Willamette Week, August 4, 2021 - Volume 47, Issue 40 - "Welcome to Portland"

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WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY

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AARON LEE

FINDINGS

MERMAID PARADE, PAGE 17

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 47, ISSUE 40 Burgerville says Lents is too dangerous to get Walla Walla onion rings. 5 Street “sliding” is putting a car

into a controlled spin in front of 400 spectators. 6

Victor Krummenacher doesn’t like tear gas in his tacos. 13 A fishtail appreciation society convened in Tom McCall Waterfront Park. 17

Lightning struck Oregon 1,830 times in two days. 7

Dignitaries will ceremonially break a bottle of seawater at the Seaside Prom. 20

Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty is poised to be the first sitting commissioner to sue Portland. 8

If you want to dance on an outdoor patio under high-velocity fans, there is a place. 20

City officials received 1,758 complaints in a week about homeless camps. 9

Celebrate Hot Duck Summer with a Cantonese BBQ round-up. 22

All Breann Vaughn wants is a vegan dinner with no questions. 11 Tim Saputo’s daughter is terrified

of nature. 12

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You can now shop online, or book an appointment to visit for fine antique and custom jewelry, or for repair work. We also buy.

A new local theatrical short was filmed at Psychic Sister. 26 Local truffle hunters tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade Nicolas Cage not to eat dirt on the set of Pig. 27

ON THE COVER:

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

New Portlander Breann Vaughn, photo by Thomas Teal, design by Jack Kent, with a nod to American Gothic.

Officials fear Forest Park is an urban wildfire waiting to happen.

MASTHEAD EDITOR & PUBLISHER

Mark Zusman

EDITORIAL

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DIALOGUE

• •••• • • • •

TA R E B A LRO S ER E T •••• A E H T

During the seven years she has served as Multnomah County chair, Deborah Kafoury has focused on fixing Portland’s housing crisis. That effort means many Portlanders associate Kafoury’s work with what they see in the streets. Supporters say Kafoury has dealt effectively with the city’s toughest problems and done more to address homelessness in Portland than any other politician. Critics claim she puts too much emphasis on affordable housing and not enough on opening more shelter beds, and that her search for tax dollars has yielded few results. In last week’s cover interview (“The Trials of Deborah Kafoury,” WW, July 28, 2021), she defended her record and discussed the dwindling chances she’ll run for Oregon governor.

Here’s what our readers had to say:

SEPT 10

JIMMY DORE SHOW political comedy SEPT 15

THIS MIGHT GET WEIRD

BFF podcast gone wild SEPT 16 with

Tim Wood, via Facebook: “I dig how candid this interview is. She went up a few notches in my book.”

NPR radio show

SARAH MARSHALL DINO ARCHIE OMAR EL AKKAD MAITA

@MakeItVeganNic, via Twitter: “If the GOP wasn’t so inclined toward Trump and fascism, I could see many Democrats voting against her and other light-on-crime liberals. Her failed policies have enabled the ever-expanding shantytowns all over Portland.”

SEPT 17

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IN THE FLESH

the high priestess of cabaret

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I PUT A SPELL ON YOU Hawaiian supergroup

Nina Simone tribute

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SEPT 30

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TOO SLIM & THE TAILDRAGGERS

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+ Tevis Hodge Jr.

UPCOMING SHOWS

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3000 NE Alberta • 503.764.4131 4

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

SOSPortland, via wweek.com: “‘The poverty and squalor unspooling each day on Portland’s streets are the direct result of a housing crisis she’s dedicated years trying to alleviate.’ That says it all. Dedicated years and increased taxes, yet failed miserably to address the humanitarian crisis which gets worse every year. ‘Spend more with less to show for it’ seems to be a poor motto for a gubernatorial election.”

Tony Rutt, via Facebook: “’The city needs to clean up the garbage. I do feel like the public needs to just be pounding on the table about that.’ Why should we, the taxpaying public, have to be pounding the table to get trash picked up?”

Melinda, via wweek.com: “Is there any data that quantifies an overall reduction in homelessness since the measures in 2016 and beyond were approved? (I mean this sincerely, I can’t find that answer. I know that many have now been provided with housing, but does that lower the overall numbers?) This interview seems to show that Ms. Kafoury’s plans to continue

Dr. Know

improving the situation are contingent on more spending. This may very well be necessary, but if the net result of providing housing doesn’t actually result in a true reduction in the number of houseless people in our town, then what are we doing?” @lasertag19, via Twitter: “‘Tangled with’ the toughest problems does not mean ‘solved the problems.’ I tangled with a tough algebra test once and got a D. Make me World Math Czar.”

Catherine Watts, via Facebook: “‘What responsibility do you take for this very apparent misery?’

‘It’s a failure on all of our part as a community.’ As a homeowning single parent barely making it from paycheck to paycheck, I completely disagree that the ‘community’ has failed, and I find her quote offensive.

I pay my taxes, and I have voted for the homeless initiatives, yet here we are with a problem that is getting worse and worse. It is not on me to solve these problems—that is why we elect people like Ms. Kafoury.

You have our money and you have the political means—now fix the problem.

CORRECTIONS

Due to an editor’s error, a story on pickleball courts (“We Can Pickle That,” WW, July 28, 2021) incorrectly stated that a levy passed by voters in November would restore crumbling infrastructure. In fact, the levy funds the hiring of staff to maintain and protect parks, restore recreational programming, and provide park upkeep. It cannot be used for capital projects, such as renovating tennis courts. A 2014 bond measure funded such capital projects.

In an interview (“Seven Questions About the Delta Variant,” WW, July 14, 2921), virologist Dr. William Messer of Oregon Health & Science University mischaracterized the odds of infection for vaccinated people. He said the odds were 1 in 20, but OHSU spokeswoman Franny White says the chances of contracting COVID-19 depend on a more complicated set of factors and cannot be easily calculated.

WW regrets the errors.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author's street address and phone number for verification.

Letters must be 250 or fewer words.

Submit to: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210.

Email: mzusman@wweek.com

BY MART Y SMITH @martysmithxxx

When should you close windows in the morning to keep the house cool? My wife says to wait until it’s hotter outside than inside. I say that doing it an hour or two before that (8 am at the latest) keeps the house significantly cooler. Who’s right?

Can this marriage be saved? —Doghouse Dad I’ve got good news and bad news for your marriage, Doghouse. The good news is that you win the argument. The bad news is that you’re not Ethan’s real father.

Just kidding! You don’t really win the argument.

But to be fair, neither does your wife. It turns out you’re both right—at least under the kind of ideal conditions that obtain on undergraduate physics exams.

Assuming your house has good windows and a couple of window fans to keep the air-exchange rate up (and—ahem—ignoring the thermal inertia of the house itself ), the temperature inside the house should track the falling outdoor temperature pretty closely. When the outdoor temperature reaches its lowest point and starts to go back up—i.e., when it starts to get hotter outside than inside, as your wife (correctly) says—you’ve done as much cooling as you can and it’s time to shut the windows.

However, since overnight temperatures typically reach their lowest point just after sunrise, on most days all of this will happen before 8 am, as you (also correctly) suggest.

As always, there are a few caveats to this kumbaya moment. First, you need to seal the house right when the outdoor temperature starts to rise, not when one of you finally notices that, hey, it seems pretty hot outside. (Rigorous data logging: the key to marital harmony!)

Second, if the walls are still radiating the day’s heat you may never get the indoor temperature as cool as the outside. If the house is still at 80 degrees when the outdoor temperature bottoms out at 60, it makes sense to keep the windows open a bit longer even though the outside temperature is going up, since it’s still cooler than your sweatbox.

Luckily, there’s an even easier way to find the sweet spot: Just shut up the house as soon as the indoor temperature stops falling and starts rising, since that’s self-evidently the best you’re going to do that night.

See, everybody wins! (Except Ethan.)

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

MURMURS DANIEL STINDT

S K I D MORE PRIZE

BURGERVILLE ON SOUTHEAST POWELL BOULEVARD

MOMENTUM BUILDS FOR VACCINE MANDATE: The health care giant Kaiser Permanente announced Aug. 2 it will require all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19— including its 13,500 employees in Oregon, where a 1989 law exempts health care workers from employers’ vaccine mandates. Nonetheless, Kaiser is proceeding. “We will act to apply the vaccination requirement in the Northwest region,” reads an email from Jeff Collins, Kaiser’s Northwest president. “We are taking steps, including working with the Oregon Health Authority and the governor, to support vaccination to the fullest extent permitted by law and any future guidance.” What that means: Beginning Aug. 23, unvaccinated workers will be required to be tested twice a week. Under a policy that allows religious and medical exemptions, the “target date” for workers to become fully vaccinated is Sept. 30. Pressure on Gov. Kate Brown, including from the Kaiser announcement and the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems’ push for employer mandates, has been building. State Reps.

Lisa Reynolds and Maxine Dexter, both doctors and Democrats from Portland, have publicly endorsed changing the law to allow health care employers to mandate vaccines.

And last week, the politically powerful long-term care industry group, the Oregon Health Care Association, came out in favor of changing the law. Multiple sources say they expect an announcement from the governor as soon as Aug. 4, though it’s not clear what she will decide.

BURGERVILLE CLOSES SHOP IN LENTS: Yearlong tensions over homelessness and policing in the Lents neighborhood took a surprising turn Aug. 3, when fast food chain Burgerville announced it would temporarily close its restaurant at Southeast 92nd Avenue and Powell Boulevard. The company cited employee concerns about increasing vandalism and crime around the storefront.

Burgerville CEO Jill Taylor said in a statement, “While it saddens me to temporarily close this Burgerville, I will always put the safety and security of our employees first.”

A company spokesperson told WW: “The environment around the restaurant has deteriorated seriously. Police are now being called daily. Burgerville employees have found weapons, drug paraphernalia, and human waste on the property.” No police reports have been filed about any of the incidents, according to the spokesperson.

CEO RESIGNS FROM HOMELESS BOARD: Cindy Adams, CEO of United Way of the Columbia-Willamette, abruptly resigned from the executive board of A Home for Everyone on July 25, saying in an email to agency director Marc Jolin she felt “unable to have an impact in the current governance structure.” Adams was one of just three private-sector representatives on the eight-member board, which oversees Multnomah County’s spending on homelessness. Adams provided feedback in an April board survey that nodded to tensions around the county’s allocation of funds from its share of a 10-year, $2.5 billion supportive housing services measure. In that survey, she said A Home for Everyone’s board was dysfunctional and needed to “maintain a sense of urgency, and hold ourselves accountable to the public.” In an email to Adams, Jolin expressed surprise and regret at her resignation, while acknowledging that Adams’ concerns were “consistent in many respects with what we’ve heard in other discussions.” In a statement, Adams said United Way will continue to work with the county on homeless issues. “I was honored to serve on AHFE’s executive committee,” Adams said. “A key takeaway for me is we also need to make investments in innovative ideas and approaches to address our housing crisis.”

PRESCHOOL STRUGGLES TO FIND NEW HOME: The city’s largest preschool, threatened with eviction from a Southeast Portland church amid a shortage of early child care providers citywide, says it now has half a new home.

Executive director Crystal Gwyn wrote to parents July 16 that Childswork Learning Center would operate on two different campuses beginning in the fall. One of those locations has come through—the Harmony Montessori School building near Interstate 205—but the other one, Gwyn tells WW, is now uncertain. Childswork was set to move into three classrooms at Portland Community College’s Southeast campus, but Gwyn says the property manager told her on July 24 that HVAC upgrades were needed first. Gwyn says this uncertainty about having adequate space for students is “absolutely what preschool providers are facing all over the city.” PCC spokesperson James Hill tells WW that “PCC is working on a contract with Childswork and does not expect to have the facility ready for them until [Sept. 27]. In the meantime, the HVAC systems across the college are currently being tested, balanced and certified in preparation for safe in-person operations for the new academic year.”

Nominate a nonprofit hero!

WW’s Give!Guide is awarding four nonprofit professionals (age 36 and under) with cash prizes and glory for making a significant impact in the community.

Do you know someone like that? Nominate them by midnight, August 13. https://bit.ly/ skidmore2021

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

5

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

SAMUEL GEHRKE

POLICY

Slip Slidin’ Away The Portland City Council examines a plan to curb street racing.

BY S OPHI E P E E L

speel@wweek.com

Portland city officials have drafted an ordinance that would increase the criminal penalties for street “sliding,” as weekly contests of souped-up cars burning rubber in circles draw crowds of hundreds, block city intersections, and alarm business owners in industrial neighborhoods.

THE ORDINANCE Sam Adams, director of strategic innovations for Mayor Ted Wheeler, tells WW the draft ordinance would “increase the sanctions for this kind of dangerous driving on public streets.”

“Large unpermitted street racing events involving high speed and at times pedestrian onlookers have grown in number and size across the city,” Adams says. “We have a draft of an ordinance in front of the City Council for them to comment on. We want to have it at the City Council when folks come back from their time off.”

The draft of the ordinance and code provision, obtained by WW, proposes that City Council approve two different misdemeanor offenses for participating in such events: unlawful street takeover and unlawful staging of a street takeover event.

It reads: “A person commits the offense of an Unlawful Street Takeover if, in a public place or upon a highway, the person knowingly operates a motor vehicle while engaged in an unlawful street takeover event.”

The draft proposes that the penalty be up to six months in prison and a fine up to $500—but gives firsttime offenders the choice to go through a diversion program instead, if approved by the Multnomah County district attorney.

THE COMPLAINT Since October, a coalition of businesses has appealed to City Hall for a crackdown on the street events known as “sliding.”

Sliding—a practice that participants say is distinct from car racing—is when drivers accelerate and steer their vehicles into tight circles, the cars often looking dangerously close to flipping or spinning out of control.

Sometimes, only one car is spinning in circles. Other times, there are four.

On July 19, the North Portland Coalition for Safe Streets, a group of businesses, penned a letter to the mayor and city commissioners decrying the events in industrial North Portland, often along Marine Drive and Columbia Boulevard.

It’s the group’s third plea for City Hall to take action against the street sliding events. Businesses in the coalition include Columbia Sportswear, BNSF Railway, the Port of Portland, Subaru of America and Ajinomoto Foods North America.

6

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

ELECTRIC SLIDE: City officials are weighing new penalties for street sliding.

“Since we last wrote to you and spoke with your representatives, people have died. The practice of street racing in our neighborhoods on city streets continue unabated without any compliance or enforcement,” the letter read.

“Scheduled events are actively and unabashedly advertised on social media. We are concerned for the safety of our employees. They are afraid to come to work. They are threatened and harassed and put into dangerous situations just so they can provide for their families.”

The mention of a death refers to a fatal crash during a racing event on April 19, when a motorcyclist was struck and killed in the 6200 block of Marine Drive in North Portland. The driver of the other vehicle was cited for reckless driving.

Peter Bragdon, executive vice president of Columbia Sportswear, which has a North Portland warehouse, is frustrated by the pace of the city’s response. “At this rate,” he tells WW, “my grandchildren will be able to engage in those street races…and I don’t have any grandchildren yet.”

THE EVENT A street sliding event at the intersection of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. and Columbia boulevards drew a crowd of hundreds on Aug. 1.

The crowd formed a circle blocking all four streets at the intersection and creating an arena for the sliders to ride around. This reporter walked inside the circle, drawn by the noise that could be heard for blocks.

Sports cars—some beaten down, others spiffy with rims and fresh paint—spun circles within the protective circle created by 400 spectators. The crowd consisted of young people: teenagers, mostly.

The event began around 9 pm and continued until past midnight. Gas fumes clouded the sky and the smell of burnt rubber filled the air. Lines of cars backed up a quarter to a half-mile down all four streets waited for hours. Some spectators launched fireworks.

A rhythm emerged: One to four cars would enter the circle from one of the four streets, emerging behind spectators who would jump out of the way as the engines revved. They would enter the circle, making impossibly dangerous angles with their cars as they spun around, leaving a wake of fumes, sparking tires and cheers with every turn. The crowd would egg them on, yelling, sometimes chasing them for short spurts.

Cars would cycle in and out every three or four minutes, another car always waiting in the wings to take its place. Sometimes cars would exit the circle at will; other times, their wheels were so stressed, overheated and eroded that bare metal was grinding along the road.

The event, WW learned through various social media accounts, was held as a memorial for a fellow racer who was shot and killed in October 2020 in Portland. His name was Noah Terry.

Bystanders told WW the event has happened every Sunday for months now.

DAMAGES: The bust of York was found partly shattered on July 28.

“Some people were scared of what we might see in these pieces, so they tried to take away our ability to see these pieces at all. And they were scared of what we might see in their actions, so they acted when we could not see them.”

—From a July 30 statement by the Portland City Council decrying the toppling and mutilation of a bust portraying York, a Black member of the Corps of Discovery. The sculpture was anonymously installed atop Mount Tabor in February.

On July 28, early morning passersby found the bust, made of urethane, torn to the ground with its nose hacked off.

The vandalism was a bleak end to a remarkable piece of guerrilla art—a urethane sculpture surreptitiously erected on the pedestal where another statue, honoring onetime Oregonian editor Harvey Scott, had previously stood. The act of finding a new figure to honor, months after the toppling of the old guard, astonished Portlanders who made pilgrimages to the top of the cinder cone. And it inflamed resentment and racism, too, judging by the repeated attempts to deface the monument to an enslaved man compelled to join the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Elected officials, led by Commissioner Carmen Rubio, issued a joint statement saying the July 28 damage to the sculpture was in keeping with white supremacist graffiti scrawled atop a Northeast Portland mural to Black victims of racist violence: “After repeated racist assaults, it is tragically fitting that this magnificent piece was toppled Wednesday morning just three days after a mural depicting George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery was defaced.” The statement vowed to replace the sculpture with a similar piece, but offered no specific details.

AARON MESH.

NEWS J U S T I N YA U

INDEX

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

THE BIG NUMBER

FIRE LINE: Scott Griffin of Sycan Estates puts out a log fire in Southern Oregon (above)as firefighters battle the Bootleg Fire (below).

J U S T I N YA U

WELCOME BACK: Students returning to Portland Public Schools must wear masks.

64.6% Multnomah County teens do well at getting vaccinated—if you grade on a curve.

That’s the percentage of 12- to 17-yearolds in Multnomah County who have had at least one dose of the COVID -19 vaccine.

And that’s the maximum percentage of kids who will be fully vaccinated by the time Portland Public Schools opens for the fall on Sept. 1, four weeks from today.

WW reviewed the numbers in public data this week, with a return to classrooms imminent.

Only one other Oregon county has a higher vaccination rate in this age group, the youngest demographic approved to

receive the COVID vaccine. Statewide, the rate is 49.4%.

But Multnomah County’s relatively high vaccination rate is not even close to a rate that would stop the spread of the virus in a community. Given the rate at which the more contagious Delta variant can spread, herd immunity is estimated to require a vaccination rate closer to 90%.

On July 29, Gov. Kate Brown ordered that students and teachers must wear masks when they return to classrooms next month. RACHEL MONAHAN.

Fire Weather Lightning struck parched ground in Oregon.

Guess what happened next?

Multnomah County and Statewide Vaccination Rates in Ages 12-17

Oregon’s historically bad drought has contributed to a historically bad fire season.

So when thunderstorms rolled in across the state’s abnormally dry landscape last weekend, new fires seemed inevitable.

After all, Southern Oregon’s Bootleg Fire, the biggest in the country, was started by lightning. Here’s what’s now happening on the ground, by the numbers.

SHANNON GORMLEY.

28:

Active large fires burning in Oregon, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.

1,830:

The number of lightning strikes in Oregon between Aug. 2 and 3.

47: Confirmed lightning-caused fires

71:

Percentage of the state in extreme or exceptional drought, according to U.S. Drought Monitor. Ninety-three percent is experiencing severe drought, and all of Oregon is at some level of drought.

413,762: Acreage of the Bootleg Fire, the largest in the country and the third-largest in Oregon’s recorded history.

17:

Days out of the 29 since it started that the Bootleg Fire has been under a red flag warning for extreme fire weather, due to abnormally dry fuels.

48:

Consecutive days that Portland has gone without rain.

ignited in Oregon from July 31-Aug. 2.

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

7

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

NEWS

Whisper Network

City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty intends to sue Portland over the police leak of a false allegation against her.

PRECEDENT: Jo Ann Hardesty appears to be the first sitting Portland commissioner to file a tort claim notice against the city.

BY TE SS R I S K I

tess@wweek.com

City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty is planning to sue the city for the leak of internal police records that wrongly named her as the driver in a March 3 hit-and-run crash in East Portland.

On Aug. 2, Hardesty’s attorneys filed a tort claim notice, obtained exclusively by WW. The notice, which is the legal precursor to a lawsuit, alleges that city employees who leaked the false information violated Oregon’s public accommodations laws because they deprived Hardesty of her right to receive public services on the grounds of her race and her advocacy for police reform. She is the first Black woman to serve on the Portland City Council.

The notice names just one city employee: Brian Hunzeker, a veteran officer of the Portland Police Bureau who resigned as president of the police union for his unspecified role in the leak.

“The goal of the leaks was to damage Ms. Hardesty and force her removal from office,” the notice says. “Had Ms. Hardesty not been a Black woman, and had she not sought to call out the PPB for long-standing racist practices for decades, these leaks would not have been wrongfully and recklessly disclosed with the purpose of forcing her out of office and maligning her reputation.”

If Hardesty proceeds with a lawsuit against the city, she would appear to be the first sitting city commissioner ever to sue Portland.

“What happened to me shouldn’t happen to anybody,” says Hardesty. “I’m actually fortunate that I’m an elected official. Do you know how long it would have taken a regular Black person in the city of Portland to have proven that they didn’t do the hit-and-run and to seek some kind of redress? I have an obligation for folks who don’t have the wherewithal to actually seek justice.”

Hardesty’s legal notice is an extraordinary development in a peculiar saga, which began in early March when an East Portland woman called emergency dispatchers to wrongly claim Hardesty had rear-ended her car. The situation escalated rapidly after some city employees leaked details from the report both internally and to local news outlets.

Hours after those outlets blasted the false allegation across social media, police announced they had cleared Hardesty as a suspect. The next day, the Police Bureau released records that said the suspected driver was actually a 64-year-old Vancouver, Wash., woman—not Hardesty.

“By that time,” the tort claim notice says, “intended damage to Ms. Hardesty by city employees had been done.”

For more than 20 weeks, the Portland Police Bureau and outside firms hired by the city have conducted sep8

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

arate investigations into the source of the leak. But the investigations are ongoing and city officials will not say when they will be complete.

Hardesty isn’t waiting any longer.

In fact, in her interview with WW, she disclosed an astonishing fact: The Bureau of Emergency Communications, which dispatches police and firefighters to 911 and non-emergency calls in Portland, concluded its investigation into the leak July 29.

The bureau disciplined three employees as a result of the investigation. Yet BOEC did not announce it had concluded its investigation, nor whether it had disciplined any employees.

“We know absolutely nothing,” Hardesty says of the various ongoing investigations. “We know exactly what we knew the day that this happened. So do I think there’s been transparency? Not at all.”

The three-page tort claim notice alleges that an unknown number of city employees showed a “reckless disregard for the truth” and potentially violated city and bureau directives relating to disseminating confidential information.

It further alleges the leak may constitute criminal official misconduct, a violation of state statute that may merit investigation by the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office.

Hardesty’s attorneys, Matthew Ellis and Stephen Brischetto, say they anticipate filing a civil complaint within the next 60 days. They have not yet determined what sort of damages Hardesty may seek.

“The case is really more about the almost gleeful response that the police had to receiving such a call,” Ellis says, “and the sort of extreme overreaction and the violation of their own policies and rules in leaking information with the goal of damaging Commissioner Hardesty.”

Shortly before midnight on March 3, a Portland woman named Evelyn Ellis called the city to report that she had been rear-ended hours earlier at the intersection of Southeast 148th Avenue and East Burnside Street. “I know who hit me,” Ellis told the 911 operator. “It’s bizarre. It was a city commissioner. It was Jo Ann Hardesty. I know it was her….I was somewhat kind of starstruck.” (She later told police she wasn’t “100%” certain whom she saw.)

Reached by phone Tuesday, Ellis declined to answer questions about the incident. “Oh, with the police officer and all of that? I have no comment,” she told WW, then hung up the phone.

New details from Hardesty’s tort claim notice allege that about two hours after Ellis made the report, a pair of Portland police officers showed up at the commissioner’s home at about 2:30 am on March 4. The filing alleges the

officers “banged loudly” on the door, waking up the neighbors.

Hardesty says she was home and “sound asleep” when the police arrived and that she learned of the incident two or three days later from a neighbor.

Hardesty and her attorneys allege that the purpose of the early morning door knock was to arrest Hardesty and force her to do a “perp walk” in which police escort a suspect in handcuffs, usually in public view, to their squad car and the police station.

“Let me just say,” Hardesty tells WW, “if this had been Mayor [Ted] Wheeler, I don’t anticipate they would have come over to make an arrest.”

The tort claim notice calls the alleged door knock a “show of force [that] was extreme given that the reported damage to the vehicle was a 1 centimeter circle on the white woman’s bumper possibly caused by the license plate screw from the offending driver’s license plates.

“Meanwhile,” the notice continues, “Portlanders—and especially Black Portlanders—often have to wait hours for police response to much more significant criminal allegations. Sometimes, there is no response at all.”

Later, on the morning of March 4—less than 12 hours after Ellis reported the crash—the hit-and-run allegation made its way to right-wing media pundits, including conservative commentator Andy Ngo, who has over 889,000 Twitter followers, and Jeff Reynolds, former chair of the Multnomah County Republican Party, who had previously penned a scathing column about Hardesty.

Before noon that day, the state’s paper of record, The Oregonian, picked up the story, adding that the driver had provided a license plate number to police. (The paper later removed the incorrect claim from subsequent versions of its story.)

Within hours, police used surveillance footage from a nearby TriMet MAX station to determine the driver was not, in fact, Hardesty, but a Vancouver, Wash., woman named Shirley Collins, who is Black.

Currently, the city says three investigations into the leak are ongoing: one by the Police Bureau’s internal affairs unit and two separate inquiries for which the city hired outside contractors. Those independent investigations will probe the leak itself and the broader culture of the Police Bureau, respectively.

On March 16, Officer Hunzeker resigned abruptly from his role as president of the Portland Police Association, the city’s police union. The PPA said Hunzeker had resigned due to a “serious, isolated mistake” relating to the leak.

To this day, neither the city nor the PPA have released details about Hunzeker’s purported role in the leak. He’s on administrative leave and did not respond to WW’s request for comment.

And on July 29, WW has confirmed, BOEC concluded its investigation into the leak. The investigation resulted in the discipline of three employees, the first on April 17.

“Our investigation found there was no external leak that came from BOEC,” bureau spokesman Dan Douthit said. “The only information shared through gossip by BOEC employees was within public safety.”

One employee received coaching for a minor infraction, Douthit says, while two others were “found to have significantly deviated from bureau policy by gossiping/engaging in unprofessional conduct.” One received a three-day suspension on July 14, and the other a five-day suspension on July 29.

Douthit adds that BOEC sent a reminder to all employees informing them about bureau policies, specifically as they relate to “professional conduct and gossiping.”

“Employees were reminded never to share call information with someone, even internally, without a need to know,” Douthit says.

Wheeler and the City Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the tort claim notice.

Hardesty says the attempt to discredit her cements her belief that Portland police pick and choose whom they serve.

“I certainly could not imagine a situation where I would call the police for assistance today,” she says, “because I don’t have faith that they’re there to protect everyone equally.”

NEWS J U S T I N YA U

Sweeping Up

NO PARKING: A city contractor removes a bicycle from a camp at Laurehurst Park.

Portland’s high-profile sweep of a homeless camp at Laurelhurst Park wasn’t the only one.

BY S OP H I E P E E L

speel@wweek.com

On July 29, television news trucks set up shop along Laurelhurst Park to witness the city’s removal of a 50-tent homeless camp.

It was a delicate operation: the high-profile eviction of people from an iconic park where they had slept for months. That afternoon, the Portland City Council breathed a sigh of relief at a largely peaceful event that resulted in at least 65 people being offered emergency shelter, and three getting the cars they sleep in towed to another location for free.

That week, the city conducted 11 other sweeps that received much less media attention.

Moving west along Southeast Powell Boulevard from 79th Avenue, city contractors rousted campers from small parking lots lining the road. In one of those parking strips along Powell at 75th, a man rocked back and forth on the pavement, screaming and sobbing.

“They take my things, they’re just taking my things,” he moaned. “Why do they keep doing this?”

It wasn’t clear if he was referring to a camp sweep. But other people living in the parking lot said city contractors had removed the camp two days before.

After a yearlong slowdown, Portland is again sweeping out large homeless camps from its sidewalks, parks and wetlands. The average number of sweeps per week has tripled since earlier this year, according to public documents reviewed by WW. A spokesperson for the Portland Office of Management and Finance, the bureau that oversees sweeps, tells WW that’s the new normal: It plans to conduct 10 to 15 camp removals a week for the foreseeable future, up from the four to six sweeps at the beginning of the year.

That’s still a fraction of the average of 40 homeless camps that were swept each week before the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to the OMF spokesperson.

City commissioners tell WW that this middle ground is the result of a carefully crafted policy that sets strict parameters for when and where camps are removed.

But it’s also true that the compromise chosen by City Hall—more sweeps than Portland has seen in a year, but

far fewer than the previous average—reflects a political balancing act between the values of a populace that views sweeps as cruel to the downtrodden and an increasing number of residents and business owners who believe the city’s inattention to large encampments threatens neighborhood safety.

“The new protocols attempt to balance the need to manage public space,” Commissioner Mingus Mapps tells WW, “and the reality that there is currently not enough shelter space or deeply affordable housing to transition every person off the street.”

THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF SWEEPS PER WEEK HAS TRIPLED SINCE EARLIER THIS YEAR, ACCORDING TO PUBLIC DOCUMENTS REVIEWED BY WW.

Not everyone thinks the city has struck the right balance. Kaia Sand, executive director of Street Roots, says the city is wrong to resume sweeps at any scale without giving unhoused people clear directions about where they can go. (The city’s promised “safe rest sites” are still months from opening.)

“It’s still quite vague,” Sand says. “What the city really needs to do is give unhoused people a map that shows where it would be safe to sleep.”

When the pandemic hit, the city temporarily halted all sweeps of homeless encampments, conducting only trash and debris pickups. This fall and winter, camp removals remained uncommon—sometimes none in a week.

During that time, the size of the camps grew.

“Due to our COVID -19 protocols, we significantly reduced the number of campsite removals we performed.

As a result, we saw increased numbers of campsites, and some of them got much bigger than we typically see,” says a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Finance.

The latest official count in 2019 showed that over 2,000 people are living unsheltered in Multnomah County. On

the week of July 18, city documents say, officials received 1,758 calls or emails about 205 camps—and another 523 complaints about people sleeping in vehicles.

In June, the City Council, for the first time ever, passed an ordinance that codified the standards used by the city team that coordinates sweeps to determine which camps were “high impact” and “low impact”. (City officials dislike the term “sweeps” and, in documents, call them “camp removals.”)

Camps where complaints are documented are ranked by the city on a scale of 0 to 5, based on a list of factors that include drug use, the presence of trash as it affects the neighborhood, proximity to schools, parks or homes, the size of the camp, the environmental impact, and reports of crime or violence.

A 2018 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Martin v. Boise ruled that local governments could not criminalize homelessness if they weren’t providing other housing alternatives.

But Juan Chavez, a lawyer with the Oregon Justice Resource Center, says Portland has circumvented the ruling by arguing that its sweeps are done for safety reasons.

The city says camps that qualify for a sweep must contain biohazardous waste, give rise to credible allegations of criminal activity, or consist of eight or more structures, among other criteria.

Last week, the city’s list of camps earmarked for sweeps expanded again.

Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty presented new rules for removing campers from urban forested areas, in order to reduce wildfire risk amid a parched summer.

WW asked Hardesty this week if she thinks the city has struck the right balance in deciding which camps to remove.

“Not yet,” Hardesty replied. “But what I hope we showed at Laurelhurst is that you can actually remove a houseless camp with empathy and people skills and deescalation. It was heartbreaking to have to remove that camp. But I think, with all the City Council working cooperatively together, we were able to do it in a way that caused the least amount of harm possible.”

Raven Drake, an outreach worker at Street Roots, wants the city to show that much care in all of its camp removals. “[At] Laurelhurst, all the commissioners were there with us having conversations. A big camp like Laurelhurst is in the public eye,” Drake says. “But when it’s some camp off of Powell and 82nd, then there isn’t the same outreach to them that you’d do at Laurelhurst, where everyone’s yelling about it.”

The people who’ve been swept say the treatment they receive varies. At 75th and Powell, a homeless couple named Shea and Michael sat in their van.

Shea, who has been homeless for four years, says she’s been swept 15 times. She’s usually gotten 24 to 72 hours’ notice to leave. If campers haven’t left by then, that’s when police come.

“The Rapid Response [Bioclean] guys are actually pretty cool, they feel for us,” Shea says. “They actually bought a few things from me because I needed cash at the time. I had this mini vintage shopping cart, and one of the guys said his daughter would love it and bought it for $5.”

But when the police come after the notice expires?

“They’re looking down their noses at us.”

Others say the removal of a camp only stops people from living there for a matter of days.

While that will not likely be the case for Laurelhurst because of the vocal nature of the neighborhood and the media coverage that’s engulfed it, people with experience on the streets know to pack their belongings and return a few days later.

Paul Woods, a homeowner who lives along Powell at 60th Avenue, says the camp in a parking lot near his house was swept last month. It was repopulated just days later. It now has close to 20 tents and 10 cars. He thinks the camp poses no danger—and the sweeps are pointless.

“My grandkids come over and we play in the yard, and I’ve never had anybody not respect my boundaries,” Woods says. “They’ve moved everybody at least three times in the past two years. Within days, they’re back.”

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Meet the New Portlanders Why would anyone move to Portland in the past year and a half?

COVID, heat domes, downtown protests, Proud Boys, homeless people sleeping on the streets. Those of us who already live here may not be going anywhere soon, but move here?

I’ve lived in Portland for 13 years.

In many ways, I have seen Portland at its best: its jubilant Pride parades, its rose-filled parks, its ever-growing bike lanes, its food carts becoming brickand-mortar restaurants, its cultural enclaves pulling together for mutual aid.

However, my ankle is permanently bruised from a ricocheting munition that hit me on New Year’s Eve while I was reporting on a protest downtown. And during February’s ice storm, houseless people built a fire in an oil drum that filled my building with smoke.

The popular Instagram account @portlandlookslikeshit may be one-sided, but it’s not without its piercing reality that this city seems to be somewhat out of control.

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Yet people are moving to Portland.

According to Portland State University’s Population Research Center, the city saw a steady population increase through 2020. The numbers for 2020-2021 won’t be out until November, but data right now seems to suggest that while the pandemic may have slowed Portland’s population influx, it hasn’t stopped it. The city is growing.

We spoke with several people who have picked up stakes and moved to this city in the past 18 months. Renters and homebuyers. Students, teachers and designers. A scholar from Myanmar and a Black woman from Kentucky. We asked them all the same questions. Why Portland and why now?

They’ll tell you.

—Suzette Smith, Arts & Culture Editor

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The Vegan Vlogger Breann Vaughn has two businesses and attends college online. And she plays the viola. All she wants is a vegan dinner with no questions.

BY SUZ E T T E SM I TH

suzette@wweek.com

“The cat is out of the bag,” Breann Vaughn says in her latest YouTube video. “We never came back from our honeymoon.”

She announces that a month ago she and her husband, Montez, sold most of their possessions and moved from Newport, Ky., to Portland. Vaughn arrived at Portland International Airport with a carry-on bag and her viola case. The couple found a small but bright apartment off Southeast Division.

Though she’s quick to describe herself as a reserved, shy person, Vaughn, who recently turned 30, has been vlogging on YouTube for over a decade—on subjects ranging from college tips (when she was in college) to styling tips for Black hair to how she makes vegan versions of many of her favorite dishes.

“I want to find a niche,” she sighs. “I guess if I have to encapsulate, it’d be lifestyle because the channel changes with me.”

Her following is a respectable 4,650 people. And her voice is wildly addictive, if ASMR is your slice of cake.

Hearing this, she laughs.

“That’s been some of the most recent comments. They just wanted me to say certain phrases or just talk quietly for a long time. My husband was like, ‘You haven’t heard your voice?’”

The channel Allodyno was something she started with her twin brother, Bryson, a Portland rapper who goes by Bryson the Alien. They both grew up in Toledo, Ohio, but musical pursuits brought Bryson out to Portland in 2015.

Vaughn says she moved to Portland for Bryson. But also, she says, because of the opportunities she thinks she can

find here. And lastly, the vegan community of Portland, which she already feels welcomed by.

“Every time we go into a restaurant and try to find a vegan meal, we’re talking to people who know what we mean and we don’t have to explain it,” Vaughn says.

In Kentucky, she found herself constantly explaining what veganism was, to the point where, just before they left for Portland, the couple found out their favorite restaurant had been serving them curry with oyster sauce in it for two years.

“They didn’t know how important it was for us,” Vaughn sighs.

The confusion over Vaughn’s animal- and eco-friendly principles also presented a barrier to her other business: a cleaning company, Shiny Vegan.

“Everything we tried to bring to Kentucky with our business—like using paper straws or reusable microfiber cloths—people had such a hard time understanding it there,” Montez says.

And while Vaughn is new to the homeless problem in Portland, she was charmed to see Portlanders leaving a store and giving their change to someone standing outside.

Between vlogging and filling out the paperwork to start up Shiny Vegan in Portland, Vaughn is also attending an online college to become a paralegal. And playing viola— which she’d been doing since fourth grade. Somehow she works all of it into a sort of harmony.

“Having a YouTube channel but also having a business, I just try to make them flow together,” she says. “I make videos about the hiccups I’m having.”

“I make videos about the hiccups I’m having.”

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The Photographer Family Man The Saputos moved from Brooklyn to Portland to reacquaint their 6-year-old daughter with the natural world. At first, it terrified her.

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state of California, where they both grew up.

“We both really missed the West Coast,” Tim says.

“There’s a general sensibility that’s different than the East Coast, and we really missed being around nature.

But we really didn’t want to live in California.”

Even after you spend a small amount of time with him, Saputo feels like the kind of newbie that Portland should be attracting. As a designer, he’s brought a clean, modern style to promotional campaigns by Google and Squarespace, and he helped create the sleek look of Pax vaporizers.

As do most professionals in his field, Saputo also maintains a creative side hustle, as a freelance photographer.

His photography work is even more stunning than his design efforts.

Whether it’s a sneaky shot of Nick Cave onstage or a candid picture of his daughter, Saputo’s photos feel active and vibrant—even more so when risograph-printed in the pages of his self-published photo books.

Though it hasn’t even been a year since his arrival, Saputo already talks like a native. He’s found his favorite haunts in Woodlawn, like the P’s & Q’s Market, and expounds on the greatness of Eem and Ranch Pizza. But he’s also wise enough not to overstep when WW starts quizzing him about how it feels to see the homeless encampments around the city.

“We really didn’t want to live in California.”

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BY R OBERT HA M @roberthamr Finding an abundance of free time on his hands—as a result of the world grinding to a halt because of the coronavirus pandemic—photographer and graphic designer Tim Saputo and his wife decided to, in his words, “rethink what we wanted out of life.”

After shelter-at-home orders went into effect, Saputo and his family were stuck in their tiny apartment in Brooklyn for the better part of four months. His wife worked from home full time, so Saputo put an end to his freelance career to keep on top of the housework and serve as his young daughter’s pre-K teacher. “I wanted to make sure that we kept some degree of normality,” Saputo says.

But as the pandemic wore on, the prospect of remaining in New York—a city suffering one of the highest rates of infection and COVID-related deaths—became harder and harder to defend.

“It was just so claustrophobic and terrible,” Saputo, 38, says. “Everybody’s just so crammed together. New York has gotten increasingly hard for people, especially working families, to afford to just live there.”

So late last year, the Saputos pulled up stakes and ventured across the country, landing in Portland just as smoke from the wildfires overtook the city. Add in the ice storm a few months later, and the couple began to have some reservations about their decision to relocate here.

But not enough to send them scurrying to the nearby

“I honestly don’t know what to say, because it’s so complicated,” Saputo says after a small pause.

“And I don’t know enough about local politics yet to be able to say that one person has a better solution than another. There’s so much that I don’t know still.”

What Saputo can speak about with confidence is how much better it feels for him and his family to reconnect with the natural world after years cloistered in an ultra-urban environment.

Taking a trip to the woods, for example, used to be an all-day nightmare that included renting a car and fighting traffic for three hours. Now, the Saputos are less than 20 minutes away from a forest hike or camping trip.

That said, their proximity to nature was a bit of an adjustment for the youngest member of their family.

“When my daughter first got here, a plant would blow in the wind and she’d be like, ‘Aaaah!’” Saputo says, laughing. “Now she’s off climbing trees.”

The Well-Traveled Rocker Camper Van Beethoven bassist Victor Krummenacher toured Portland for decades with his many bands and music projects. Now he’s here to stay and climbing back onstage with Eyelids.

BY JASON COHEN

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When Camper Van Beethoven bassist Victor Krummenacher, 56, stepped off the stage of the Aladdin Theater in January 2020, he expected to be back in Portland soon.

Third Mind, a new band he’d formed with longtime collaborator and guitarist David Immerglück, was scheduled to play Mississippi Studios in April. There were talks of solo shows and sharing a bill with Portland singer-songwriter Casey Neill to support Krummenacher’s ninth album, Blue Pacific. Lastly, after leaving his longtime home of San Francisco and his designer job at Wired for the freelance life, Krummenacher was also keeping tabs on Portland real estate.

Needless to say, most of that didn’t happen— except he did move to Portland.

Krummenacher spent the first four months of pandemic lockdown living with his mom in Riverside, Calif. Then he bid on a house in Portland’s Alameda neighborhood sight unseen—other than a Redfin listing and an iPhone tour. He got the keys in July, around the same time Department of Homeland Security officers showed up at the ongoing demonstrations in Chapman Square.

“I was eating tacos at some kind of yuppie taco place,” Krummenacher remembers. “And there’s like tear gas. [The servers] came up like, ‘You need to leave. We’ll just put your margarita into a to-go cup.’”

Krummenacher was drawn to Portland by the same things many people are: its fusion of big-city culture and proximity to nature and, yes, its progressive mindset.

He says he knows enough about Portland’s history to understand the city’s racist legacy, but “part of the benefit of having a liberal-minded culture is that at least you have awareness,” Krummenacher says. “People are willing to actually look at things. There are a lot of communities here that look out for each other, and that is good. Because if it gets gnarlier, at least you have some people who will be fighting good fights.”

Krummenacher doesn’t buy into the “Portland is dying” hype.

“On some levels, this town is pretty messed up,” he says. “And then, on other levels, when I hear people complain, I’m like, ‘Have you really spent time in Los Angeles? Have you really spent time in the Bay Area?’ Because yeah, the homeless thing is bad here, but it’s really bad in the Bay Area. It’s horrific in Los Angeles. There are plenty of places in Los Angeles where you can see everything you see in Portland, sometimes on a larger scale. It’s just: America.”

Krummenacher describes himself as “not completely anti-police, but yeah: Defund the shit out of it and make it more accountable.” He also didn’t have to live here long to diagnose the city’s basic problem. “It would be nice if the mayor wasn’t a police chief,” he says. “That’s just super not OK, on so many levels! The commission thing is stupid.

The city should just rip off the Band-Aid and get a real city council. That would really help things I think—more than people can imagine.”

The other reason Krummenacher made Portland home was that he already knew a ton of people, going back to the ’80s heyday of college

rock. Quasi’s Sam Coomes, Jackpot Recording Studio’s Larry Crane and Janet Weiss were friends.

Camper Van Beethoven tours forged connections with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, the Young Fresh Fellows’ Scott McCaughey, and Dharma Bums’ John Moen and Jeremy Wilson. Much more recently, Krummenacher has shared a bunch of bills with Moen and Christopher Slusarenko’s band Eyelids.

During the pandemic, Krummenacher couldn’t see those friends. He also lost several back in California to the coronavirus and couldn’t help but be reminded of living through the AIDS epidemic as a gay man in San Francisco in the ’80s and ’90s. He spent most of his days walking alone, sometimes going as far away as Mount Tabor (a solid 9- to 10-mile round trip), and home recording a new solo album, Silver Smoke of Dreams.

Still unable to play live or socialize when the second lockdown hit in the late fall, Krummenacher seriously considered undoing the whole thing and heading back to California. But then he got vaccinated and also got a call from Moen and Slusarenko. Their longtime bassist Jim Talstra (another former Dharma Bum) was leaving Eyelids; did he want to join the band?

“I like those guys personally a lot, I like their music a lot, and I haven’t really played music like that—the power pop thing—much,” Krummenacher says. “They have an audience and I can be in front of people and, also, they’re thoughtful. They think about what they want to do and how they want to do it. It means something to them. That’s important now.”

Pandemic protocols permitting, Krummenacher will see a stage again very soon. The new Eyelids lineup makes its official debut at Mississippi Studios on Oct. 16. “At this point,” he says, “really all I want is just to continue to play and be creative.”

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“It would be nice if the mayor wasn’t a police chief.”

@cohenesque

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CO U R T E SY O F J O R DA N PA I N G

The Student Far From Home

“I am saddened by the poverty and the vulnerability of drug addiction and mental illness in the unhoused community,” Paing says.

Paing eventually moved to Northeast Portland, where the issue is less apparent. Still, in his eyes, the city’s leadership should put forth more effort to find solutions to end the homelessness epidemic.

“I’ve seen them yell at people,” he says. “I was shocked by the yelling, but I didn’t really feel unsafe.”

An architecture student from Yangon, the capital of Myanmar, Paing moved to Portland to complete a master’s degree in historical preservation at the University of Oregon. “I want to learn about the preservation of historical urban structures,” Paing says. “I want to be able to take these skills back to Myanmar.”

Though initially drawn to the East Coast for its much older cities, Paing ended up choosing Portland because of a scholarship he received. He also liked that the city’s interest in environmentalism aligned with his own.

Much of Paing’s time here in Portland is—ironically enough—spent in Zoom classrooms, the COVID-era nightmare of higher education right now.

He also can’t help but be drawn into Portland-area demonstrations with other like-minded members of the local Burmese community.

“I want to organize more food fairs, expand Burmese food fairs to the Portland community.” Paing says. “Food is

Jordan Paing came to Portland to study historical preservation, only to see his home country deteriorate from afar.

BY JU STI N YAU

@Pdocumentarians

Two months after Jordan Paing moved to Portland, there was a coup in his home country of Myanmar.

He found out on social media, seeing a Jan. 31 post from a friend back home. Paing called and they told him officials of Myanmar’s pro-democracy government had been arrested by the Burmese military.

“I tried to text everyone,” Paing explained. “You know, to wake up and be prepared, since it was 4 in the morning in Myanmar. I finally reached my mother after an hour and a half.”

Two months earlier, Paing, 25, stepped into the cold December air outside Portland International Airport, it was his first time in the U.S., let alone Portland.

At first, he lived in the Pearl District. Despite the street demonstrations on a near-nightly basis and the dire December-January spike in new COVID cases, what bothered Paing the most was the plight of the homeless that was the backdrop of his new neighborhood.

CO U R T E SY O F J O R DA N PA I N G

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“I want to learn about the preservation of historical urban structures.” a very subtle cultural product. You can touch people of other cultural backgrounds with food.”

Paing has a big passion for food—he likes eating it as much or more than making it—and hopes to enjoy more of the city’s rich food culture, carts and eateries before finishing the final year of his program.

“I’m looking forward to Portland’s night scene, the bar scene, the live music,” he says.

As society opens up again and before he decides whether or not to return to Myanmar, Paing has a chance to experience the Portland he’s heard so much about.

“Everything is up in the air right now,” he says, a twinge of hope and uncertainty in his voice.

The Wry Remote Teacher Comedian Rachel Rosenthal spent quarantine teaching Facebook employees how to communicate—with theater!

BY S U Z E T T E S M I T H

suzette@wweek.com

“More people have warned me about locking my car and hiding my valuables here than in 10 years of living in New York,” Rachel Rosenthal says.

Rosenthal has a big-city vibe about her. She grew up in Connecticut, and her parents, New Yorkers themselves, frequently encouraged her to take the train into the city alone.

People who weren’t from there were like, “Isn’t it dangerous to go to the city?”

The irony is that Rosenthal, 42, is no stranger to theft.

Though she’s a comedian and improviser, she’s also NPR famous for a particularly jaw-dropping episode of This American Life called “The Perils of Intimacy” in which she unpacked the experience of having her romantic partner steal her identity, repeatedly—for years.

Perhaps that’s why it’s so nice to hear that things are going well for her. She’s married—to another comedian-performer, Sam De Roest. They have an adorable podcast together and an adorable dog. And since August of 2020, she lives in Portland.

Despite the theater and comedy scene tanking hard last year, Rosenthal’s career as a corporate improv teacher has, strangely enough, boomed. She’s been teaching workshops, primarily for Facebook. “They’re a little startup. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them,” Rosenthal jokes.

“When the pandemic hit, and we really began to get a sense of the scope, I thought I was going to be making zero income.” Rosenthal says. “What I’ve found is that companies seem to need connection now more than ever.”

Teaching remote improv theater to tech employees suited Rosenthal fine. She didn’t want to try to innovate over Zoom. “My art form is completely based on eye contact and in-person communication,” she says. “Trying to perform improv on Zoom lacks all the things that make it fun.”

Instead, she started a podcast with her husband called Sam and Rachel’s Generation Gap, built around the 12-year difference in their ages—her husband is 30. They take turns explaining two pop culture items every episode, one from her childhood and one from his.

The episodes are funny and warm and include moments like De Roest interrogating an extremely stoned Rosenthal, in transit on the subway, over the makeup of the fellowship of the nine. She guesses, “Sauron?”

In August, the pair moved to Portland, undeterred by reports of ongoing protests—actually inspired that a city would care so much about Black lives.

“We were living in a very small apartment, a fourth floor walk-up, with a galgo (a Spanish greyhound). It was August, so every day was like 100 degrees. Sure, we knew about the protests, but there was just so much other stuff going on.

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“You can tell that downtown isn’t what it used to be.”

“At that point, protests weren’t going to stop us. We needed to get somewhere we could live and breathe and have two people work from home for an extended period of time.”

Living in outer Southeast, Rosenthal maintains a view of Portland that consists mostly of flowers, gardens and friendly neighbors. When hers saw two New Yorkers struggling to figure out their garden, they walked over and gifted them a pair of shears. “She was like, ‘Here, I just picked these up for you.’”

Not everything is roses, though. Someone recently stole the catalytic converter from a car owned by one of Rosenthal’s visiting friends, effectively stranding the car for weeks: “She had to go back to Ashland. She has no way to get to work right now. It’s terrible.”

“You can tell that downtown isn’t what it used to be,” Rosenthal says. “I don’t attribute that to the pandemic and protests. I might attribute that to a city that was booming and grew too fast.”

For all its troubles one year in, the magic Rosenthal felt when she moved to Portland is still part of her everyday life.

“Just walking my dog every day in Southeast, I stop to smell flowers every day. I don’t want to get sick of it, and I don’t want to get over it. Now that things are opening up, I feel like I just got here.”

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

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YOUR BACKSTAGE PASS TO THE WWEEK NEWSROOM Join the Dive podcast every Saturday as we quickly cover the week’s headlines, and then dive deeper into the big stories of the week. Host Hank Sanders sits down with the paper’s staff as well as the biggest names in Portland to discuss the city and the events that change lives.

The Dive podcast by Willamette Week is the best way to stay up to date with Portland’s news, sports, arts, and culture.

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AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE

STREET

MERMAID PARADE Photos by Chris Nesseth On Instagram: @chrisnesseth

Despite the heat, hundreds donned fishtails, or showed up to show their appreciation for fishtails, Saturday, July 31, at Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

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STARTERS

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

RE AD MORE AB OU T T H E S E STORI E S AT WWE E K .COM.

RIDICULOUS

THOMAS TEAL

Sushi Ichiban, Portland’s sushi-go-round that serves sushi via toy train, reopens for dine-in service.

COMFORT SHOES FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider releases Please Move West, the first of several protest-themed ciders the local cidery plans to release.

Bracing for possible 100-plus-degree heat, Gov. Kate Brown and Mayor Ted Wheeler declare respective states of emergency. Saved again by good ol’ cloud cover, Portland stays in the ’90s.

The anonymously installed statue of York on Mount Tabor is toppled and partially shattered.

McMinnville’s ForeLand Beer announces it will open a second taproom in the old Rocking Frog Cafe.

Fri Aug 27 – Sat Aug 28 South Park Blocks

paseopdx.com

AARON WESSLING

A new track from one of WW’s Best New Bands of 2020, Maita, simultaneously lampoons and longs for the open road.

BRIAN BROSE

AARON MESH

Oregon bars and restaurants facing a workforce shortage are paying staff more.

PASEO

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BRIAN BURK

DANIEL DENISON

EarthLab Libations announces it intends to start selling beer and kombucha out of a rare Italian box truck on Southeast Belmont.

Mon-Sat 10-6pm Sunday 11-5pm

Portland officials, worried about wildfires in the city’s urban forests, approved new protocols for removing campers in locations like Forest Park and Powell Butte.

WHERE DO YOU READ WILLAMETTE WEEK? @smokeshowk9 #READWW

SERIOUS Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

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GET BUSY

STUFF TO DO THIS WEEK, IN PORTLAND AND AT THE COAST.

GO | DJ Action Slacks After more than a year and a half of waiting, you can finally get down to an in-person DJ set again.

DJ Action Slacks has long been one of Portland’s favorites—her knowledge of early soul and R&B is as deep as her crates of vinyl. This set is loosely themed as a ’50s and ’60s dance party, and as always, Action Slacks will be spinning the most danceable jams from the era. Best of all, it’ll be held on Kenton Club’s outdoor patio for COVID safety and under high-velocity fans for a reprieve from the heat. Kenton Club, 2025 N Kilpatrick St., kentonclub.com. 6 pm Saturday, Aug 7. $10.

NEON

SEE | Pig

If you’re making a movie about Oregon truffle hunting, it’s almost a given you’d call the Czarnecki family— four generations of mushroom seekers and savants, and the current proprietors of the Joel Palmer House Restaurant in Dayton. Through that niche expertise, brothers Stefan and Christopher Czarnecki ended up integral resources for the acclaimed new indie film Pig, starring the inimitable Nicolas Cage as a hermetic Oregon woodsman pursuing his abducted truffle-hunting pig through a noir reimagining of Portland’s culinary underbelly. Pig contains one of the finest and subtlest Cage performances of the past decade, and substantial pieces of Czarnecki family iconography too: matriarch Heidi’s trademark mushroom tart, Stefan’s freshly picked Mount Hood mushrooms, chef Christopher’s cast iron skillet—even a bottle of Joel Palmer House pinot noir. You can watch the results of their work at multiple theaters across the Portland metro area this week. Screens at various theaters.

If you’re a fan of Mercatus— Portland’s magazine and directory dedicated to uplifting BIPOC business owners—you’ll want to check out its affiliated festival, My People’s Market, which takes over the North Parks Blocks this weekend for three days of music, food and wares sold by local vendors. Now considered the largest BIPOC market in the Pacific Northwest, My People’s Market has proved a terrific place to scope artworks, jewelry, fashion and wellness items from local BIPOC creators.

North Park Blocks, 235 NW Park Ave., mypeoplesmarket.com/ mpm-7. 4-8 pm Friday, noon-6 pm Saturday-Sunday, Aug. 6-8.

SEE | Fantastic Planet

SEE | Drive-In Movie Spectacular: Bill & Ted’s Excellent

Adventure Pack a carload and hit the drive-in at the Expo Center to while away a temperate Portland evening in front of the Drive-In Movie Spectacular’s 60-foot screen with professional-level sound.

Presented in collaboration with the Hollywood Theatre, these outdoor movie nights sold like hotcakes last year. With everything opening back up, you can actually get a ticket now. Musical performance by Dirty Princess Band. Portland Expo Center, 2060 N Marine Drive, expocenter.org. Doors open at 7 pm, film begins at dusk Thursday, Aug. 5. $40 per car, $10 for bike- and walk-ins.

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In this French animated sci-fi classic, a society of giant blue aliens kidnap humans from Earth and bring them to their home planet of Ygam, where they keep some of them as pets. The wild humans, however, are planning a revolution. Featuring gorgeous hand-drawn animation and effective allegory, Fantastic Planet is, well, fantastic. Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., 503238-5588, cstpdx.com. 10 pm Friday, Aug. 6. $6.

C J . M O N S E R R AT

O R I O N P I C T U R E S CO R P/CO U RT E SY E V E R E T T CO L L E C T I O N

☛ DO | My People’s Market

GO | Seaside Prom Centennial Seaside’s 1.5-mile ocean-view walkway, better known as “The Prom,” is about as close as you can get to one of the iconic rollicking Jersey shore boardwalks without buying a plane ticket.

Oregon’s version is typically clogged with all sorts of colorful tourists and features the beach on one side and Seaside’s carnivalesque downtown on the other, complete with a carousel, knickknack shops, and taffy makers on seemingly every corner. This August, the Promenade turns 100, and the city of Seaside is hosting a centennial commemoration. Festivities kick off with a parade, which flows into a ceremony at the iconic turnaround. Community dignitaries will bury a time capsule and break a bottle of sea water—an act that christened the Prom in 1921. After that, buy an ice cream cone and a bag of caramel corn and stroll the length of it yourself—it’s the quintessential summer experience on our coast. Parade begins at Seaside City Hall, 989 Broadway St. 10 am Saturday, Aug. 7. Ceremony to follow parade. Free.

GO | Gaytheist Mississippi Studios is finally back. The beloved venue hosted a reopening party last month, but this weekend is when its return to a full calendar really kicks off. Fittingly, Mississippi Studios has booked one of Portland’s most celebratory punk bands for its returning weekend. Gaytheist released their fifth album, How Long Have I Been on Fire?, in April 2020. Like many artists who ended up dropping a full-length during the pandemic, it feels like the hardcore trio is only now getting to relish the album’s release. Hopefully, that’ll just mean the band’s set will be even more high spirited than usual. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., mississippistudios.com. 8 pm Saturday, Aug. 7. $5. 21+.

GET OUTSIDE POP-UP REPORT

Fresh Cut Flowers In a little white room above Cloudforest, you can buy actual and conceptual flowers, including dried arrangements by Manu Torres.

BY SUZ E T T E SM ITH

suzette@wweek.com

In a little white room above the Cloudforest chocolate shop on Southeast Morrison, flowers are for sale—some real and some conceptual. The pop-up, which runs until Labor Day weekend, represents a foray into physical space for two clothing brand designers, Trey Hales and James Fink.

The shop takes its name from Hales’ brand Fresh Cut Flowers, and the pop-up seems largely under his direction, but Fink’s apparel is also on display—limited item creations for a brand called Daag. The brands are similar insofar as both are the projects of graphic designers and make very limited runs of each item.

Despite the abundance of apparel, the flowers—or the idea of them—are the shop’s main focus.

The original idea of the upstairs pop-up was that Hales and Fink would sell clothes and a local floral designer Cody Shulund would sell actual fresh cut flowers. “But the first weekend, we found that this environment wasn’t conducive to keeping flowers fresh.” Hales explains. “I said, ‘Well, do you want to do dry ones?’ So he made that installation.”

Shulund sculpted a massive dried flower arrangement that seems to grow up around two mirrors in the loft, then force its way through an interior window until it curls around the upstairs entrance. It lends an art gallery feel to the already white-walled space.

“As the flowers dry, it continues to change,” Hales points out.

Hales still wanted to sell bouquets to keep with the pop-up’s original theme. And that’s how Fresh Cut Flowers became a place—the only place—where you can walk in and buy a dried flower bouquet by local artist Manu Torres.

“People come in specifically for his stuff. They’re looking for specific things like these pink fuzzies,” Hales says, gesturing to a bouquet on his counter. “There’s nowhere else to get grab-and-go bouquets of his projects.”

Since Torres was already making arrangements for Cloudforest below, the partnership came together easily.

Hales has run Fresh Cut Flowers as an online label since 2018, but he’s been designing apparel for much of his adult life.

“I started off in the DIY [music] scene helping with tour management and merchandising,” Hales says. “But then, when I started working for slightly bigger bands, the merch I was selling—I just thought it was so bad.”

Hales realized designing band merch was something he was good at and loved doing. He still designs for artists on a freelance basis. “Now, what I work on are entire spreads of merch; if they want the look to be really cohesive.”

The cohesion and constraint of Fresh Cut Flowers lie in Hales’ playfulness around the idea of flowers and floral arrangements in general.

The bulk of his wares are hoodies, sweatshirts and graphic tees. But he’s been trying to push out, into concepts like hats and hoodies that say “Florist,” a label that could be taken any number of ways.

“I was thinking, if I design something flower-based, illustration-based or repurposing floral imagery,” he says, “is that some kind of floral work? Am I a florist?”

TREY HALES

As the flowers dry, it continues to change.

GO: Fresh Cut Flowers pop-up, 727 SE Morrison St., shopfreshcutflowers.com. Noon-4 pm Friday-Sunday.

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

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FOOD & DRINK

YAYA

feature

BBQ Duck Summer A guided tour of Portland’s best Cantonese barbecue spots.

BY A N D R E A DA M E WO O D

@adamewood

Step away from the hamburger and ribs—this summer, it’s all about the Cantonese barbecue.

Pork and duck, marinated and roasted in ways that create crispy skin, and tender meat laced with the flavors of hoisin, soy and star anise. And of those Cantonese specialties, I present a holy trinity of sorts: roasted duck, chopped whole and bone-in, flush with flavor; roasted pork belly, rendered well and with a perfectly crisp layer of skin on the top; and char siu pork, sliced and infused with hoisin and soy. Sometimes there’s also steamed soya chicken, and that’s fine too, but those three are the supreme meats.

Newcomer YāYā PDX brings takeout Cantonese barbecue to a close-in neighborhood, with delicious results, which inspired me to take a li’l tour of all my favorite spots, just in case you too would like to subsist on leftover duck for the better part of a month. (Pro tip: It makes fantastic fried rice.)

ROASTED: The duck at YāYā PDX is the most five-spice forward.

Chen’s Good Taste Unless you’re a vegetarian, I can’t think of a tastier sight than the roasted meats hanging near the entrance to Chen’s Good Taste, a holdout in downtown’s Chinatown. To be perfectly honest, the finest way to have the meats at Good Taste are by ordering Super Bowl A, an absolute unit of soup that’s filled with noodles, wontons and bok choy and topped with roast duck and roast and barbecue pork. It is nigh on physically impossible to finish in one go.

But if you’re not in a soup mood, each of the trinity is sold by the pound or is available in all sorts of dishes. The roasted pork here is a true delicacy, perfectly salty and not too fatty. The contrasting crunchy skin hits just the right textural note in a blend of fat and umami that I crave regularly. Chen’s know this is its signature meat: You can order an entire pig, and it’s a bucket-list birthday plan of mine.

YāYā PDX Owner and chef Steven Chin calls Cantonese barbecue his soul food, and you really feel that. The streamlined menu focuses on serving meat over rice with hot mustard, dipping sauce and pickled cucumber and carrot. It’s simple and it’s great.

Of the three in our meat triumvirate, YāYā particularly nails the duck and char siu pork. Of all the duck I’ve sampled (and it’s been many; sorry to my avian friends), Chin’s is the most five-spice forward.

The ducks he selects also have more meat on the bones than many of the others, leading to luscious full bites of bird. As Cantonese duck is served chopped and bone-in, this means a bigger and better pay off as you nibble.

The char siu is even better—tender and softly sweet, it’s a far cry from the red food coloring-spiked barbecue pork served at some establishments. In both cases, the juices from the meat make their way into the bed of rice, which is itself perfectly cooked and seasoned beyond standard steamed rice. The one downside to YāYā’s dishes is that all of the rich meats are accompanied by sweet sauces, and while the pickles have a bit of acid, they also are a bit sugary, meaning the whole meal tends a bit toward the saccharine. Bites of rice and throwing an order of the cool, crisp cabbage salad onto your order maintains balance.

Chin’s Cantonese approach, done in partnership with Portland restaurateur Micah Camden, is certainly geared more toward a crowd on Alberta than in the Jade District, but the cheffy turns he takes make for a great takeout meal.

YĀYĀ’S CHEF STEVEN CHIN

EAT: Chen’s Good Taste, 18 NW 4th Ave., 503-223-3838, chensgoodtaste.com.

EAT: YāYā PDX, 1451 NE Alberta St., 503-477-5555, yayapdx.com.

YAYA

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FOOD & DRINK Happy Dragon

EAT: Happy Dragon, 707 NE 82nd Ave., 503-256-3828, happydragonchineserestaurant.com.

Pure Spice Known more for its fresh-from-the-kitchen dim sum, Pure Spice low key holds it down in the Cantonese barbecue category as well. Pure Spice doesn’t mess with a roast pork belly but makes up for it with its barbecue pork. It’s just a shade more tender and meatier than most, and lacks the overt sweetness that is often typical in a char siu situation.

Where to drink this week.

HOT PLATES

TOP 5

Where to eat this week.

1. Jackie’s

Jackie’s, 930 SE Sandy Blvd., jackiespdx.com. 4 pm-midnight Monday-Friday, 11 am-1 am Saturday, 11 am-midnight Sunday.

It’s easy to mistake Jackie’s for its predecessor Century Bar—all dolled up with a new paint job and potted plants—but for its chic veneer, Jackie’s is a sports bar at heart. Wide-screen TVs are just about anywhere you look, playing the game at a volume level where your friends can talk trash but not have to scream in each other’s faces. The cocktail pitchers are technically the better deal per glass, but the signature house drinks are easier to switch between and worth the range. The gorgeous watermelon-hibiscus-lime agua fresca margarita was our favorite. We awarded the silver medal to the confectionary halva mule—the fruity, slightly bitter (and therefore gay icon) Ms. Pittman made due with the bronze.

1. Miami Nice

2117 NE Oregon St., 818-200-5571, miaminicepdx. com. Noon-9 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

At Miami Nice, you may not immediately realize you’re eating vegan. The croquettas are fried up tightly, and the Cubanito is neatly pressed. Many menu items are versions of street/comfort food that owner Valerie Espinoza loves—with a vegan twist.

The chop salad comes with marinated soy curls on top instead of chicken. The dish’s bright yellow sauce draws stares; it’s a mixture of curry, mustard and mayonnaise she worked on to get just right. Other menu items stand out for their Mami-specific flavor, like the Big Papi, which has green olives in the picadillo instead of raisins. The starchy food works well to stave off the high ABV in beers at Culmination Brewing, where Espinoza runs the kitchen.

2. The Red Fox

5128 N Albina Ave., 503-282-2934, redfoxpdx.com. 3 pm-midnight daily.

The Red Fox’s entire food and drink menu consists of fewer than 10 items. That’s one way of reading this tucked-away, no-frills joint. Another way is to call it what it is—a genuine neighborhood treasure adored by all who know of its existence. The Red Fox is the very definition of “local”: It’s a small spot featuring cozy outside tables, cool music and a precious, low-key vibe.

3. Good Luck Charm

203 SE Grand Ave., facebook.com/goodluckcharmpdx. 4 pm-2:30 am Tuesday-Thursday, 4-10 pm FridayMonday.

Formerly the Elvis Room, formerly East End, Good Luck Charm is the same old bar under a new name, with all the same Elvis Room stuff on the walls—including that enormous, mesmerizing painting of a bored-looking, long-hair cat. New menu, new drinks, who dis? Good Luck Charm’s basement has a powerful chill and a secondary, subterranean bar that opens on weekends or “when it gets busy.”

4. Hammer & Stitch

2377 NW Wilson St., 971-254-8982, hsbrew.co. 11:30 am-8 pm Wednesday-Thursday, 11:30 am -9 pm Friday-Saturday, 11:30 am-7:30 pm Sunday.

A visit to the Hammer & Stitch taproom will remind you of an earlier era of craft beer, when breweries often popped up on the industrial fringes and tracking them down felt like a scavenger hunt. The brewery’s motto is “Keep it simple stupid,” but “simple” does not equate to dull. The lager stands out for its bracing minimalism—each straw yellow sip is light, crisp and offers a quick burst of bubbles.

5. Roadside Attraction

AARON LEE

2. Cool Moon

ADAM BABKES

Pick the menu option that lets you order the roast duck, steamed chicken (another Cantonese classic), and barbecue pork together for $22.50, and then spend some time with the rest of the menu: Grab some har gow shrimp dumplings, a scallion pancake and a rice noodle roll with XO sauce for maximum sampling satisfaction.

EAT: Pure Spice, 2446 SE 87th Ave., 503-772-1808, purespicerestaurant. com.

TOP 5

CHRISTINE DONG

This Independence, Ore., restaurant is a central valley favorite for duck, and when the owners moved to Northeast 82nd, they immediately upped Portland’s duck game as well.

Happy Dragon is most famous for its super-crunchy and deeply seasoned Peking duck, but the roast duck is something a little more accessible for everyday eating. A little less crispy than Peking, the roast duck maintains its juiciness, with the meat absorbing the rendered fat, while the skin is a vehicle for the 18 ingredients used in the marinade. Here the barbecue Pork is a bit of an afterthought, and the roast pork belly is totally serviceable. You won’t go wrong ordering either of them, as long as you don’t skip that duck.

BUZZ LIST

1000 SE 12th Ave., 503-233-0743. 3-11 pm daily.

Shrouded in foliage and draped in all sorts of rusting accoutrements, from license plates to dock equipment, the front patio of Roadside Attraction has always felt like a refuge from the modern world. That it’s still cash only after all these years only exacerbates the sense that the place somehow exists off the grid.

1105 NW Johnson St., 503-224-2021, coolmoonicecream.com. Noon-10 pm daily.

For conventional ice cream, we’ve long loved Cool Moon best. The chocolate flavors are more Valrhona than Hershey’s, and there remains a solid core of unusual—but consistently creamy—naturally flavored and well-balanced offerings. Definitely order the kulfi, redolent of cardamom and rose water, Thai iced tea and Mexican-influenced horchata cookie.

3. Nacheaux

8145 SE 82nd Ave., 971-319-1134, nacheauxpdx.com.

Noon-7 pm Wednesday-Thursday and Saturday, noon-8 pm Friday, 9 am-3 pm Sunday.

At Anthony Brown’s garishly teal-colored food truck, Mexican favorites get hitched to Southern food and Cajun-Creole flavors. You can find “Mexicajun” food in both Louisiana and Southeast Texas, but it’s a rare concept in Portland, if not entirely unheard of. The “Nacheaux nachos” start with a big pile of fresh-fried chips and also feature carnitas that could just as easily be cochon au lait, while a cheesy “crunchwrap” comes stuffed with red beans, dirty rice and fried chicken.

4. Cully Central

4579 NE Cully Blvd., 503-206-8911, cully-central. business.site. 4-10 pm Monday-Friday, 11 am-10 pm Saturday, 11 am-9 pm Sunday.

Cully Central is something unique in Portland: a Lao beer bar with 20 handles, boasting favorites from Breakside and pFriem. It turns out dishes you can’t find anywhere else, in particular a subtle khao piek sen chicken noodle soup with thick and chewy rice noodles and a light cinnamon and pepper broth.

5. Cooperativa

1250 NW 9th Ave., 971-275-2762, cooperativapdx. com. 7 am-8 pm Tuesday-Saturday.

Cooperativa has a lot of what you need in a beautiful, air-conditioned environment—it’s a grocery store, a coffee shop, an ice cream place, a sandwich shop, a bar, a restaurant and a pizzeria, infused with the vibe and flavors of Bologna, Florence, Rome and the Italian “slow food” movement. Never go outside again!

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

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Need something to do?

Got a special event to share?

Check out wweek.com/calendar to find out what’s happening around town.

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POTLANDER

Cannibis of Champions ///////////////////

Canna-recovery remedies for the fitness-minded.

BY B R I A N N A W H EE LE R

I dig the Olympics, not because I’m an athlete, but because I am a very committed gym stoner.

My high-level routine involves hotboxing in the gym parking lot and rolling up to the ellipticals smelling like I’m made of weed. Of course, space-out cardio is a personal preference, and while astral traveling at Planet Fitness might help me go harder and last longer, it certainly does not increase my motor skills—as evidenced by how often I trip on the stair climber.

Cannabis may not increase my dexterity, but it absolutely works wonders for my recovery. I’m far from alone in my enthusiasm for cannabis-assisted preparation and recuperation when it comes to physical fitness.

Even for athletes complying with World Anti-Doping Agency standards, isolated CBD is an acceptable part of an everyday wellness routine. The anti-inflammatory, pain-relieving, sleep-supporting compounds in cannabis all encourage speedy post-workout recovery, but when used pre-workout, CBD (as well as other, non-WADA-acceptable cannabinoids) can reduce the anxiety, stress and depression associated with launching a new fitness routine, setting new goals or even competing.

Bottom line: For fitness enthusiasts at every level—from spaced-out cardio moms to professional competitors—there are cannabis products, both psychotropic and non-intoxicating, to support healthy workouts, a balanced state of mind, and a speedy recovery.

/////////////////// PRE-WORKOUT ///////////////////

////////////////// POST-WORKOUT ///////////////////

Quill CBD Vape Pen Quill’s disposable CBD pen is my go-to for quick hits of CBD pre-workout, specifically on mornings when I get to the gym ready to prove something. The consistent draw delivers a smooth 10 to 15 mg hit of full-spectrum hemp extract with a mild but sweet template of terps. The inhale is silky, and the exhale is floral and discreet. Bonus, the slimline design of the pen is super inconspicuous, in case users would rather not advertise their pre-workout curb vaping.

One or two measured sips of this pen and I’m ensured a quick recovery turnaround. Plus, it does a serviceable job of tempering whatever aggressive strain I smoked before I crossed the gym’s threshold, making me less likely to eat it on the stair climber (again).

Lazarus Naturals Relief + Recovery CBD Balm When the few lingering injuries I’ve collected over the years (busted knee, dislocated shoulder, Angry Birds ankle) are aggravated by exercise, weather or sleeping wrong, I reach for a cannabis-infused salve. Recently, I found significant relief from the metallic pang of burned-out knee with a liberal smear of Lazarus Naturals Relief + Recovery balm.

It features full-spectrum CBD, bolstered by familiar topicals capsaicin and menthol. The formula is not as pungent as an Icy Hot or a Tiger Balm but is similarly effective nonetheless. The application is light, non-greasy and only mildly fragranced.

Get it from: Make and Mary, 2506 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-444-7608, makeandmary.com.

Serra Woodblock Chocolate 2:1 CBD:THC Caramels If it feels counterintuitive to pop a chocolate bonbon in your mouth before launching into a fitness routine, please reconsider. Pre-workout chocolate is arguably the best chocolate: It can lift your spirits, put some pep in your step and, in moderation, help maintain healthy blood sugar levels. Plus, chocolate’s natural terpenes harmonize well with those in cannabis.

Serra’s Woodblock chocolate collabs are foremost, a stellar chunk of chocolate full of heart-healthy antioxidants. The thoughtful cannabinoid balance is what makes these confections extraordinary. When timed right, activation can occur as your workout winds down, bolstering recovery and adding some sparkle to a natural endorphin buzz. Starting your workout with chocolate and ending it with a manageable buzz is a great way to stay engaged in the routine long term.

Get it from: Serra, 2519 SE Belmont St., 971-544-7055, shopserra.com.

Edibology Relieving Green Cannacubes 5:1 CBD:THC Alternatively, if the idea of chocolate-fueled workouts already feels attractive, investing in at least one sack of Ediblogy’s Green Cannacubes is a great way to get a no-frills chocolate fix that unfolds into some potent post-workout recovery.

These eensy cubes are small enough to be guilt-free but still manage to pack a substantial dose of CBD in each serving. Additionally, the cannabinoid profile is rounded out with just enough THC to rose-tint an established THC user’s outlook, or give a lower tolerance user a giggly boost of euphoria.

Get it from: potmatespdx.com

Get it from: lazarusnaturals.com Chalice Farms RXO 1:1 Dermal Patches For fitness enthusiasts working through chronic pain, Chalice Farms’ dermal patches might be a solution worth exploring. Designed to deliver a constant dose of topical medication, these are an easy-to-use alternative to slathering your painful areas with salves, lotions, gels or oils.

On an afternoon of stationary biking, for example, this particular patch stayed affixed to my kneecap throughout, dulling the residual chronic pain of an erstwhile moped accident without making my legs greasy. During free weights, a patch applied to my wrist kept my carpal tunnel in check without leaving my hands too oily to grip the weights.

Get it from: Chalice Farms, 5333 SE Powell Blvd., 503-788-9999, chalicefarms.com.

Sugarbud Animal Face For some, the sense of accomplishment that follows a formidable workout calls for more than gently sipped concentrate or the application of massage oil. Big juicy weed nugs are, perhaps, the only correct way to celebrate the end of a sesh. In those cases, a cultivar with a terp profile and cannabinoid balance, bred specifically for anti-inflammation, pain relief and mind-blowing, couch-locking highs is a pretty effective way to lean into both canna-recovery and general cannathusiasm Animal Face is a cross of Animal Mints and Face Off OG known for its powerfully blissful body high, cottony-soft head high, and fast-acting pain and inflammation relief. Pro tip: Finishing out the sesh with this phenotype might also effectively wrap up your entire day, so plan accordingly.

Get it from: Green Front, 6834 NE Glisan St., 503-252-0036, thegreenfront.org.

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PERFORMANCE

Editor: Andi Prewitt | Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com T H E T H E AT R E C O M PA N Y

CARD-CARRYING MEMBER: DeLanna Studi plays Delphine, a tarot card reader who’s hypnotically calm.

In the Cards A tarot card reader gives romantic advice in The Broken Heart Spread.

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

Near the end of the Theatre Company’s new short film The Broken Heart Spread, a woman named Serena (Lauren Modica) asks a tarot card reader named Delphine (DeLanna Studi) for advice on dating apps.

“Do I have to reply to all the messages?” she wonders.

“Because this is starting to feel like a full-time job.”

In Serena’s voice, you hear the panic of a person adrift in a sea of possibilities, but Delphine meets her desperation with hypnotic calm. Her clients confront all manner of agonies—from a crisis of faith to angst about a gaping age difference in a relationship—but she almost always projects the soothing confidence of a woman who has placed her faith in a higher power.

The Broken Heart Spread—written by Claire Willett, directed by Brandon Woolley, and filmed at Northeast Portland metaphysical shop Psychic Sister—wants to share Delphine’s faith with the audience. Watching the film won’t teach you what all 78 cards in a tarot deck mean, but it will teach you that those cards have the power to illuminate and instruct.

Delphine is introduced to us in a dreamy prologue in which she declares, “Magic is hard fucking work.” That may be true, but in the film, the hardest work is Delphine’s struggle to place the emotional needs of her clients above her own. Her story invites you to meditate not only on the meaning of tarot cards, but on the mentors—whether they are parents, teachers, doctors or friends—who may fulfill a similarly selfless role in your life.

The Broken Heart Spread follows Delphine through a hectic day of virtual sessions with people like Sister Joan (Josie Seid), a nun tormented by her love for a woman.

While we hear the voices of the characters seeking Delphine’s advice, they rarely speak and we never see their faces. That’s not a problem for Studi, who has perfected the art of speaking in a conversational manner that sometimes makes you forget that Delphine is the only person in the room.

Studi’s aura of assurance conveys Delphine’s conviction that her words are backed up by something more than human authority and her unmistakable cleverness. When she brings out baubles of wisdom like “It’s OK to want to have your needs met” and “Scared is normal,” you’re 26

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

struck not only by the value of her words, but how good she is at sounding right.

Some of the best scenes in The Broken Heart Spread feature moments that pierce Delphine’s serenity, like her uncharacteristically plainspoken exchange with her cousin C.J. (Lindsey Bruno) about what sounds like a toxic relationship.

“Your insistence that the universe brought you together is on the border of delusion, and you seem unable to distinguish between divine intervention and white privilege!” Delphine exclaims.

When Delphine is talking to C.J., she sounds like a concerned and exasperated cousin, not a guide at peace with the world and herself. It’s enough to make you wonder who she is without her ethereal demeanor—and how much her persona blurs the boundary between heartfelt belief and calculation.

That question matters because The Broken Heart Spread comes uncomfortably close to being a commercial for tarot cards. While there’s nothing problematic about the film’s assertion that tarot can be a positive force in a person’s life, there’s something troubling about its vague and unquestioning portrayal of Delphine’s profession.

Delphine never fully makes the case for tarot’s importance because no one in The Broken Heart Spread challenges it. All of her clients appear to be believers, which makes the film feel cloistered and occasionally undramatic. Delphine’s routine is consistently interesting, but it leaves no room for the kinds of arguments that would have allowed the film to engage—or even convert—more skeptical viewers.

Despite sometimes seeming like fan service, The Broken Heart Spread is a compelling character study and an intriguing start to the Theatre Company’s new six-film series, the Playwright Initiative: Solo Works. Last month, it seemed ironic that the company was premiering a film during a resurgence of in-person performances, but given the deadliness of the Delta variant, audiences should be grateful that intimate and inventive virtual theater has continued.

SEE IT: The Broken Heart Spread streams on Stellar through Aug. 22. Purchase access at thetheatreco.org/the-brokenheart-spread. $20. $100 for the six-film series.

MUSIC Written by: Daniel Bromfield | @bromf3

Now Hear This

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

SOMETHING OLD Icelandic producer Yagya’s approach to dub techno is far more sentimental than this austere subgenre of electronic music usually requires.

2002’s Rhythm of Snow is self-explanatory: choppy rhythms, dense digital sleet, and lonesome chords that seem to have echoed for miles through the mountains of his home country before he bottled them into his computer. Yagya has no doubt spent a lot of time staring wistfully out his windows at blizzards; put Rhythm of Snow on and you can almost see flakes.

SOMETHING NEW The experimental and highly collaborative Ran Cap Duoi collective is one of Vietnam’s few prominent avant-electronic ensembles. Their debut, Ngu Ngay Ngay Ngay Tan The, is hermetic and cosmopolitan at once, cribbing from both Vietnamese folk music and the coiling body-horror electronica of American artists like Chino Amobi and Elysia Crampton. Its title translates as “sleeping through the apocalypse,” which is as good a summation of its scorched, seething, somehow lush landscape as any.

SOMETHING LOCAL Eyelids are something like Portland’s indie-rock illuminati, and their forthcoming Dubble Live set (Oct. 22) showcases the depth of both their repertoire and their connections. Recorded over two nights at Mississippi Studios, this sprawling two-disc set includes guest turns by Hedwig & the Angry Inch scribe John Cameron Mitchell, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, local hero Scott McCaughey, and Camper Van Beethoven’s Jonathan Segel, who appears on first single, “(I Will) Leave With You.” SOMETHING ASKEW Mike Cooper cut his teeth in the original British blues-rock bloom almost 60 years ago, but in his 70s he’s moved toward an idiosyncratic style, defined by harsh, piercing electronics and Hawaiian slack-key guitar. An island traveler and ardent leftist, Cooper deconstructs the perception of Pacific islands as paradises and visualizes the ravages of global warming and colonialism therein.

His best and most frightening album is last year’s Playing With Water, which in this context can be read as “playing with fire.”

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

GET YO UR REPS I N COURTESY OF NEON

SCREENER

MOVIES

Buried Treasure

True Stories (1986) David Byrne of Talking Heads writes, directs and stars in this wholesome musical comedy that aims to celebrate “specialness” in all its forms. In a series of vignettes, Byrne takes us through a small Texan town, offering his own unique insights (such as: “What time is it? No time to look back”) and musical numbers along the way. Clinton, Aug. 5.

Dirty Dancing (1987) L I O N S G AT E

S T E FA N C Z A R N E C K I

WHOLE HOG: Nicolas Cage trained with truffle forager Stefan Czarnecki.

Two local brothers, who come from a long line of truffle and mushroom hunters, describe what it was like to consult for the new Nic Cage film Pig.

BY C H A N C E SO L E M - P FE I FER

@chance_s_p

WW: What was your first reaction to learning there would be an Oregon truffle-hunting movie?

Stefan Czarnecki: I think they reached out to Dad [Jack Czarnecki] first. I started interacting with [co-writer and producer] Vanessa Block. They were going to be up in the area to do some scouting and meet Mom and Dad and hear their story and “talk truffle.” They were really sweet and interested right from the get-go.

Was the script still coming together?

Stefan: It sounded like we were part of the vetting process a little bit. We knew as far as pigs versus dogs, we weren’t going to win that battle.

Because using a pig to hunt truffles is rare to the point of being anachronistic, right?

Stefan: A dog is just so much more practical. There are people in the Northwest who use a pig, but it’s one or two.

Dogs are easier to control, and they don’t bite your fingers off going for the truffle when you’re trying to dive in there.

Pigs will gobble it up.

Christopher Czarnecki: Director Michael Sarnoski said he even knew that going in, but the idea of using a pig is more romantic.

Let’s delay no further. Your favorite Nic Cage interaction?

Christopher: The most common question I get is, “What was he like?” And now I just point to the screen and say, “He was like that.” Getting into character, big time.

Stefan: But when he was off, he was really gracious and nice. We had an interesting interaction at dinner, everyone sharing stories about where they’ve lived and traveled, and then all of a sudden he tells a story about doing mushrooms with Charlie Sheen on an airplane. And it was like, “Oh, right! This is not a normal dinner.”

Did you like the movie in general?

Stefan: I enjoyed it on multiple levels. It was beautifully shot, especially the opening scene in the forest. But! We do not taste the dirt. I do not need to taste the dirt to find truffles. Maybe Nic does, but I do not.

Christopher: Only after he’s done mushrooms with Charlie Sheen.

Stefan: And don’t eat raw mushrooms.

Christopher: That was a fun scare. On set, [Cage] does the cool knife flip to stir his mushrooms, and he grabs a pinch and eats it. This is before the mushrooms have been cooked at all, let alone cleaned.

Stefan: No, he does it in the movie!

Christopher: They weren’t recording audio, so I was like, “You’ll want to spit that out.” After they yell cut, he turns and looks at Vanessa and Michael. You could see the panic in his eyes: “I’m flying out of here in a week to shoot another movie.” I was like, “Nic, you’re not going to get sick; we’ve never gotten anyone sick; we just don’t want you eating dirt.” And he calmed down quite quickly.

Stefan: Some mushrooms can make you sick if they’re eaten raw. I get that [he’s] in character, but don’t try this at home, folks.

SEE IT: Pig screens at Bridgeport, Cascade, Cedar Hills, Cinema 21, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Eastport Plaza, Fox Tower, Movies on TV, Studio One and Vancouver Mall.

Fantastic Planet (1973) In this French sci-fi classic, a society of giant blue aliens kidnap humans from Earth and bring them to their home planet of Ygam, where they keep some of them as pets. The wild humans, however, are planning a revolution. Featuring gorgeous hand-drawn animation and effective allegory, Fantastic Planet is, well, fantastic. Clinton, Aug. 6.

Brokeback Mountain (2005) “I wish I knew how to quit you.” Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal star as two cowboys who take summer jobs herding sheep together on Brokeback Mountain. What follows is one of the all-time greatest love stories, a secret but blistering romance that spans years. In a just world, it would’ve won Best Picture over the heinous Crash. Rooftop Cinema at Lloyd Center, Aug. 7.

Near Dark (1987) TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES

If you’re making a movie about Oregon truffle hunting, it’s almost a given you’d call the Czarnecki family—four generations of mushroom seekers and savants, and the current proprietors of the Joel Palmer House Restaurant in Dayton.

Through that niche expertise, brothers Stefan and Christopher Czarnecki ended up integral resources for the acclaimed new indie film Pig, starring the inimitable Nicolas Cage as a hermetic Oregon woodsman pursuing his abducted truffle-hunting pig through a noir reimagining of Portland’s culinary underbelly.

Pig contains one of the finest and subtlest Cage performances of the past decade, and substantial pieces of Czarnecki family iconography too: matriarch Heidi’s trademark mushroom tart, Stefan’s freshly picked Mount Hood mushrooms, chef Christopher’s cast iron skillet— even a bottle of Joel Palmer House pinot noir.

WW caught up with the Czarnecki brothers to discuss their experience as consultants for Pig, and what it was like trying to convince Nic Cage not to eat dirt.

Any other specific notes you gave?

Christopher: My biggest fear, other than the movie being terrible, was when Nic was in the kitchen. I was really adamant, “You’ve got to practice chopping if you’re gonna be on camera looking like a chef. You’ve gotta use the Claw Method.” And the day of shooting he takes his knife and starts going bang, bang, bang like it’s this hatchet. But thankfully the one-second shot of him chopping mushrooms, he had good technique. I’m proud of that.

On a vacation in the Catskills, a sheltered teen girl nicknamed Baby (Jennifer Grey) falls for hunky dance instructor Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze). Of course, an unexpected series of events means they’re gonna have to dirty dance together, and sparks fly. They make you wait for the famous “nobody puts Baby in a corner” line, but it’s so worth it!

Rooftop Cinema at Lloyd Center, Aug. 6.

Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow’s solo directorial debut follows a man who, after being seduced by a beautiful drifter, turns into a vampire. He soon falls in with a pack of nomadic vampires, but his moral refusal to kill humans causes tension, especially between the group’s leader (Lance Henriksen) and his psychotic companion (Bill Paxton). Screens in 35 mm.

Hollywood, Aug. 7-8.

ALSO PLAYING: Academy: Back to the Future (1985), Aug. 4-5. Monterey Pop (1968), Aug. 4-5. Carnival of Souls (1962), Aug. 6-12.

Clinton: A.K.A. Serial Killer (1975), Aug. 4. The Goonies (1985), Aug. 4. Ghost Dog (1999), Aug. 6 and 10. Speed Racer (2008), Aug. 7. Brazil (1985), Aug. 9. Hollywood: Awaken (2018), Aug. 6. A Night at the Opera (1935), Aug. 7-8. The Amusement Park (1973), Aug. 9. The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979), Aug. 10. Rooftop Cinema at Lloyd Center: Medicine for Melancholy (2008), Aug. 8.

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

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MOVIES ERIC ZACHANOWICH / A24

NOW PLAYING TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

The Green Knight With A Ghost Story, director David Lowery demonstrated he was a master of dreamy wonderment. Yet that film never hinted he was capable of creating The Green Knight, a romantic fantasy so overwhelming it leaves you shivering in awe of cinema’s possibilities. Dev Patel stars as Sir Gawain, a callow adventurer who must repay a debt to his nemesis, the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson). As their final confrontation looms, Gawain wanders, encountering giants, a talking fox and a noblewoman (Alicia Vikander) who challenges his sexual timidity. Vikander also plays Essel, a sex worker with whom Gawain is in love, creating the impression that a single soul is guiding his journey in different forms. All of this strangeness makes perfect sense in Lowery’s universe, which modernizes the 14th century epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. While Gawain hungers for greatness, Essel asks him, “Why is goodness not enough?” The Green Knight matters, but not as much as Gawain’s acts of compassion, like helping a violated spirit (Erin Kellyman) find peace. It is possible to simply bask in the film’s surreal visions—like a beautifully haunting shot of Gawain and the fox walking along a ridge at night— but the wisest moviegoers will also cheer its rejection of hollow patriarchal glories and embrace its conviction that goodness is more than enough. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinema 21, Cinemagic, City Center, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Studio One, Tigard.

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 Stillwater Bill Baker (Matt Damon) has a new life. After a career working on oil rigs, he has moved to Marseilles, started dating an actress named Virginie (Camille Cottin) and become a father to her daughter, Maya (Lilou Siauvaud).

Yet Bill didn’t plan to forge a new family. He left his home in Stillwater, Okla., because his daughter, Allison (Abigail Breslin), was convicted of murdering her college roommate and has been languishing in a French prison for five years.

While a wimpier film would have turned Bill’s dogged quest to prove Allison’s innocence into a righteous tale of a hometown hero battling foreign evils, Stillwater’s sharp emotional claws shred Bill’s moral authority and the myth of American exceptionalism. In ways both shocking and right, director Tom McCarthy (Spotlight, The Station Agent) reinvents the story seemingly in real time. Mystery and melodrama give way to romance, which gives way to horrific vigilantism and a reckoning with the anguish and delusions of America’s white working class. Late in the film, Bill stares at Stillwater and claims that he no longer recognizes it, but the truth is that he also no longer recognizes himself. Like us, he’s seen too much. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinema 99, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Cornelius, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Eastport 28

Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sherwood, St. Johns Twin Cinemas, Studio One.

Cousins If you’re scouring Netflix for a breezy summer flick, the New Zealand saga Cousins is not your best bet. It’s an ambitious, often heartbreaking film that follows the lives of three Maori women, cousins Mata, Missy and Makareta.

The sprawling family epic opens on an adult Mata wandering barefoot through the streets of Wellington, disheveled and muttering a nursery rhyme under her breath. As her story unfolds, we begin to understand how she wound up there: Mata became estranged from her Maori culture after being illegally adopted by a white Christian orphanage. She never learned to speak te reo, the Eastern Polynesian language of the Indigenous population, and has the Bible shoved down her throat. Soon, Mata begins to distrust her own culture. The film is a homecoming story but also one of loss and alienation. We follow the cousins in a kind of narrative mosaic that chronicles the characters’ lives as their paths weave together and diverge. At times, the dialogue veers from expository to didactic. Luckily for the viewer, it’s also gorgeously shot and impeccably acted, with standout performances by Tanea Heke as older Mata and Keyahne Patrick Williams as a young Missy. NR. GRACE CULHANE. Netflix.

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over

make the curator’s job that much more important? NR. JAY HORTON. Hollywood.

In an era of rockumentary overload, where every single act to grace CBGB’s stage shall receive full Behind the Music treatment, Lydia Lunch—iconic poster girl for the early ’80s, avant-rock No Wave scene—eminently deserves her moment in the spotlight. Moreover, director Beth B, Lunch’s contemporary in the salad days of New York’s downtown underground, guarantees a too-close-up authenticity while ensuring the 75-minute overview never lags. If age hasn’t exactly mellowed the sexagenarian survivor, the years have burnished Lunch’s wry, sardonic, almost droll perspective on a youth in constant revolt. Lunch appears newly comfortable letting loose the raconteur long hidden behind the rage-fueled, frontwoman theatrics, and the documentary’s best scenes play with that seeming disconnect between gimlet-eyed remembrances from our current lioness in winter and past concert films framing an incandescent performance artist. To be sure, anyone who so fiercely intermingles the personal and political runs the risk of allowing larger ideological musings to seem faintly cartoonish. As the fusillade of rant blurbs wander from Vietnam to Hillary Clinton, the disconnected musings veer uncomfortably between tweaker delirium and the sort of entitled irrelevance rattled off as a great-aunt finishes her third bottle. Nobody should look to performative poets for coherent societal analyses, but set so near musings about feminist paradigms, her forcible deflowering of a much younger (male, as it happens) band member throws harsh light on a power dynamic trending toxic.

“Lydia’s greatest work of art was herself,” one adoring fellow traveler marvels early on, but doesn’t that

Space Jam: A New Legacy Early in Space Jam: A New Legacy, two marvelously smarmy Warner Bros. executives (Sarah Silverman and Steven Yeun) pitch a galaxy of LeBron James crossover projects, including LeBron v Batman and LeBron of Thrones.

LeBron (who plays himself) calls the concept one of the top five worst ideas he’s ever heard, but the idea is essentially the plot of A New Legacy, a shameless commercial for Warner Bros. properties that barely keeps up the pretense of being a movie. If the film were merely the story of LeBron and his son Dom (Cedric Joe) being sucked into the so-called Warner Bros. ServerVerse to play basketball with the Looney Tunes, it might have gotten by on goofy charm, but director Malcolm D. Lee (Girls Trip) inserts LeBron into The Matrix, Mad Max: Fury Road and even Casablanca. By the time LeBron is playing basketball in front of Catwoman, Pennywise and the Night King, it’s clear that the film is nothing more than a product engineered to sell other products.

Like too many mainstream movies, it adheres to the golden rule of the Ready Player One school of filmmaking—bludgeon your audience with references until they beg for mercy. PG. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Cornelius, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, HBO Max, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Studio One, Tigard, Wunderland Milwaukie.

Jungle Cruise Eighteen years ago, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the

Black Pearl took the unholy idea of a film adaptation of a Disneyland ride and slathered it with subversiveness and eyeliner. Yet instead of admitting that Black Pearl was a corporate product that had personality almost by accident, the Mouse House unleashed Haunted Mansion, four Pirates sequels and now Jungle Cruise, a bludgeoning voyage from Jaume Collett-Serra, director of four Liam Neeson action movies.

Dwayne Johnson stars as Frank Wolff, a skipper helping two British explorers (Emily Blunt and Jack Whitehall) search the Amazon for magic flower petals called the Tears of the Moon during World War I. The story is absurd, but it isn’t messy enough for Jungle Cruise to be a batshit B-movie. Collett-Serra mechanically serves up stingy doses of action, humor and romance— watching his film is like watching an alien try to create a summer blockbuster based on a checklist. Jungle Cruise may be a movie, but it isn’t cinema. It’s a Disney film that wasn’t made by Lucasfilm, Marvel or Pixar, which is another way of saying that it’s from a studio currently better at buying dreams than creating its own. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bagdad, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Disney+, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Theater & Pub, St. Johns Twin Cinemas, Studio One, Tigard, Wunderland Beaverton, Wunderland Milwaukie.

JONESIN’

Week of August 12

©2021 Rob Brezsny

by Matt Jones

"It's All There For You"--at least I think so.

ARIES (March 21-April 19):

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):

"Consecrate" isn't a word you often encounter in intellectual circles. In my home country of America, many otherwise smart people spurn the possibility that we might want to make things sacred. And a lot of art aspires to do the opposite of consecration: strip the world of holiness and mock the urge to commune with sanctified experiences. But filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) expressed a contradictory view.

He wrote, "I am not interested in deconsecrating: that's a fashion I hate. I want to reconsecrate things as much as possible, I want to re-mythicize them." In accordance with astrological omens, Aries, I invite you to look for opportunities to do the same.

Ancient Greek philosopher Plato mistrusted laughter, poetry, bright colors, and artists who used bright colors. All those soulful activities influenced people to be emotional, Plato thought, and therefore represented a threat to rational, orderly society. Wow! I'm glad I don't live in a culture descended from Plato!

Oh, wait, I do. His writing is foundational to Western thought. One modern philosopher declared, "The European philosophical tradition consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." Anyway, I'm counseling you to rebel against Plato in the coming weeks. You especially need experiences that awaken and please and highlight your feelings. Contrary to Plato's fears, doing this will boost your intelligence and enhance your decisionmaking powers.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Anais Nin wrote, "I don't want worship. I want understanding." George Orwell said, "Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."

Poet Marina Tsvetaeva declared, "For as long as I can remember, I thought I wanted to be loved. Now I know: I don't need love, I need understanding." Here's what I'll add, Taurus: If you ask for understanding and seek it out, a wealth of it will be available to you in the coming weeks.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The English idiom "playing hard to get" means "pretending to be unavailable or uninterested so as to make oneself more attractive or desirable."

Psychologists say this strategy often works, although it's crucial not to go too far and make your pursuer lose interest. Seventeenth-century philosopher Baltasar Gracián expressed the concept more philosophically.

He said, "Leave people hungry. Even with physical thirst, good taste's trick is to stimulate it, not quench it. What's good, if sparse, is twice as good. A surfeit of pleasure is dangerous, for it occasions disdain even towards what's undisputedly excellent. Hard-won happiness is twice as enjoyable." I suggest you consider deploying these strategies, Gemini.

ACROSS 1 _ _ _ weevil (plant pest) 5 Makes "turn" look like "tum," say 10 Amorphous lump 14 "Caprica" actor Morales 15 Get from the ASPCA 16 Uncontrolled fury 17 Former second lady who crusaded against obscenity in music lyrics 19 "Jane _ _ _" (Bronte novel) 20 Mythical beast 21 Levi's competitor

27 Take for granted

CANCER (June 21-July 22):

59 _ _ _ mater

29 The bird that gets the showy feathers

60 They're low in the pantheon

31 Grammy-winning rock producer Brian

64 Fly (through)

32 Sudoku constraint

65 Oceanic ring

34 "M*A*S*H" ranks

66 Ocho _ _ _ (Jamaican seaport)

35 Sixth sense, familiarly

Painter John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) sometimes worked alongside painter Claude Monet (1840–1926) at Monet's home. He sought the older man's guidance.

Before their first session, Sargent realized there was no black among the paint colors Monet gave him to work with. What?! Monet didn't use black? Sargent was shocked. He couldn't imagine painting without it. And yet, he did fine without it. In fact, the apparent limitation compelled him to be creative in ways he hadn't previously imagined. What would be your metaphorical equivalent, Cancerian: a limitation that inspires?

58 2021 Billie Eilish song titled for a legal document

67 "Devil Inside" rock band

37 They're like "Eureka" but shorter

68 Some marching band members

38 Society column word

69 Therefore (or the word hidden in the four theme answers)

44 "Days _ _ _ Lives"

22 Puzzler's precaution

39 Handful while hiking 46 Of concern, in "Among Us"

DOWN

49 "Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette" painter

1 Support with a wager

50 1993 De Niro title role

2 Bearded Egyptian deity 3 Pet for a sitter?

52 Book that'll show you the world

4 Trash talk

53 Caroler's repertoire

5 Pejorative name The Guardian called 2020 "The Year of"

54 "Ted _ _ _" (Apple TV series)

6 Sidle

56 Verve

40 Lisbon's river

7 "Winnie-the-Pooh" marsupial

57 Enchanted getaway

41 Branch out

8 "Ask Me Another" airer

42 Roll call response

9 Take the wheel

43 2-in-1 component, maybe

10 Selfless concept to work toward

24 B complex component 26 Best-selling Japanese manga series 28 ESPN tidbit 29 Gumshoes, for short 30 At no time 33 New album, e.g.

36 "Biggest Little City in the World" 37 Poker pot

45 Comapny that sold the DieHard brand to Advance Auto Parts in 2019

11 Takes a break on a journey 12 Fairy tale monster

47 Before, poetically

13 Tap output

48 IRS paperwork

18 High-society group

51 Lizard kept as a pet

23 Skedaddle

53 Proposal rejection phrase

25 Job interview subjects

55 Defeated team's lament

26 Falls on many honeymoon trips

57 "Pay you later" note

55 "Now then, where _ _ _?"

61 Greek vowel 62 "Red" or "White" follower 63 Aspiring M.A.'s hurdle

last week’s answers

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): According to Leo author Guy de Maupassant, "We are in the habit of using our eyes only with the memory of what people before us have thought about the things we are looking at." That's too bad. It causes us to miss a lot of life's richness. In fact, said de Maupassant, "There is an element of the unexplored in everything. The smallest thing contains a little of what is unknown."

Your assignment in the next two weeks, Leo, is to take his thoughts to heart. In every experience, engage "with enough attention to find an aspect of it that no one has ever seen or spoken of." You are in a phase when you could discover and enjoy record-breaking levels of novelty.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Poet Brigit Pegeen Kelly wrote a poem I want you to know about. She described how, when she was a child, she stayed up all night picking peaches from her father's orchard by starlight. For hours, she climbed up and down the ladder. Her hands "twisted fruit" as if she "were entering a thousand doors." When the stars faded and morning arrived, her insides felt like "the stillness a bell possesses just after it has been rung."

That's the kind of experience I wish for you in the coming days, Virgo. I know it can't be exactly the same.

Can you imagine what the nearest equivalent might be? Make it happen!

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): A biography of Nobel Prize-winning Scorpio author Albert Camus noted that he had two modes. They are summed up in the French words *solidaire* ("unity") and *solitaire* ("solitary"). When Camus was in a *solidaire* phase, he immersed himself in convivial engagement, enjoying the pleasures of socializing. But when he decided it was time to work hard on writing his books, he retreated into a monastic routine to marshal intense creativity. According to my astrological analysis, you Scorpios are currently in the *solidaire* phase of your rhythm. Enjoy it to the max!

When might the next *solitaire* phase come? October could be such a time.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): During the 76 years since the end of World War II, Italy has had 69 different governments. That's a great deal of turnover! Is it a strength or weakness to have so many changes in leadership? On the one hand, such flexibility could be an asset; it might be wise to keep reinventing the power structure as circumstances shift. On the other hand, having so little continuity and stability may undermine confidence and generate stressful uncertainty. I bring this to your attention, Sagittarius, because you're entering a phase when you could be as changeable as Italy. Is that what you want? Would it serve you or undermine you? Make a conscious choice.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn actor Nicholas Browne testifies, "My heart is too full; it overflows onto everything I see.

I am drowning in my own heart. I've plunged into the deepness of emotion, and I don't see any way back up. Still, I pray no one comes to save me." I'm guessing that his profound capacity to feel and express emotions serves Browne well in his craft. While I don't recommend such a deep immersion for you 24/7/365, I suspect you'll be wise to embark on such an excursion during the next three weeks. Have fun diving! How deep can you go?

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In accordance with current astrological omens, I'm calling on author Byron Katie to offer you a message.

Is it infused with tough love or sweet encouragement?

Both! Here's Katie: "When you realize that suffering and discomfort are the call to inquiry, you may actually begin to look forward to uncomfortable feelings. You may even experience them as friends coming to show you what you have not yet investigated thoroughly enough." Get ready to dive deeper than you've dared to go before, Aquarius. I guarantee you it will ultimately become fun and educational.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In August 1922, author Nikos Kazantzakis wrote this triumphant declaration: "All day today I've had the most gentle, quivering joy, because I'm beginning to heal. Consciously, happily, I feel that I am being born anew, that I am beginning once again to take possession of the light." On behalf of the cosmic powers-that-be, I authorize you to use these words as your own in the coming weeks. They capture transformations that are in the works for you. By speaking Kazantzakis's declarations aloud several times every day, you will ensure that his experience will be yours, too.

HOMEWORK: Name what you're most eager to change about your life. Newsletter@FreeWillAstrology.com Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes

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SPOTLIGHT ARTISTS

Be a Willamette Week featured artist!

Any art style is welcome!

Let’s share your art!

Contact us at art@wweek.com.

DEVIN JAMES

JIM LEIGHTON

I’ve been drawing my whole life, but just got into digital drawing on my iPad last year. The comic style has always intrigued me, so I’ve been experimenting with different formats, and believe I’ve found one with emotions. My plan is to create a compilation of comic strips dealing with emotional awareness, and release it in 2022.

Jim has been painting in Portland for about 20 years. There are about 2000 of these French cliché images. Jim did one every day for about five years. Many plein air oil paintings, about 1000 or so. Jim lives in the Hawthorne neighborhood across the street from Tattoo 34.

Art background: PNCA for a few terms, Hipbone Studio (lots of nudes), and the Drawing Studio.

www.flowtherapy2020.com/comic-looks www.facebook.com/devinjames96 www.instagram.com/devingatsbyjames www.twitter.comV/devinjames96 www.linkedin.com/in/devingatsbyjames

COMiCS!

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Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

COMiCS! JACK KENT’S

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

IG @sketchypeoplepdx kentcomics.com

Willamette Week AUGUST 4, 2021 wweek.com

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