curious offering too deliciously bizarre for words. There are, of course, some duds, including a shoddy monster tale from Africa and an obnoxiously twee Abbott & Costello knockoff. But missteps aside, the anthology is overflowing with ideas, ranging from black humor to psychedelic horror to genuine terror. By the time you get to Z—in this case, “zygote”—you will have experienced enough murder, child slayings, flung poop, zombies and decapitations to fuel a whole summer’s worth of campfire tales.

AP KRYZA. Hollywood Theatre. 9:30 pm Friday and Sunday, Nov. 7 and 9.

Advanced Style

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A documentary about New York City fashion plates aged 62 to 95. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Monday, Nov. 10.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner star in a Disney adaptation of the popular kids’ book. PG. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Oak Grove, Movies on TV, Sandy.

Annabelle

The haunted doll from the Conjuring movies gets her own spinoff. R. Eastport.

Art and Craft

A documentary about Mark Landis, a prolific art forger (he donates his works to museums to avoid prosecution) who is also a diagnosed schizophrenic. Living Room Theaters.

Before I Go to Sleep

A psychological thriller starring Nicole Kidman as an amnesia victim and Colin Firth as her seemingly gentle husband. R. Cornelius, Oak Grove, Sandy.

The Best of Me

Onetime high-school sweethearts find themselves back together in their small town. For Nicholas Sparks devotees only. PG-13.

Clackamas.

Big Hero 6

A Shelving wordy cleverness for its

own sake, ignoring parental intrusion, and allowing moral lessons to develop organically through a simplified storyline, Big Hero 6 is that rarest thing: an animated children’s adventure designed purely to delight its target audience.

Substantial swaths of the picture are devoted to nothing loftier than portraying just how unstoppably cool soaring on the back of your own robot would feel. Based on a Marvel comic about repurposed Japanese mutant-villains, this Disney feature drops all references to a larger Marvel world and scales back the well-worn superhero textures to best serve the needs of a slightly harder-edged kids’ cartoon. Big Hero 6 opens in the mean streets of San Fransokyo, where Tadashi narrowly saves his little brother Hiro from a beating after the 14-year-old prodigy wins fistfuls of cash during back-alley ‘bot fights. The first third of the film concerns itself solely with the orphans’ attempts to land Hiro enrollment at a whiz-bang university. The appeal of superherodom isn’t even suggested until an explosion kills Tadashi, but, upon discovering a nano-tech project has been stolen for shadowy ends, what’s a boy to do but weaponize his brother’s adorably puffy health care robot and outfit his goofball lab mates as newly minted misfit warriors of science? You’ll believe unadulterated tweener dreams can fly. PG. JAY HORTON. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Mill Plain, Cornelius, Moreland, Oak Grove, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Division, Evergreen Parkway, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonveille, Roseway, Sandy, St. Johns Theater.

Birdman

MOVIES

B- In Birdman, our protagonist is Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), a washed-up actor who once wore wings as the titular superhero. But in this film, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the real thing with wings is the camera, which soars and swoops through narrow stairwells and bustling Manhattan streets. The effect is that of a single, continuous take. But just as the camera floats along, so too does much else in this self-consciously clever film skate along the surface.

Decades ago, Riggan struck gold as a Hollywood superhero, and he’s now trying to rebuild himself by adapting, directing and starring in a Broadway play. It’s of course a winknudge role for Keaton, 63, who wore the Batman suit more than 20 years ago and whose career has wobbled since. The actor works himself into a fidgety lather as he stomps through the theater, bleeding insecurity, self-pity and wounded arrogance. But the screenplay—a committee affair, by Iñárritu and three others—is creaky and self-satisfied. If Birdman’s message is that the theater is the home of high art and Hollywood a place of debased, greed-driven entertainment, Iñárritu doesn’t make a convincing—or even amusingly satirical—argument. R. REBECCA JACOBSON. Fox Tower, Cedar Hills, Clackamas.

B- A transcendent flourish of fourcolor splendor and kinetic verve, new animated feature The Book of Life arrives overstuffed with artisanal delights, including the world’s grandest piñata. But, while the picaresque drollery will surely draw crowds, the film is still hollow, disposable and a shameless waste of candy. PG. JAY HORTON. 99W Drive-In, Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Movies on TV.

The Boxtrolls

C+ As in Laika’s previous two efforts—the fantastical Coraline and playfully supernatural ParaNorman— The Boxtrolls boasts a scrupulously crafted world. But its overstuffed screenplay lacks humor, and it could use a great deal more fun. PG. REBECCA JACOBSON. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas.

Boyhood

A Boyhood took 12 years, in film as

in life. For 12 years, director Richard Linklater shot the movie for a few weeks each summer as both the main character, a boy named Mason, and the actor, Ellar Coltrane, came of age, from 6 to 18. The epic undertaking has resulted in one of the most honest and absorbing representations of growing up ever put to film: all the tedium, all the wonder.

R. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Academy, Laurelhurst.

Chef

C- Chef is likable the way your halfwitted, earnest cousin is likable.

But over time, it’s just as tedious. R. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Laurelhurst.

The Color of Noise

[ONE NIGHT ONLY, DIRECTOR ATTENDING] Eric Robel screens his new documentary about Tom Hazelmyer, founder of the noiserock label Amphetamine Reptile Records. Academy Theater. 6:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 9.

Dear White People

A- When Justin Simien began work

on Dear White People, early drafts of the screenplay included an overthe-top college party featuring white students in blackface. At some point, though, he ruled it too outlandish and slashed it from the film.

Then came the Compton Cookout at the University of California, San Diego, in 2010. Students showed up in heavy gold chains, oversized T-shirts and, yes, blackface. Simien quickly revived the party in Dear White People, and it’s one of many pieces that makes this college-set satire so smart, gutsy and relevant.

The film, Simien’s directorial debut, blasts apart the notion that we live in a post-racial society, and it explores questions of appropriation, conformity and political strategy while maintaining a tone that’s as playful as it is biting. R. REBECCA JACOBSON. Cinema 21.

Dracula Untold

Based on early reviews of this film, set in 15th-century Transylvania, this story might have been better left, well, untold. PG-13. Eastport, Clackamas, Movies on TV.

The Equalizer

C Antoine Fuqua’s revenge thriller The Equalizer could easily have been downright awful. Instead, it’s merely mediocre, which is testament to the immutable charisma of Denzel Washington. R. MICHAEL NORDINE. Eastport, Movies on TV.

Eternity: The Movie

C- [TWO NIGHTS ONLY] Perhaps Guardians of the Galaxy unfairly raised expectations for sexualized cassette tapes, but Eternity: The Movie never regains the stylized bounce of its opening—a DayGlo fingernail pushes play on a boombox, syncopated sax riffs play, and the screen fills with a loving tribute to the heightened camp of early MTV

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nov. 5–11

pop duos. The song (and re-creation of Wham!’s homoerotica) somehow feels less dated than the mock-rockumentary narration of fresh-faced vocalist Todd (Barrett Crake) as he details climbing the charts with hirsute sax man B.J. Fairchild (Myko Olivier). To his credit, director Ian Thorpe quickly tires of the Behind the Music device, and we’re instead launched upon a breezy pastiche of Reagan-era sex comedies starring a facsimile Hall & Oates. But why keep beating horses dead for a quarter-century? Why satirize the most obvious tropes of an era the filmmakers evidently experienced only through straight-to-VHS schlock?

If not quite a parody of a parody, the creators’ distance from their targets inevitably rings hollow and a bit desperate. JAY HORTON. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Wednesday and 9 pm Thursday, Nov. 5-6.

Fury

C Brad Pitt makes an inglorious return to Nazi-killing movies in Fury, David Ayer’s would-be epic about tank warfare in the waning days of World War II. Fury is meant to be a gritty depiction of the Nazis’ “total war” period, when all civilians were ordered to aid in their country’s desperate efforts—which would be more effective if the director didn’t use these atrocities as little more than action-movie set pieces. R. MICHAEL NORDINE. 99W Drive-In, Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Mill Plain, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Movies on TV, Sandy.

Gone Girl

B+ Gone Girl might be David Fincher’s battiest work. The director has taken a lurid suspense yarn—the wildly popular novel by Gillian Flynn—and emerged with a film that deftly straddles the line between brilliant and stupid. The film centers on Nick and Amy Dunne (Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike), a couple whose relationship is dying, though who’s to blame is a matter of debate. Following Amy’s disappearance, the couple’s story is told in flashbacks via Nick’s interrogation sessions and Amy’s diary entries. Her vanishing sparks a national media circus, but what starts as a procedural mystery goes bonkers after a midfilm twist that transforms the tale into perhaps the most expensive, well-acted Lifetime movie ever. R. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Mill Plain, Movies on TV, Sandy.

Harmontown

B+ [THREE DAYS ONLY] The docu-

mentary Harmontown, a sort of video diary about Community creator Dan Harmon and his cross-country podcast tour, is all self-obsessed grandeur. But it’s also a portrait of a creative force who honestly cares about forging a connection with an audience that’s followed him from The Sarah Silverman Program to network TV and eventually online. During his live shows, Harmon is frequently shit-canned —a topic he freestyles about, at least when he’s not trying to crowd-surf (an ignominious feat for such a big dude). But for anyone who’s kept up with Harmon in the wake of his dismissal from Community, the cuss-laden nonsense is to be expected. Along for the ride are podcast regulars Jeff Davis, who serves as the show’s MC, and dungeon master Spencer Crittenden. While it’d be easy for director Neil Berkeley to focus on Harmon’s outsize personality or his relationship with his girlfriend, Crittenden’s reckoning with fame turns into an earnest part of the film, as we watch him pose for fans’ photos after performances. That Harmon was eventually rehired by Community before NBC finally canceled the show (Yahoo has picked it up for a sixth season) can’t detract from the film’s import or make the podcast feel any less urgent for a guy who’s clearly not short of ideas or ways to alienate those around him. DAVE CANTOR. Hollywood Theatre. 3:30 and 7:15 pm FridaySunday, Nov. 7-9.

Horns

B There’s not much sympathy for the devil in the small Washington hometown of Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe).

With the exception of his friend and legal counsel, Lee (Max Minghella),

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every resident is convinced Ig murdered his longtime girlfriend, Merrin (Juno Temple). Drowning his sorrows in drink one night, he takes a leak on a statue of the Virgin Mary—and wakes up with horns sprouting from his head.

But other than Ig, no one seems all that startled. Instead, the horns make everyone want to reveal their darkest desires to Ig and beg his permission to carry them out. The horns also grant him the ability to see into other people’s pasts by touching them, which he uses to solve the mystery of Merrin’s death. This results in a profusion of plot twists, some more predictable than others, and a series of childhood flashbacks, carried out by a surprisingly capable young cast. Radcliffe has certainly developed more range since his earlier days as Harry Potter, though the film’s stoner-epiphany voice-overs don’t do him any favors. These and not-at-all-subtle thematic and visual motifs serve as boring dressing to an otherwise compelling and singular movie. R. JAMES HELMSWORTH. Living Room Theaters, Forest.

How to Train Your Dragon 2

More animated Vikings, dragons and, scariest of all, teenagers. PG. Academy, Indoor Twin.

John Wick

A- John Wick treads familiar ground:

A retired hit man is roped back into the life. But this is the rare film that excels as much for what it puts on display as for what it holds back. It oozes style, yet avoids showy slow-mo and CGI. It’s birthed from cliché, yet populated with unpredictable characters. John Wick opens with the titular character (Keanu Reeves) in mourning, having just buried his wife. That leaves him with only his tricked-out Mustang and a new puppy. Pity, then, when sadistic Russian thug Iosef (Alfie Allen) and his cronies jack his ride and kill his dog. As directed by David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, the action unfolds without confusing jump cuts.

Whenever the story approaches redundancy, the directors pull out another stylistic flourish. Unburdened by exposition, Reeves is free to do what he does best: be one of his generation’s best action stars. John Wick is a perfect vehicle for him. Which is to say, it’s one of the best action flicks to come along in years. R. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Movies on TV.

The Judge

D+ Having reluctantly flown home to

rural Indiana to attend his mother’s funeral, high-powered lawyer Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) forced to confront his estranged father (Robert Duvall). Watching Iron Man work out his daddy issues for well over two hours proves painful for everyone involved, especially viewers, so drawnout and overwrought is every torturous detail. R. MICHAEL NORDINE. Clackamas.

Laggies

B- Laggies is one of those coming-of-

age stories in which the person who’s growing up should have done so 10 years ago. The woman-child in question is Megan (Keira Knightley), an unemployed 20-something who reacts to her longtime boyfriend’s marriage proposal as any sane person would: by freaking out, partying deep into the night with some teenagers she meets outside a liquor store and making up a bogus story to her would-be fiance. She then crashes with one of these teenagers (Chloë Grace Moretz) in order to clear her head when she’s supposed to be at a self-actualization seminar—and then ends up falling for the girl’s father (Sam Rockwell). As patently ludicrous as all this is, it’s also a clever means of imbuing the film with humor and sweetness. Lynn Shelton has a fondness for her flawed characters where others would be content to mock them, which is a rarer quality than it should be. And though the slow-moving tortoise in the backyard is a little on the nose as far as spirit animals go, it does provide an apt enough metaphor for Megan’s incremental progress: better late than never.

R. MICHAEL NORDINE. Fox Tower, Bridgeport, Clackamas, Living Room Theaters.

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

Listen Up Philip

REVIEW MELINDA SUE GORDON

MOVIES

B+ Oh, the bittersweet deliciousness

of being an asshole. Listen Up Philip revels in it. Director Alex Ross Perry has said in interviews that his film is an amalgamated homage to Philip Roth, and the title card uses the jacket font of Roth’s sex-crazed novel Portnoy’s Complaint. The film blends up the spirit of a self-obsessed, self-hating New York Jewish Lothario just like the Canadians do whiskey, with some of the edge shaved off. True to our times, Listen Up Philip is a coming-of-age movie about a man in his 30s—arrogant, unlovable Philip Lewis Friedman (Jason Schwartzman). Friedman escapes his supportive girlfriend (Elisabeth Moss) to a cottage owned by a lonely, embittered novelist named Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce), a stand-in for Roth. The older man offers Friedman a tutorial in how to fuck up a life, which he drinks in with wide eyes and a trusting heart, ready to commit himself to a life of casual savagery. The film is marred by a somewhat cutesy voice-over, and it’s oddly disjointed, wandering off digressively into the life of Moss’ character as a perhaps tacit commentary on Roth’s treatment of women. But it is still Schwartzman’s film. Friedman will never be happy; we know this. But as we watch, the childish man learns how to be unhappy as an adult. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Laurelhurst.

Maleficent

C+ A revisionist retelling of Disney’s 1959 Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent has a fever-dream edge and the prominent cheekbones of Angelina Jolie. In case your grasp of the source material is rusty, evil fairy Maleficent was left off the invite list to Princess Aurora’s christening, so she dooms the girl to death. But we do not believe in pure evil these days, and Disney wasn’t content to let such a single-minded villain go unconsidered. So what hardened Maleficent’s heart? Rape. The implications are mindboggling, but Jolie only gets the chance to play a jilted lover who exacts her revenge on the most helpless of the kingdom.

PG. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Academy, Laurelhurst, Valley.

The Maze Runner

Because there just aren’t enough film adaptations of dystopian young-adult novels out there, here’s another one, about—as you might have gleaned from its title—kids trapped in a maze.

PG-13. Clackamas.

A Merry Friggin’ Christmas

In one of his final roles, Robin Williams plays an estranged father who must hit the road—during a blizzard, of course—with his son, who’s forgotten all the Christmas gifts at home. PG-13.

Kiggins Theatre.

MicroBirth

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Toni Harman and Alex Wakeford’s new documentary explores the impact of a mother’s bacteria on a newborn baby. Proceeds benefit a service trip by the senior class at Portland Waldorf High School.

Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Thursday, Nov. 6.

Nightcrawler

B+ With eyes bulging from his gaunt

skull like a Chihuahua trapped in an industrial vise, Jake Gyllenhaal is an unnervingly strange sight to behold when he walks onto the screen in Nightcrawler. And that’s before his character, Lou Bloom, even opens his mouth. Once Lou starts chattering—and boy, does Lou chatter—what emerges is one of the slimiest, most disarming sociopaths to hit theaters in some time. Gyllenhaal’s character is terrifying. Not so much for what he does, but for what he represents: He’s sensationalistic and exploitative media personified. The title of Dan Gilroy’s debut feature refers to the lecherous freelance cameramen who prowl city streets, their ears trained to police scanners so they can get to gruesome crime scenes before help arrives and shoot the carnage, tragedy and response as it all unfolds. After wit-

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spaced and confused: Matthew Mcconaughey.

INTERSTELLAR Christopher Nolan is Hollywood’s most masterful huckster: a blockbuster auteur who uses incredible sleight of hand to elevate into art what other directors would leave as garbage. He is the king of making you think his films—the Dark Knight trilogy, the madly convoluted Inception, the oh-so-slick Memento—are smarter than they actually are. His are popcorn films, but damned if they aren’t gourmet popcorn.

So it makes perfect sense that Nolan takes us to another galaxy with Interstellar. In space, nobody can hear you scream, “Wait, that doesn’t make sense...but holy shit, did you see that?!”

The director, along with screenwriting brother Jonathan, has crafted a world where extremely complex space theory—for example, that time passes on some planets at a rate exponentially slower than on Earth—is explained with fleeting comments that are instantly accepted. Whenever something seems really, really out there, somebody conveniently finds a whiteboard and draws a bunch of squiggly marks. Bam! Equation! Now look at this wormhole!

And really, when a film looks this good, that’s almost enough.

It helps, too, that Interstellar is stocked with actors whose charisma endures, even as they’re forced to spout robotically scientific gobbledygook. The plot finds former pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) raising his kids and crops on a blighted Earth, where all plant life is slowly going extinct. Constant dust storms pummel the land. The only form of food appears to be corn. Things aren’t looking good for mankind.

Through seemingly paranormal prompting, Coop discovers a top-secret lab, the kind that Bond villains usually populate, complete with spaceships behind hidden doors. He’s almost immediately enlisted by a speechifying Michael Caine to captain a space expedition: He must either find a new planet for the remnants of humanity to call home or—if time runs out—find a place to incubate a stash of embryos, thus preventing the extinction of mankind.

That’s all a very long way of saying this is a movie in which McConaughey leaves his kids behind on Earth so that he, Anne Hathaway and some robots can go on a cool space adventure and visit places where frozen clouds hover above tundra and waves the size of skyscrapers threaten laid-back days at the beach. Meanwhile, back home, the rest of humanity (including Coop’s now-adult daughter) runs around eating corn and trying to find a way to survive.

But this is a Nolan film, so nothing is simple—or quick to the point.

At nearly three hours, the film piles on the twists, wonky physics, heartfelt speeches and pseudoscience, which, again, is totally fine, because we’re hanging out with Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway in a psychedelic space fantasia. But Interstellar remains something of a slog, and could easily chop an hour off its runtime and remain an exhilarating piece of escapism.

Instead, it drags because of Nolan’s insistence on overcomplicating things with indecipherable equations and endless exposition. Add a twist ending that’s ludicrous and self-important to the point of hilarity and you’ve got a lot of strained goodwill. Again, this is a film about McConaughey and robots kicking it in space. Why so serious?

AP KRYZA.

Christopher nolan aces art class but flunks astronomy.

C+ Interstellar is rated PG-13. It opens Friday at most major Portland-area theaters.

NOV. 5–11

Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival: B.F.E.

A For the entirety of B.F.E., the words behind the letters in the title go unmentioned. But if you have a passing familiarity with the accusations of sodomy so routinely hurled at rural communities, you can probably figure them out. Shawn Telford’s debut feature tells three interconnected stories of people living in an unnamed small town, trying to escape. Ian (Ian Lerch) is stuck there taking care of his grandfather (Wally Dalton), who’s eager to leave not just the town but the world, whether by gun or drug binge. His friend Ellie (Kelsey Packwood) is trapped in an abusive foster home, taking care of her sister. Ellie’s boyfriend, Zach (Alek Greenleaf), feels trapped by his virginity. B.F.E., playing in Portland as part of the Northwest Filmmakers’ Festival, has won a boatload of awards, and for good reason. Born and raised in Post Falls, Idaho, Telford, who hails from Seattle, weaves together culturally ingrained notions of smalltown despair with underexplored narrative threads: the cool mom, the immigrant family, the actually helpful pastor. The cast, mostly young rookies, deliver compelling, natural performances. Visual motifs—and a location that looks like every freeway off-ramp town in America— underscore the universality of B.F.E. There’s a pretty good chance that last letter stands for “everywhere.”.

JAMES HELMSWORTH. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 8:15 pm Sunday, Nov. 9. For full festival schedule, see nwfilm.org.

One Chance

Back in 2007, a pudgy Welsh mobile-phone salesman named Paul Potts stunned everyone—or at least the audience of Britain’s Got Talent— with his operatic singing skills. His story gets a loving dramatization here. PG-13. Living Room Theaters.

Ouija

A supernatural thriller about... you guessed it. PG-13. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Cornelius, Movies on TV, Sandy.

Portland German Film Festival: Inge Is Dancing

B- Frothy teen comedies aren’t the first thing that come to mind when one thinks of German cinema. But aside from a few serious-minded documentaries and a drama about a Jewish boy who escapes the Warsaw ghetto, this year’s German Film Festival (running Nov. 7-11) isn’t much interested in solemnity. In addition to a film that might as well be titled Step Up: The Alps (it’s actually called Rise Up! And Dance, and it features both break dancing and cow milking), there’s Inge Is Dancing, a high-school comedy about a punk band on the cusp of success. But when the guitarist injures his hands, the group must enlist a replacement for an upcoming gig. The only capable player at school? Inge (Paula Kalenberg), an uptight eco-activist who favors floor-length peasant skirts and plays guitar with a dweeby footstand— and who’s the derided subject of the band’s most popular song. Will Inge agree to play? Will angsty bassist Max (Tim Oliver Schultz) realize she’s actually pretty rad? Will there be a debaucherous pool party? Natürlich, and this party will be filled with far

more boobs and butts than any American rager, presumably because these German kids were raised on Freikörperkultur and nudie spreads in the daily tabloids. It’s all quite thin, but it bops along energetically, with a few nice touches—Max’s uncle (Peter Kraus) is a washed-up crooner who spends his days testing out caskets—and a few cheap ones, as in a slow-mo shot of Inge unknotting her bun and shaking out her long blond locks. REBECCA JACOBSON. Cinema 21. 7 pm Tuesday, Nov. 11. For the festival’s full schedule, see portlandgermanfilmfestival.com.

Pride

B+ Politics make strange bedfellows.

That was certainly true of gay activists and mineworkers, who formed an unlikely alliance during a British labor

strike 30 years ago. Their story is dramatized in Pride, Matthew Warchus’ unabashedly crowd-pleasing but not overly saccharine film. Though Pride hits the expected beats—the soundtrack swells and a little old lady asks if all lesbians are vegetarians—it’s so ebullient that it just feels shrewish to resist. R. REBECCA JACOBSON. Cinema 21.

Private Peaceful

[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Pat O’Connor’s film follows two brothers in rural England as they come of age and head to the trenches during World War I. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Tuesday, Nov. 11.

503.944.5475 | 1046 NW Johnson | visageeyewear.com

Design Fashion

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REVIEW C O U R T E S Y O F R A D I U S -T W C

nessing one particularly soulless photographer in action, petty thief Lou invests in a camcorder and a scanner, and promptly crosses police lines in order to tape a grisly accident. What makes Lou such a fascinating and terrifying beast isn’t rooted in traditional cinematic tropes of violence. In reality, he’s quite docile. No, it’s his extreme disconnect and lack of conscience: He sees nothing wrong with moving a still-breathing victim into better light to improve his shot. The film is as funny as it is unsettling…and it’s plenty unsettling. R. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Mill Plain, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Movies on TV, Sandy.

MOVIES

SHY GUY: Edward Snowden.

CITIZENFOUR History happens in real time in Citizenfour, a behind-closed-doors account of Edward Snowden’s decision to reveal the dizzying extent of government surveillance programs. Much of Laura Poitras’ documentary consists of long interviews with Snowden in the Hong Kong hotel room where he was holed up in June 2013, divulging everything he knew to Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald. The result is a portrait of the whistle-blower as neither hero nor traitor.

Snowden is a reluctant protagonist who insists early and often that he is not the story, making the film’s very existence a strange artifact from the outset: It puts the spotlight on a man who’d prefer to stay in the background. Though it’s rarely been more difficult to distinguish between the importance of a film’s subject matter and the quality of the director’s craft, Citizenfour’s ground-level vibe and Poitras’ necessary cloak-and-dagger tactics make the documentary like a ’70s paranoia thriller with real-world consequences. Can you imagine a documentary about Mark Felt—aka Deep Throat—with footage of him meeting with Washington Post reporters in a parking garage?

The stakes are high from the film’s beginning. When Snowden initially attempts to make contact with Poitras, he identifies himself only as “citizenfour,” and he insists on carrying out all communication via encrypted messages. As he reveals ever-darker truths about the National Security Agency’s far-reaching power, the risk only increases.

Yet there are also instances of near-levity. In one scene, we see Snowden fuss with his hair in the bathroom mirror while a story about him is broadcast on CNN in the background. He’s reached a point of no return, and watching him jump willingly into the unknown is as terrifying as it is thrilling.

Those familiar with Snowden’s story may complain at the paucity of new details, but what Citizenfour lacks in revelatory information it makes up for with insight into its subject’s motivations. Snowden is meek and articulate, touching on everything from worries about his loved ones’ safety to how he’s more willing to risk imprisonment or “any other negative outcome” than surrender his intellectual freedom. Was his a Pyrrhic victory? Well over a year later, we’re still waiting for the effects to play out. MICHAEL NORDINE. With every move he makes, another chance he takes.

B SEE IT: Citizenfour is rated R. It opens Friday at Living Room Theaters.

Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

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MOVIES

NOV. 5–11

The Skeleton Twins

AP FILM STUDIES

Interstellar XD (PG-13) 11:30AM 3:15PM 7:00PM 10:40PM John Wick (R) 11:55AM 2:35PM 5:10PM 7:55PM 10:35PM Interstellar (PG-13) 10:45AM 1:00PM 2:25PM 4:45PM 6:10PM 8:30PM 9:55PM St. Vincent (PG-13) 11:15AM 1:50PM 4:30PM 7:15PM 10:00PM Gone Girl (R) 7:05PM 10:30PM Judge, The (R) 12:30PM 7:00PM On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter (PG) 12:35PM 3:00PM 5:25PM 7:50PM 10:15PM Ouija (PG-13) 10:55AM 1:15PM 3:35PM 5:55PM 8:15PM 10:40PM Nightcrawler (R) 11:00AM 12:25PM 1:55PM 3:25PM 4:50PM 6:15PM 7:40PM 9:10PM 10:35PM Laggies (R) 11:15AM 1:50PM 4:30PM 7:10PM 9:45PM

Interstellar (PG-13) 10:00AM 11:05AM 12:30PM 1:45PM 2:50PM 4:15PM 5:30PM 6:35PM 8:00PM 9:15PM 10:15PM

Maze Runner, The (PG-13) 11:20AM 2:10PM 5:00PM Big Hero 6 3D (PG) 11:45AM 12:40PM 2:30PM 5:15PM 6:10PM 8:00PM 10:40PM Big Hero 6 (PG) 10:50AM 1:35PM 3:25PM 4:20PM 7:05PM 9:00PM 9:50PM Best Of Me, The (PG-13) 4:00PM 10:20PM Fury (R) 12:55PM 4:10PM 7:20PM 10:30PM Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No (PG) 10:55AM 1:10PM 3:30PM 5:45PM 8:05PM 10:15PM Birdman (R) 10:45AM 1:40PM 4:35PM 7:30PM 10:25PM Boxtrolls, The (PG) 11:10AM 4:25PM Dracula Untold (PG-13) 7:45PM 10:10PM Boxtrolls, The 3D (PG) 1:45PM Book Of Life 3D (PG) 2:20PM 7:25PM Book Of Life (PG) 11:40AM 4:55PM 10:05PM

Brother of Bommali (CineGalaxy) (NR) 10:00PM

Gone Girl (R) 12:20PM 3:40PM 7:00PM 10:20PM

Big Hero 6 3D (PG) 10:45AM 12:35PM 2:25PM 4:15PM 6:05PM 7:55PM 9:45PM

St. Vincent (PG-13) 11:25AM 2:00PM 4:35PM 7:10PM 9:45PM

Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No (PG) 10:45AM 1:00PM 3:15PM 5:30PM 7:45PM

John Wick (R) 12:00PM 2:35PM 5:10PM 7:45PM 10:20PM

Fury (R) 11:00AM 1:15PM 4:20PM 7:25PM 10:30PM

Ouija (PG-13) 10:45AM 1:05PM 3:25PM 5:45PM 8:05PM 10:25PM

Big Hero 6 (PG) 10:00AM 11:40AM 1:30PM 3:20PM 5:10PM 7:00PM 8:50PM 10:35PM

On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter (PG) 5:45PM 8:05PM 10:25PM

Boxtrolls, The (PG) 10:00AM 12:30PM 3:00PM

Nightcrawler (R) 11:00AM 1:50PM 4:40PM 7:30PM 10:20PM Guardians Of The Galaxy (PG-13) 11:20AM 2:30PM 5:30PM 8:30PM Interstellar (PG-13) 11:00AM 12:15PM 1:30PM 3:00PM 4:15PM 5:30PM 7:00PM 8:15PM 9:30PM 10:15PM St. Vincent (PG-13) 11:30AM 2:10PM 4:50PM 7:30PM 10:10PM Gone Girl (R) 12:10PM 6:50PM On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter (PG) 12:00PM 2:30PM 5:00PM 7:30PM 10:00PM Ouija (PG-13) 11:55AM 2:20PM 4:45PM 7:10PM 9:35PM John Wick (R) 11:25AM 2:05PM 4:40PM 7:15PM 9:50PM Nightcrawler (R) 11:00AM 1:50PM 4:40PM 7:35PM 10:25PM

Book Of Life (PG) 10:50AM 2:05PM 4:35PM 7:05PM 9:35PM Birdman (R) 10:50AM 1:40PM 4:30PM 7:20PM 10:10PM Equalizer, The (R) 3:30PM 10:10PM Big Hero 6 3D (PG) 12:25PM 3:15PM 6:05PM 8:55PM Big Hero 6 (PG) 11:00AM 1:50PM 4:40PM 7:30PM 10:20PM Fury (R) 12:50PM 3:55PM 7:00PM 10:05PM Annabelle (R) 12:05PM 5:15PM 10:20PM Boxtrolls, The (PG) 11:35AM 2:15PM 4:45PM 7:20PM Dracula Untold (PG-13) 2:40PM 7:50PM Book Of Life 3D (PG) 1:55PM Book Of Life (PG) 11:15AM 4:25PM 7:15PM 9:45PM

FRIDAY

other’s sentences, or guess what number the other is imagining with to-the-decimal-point accuracy. In The Skeleton Twins, Maggie and Milo’s sibling ESP manifests in simultaneous suicide attempts. Despite living on different coasts and having had no contact in 10 years, the twins (Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader), try to take their own lives at practically the same moment. Neither succeeds, but the incident brings them back under the same roof, in the town in upstate New York where they grew up. If this sounds like typical Sundance-baiting indie stuff, well, it is. But if there’s one thing writerdirector Craig Johnson gets right, it’s the casting. As former Saturday Night Live castmates, Hader and Wiig come with built-in brother-sister chemistry. One can only imagine how insufferable it would be with anyone else. R. MATTHEW SINGER. Living Room Theaters.

St. Vincent

B- Under most circumstances, his debut, St. Vincent, would be blasted for its contrived, overwrought plot.

Does the world really need another story about a mean old bastard who finds redemption and purpose thanks to a kid? But luckily, that crusty bastard is played by Bill Murray, who takes what could have been a geriatric riff on About a Boy and turns it into a showcase of his ever-evolving comedic prowess. PG13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Clackamas, Mill Plain, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Movies on TV.

This Is Where I Leave You

C+ Shortly after discovering that his wife is cheating on him, a radio producer (Jason Bateman) returns to his childhood home with his semiestranged siblings to mourn their father’s death as part of a sevenday Jewish ritual their mother insists was the dearly departed’s final wish. Director Shawn Levy doesn’t do much to hold this all together, instead relying on his ensemble cast to strike a workable balance between laughter and tears. R. MICHAEL NORDINE. Living Room Theaters.

Whiplash

B+ Whiplash clefts music from

dance, love and spirituality. What’s left is muscle, red and raw, beating faster and faster against a drum.

That’s how Damien Chazelle’s beautiful but troubling film begins: 19-year-old Andrew (Miles Teller) is practicing jazz drumming in a dark room of a New York conservatory.

Conductor Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) happens upon him and invites him to join the school’s top band. A battle of egos and tempos ensues, as Andrew must decide how much of himself and his sanity he’s willing to give to music. Teller gives a close-to-the-chest performance. Though he spends most of the movie looking like a dog with its tail between its legs, he occasionally flies into a solipsistic rage.

Simmons is certainly horrifying, but you’ve heard these hardass lines before. And here’s where Whiplash is most troubling: It views the abusive instructor as a necessary evil for creating great art. Whiplash is certainly an affecting film, but taking it as anything more than a portrait of a single student-teacher relationship would be a mistake. R. JAMES HELMSWORTH. Fox Tower.

The Zero Theorem

B Something of an unofficial

retro-futuristic companion to Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece, Brazil, The Zero Theorem concerns itself with no less than the origins and potential destruction of the universe. It’s all very weird, anchored by gorgeous visuals and a twitchy, uncharacteristically oddball turn from Waltz, who tones down the charisma that scored him Oscars for Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. R. AP KRYZA. Laurelhurst.

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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

COURTESY OF 20TH CENTURY FOX

C Some twins can finish each

H.I. AND MIGHTY Raising Arizona and the art of loquacious lowlifes.

Did somebody tell the Coen brothers to shut up?

Maybe it’s a response to Tom Hanks’ silver-tongued jackass in the reviled 2004 remake of The Ladykillers, but with the exception of the goofballs in Burn After Reading, the Coens have really dialed back the loquaciousness of their leading men.

The screenplays of No Country for Old Men and True Grit could largely be summed up in grunts. A Serious Man’s Larry Gopnik?

Too serious to blather. Llewyn Davis? Quietly artistic.

It’s a drag, because the Coens know how to create great blabbermouths, from O Brother, Where Art Thou?’s Everett McGill to the profane sparring between Walter Sobchak and the Dude. But it all began with H.I. McDunnough: crook, put-upon kidnapper of a quintuplet and garrulous narrator of the Coens’ most thoroughly enjoyable comedy, Raising Arizona (Academy Theater; Nov. 7-13).

Thing is, H.I. (played by a peak Nicolas Cage) is pretty quiet in his everyday life, which jackknifes from domestic placidity to a well-intentioned kidnapping to an apocalyptic Tex Avery nightmare. But the Coens ingeniously let us inside his head throughout the film, whether he’s rambling about that sumbitch Reagan—“I dunno. They say he’s a decent man, so maybe his advisers are confused”—or examining the nature of fate and existence in a long, articulate voice-over about a fantasy future for him and his wife.

Of late, the Coens have become masters of drawing their characters with minimal dialogue. But nothing beats a good, wordy monologue from American cinema’s most lexically blessed writers. Somebody send them a thesaurus, courtesy of Mr. H.I. McDunnough, and tell them we miss their tonguetwisting rogues. AP KRYZA. ALSO SHOWING: Helmed by direct-to-video mainstay Cynthia Rothrock, 1994’s Undefeatable sees the action heroine as a street-fighting martialarts master seeking to avenge the death of her sister, who was offed by an eye-gouging serial killer named Stingray. He also knows kung fu. This is what B-Movie Bingo was made for! Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Nov. 5.

Is Steven Spielberg’s Hook—with Robin Williams as an adult Peter Pan, Dustin Hoffman as a giant ham in a wig, and its legion of bizarre, feral children—really as bad as some people say? It depends on how old you were in 1991. Kiggins Theatre. Opens Friday, Nov. 7.

Edward Scissorhands refuses to stay away from Portland theaters…and that’s just fine. Laurelhurst Theater. Nov. 7-13.

With its saturated colors, overwrought music, rampant misogyny and outdated sexual mores, Anna Biller’s 2007 comedy, Viva, functions as both a satire of antiquated cinematic tropes and a homage to a bygone era of softcore cinema. 5th Avenue Cinema.

7 and 9:30 pm Friday-Saturday and 3 pm Sunday, Nov. 7-9.

Scarecrow Video returns with another edition of VCR That Dripped Blood, a collection of rare, possibly lost-on-purpose videos featuring everything from break-dancing mummies to Christopher Lee. Hollywood Theatre. 9:30 pm Saturday, Nov. 8.

Kung Fu Theater unspools another ultra-rare 35 mm print: Shaolin vs. Lama. This one features the “Buddha Finger” technique, which has since disappeared from everything except your browser history. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Tuesday, Nov. 11.

NOV. 7–13

MOVIES

C O U R T E S Y O F T R I S TA R P I C T U R E S

Academy Theater

7818 SE Stark St., 503-252-0500 THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:10, 07:00 DOLPHIN TALE 2 Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:15 BOYHOOD Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 06:30, 09:10 THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 04:25, 06:45 22 JUMP STREET Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 09:25 HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 02:00 MALEFICENT Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:35 RAISING ARIZONA Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:30, 09:45 THE COLOR OF NOISE Sun 06:30

I DO BELIEVE IN FAIRIES: Hook opens Friday, Nov. 7, at Kiggins Theatre.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Fri-Sun-Mon-TueWed 09:00

Kennedy School Theater Bagdad Theater

3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-249-7474 INTERSTELLAR Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:00, 02:45, 07:00

Cinema 21

616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515 PRIDE Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 04:00, 06:45 DEAR WHITE PEOPLE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:30, 07:15 ELEVEN Wed 06:00

Clinton Street Theater

2522 SE Clinton St., 503-238-8899 TEN MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL Fri-Sat-Sun 07:00 THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW Sat 12:00 ADVANCED STYLE Mon 07:00 PRIVATE PEACEFUL Tue 07:00 THIS AIN’T CALIFORNIA Wed 07:00

Laurelhurst Theatre & Pub

2735 E Burnside St., 503-232-5511 THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 07:00 LISTEN UP PHILIP Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 09:15 BOYHOOD Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 06:15 EDWARD SCISSORHANDS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:30 CHEF Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 06:30 20,000 DAYS ON EARTH Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:00 THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 06:45 THE ZERO THEOREM Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:40 MALEFICENT Fri-Sat-Sun 01:30, 04:10

Mission Theater and Pub

1624 NW Glisan St., 503-249-7474-5 DOLPHIN TALE 2 Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:45 THE HANGOVER Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 10:30 22 JUMP STREET Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 05:00

Moreland Theatre

6712 SE Milwaukie Ave., 503236-5257 BIG HERO 6 Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 05:30, 08:00

Roseway Theatre

7229 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-282-2898 BIG HERO 6 3D Fri-Sat-TueWed 01:45, 04:45, 07:45 BIG HERO 6 Sun-Mon 01:45, 04:45, 07:45

St. Johns Cinemas 8704 N Lombard St., 503-286-1768 INTERSTELLAR Fri-Sat-

Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 05:00, 08:30

CineMagic Theatre

2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-231-7919 INTERSTELLAR Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 03:30, 05:00, 07:00, 08:30

Kiggins Theatre

1011 Main St., 360-816-0352 A MERRY FRIGGIN’ CHRISTMAS Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 04:30, 08:30 HARMONTOWN Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 06:15 HOOK Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon 04:30

Century 16 Eastport Plaza

4040 SE 82nd Ave. ST. VINCENT Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:30, 02:10, 04:50, 07:30, 10:10 GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:20, 02:30, 05:30, 08:30 THE EQUALIZER Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 03:30, 10:10 THE BOXTROLLS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:35, 02:15 DRACULA UNTOLD Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:40, 07:50 GONE GIRL Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:10, 06:50 ANNABELLE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 05:15, 10:20 THE BOOK OF LIFE Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:15, 04:25, 07:15 THE BOOK OF LIFE 3D Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 01:55 OUIJA Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 11:55, 02:20, 04:45, 07:10, 09:35 BIG HERO 6 Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 11:00, 01:50, 04:40, 07:30, 10:20 BIG HERO 6 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:25, 03:15, 06:05, 08:55 INTERSTELLAR Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:00, 12:15, 01:30, 03:00, 04:15, 05:30, 07:00, 08:15, 09:30, 10:15 FURY FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:50, 03:55, 07:00, 10:05 NIGHTCRAWLER Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:00, 01:50, 04:40, 07:35, 10:25 JOHN WICK Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 11:25, 02:05, 04:40, 07:15, 09:50 ON ANY SUNDAY: THE NEXT CHAPTER Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 02:30, 05:00, 07:30, 10:00 BILLY ELLIOT: THE MUSICAL Wed 07:00

99 West Drive-In

Highway 99W, 503-538-2738 THE BOOK OF LIFE Fri-Sat 07:00 FURY Fri-Sat 08:45

Edgefield Powerstation Theater

2126 SW Halsey St., 503-249-7474-2 DOLPHIN TALE 2 FriSun-Mon-Wed 06:00

5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503-249-7474-4 KUNG FU PANDA 2 Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 05:30 DOLPHIN TALE 2 Fri-SatSun-Mon 02:30 THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:30, 07:45 22 JUMP STREET Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 10:00

Empirical Theatre at OMSI

1945 SE Water Ave., 503-797-4000 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL ANIMATED SHORT FILMS Fri-Sat-Sun 07:45 BEST OF NYICFF: KID FLIX MIX Fri-Sat-Sun 11:30 A CAT IN PARIS Fri-Sat 12:15 NOCTURNA Fri-Sun 10:00 ERNEST & CELESTINE FriSat 03:00 SITA SINGS THE BLUES Fri-Sun 12:30 A LETTER TO MOMO Fri-Sat 10:00 WELCOME TO THE SPACE SHOW Fri 08:00 BEST OF NYICFF: PARTY MIX Sat-Sun 02:00 AKIRA Sat 08:00

5th Avenue Cinema

510 SW Hall St., 503-725-3551 VIVA Fri-Sat 07:00, 09:30 Sun 03:00

Hollywood Theatre

4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-281-4215 INTERSTELLAR Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 08:00 HARMONTOWN Fri-SatSun 03:30, 07:15 ABCS OF DEATH 2 Fri-Sun 09:30 THE VCR THAT DRIPPED BLOOD 2 Sat 09:30 GETTING TO KNOW YOUTUBE Mon 07:30 SHAOLIN VS. LAMA Tue 07:30 MADE IN OREGON: 16MM INDUSTRIAL FILMS FROM THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST Wed 07:30

Century Clackamas Town Center and XD

12000 SE 82nd Ave. ST. VINCENT Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 11:15, 01:50, 04:30, 07:15, 10:00 THE MAZE RUNNER Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 11:20, 02:10, 05:00 THE BOXTROLLS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:10, 04:25 THE BOXTROLLS 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:45 LAGGIES Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:15, 01:50, 04:30, 07:10, 09:45 DRACULA UNTOLD Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:45, 10:10 GONE GIRL Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:05, 10:30 ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 10:55, 01:10, 03:30, 05:45, 08:05, 10:15 THE JUDGE FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:30, 07:00 THE BOOK OF LIFE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:40, 04:55, 10:05 THE BOOK OF LIFE 3D Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:20, 07:25 THE BEST OF ME Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:00, 10:20 BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 10:45, 01:40, 04:35, 07:30, 10:25 OUIJA Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 10:55, 01:15, 03:35, 05:55, 08:15, 10:40 BIG HERO 6 Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 10:50, 01:35, 03:25, 04:20, 07:05, 09:00, 09:50 BIG HERO 6 3D Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 11:45, 12:40, 02:30, 05:15, 06:10, 08:00, 10:40 INTERSTELLAR Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 10:45, 01:00, 02:25, 04:45, 06:10, 08:30, 09:55 FURY Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:55, 04:10, 07:20, 10:30 NIGHTCRAWLER Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:00, 12:25, 03:25, 07:40, 10:35 JOHN WICK FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:55, 02:35, 05:10, 07:55, 10:35 ON ANY SUNDAY: THE NEXT CHAPTER FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:35, 03:00, 05:25, 07:50, 10:15 BIG APPLE CIRCUS: METAMORPHOSIS Sat 12:30 ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST Sun-Wed 02:00, 07:00

NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium

1219 SW Park Ave., 503-221-1156 NORTHWEST FILMMAKERS FESTIVAL Fri-Sat-SunWed 08:30 FRESH FILM NORTHWEST WORKS Sat 02:00 BELLA VISTA Sat 04:00 FRIENDSHIP! Sat 08:00 ONE LAST HUG (...

AND A FEW SMOOCHES): THREE DAYS AT GRIEF CAMP Sun 04:30 B.F.E. Sun 08:15 RETURN OF THE RIVER Mon 08:00 MENDING THE LINE Tue 06:00 IN COUNTRY Tue 08:15 FREELOAD Wed 07:00

St. Johns Theater

8203 N Ivanhoe St., 503-249-7474-6 BIG HERO 6 Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 01:00, 03:45, 06:30, 09:15

SUBJECT TO CHANGE. CALL THEATERS OR VISIT WWEEK.COM/MOVIETIMES FOR THE MOST UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION FRIDAY-THURSDAY, NOV. 7-13, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED

MUSIC

PG. 51 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 5, 2014 wweek.com

71

END ROLL

$100 oz specials • 4 grams of wax for $75 Proudly featuring co2 oils from:

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DISPENSARY REVIEW: SHANGO Editor’s note: If his attorney is right, Wm. Willard Greene should be back soon.

WWEEK.COM MOBILE SITE

• BREAKING NEWS • GEO-LOCATING BAR AND RESTAURANT REVIEWS • CITY GUIDES

If you don’t have an Oregon Medical Marijuana Program card, you might be surprised at how unenthused patients are about stopping by the dispensary.

Though I’ll undoubtedly renew my card next year, the system is far from perfect. It’s not unusual to wait 30 minutes to see the budtender if you’re stopping by a short-staffed dispensary at a busy time. Then, you have to pick your bud and make polite conversation while waiting for the product to be weighed and recorded.

The new Shango Farms OMMP dispensary is streamlining that process, with a clear eye to the coming recreational market.

Shango is owned by Shane McKee and Brandon Rexroad. Their first shop, opened in September, is on the busy corner of Southeast Foster Road and 82nd Avenue. Their second location, near the airport, got the sort of rollout we’re more used to seeing from a hot new bar: Owners hosted a party for local media and industry types that featured a master pumpkin carver making custom jack-o’-lanterns. The ploy worked: Shango got coverage from KOIN, The Oregonian and, uh, Willamette Week.

It’s intentionally ambitious. “Shango is the new name for cannabis in America,” the com-

pany’s website says.

Inside, it’s polished. Small and efficient, Shango has iPads packed with product info and a gallery of ganja, with strains mounted inside clear cylinders on the wall to allow for 360-degree perusal of the nugs. In the center of the room you fi nd a counter where patients can get a whiff. Customers buy pre-measured glass jars—there’s no weighing or repackaging, so the buds stay fresh, shake stays to a minimum and the cost is predictable.

That’s a new model for dispensaries, where product is usually stored in large quantities and measured out for each buyer. You can’t look forward to the budtender weighing heavy or obtain exactly $27.41 worth of cannabis, but you’re also free of that guy who lets his ponytail flip a little too close to the open jars.

Shango’s bud is high quality—try Chillberry— and the location will make easy stops for tourists.

The Space Age strain display and meager scent samples can feel cold and pharmaceutical, but a year after undisciplined dispensaries drew fire by giving free bong rips to exiting customers, the professionalism is appealing.

OMMP has not set standards for how product can be sampled and exposed to patients before a transaction. Things will be different when recreational weed comes, and Shango will be well positioned. MARY ROMANO. GO: Shango Farms, 6033 NE Win Sivers Drive and 8056 SE Harold St., goshango.com.

For more information on John Callahan’s memorial, see ffojohncallahan.tumblr.com.

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CLASSIFIEDS DIRECTORY

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

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WELLNESS

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MUSICIANS’ MARKET

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MOTOR

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SERVICES

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BULLETIN BOARD

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STUFF

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REAL ESTATE & RENTALS

74

JONESIN’ & MATCHMAKER

75

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

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ANNOUNCEMENTS HOLIDAY CRAFT SHOW 17TH ANNUAL YACHATS ON THE COAST Inside Yachats Commons Nov 8-9, 10AM 70 Booths +100s of Gift Ideas!!!

Arts, Food, Demos, Fun FREE ADMISSION 541-547-4664

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Conveniently located, affordable, and preferring male clientele at this time. #5968 By appointment Tim 503.482.3041 M for Massage/Chiropractic M for Massage Relief from all conditions Soothing - Relaxing Specializing in Myofacial Release 12 years experience Portland - Vancouver 360-977-435 OR # 12412 - WA # 20820 Our clinic Home - Office 10249 N.E. Clackamas St. (One block south of Halsey St.)

ALL AROUND MAID SERVICES DETAILED!!!Deep Cleaning, Organizing, Laundry, Vacancies excl. refs. 971-302-1174

HAULING/MOVING

MEN’S HEALTH Lexi Parrott MPH, CHT

MANSCAPING Bodyhair grooming M4M. Discrete quality service.

503-841-0385 by appointment.

MUSICIANS MARKET STILL SPINNING YOUR WHEELS? HYPNOSIS CAN HELP ~ ~ ~ ~

Elevate Your Self Esteem Bust Thru Old Blocks Stop Procrastinating Get Your Mojo Back!

LEXI PARROTT

Clinical Hypnotherapist 503-267-9353 lexiparrott.com

FOR FREE ADS in 'Musicians Wanted,' 'Musicians Available' & 'Instruments for Sale' go to portland.backpage.com and submit ads online.

Ads taken over the phone in these categories cost $5.

INSTRUMENTS FOR SALE TRADEUPMUSIC.COM Buying, selling, instruments of every shape and size. Open 11am-7pm every day. 4701 SE Division & 1834 NE Alberta.

MUSIC LESSONS VOICE INSTRUCTION Anthony Plumer, Concert Artist/Voice Teacher. www.naturalvocalarts.com 503-299-4089.

LEARN PIANO ALL STYLES, LEVELS With 2 time Grammy winner Peter Boe. 503-274-8727.

MOTOR AUTOS WANTED CASH FOR CARS: Any Car/Truck. Running or Not! Top Dollar Paid. We Come To You! Call For Instant Offer: 1-888-420-3808 www.cash4car.com

Haulers with a Conscience

503-477-4941 www.anniehaul.com All unwanted items removed (residential/commercial) One item to complete clear outs

Free Estimates • Same Day Service • Licensed/Insured • Locally Owned by Women We Care

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LJ’S HAULING ANYTHING Removal of Metal/Cars free 503-839-7222

PAINTING/WALLPAPERING S. MIKE KLOBAS PAINTING. Interior and exterior. References.

CCB#100360.

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LANGUAGE

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The trees! The grass!

The flowers! It was love at first sight. They sure don’t make em like this on the island. I catch myself day dreaming about the next patch of grass I’ll roll around in or the next flower I’ll sniff. I absolutely LOVE other doggies and kitties too! I have such a sweet and playful spirit! I can be just a wee bit sensitive at times so kiddos over 6 would be best. I will be your most loyal companion and your best lap warmer as well as your hiking buddy. I have it all!

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The Pixie Project: Loving pets and people through personalized pet adoption and low cost veterinary assistance.

GET FAST, PRIVATE STD TESTING. Results in 3 DAYS! Now accepting insurance. Call toll free: 855-787-2108 STRUGGLING WITH DRUGS OR ALCHOHOL? Addicted to PILLS? Talk to someone who cares. Call The Addiction Hope & Help Line for a free assessment.

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OR JUST POLY-CURIOUS POLYAMORY CIRCLE CALL LAURY 503-285-4848

HEARTLINES SARA, you answered my ad in the Willamette Week a decade ago this week and my life hasn’t been the same since! Thank you for sharing these last ten wonderful years together! Here’s to many more of SR2I love you, Chip

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CHATLINES

JONESIN’

by Matt Jones

Lucky Number Seven–for the 700th Jonesin’ puzzle.

REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN

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56 Singer/ songwriter Jones 57 Freshmen-to-be, perhaps: abbr.

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Across 11 Upsilon’s follower 4 Talking-animal tale 9 WWII general ___ Arnold 12 Bottom of a parking garage 15 Spare parts?

16 1998 Bryan Adams album 18 Dinner ingredient?

19 Home to Hercules’s lion 20 OB/___ 21 Competitions

like those in “8 Mile” 26 “His Master’s Voice” label 27 “Just let me finish” 30 Round body 31 Cop’s request before “I’m going in” 32 Get the bad guy 33 You, to Christoph Waltz 34 One who’ll leave a mark 35 “La la la can’t hear you,” for short

36 Punctured tire sound 37 Desert after an Italian meal 38 ___ Majesty 39 One side of a bilingual store sign 41 Former “Tonight Show” announcer Hall 42 He pitched the only World Series perfect game 43 Pit stop stuff 44 Mercredi preceder 45 “Who’s a good

Down 1 Mideast grp.

2 Apple variety created in Minnesota 3 Song that starts “Twenty, twenty, twenty-four hours to go” 4 Lobster ___ Diavolo 5 Actress Michalka 6 ___ Paese (semisoft cheese) 7 2022’s Super Bowl (if they keep using Roman numerals) 8 “Mouse!”

9 Is stealthy like a snake 10 Quatrain rhyme scheme 11 Korean sensation 13 Mag VIPs 14 Slowly, on sheet music 15 “Star-crossed” lover 17 Laurelin’s partner in Tolkien’s Two Trees of

Valinor 20 Brazil’s Mato ___ 21 Stand-up comedians’ supporters 22 1980s Hostess product 23 Oktoberfest locale 24 Thwarting type 25 Nightmare visions 28 Called in honor of, as a relative 29 Famed Fords 40 Missile-warning gp.

44 Dance in a pit 45 Freddy formerly of D.C. United 46 Baby seal 47 Singer Janis 48 Ship passing in the night?

49 Cousteau’s sea 50 Ex-Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James 51 “Well, look at you!”

52 Count follower

last week’s answers

©2014 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 #JONZ700.

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BACK COVER CONTINUED...

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Week of November 6

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ARIES (March 21-April 19): Shape-shifting is a common theme in fairy tales, says cultural historian Marina Warner in her book From the Beast to the Blonde.

“A rusty lamp turns into an all-powerful talisman,” for example. “A humble pestle and mortar become the winged vehicle of the fairy enchantress,” or a slovenly beggar wearing a dirty donkeyskin transforms into a radiant princess. I foresee metaphorically similar events happening in your life sometime soon, Aries.

Maybe they are already underway. Don’t underestimate the magic that is possible.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The technical scientific term for what happens when you get a headache from eating too much ice cream too fast is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. I urge you to be on guard against such an occurrence in the coming week. You should also watch out for other phenomena that fit the description of being too-much-and-too-fast-of-a-goodthing. On the other hand, you shouldn’t worry at all about slowly getting just the right amount of a good thing. If you enjoy your pleasures with grace and moderation, you’ll be fine.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “Pregreening” is a term for what impatient drivers do as they are waiting at a red light. They partly take their foot off the brake, allowing their car to creep forward, in the hope of establishing some momentum before the light changes to green. I advise you to avoid this type of behavior in the coming week, Gemini -- both the literal and the metaphorical variety. Pregreening might make sense by, say, November 15 or 16. But for now, relax and abide.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was one of the greats.

His influence on the evolution of Western music has been titanic, and many of his best compositions are still played today. He was prodigious, too, producing over 350 works. One of the secrets to his high level of energy seems to have been his relationship with coffee. It was an indispensable part of his diet. He was fastidious in its preparation, counting out exactly 60 coffee beans for each cup. I recommend that you summon a similar attention to detail in the coming days. It will be an excellent time to marshal your creative energy and cultivate your lust for life. You will get the best results if you are precise and consistent and focused in your approach.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): By the time we have become young adults, most of us don’t remember much about our lives from before the age of five. As we grow into middle age, more and more childhood memories drop away. Vague impressions and hazy feelings may remain. A few special moments keep burning brightly.

But the early events that shaped us are mostly gone.

Having said that, I want to alert you to the fact that you are in a phase when you could recover whole swaths of lost memories, both from your formative years and later. Take advantage of this rare window of opportunity to reconnect with your past.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Photographer Joel Leindecker can kick himself in the head 127 times in one minute. Guinness World Records affirms that his achievement is unmatched. I’m begging you not to try to top his mark any time soon. In fact, I’m pleading with you not to commit any act of mayhem, chaos, or unkindness against yourself -- even if it it’s done for entertainment purposes. In my view, it’s crucial for you to concentrate on caressing yourself, treating yourself nicely, and caring for yourself with ingenious tenderness in the coming weeks.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The writing of letters is becoming a lost art. Few people have a long enough attention span to sit down and compose a relaxed, thoughtful report on what they have been doing and thinking. Meanwhile, the number of vigorous, farreaching conversations is waning, too. Instead, many of us tend to emit and absorb short bursts of information at frequent intervals. But I invite you to rebel against this trend in the coming weeks. Judging from the astrological omens, I believe you would stir up some quietly revolutionary developments by slowing down and deepening the way you communicate with those you care about. You may be amazed by how much

get your

STICKERS the easy way.

richer your experience of intimacy will become.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Near the end of the 19th century, an American named Annie Londonderry became the first woman to ride a bicycle around the world. It was a brave and brazen act for an era when women still couldn’t vote and paved roads were rare.

Her 15-month journey took her through countries that would be risky for a single woman on a bike to travel through today, like Egypt and Yemen. What made her adventure even more remarkable was that she didn’t know how to ride a bike until two days before she departed. I’d love to see you plan a daring exploit like that, Scorpio -- even if you do not yet have a certain skill you will need to succeed.

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SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): P. G. Wodehouse wrote more than 90 books, as well as numerous plays, musical comedies, and film scripts. When he died at age 93, he was working on another novel. He did not suffer from writer’s block. And yet his process was far from effortless. He rarely churned out perfection on his first attempt. “I have never written a novel,” he testified, “without doing 40,000 words or more and finding they were all wrong and going back and starting again.” The way I see your immediate future, Sagittarius, is that you will be creating your own version of those 40,000 wrong words. And that’s OK. It’s not a problem. You can’t get to the really good stuff without slogging through this practice run.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): It’s a favorable time for you to meditate intensely on the subject of friendship. I urge you to take inventory of all the relevant issues. Here are a few questions to ask yourself. How good of a friend are you to the people you want to have as your friends? What capacities do you cultivate in your effort to build and maintain vigorous alliances?

Do you have a clear sense of what qualities you seek in your cohorts and colleagues? Are you discerning in the way you choose your compatriots, or do you sometimes end up in associations with people you don’t truly enjoy and don’t have much in common with? If you discover any laziness or ignorance in your approach to the art of friendship, make the necessary fixes.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Before the invention of the printing press, books in Europe were handmade.

Medieval monks spent long hours copying these texts, often adding illustrations in the margins. There’s an odd scene that persistently appears in these illuminated manuscripts: knights fighting snails. Scholars don’t agree on why this theme is so popular or what it means. One theory is that the snail symbolizes the “slow-moving tedium of daily life,” which can be destructive to our hopes and dreams -- similar to the way that literal snails may devour garden plants. In accordance with the cosmic omens, I am bestowing a knighthood on you, Aquarius, so you will be inspired to rise up and defeat your own metaphorical version of the snail.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): To be in righteous alignment with cosmic forces, keep the Halloween spirit alive for another week. You have a license to play with your image and experiment with your identity. Interesting changes will unfold as you expand your notion of who you are and rebel cheerfully against your own status quo. To get started, try this exercise. Imagine that your gangsta name is Butt-Jugglin Smuggla. Your pirate name is Scallywagger Hornslasher. Your sexworker name is Saucy Loaf. Your Mexican wrestler name is Ojo Último (Ultimate Eye). Your rock starfrom-the-future name is Cashmere Hammer. Or make up your own variations.

Homework Is there a place in your life where you’re skilled at bending but not breaking? Brag about it! uthrooster@gmail.com.

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