Willamette Week, May 26, 2021 - Volume 47, Issue 30 - Marching For Home

NEWS

The Disappearing Preschool. P. 8

"STASH A BURNER PHONE TO CALL FOR HELP FROM THE RUBBLE." P. 4 WWEEK.COM

VOL 47/30 05.26.2021

MUSIC

Esperanza Spalding's Homecoming. P. 21

DANCE

Do the Bartman Again. P. 27

MARCHING for HOME First and second generation immigrant Portlanders can't look away from injustices in their homelands.

Page 11

IT’S ROLL CALL TIME!

If you’re an Oregonian and you’re 16 or older, it’s time to roll up your sleeve and get your COVID-19 vaccine.

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Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

All4Oregon.org

FINDINGS CHRIS NESSETH

Memorial Day weekend plans?

We got you.

STREET, PAGE 18

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 47, ISSUE 30 In 17 days, police contract negotiations could vanish from public view. 6

A Portland bar is hosting a pop-up vaccination clinic and giving away a free drink with each shot. 19

Elijah Warren says Eric Kammerer hit him in the head. 6

Portland is getting its first cannabis cafe this week…sort of.

Multnomah County preschools declined by one-third over the past year. 8

Not even Esperanza Spalding could get approved for a loan. 21

The National Association of Truck Stop Operators hates Oregon’s masking policy. 9 A Portland mother donated $280 to Myanmar rebels with proceeds from her homemade goat curry. 13 If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t catching a 22-inch fish. 16 Hey, look! A pet pig! 18 Damian Lillard discovered e-bikes. 19

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The hosts of this year’s Oregon Beer Awards announced the winners live from a backyard hot tub. 24 Yes, there is such a thing as cannabis-infused ghee. 26 Simpsons creator Matt Groening choreographed a dance video for BodyVox. 27 You can watch a different film in the Fast & Furious franchise for free every Friday through midJune. 28

ON THE COVER:

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

Nakba Day Call to Action on Saturday, May 15, at Terry Schrunk Plaza, photo by Mick Hangland-Skill.

Missing since May Day, Michael Watts, 37, is found floating in the Willamette River.

MASTHEAD EDITOR & PUBLISHER

Mark Zusman

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DIALOGUE Last week, Sam Adams—Portland’s former mayor and current Mayor Ted Wheeler’s business liaison—met with partners from some of Portland’s largest downtown law firms to discuss homeless camps in Portland (“Camping Retreat,” WW, May 19, 2021). WW spoke to several people who attended the meeting, all of whom recounted Adams describing Wheeler’s plan to move unhoused Portlanders from downtown sidewalks to designated campsites in the city’s neighborhoods.

Plans for sanctioned camping lots have previously caused backlash from neighbors. Sanctioned camps also conflict with Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury’s proposed budget for homeless services, which she intends to spend largely on permanent housing. Here’s what our readers had to say: Chris, via wweek.com: “There’s a surprise: privileged access, favoritism, and inclusion in Wheeler’s decision for a bunch of wealthy downtown lawyers… and the middle finger to the homeless and middle class neighborhoods.” @mlucan1, via Twitter: “Shadow Mayor meets with coven of wealthiest, bloodsucking lawyers, hatches yet another plot to push the homeless away from their money.”

Shane McDonough, via Facebook: “So the solution is to move them from in front of expensive offices into neighborhoods? Really forward thinking. Just make sure you find a neighborhood too poor to fight back.”

Dan Van, via Facebook: “What has the county done so far? Have they issued any of these wonderful housing vouchers that they think are going to solve the problem? Do they have outreach people going to the camps to help folks apply or do they have to go to the county office? Will the vouchers even be enough to pay rent in Portland? Moving people around may be a temporary solution, but if we get folks where they

Dr. Know

@dijcrap, via Twitter: “Ah yes, the depressing irony of the white-collar beneficiaries of a massively flawed criminal justice system pooling their resources to shout about a symptom vs. being advocates for real change and betterment to their community and the ‘city they love.’” @JohnEvans1019, via Twitter: “Cool! Now people can stop whining that the homeless are a problem.

The homeless have a problem. Let’s be kind.”

NoMoreGods, via wweek.com: “This is not a homeless issue! This is a severe mental health and/ or addiction issue requiring upwards of $200,000 for each chronically homeless person we see just to become marginally stabilized enough to be considered for permanent housing. We have let ideological constraint and the overuse of an untested, unproven model—which is required for federal reimbursement that homeless agencies rely on for their primary revenue —to cloud our understanding of what we are actually facing. Until we face this reality, we will not address these issues in any meaningful way.”

Deany Goode, via Facebook: “Do something about the cost of living or raise the minimum wage.”

Steve Dixson, via Facebook: “I’m sure they will keep having meetings and get public opinions forever until the next mayor and commissioners come along.

I only see a lot of talk and no action. That’s how our city government is. Meanwhile, the problem will continue to get worse.”

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BY MART Y SMITH @martysmithxxx

In the coming “megaquake,” how much warning will the new ShakeAlert app give us? I live in a brick building in a liquefaction zone, so I don’t just need five seconds to get under a table. I need enough time to get downstairs, get out and run for my life. —Adam A. The bad news, Adam, is that it’s unlikely your ShakeAlert notification (like an Amber Alert, but for earthquakes) will give you enough lead time to make it out of the building. The good news, however, is that you were gonna die if you did that shit anyway. The system is actually doing you a favor!

I understand the temptation to hightail it out of your wobbly building (ideally trampling your too-cheap-to-spring-for-a-seismic-refit landlord for traction), but it’s a bad idea. Unreinforced masonry buildings tend to lose their outer walls first, so you’ll probably get brained by a falling cornice as you make for the exit.

Instead (cry the experts in unison), you should DROP! COVER! And HANG ON! Do this as soon as you get the alert. Get under (or, if that’s not possible, next to) something sturdy in the room you’re in—a desk, a table, a doorway, even a wall. Once you’re down, cover your head, hang on to the aforemen4

have access to sanitary facilities, that’s at least a small but immediate step toward improving their lives.”

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

tioned sturdy thing, and wait for the apocalypse.

How long will you have to wait, though? Unfortunately, there’s no way to know. Seismic waves travel at 100 to 250 miles per minute, so if the quake’s epicenter is due west of Seattle, you might have 70 seconds. If it’s in Tigard, they’ll find you in the rubble by the sound of the notification alert finally reaching your phone.

That’s why you need to act fast—don’t waste time running down the hall because there’s a really great desk three rooms over. If you wanted to stack the deck a bit in your favor, you could buy an extra-sturdy table with a reinforced bottom, and maybe even stash a burner phone under there to make sure you have a way to call for help from the rubble.

But let’s get real: You haven’t even managed to stash 5 lousy gallons of drinking water for emergencies,* even though water is basically free and we’ve been nagging you about it since 1995. You get your earthquake safety advice from a newspaper humor column. Are you really going to trick out your apartment with a comms-equipped custom DIY roll cage?

I’ll believe it when I see it. *Full disclosure: Neither have I. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@ wweek.com.

Are you the best of Portland? nominations now open bop.wweek.com

MURMURS TECHFESTNW

REWIRE NEURO

CITY EMPLOYEES NOT EAGER TO RETURN TO OFFICE: Even as Portland elected officials try to persuade downtown business owners to bring workers back to downtown office towers, the city may have a hard time luring back its own employees. Heather Hafer, a spokesperson for the city, told WW on May 13 that most of the roughly 50 staff in the Chief Administrator’s Office wanted to work remotely save for one or two essential monthly meetings, according to a survey. Data from two other city bureaus collected from employee surveys, shared with WW, show that most employees want to work remotely but have the option to come in one or two days a week. “Most people want flexibility and to work remotely when possible, with many indicating that they’d like to only come in one to two days a week or as needed,” a spokesperson for the Bureau of Environmental said about a survey it conducted. Laura Oppenheimer, a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Finance, tells WW: “The shift to full access in city buildings will not happen for some time. There is a workgroup looking at what we’ve learned from the pandemic, how we will blend telework and in-person work in the future, and what this means for the city’s building footprint, budget and culture over the long term.”

DOJ INVESTIGATED MORE CLAIMS AGAINST EMPLOYMENT LAWYER: In an odd coda to a harassment claim that rocked the Oregon Department of Justice last year, former senior assistant attorney general Heather Van Meter reported further claims against lawyer Marc Abrams, who leads employment litigation for the state.

Van Meter received a $190,000 settlement from the state in January after alleging Abrams harassed her. According to a report completed May 6 by investigator Lori Watson, Van Meter in February provided the agency four names of women who she says had contacted her “about the conduct of Marc Abrams.” Watson contacted all four—two of whom declined to be interviewed, and another who said she dated Abrams but did not describe any misconduct. The fourth woman, a former law clerk at the DOJ, requested her name be kept confidential.

The DOJ says it cannot investigate confidential claims, and it has not taken disciplinary action against Abrams stemming from the report.

Abrams tells WW, “I am pleased that, yet again, Ms. Van Meter’s allegations have been found to be unsubstantiated.”

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REWIRE NEURO WINS ANGEL OREGON TECH: Portland biomedical startup Rewire Neuro gave the winning pitch at Angel Oregon Tech, a program of Oregon Entrepreneurs Network. The pitch contest was the final event of a virtual TechfestNW 2021 on May 21 and the culmination of months of education and networking sponsored by OEN. “This is just a dream for us, to be working on this project and to scale operations and move forward, and this investment is a big part of making that success possible,” says Rewire Neuro founder Josh Harkness, who received a $125,000 investment. The pitch competition was one part of a daylong event presented by WW that included talks by New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth and Arcimoto founder Mark Frohnmayer. Watch for their remarks at wweek.com.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION: WW received five awards last week from the Society of Professional Journalists in a five-state contest. The Region 10 Excellence in Journalism Contest picks the best work by newspapers in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. Among the awards WW received: first place for general excellence among small newsrooms, the top prize for overall coverage in 2020. Photographer Alex Wittwer also took home two first place awards, for a feature photo of a woman praying for her son after the death of George Floyd, and for a portfolio of images taken in Oregon during the wildfires and unrest.

MORE AT WWEEK.COM: A Portland man named Jeff Stillwell was fired by the Ross clothing store chain after creating a viral TikTok video. Watch the video and see what might have annoyed Ross’ corporate office.

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

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BRIAN BURK

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

SAVE THE DATE

June 12

LAWSUIT

Elijah Warren v. the City of Portland

A Black homeowner hit in the head by a Portland police officer sues the city—and names his alleged attacker.

POPULAR TARGET: Public ire toward the Portland Police Association remains intense.

Just 17 days remain until the city and the Portland Police Association can demand private mediation to hash out their contract.

On Jan. 13, after nearly a yearlong delay due to the COVID19 pandemic, the city of Portland and the Portland Police Association resumed negotiations for their collective bargaining agreement.

That was 133 days ago. Per state labor law, if a consensus isn’t reached after 150 days of “good faith negotiations,” either party is legally entitled to request private mediation through the state’s Employment Relations Board.

A year after the start of a nationwide reckoning with racist policing, transparency around law enforcement policy feels especially critical. There are few matters that Portlanders take such intense interest in. Yet if a deal isn’t struck in less than a month, either side can move the bargaining table behind closed doors.

Currently, bargaining sessions between the city and PPA alternate between being public and private.

During the last public bargaining session, on May 5, the City Attorney’s Office proposed that all future contract bargaining sessions between the PPA and the city be open to the public. “When they [the public] don’t see that process unfolding, then there is concern about how we ended up with the contract we ended up with,” chief deputy city attorney Heidi Brown said during that session.

Should the parties enter mediation, however, the quasi-public process would become invisible. And with 17 days until the clock runs out, it’s unclear whether the city and the cops’ union will reach an agreement before then.

“The pressure ratchets as the 150 days counts down,” says Keith Cunningham-Parmeter, a labor lawyer and professor at Willamette University College of Law. To date, the city and PPA have reached “tentative agreements” for fewer than 30 of the 68 articles in the contract, according to the city’s bargaining website. (Some articles will remain unchanged because neither party proposed to amend them.)

And the parties haven’t reached consensus reached on some big-ticket items. Take Article 20, which outlines discipline procedures and mandates that if the city must discipline or reprimand an officer, “it shall be done in a manner that is least likely to embarrass the officer before other officers or the public.” There’s also Article 22, which dictates the grievance and arbitration process for union members.

Meanwhile, the fate of two bills making their way through the Oregon Legislature will affect what the city and the police union are haggling over. Senate Bill 621 6

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

would allow the city to implement its new police oversight board without mandatory bargaining, and House Bill 2930 would make it more difficult for an arbitrator to overturn a law enforcement agency’s decision to terminate an officer for misconduct.

That said, the 150-day mark isn’t a hard and fast deadline, says Stacy Chamberlain, executive director of Oregon’s American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 75.

“I wouldn’t necessarily think that something magic might happen on the 151st day,” Chamberlain says. In fact, both parties can continue to bargain past the 150 days if they’re making progress. However, they can request mediation “if they get stuck and they’re unable to reach agreement, or they’re getting hung up on issues and they can’t proceed any further,” she says.

Mediation, which lasts a minimum of 15 days, happens behind closed doors.

If the parties still don’t reach an agreement during mediation, they reach what’s called an “impasse.” They can then initiate arbitration, where an arbitrator issues a final and binding decision, siding with the “last best offer” of only one party.

“It’s an all or nothing deal,” Chamberlain says. In other words, the arbitrator doesn’t pick and choose the best proposals from each side; there is one winner.

Neither the City Attorney’s Office nor the PPA responded to requests for comment about its bargaining strategy.

An observer might wonder if one side, or both, would prefer to have a franker conversation, away from public scrutiny, about the politically dicey issues of police discipline and use of force. The city and PPA have been down this road before. In 2010, after five public bargaining sessions, the parties entered private mediation, emerging shortly thereafter with a deal.

Cunningham-Parmeter agrees that the parties might, in some instances, strategically run out the clock on public hearings. But that tactic becomes increasingly chancy as they near arbitration.

“It’s risky to give all of the issues to the arbitrator. It kind of depends on who wants more leverage and who is more risk-averse,” Cunningham-Parmeter says. “Arbitration is very rare. It’s just like civil litigation, [where] 95% of cases settle before it gets to a jury. Lawyers don’t want to give up that control and roll the dice with a jury. Going to an arbitrator is kind of the same thing.” TESS RISKI.

Last September, on the 100th consecutive night of Portland protests against police brutality, Elijah Warren says a seemingly anonymous riot cop struck him in the back of the head with a baton, sending him to the hospital.

Number 67: That’s the only way Warren, 37, could describe the officer who he says struck him soon after he left his home to complain about tear gas wafting through his windows. The number—inscribed on the back of the officer’s helmet—was the only identification visible on his uniform that evening.

To this day, the city has refused to disclose the officer’s identity. But now Warren is suing the city. And for the first time, an officer has been named as a defendant in connection with the Sept. 5 incident: Detective Erik Kammerer.

THE LAWSUIT On May 25, Warren filed a $400,000 lawsuit in Multnomah County Circuit Court against the city of Portland for negligence and battery. The complaint gives a narrative of what happened on the late summer evening in the Mill Park neighborhood.

On Sept. 5, the complaint says, Warren was home in his East Portland residence when his son and his son’s friend began screaming as they attempted to wash their eyes in the sink. Nearby, the Portland Police Bureau had deployed tear gas into a crowd of protesters. It seeped into Warren’s home, prompting him to go outside and tell police what had happened. He began conversing with an officer.

The lawsuit says that’s when Kammerer struck Warren behind the ear.

“An officer was listening to plaintiff when defendant Kammerer hit plaintiff in the head from behind with a baton, causing injury,” the complaint says. “After Kammerer hit plaintiff, other police officers pulled Kammerer away and told him that plaintiff was a homeowner.

“As a result of the above-described battery,” the complaint continues, “Plaintiff suffered a concussion [and] a laceration to his right ear, which required sutures.”

The complaint alleges the city was negligent in failing to adequately train, discipline, transfer or terminate Kammerer and other unnamed officers “who used unlawful force.”

“The City further knew that by its pattern and practices of failing to discipline or terminate Kammerer and other unreasonably violent police officers,” the lawsuit says, “that Kammerer was likely to assume that he was substantially above the law, and that this was likely to encourage him to engage in unlawfully violent or threatening encounters with civilians.”

The lawsuit alleges the city of Portland should have anticipated such a reaction from Kammerer due to “prior instances of Kammerer’s misuse of force,” though it does not elaborate on the alleged prior incidents. The city attorney and the Police Bureau declined to comment.

WHY IT MATTERS The lawsuit is the first time Kammerer has been formally accused of hitting Warren. It follows reporting by WW last November that first named Kammerer as the officer wearing helmet number 67.

If the city finally acknowledges that Kammerer is the officer who struck Warren, it could call into question his role testifying about police use of deadly force before grand juries. As WW previously reported, Kammerer is a homi-

NEWS HENRY CROMETT

SAM GEHRKE

DOCUMENT

Uncovered

SLOW EXCHANGE: Interstate 5 north of the Rose Quarter.

A report raises another red flag about the Oregon Department of Transportation’s commitment to racial justice.

ELIJAH WARREN

cide detective who has repeatedly testified in grand jury proceedings regarding fatal shootings by police, including the deaths of Aaron Campbell, Keaton Otis, Andre Gladen and Quanice Hayes. (All of the officers in those shooting deaths were exonerated.) Kammerer is currently investigating the most recent non-fatal shooting by a police officer on Saturday, May 22, in the Sunderland neighborhood.

Warren, a Black single father, says the lawsuit is about more than him and the injuries he suffered.

“My biggest thing is, I hope it actually makes an impact,” he tells WW. “It’s really not about me, it’s more for my son and the future of other young Black kids growing up in Portland.”

More specifically, Warren wants to see meaningful police reform at the Oregon Legislature. “I really hope it helps with police accountability and pushing that forward,” Warren says.

Greg Kafoury, the Portland attorney representing Warren, says Kammerer’s alleged actions and lack of discipline to date highlight the importance of Senate Bill 621, which seeks to change state law so that Portland can establish a new police oversight board approved by voters last November—without having to bargain with the police union.

“That would be an earth-shaking change in the power relationships between the people and those who are sworn to serve and protect,” Kafoury says of the bill’s potential passage.

Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-East Portland) has been publicly vocal on Warren’s situation, using his personal story as an argument for police reform bills.

“I’m glad Mr. Warren is seeking justice. It’s been too long,” Bynum says. “The conclusion that I can draw from my experience in advocating for him is the situation is complicated and perhaps unnecessarily so. It’s not something we have to accept [as] the status quo going forward, so I hope that there will be a good outcome.”

Kafoury says Warren’s lawsuit brings the city closer to holding Portland police accountable—even when the city conceals officers’ identities and fails to discipline them.

“Every lawsuit that involves police brutality,” Kafoury says, “increases the pressure for the city and police department and the Legislature to do the right thing.”

LATISHA JENSEN.

CLOCKED

Hunzeker Watch Yes, we’re still counting how long it takes to find the source of a police leak.

The $795 million project to widen Interstate 5 at the Rose Quarter has hinged for more than a year on whether the project would help build back a Black neighborhood that the original construction of the highway helped destroy.

Specifically, the fight has centered on a plan to redevelop the Albina neighborhood by constructing caps over the highway that would make it possible to build on top of it.

The Portland City Council lined up behind that effort, championed by the nonprofit Albina Vision Trust. Both parties withdrew from the project, however, after the Oregon Department of Transportation failed to adequately commit to investing in highway covers that could support a neighborhood.

But ODOT did enlist a contractor to independently assess what kind of caps were possible.

The April Facilitation Needs Assessment Report, a document dated May 11 and obtained by WW this week, now casts doubt once again on whether ODOT is actually committed to highway caps. In fact, the team brought in to evaluate the caps’ feasibility says the state highway department isn’t giving it enough information or time to reach an independent conclusion.

“There has been a considerable amount of pressure and influence exerted by ODOT consultants and facilitators to manage which preliminary cover concepts get studied more deeply, despite the Black community workshop participants’ expression of their preferences,” the report says.

ODOT consultants and individual steering committee members should stop suggesting changes to the report, it adds. “Otherwise, the process cannot be represented to the public as an independent study of alternative cover designs.”

In other words, the contractor alleges ODOT is pre-baking the independent review to avoid having to build a neighborhood over the freeway.

State highway officials strongly dispute that claim.

The report makes three key assertions: 1. ODOT asked the independent cover assessment contractor to include an option that would fit with plans already approved by the federal government, also known as the environmental assessment. The contractor could also recommend another plan “outside EA parameters” and possibly suggest a third choice, the report says. “There has been testimony from other project stakeholders at both the April [executive steering committee] and [Historic Albina Advisory Board] meetings that has implied that consideration of any alternatives that do not fall with-

in the current EA parameters should not be considered if they will further delay the project schedule,” the report states.

Significance: Any plan that requires changes to the environmental assessment could carry additional costs; it might delay the project, among other reasons. Requiring the independent assessment to include an option that didn’t mean starting over would almost certainly make that the choice ODOT would rubber-stamp.

ODOT’s response: “For scenarios outside of the EA, they are required to provide the analysis that considers structural, cost, economic implications and implementation strategies for that scenario. They are still working to complete that analysis,” says ODOT spokeswoman Tia Williams.

2. The independent cover assessment team “requested project schedule and cost information in early April,” among other things, but as of May 11 was still waiting.

Significance: If the contractor isn’t receiving information it requested from ODOT, the agency may not be living up to its promise to make an independent assessment of highway caps.

ODOT’s response: It disputes the contractor’s contention. “The ICA team has the most up-to-date information,” says Williams. “Our contract with the ICA team outlines the information needed for them to complete their work. We have provided that and have responded to additional requests throughout the process of their work as we collaborate on a near daily basis.”

3. The report alleges the independent assessment team has “not been provided sufficient time on ODOT’s Historic Albina Advisory Board or [executive steering committee] meeting agendas to present and receive feedback from stakeholders about the various preliminary cover concepts.”

Significance: The contractor alleges another way ODOT has not provided support—by not letting its team hear outside ideas. “If the ICA team had received adequate time to discuss these concepts in the committee meetings, we would have been able to hear the feedback directly from individual committee members without any filtering

by ODOT,” the document states.

ODOT’s response: “When reviewing agendas since September 2020, the ICA team has been provided with about 60% of the meeting time,” Williams says.

RACHEL MONAHAN.

71 DAYS:

70 DAYS:

That’s the number of days since Officer Brian Hunzeker resigned from his role as president of the Portland Police Association due to what the union described as a “serious, isolated mistake related to the [Portland] Police Bureau’s investigation into the alleged hit-and-run by Commissioner [Jo Ann] Hardesty.”

We still don’t know what he did. The mayor’s office says it doesn’t know what he did. Hunzeker is still working patrol in the North Precinct.

82 DAYS

That’s how long it’s been since the Police Bureau opened an internal affairs investigation into the leaking of information that wrongly implicated Commissioner Hardesty in a March 3 hit-and-run crash. It has released no results of its inquiry.

That’s how long it’s been since the city signed a contract to hire an outside investigative firm to probe the leak.

It is unusual for WW to track the timeline of such investigations, but the circumstances themselves are unusual: A veteran police officer and union president abruptly resigned from his union leadership role in connection with information leaked about an elected official. Meanwhile, he has continued to work the patrol unit in the North Precinct.

We believe Portlanders have a right to know what Hunzeker did that led to his resignation, and we believe it is critical to put pressure on public officials and law enforcement leadership who might prefer that the public forget about it. We will continue to publish this column until we know what Hunzeker did. TESS RISKI.

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

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NEWS SAM GEHRKE

NO PARKING: Crystal Gwyn, executive director of Childswork Learning Center, stands near the playground at the center of a parking dispute that may have cost the preschool its home.

Careless The displacement of a Portland preschool shows the shaky foundation under an ambitious county plan for child care.

BY S OPHI E P E E L

speel@wweek.com

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Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

In 2019, a neighbor of St. Stephen Catholic Church complained to the city of Portland that the playground at Childswork took up too much parking space.

The city told the church it would need to convert a portion of its playground back to parking spaces or apply for a land use change to allow the play structure to remain, according to the city’s Bureau of Development Services.

“That’s where things seemed to have gone south,” Gwyn says of the relationship between the church and the school.

One year ago, Father Eric Andersen gave Childswork a year’s notice to leave. City officials say that allows him to get rid of the playground and restripe the parking spaces.

Gretchen Barnes, the attorney representing the parish, told WW in an email, “The parish has other plans for the space more directly connected to its core ministry.”

Barnes declined to say whether the termination had

SAM GEHRKE

In two months, Portland’s largest preschool will be kicked out of the Sunnyside neighborhood church it has called home for the past 15 years. That puts 250 kids and their families at risk of not having child care come next school year.

For the past 10 months, Crystal Gwyn, executive director of Childswork Learning Center, has been looking for a new building that’s big enough, that has outdoor space for a playground and, above all else, that Gwyn can afford to rent.

No luck.

“Very little is available that’s large enough. If it is large enough, it doesn’t meet bathroom or outdoor needs, or it’s zoned industrial,” Gwyn says. “We’ve found maybe a dozen places that could work, but the cost has been $25 per square foot, more than double what we’re currently paying.

And for a third of the space.”

The impending displacement of Childswork Learning Center by St. Stephen Catholic Church is the result of a dispute that started with a neighbor complaining about parking. And while a church kicking a preschool out of its commercial space has raised some eyebrows, it’s Childswork’s nearly yearlong struggle to find a new home that is emblematic of a much bigger issue than Portland’s perennial parking feuds: If providers can’t stay afloat, how will Multnomah County implement its vision of universal preschool?

After all, Childswork isn’t the only preschool at risk of shuttering this summer. On July 1, the Opal Learning Center, housed in the Portland Children’s Museum, is closing down for good.

In fact, data presented in county budget documents shows the number of licensed preschool providers in Multnomah County dropped by more than one third in just over a year, from 1,242 in January 2020 to about 800 last month.

Early childhood education has always been an industry with heavy turnover, due to its narrow profit margin. But the closures arrive at a particularly inopportune moment.

Economists tracking Oregon’s stagnant job market say the biggest roadblock to many people, especially women, returning to the workforce is finding child care. That’s a priority for local officials, too. Last year, Multnomah County voters approved a tax on high-income households that would pay for universal preschool.

But the success of the measure hinges on finding enough existing providers to care for nearly 20,000 kids over the next 10 years.

Megan Irwin, who helped lead the county’s Preschool for All Task Force, is blunt: “We don’t have enough providers in the county to meet the needs of the universal preschool program.”

And if providers can’t sustain themselves, the county may find itself in a bind. How do you pull preschools into partnering with the county when those partners don’t exist?

“We’re the largest preschool in the city. If we can’t survive, who can? Losing our space, it’s a signal of things to come,” says Mary Beth Kierstead, director of education at Childswork. “I think it’s a signal that early childhood educators and providers can’t survive in this city.”

anything to do with the parking complaint.

Kierstead says she and Gwyn have scoured Portland’s eastside for appropriately zoned locations.

“There’s no space,” Kierstead says. “None of these new buildings are appropriate for children. And the cost is outrageous. We simply can’t afford $25 per square foot.”

The closing of providers forces more parents, mostly mothers, to opt out of Oregon’s workforce. About 1 in 5 Oregon mothers report staying home because of child care, according to state economist Josh Lehner.

“It’s a combo of affordability and lack of availability of child care,” Lehner says. “Would they prefer to be working if they found child care? Parents can’t work, even if they want to, if they can’t arrange it.”

Last year, advocates of early childhood education and Multnomah County officials sought to fix that problem.

In November, 64% of voters passed Measure 26-214, which taxes incomes above $200,000 to expand preschool offerings to all children in the county. By raising $105 million a year, the program intends to subsidize the cost of tuition for 7,000 children by 2026.

But the model depends on reimbursing existing preschools—which requires a wide base of providers.

Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson, who crafted and championed the measure, says the disappearance of potential partners is “of course a concern.”

“Space, and finding space that’s appropriate, is definitely an issue,” Vega Pederson says. “We don’t have enough child care providers and enough pre-K providers, because every county is a child care desert.”

Irwin of the preschool task force says early figures showed that the county would need to add anywhere from 270 to nearly 600 new preschool classrooms to meet the county’s 10-year implementation goal, adding that “providers have been operating for this past year in a really unstable market.”

One glimmer of hope: People working from home might free up commercial space for child care that parents need to return to their jobs.

Jerry Johnson, an economist who specializes in commercial real estate projections, says more commercial buildings may be vacated in the near future if remote work turns into a long-term custom. If there’s a massive surge in vacancies, rent prices could plummet—giving preschool providers and the county an opening.

But that’s no solace for Childswork, which has just over two months left to find a new space.

Gwyn’s last-ditch idea? Rent space at three smaller churches, and split the kids among those locations. But even that idea is a long shot, Childswork’s operators say.

“Preschools have always been vulnerable to the whims of landlords. When the county is ready to fully implement preschool for all, many of these will be gone,” Kierstead warns. “[The measure] feels like a clear signal that this is a value that Portlanders hold dear. But how are we going to implement that when centers like ours are closing?”

NEWS BRIAN BURK

NO MASK POLICE: Retailers balked at the idea of their employees checking vaccination cards.

Carded and Discarded Oregon tried to innovate a policy for determining who still has to wear a mask. It bombed.

BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N

rmonahan@wweek.com

On May 18, Gov. Kate Brown offered Oregon businesses a choice not available anywhere else in the nation: They could allow vaccinated patrons not to wear their masks— after checking vaccine cards at the door.

One week later, the verdict is clear: a resounding thumbs down. Not a single major retailer or venue in the Portland metro area has taken Brown up on the offer.

Business owners don’t want to ask for proof.

“I just don’t believe that it’s a private citizen’s responsibility to ask another private citizen anything to do with their health,” says Rep. Daniel Bonham (R-The Dalles), who owns Maupin’s Stoves & Spas, which sells wood stoves, hot tubs and barbecues. “Most people believe that they’ve got that right to privacy. You’re putting that frontline worker in a really awkward spot with some people that are very passionate on both extremes of this issue.”

In all, 31 states no longer require anyone to wear a mask indoors, if they ever did. Four states still require masks for everyone. But Oregon appears to be the outlier among the 15 remaining states that require masks indoors only for the unvaccinated.

In the other 14 states, masking up is based on an honor system. That’s what federal officials proposed, too. Only Oregon required businesses to card people.

A May 25 letter signed by 10 national business associations to top Biden administration officials called Oregon’s requirement for shops to check vaccine cards “alarming.”

The letter’s signatories ranged from the National Grocers Association to the National Association of Truck Stop Operators.

“Policies like Oregon’s will risk the safety and well-being of employees,” the letter states. “We strongly urge the Centers for Disease Control, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and Department of Health and Human Services to recognize the peril that these types of policies will create for employees and make public statements emphasizing that state and local rules should not place the burden of verifying vaccination on employees. If Oregon’s policy remains in place or, worse yet, spreads to other jurisdictions, it will put America’s labor force at risk.”

Oregon’s policy put retail shops on a collision course with shoppers.

“The burden to verify a customer’s vaccination status is on the employees of a store,” says Jennifer Hatcher, chief public policy officer for FMI, the Food Industry Association, a national group of supermarkets and wholesalers that signed the letter. “That makes no sense at all. It’s likely to cause confrontations in a store, and that’s the last thing we want to happen.”

The national message that it’s safe to go out with a mask creates further conflict.

“We can’t ignore President Biden, appearing in a press conference without a mask on, saying we’re returning to normal,” says Amanda Dalton, president of the Northwest Grocery Association. “The public knows that, and the workers are facing off with that angry public at the door.”

That’s led to a twist ending: In Portland, at least, most everyone is still wearing their masks indoors. There are none of the fierce battles of last spring to push people into wearing a mask. In effect, the old masking rules are dragging into summer because nobody wants to risk conflict.

The governor isn’t willing to change course quite yet, but officials in her office admit checking vaccine cards wasn’t a popular idea.

“Oregon’s guidance was meant to give businesses options in reacting to the CDC’s announcement, and to give them a choice between implementing new verification procedures or keeping their current health and safety measures in place,” says Brown spokesman Charles Boyle. “The majority of businesses are choosing to continue requiring masks. Our office has heard the concerns from the business community, retail workers, and others loud and clear, and we are committed to working to continue to refine our approach.”

Critics of the governor point to Washington state’s adoption of the honor system, allowing people to take off their masks when they have been vaccinated.

Boyle says the governor is adapting to criticism, citing the announcement of a new model for vaccinated sections in businesses and venues that would allow them to increase capacity. “Starting this week, with vaccine verification in place, businesses and other venues can increase their maximum capacity,” Boyle notes.

Indeed, the Portland Trail Blazers are offering a vaccinated-only section at playoff games, which will allow them

to increase capacity at Moda Center, with no social distancing required.

But if the idea behind a carding requirement was that vaccination has its privileges, the Blazers didn’t play ball.

They’re still requiring masks for everyone, even those vaccinated. (The state would have allowed them to forgo the mask requirement.)

“While COVID-19 vaccines are not 100% effective, we are choosing to require masks to make this experience as safe as possible for everyone,” says Blazers spokeswoman Ashley Clinkscale.

One prominent business tried to implement the governor’s policy: the Salem area’s beloved Enchanted Forest amusement park. It was met with complaints and threats of violence.

“We had to think of our employees’ safety,” co-manager Susan Vaslev told Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud, declining to specify. “We have to think of the safety of the guests in our park. And that was in question with the threats we’re getting.”

Masks, of course, have become a political wedge issue.

Vaccines, too. The underlying culture war made asking for proof of vaccination to remove a mask particularly difficult.

“Even a year ago, it was hard,” grocery association president Dalton says of mask requirements. “We were faced with some of the same opposition that we are now, but the difference is: You now have a year’s worth of politics attached to that mask.”

Of course, a vaccination card is a piece of paper that also relies on trust. Notably, when vaccines were in short supply, the state’s largest vaccination clinic, at the Oregon Convention Center, did not consider cards given out after a first dose sufficient proof that someone was in fact scheduled for a second appointment. They still had to show an email or QR code to sign in.

So grocers wonder why they were told to trust a piece of paper.

“We have absolutely no way to verify that,” says Dalton.

“So then it begs the question: Why are we putting business and retail owners and our frontline workers in this position, a year into this pandemic, on top of everything else?”

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

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Marching for Home SUZETTE SMITH

J U S T I N YA U

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

THREE DAYS IN SPRING: Protesters from the Palestinian, Colombian and Myanmar communities repeatedly gathered in downtown Portland this year.

First and second generation immigrant Portlanders can’t look away from injustices in their homelands.

BY J U ST I N YAU

and

S UZ ETTE S M I TH

On Saturdays, Ramzy Farouki often rides the MAX Red Line into downtown. He uses the ride to clear his mind before he stands in Terry Schrunk Plaza to talk about the plight of a country he can no longer visit to anyone who will listen.

Farouki, 35, is a Palestinian raised by parents who immigrated to St. Louis. He moved to Northeast Portland in 2010 and works construction and landscaping jobs.

He cannot go home to Palestine. So he brings Palestine to downtown Portland.

“I see how much culture and heritage is lost in each generation, and that’s why I try to educate,” he says. “It’s my love for my heritage in the face of seeing its erasure.”

He isn’t the only immigrant activist in Portland feeling sick about home. For many, protesting downtown is a way to feel they are doing something for their homelands, many of which are now under siege.

In the national imagination, Portland’s protest scene is 25 furious teenagers in black ski masks demanding police abolition around a dumpster fire.

But for much of this spring, Portlanders strolling along the Willamette River or near City Hall have instead encountered a very different sight: first- and second-generation immigrants carrying the flags of their homelands and sometimes potluck meals.

Portland is not diverse compared with most American cities. But to the casual observer, this spring has witnessed a blooming of small communities, in groups of 20 to 200, who gather downtown each weekend amid rain clouds and cherry blossoms, sharing with the rest of us the unthinkable bloodshed they see occurring in their home countries.

In Myanmar, where over 805 pro-democracy protesters have been killed by government forces as the nation teeters on the brink of civil war.

In Gaza, where a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas occurred only after Israeli military forces killed 248 people in two weeks.

In Colombia, where local law enforcement has engaged in extrajudicial killings of dozens of protesters.

For many, the violence has effectively locked them out of their homelands. “I don’t think I can go home until this is all over, because it is too dangerous,” says

Tori, an Oregon State University student who hasn’t seen her family in Myanmar in two years.

And so, from the small Palestinian, Colombian and Myanmar communities that live in Oregon has emerged a passionate, peaceful and distinctive kind of protest.

They defy the common conception of what a Portland protester looks like. They ask that a city weary of marches and unrest pay attention to injustices that don’t feature cops or Donald Trump. They found inspiration in the methods and message of the Black Lives Matter movement and now they ask that people listen to their story, see what they see, and consider the role our elected officials can play—and have played—on a larger, global stage.

On three recent weekends, we mingled with three movements spearheaded by first- and second-generation immigrant organizers. We found Portlanders of all ages taking to the streets to protest the injustices closest to their hearts yet happening thousands of miles away.

CONT. on page 12

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

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CHRIS NESSETH

Myanmar Revolution Day Saturday, March 27, at Pioneer Courthouse Square

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Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

On a bright, cold day in March, a golden peacock on a crimson background flew proudly in the wind.

That’s the symbol of the National League for Democracy, the political party overthrown Feb. 1 by a military coup in Myanmar.

Portland’s Burmese community was gathered beneath the brilliant flags, representing the Shan, Zomi, Kachin, Kayah and Rohingya—all ethnic minorities in Myanmar. (The country was once called Burma, and the name remains in dispute.) They stood together on Pioneer Square’s curved brick stairs, speaking out against Myanmar’s new military dictatorship.

This was the fifth gathering in Pioneer Courthouse Square since Myanmar’s military arrested its president and assumed control over the government on the first of February.

In Pioneer Courthouse Square, a line of college-age immigrants led chants.

“Free our president!” one yelled.

“Aung San Suu Kyi!” the crowd responded—the name of the imprisoned leader.

They simultaneously threw up a three-finger salute, a gesture originating in the Hunger Games movies but now used by protesters in streets across Southeast Asia.

One of the hundred hands raised belonged to Tori, an 18-year-old

international student at Oregon State University. She’s in her second year of a pre-medical program and juggles her studies and activism quite well. Her grades are up. “But my friends have been telling me to take a break since I have no time for them,” she admits later in an interview.

Oregon has one of the largest immigrant populations from Myanmar on the West Coast.

The most recent census data, from a decade ago, said just over 1,400 Burmese lived in the Portland area.

She came to the U.S. on a merit scholarship to OSU. She was born and raised in Yangon, the capital of Myanmar. “I did not see democracy growing up,” she says. “That is something I don’t want for my younger siblings.”

Her family still lives in Yangon—the heart of the unrest.

“My parents don’t know that I am involved in the activism here. I didn’t tell them because I don’t want them to worry,” she says. “I miss them a lot.”

J U S T I N YA U

REVOLUTION NOW: Burmese protesters carry the flag of the National League for Democracy (far left) and give the three-finger salute in Pioneer Courthouse Square during a chant (above).

Many are demonstrating in support of President Aung San Suu Kyi (below left).

J U S T I N YA U

resettle many of them, while working for Lutheran Church Charities.

Oberg is a mother of three, the daughter of a United Nations diplomat who made Portland home more than 33 years ago. She now works for Multnomah County’s developmental disability services in downtown Portland.

On weekends, she attends the weekly Myanmar pro-democracy marches in downtown Portland, where students raise money to send home through apps that are difficult for the Myanmar government to trace.

On a sunny May weekend, Oberg was one of several vendors selling shirts and food in Lents Park. She stood behind a plastic folding table laden with a large inventory of Myanmar pro-democracy T-shirts, many emblazoned with symbols of the Federal Army of Myanmar, a rebel group currently resisting the military regime.

“I spent about $2,000 out of pocket to buy the shirts,” she says. “I see dead bodies on social media every day. Kids, 15,16,17. I have three kids of my own. I think of how lucky they are.”

Oberg managed to donate $280 to the cause after a day of sales of T-shirts and her homemade goat curry.

“I can act like nothing’s happening,” she says. “I am settled here, my children are safe here, but I feel heavy in my heart if I do.”

CHRIS NESSETH

Increasing overreach surveillance on social media platforms by Burmese authorities creates new risks for returning Burmese citizens. Those engaged in activism overseas face possible arrest and detention, according to Amnesty International. Tori says she’s too worried to go back to Myanmar, despite having deleted much of her online social media presence.

For Tori, this fight is not only for a democratic future in Myanmar, but also for her right to return home. “We can’t lose,” she says. “We can only lose if we give up.”

Oregon has one of the largest immigrant populations from Myanmar on the West Coast. The most recent census data, from a decade ago, said just over 1,400 Burmese lived in the Portland area.

Yin Oberg says the number is much higher: About 10,000 in the growing Burmese community currently live in Portland. “Anywhere from 122nd Avenue to 160th Avenue all the way down Division Street, there are a lot of Burmese people. Many came as refugees in 2005-2006,” Oberg tells WW. “These refugees have been in the refugee camps for more than decades on the border of Thailand and Burma. Some kids were born at the camp and have never lived outside of barbed-wire refugee camps.”

Oberg would know: She helped

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

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MICK HANGLAND-SKILL J U S T I N YA U

Nakba Day Call to Action Saturday, May 15, at Terry Schrunk Plaza

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Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

“Free Palestine! Free Palestine!” a crowd of 400 people chanted. They filled Terry Schrunk Plaza and then some, spilling back into the trees and shrubs. That’s nearly as many Portlanders who listed Palestinian as their ancestry in 2019 census data.

Ramzy Farouki joined them briefly in the chant, before opening the rally by comparing the Pacific Northwest land he was standing on to his own. Both, he said, were stolen.

“Remember, as Palestinians, we will always stand with you and your struggle for decolonization,” he declared.

The May 15 rally was the second pro-Palestine rally in Portland since Israeli military actions in East Jerusalem on April 11 sparked a rapidly escalating war in Gaza. It was also Nakba Day: the globally observed anniversary remembering the mass exodus of upward of 800,000 Palestinians who were displaced after the creation of the state of Israel.

Throughout the rally—between speakers—Farouki read a fraction of the names of the 400 villages the Palestinian people fled in 1947 to 1949. He ran out of time to read them all.

Farouki is founder and director of the Center for Study and Preservation of Palestine, a tiny educational center in Northeast Portland. “Personally, I think just being a Palestinian places me into the activism sphere,” he says. “It

shouldn’t be activism to be for the human rights of your people, to be against ethnic cleansing and genocide, to be against the occupation of your homeland.”

Far more than most rallies by immigrants, the Palestinian cause interlocks closely with the city’s leftist politics.

Efforts to divest from companies doing business with Israel’s government have regularly been a contentious issue in City Hall and a mainstay of campus politics at Portland State University.

“Personally, I think just being a Palestinian places me into the activism sphere.”

—Ramzy Farouki That—along with the horrifying images emerging from Gaza City over the past two weeks—may explain why the crowds at Palestinian protests are larger than those at other immigrant rallies.

Despite a May 21 cease-fire in Gaza, the crowds returned a week later, gathering in front of City Hall to chant slogans and march through Portland’s downtown.

This time, 250 people joined in.

STOLEN LAND: Ramzy Farouki speaks to TV reporters (inset) following one of several rallies for Palestine in Terry Schrunk Plaza (above).

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

Maysa’s family is from Iran, but she and a number of the other organizers are part of a Muslim activist organization called Hurriyah Collective. Their focus is on mutual aid—projects like toy drives and serving hot meals to the houseless.

“Always fight for the oppressed and the marginalized,” she says. “That’s a very big thing in Islam.”

If some of this sounds familiar from other protests, it should. “We have to give a lot of credit to the Black Lives Matter movement,” Ali points out later.

“They set the foundation for really widespread knowledge being passed on via social media. And engaging the younger population to become a part of these movements. We owe that turnout today to all the people who’ve been putting in work before us.”

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

“A cease-fire has been announced.

We all know that’s bullshit!” Willamette University student Abdul Ali shouted into a stranger’s megaphone. Ali said his grandparents fled Palestinian villages and he grew up as a refugee in Jordan.

“Boycott Israel!” he demanded. “Your workspace. Your campus. Get that shit out of there!”

At a downtown rally a week later, Olivia Katbi-Smith held a petition for such divestment asked Portland City Hall not to renew a security contract with the Florida-based corporation G4S, due to that company’s ties to Israel.

Katbi-Smith is co-chair of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Katbi-Smith is of Jordanian descent, but the organization she coordinates for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions is Palestinian-led and was founded

by Palestinians in 2005.

After a failed attempt to get the hundreds sitting on the plaza’s steps to sign the petition, another young activist, an Oregon Health & Science University nursing student who asked WW to use only her first name, Maysa, walked to the center with a bullhorn.

“If you have your phone, hold it up,” she says. “We’re all going to go sign the petition together!”

MAY DAYS: Protesters supporting Palestine marched through the streets of downtown Portland on May 22 (above). Olivia Katbi-Smith demanded City Hall divest from companies doing business with Israel (left).

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

15

Colombia Peaceful Protest Rally Saturday, May 8, at Tom McCall Waterfront Park Next to the sophisticated activism of Palestine’s supporters, Portland’s Colombian community is just getting warmed up. On an overcast day in Tom McCall Waterfront Park, 150 gathered—most decked out in the vivid yellow, red and blue of the Colombian flag.

They marched on downtown sidewalks to Pioneer Courthouse Square and briefly cumbia-danced before speeches began: charged calls to action or denouncements of the violence Colombia’s police and military forces have meted out to protesters.

Dia Murillo, a therapist who grew up in Cali, Colombia, led the group in a meditation where they held tea lights and sent good wishes to Colombia.

About 150 Colombians were at the event, 15% of the population of Colombians living in the Portland area, according to the 2010 census.

“One of the goals of the march was just to see Colombians in the city,” Murillo says in a later interview. “Who are they? Who would come? We wanted to have Colombia present in our hearts, but not specifically engage in conversations—who is on the right, who is on the left, who is for and against the government.

You might be surprised how many different views there were in that crowd.”

Unlike Palestinian protesters, who are united in their outrage toward Israel, this group of Colombians is mixed in its attitudes toward the Colombian government, which is locked in a violent struggle with protesters. Protests in Bogotá started April 28, in response to a proposed tax change that would fall heaviest on low- and middle-income communities.

“Basic foods like eggs, basic needs like tampons would be taxed at 19%,” Murillo says.

Colombia’s militarized police came down heavily on the demonstrations, firing live ammunition into crowds of peaceful protesters.

Murillo says some Colombian immigrants, fairly conservative in their politics, still attended the march. “They like the government, but don’t think people should be shot for protesting. Their attendance was really brave and humble.”

Murillo’s mother still lives in Cali, and Murillo describes the past two weeks as spent “hiding under tables” for portions of the day.

“Shootings. Gunfire. She can see buses of police coming into the neighborhood. It isn’t the most safe neighborhood, but she’s never seen anything like this.”

All of the Colombians WW interviewed had people back in Colombia whom they worry about. But not many were worried for themselves, outside of the nagging concern that

16

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

HOMESICK: Colombian immigrants say activism, like this May 8 rally, helps them feel like they’re making a difference during bitter conflict in their country.

activism could somehow lead to deportation.

“I was very afraid of being taken or deported,” Murillo admits.

Even though the Colombia solidarity march, which she helped plan, walked on city sidewalks instead of marching in the street, she looked around for police. Murillo didn’t know who in the crowd might be undocumented, and she worried about her residency status if she faced legal problems. “I was very afraid of the cops showing up,” she says.

More than one protester described to this reporter the psychological toll of being so far away and feeling so helpless.

“There are some moments where I’ve been so paralyzed,” Juliana said. She requested that WW use only her first name. Much of Juliana’s every day is consumed with making social media posts about the situation in Colombia or calling attention to other social justice causes.

But there are days when she says she can’t bear to look at anything online. “Yesterday I went fishing and I think that all that frustration made me catch a 22-inch fish!”

Murillo, on the other hand, views her online activism as a way to care for herself. “People have to see, people have to be informed. I normally take 10 minutes of my day to talk about it or educate people. Not just marches, but the war on drugs. The ’91 constitution. Changing how people see Colombia.”

For now, the future of this slowly coalescing community is focused on mutual aid rather than marches. Angela Barrios, an environmental science major at Portland State, says the volunteering she did during the 2020 wildfires taught her the simple value of sending money to people who need it, no strings attached.

She’s planning a Colombian food pop-up fundraiser. “Families are having a hard time getting access to food, water and medical supplies,” Barrios says. “They’re still in a pandemic. They haven’t had any assistance. If I can send them some money by sharing a bunch of food that I grew up eating, it’s the least I can do.”

SUZETTE SMITH

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

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STREET OUT AND ABOUT Who we found around Portland this week.

Photos by Chris Nesseth @chrisnesseth

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Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

STARTERS

THE MOST IMPORTANT PORTLAND CULTURE STORIES OF THE WEEK—GRAPHED.

R E A D M O R E A B O U T TH E S E STO R I E S AT WW E E K .CO M .

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An Oregon-born gray wolf has gone missing in California.

Damian Lillard finally buys an e-bike.

O

N AT H A N H O WA R D

R EG

ON ZO

O

Over a dozen Oregon tourist attractions, including the zoo, confirm they will continue to require visitors to wear masks.

AWFUL

ALEX WITTWER

AWESOME

Portland’s first “hemp bar” is opening this week.

Church Bar announces it will close indefinitely.

Downtown bar Kelly’s Olympian is hosting a pop-up vaccination clinic, giving away a free drink with every shot.

THOMAS TEAL BRIAN BURK

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Music organization Friends of Noise is hosting open-mic vigils for those who died in 2020.

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Built to Spill frontman Doug Martsch announces intimate solo shows in Portland.

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After the driest April on record, the total rainfall for May in Oregon is far below average.

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L . A . P U B L I C L I B R A R Y/ Y O U T U B E

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WHAT TO DO WHILE YOU’RE STUCK AT HOME THIS WEEK.

WATCH: The Linda Lindas at the L.A. Public Library Punk’s next feminist heroes are, as it reads on their Bandcamp page, “two sisters, a cousin, and their close friend” who are “half Asian/half Latinx” and not yet old enough to vote. It would seem L.A.’s Linda Lindas came out of nowhere just last weekend, going viral on the strength of a track called “Racist, Sexist Boy” played inside the Los Angeles Public Library. But young as they are, this is not the band’s first brush with fame: They opened for Bikini Kill at the Hollywood Palladium and subsequently landed a cameo covering “Rebel Girl” in Amy Poehler’s riot grrrl teen drama Moxie! The reverberations from the library performance have been something else: Within days, the group landed a deal with Epitaph Records. It’s not a case of “good for their age,” either—the band simply slays, and “Racist, Sexist Boy” isn’t even their best song, although the shouted bridge (“Poser! Blockhead! Riffraff! Jerk face!”) is one for the canon. Watch the full set on the L.A. Public Library YouTube page. Stream at thelindalindas.bandcamp.com.

Thesis exhibits are always a great place to see boundary-pushing art. But this year’s final exhibit

by University of Oregon MFA candidates should be especially interesting because of, you know, the pandemic. The eight artists in the show spent the last of their three years in the program experimenting in relative isolation, and the results are as bold and varied as you’d hope. Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., disjecta.org. Noon-5 pm Friday-Sunday, through May 30. Free.

D R I V E WAY J A Z Z FA C E B O O K

WATCH: The Age of Innocence and Le Bonheur They say “April showers bring May flowers,” so before this month blossoms into June, start streaming some spring-y films that pay homage to the beauty of flora. In The Age of Innocence, a period romance directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted from Edith Wharton’s seminal novel, Daniel Day-Lewis plays a lawyer whose engagement to an innocuous young woman (Winona Ryder) is rocked upon meeting a more age appropriate and worldly countess (Michelle Pfeiffer). Featured plants include lily of the valley (connoting purity, for the fiancée) and yellow roses (connoting passion, for the countess). Le Bonheur, Agnès Varda’s bittersweet 1965 drama, follows a young couple with children who seem to be perfectly in love, until the husband begins an affair with a post office clerk. The film is loaded with sunflowers—it’s even been referred to as “a horror movie wrapped up in sunflowers.” Streams on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Criterion Channel and other services.

☛ GO: Hemp Bar Grand Opening

Finally, Portland is getting its first cannabis cafe—kind of. Taking advantage of hemp’s murky legal status, East Fork Cultivars’ straightforwardly named Hemp Bar has all the markings of a Amsterdam-style weed bar, from infused drinks to pre-rolls and blunts, except every product contains 0.3% THC—the legal limit for hemp to be sold and consumed outside regulated dispensaries. Still, the owners swear the stuff will give you at least a mild high, depending on the makeup of your endocannabinoid system and just how much you smoke. Either way, it’s a unique experience in a state that typically allows public consumption only at private clubs. Plus, on opening day, Caesar the No Drama Llama will attend, and stroking a camelid while even lightly stoned is an unbeatable experience.

6258 SE Foster Road, 503-477-7183. 11 am-7 pm Tuesday-Sunday. Grand opening Saturday, May 29.

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Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

CATCH UP ON: Fast & Furious There is a scene in Fast Five where street racer Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel) sums up the soul of the series for his crew. “Money’ll come and go, we know that,” Dom declares. “Most important thing in life will always be the people in this room—right here, right now. Salute, mi familia.” For 20 years, the series has made heavy-metal poetry out of cars, airplanes and anything else that can go boom. Yet the reason we’re still watching is because it’s an adventure both kickass and heartfelt—and because the story of how it got that way is mesmerizingly bizarre. So in anticipation of the June release of F9, the next chapter in the saga, now is the time to recount that history and rewatch those films for free at select area theaters. Both AMC Theatres and Regal Cinemas are offering free screenings of films in the Fast & Furious franchise every Friday. Visit amctheatres.com/fastfridays and regmovies.com/ static/en/us/promotions/fast-friday for details on how to obtain tickets.

☛ GO: University of Oregon MFA Thesis Exhibit

R AV E N ’ S M A N O R

STREAM: The Pearl Dive Project There is a moment in the Pearl Dive Project when Ashley Roland, BodyVox’s co-artistic director, tries to convey the hallucinogenic wonderment of a dance piece called Photo Synthesis. “You can flip through the pages of a photography book,” she explains, “but in this case, it’s like going into the photography book and journeying through all these different moments and these different visions for dance.” The 2021 edition of the Pearl Dive Project is filled with visceral, enveloping imagery and unites BodyVox with collaborators ranging from legendary dance photographer Lois Greenfield, who conceived Photo Synthesis, to Simpsons creator Matt Groening. With two episodes available and three more on the way, the project is off to a ravishing start—and continues the company’s tradition of shattering dance orthodoxy. Episodes 1 and 2 of the Pearl Dive Project stream at bodyvox.com/performance/ pearl-dive-project-2021. Episode 3 debuts Thursday, May 27. Tickets are $15 per installment or you can access all five for $50.

VISIT: Raven’s Manor Goths, ghost hunters and Halloween geeks: Here is your new hang. Raven’s Manor, a cocktail lounge designed to look like a haunted mansion, is now open in the historic Henry Failing Building, and the 135-year-old brickwork structure appears to be the perfect backdrop for quaffing horror-themed drinks. Some of the themed adornments include gargoyles, candelabras, and specimens of questionable origin preserved in glass jars. There is even a series of wall-mounted taps in the shape of human skulls that will dispense beer, cocktails and mocktails. If you picture a regal mansion straight out of the classic board game Clue that’s been gussied up for All Hallows’ Eve, you’ll begin to get the idea—complete with the appearance of at least one dead body in a corner. 235 SW 1st Ave., ravensmanorexperience.com. 5-11 pm Wednesday-Monday.

☛ GO: Driveway Jazz

Following last summer’s series of small pop-up concerts, Driveway Jazz is back for another season.

Hosted by local jazz pianist Kerry Politzer in front of her Southeast home, the concerts took place every Friday last summer and featured some of the city’s best musicians. Politzer is kicking off the second season with Portland jazz legends the Mel Brown Organ Group. The season launch doubles as a fundraiser for this year’s Montavilla Jazz Festival, which is scheduled to take place in August. Politzer doesn’t give out the location of her house online; other than that it’s somewhere near Tabor Bread. If you’re not up for wandering around in search of the social distance concert, it’ll also stream on Driveway Jazz’s Facebook page. 5 pm Friday, May 29, at facebook.com/drivewayjazz. Tickets free, donations accepted.

LISTEN: Mayahuel by Sávila Mayahuel, the first album from Sávila in three years, immerses itself in the sounds of the Mexican state of Oaxaca—not just musically but in the field recordings of local natural phenomena and city scenes that undergird its six tracks. Meanwhile, their “ancestral club” sound is as rewarding as ever: a vision of dance music’s future written in organic instruments and pre-Hispanic percussion, light as a feather even at its most formidable. Stream at savila.bandcamp.com.

HOTSEAT

Purchasing Power L A M O N T H A M I LT O N

Esperanza Spalding has long dreamed of creating a sanctuary for artists of color in her hometown of Portland.

She needs the public’s help to make it a reality.

WW: You’ve been saving money to create this sanctuary since college. Where did the idea originate?

Esperanza Spalding: Well, in this recent chapter of my life, it was from experiencing a residency on really beautiful land, surrounded by artists who are super plugged in to their devotion. We had unstructured times to just encounter each as we were involved in our own projects, and that really opened up this understanding in me about how profoundly restorative it is to share space with other creatives when there isn’t an agenda and when we’re held by the land. But my mother reminded me recently that when I was a kid, and she was a single mom doing all these things, we had this vision of having, like, a boarding house. What I’m doing is not a boarding house, but it had already been percolating in our shared dream, of this space that people could come stay and be in a community and bond.

How did you end up finding this particular property?

I’ve had a recurring dream about some place that kind of looked like a school or like a church. It was brick, it had big cement spaces inside, and it’s like this kind of station where artists would stay for a couple of days as they were maybe on the road or traveling from here to there. So, periodically I’m searching for churches or schools for sale, and then—you know how the real estate wormhole works—you somehow end up on Zillow. I saw this property’s photos, and I was like, “That looks weird.” I saw it was three quarters of an acre, and I saw the price, and I was like, “OK, something must be wrong.”

And then I started learning why it was in my price range for all that space. It’s not insurmountable, but it’s basically going to be a rebuild from the bottom to the top.

BY MATTHEW SINGER

msinger@wweek.com

Esperanza Spalding wants to come home.

Technically, she’s already been home for over a year. Last February, the Portland-born jazz-soul musician returned to Oregon from Massachusetts, where she teaches a course on music therapy at Harvard, to curate an artist retreat in a secluded area of Wasco County. A month later, the pandemic hit and she ended up staying—her noisy upstairs neighbors back in Boston made the move easy.

But after 20 years of bouncing between coasts, Spalding, 36, is looking to put down roots in the city that raised her.

That doesn’t mean just owning a house, although she is interested in buying some property—specifically, a three-quarter-acre parcel with farmhouse in St. Johns, which she plans to convert into a private sanctuary exclusively for artists of color.

It’s a dream she’s had since she was a child, and has been saving money for since graduating college. The plot of land she came across on Zillow looked strikingly like what she envisioned in her head all those years.

The only problem? Even being a successful, Grammy-winning Ivy League professor apparently doesn’t qualify you for a loan.

And so, after five months of getting turned down by banks and credit unions, she was finally convinced to go the crowdfunding route. Three weeks ago, Spalding launched a GoFundMe campaign in hopes of raising $300,000 to cover the other half of the down payment. It’s something of a last-ditch effort—if she can’t hit that goal by June 3, the owners are putting the property back on the market.

But, as Spalding explains to WW, now that she’s spoken her dream out loud, she’s going to make it happen, one way or another.

Why is it important for artists of color to have a space like this?

I’m curating this for artists that I know, and will meet surely along the way, who, like me, have had some really demeaning challenges entering spaces that are not curated by people of color. Being an artist of color in a space that is predominantly European or predominantly European American, many times I feel tokenized and on display. In a moment where the world is reeling with the reckoning of how deeply embedded racism is in arts institutions—and in so many institutions—there’s this kind of urgency to want to show up and resolve things. And in the last year, sometimes it felt like I was being brought into a space to fill this weird role of a representative or an emblem of some sort of progress being made or sought. I know we need these spaces where there’s no ask. We can just go be creators, and not feel like anyone’s going to ask us a question about race relations when we’re really just trying to work on this painting.

You plan to build a basement recording studio, so is the space going to serve that purpose for you personally?

Hell, yes! Most artists have a studio that they work out of, and I don’t because I’ve been moving so much. I don’t live anywhere right

now. I’m just here and there and there and here and there. I feel a type of way about buying property in the United States, because this is all unceded Native territory.

So I don’t know yet how to respond to that comprehensively as a grown-up with the privilege of buying power. But I know, as a starting space for me to be able to step into that practice of having a long-term home, I’d at least want it to be a restorative space for others.

Why are you going the crowdfunding route?

I ran into the same shit anybody who doesn’t have a massive savings or credit runs into: I couldn’t get a loan. It didn’t matter that I’m known, or that I teach at Harvard, or that I have half the down payment in my savings account. I tried three different credit unions and another bank and another bank, and something would go wrong. “Oh, actually we can’t mortgage this because of the condition of the house and we don’t do renovations.” Or, “You’re not eligible because you don’t have any credit.” We started working on this in the middle of January, and the sellers just kept giving us extensions because they really believe in the vision. But we all live in an economy, and it got to that point where they’re like, “OK, we love you. But this is the last extension.”

Then my cousin was like, “Have you tried asking the community for help?” And I was like, “It’s the pandemic, I don’t want to ask people to give me money for this.” And he was like, “But you know people want this and need this. Give the community a chance to help you.”

I ran into the same shit anybody who doesn’t have a massive savings or credit runs into: I couldn’t get a loan.

How will you know if the project is a success?

I already know the practice of sanctuary curating is successful because I’ve been seeing it happen over the years. If everything falls through, and I’m not able to get this property, I feel that now enough people know that this is a thing I’m committed to, and if it’s not this place, which I really hope it is, something else is going to come up. I’m going to be figuring out ways to do it however I can. But it would be really nice to have that home.

GIVE: To donate, go to gofundme.com/f/esperanzas-bipoc-artist-sanctuary-in-portland.

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

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FLASHBACK

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Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

THIS WEEK IN 2012

FOOD & DRINK

FEATURE

PILSNER GOLD pFriem Family Brewers Pilsner SILVER Ex Novo Brewing Co. Perle Haggard BRONZE Breakside Brewery Noble Pilsner

AMERICAN IPA GOLD Von Ebert Brewing Volatile Substance SILVER Sunriver Brewing Company Howdy!

BRONZE Sunriver Brewing Company Clearview

GOLDEN, BLONDE, AND OTHER LIGHT ALES GOLD Breakside Brewery Breakside True Gold SILVER Pelican Brewing Kiwanda Cream Ale BRONZE Immersion Brewing Packin’ the Arena

HAZY OR JUICY IPA GOLD Ruse Brewing Star Senders SILVER Ruse Brewing Similar Science BRONZE Sunriver Brewing Company Life Above

PALE LAGERS GOLD 10 Barrel Brewing Co. Money Cat SILVER Breakside Brewery Breakside SoCal Pils BRONZE Ecliptic Brewing Ecliptic + Wayfinder Cold IPA

LIGHT GERMAN AND EUROPEAN LAGERS GOLD Zoiglhaus Brewing Company Zoigl-Hell SILVER pFriem Family Brewers Vienna Lager BRONZE Wayfinder Luna Muerta

Honor Roll The Oregon Beer Awards, the state’s most prestigious (and raucous) craft brewing competition, finally went down last week. Here’s who won.

The drunkest award show this side of the Golden Globes took place last week—live from a hot tub somewhere in Portland.

The annual Oregon Beer Awards may have been delayed by three months and pushed out of its usual confines at Revolution Hall and into the virtual realm, but that hardly dampened the raucousness of the ceremony. Make no mistake: In the six years Willamette Week has been putting it on, the OBAs have grown into the state’s most prestigious craft brewing competition, and the judging—a legit double-blind process involving 42 tasters and 1,097 entries from 105 different breweries—is serious business.

But this is still beer we’re talking about, and if you’re not having fun, what’s the point?

To wit, MCs Ben Love and Joe Sanders of Gigantic Brewing and Old Town Brewing, respectively, announced winners in 29 categories—plus 11 more honoring the industry at large—while lounging in a backyard hot tub as nominees held watch parties across the state.

If you weren’t tuned in yourself, well, you missed a good time. Below, however, you can check out the list of winning beers—consider this your summer drinking bucket list.

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Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

DARK GERMAN AND EUROPEAN LAGERS GOLD 10 Barrel Brewing Co. Captivator SILVER Wayfinder Funeral Bock BRONZE Threshold Brewing & Blending Neptune CLASSIC UK STYLES GOLD Ecliptic Brewing Magnetar Scotch Ale SILVER Fort George Brewery Smiling Eyes BRONZE Breakside Brewery Breakside ESB CLASSIC NORTH AMERICAN STYLES GOLD Hop Valley Brewing Hefeweizen SILVER Cascade Lakes Brewing Company 20 Inch Brown

BRONZE 10 Barrel Brewing Co. Twheat BELGIAN BEERS, GERMAN WHEAT BEERS, AND TRADITIONAL BRETT BEERS GOLD Alesong Brewing and Blending Pacific Bliss SILVER Deschutes Brewery Blue Butterfly BRONZE Von Ebert Brewing Channel Capacity RED BEERS GOLD Breakside Brewery Breakside Disco Queen Lager

SILVER StormBreaker Brewing ALTerior Motive BRONZE Sasquatch Brewing Co. Journey to Red Planet

AMERICAN PALE ALES GOLD Breakside Brewery Breakside Woodlawn Pale Ale

SILVER Oregon City Brewing Co. Temporary Stairs BRONZE Migration Brewing Company MoHaze-Ic

IMPERIAL IPA GOLD 10 Barrel Brewing Co. All Ways Down SILVER Oakshire Brewing A Life Beyond the Dream BRONZE StormBreaker Brewing Buffalo Smile DARK HOPPY BEERS GOLD Ecliptic Brewing Oort Imperial Stout SILVER Sunriver Brewing Company Cinder Beast BRONZE Baerlic Brewing Co. Night Howler BARREL AGED BEERS GOLD pFriem Family Brewers Cognac Barrel-Aged Belgian-Style Strong Dark

SILVER Alesong Brewing and Blending Rackhouse Reserve

BRONZE Buoy Beer Company Decapitator BARREL AGED STOUTS GOLD Ecliptic Brewing Barrel-Aged Oort Imperial Stout

SILVER Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Cubed Amburana

BRONZE Alesong Brewing and Blending Coconut Rhino Suit

FLAVORED BEERS GOLD pFriem Family Brewers pFriem + Alesong SILVER Barsideous Brewing Chocolate Casanovia BRONZE Xicha Brewing Co. 505 Pale FRUIT BEERS GOLD Breakside Brewery Breakside Desert Bloom SILVER 10 Barrel Brewing Co. Passionate Envy BRONZE Public Coast Brewing Company Coconut Brown Ale

COFFEE & SMOKE BEERS GOLD Wayfinder Linear Ashes SILVER Away Days Brewing Dope Day BRONZE Mt. Hood Brewing Co. EXPERIMENTAL BEERS GOLD Alesong Brewing and Blending Gose Anejo SILVER Fort George Brewery Pipiopi BRONZE Upright Brewing Special Herbs RARE, HISTORICAL, AND OTHER TRADITIONAL BEERS GOLD Zoiglhaus Brewing Company Berliner Weisse-Bock

SILVER 10 Barrel Brewing Co. Baywindow BRONZE Oregon City Brewing Co Beast of Burton

FOOD & DRINK TOP 5

PASTRY OR DESSERT BEERS GOLD Deschutes Brewery Peach Cobbler SILVER Great Notion Peanut Brother BRONZE Alesong Brewing and Blending Senor Rhino EMERGING IPA OR EXPERIMENTAL HOPPY BEER GOLD 10 Barrel Brewing Co. Equatorial SILVER Wayfinder Chronokinetic IPA BRONZE StormBreaker Brewing Liquid Hot Enigma

I Could Have Unicorns

BRONZE Breakside Brewery Passionfruit Sour MIXED CULTURE BEER GOLD Ex Novo Brewing Co. Dripping Sun SILVER Wolves & People Farmhouse Brewery Friends in Far Places

BRONZE Little Beast Brewing Empire of Oak (Ekuanot) FRUITED MIXED CULTURE BEER GOLD Von Ebert Brewing Alma SILVER Von Ebert Brewing Rain Shadows BRONZE Breakside Brewery Breakside What Peaches And What Penumbras!

FRESH HOP PALE ALES AND INDIA PALE ALES GOLD Breakside Brewery Fresh Hop Cascade Wanderlust

SILVER Breakside Brewery Fresh IGA BRONZE Three Creeks Brewing Co. Conelick’r Fresh Hop IPA

FRESH HOP HAZY PALE ALES AND INDIA PALE ALES GOLD Ruse Brewing About That Time SILVER Breakside Brewery & Beer Hall What Fresh Beast BRONZE Sasquatch Brewing Co. Fresh Hop Mouth Pillow

Hop Sterling Pils

SILVER Zoiglhaus Brewing Company Fresh Hop Zoigl-Kölsch

BRONZE Baerlic Brewing Co Fresh Hop Pioneer LARGE BREWERY OF THE YEAR Breakside Brewery

MEDIUM SIZE BREWERY OF THE YEAR Von Ebert Brewing

SMALL BREWERY OF THE YEAR Alesong Brewing and Blending

Want to start making your way through this checklist? The best place to start is the breweries themselves. Otherwise, check John’s Marketplace (3560 SE Powell Blvd., 3535 SW Multnomah Blvd.), Belmont Station (4500 SE Stark St), Imperial Bottle Shop (3090 SE Division St., 2006 NE Alberta St.) and other well-stocked bottle stops for availability. See wweek.com for a complete list of honorees.

1. Portland Cà Phê

2815 SE Holgate Blvd., 503-841-5787, portlandcaphe.com. 8 am-3 pm daily.

Portland Cà Phê opened less than a month ago, but its signature Vietnamese coffee drinks have already managed to become iconic. You’ve surely seen what’s already become a signature snap of the Holgate coffee shop on your socials: a perfect purple ube latte held aloft in front of a wall-sized map of Vietnam. It tastes as good as it looks.

2. The BeerMongers

1125 SE Division St., 503-234-6012, thebeermongers.com.

Noon-9 pm daily.

If its Instagram account is to be trusted, the BeerMongers has not closed in over 4,000 days—even after the easy-up erected in the parking lot collapsed during the Great Blizzard of 2021. “Paul’s Patio,” this scruffy, 10-tap beer bar’s pivot to keep that streak going through the pandemic, is a no-frills affair, but that didn’t stop it from winning Best Beer Bar at last week’s Oregon Beer Awards. It’s a one-stop shop for local heroes and out-of-state whales alike, all of which can be plucked from the fridge and consumed on the premises for a $1 corkage fee.

5. Mad Hanna

6127 NE Fremont St., 503-288-2944, madhanna.com. 11 am-11 pm daily.

It’s easy to understand how, after throwing back a few of its signature spiked pudding shots, Mad Hanna customers might forget they’re at a bar and not a college punk house.

Well manicured its patio is not: Easy-ups are balanced on cinder blocks, space heaters sit in milk crates. But for anyone still in touch with their dirtbag youth, it makes for a hang as comfortably familiar as the ratty La-Z-Boy you found on a street corner freshman year and still take naps in.

3. Raven’s Manor

235 SW 1st Ave., ravensmanorexperience.com.

5-11 pm Wednesday-Monday.

Goths, ghost hunters and Halloween geeks: Here is your new hang. Raven’s Manor, a cocktail lounge designed to look like a haunted mansion, is now open in the historic Henry Failing Building, and the 135-year-old brickwork structure appears to be the perfect backdrop for quaffing horror-themed drinks, including straight-up absinthe.

4. Revolution Hall Roof Deck

1300 SE Stark St., 503-776-5500, revolutionhall.com/fooddrink. 3 pm-close Monday-Thursday, noon-close Friday-Sunday, weather permitting.

Even though the expansive deck atop the former Washington High School has been open to the general public since 2017, there are still people who stumble across

TOP 5

HOT PLATES Where to eat this week.

1. Da Pine Grinds

1208 E Historic Columbia River Highway, Troutdale.

11 am-3 pm Tuesday-Friday.

The charmingly retro Sugarpine Drive-in has been one of Portland’s essential summer visits for three years now—and with the recent addition of on-site Hawaiian food cart Da Pine Grinds, the trip has only grown more crucial. Here’s the early recommendation: Grab the ahi shoyu poke, add in a P.O.G.—a frozen mixture of passion fruit, orange, and guava juice—then take your food to an oversized picnic table above the Sandy and, boom, a perfect afternoon.

James Beard Award-winning chef Greg Higgins’ kitchen, with a menu that includes classics, like the iconic openfaced brisket pastrami sandwich.

5. Papi Sal’s

3612 SE 82nd Ave., papisalfoodcart.com. 4-8 pm Wednesday, 1-7 pm Thursday, noon-7 pm Friday, noon-8 pm Saturday, 11 am-7 pm Sunday.

Papi Sal’s is the must-try jawn at one of Portland’s biggest, newest food cart jawns. Its signature item? The Jawn. It’s pulled lechon, slow-cooked in sweetish barbecue sauce, with toppings that nod to both Philadelphia’s Italian-style roast pork (sharp provolone, “long hot” peppers) and Puerto Rican cuisine (sofrito mayo, sazón on the long hots, chicharrones). The real star, though, may be the sesame sandwich rolls, which owner John Hatch bakes daily in the truck.

2. Sweet Lorraine’s

AARON LEE

OTHER FRESH HOP BEERS GOLD Breakside Brewery + Taproom Fresh

Where to get drinks this week.

WESLEY LAPOINTE

AMERICAN SOUR BEER GOLD Cascade Brewing Winter Sage SILVER Gratitude Brewing Daddy Said

BUZZ LIST

the space for the first time on a friend’s Instagram account or through word of mouth. For those who miss the inner eastside’s more conspicuous rooftop pillar, the pandemic-shuttered Altabira, and its sweeping views of downtown’s serrated skyline, this is where you’ll want to camp out this summer.

1331 N Killingsworth St., sweetlorraineslatkes.squarespace. com. 11:30 am-3:30 pm Monday-Tuesday, noon-8 pm Thursday-Sunday.

It’s Hanukkah year-round at Killingsworth Station—or, at least, a reasonable facsimile of the Lower East Side of New York. The cart pod is where Aaron Tomasko and Rachel Brashear are serving voluptuous potato pancakes, as well as knishes, kugel, kasha varnishkes and East Coast sweets.

The crispy, pillowy latkes are fried to order and come with the traditional accompaniment of sour cream and applesauce.

3. Jerry’s Pizza

3237 SE Milwaukie Ave., 503-239-9208, instagram.com/jerryspizzapdx. 4-9 pm Monday-Thursday.

In just under a year, Jerry Benedetto has gone from tinkering with recipes for Chicago-style tavern pizza in his home kitchen to opening one of Portland fooderati’s most anticipated new restaurants. Now slinging pies inside the Bear Paw Inn in the Brooklyn neighborhood, his is the stuff of fond Midwestern memories: a thin, crispy crust with squarecut slices, preferably with sausage and hot giardiniera.

4. Piggins

1239 SW Broadway, 503-222-9070, higginsportland.com.

11:30 am-7 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

One of downtown’s most popular pandemic pivots appears as if it’s becoming a seasonal tradition. The basil-hued, cedar-trimmed food cart has returned to the courtyard of the Oregon Historical Society, acting as an extension of Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

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POTLANDER

Another Spliff on the Barbie Must-have items for your stoner Memorial Day cookout.

BY B R I A N N A W H E ELER

When this summer’s barbecue season hits, it’ll probably be with some measure of general wellness precautions, as well as a renewed self-interest regarding party damage like boozy blackouts and harrowing hangovers. Plenty of us doubled down on our cannabis commitments this past year, and many introductions to Oregon grass were made, so it stands to reason that centering your inaugural summer barbecues around food and herb, rather than, hooch could set the right tone.

Besides, BBQ weed has a whole new meaning in 2021—and each of these uniquely shareable cannabis products are proof that you don’t have to supply a bundle of buds to be the life of the pothead party.

This year, whether hosting or attending, consider offering one of these unexpected cookout contributions to the potluck table or trendy, curated spread, and let’s all work together to make this the most vaxxed, relaxed and smoke-stacked summer ever.

For Your Canna-Charcuterie: Dreamers Glass Cannaghee

(50 mg THC per 3 g jar) This spreadable, cannabis-infused ghee is a thoughtful addition to any artisan charcuterie platter. Spread this on bias-sliced Grand Central baguettes for a chic appetizer, or whip it until it’s dippable and incorporate it into your crudité dip selection. These cannabutter blends are strain specific, so users can choose the vibe they impart on their outdoor festivities, from dance-party sativas like Durban Poison to deeply psychotropic indicas like Granddaddy Purple. Bonus: Put it on your toast the next morning to relive your stoned summer holiday barbecue fantasy.

Get it from: Pacific Green, 710 NE Killingsworth St., 971-242-8535, pacificgreenportland.com.

Laurie + MaryJane Cheese Crisp Crackers

(3 mg THC per cracker, 50 mg per package) Savory cannabis snacks are a must-have for seasonal backyard shindigs. A comprehensive canna-spread should include more than just entrees or deserts alone.

Local fave Laurie + MaryJane’s line of edibles are stellar across the board, but their cheese crisp crackers are uniquely perfect for backyard barbecue-type shenanigans. Plus, their uniform appearance would make them an agreeable addition to both a contemporary deli spread and a Lunchables-inspired charcuterie board.

Get it from: Deanz Greenz, 10415 NE Sandy Blvd., 971-255-0758, deanzgreenz.com.

For the Plant Magic Wet Bar: Hush Pineapple Passion Sizzurp

(1,000 mg THC per 4-ounce bottle) Maintaining low doses throughout your event will help keep your guests from overconsuming without dulling the party vibe. A drop or three of this fruit-flavored, THC-infused simple syrup is an on-brand way to run that all-night stoner theme through your beverage selection and keep your bar from being exclusively medicated or exclusively soft. These drops are truly made for sharing; they can jazz up simple soda water or add a tropical flavor profile to a signature mocktail, and since the dose can be tailored to the user, they have universal barbecue appeal.

Get it from: Gram Central Station, 6430 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-284-6714.

Wyld Blackberry CBD Sparkling Water

(25 mg CBD per 12-ounce can) If any of your guests start to feel a bit unwound from all the consumption, a can of Wyld CBD sparkling water can bring them back to earth without completely evaporating their high. A single dose of CBD can temper an astronomical THC experience, while maintaining physical relaxation and euphoria and easing anxiety and spacey delirium. Plus, this soda water makes a great mocktail mixer, which is a necessity at any modern Memorial Day celebration.

Get it from: Pur Roots, 5816 NE Portland Highway, 971-865-5176.

For the Cookout Condiment Collection: Portland Oven Pot Sauce

(50 mg THC per 10 ml, 5 mg per dash) Pot Sauce is a Tapatío-style hot sauce that paler palates are likely to find borderline combustible and more seasoned tastes will consider mild to medium in spice.

Either way, a dash or two of this sauce is going to get all your guests baked. Be considerate of your hot sauce aficionado friends and make sure to have some alternative salsas and picante sauces on hand for those with higher heat tolerances than THC tolerances.

Get it from: Bridge City Collective, 215 SE Grand Ave., 503-477-9532, bridgecitycollective.com.

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Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

Ruby Cannabis Sugar

(10 mg THC per sugar packet, 50 mg per package) It’s a boss domestic stoner move to have cannabis-infused sugar on hand for your guests, especially on an already impressively stocked condiment table. Keep these individual sugar packets on hand for users to sprinkle atop their Jell-O salad- and banana pudding-laden dessert plates or in their iced teas during dinner. But be advised, one sugar packet contains two 5 mg servings, so make sure your low-tolerance, sweet-toothed guests dose accordingly.

Get it from: Virtue Supply Co., 510 NW 11th Ave., 971-940-6624, virtuesupplycompany.com.

For the Dessert Table: SDK Snickerdoodle Cookies

(50 mg per cookie, 5 mg per serving) When entertaining a squad of stoners, don’t sleep on a good old-fashioned stack of cannabis cookies. As far as cannabis desserts go, baked goods in general are pretty low stakes, and despite the high THC dosage, SDK’s cookies in particular offer mellow highs that are manageable and uplifting. Pro tip for varsity stoners: Split one of these bad boys with a buddy, put a scoop of ice cream on each half, and finish it with a pinch of Ruby Cannabis Sugar and a drizzle of Hush Sizzurp, and have fun astro traveling because this will absolutely end your night.

Get it from: Budding Culture, 6802 NE Broadway, 503-719-6192, buddingculturepdx.com.

Junk Marshmallow Bon-Bons!

(3:1 CBD:THC per bonbon, 12 bonbons per package) When the barbecue eventually moves from grill-watching and cornholing to fire pit gazing and elevated chit-chatting, someone is probably going to suggest s’mores. Bless their hearts. If and when that happens, these are the only marshmallows to reach for. These confections are made with Ranger dark chocolate, vegan mallows and chocolate sea salt—and the resulting s’more will be one your guests remember for the rest of the summer, if not the rest of their lives.

Get it from: Oregrown, 111 NE 12th Ave., oregrown.com.

Editor: Andi Prewitt | Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com BLAINE TRUITT COVERT

PERFORMANCE

MUSIC Written by: Daniel Bromfield | @bromf3

Now Hear This

Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery.

SOMETHING OLD

DIVE IN: A scene from Episode 3 of the Pearl Dive Project, choreographed by Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi.

Precious Gems

An eclectic group of guest artists joins BodyVox for the Pearl Dive Project.

BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E LL FERGUS O N

There is a moment in the Pearl Dive Project when Ashley Roland, BodyVox’s co-artistic director, tries to convey the hallucinogenic wonderment of a dance piece called Photo Synthesis.

“You can flip through the pages of a photography book,” she explains, “but in this case, it’s like going into the photography book and journeying through all these different moments and these different visions for dance.”

Roland’s words could be a manifesto for BodyVox’s mission during the pandemic. For the past year, the contemporary dance company has been fusing dance and film to create performances that make you feel like you’re falling through your screen and onto a stage—whether you’re watching dancers frolicking in a diner or masquerading as a flock of sheep.

The 2021 edition of the Pearl Dive Project is filled with visceral, enveloping imagery and unites BodyVox with collaborators ranging from legendary dance photographer Lois Greenfield, who conceived Photo Synthesis, to Simpsons creator Matt Groening. With two episodes available and three more on the way, the project is off to a ravishing start—and continues the company’s tradition of shattering dance orthodoxy.

The Pearl Dive Project invites guest artists who have never choreographed to collaborate on a piece with Roland and Jamey Hampton, the company’s other co-artistic director (the project also offers audiences a peek behind the scenes at BodyVox). Greenfield’s decadeslong coverage of experimental dance for The Village Voice makes her a somewhat obvious recruit, but Photo Synthesis has a wild expressionism that makes it seem as if she’s discovering the possibilities of dance anew.

Like the BodyVox classic In the Garden of Synesthesia, Photo Synthesis is more about patterns and light than presence and physicality. When two dancers bend sheets of reflective material together to create what looks like a gigantic kaleidoscope, you don’t focus on their bodies. You focus on the way they use their bodies to shape images.

The second episode was inspired by the life of its mastermind, Poison Waters, the co-hostess of Darcelle XV Showplace. Part of Waters’ piece, Too..., was filmed

at Darcelle’s, but it doesn’t start there. It begins with an aggressive sequence in a bleak, cavernous room where the dancers wear athletic wear and slap their hands against their legs.

Roughness gives way to glamour at Darcelle’s, where the dancers don shimmery dresses. The choreography at the nightclub is graceful—shoulders smoothly roll to the serene sounds of Diana Ross’ “Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To?)”—but it also sets up an epilogue that beautifully combines the intensity of the piece’s beginning with the elegance of its middle.

Photo Synthesis and Too… lean into the language of cinema. Hampton, who is also a cinematographer, uses agile camerawork to make sure that we both witness and feel each movement. When a dancer dashes through a curtain of beads, the camera swiftly follows, offering the kind of dizzying vantage point that’s only possible in film—allowing the Pearl Dive Project to escape the visual ennui that can afflict virtual performances.

BodyVox will continue to blend disparate influences with upcoming episodes of the Pearl Dive Project. This Thursday, audiences can stream the company’s collaboration with Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi—and later this summer, pieces by Groening and writer Yiyun Li will premiere.

Some audiences might wonder why visionaries like Roland and Hampton need a squadron of high-profile guest stars. Maybe they don’t, but the question of who gets to choreograph matters. Roland and Hampton dared to imagine that some unusual suspects could imagine something that they couldn’t—and the results speak for themselves.

To see dancers draped in shiny bags that make them look like graceful, metallic boulders in Photo Synthesis is to see some of BodyVox’s most strange and striking work— and therein lies the power of the Pearl Dive Project. While you don’t always know exactly what you’re watching, you don’t have to. Being wowed is enough.

India Jordan is making some of the best retro house on the planet right now, and last year’s For You is frenzy-inducing stuff, pitched at hair-raising tempos and replete with screaming soul samples and video game blips. House loves to pitch itself as the music of healing and liberation, but it’s rare that it actually makes you believe it through sheer force of sound. Also, you have to admire the chutzpah in naming an album For You—then putting yourself looking in the mirror on the cover.

SOMETHING NEW Erika de Casier is going to blow up. Even if she doesn’t, this sweet, stylish PortugueseDanish soul singer will still have two cult classics under her belt: last year’s Essentials and now Sensational, her debut for vaunted indie label 4AD. The sound’s a little less sedate than on Essentials and messes with a few more genres, but it’s still distinctly hers: skittering TR-808 drum machines and bossa nova guitars, all boiled down to a simmer. The post-pandemic baby boom has its soundtrack.

SOMETHING LOCAL Mayahuel, the first album from Sávila in three years, immerses itself in the sounds of the Mexican state of Oaxaca—not just musically but in the field recordings of local natural phenomena and city scenes that undergird its six tracks.

Meanwhile, their “ancestral club” sound is as rewarding as ever: a vision of dance music’s future written in organic instruments and pre-Hispanic percussion, light as a feather even at its most formidable.

SOMETHING ASKEW Anne Guthrie’s new album, Gyropédie, uses field recordings and her own French horn playing to piece together an audio diary of a cross-country trip from New York to California. You can practically feel the morning chill and the melancholy of the solo journey as these four lengthy tracks wash by. Most of our lives have been in transition in the past year-plus, but the desire to document our personal turning points rarely yields more tactile and terrific results than here.

SEE IT: Episodes 1 and 2 of the Pearl Dive Project stream at bodyvox.com/performance/pearl-dive-project-2021. Episode 3 debuts Thursday, May 27. Tickets are $15 per installment or you can access all five for $50.

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

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Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com ROGER EBERT

screener

MOVIES

GET YO UR REPS I N While local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. They say “April showers bring May flowers,” so before this month blossoms into June, we’ve rounded up a series of spring-y films that pay homage to the beauty of flora.

Late Spring (1949) In this masterwork by legendary director Yasujiro Ozu, 27-year-old Noriko (Setsuko Hara) chooses to reject traditional marriage and instead focus her energy on caring for her ailing father, despite everyone trying to talk her into finding a man. Featured plant: the water iris, when Noriko goes to see a Noh play named after the Japanese flower.

Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Criterion Channel, HBO Max, iTunes, Kanopy.

MUBI.COM

FAMILY VALUES: When Dom (Vin Diesel, left) and Brian (Paul Walker) aren’t driving fast or downing Coronas, they’re furious and ready to fire.

From Hooligans to Heroes

How the Fast & Furious series became transcendent cinema—seriously!

BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E L L FERGUS O N

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Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

SEE IT: Both AMC Theatres and Regal Cinemas are offering free screening of films in the Fast & Furious franchise every Friday. Visit amctheatres.com/fastfridays and regmovies. com/static/en/us/promotions/fast-friday for details on how to obtain tickets. The remaining schedule includes Fast Five on May 28, Fast & Furious 6 on June 6, Furious 7 on June 11, and The Fate of the Furious on June 18.

A New Leaf (1971) Elaine May’s marvelous directorial debut stars Walter Matthau as Henry Graham, a sardonic bachelor who’s just run out of his inheritance money and thus hatches a scheme to marry rich. Enter Henrietta (May), a klutzy heiress/botanist and the perfect target. Featured plant: Alsophila grahami, a new species of fern that Henrietta discovers and names after Henry. Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Criterion Channel, Google Play, iTunes, Pluto TV, Vudu, YouTube.

NETFLIX

There is a scene in Fast Five—the 2011 blockbuster that transformed the scrappy Fast & Furious franchise into an epic of vehicular warfare—where street racer Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel) sums up the soul of the series for his crew.

“Money’ll come and go, we know that,” Dom declares.

“Most important thing in life will always be the people in this room—right here, right now. Salute, mi familia.”

Dom’s proclamation is somewhat absurd, given that the Fast & Furious films are often about stealing money (from a Tokyo crime lord, a Rio crime lord, or anyone else with a wallet or a safe) and always make money ($5.9 billion in worldwide box office so far).

That doesn’t mean you should dismiss Dom’s devotion.

For 20 years, the series has made heavy-metal poetry out of cars, airplanes and anything else that can go boom. Yet the reason we’re still watching is because it’s an adventure both kickass and heartfelt—and because the story of how it got that way is mesmerizingly bizarre. So in anticipation of the June release of F9, the next chapter in the saga, now is the time to recount that history and rewatch those films for free at select area theaters.

It all began in 2001 with The Fast and the Furious, an entertainingly junky crime flick about Los Angeles police officer Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) betraying his badge to join Dom and his cronies. It holds up, but not as well as 2006’s Tokyo Drift, the first Fast & Furious film directed by Justin Lin, the daredevil auteur whose style would define the series.

In the early to mid-aughts, Lin was best known for Better Luck Tomorrow, a garish teen odyssey that gleefully tried to demolish the “model minority” stereotype used to degrade Asian Americans. With Tokyo Drift, he tried to demolish Hollywood’s obsession with overly frenetic action, unleashing car chases edited and choreographed for maximum clarity.

Tokyo Drift peaks during a chase down a mountain highway filled with harrowing moments that you feel in your body. When a 1967 Mustang nearly goes off the road, we see a blissfully terrifying shot of a wheel hovering over the edge—an image that sealed Lin’s ascendance into the rarefied realm of directors who turn action into art.

While Tokyo Drift starred a cast of newbies (including Sung Kang as Han, a character he played in Better Luck Tomorrow), Diesel and Walker returned for 2009’s Fast & Furious. That film is as bland as its amusingly uncreative

title, but it set up the superior Fast Five, in which Dom journeys to Rio for a $100 million heist.

After four films, Lin was succeeded by director James Wan (Saw), who helmed the series during its defining trauma: the death of Walker, who perished in a real-life car crash. Furious 7 ends with Diesel as Dom eulogizing his co-star: “No matter where you are, whether it’s a quarter mile away or halfway across the world, you’ll always be with me.”

By Furious 7, we had seen characters fall in love, become parents, switch careers, live and die. The series was reckoning with time—and Walker’s passing forced that reckoning out of the subtext and into the spotlight, where it confronted mortality with unexpected grace.

Crass commercialism occasionally overshadows the franchise’s nobler pursuits. Mad Max has socialism and feminism; Fast & Furious has Corona product placement and the male gaze (the films are addicted to greedily gazing at women from behind). Authentic unwholesomeness may be better than phony Hollywood virtue, but that doesn’t make it defensible.

Yet the Fast & Furious films have always seemed immune to criticism—maybe because they speak to moviegoers in ways that not all film series do. While The Avengers stars a team of mostly white elites, Dom is the patriarch of a diverse working-class clan. He’s more Captain America than Steve Rogers.

No film embodies the contradictory nature of Fast & Furious better than Fast Five, which returns to theaters on Friday as part of a series of free screenings leading up to the new sequel F9, which Lin returned to direct. Fast Five has the glorious spectacle of Dom and Brian racing through a favela on foot, but it also has a tender scene where Brian worries that he will emulate his emotionally distant father.

“You ain’t gonna be like that, Brian,” Dom reassures him. A lot of actors would throw that line away and say, “It’s just a Fast & Furious movie.” Diesel gives it the emotional weight it deserves, daring us to laugh at his unabashed sincerity. When an actor does that, there’s nothing left to say except, “Salute.”

The Age of Innocence (1993) In this period romance directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted from Edith Wharton’s seminal novel, Daniel DayLewis plays an attorney whose engagement to an innocuous young woman (Winona Ryder) is rocked upon meeting a more age-appropriate and worldly countess (Michelle Pfeiffer). Featured plants: lily of the valley (connoting purity, for the fiancée) and yellow roses (connoting passion, for the countess). Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Pluto TV, Vudu, YouTube.

Le Bonheur (1965) Translating to “Happiness,” Agnès Varda’s bittersweet drama follows a young couple with children who seem to be perfectly in love—until the husband begins an affair with a post office clerk. Featured plant: Sunflowers, and lots of ’em. Le Bonheur has even been called, “a horror movie wrapped up in sunflowers.” Criterion Channel, Kanopy.

Adaptation. (2002) Nicolas Cage stars in dual roles as real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and his fictional twin brother Donald.

Charlie’s tries to adapt The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) into a film, but finds himself stuck with writer’s block. Desperate, chaotic attempts to unblock his writing ensue. Featured plant: Orchids, obviously. Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, iTunes, Pluto TV, Vudu, YouTube.

MOVIES WA R N E R B R O S .

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

Those Who Wish Me Dead Those Who Wish Me Dead is the kind of movie that makes you feel alive. The suspense that surges through the film is so intense it’s almost as if you’re wincing at the heat of the flames surrounding Hannah (Angelina Jolie), a Montana firefighter defending an orphaned boy named Connor (Finn Little).

A nonsensical conspiracy has put Connor in the crosshairs of two assassins (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) who are so single-minded that they chase Hannah and Connor into a forest being devoured by a wildfire. Can Jolie triumph over the cruelty of man and nature? Director Taylor Sheridan (who wrote Sicario and Hell or High Water) keeps you guessing by making the action rough and fierce, pummeling his characters with everything from bullets to an improvised blowtorch. Gillen is a laughable villain (Game of Thrones actors don’t belong in Westerns) and the story is annoyingly tidy (why does Hannah have to be motivated by her failure to save a group of boys who were the same age as Connor?), but Those Who Wish Me Dead transcends its artificial trappings. It’s a bracing adaptation of the novel by Michael Koryta—and a reminder that Jolie is an indomitable action star.

She is the fire. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bagdad, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinema 99, City Center, Cornelius, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, HBO Max, Living Room, Regal Movies On TV, St. Johns Theater & Pub.

Our Towns

OUR KEY

: T H I S M O V I E I S E XC E L L E N T, O N E O F T H E B E S T O F T H E Y E A R. : T H I S M O V I E I S G O O D. W E R E C O M M E N D YO U WATC H I T. : T H I S M O V I E I S E N T E R TA I N I N G B U T F L AW E D. : THIS MOVIE IS A STEAMING PILE.

ALSO PLAYING

The Killing of Two Lovers

RK/RKAY

Robert Machoian’s family drama knows it’s freighted with a foreboding title, and violence looms immediately over this story of a freshly separated couple. The longer it takes for that title to come true, the more we nervously rifle through its possible meanings. Even so, The Killing of Two Lovers slips into an inquisitive mode, deeper than pure tension. We witness father and Western Utah day laborer David (Clayne Crawford) make genuine and misguided efforts to resist the deadbeat-dad status that his moving out and family visiting hours suggest. While some of the supporting acting verges on stilted (given the film’s overall earthiness), The Killing of Two Lovers is largely a director’s showcase. Known mostly for short documentaries, Machoian concocts an internal universe of David’s rage through sound design full of slamming doors and endless creaking. And the complex, uncut blocking of a key marital squabble against a high-desert horizon blends stark indie filmmaking with Edward Albee-esque theatrical instincts. The particular shape of this failing marriage confronts the characters’ expectations as much as the audience’s. It’s easy (perhaps sickeningly preferable) to believe David is living out a filmed murder ballad, or elegy for faded youth and manhood. The reality is both simpler and more complicated than all that country poetry. Realities always are. R. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Cinema 21, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube.

Mahboob is a fictional character, but that doesn’t stop him from making real-life mayhem in this cheeky comedy from Indian filmmaker Rajat Kapoor. Kapoor stars as RK, a somber visionary who directs himself in a film about Mahboob, a mustachioed romantic who is murdered in a forest.

Rather than face his morbid fate, Mahboob hails a taxi that inexplicably transports him out of the film and into RK’s life, where he pleads for his creator to spare him. RK/RKAY could have been a Truman Show-style meditation on faith and free will, but Kapoor is more interested in asking witty questions. How do you report a fictitious person missing to the police? How do you return him to your imagination? What do you do when his diabolical nemesis (Ranvir Shorey) follows him into the real world with a lethal grudge? The answers that the film offers are delightfully clever and deliciously bizarre. Kapoor seems to be meditating on what happens when a director is drawn too deeply into his art, but allegorical baggage never weighs down the film. He keeps the mood playful, setting the stage for a magnificently wacky ending that suggests the only thing stranger than cinema is life. NR. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Virtual Cinema.

When journalists Deborah and James Fallows conclude their new HBO documentary in Bend, the Central Oregon hub is held up as a beacon, having reinvented itself into a year-round tourist destination after weathering the 1980s timber crash. Evolving municipal identity runs through all eight profiles in Our Towns, based on the Fallowses’ 2018 book of the same name. While the film’s many drone-captured sweeps of marshes, highways and farmland are simultaneously majestic and too polished, the most useful takeaway from Our Towns is a psychological prophecy.

The Fallowses note that although Americans are routinely intransigent when it comes to their national politics, they often believe their communities’ outlooks to be different.

And with enough of that exceptionalism, cities can actually become positively idiosyncratic. California’s Inland Empire boxing gyms double as chess clubs. West Virginia public radio stations leap to the national stage. Small-town Maine newspapers stay robust against all odds.

If Our Towns has a major shortfall, it too often employs industrial narratives as a crutch for town health and identity. Today’s innovations are framed as victories for locales like Bend, but the exit of the previous industry only shows how fickle and exploitative commercial definitions can be. Luckily, though, the guiding principle here is classic, unassuming human interest—may it never decline, crash or outsource. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. HBO, HBO Max.

The Columnist “Never read the comments.”

That is the golden rule of online content creation. And yet, when your job requires any sort of internet presence, it’s nearly impossible to avoid. Femke Boot (Katja Herbers) is a columnist for a popular Dutch magazine. Because her articles tend to focus on women and/or politics, Femke is constantly

being harassed with vile Twitter replies and death threats—all perpetrated by men. This is an all too common problem for women who dare to post their opinions online, and Femke is justifiably fed up. So, when the police won’t do anything, she takes matters into her own hands by going on a killing spree.

This is where the catharsis is supposed to kick in. And it does, somewhat, but there is a vital nuance missing. What the male writers and director of this icy thriller gloss over is that we don’t necessarily purely want revenge on these bullies.

While retaliation is always cinematic and awesome, women really just want to be seen as people, not faceless vessels for others to project their own insecurities onto.

As a result, the end product feels flattened and surface level, its innovative and relevant premise held back from reaching its full potential.

Still cool to see bigots get wrecked, though. NR. MIA VICINO. Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube.

Spiral The newest chapter in the Book of Saw stars Chris Rock (who also executive produces) as Zeke, a cynical detective on the hunt for the infamous Jigsaw killer. Though the original Jigsaw has been dead for years, a copycat who exclusively targets and tortures dirty cops has sprung up in his place. It gets personal when Zeke’s father (Samuel L. Jackson) goes missing, and he finds himself at the center of the new Jigsaw’s twisted game. Discussing the politics of a Saw movie feels counterproductive (I wanna talk traps!), but when the villain uses a pig puppet to literally say, “I want to reform the police,” one’s hand is forced. Spiral seems to have a noble goal of exposing the force’s corruption and brutality, and in the first half, it even succeeds. But as the plot unravels, so does the movie’s political statement, leading to a disaster of an ending that’s obscenely disturbing—and not even in the gleefully gory way that the

franchise admittedly tends to nail.

If the traps were more memorable, maybe they could atone, but aside from the agonizing opening scene involving a man’s tongue and a railway train, they’re lacking in the clever creativity that made the series a cultural mainstay. That’s not to say I won’t watch the inevitable sequel, though. R. MIA VICINO. Bridgeport, Cascade, Cedar Hills, Cinema 99, City Center, Cornelius, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, Regal Movies On TV, Vancouver Mall.

The Woman in the Window Dan Mallory is a liar. His deceptions include pretending to have a doctorate from Oxford and falsely claiming that his mother died of cancer, but most people don’t know that. He is better known as A.J. Finn, the author of the bestselling mystery novel The Woman in the Window, which has been transformed into a glossy and frenzied film by director Joe Wright. Amy Adams stars as Anna Fox, an agoraphobe barricaded in a gloomy brownstone in Manhattan. Addled by pills and alcohol, she’s a less than credible witness when she says that she saw a woman (Julianne Moore) stabbed to death across the street, but that doesn’t stop her from spying on Alistair Russell (Gary Oldman), a neighbor who she suspects is a serial killer. The Woman in the Window is modeled on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, but Wright doesn’t have Hitchcock’s patience—frantic pacing and a pounding score by Danny Elfman combine to create a film that is exhausting instead of exciting.

Wright can be an ingenious director, but the visual flamboyance that he brought to Anna Karenina and Pan— both of which were cinematic carnivals of swirling colors—has all but dried up. Skip The Woman in the Window and wait for the upcoming TV series about Dan Mallory starring Jake Gyllenhaal. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Netflix.

Willamette Week MAY 26, 2021 wweek.com

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ART N’ COMICS!

Be a Willamette Week featured artist! Any art style is welcome!

Let’s share your art! Contact us at art@wweek.com.

FEATURED ARTIST: FLYNN M. KNOX

More of Flynn’s art can be found here: art-by-flynn.tumblr.com/

Flynn Knox is an 8 year old boy finishing up 2nd grade. He lives in southeast Portland with his mom, dad, and dog. He’s been drawing ever since he could hold a pencil. He’s inspired by comic book greats Bill Watterson, Jim Davis, and Charles Schulz.

JACK KENT’S

Jack draws exactly what he sees n’ hears from the streets.

IG @sketchypeoplepdx kentcomics.com

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JONESIN’

Week of June 3

©2021 Rob Brezsny

by Matt Jones

"It's Elemental"--parts of a full set.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

"There is ecstasy in paying attention," writes Aries author Anne Lamott. That's always true for everyone, but it's extra true for you Aries people. And it will be extra ultra especially true for you during the next 20 days. I hope you will dedicate yourself to celebrating and upgrading your perceptual abilities. I hope you will resolve to see and register everything just as it is in the present moment, fresh and unprecedented, not as it was in the past or will be in the future. For best results, banish all preconceptions that might interfere with your ability to notice what's raw and real. If you practice these high arts with exhilarating diligence, you will be rewarded with influxes of ecstasy.

According to physicists, it's impossible for a human being to suck water up through a straw that's more than 34 feet long. So please don't even try to do that, either now or ever. If, however, you have a good reason to attempt to suck water up a 33-foot straw, now would be an excellent time to do so. Your physical strength should be at a peak, as is your capacity for succeeding at amazing, herculean tasks. How else might you direct your splendid abilities? What other ambitious feats could you pull off?

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) Your guiding wisdom comes from Taurus author Annie Dillard. She writes, "I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you." I suspect that Dillard's approach will enable you to maintain a righteous rhythm and make all the right moves during the coming weeks. If you agree with me, your crucial first step will be to identify the nature of your "one necessity." Not two necessities.

Just the single most important.

GEMINI (May 21-June20)

ACROSS

61 Less than enthusiastic

28 ACL's locale

1 Jazz group

32 Gore and Green

9 Winter Olympics vehicles

62 *WWE wrestler and member of the Undisputed Era (and not the chess player)

14 Without missing _ _ _

64 Split second

35 Kinda

15 Director Howard

65 Craft in the tabloids

16 Campus town bordering Bangor

66 Alphabet quintet

36 "Harvesting the Heart" author Picoult

6 Org. that meets in schools

17 *"Batman & Robin" role for Uma Thurman 19 One making references 20 "Desperate Housewives" actress Hatcher 21 Three _ _ _ match 22 Four, in France 23 *What your remote might have slipped under 26 Cartridge contents 29 Boise-to-Missoula dir.

30 Source of some pressure before photo day?

31 Airline until 1991

67 "Bellefleur" author Joyce Carol

41 Toy with a string attached

DOWN

46 Pricey stadium seating

1 1st Lieut.'s boss 2 Instrument among the reeds

47 "And _ _ _ Davis as Alice" ("The Brady Bunch" credits closer)

3 Israeli P.M. Golda

49 _ _ _ voce (softly)

4 Bare-bones

50 "Pagliacci," e.g.

5 Prefix meaning "earrelated"

51 _ _ _ in the bud

6 "When Doves Cry" singer

53 Uncle Sam's land, informally

8 Indeterminate number

38 What each character in the starred theme answers is (comprising a full set from the periodic table)

10 "David Copperfield" character Heep

9 Plague member?

42 Carries out

11 Crime boss known as the "Teflon Don"

43 Participate in crew

12 First month in Madrid

44 Word after zinc or iron

13 Tabitha formerly of MTV News

49 *Response to "I had no idea"

18 It's definitely a thing 22 Witty remarks 24 "All Eyez _ _ _" (1996 Tupac Shakur album) 25 Policy honcho

56 Roget's entry: Abbr.

26 With 27-Down, Apple portable player from 2005 to 2017

57 Line of symmetry

27 See 26-Down

55 Offers one's views

39 Waiter's weights

69 Command that can also create a PDF

34 _ _ _ California (Mexican state)

48 "_ _ _ Tac Dough" (Wink Martindale game show)

37 Guinness of "Star Wars" 40 Cairn terrier of film

33 Treasure hunter's need

46 Utter

34 Bike race with hills

68 Payroll deduction

7 Actress Feldshuh who played 3-Down on Broadway

45 Used chairs?

33 Tiny noise at a bowl?

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45 Stockholm citizens

52 Preserved for later

54 Nilla cookie 58 Number not found on a clock

"All I want to be is normally insane," said actor Marlon Brando. Yikes! I have a different perspective. I would never want to be *normally* insane because that state often tends to be sullen and desperate and miserable.

My preferred goal is to be quite abnormally insane: exuberantly, robustly, creatively free of the toxic adjustments that our society tells us are necessary.

I want to be cheerfully insane in the sense of not being tyrannized by conventional wisdom. I want to be proactively insane in the sense of obeying my souls' impulses rather than conforming to people's expectations. I bring this to your attention, Gemini, because I believe the coming weeks will be a fruitful time for you to be my kind of insane.

Poet Tess Gallagher praises those times "when desire has strengthened our bodies." I want you to have an abundance of those moments during the coming weeks. And I expect that cultivating them will be an excellent healing strategy. So here's my advice: Do whatever's necessary to summon and celebrate the strong longings that will strengthen your body. Tease them into bountiful presence. Treasure them and pay reverence to them and wield them with gleeful passion.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

According to my analysis of the astrological omens, the number of perfect moments you will experience during the next two weeks could break all your previous records. And what do I mean by "perfect moments"? 1. Times when life brings you interesting events or feelings or thoughts that are novel and unique. 2. Pivotal points when you sense yourself undergoing a fundamental shift in attitude or a new way of understanding the world. 3. Leaping out of your own mind and into the mind of an animal or other person so as to have a pure vision of what their experience is like. 4. An absolute appreciation for yourself just the way you are right now.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20)

60 Kubrick's "Eyes Wide _ _ _"

"There is strong shadow where there is much light," wrote Virgo author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). That's a good metaphor for you these days. Since I suspect you are currently shining as brightly as you possibly can, I will urge you to become acutely aware of the shadows you cast. In other words, try to catch glimpses of the unripe and unformed parts of your nature, which may be more easily seen than usual. Now, while you're relatively strong and vibrant, investigate what aspects of your inner world might need improvement, care, and healing.

last week’s answers

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

"It’s one thing to make a mistake, it’s another to become wedded to it," advised author Irena Karafilly.

Let's make that one of your key truths in the coming weeks. Now is a good time to offer yourself forgiveness and to move on from any wrong turns you've made.

Here's a second key truth, courtesy of composer Igor Stravinsky: "I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge." Third key truth, from Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan: "Don’t be concerned about being disloyal to your pain by being joyous."

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

63 Talk and talk and talk

Scorpio poet Ezra Pound had character flaws that bother me. But he also had a quality I admire: generosity in helping his friends and colleagues.

Among the writers whose work he championed and promoted with gusto were 20th-century literary icons James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Hilda Doolittle, William Butler Yeats, Ernest Hemingway, William Carlos Williams, and Robert Frost. Pound edited their work, arranged to get them published in periodicals and anthologies, connected them with patrons and editors, and even gave them money and clothes. In accordance with astrological omens, I encourage you to be like Ezra Pound in the coming weeks. Make an extra effort to support and boost your allies. Assist them in doing what they do well. To do so will be in your own best interest!

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else," observed poet Emil Dickinson. That's the truth!

Given how demanding it is to adjust to the nonstop challenges, distractions, and opportunities of the daily rhythm, I'm impressed that any of us ever get any work done. According to my astrological analysis, you Capricorns are now experiencing a big outbreak of this phenomenon. It's probably even harder than usual to get work done, simply because life keeps bringing you interesting surprises that require your ingenuity and resourcefulness. The good news is that these surges of ingenuity and resourcefulness will serve you very well when the hubbub settles down a bit and you get back to doing more work.

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

59 "The pressure _ _ _"

62 Nevertheless

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

Aquarius-born August Strindberg (1849–1912) was a masterful and influential playwright. He also liked to dabble in painting and photography. His approach in those two fields was different from the polish he cultivated in his writing. "I am an amateur and I intend to stay that way," he testified about his approach in the visual arts. "I reject all forms of professional cleverness or virtuosity." Just for now, Aquarius, I recommend you experiment with the latter attitude in your own field. Your skill and earnestness will benefit from doses of playful innocence, even calculated naiveté.

Which of the astrological signs feels the deepest feelings? I say it's you Pisceans. You're connoisseurs of deep feelings, as well as specialists in mysterious, multi-splendored, brushes-with-infinity feelings. And right now, you're in the Deepest Feelings Phase of your personal cycle. I won't be surprised if you feel a bit overwhelmed with the richness of it all. But that's mostly a good thing that you should be grateful for—a privilege and a superpower! Now here's advice from deep-feeling author Pearl Buck: "You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings."

HOMEWORK: Testify about how you redeemed the dark side.

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“DO I WANT TO DROP DEAD NEXT WEEK? NOT REALLY.” P. 29

CASH for INSTRUMENTS

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A cadre of helmeted guerrilla filmmakers is coming to you live from Portland’s flaming streets.

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Now mo

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THE MAGIC IS IN MEL’S HOLE. page 22

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Distant Summer

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These 9 charts will show you.

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TH

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"THEY ARE KILLING US AND Y'ALL MISS A PARADE?" Seven queer black Portlanders speak out on what Pride means to them.

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