Willamette Week, December 1, 2021 - Volume 48, Issue 5 - "Who's Afraid of a Small White Box?"

“KENNY G? KENNY G?” P. 27

Ridwell’s boxes are sprouting up on porches across Portland.

They unnerve trash haulers.

BY SOPHIE PEEL•PAGE 15

NEWS

Mowed Down

by Cars. P. 9

FOOD

Friendly Neighborhood Pizza Thief. P. 23

POTLANDER WWEEK.COM

VOL 48/05 12.01.2021

Weed Cookie Season! P. 25

Presented by

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Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

STEVE LANE

FINDINGS

personal injury wrongful death trucking accidents product liability

CHARLES MOOSE, PAGE 13

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 48, ISSUE 5 The airsoft pistol Robert Delgado was holding when he died costs $26.99 at Amazon. 8 Three people died riding electric scooters on Portland streets this year. 11 Charles Moose’s house purchase got the attention of Connie Chung.

13

Sci-fi author Neal Stephenson’s first novel was an eco-thriller. 22 There are 200 wooden ornaments hidden in Willamette and Umpqua National Forests. 22 It’s universally difficult for hard seltzer brands to make both smell and taste palatable. 23 Bandit Bar sells an Acapulco Gold cocktail in honor of the neigh-

The items Ridwell recycles make up 0.0006% of the city’s waste stream. 17

borhood restaurant that formerly occupied its space. 24

Vera Katz wanted Portlanders to recycle clamshells. 19

Two percent milk is still useful for softening hard cookies. 25

The Columbia Gorge Model Railroad Club recently added a lit stag sign to its miniature downtown Portland. 20

Pettable cats are a unifying album art motif of the New York audio-visual duo Bengalfuel. 26

There’s a sinkhole in Ecola State Park. 21

Portland jazz legend Mel Brown hired a young Kenny G—then known as Kenneth Gorelick—to play sax in his quintet in the 1970s. 27

ON THE COVER:

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

Recycling startup Ridwell opened a Pandora’s box for Portland-area garbage haulers, photo by Mick Hangland-Skill.

Zillow thought flipping houses meant easy money. A North Portland home shows the downside.

1022 NW Marshall Street #450 Portland OR | (503) 226-6361 | paulsoncoletti.com

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Mark Zusman

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DIALOGUE

• •••• ••••

A T R E A LRBO S ER E T •••• A E H T DEC 1 THRU

Last week, WW reported on the effects of Zillow, a publicly traded online realty company, attempting to flip Portland houses using an algorithm (“Zombielandia,” Nov. 24, 2021). The result: Dozens of homes sit vacant across Portland. Residents of one block in the Piedmont neighborhood say a Zillow-owned home was occupied by squatters. Here’s what our readers had to say.

DEC 11

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with The NowHere Band

+ Rose City Circus one day, two shows!

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it’s a

TONY STARLIGHT Christmas music, storytelling + Irish step-dancing

GRAMMY FOXX’S

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Cassandra OLDE TIMEY Lewis & friends BUMP N’ GRINDEY featuring

MAGICAL STRING CELTIC YULETIDE 3 Leg Torso presents

DEC 18 DEC 19

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HOLIDAY SPECIAL

NYE party

DEC 30

with Saloon Ensemble + Pink Lady’s “Cat’s Meow” Burlesque

an aerial celebration of Pink Floyd

MICHAEL NAMKUNG

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DARK SIDE

a piece for assorted lunatics

Good Pain: The Art of Being Hurt

feat. LOVE GIGANTIC

Booklover’s Burlesque

JAN 22

cozy classics

FEB 5 33rd Annual

WINTERFOLK a benefit for JOIN PDX FEB 10

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previous owner for taking advantage.”

@BRICK_MOJO, VIA TWITTER: “When a whole bunch of

I could hit a baseball to this house from my porch. There’s no fucking way anyone’s going to fork over 600K for a place around here. Unless they’re laundering money. Or there’s a full-time growing operation in the basement that I’m unaware of.”

DZERRES, VIA WWEEK.COM:

“Zillow chose the wrong angle— taking possession of physical real estate and trying to manage the showings and negotiations electronically online is ridiculous. Zillow should have provided a sales, advertising, contract writing, and closing service to the sellers, thus eliminating the obnoxious, overpaid real estate agents and their ridiculous fees—that’s where money can be made.”

FIRTOPANX, VIA REDDIT:

“Their algorithm may work in a neighborhood full of cookie-cutter houses, but here the variation in value between two houses with identical stats can be tens of thousands of dollars.

I feel like they could have asked anyone who’s ever bought a house here and learned their system was desperately flawed.

But also, fuck ’em. Hope they lose their shirts.”

KATE BOWDEN, VIA FACEBOOK: “Nobody has brought

up the point I thought looking at these homes. You can see the price they paid and it was also pretty clear they didn’t actually do any flipping work. Why would anyone want to pay more than what Zillow paid to get the house a few weeks earlier?

Also, they didn’t think about the skepticism people would have with a Zillow-bought home.

They were not offering market

EVA, VIA WWEEK.COM:

“Speculative buyers who will not be living in a property should be charged steep anti-speculation taxes to discourage turning housing—a basic need—into the stock market. It’s unethical.” @PLANT_WARLOCK, VIA TWITTER: “It’s fun to see Zillow

lose money, but this article: —Glorifies real estate agents and flippers.

—Notes the low supply and high price of houses in Portland with no examination of the causes.

—Has anti-homeless rhetoric.

—Doesn’t connect the dots between the above two issues.”

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.

THE LOVE BALL

Liberté Par La Musique JAN 8

GRAHAM HACKETT, VIA WWEEK.COM: “Kudos to the

us move next year, this is a big part of why.”

Beatles/circus mashup

DEC 15

value to the sellers.”

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

Dr. Know

BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx

My new hummingbird feeders got no takers all summer. Now, in late November, I’ve suddenly got hummers galore. If Portland is where they migrate for winter, they must spend their summers at the North Pole. Is this yet another harbinger of climate doom? —Nectar Bartender I’m glad things are finally working out with your feeder, Bartender, though obviously I’m disappointed to learn that Hummers Galore is not, in fact, Pussy Galore’s even more popular big sister. That said, I do have to correct a few of your assumptions.

What you’re seeing is probably the species known as Anna’s hummingbird, and your climate fears may be partially allayed when you learn that, unlike every other hummingbird in North America, this one is nonmigratory. Despite their tropical appearance—the males’ faces shine an iridescent fuchsia in the right light—these hardy little bastards butch out the Northwest winter as far north as British Columbia.

Granted, they’re newcomers. Native to California, the Anna’s hummingbird wasn’t seen in Oregon until the 1940s. However, it wasn’t a

changing climate that brought them north, but a revamped menu.

Our native trees (think Doug fir or Sitka spruce), for all their stately majesty, suck at producing the nectar hummingbirds crave. The advance of civilization’s plow, however, brought with it lots of non-native flowering species (as well as a not insignificant number of easy marks like you) upon which the birds could thrive.

Thus, while the earth and its climate are certainly doomed, the presence of hummingbirds in Portland in December is not, in itself, a direct sign of that doom. Enjoy!

Is Dr. Know prescient? In your article about vaccine refusers (Dr. Know, WW, July 28, 2021) you mentioned the “death-dealing Omicron variant.” Well, here we are—it has come to fruition. —Adam O. Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while, Adam. Obviously, it was just luck (if that’s the word I want) that the only Greek letter I could remember at the time turned out to have legs.

Still, I’m not above taking a victory lap around the smoldering ruins of our once-proud civilization, so thanks.

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

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141915_NPA238679-0007 Hybrid W 6x ad 9.639x12.25 Williamette Lori Wood.indd 1

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com 5 11/23/21 9:22 AM

FEBRUARY 17-26, 2022 PORTLAND, OR Ron Carter • Robert Glasper Black Radio • Gary Bartz • Diane Schuur • Brad Mehldau • Flor de Toloache Makaya Mccraven • Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah feat. Weedie Braimah • The Soul Rebels • Nate Smith + KINFOLK Lakecia Benjamin • Marquis Hill • Brandee Younger & Dezron Douglas • The Cookers • Angel Bat Dawid • MNDSGN Marc Ribot • Sasha Berliner • Lady Blackbird • Carlos Niño & Friends • James Brandon Lewis & Chad Taylor • Laufey Immanuel Wilkins • Domo Branch Trio feat. Gerald Clayton & Ben Feldman • John Carroll Kirby • Max Ribner

Tickets and full schedule at pdxjazz.org

6

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

Winner of five Tony Awards including Best Play!

MURMURS BRIAN BURK

HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN. COUNTY COVID CASES SLOW TO LOW EBB: COVID-19 cases in Multnomah County have been steadily declining since a peak more than two months ago, when the weekly case count topped 1,500. During the week of Nov. 21, the county saw just 492 cases, according to health department data. There were 12 hospitalizations, at their lowest since July. The low numbers come as health experts have identified a new variant of concern, named Omicron, though it’s not yet clear what danger the new coronavirus poses. It has not been found in the U.S. at press deadline.

“It will take time for us to learn more about this particular variant,” says county spokeswoman Kate Yeiser. “We expect vaccines will still provide good protection. So we would encourage anyone who hasn’t already to please get their vaccines. Those who are due for a booster should go ahead and schedule that.” Nearly 75% of Multnomah County residents have had a least one dose of vaccine, leaving just over 200,000 unvaccinated, including young children who are ineligible.

GUERRERO CANDIDATE FOR L.A. JOB: The Los Angeles School Unified School District is closing in on a new superintendent. Among the possible eight finalists, according to the Los Angeles Times: Portland Public Schools Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero. Guerrero took the top job in Portland in October 2017 after serving as deputy superintendent in the San Francisco Unified School District. His four-year tenure here is longer than average for a big-city schools chief, according to the Council of the Great City Schools. The L.A. school district is the nation’s second largest, with nearly 675,000 students (about 13 times the size of Portland Public Schools).

POLICE COMMANDER BROKE ELECTIONS LAW: The Oregon Secretary of State’s Elections Division has proposed a $225 civil penalty for Portland Police Bureau Commander Erica Hurley after its investigation determined Hurley violated state elections law with comments she made on two occasions about Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt. WW first reported on Hurley’s remarks in March, which prompted a lawyer to file a complaint with the secretary of state the same day. In a Nov. 22 letter, the Elections Division wrote to Hurley that “by opposing the candidacy and promoting the recall of Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt,” she violated an Oregon

statute pertaining to political campaigning by public employees. The Elections Division pointed to two occasions—one in October 2020 and another in January—in which Hurley made comments opposing Schmidt. Both times, she spoke before the Lents Neighborhood Livability Association while acting in her official capacity during work hours, according to the Elections Division. She also wore her full uniform, badge and gun. Hurley has the right to a hearing before an administrative law judge if she wishes to challenge the findings.

An attorney for Hurley did not respond to WW’s request for comment.

S E N S O RY- F R I E N D LY P E R F ORM AN C E | D EC . 2 1 , 2 02 1

ON STAGE THROUGH DEC. 24, 2021 503.445.3700 | PCS.ORG SEASON SUPERSTARS

Members of the cast of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Photo by Owen Carey.

GOV. BROWN CALLS SPECIAL SESSION ON EVICTIONS: On Nov. 29, Gov. Kate Brown announced a legislative special session to address evictions after months of uncertainty. It will convene Dec. 13.

Her office released a statement detailing Brown’s proposals—among them, extending the safe harbor for anyone who applied for government assistance and adding up to $90 million in aid for low-income renters. “As we enter our coldest months, it is absolutely essential that we take action to ensure no additional Oregon families are evicted when rental assistance is on the way,” Brown said. “We must take legislative action now.”

The state agency running the emergency relief program has struggled to keep up with applications and is freezing submissions for six weeks starting Dec. 1.

JUDGE NIXES HERNANDEZ SUIT: U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken this week dismissed a federal lawsuit filed by former state Rep. Diego Hernandez (D-East Portland) against the Oregon Legislature and some of its members. As WW first reported, Hernandez ran afoul of legislative conduct rules in his dealings with three women. After one of the women filed a complaint against him in April 2020, an investigation led to a disciplinary hearing in early 2021. The House Conduct Committee voted to expel Hernandez, but he resigned before a floor vote on the matter. In the meantime, he filed suit, alleging discrimination, a violation of his First Amendment rights, and a lack of due process.

Judge Aiken found his claims unpersuasive and dismissed the case. “[Hernandez’s] allegations of discriminatory intent by the named Defendants are conclusory,” Aiken wrote, “and unsupported by any factual allegations.”

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

7

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

PERSONAL EFFECTS • Red shirt • Dress shoes (men; black) • Black jeans • Black and blue sweatpants • One pair of gray socks • One black/gray/green glove (right-handed), located in right rear jeans pocket • One black/gray/green glove (left-handed), located in left rear jeans pocket • Light gray jacket • Black coat • One black sock w/ blue stripe • One pair brown/black sunglasses

The Things He Carried These are the possessions Portland police found on Robert Delgado after they killed him.

BY T E S S R I S K I

tess@wweek .com

On Nov. 12, the Portland Police Bureau released a 497-page report from its death investigation of Robert Delgado. Officer Zachary DeLong shot and killed Delgado in Lents Park on April 16, wrongly believing the gun Delgado pointed at police was a real firearm.

The newly released records describe the items police recovered on or near Delgado at the time of his death. As WW previously reported, advocates said Delgado had recently moved to Lents after the city swept homeless encampments in Laurelhurst Park.

Taken as a whole, the belongings police recovered illustrate a familiar picture for most Portlanders: that of an unhoused man trying to survive through the night. The items also suggest why Delgado attracted the attention of at least one concerned neighbor the night before he died: He had gone to the park to sleep.

At 11:47 pm on April 15, the night before the shooting, Lents resident Chase Hagen made an “unwanted person” call to the city’s non-emergency line. In the call audio, obtained

by WW through a public records request, Hagen reported someone camping in Lents Park who appeared to have a small flame lit in their tent. (Temperatures dropped to 46 degrees that night.)

“There’s a tent on the northern corner of 92nd and Holgate that’s been erected, so I don’t know if that’s park rangers or you guys. Just wanted to let you know,” Hagen told the call operator. “I thought I saw what looks like to be a fire in it, like, you know, like a little campfire inside the tent.”

The operator asked if Hagen believed the fire department needed to respond.

“No, no, definitely not, it does not need the fire department.

It was just blowing for a second,” Hagen said, referring to the flame that he saw, “and I was like, ‘Oh that looks like a tent,’ and it was a tent. I walk my dog this time every day, and I’ve never seen a tent in [that part] of the park before.”

HUNZEKER WATCH

• $2.11 U.S. Currency: Two $1 bills; one dime; one penny (from left front jeans pocket) • 2 cents (two pennies) U.S. currency • 10 cents (one dime) U.S. currency • One empty 23.5 Fl. Oz. can of pineapple “Earthquake” alcoholic beverage • Small piece of cardboard • Black nylon draw-string bag (empty) • Grey & green sleeping bag • Grey polar pack, which contained $1.13 U.S. currency (3 quarters; 2 dimes; 2 nickels; 8 pennies); misc. receipts and other items; bottom of aluminum can w/ suspected drug residue; two syringes; two cloth face masks • Silver flashlight • Black knit cap • Black & blue butane torch • Butane fuel can • Two tent stakes • Grey tent • Red/gray tent canopy • White/red first aid kit, which contained $1.49 U.S. currency (3 quarters; 6 dimes; 2 nickels; 4 pennies); small plastic bag containing white crystalline substance; small plastic bag containing dark brown tarlike substance; one white “Bayer” pill • Small gold metal clasp • One GFM311 airsoft pistol box, which contained misc. papers, a Walmart receipt, and a sterile gauze swab • Black plastic magazine from GFM311 6mm cal. BB pistol • One GFM311 Airsoft pistol, black w/ orange tip [available for $26.99 at Amazon.com].

It’s like an Advent calendar for police accountability. BY TESS RISKI

271 DAYS:

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

8

Hagen did not respond to WW’s request for comment.

The operator did not dispatch police: “[Complainant] aware of homeless issues but hasn’t seen here b4 and wanted to report it,” the call taker wrote. “Taking as info. We are not empowered to kick campers out of the parks.”

The next morning, Hagen and his fiancée returned to Lents Park during a walk with their dog. That’s when they saw Delgado quick-drawing a gun like “he thinks he’s some kind of cowboy…or James Bond.” For the second time in less than 12 hours, at 9:28 am, Hagen again called the city’s non-emergency line. 911 operators dispatched DeLong.

Four minutes after arriving at Lents Park, DeLong shot and killed Delgado with a single bullet wound to his chest.

Eyewitnesses testified that in the moments before DeLong fired, a visibly agitated Delgado marched to his tent, crouched over, and rifled through his belongings. He then stood up and pointed a handgun directly at police, eyewitnesses testified, prompting DeLong to fire his AR-15 rifle from about 90 feet away. (A grand jury declined to indict DeLong on Sept. 23.)

When, seven minutes later, police eventually approached Delgado, he was no longer breathing. Once they were 10 to 15 feet from his body, eyewitnesses testified, they could see the airsoft gun’s reddish-orange tip, indicating it was a fake.

Police also saw Delgado’s possessions strewn about.

“I saw the subject’s items everywhere, like, I think his living items, tent, sleeping bag, things like that,” testified Officer Gelsomina Cavalli-Singer, who placed a chest seal over the bullet wound on Delgado’s chest as other officers began CPR. Below is a list of the items police found on or near Delgado after he died, according to evidence forms and the autopsy report included in the Police Bureau’s death investigation.

Wording and punctuation are taken mostly verbatim from police documents.

• Red plastic canister containing less than ¼ ounce of marijuana (from right front jeans pocket)

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

260 DAYS:

That’s how long ago Officer Brian Hunzeker resigned from his role as president of the Portland Police Association due to what the union described as a “serious, isolated mistake related to the Police Bureau’s investigation into the alleged hit-and-run by Commissioner Hardesty.” We still don’t know what he did. The mayor’s office says it doesn’t know what he did.

259 DAYS:

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

DONOR

DISPATCH FROM

And that really did help me make the decision to make this run because those people can’t have the loudest voice.

Yamhill County

What’s the most alarming thing to you about the decisions that have been made by the school board?

I think the potential illegality of it.

There hasn’t been a legal decision made yet on the policy or the firing of the superintendent or any of the things going on in Newberg.

Tai Harden-Moore is running for office in the center of a battle over anti-racism in schools.

WW: Is there something in particular that inspired your run for office?

Tai Harden-Moore: I ran for school board in the last election cycle, and I lost that election, and we’ve seen the repercussions of that loss with the Newberg School Board and the racist and discriminatory policies that they’ve put forward, banning Black Lives Matter and Pride symbols. And that was a direct result, I think, of my loss.

But I was very committed to helping this community, to addressing the issues that need to be addressed in this community. This is my home.

And, as a Black woman, I have just as much right to say what I like and what I don’t like about the

IDEAS

C O U R T E S Y TA I H A R D E N - M O O R E

In few places in Oregon are cultural politics as toxic as in Newberg, where the school board in September banned displays of Black Lives Matter symbols and Pride flags.

Tai Harden-Moore traces the fracture to her unsuccessful bid to serve on the school board in 2020.

Harden-Moore, 41, a diversity and inclusion consultant, moved to Yamhill County when she returned to Oregon in 2015 because renting a house in Portland was unaffordable for her family.

On Nov. 30, she announced she’s running for office again—this time for Yamhill County commissioner—with priorities to tackle the “homelessness crisis, the economy and the lack of access to good-paying jobs in Yamhill County.” But in Yamhill County, any bid for elected office means a confrontation with the Newberg School Board’s racist and homophobic policies—the state’s most prominent example of conservative panic over “critical race theory.”

We asked Harden-Moore what she makes of the political outrage Yamhill County has sparked in Portland. R AC H E L M O N A H A N .

community I live in. I’m going to do something to fix it.

How did your loss result in this?

The other candidates ran as a slate of “Save Our Schools.” And the question continuously was: “Save our schools from who?” And [the answer was] from them, those women of color, those outsiders. And so there was a lot of drama around my run, and folks were tearing down my sign, saying that I was un-American, I was unpatriotic and things like that based on nothing more than the fact that I’m just a Black woman. And so a Black woman living in Newberg and Yamhill County, they felt I could not be patriotic, could not be a proud American, which is completely untrue. My father was a veteran—he’s buried in the national cemetery in Washington—so that’s not true.

Have you experienced a change in how you’re treated in the community because you’re a Black woman?

Newberg has not been a completely unwelcoming place to me because I’m Black, but it hasn’t been a completely welcoming place either.

My primary concerns were always for my children. And my son left the district at his request because he was called the N-word in seventh grade and just felt like he wasn’t able to make real connections with friends. He was kind of boxed in by teachers. He’s an athlete. So he was the Black athlete and no one wanted to see him as any more than that, but he’s also a brilliant student who gets straight A’s now that he’s at another school.

Is there anything hopeful for you about what’s happening around the school board or the high school?

We’re not this racist place where nobody’s welcomed here. That’s not Newberg. If it were, I wouldn’t live here, but that’s the narrative that’s being pushed by some folks that don’t like Black Lives Matter.

You mentioned surviving cancer: What does that experience mean you bring to elected office?

I’m actually currently still in treatment. I’m in treatment for stage IV metastatic breast cancer, and will be in treatment for the rest of my life.

I’ve been in treatment for four years [as of Nov. 30], so the launch date of the campaign was not by accident.

I had cancer in law school and it didn’t stop me, then why would it stop me now?

LLOY D C E NTE R WATE R PA R K

Becky Chiao writes: My idea for Lloyd Center is an indoor/outdoor water park.

Portland should celebrate our abundant natural resource.

Pools, water slides, waves, and of course an ice rink. A place to cool off in the increasingly hot summers and a place to exercise and play inside when it’s colder

outside.

A water park would serve the neighborhood (Buckman Pool is gone) as well as attracting visitors from the Convention Center and downtown. No need to drive out of town to enjoy wholesome wet fun. As we activate the Willamette River we need pools where people can learn to swim.

There is probably room for some retail, maybe a hotel or apartment building. But a town can’t thrive without things to do.

Hanging out at the mall used to be a social activity, but times have changed.

In the spirit of Jantzen sportswear, let’s celebrate swimming and splashing around!

WW is seeking reader proposals for the biggest real estate opportunity in Portland: Lloyd Center Mall. Send ideas to mall@ wweek.com, and we’ll publish our favorite each week until the new year.

Contribution of the Week HOW MUCH? $471.48

WHO GOT IT?

Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran

WHO GAVE IT? Former City Commissioner Amanda Fritz

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

In what will be one of the marquee matchups of the May primary election, Meieran, an emergency room doctor, is running for Multnomah County chair against two colleagues on the county board of commissioners: Lori Stegmann and Jessica Vega Pederson. A fourth contender, Shannon Singleton, is a former nonprofit executive now working for Gov. Kate Brown.

It’s an unusually strong field, and with county elections for the first time operating under campaign finance limits ($500 per donor), who gives to each candidate takes on added importance.

Fritz, a former psychiatric nurse who retired this year after three terms on the Portland City Council, served as the council’s conscience and its leading advocate for the homeless during her tenure, spending years on the relocation of the city-sanctioned camp Right 2 Dream Too. She says the choice among the four candidates for county chair is an easy one for her: Meieran’s demands for a more urgent response to the homelessness crisis on the streets convinced Fritz to empty her PAC account. “Commissioner Meieran sees homelessness through the lens of the public health emergency that it is, and she has specific plans for what to do about it,” Fritz says. “I think she’s by far the best candidate for the job.” N I G E L J AQ U I S S .

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

9

YOUR BACKSTAGE PASS TO THE WWEEK NEWSROOM

DIVE PODCAST

BY WILLAMETTE WEEK

AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE

10

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

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.

NEWS SAM GEHRKE

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Less Than Zero Portland’s record-setting traffic deaths occurred exactly where experts warned they would.

BY TO R I L I E B E R M A N

and

AARON MESH

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Ashton Simpson says the record number of people killed this year while crossing a Portland street isn’t just about the speed and scale of car traffic. It’s a symptom of this city’s housing crisis.

Simpson, executive director of the nonprofit Oregon Walks and a candidate for Metro Council, says he’s observed more people living in tent camps along the sides of busy arterial roads like Northeast 122nd Avenue.

“They’re just trying to get to the corner store right across from their camp, and there’s no clear crossing,” Simpson tells WW. “What happens when someone’s having a mental breakdown at 3 in the morning and they get struck on [Interstate] 84? Because they’re right there.”

His observation provides a new angle on what is now a dispiritingly familiar story: an increasing number of people killed in traffic.

On Nov. 24—the night before Thanksgiving—a person died walking across Northeast Marine Drive and another died at the wheel along Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Police logged those as the 60th and 61st traffic deaths of the year—surpassing the 59 fatalities in 1996, the record since Portland started keeping detailed figures.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation’s tally is lower—56 deaths—because the National Highway Safety Board doesn’t count deaths in parking lots or suicides. But Portland is certainly on pace to eclipse the quarter-century-old record.

Many saw the bleak milestone coming. Last year’s traffic death toll—54—was the second highest of the 21st century, and 2019

was close behind. In March, Simpson and his Oregon Walks co-founder Scott Kocher blamed the steady increase on drivers going too fast on roads that are too wide, inadequately lit and lacking crosswalks—and Portland officials not acting aggressively enough to slow them down (“You’re Driving Too Damn Fast,” WW, March 17, 2021).

For city leaders, the record marks another chapter in the failures of an ambitious 2016 policy, called Vision Zero, which included a goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2025. By year’s end, the city will have sunk $185 million into the campaign.

Instead, deaths have increased, regardless of conditions.

In 2020, when a pandemic emptied the roads and drivers often flew down highways at more than 100 miles an hour? Traffic deaths went up. In 2021, when enough people returned to their routines that rush hour resumed? Traffic deaths again went up.

Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who oversees the Portland Bureau of Transportation, calls the numbers a “devastating development.” Hardesty says she’s grappling with the problem by taking local control of 82nd Avenue to slow its drivers, making rapid safety improvements to the most dangerous roads, and seeking a change in state law to add more speed cameras.

“Vision Zero is a goal and a work in progress,” she says. “Had we not made the investments we did in recent years, I believe the traffic fatalities would be far worse on PBOT-controlled roads. That doesn’t take away from the unacceptable number of tragedies that have occurred on our streets this year. My priority

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will continue to be securing investments on high-crash corridors where most traffic fatalities are occurring.”

Meanwhile, at a Nov. 30 press conference, Portland Police Bureau Sgt. Ty Engstrom blamed the death toll on a gutting of the bureau’s traffic division. “Right now we’re at 62 fatalities, and that’s nowhere near zero,” he said, including a Nov. 28 hit-andrun following a knife fight in a parking lot. “I’m tired of seeing dead bodies.”

What makes the trend more frustrating to policymakers is that the deaths are happening exactly where the city’s Cassandras expected.

A review by WW of the 61 deaths tallied by the Portland Police Bureau shows that the deaths in 2021 fit into patterns previously identified about who dies and where. Here’s what we found.

A few high-traffic roads are the scenes of more than half the deaths.

A Portland Bureau of Transportation study released earlier this year shows that 56% of traffic deaths in 2020 took place on just 8% of the city’s roads. City engineers have dubbed those streets “high-crash corridors,” and they’ve poured much of the Vision Zero money into new lighting and crosswalks on these arterials.

But in 2021, WW found, the ratio remained unchanged: 59% of deaths occurred on that same 8% of blacktop. That means at least 36 of the 61 deaths occurred on urban highways, including Marine Drive, Powell Boulevard and 82nd Avenue.

Dylan Rivera, a spokesman for PBOT, says 27 of the deaths this year occurred on interstates and highways controlled by the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Kocher says those high-crash corridors, shown in orange on the map at left, are designed in ways that guarantee motorists will drive too fast.

“What you see time and time again is long straightaways with multiple lanes,” he says. “If you’ve got a 3,000-foot straightaway with a 12- or 13-foot travel lane, it’s very hard to ensure that everybody driving a car or truck on that roadway is going to be driving at a safe speed and that people will be able to cross.”

Pedestrians make up a large share of deaths.

Twenty-six deaths—or 42%—were people walking when they were killed. The Portland Police Bureau’s traffic division says it’s the highest number of pedestrian deaths since 1952. (Portland saw its first death on an electric scooter in April—and since then had two more.)

Simpson sees a correlation between people living outdoors and dying while walking. “We can’t have folks just living in the streets like this,” he says. “We claim to be this city of progressive values, but we’re OK with people, with kids too, with families living outside, being impacted by the flumes and weather? For me, it’s unacceptable.”

Many of the deaths occurred in outer East Portland.

For years, Portland traffic deaths have skewed heavily eastward.

WW revealed in March that half of the 48 pedestrians killed between 2017 and 2019 died east of 82nd Avenue. (During that same period, not a single person died while walking in Northwest Portland.)

This year, 23 of Portland’s traffic deaths—more than a third— occurred in outer East Portland. “Crashes are disproportionately in East Portland,” says Kocher, “and they are disproportionately in the big streets.”

That means the neighborhoods where people most often die in traffic are also the communities where people were most often being murdered as Portland broke its all-time homicide record this year, with 79.

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

11

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Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

NEWS STEVE LANE

social problems that often serve as the underlying causes of crime cannot be solved.”

At the time, Portland Mayor Bud Clark used a biblical turn of phrase for the community policing program: “Police others as you would have others police you.

Our officers will move from being crime fighters to being problem solvers.”

Moose did not bring community policing to Portland. Police Chief Tom Potter did. But whereas Potter was the strategic visionary (he called community policing “the Peace Corps of the ’90s”), Moose was the tactician.

He created a playbook.

As he was working on his dissertation for his doctorate in urban studies at Portland State TOP COP: Charles Moose, around the time he was sworn in as Portland police chief in 1993.

University, he took his theories of community policing and dropped them on Iris Court, a high-crime public housing complex off of North Alberta Street.

In his 1993 dissertation, Moose argued that police had conceived of their jobs too narrowly.

Instead, with his plan, “police would promote the common good, serve as community social workers as well as law enforcers, and so on.”

Not a standard mission for a police department.

For Moose, job training and nutrition classes would be as important as fighting crime.

In Moose’s policing, the police officer was a social worker as much or even more than a crime fighter. Community policing looked to stop crimes in progress, but it also to identify the whys of crime and address those societal issues.

It was a long game. If Portland has more jobs, will people stop breaking into homes to steal VCRs? Is obesity an issue that can be addressed nie Chung introduced the nation to Portland’s with nutritional classes? What sort of activipolice chief. When U.S. Attorney General Janet ties do children have after school and during Reno came to Portland in 1994, she and Mayor breaks? Under Moose’s policing, all those serVera Katz toured Moose’s home and the King vices were to be delivered to citizens by the neighborhood, cameras a-clicking.

Portland Police Bureau.

City leaders of his stature, at his pay rate, did The chief brought a Black Santa to the Iris not just buy a house “in the bad part of town.”

Court Christmas party. That was his model: This was progressive and new. cops with Santas.

Moose said he was “reclaiming the neigh By contrast, Moose also ushered in the arrival borhood.” In a city recovering from a wave of of AR-15 rifles for the Police Bureau. In 1997, homicides that wouldn’t be exceeded until this he formed the “Long Gun Option Committee,” year, Moose was making a visible commitment police archives show. In 1999, thanks largely to to his most deeply cherished ideal: community Moose’s efforts, the city purchased 225 AR-15s. policing.

When his move into the King neighborhood The lessons from his experiment are worth captured attention, Moose wanted to expand recalling in a city that is once again frustrated his vision of police officers reclaiming places. by crime and blight, and enduring violence that In August 1993, more than half of the bureau’s disproportionately kills Black men. officers lived outside the city of Portland. By In Moose’s explanation, community policing February 1995, that disparity had increased. Of “recognized that when a police agency sim1,006 sworn officers, only 341 lived within city ply responds to calls for service, investigating limits. crimes, and making arrests, sustained reduc So, in 1995, Mayor Vera Katz and Moose parttions in crime do not necessarily occur.…Unnered with five local banks to create the “Police less the police are willing to link up with other at Home” program. public and private agencies, the complicated

Community Policeman

Charles Moose had a radical idea for what Portland police officers should do: live here.

BY D O U G K E N C K- C R I S P I N

@oregon _ history

On Thanksgiving Day, Charles Moose, Portland’s first Black police chief, died while watching a football game on television. He was 68 years old.

Moose hadn’t lived in Portland for some time.

He left in 1993 and moved to Montgomery County, Md., where many people remember him as the senior law enforcement officer in the 2002 Beltway Sniper case.

But it was where he lived in Portland—in the center of a Black neighborhood ravaged by violent crime—that made him a national sensation, and a singular figure in civic history.

In 1993, not long after his swearing-in, Moose and his wife, Sandy, purchased a home at 422 NE Going St. A block off Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the house was in the King neighborhood, which at the time had one of the city’s highest crime rates.

And everyone freaked out.

Moose was all over the local media, and the national news picked up on it, too. Moose’s house purchase was featured in The New York Times and on ABC’s World News Saturday, NBC News and the CBS Evening News. Con-

Moose said he was “reclaiming the neighborhood.” In a city recovering from a wave of homicides that wouldn’t be exceeded until this year, Moose was making a visible commitment to his most deeply cherished ideal: community policing.

The purpose was simple, city archives show: “to encourage Portland police officers to purchase homes in targeted areas.” With this loan financing incentive, police officers could get a home loan with no money down and zero out-of-pocket closing costs. The officer would need to live in the home for five years, and the home had to be in one of eight targeted neighborhoods.

“This sends a clear message that you don’t have to run from these neighborhoods,” Moose told The Oregonian. He hoped to have an officer living on every city block.

It didn’t work that way. Only 22 officers purchased homes with the program. Instead, the effect of Moose’s plan was a different kind of dramatic change. The city’s first Black police chief made white Portlanders feel safe buying houses in Northeast Portland.

Moose knew the term “gentrification,” and he didn’t shy away from it. At his 1999 City Club of Portland address, Moose told attendees, “I find it quite fascinating now that the issue most often talked about in the King neighborhood is gentrification. We’re not talking about homicide, we’re not talking about gang activity.

People are talking about: Things are going too well. People are moving in.

“Now, I understand all of the issues and the ramifications to gentrification, and I want to be respectful in regards to that. But in terms of talking about crime, the mayor and I would much rather talk about gentrification than shots fired, or drive-by shootings.”

Several of Moose’s contemporaries remain skeptical of community policing to this day.

“To be honest, community policing was always BS,” says CW Jensen, Moose’s public information officer for several years. “We went to lots more meetings about petty shit. People that interact with cops generally have some parochial issue. When their issue was solved, they were done with community policing.”

The term “community policing” gets brought up regularly in Portland, both by the police union and by mayoral candidates who like the idea of friendly officers on bikes. But the city never again fully embraced Moose’s vision of policing as a compact between citizens and officers—or the idea that police could serve a role more fundamental than responding to crime or crisis.

Today, the Portland Police Bureau remains understaffed and still faces criticism for not having enough officers living in the city.

Sgt. Pete Simpson says after Moose left, the city never committed to the idea in the way that mattered: assigning people to the task.

“You need extra officers who aren’t tied to answering calls for service so that they have the time to spend in the neighborhood engaging with the community,” he tells WW. “Many of these assignments or units were eliminated and, with them, the community connections that were the core of community policing.”

And perhaps also eliminated was an opportunity to ask ourselves if we would want to be policed differently.

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

13

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14

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

Mark

Spangler Spangler Record Record Release Release & Signing New Album

& Signing

Burnin’ Daylight

In-Store Performance

Saturday December 4th, 2021

5PM

­

Who’s Afraid of a Ridwell Box?

Small white boxes are sprouting up on porches across Portland.

They unnerve trash haulers.

B Y S O P H I E P E E L S P E E L @ W W E E K .C O M • P H O T O S B Y M I C K H A N G L A N D - S K I L L

A

year ago, Beth Fischer was serving blueberry pancakes at Elmer’s.

Today, she is the spear tip of an assault on the clubby Portland trash hauling industry, a fight that’s giving local government regulators nightmares.

Fischer, 33, is an unlikely revolutionary. She drives a white van through Portland neighborhoods, picking up used light bulbs.

She appears on Portland porches every two weeks to carry off junk from inside a box. Clad in a bright orange jacket and patterned leggings, and sporting purple ends in a bun of brown hair, she’s hard to miss.

“Sometimes people look at me like, ‘What the hell are you doing on my property?’” she says with a chuckle. “And I’m like, ‘You paid for this.’”

Her task: Go to Portlanders’ homes and pick up light bulbs, batteries, plastic film used to wrap produce, plastic foam packaging, and old clothes. It’s the kind of refuse that Portland’s residential garbage haulers do not recycle, but with extra effort can be reused or recycled instead of dumped in landfills.

Until now, Portlanders could drive such items to specialty recyclers on the city’s fringes—but in reality, most people just toss plastic packaging and light bulbs into their garbage bins.

Fischer’s employer sees a business in this junk.

Ridwell is a Seattle-based, venture capital-backed startup that late last year started asking Portlanders to pay $12 to $16 a month.

In return, Ridwell supplies customers with a 2-foot-square metal box that includes a bag for light bulbs, another for batteries, and others for threads and plastic film. For a dollar extra, you can offload the clamshell containers that hold takeout meals. For another $9, Ridwell will pick up plastic foam.

In 11 months, the company says, it has signed up 18,600 households in 50 ZIP codes in the Portland area.

Portland trash haulers complained to the city shortly after Ridwell launched, arguing the company was skirting regulations that garbage companies must follow to keep their city contracts.

Since then, residential haulers have lobbied city bureaucrats, elected officials and staffers through emails and letters. Haulers in the suburban towns and counties ringing Portland have done the same.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15 “It just didn’t sit right with us,” says Dave Cargni, who operates Portland Disposal & Recycling, one of the city’s nine franchised residential haulers. “The fact that the city allowed it to happen was, I don’t want to say, a slap in the face—but we abide by all these rules, and they’re there for a reason.”

In the coming months, government regulators that oversee Portland’s recycling system will decide whether Ridwell can continue storing its haul at a Northeast Portland warehouse. But that’s unlikely to end the conflict.

A review of public records, plus interviews with trash haulers, Ridwell representatives and customers, and recycling experts, paints a portrait of a battle for trash—one that evokes the fractious beginnings of other disruptive tech companies, like Airbnb and Uber, that fundamentally changed the industries they entered.

Little wonder the haulers are raising a stink.

“Right now, it’s like taking a sledgehammer to swat at a gnat,” says Jerry Powell, who ran a recycling publication for 38 years and also advised recycling companies. “Ridwell is not a threat to them. But what they’re really fighting now is someone who could handle a lot more services.”

No one believes in Ridwell’s potential more than William Musser IV, a stay-at-home dad who has become Ridwell’s unpaid ambassador in Portland.

Musser, 49, is an environmental advocate, former financial adviser, and serial obsessive. He was instrumental in bringing Ridwell to Portland.

He sent emails to neighbors and canvassed the streets of his Grant Park neighborhood in Northeast Portland.

(Ridwell will only bring service to ZIP codes where a threshold number of residents have expressed interest in buying subscriptions—anywhere from 150 to 1,000.) He placed ads in his kids’ school newsletters. He volunteers at Ridwell pop-up booths outside New Seasons.

“Nearly every house between Fremont and Knott streets, just about everyone has [a box],” Musser says—he’s responsible for that.

Musser feels a kinship with Ridwell CEO Ryan Metzger: Both are dads who were eager to recycle items like batteries, light bulbs and plastic foam, but who didn’t want to make the mileslong drive to a transfer station on the edge of town.

Ridwell was co-founded in Seattle in 2018 by Metzger, a 42-year-old venture capitalist who previously worked for Zulily, Microsoft and Alaska Airlines. The company now has 24,000 Seattle customers.

Ridwell makes nearly all of its money from a single source: subscribers and their median $14 monthly fees.

(Multiply that by 18,600 homes, and you’re looking at more than $3 million in annual revenues from Portland alone.) Ridwell sells two products—used clamshells and plastic film—to manufacturers who turn them into new clamshells and composite lumber, but Ridwell says its transportation costs to such factories consume any profit.

It hopes to someday find more lucrative markets. But it pledges that nearly all of the junk it collects gets sent to recyclers or community partners for reuse.

Clamshells go to Texas. Plastic film to Nevada. Batteries and light bulbs stay in Seattle, where a company called EcoLights makes new ones.

“They did the research and found places to ship [items],” says Musser. “Ridwell is filling in the gaps of what’s not able to be collected.”

In October 2020, Ridwell asked the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability for permission to operate in Portland. On Dec. 8, the industry association that represents Portland’s nine franchised trash haulers emailed the bureau to object.

“It just came to my attention that Ridwell, a company performing collection of residential recycling materials, is currently operating in Portland,” wrote Beth Vargas Duncan, regional director of the Oregon Refuse & Recycling Association. “This appears to be a franchise violation.”

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Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

They’re like DoorDash drivers, just walking up to our customers. It’s not regulated in any way to make sure that it’s collected safely or disposed of responsibly.

—K ARI WALKER McCULLOUGH, CO-OWNER OF WALKER GARBAGE

What she meant by that: Ridwell was doing work regulated by the city’s existing contracts with its residential garbage haulers.

Bruce Walker, who for 34 years oversaw Portland’s garbage and recycling systems, disagreed. He told Vargas Duncan that Ridwell wasn’t collecting any products that fell under existing contracts.

On Dec. 16, Walker emailed a bureau colleague, expressing annoyance at the friction. “We probably should [debrief ] but right now my G.A.S. [give a shit] meter is running low,” he wrote. “Do the haulers really care? How big of a deal is this? Anyway, if we need to clean up our code, we’ll do so.”

And that’s exactly what the city did.

The Portland City Council approved an exemption to city code that allowed Ridwell and similar companies to operate legally in the future. It was adopted in October by a unanimous vote.

Walker, who retired from BPS in August, says the haulers’ opposition to Ridwell caught him by surprise.

“I’m still dumbfounded. What’s the big issue here?”

Walker says. “I’ve asked point blank, and I haven’t gotten clear answers. [The haulers] just want to read me city code.”

In the suburbs, Ridwell has gotten a chillier reception.

Over the past year, after trash haulers complained, both Clackamas and Washington counties sent Ridwell ceaseand-desist letters demanding that it halt pickup in unincorporated portions of the counties. Tualatin and Lake Oswego sent letters telling Ridwell to halt operations, and Beaverton officials say they’ve also told Ridwell to stop.

Caleb Weaver, Ridwell’s vice president of public affairs, who previously had a similar job for Uber, says suburban

officials are placing loyalty to trash haulers above environmental goals.

“Many local officials have acknowledged that our service can help achieve their waste reduction goals,” Weaver says, “but they also appear to be feeling pressure from forces that seek to protect the status quo.”

Weaver says Ridwell still operates in those cities and counties (though Ridwell never started service in unincorporated Clackamas County, he says), and does not believe the municipalities have the authority to stop it.

“We believe it’s inconsistent with both state and public policy and state law,” he says, “to use the franchise monopoly power to outright prohibit the collecting of items for reuse and recycling that aren’t included in the curbside recycling service.”

Tualatin Mayor Frank Bubenik knows Ridwell is still operating in his city despite telling the company not to.

“We’re trying to handle it nicely without going to court,” Bubenik says.

By spring of next year, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the regional government Metro, which sets recycling policy for the Portland area, will decide whether to give Ridwell a permit for its Northeast Portland warehouse (see “The Treasure Room,” page 17).

For Kari Walker McCullough, trash is a birthright.

Walker McCullough, 57, co-owns Walker Garbage— one of the city’s nine contracted residential haulers. A fourth-generation garbage hauler, she learned at a young age the smell of garbage and the squeaking of spring-loaded seats as her grandfather’s truck rolled across a landfill, seagulls swooping low to the mounds of trash.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 18 FREE HELP: William Musser IV helped bring Ridwell to his neighborhood in Northeast Portland.

REBIRTH: Beth Fischer left an Elmer’s diner after nine years to drive for Ridwell.

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

17

The Treasure Room The Ridwell warehouse in Northeast Portland is a bustling place.

Stacks of pallets filled with thousands of crushed clamshells line one wall, repeatedly crunched together by one of the warehouse’s two balers to maximize space. On another wall, condensed plastic film is stacked 20 feet high.

In industrial-sized laundry baskets are clothing and rags. Batteries in Home Depot buckets and fluorescent light tubes in large cardboard drums are stored in an enclosed room—which doubles as an office.

Two workers toss used shirts and sweatshirts into a big bin as alternative rock comes out of speakers.

This warehouse is now the focal point of government regulators’ inquiries into what Ridwell does.

Metro is deciding whether Ridwell should get a solid waste facility permit for its warehouse. One of Metro’s requirements for approving such a permit is for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to grant Ridwell a solid waste disposal site permit.

Every place where trash haulers drop off materials to be sorted and consolidated—whether it’s a materials recovery center, transfer station or landfill—must be permitted by Metro.

When Ridwell first entered the Portland market, DEQ determined the company didn’t need a permit. But in the spring, Metro told DEQ it had toured Ridwell’s warehouse and urged the department to reconsider, says DEQ spokesman Harry Esteve.

Inspectors toured Ridwell’s warehouse in June and gave it until Nov. 15 to submit an application for a solid waste disposal site permit.

(Ridwell initially challenged DEQ’s determination, arguing it collected “hard to recycle” items and not “solid waste.” But on Nov. 29, Ridwell submitted the application.)

Why? “To ensure environmental compliance, and to make sure the materials they’re handling are handled in the right way so they don’t have an impact on public health or the environment,” says Esteve. “We put stipulations on how they store, handle and dispose of materials.”

Metro echoes that sentiment: Pam Peck, a policy and compliance program director for Metro, says her agency issues permits for such facilities to “be sure that the materials are being handled responsibly and how people have said they’re handling them.”

Decisions from DEQ and Metro are expected by spring. Those decisions won’t resolve disputes about whether the company should be allowed operate in garbage haulers’ territory— but they will mean Ridwell is accountable to a government agency for what it does with the junk it collects. SOPHIE PEEL. 18

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16 She sees Ridwell as an interloper that can pluck whatever customers it likes, without following any of the rules that apply to her company.

“They’re like DoorDash drivers, just walking up to our customers,” she says. “It’s not regulated in any way to make sure that it’s collected safely or disposed of responsibly.”

Residential trash hauling is a $70 million industry in Portland. The 255 trash haulers that operated in the city in 1955 have shrunk to nine—each set up with a contract with the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.

The city sets the rates for four different sizes of garbage can, anywhere from $29.85 to $45.30 a month. (That price includes recycling and compost bin pickup.) The city takes 5% of revenue, while the haulers get 95%.

Each year, the city reevaluates rates based on changes in the market.

The city’s target is to have haulers operate at a 9.5% profit margin. (Last year’s margin was 7.6%).

Of the nine haulers that have contracts with the city for residential garbage, six of them are based in Portland; three are national, including Waste Management and Republic Services, which have a combined market capitalization of more than $100 billion.

The items Ridwell recycles make up 0.0006% of the city’s waste stream, according to BPS officials. As a result, it’s BIRTHRIGHT: Kari Walker McCullough is a fourth-generation trash hauler in Portland.

hard to see how Ridwell’s success could lead customers to shift to smaller garbage cans, thus affecting haulers’ income.

But the haulers see Ridwell as a threat to that system and instead want the city to expand recycling options for all residential customers and give the haulers the work and revenue of picking up the material.

“We support expanding recycling options for all Portland’s residential customers at reasonable rates,” the Portland Haulers Association wrote to the City Council in September.

Recycling policy for Portland is set by both Metro and City Hall—which writes the contracts for the haulers.

The recyclable items that Portland’s trash haulers pick up go to recovery centers that sort and then find buyers for the materials. For decades, the primary market for most of those items was China—but when China stopped buying U.S. recyclables in 2018, recovery centers started sending paper and plastics to domestic markets, like the paper mill in Longview, and plastics to California recyclers. All plastic bottles under Oregon’s bottle bill go to a recycler in St. Helens. (“You’re Doing It Wrong,” WW, June 6, 2018).

Dylan de Thomas, public affairs and policy director for national nonprofit The Recycling Partnership, says

the city had valid reasons for not picking up light bulbs or plastic wrap—mostly because it couldn’t find enough destinations for them.

“The reason things are on the recycling list is because there’s a home for those things,” says de Thomas. “For other materials, the end markets are still developing.”

The logistics of recycling plastic film and batteries are too complex for Portland to make the project feasible citywide. (That may be changing: See “Catching Up,” page 19.) And perhaps more importantly, local officials fear a backlash if customers discover a new fee added to their monthly bills.

“The city hasn’t provided it yet because of the cost of the service,” says de Thomas. “That cost is borne by all of us—we all pay the same rate for our services.”

In 1995, then-Mayor Vera Katz’s administration tried to add batteries and clamshells to the city’s list of recyclables.

Her chief of staff at the time, current mayoral aide Sam Adams, tells WW that two major hurdles killed the plan.

“There weren’t obvious markets for them, and there were sorting issues,” Adams says. “They were really hard to sort out of what’s in the blue bins.”

BPS says it has no intention to roll out collection of such items citywide. “If these items could easily be collected in the blue bin, they would be,” says Eden Dabbs, a spokeswoman for the bureau. “The cost is high because the collection costs are high—and a significant barrier to a citywide service mandate.”

Jerry Powell, the recycling expert, says the haulers have always been territorial.

“When there’s a little bit of unique competition, they go ballistic,” Powell says. “If the city can only have five restaurants, and you have one of them, why compete?”

If an upstart can walk in and start recycling an item that currently goes into a trash bin—and no government steps in to stop them or regulate their activity and pricing—that threatens the haulers’ exclusive arrangement.

“The haulers believe that if you let in one operation that can charge and provide a service to only select customers, that we’ll see a whole series of these handling different materials,” says Powell.

There’s another reason the haulers oppose Ridwell. In correspondence with WW, all the haulers worried that

BOUNTY: Some of the clothing at Ridwell’s Northeast warehouse goes to community organizations like Rose Haven.

without regulation, no one knows what Ridwell is actually doing with the materials it collects.

“Hard-to-recycle items are, by definition, hard to recycle,” says Kristan Mitchell, executive director of the Oregon Refuse & Recycling Association. “They do not have well-established markets yet. [They] should have more regulation, not less—if they are not properly regulated, they could end up as pollutants in someone else’s community or waters, most often in marginalized communities.”

Taylor Loewen, Ridwell’s Portland manager, says the company prides itself on its transparency. She says it’s currently recycling 93% of the clamshells it collects, and 88.5% of the plastic film.

We’re setting a new standard in the industry for showing people how much is going to be recycled versus is going to be residual. I couldn’t say that about my curbside recycling.

—TAYLOR LOEWEN, RIDWELL’S PORTL AND GENERAL MANAGER

Catching Up

Ridwell may soon face competition from the recycling system it eclipsed.

This year, state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 582, which could expand the list of items that the recycling system will accept by 2025 and will also work to create stronger processing facilities for unwanted materials.

(Much of the funding for bolstering existing sorting facilities and building more access to recycling will be paid for by the manufacturers of recyclable items.)

Some of the items that could be added to the bins or in separate containers—such as clamshells—could be materials Ridwell now picks up.

Such changes could make Portland

“We’re setting a new standard in the industry for showing people how much is going to be recycled versus is going to be residual,” she says. “I couldn’t say that about my curbside recycling.”

What makes Ridwell’s business model work is the same thing that makes haulers irate: Ridwell only provides its white boxes to people who want to pay for them.

Every Ridwell customer is willing to pay extra for a service they now get for free when they throw light bulbs, plastic, foam and batteries in their trash bins.

Haulers’ rates and routes are set by the city. They have to serve everyone, not just customers who voluntarily subscribe. Their profit margin is regulated by the city.

Ridwell suffers no such limitations.

“They’re targeting people that really want to recycle that can pay an extra $14 a month,” says Cargni of Portland Disposal, one of the city’s franchised haulers. “It’s not reaching out to everyone in our system, and that’s what the franchise was set up to do.”

Ridwell argues it isn’t just seeking a profit—it’s prodding the state into a greater effort to recycle. Powell says that result would be a good thing.

“If the mayor said tomorrow the trucks need to be painted the city’s color, they’d be painted the next day,” he says.

“If you tell a hauler to jump 6 feet, they nail it. But nobody is asking them to jump 6 and a half feet.”

less attractive for Ridwell, depending on how the bill is implemented and which new materials may be added to curbside service.

“If we pull [those items] into the franchise system, Ridwell can’t collect them,” says Donnie Oliveira, deputy director the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. “[If] we add those to the franchise or our own machinations, that would be removed from their flow.”

Ridwell insists that would be a victory. “If things [we do] become more widely available through the franchise-provided service, we see that as a win,” says Ridwell’s Caleb Weaver.

“It would force us to make a shift in

the direction we’re going, just maybe a little faster, which is reusables.”

Haulers don’t want to wait and see if state legislation siphons business away from Ridwell.

But the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability tells WW the city has no intention of setting up a subscription service similar to Ridwell’s for their haulers.

“From the city’s perspective,’ says bureau spokeswoman Eden Dabbs, “we do not see a benefit—in terms of efficiency gains or cost savings—to restricting the provision of this boutique service to only the franchised haulers at this time.” SOPHIE PEEL. Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

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STREET COLUMBIA GORGE MODEL RAILROAD CLUB 2021 MODEL TRAIN SHOW Photos by Brian Burk On Instagram: @bpburk

Tiny trains are back! Hosting its first model train show since March 2020, the 74-year-old Columbia Gorge Model Railroad Club is once more giving tours of its 2,000-plus-foot network of double-laid track. CGMRC owns the largest model train layout in the Pacific Northwest. Painstaking models of track to Wishram, Wash., and Bend include a miniature steel arch bridge that spans the mouth of the model’s Deschutes River and a tiny but bright neon stag sign that lights the model’s downtown. The show concludes this weekend, but there are more opportunities to see the collection by making a reservation for Saturday or Sunday, Dec. 4-5.

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Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

STARTERS

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

READ MORE ABOUT THESE STO R I E S AT WW E E K .CO M .

RIDICULOUS

COMFORT SHOES FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

Thanksgiving 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the D.B. Cooper hijacking, so local musicmakers Wonderly write a song and make an Unsolved Mysteries-style music video about it, with a hard look at historical accuracy.

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

1433 NE Broadway St Portland • 503 493-0070

Tired of cereal?

We'll make you some eggs!

There’s a coffee shop inside Powell’s again! Princess Bride-themed Guilder Cafe brings out the movie-quoting public on opening weekend.

Open daily at 8am.

2239 SE Hawthorne Blvd

Sunnyside strip Peacock Lane fires up its holiday lights Dec. 15, but without pedestrian-only nights as a precaution against COVID.

AWFUL

Open for indoor & Now accepting online outdoor dining! pre orders for 7Mother’s days a week - 2pm Day8am Brunch!

AWESOME

www.JamOnHawthorne.com

Check out our menu at jamonhawthorne.com

PORTLAND’S MOST IMPORTANT STORIES SENT DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX

Hometown hero and Portland State University professor Douglas Wolk gets a shoutout on the cover of The New York Times Book Review for All of the Marvels.

Following November’s heavy rains and mass flooding, Ecola State Park in Cannon Beach remains closed due to a sinkhole, fissures and damaged roads.

The team behind the Oregon Brewers Festival announces Hillsbrew Fest— slated for February 2022 at the Washington County Fairgrounds.

SUBSCRIBE NOW WWEEK.COM/NEWSLETTERS

SERIOUS Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

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GET BUSY

STUFF TO DO IN PORTLAND THIS WEEK.

P O R T L A N D C E N T E R S TAG E

SEE | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the

Night-Time It’s no wonder Portland Center Stage artistic director Marissa Wolf once again tapped Jamie Sanders for the lead in this production after he last appeared in her Kansas City staging of this Tony Award winner. The raw emotion he brought to the stage in March 2020 as a 15-year-old autistic boy determined to track down the person who killed his neighbor’s dog was at once tender and haunting. The company also worked marvels with a spare set that looked like the Transporter Room in Star Trek. Unfortunately, the company had to close the production just one week into its run because of the pandemic lockdown. Happily, though, it’s brought it back for a full run. Portland Center Stage at the Armory, 128 NW 11th Ave., 503-445-3700, pcs.org.

7:30 pm Wednesday-Saturday, 2 and 7:30 pm Sunday, through Dec. 24. $30-$87.

M A R I A O R L O VA

�GO | Portland Night Market With the holidays approaching and supply chains being what they are, consider the Portland Night Market—and its 175-plus local retail, artisan goods, food and art vendors your unique and irreplaceable gift-giving salvation. Though the Night Market appears promptly every four months, the holiday incarnation can be one of its busiest. The ticketed Thursday preview event means you get first pick of what’s for sale and can move around a little more freely, but unlike the free market it’ll set you back $20 (one cocktail included). Portland Night Market, 100 SE Alder St., pdxnm.com. 6-9 pm Thursday, Dec. 2. $20. 4-11 pm Friday-Saturday, 11 am-4 pm Sunday, Dec. 3-5. Free. �VIRTUAL | Neal Stephenson

Sci-fi and fantasy lovers saw Neal Stephenson in conversation with Lev Grossman and are already clicking over to Powell’s to register for this remote chat between two beloved world-building authors about Stephenson’s new vision of the future, Termination Shock. Ever focused on the roads our world might rumble down, Stephenson’s new novel brings together characters from far-ranging continents and cultures to grapple with potential solutions for climate change. Seeing as Stephenson’s first book, Zodiac, was an unabashed eco-thriller, filled with soliloquies to hardware stores and bike lights, this subject has long been part of Stephenson’s oeuvre. Register for the zoom at powells. com. 5 pm Friday, Dec. 3. Free.

☛ DO | Ornament Hunt Whether you love the thrill of a good hunt or simply get bored browsing the aisles of Target for Christmas decorations, this event should keep you entertained if you’re getting ready to trim a tree.

The Willamette Valley Visitors Association has hidden 200 wooden ornaments along non-wilderness trails in the Willamette and Umpqua National Forests. Each one includes a Willamette Valley leather patch and instructions on how to register to win a prize. Though you might have to break a light sweat to get one, there are worse holiday traditions than hiking in the woods. Willamette and Umpqua National Forests, willamettevalley.org/ornaments. Through Jan. 1, 2022. SEE | Foamboy

A name like Foamboy suggests softness, inefficacy, the quality of being a punching bag—a neat contrast with the muscular post-disco that the duo has been pursuing since changing its name from Chromatic Colors. Their recently released debut, Sober Daydream, sets Katy Ohsiek’s sangfroid against a jazzy, hard-hitting backdrop from producer Wil Bakula and a boatload of local players.

Imagine the grungiest and most elegant bits of the ’80s combined—as much synthwave as sophisti-pop, as much Sade as Schwarzenegger. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 503-239-7639, holocene.org. 8 pm Wednesday, Dec. 1. $10.

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Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

☛ DO | Drag Queen Bingo with Katya Drag queen bingo is like a drag show where you have something to do with your hands—other than toss back cocktails and clap. This one-off charity night asks supporters of the Cascade AIDS Project to dress up in red and fill out their cards for a good cause. Local hostess and performer Katya will provide the wit and the numbers. Kells Brewery, 112 SW 2nd Ave., capnw.org. 6 pm Thursday, Dec. 2. $20, includes one bingo card for each of three rounds.

�GO | Unique Markets Portland Holiday Pop-Up By now, we’ve all heard about the global shipping delays that are expected to continue into the new year. If you want to avoid buying holiday gifts online for fear they’ll arrive by Christmas 2022, then it’s time to return to the old brick-and-mortar, and this holiday pop-up should make it easy to get your shopping done all in one place. Unique Markets Portland launched last year in a vacant Orchard Supply Hardware and since then has tripled in size, growing into the Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

There you’ll find 140 local businesses, emerging brands and artists. And to make the drudgery of shopping a little more fun, organizers will offer free drinks and holiday portraits, and even wrap your gifts before you leave. Veterans Memorial Coliseum, 300 N Winning Way, uniquemarkets.com. 10 am-4 pm Saturday-Sunday, Dec. 4-5. $5 general admission, $25 VIP online, in advance.

FOOD & DRINK

Opinionated WW staff sound off about hard seltzer.

BY W W S TA F F

J U S T I N YA U

FIZZY LIFT: Seek Out’s Blackberry Lemonade flavor was mistaken by all for cranberry.

could see themselves buying it again, especially during the upcoming holiday season. Though not totally a deterrent, the easygoing Blackberry Lemonade flavor was mistaken by all for cranberry. However, the overall tastelessness factored positively.

Tasters thought it would be a good fit to bring to parties. Made by 2 Towns Cider in Corvallis, Seek Out gets its 5% ABV from fermented fruit juice.

Flying Embers: 5% ABV, 95 calories per 12-ounce can The fanciest brand name, in the fanciest can, proved to be the best-tasting drink. Flying Embers’ Pineapple Cayenne smelled the worst—but still won the blue ribbon. Our panel of judges agreed the drink tasted “like an angry pineapple,” but wasn’t actually spicy. The Ojai, Calif., brand uses fermented cane sugar to achieve that 5% ABV, which may account for the off-putting scent.

Pacific Sparkling: 5% ABV, 100 calories per 12-ounce can Our panel was drawn to the idea of a Cucumber Mint flavor seltzer, but we collectively agreed that the reality smelled like alfalfa.

The result was a fizzless, highbrow-tasting beverage that was, at once, compared to a mojito and an old martini. Crafted with the “water of the Cascades,” by Ninkasi Brewing

Company in Eugene, Pacific Sparling gets its 5% ABV from malt liquor, but we respected its upfront admission of that. The panel decided this hard seltzer was best suited for a spa experience, as it tasted vaguely like health food.

Upper Left: 6% ABV, 100 calories per 12-ounce can Our taste test was blind, so we had no control over our only Portland-made brand Upper Left coming in last—though still with good rankings in taste. The Cotton Candy-flavored seltzer was just a little too intense for our panel, and we found its lack of fizz disappointing. One panelist complained that it made her mouth numb, “but not in a good way.” Still, we agreed it would make sense at a college party, where more adventurous drinkers might take to the experimental flavor.

J U S T I N YA U

Seek Out: 5% ABV, 100 calories per 12-ounce can This semi-local seltzer held strong in the rankings because all tasters agreed they

WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.

CLOUDFOREST

Hard seltzer is a summer drink. However, WW staff has noticed a number of new seltzers cropping up in the cold season and reason it’s easy to argue for hard seltzer as a winter drink too. After all, come January, the calorie-restricting faithful will look to 100-cal cans for salvation.

Opinionated WW staff formed a panel for a blind taste test, marking subjective scores on our office whiteboard in an attempt to quantify collective tastes. Ranked from favorite to least, here they are:

Topo Chico: 4.7% ABV, 100 calories per 12-ounce can The most seltzer-forward and recognizable name brand, Topo Chico’s Exotic Pineapple, gave off the greatest fizz upon opening.

Where Flying Embers’ pineapple flavor possessed a rank smell and a delightful taste, Topo Chico had the most textbook pineapple smell imaginable. It tasted like a pleasant “sweet fizz” and seemed the most at home for everyday use.

Hot Plates THOMAS TEAL

The Boozy Seltzer Taste Test

Top 5

727 SE Morrison St., 503-893-2614, cloudforest. shop. 10 am-7 pm Thursday-Monday (outdoor seating only).

A visit to the Cloudforest shop reveals an abundance of fine chocolate, ranging from the vanilla-infused Orchid bar to the Holy Wood: flavored with woodsy-herbaceous and reputedly medicinal palo santo. The namesake Cloudforest bar is refined solely from Nacional-type cacao beans grown in Ecuador’s Camino Verde orchard. Owner Sebastian Cisneros has also begun to extend his reach beyond bar chocolate. Summer brought ice cream made from cacao pulp, tasting of fruit with the barest whisper of chocolate flavor, and a hazelnut-chocolate spread suited to spoon right on top.

ZUCKERCREME

414 SE 81st Ave, 317-366-6938, instagram.com/ zuckercreme. 10 am-6 pm Wednesday-Saturday, weekly pop-ups 10 am-4 pm Sunday.

Following a summer of successful themed popups (Strawberry Museum, among them), Brittany Sigal decided to keep monthly themes moving through her Montavilla cafe, Zuckercreme. December is “cozy AF” month and every Sunday she hosts local makers at the coffee shop’s tables— making it an impromptu little market. During the week, there’s a much chiller vibe of “damn fine” Mutt’s coffee, baked goods and a corner of consigned local wares. “I’m from the Midwest,” Sigal says, “and I think I accidentally made a Cracker Barrel.”

WILD THING

1483 NE Alberta St., wildthingpdx.com. 10 am-3 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Pearl District restaurant and wine bar Arden recently debuted its little sister cafe, Wild Thing.

The entirely plant-based menu centers on buildyour-own bowls with a base of brown grains or mixed greens rampaged by fruits, vegetables and nuts from all shades of the color wheel. Wild Thing has been a three-year project in the making from Arden owner Kelsey Glasser. The cafe also serves its very own label of canned wines and cold-brew coffee made in collaboration with Never Lab.

QUAINTRELLE

2032 SE Clinton St., 503-200-5787, quaintrelle.co.

5-10 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Mississippi fine dining spot Quaintrelle reopened in late August on Southeast Clinton with a noticeable upgrade. Chef Riley Eckersley and bar manager Camille Cavan stayed on and built out the former Burrasca location into the kitchen and bar of their combined dreams. There are now splurge-worthy five-, seven- and nine-course tasting menus with available add-ons and drink pairings, along with an à la carte menu. Eckersley continues his uncanny knack for drawing from wherever his culinary interests take him—a fish sauce here, freshly foraged mushrooms there, and a touch of Spanish flair. Plates always look like art, and also taste like it.

BRASA HAYA

412 NE Beech St., 503-288-3499, brasahayapdx. com. 5:30-10 pm, Wednesday-Sunday. Indoor seating not ADA accessible, vaccination required to dine indoors.

A new Spanish restaurant in a converted home that was formerly Beech Street Parlor, Brasa Haya is a fine(r) dining restaurant with textbook salt cod croquettes. The portion was too small to split effectively, but this is a problem inherent to tapas, not Brasa Haya.

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

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FOOD & DRINK

Top 5

SUZETTE SMITH

BAR REVIEW

Buzz List WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.

1. PUSH X PULL

821 SE Stark St., pushxpullcoffee.com. 8 am-2 pm Monday-Friday, 8 am-3 pm Saturday-Sunday.

Coffee may be ubiquitous in our city, but Christopher Hall, the 37-year-old co-founder of coffee roaster and cafe Push x Pull, possesses a singular focus on natural process beans. “Natural process” refers to fermentation of the entire coffee cherry after harvesting. In Push x Pull’s capable hands, the results are flavorful espresso shots and captivating cortados.

2. NIGHTINGALE

18 NE 28th Ave., 971-254-9017, nightingalepdx. net. 5 pm-midnight Thursday-Saturday, 5-11 pm Sunday, Monday and Wednesday.

There’s something subdued about Nightingale, even with a decent weekend turnout of groups dining both inside and out—on the bar’s festive but understated streetside patio. The elusive quiet bar on a Saturday night, its cocktail menu consists of well-conceived concoctions most with a “peaty” cast to them, owing to the liberal deployment of mezcals, scotches, and smoked bitters.

3. MIDNIGHT SOCIETY

CRUST ABOVE: Pizza Thief’s crust has give for folding, but enough crumb to prevent sogginess. Below, Bandit Bar’s old fashioned sports infusions of fig and vanilla.

SUZETTE SMITH

Hot New Neighbor With an impressive sourdough crust and craft beer selection, Pizza Thief has the makings of an instantly beloved neighborhood spot.

BY C A M P Y D R A P E R

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Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

cheeses. It’s perfect, don’t overthink it! Similarly, The Baller puts meatballs and ricotta on a pizza bed together with fresh basil. We ship that, a classic throuple. The standout pie was Hot Tony, which earns its name due to liberal amounts of spicy pepperoni, salami, Calabrian chiles, and jalapeños, all balanced by sweet piquillo peppers. Unfortunately, there’s only one vegan pie choice, but it rotates seasonally for variety.

Whole 18-inch pies at Pizza Thief sell for around $30, but slices ring up at between $3.75 and $5. The setup seems perfect for lunch (although I’m a proud lunch-at-10:45 am type, and Pizza Thief doesn’t open until noon).

Two slices are likely to be enough for most people. I ate four. It wasn’t cheap, but the price of good pizza is eye-popping pretty much anywhere these days. And the same could be said about cocktails. Speaking of: Attached to the dining area is a moodier, sexier watering hole with black and pink walls—Pizza Thief’s dark twin, Bandit Bar. Blessed with ample booths, Bandit Bar is exactly the kind of place to settle in with some friends, share a pie, and knock back drinks over tales of how impossible the neighborhood is to park in.

Like the pizzas, the cocktail list presents standard but strong takes on classic, well-balanced crowd pleasers—priced in the $12-to-$16 range. The old fashioned sports

4. COOPERATIVA

1250 NW 9th Ave., Suite 100, 503-342-7416, cooperativapdx.com. 7:30 am-9 pm Wednesday-Saturday.

New to the menu at the Pearl’s Italian market, the World Vermut Tour flight comes with three 3-ounce pours to remind drinkers that—to quote bar manager Joel Schmeck—“really killer vermouths” are made internationally and domestically. Alongside Spanish Lustau vermut rosé and Cnia Mata red vermouth, Cooperativa features Son of Man’s “Someday” vermouth. Made with the Basque-style Sagardo cider, brewed in Cascade Locks, this dry white warps the vermouth category—a category known to have few requisites other than being made with wine. The cloudy yellow bottle carries tart sips of kumquat and rhubarb.

AARON LEE

Portland is in the midst of a pizza renaissance, or a glut, depending how you look at it. It’s impossible to keep up with all the new, local pies you can sink your chompers into. However, the dual gem of Pizza Thief and the adjoining Bandit Bar—open since early June—is a newcomer that fits into its surroundings perfectly, serving up big, New York-style slices, quality craft beers and unpretentious cocktails under the neon lights of the Montgomery Park sign.

Pizza Thief’s pizza side is bright and family-friendly with big windows, a pair of arcade cabinets, and tall walls covered with simple, colorful illustrations of flowers and raccoons.

The service is walk-up, but should you bring the kiddos, you can easily keep them in sight.

What is the most important thing about pizza? Crust! And Pizza Thief has a top-shelf sourdough crust game: the right amount of give for folding, but enough crumb to prevent sogginess. The sauce attains a perfect middle ground of savory and sweet with just the right acidic tang. The toppings— though fairly standard for this unorthodox pizza city—are plentiful, high quality and locally sourced.

Your pie choices are standard, but strong.

For instance, the Kevin Pepperoni has the little cup pepperonis that curl upward and become delicious grease traps, laid across a bed of mozzarella, provolone and grana

3341 SE Belmont St., themidnightsocietypdx.net.

4 pm-midnight Tuesday-Thursday, 4 pm-2 am Friday-Saturday.

When it’s an option, vermut de la casa is the best and cheapest vermouth choice you can make— and is assuredly the least FDA approved. Midnight Society co-owner and bartender Estanislado Orona makes two secret-menu blends. The white combines Dolin Dry and Padró & Co.’s Myrrha Blanco with saline to give the sweet and nutty mix a tang, like sour verjus. The red is a mix of Dolin and Cocchi Storico reds, set over cacao nibs for a week. The first sip is cherry cola and fudge.

As it mellows on ice, clove and banana come out.

curiously effective infusions of fig and vanilla. The Acapulco Gold—which takes its name from the restaurant Bandit Bar replaced—is a margarita with just the right muddled jalapeño kick.

Bandit Bar also boasts a short list of wines from Italy and Oregon, as well as craft brews to satisfy the beer nerds in your life—Ferment, pFriem and Little Beast, among others. Lacking are the kinds of cheap tallboys that someone on a budget can get down and dirty with.

With that dough, craft beer selection, and respect for pepperoni grease cups, Pizza Thief has the makings of a great neighborhood establishment. While it probably won’t reach destination status, everyone in the Northwest neighborhood should already know Pizza Thief’s name.

EAT: Pizza Thief/Bandit Bar, 2610 NW Vaughn St., 503-719-7778, pizzathief.com.

Noon-9 pm daily.

5. SPEED-O CAPPUCCINO

402 SE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-754-4371, speed-o-cappuccino.business.site. 7:30 am-5 pm Monday-Friday, 10 am-4 pm Saturday-Sunday.

In the summer, most of Speed-o Cappuccino’s staff served drip coffee and Spanish cortados (a cappuccino that’s equal parts espresso and milk), wearing hot pink crop tops and booty shorts. The cart’s brunch menu is equally bright and colorful enough to wake up diners or restore them after a long night at neighboring Coffin Club. The Glory Bowl toast plate’s smorgasbord of peanut butter, banana slices, almond granola, coconut shavings, cocoa nibs and honey are the sweetest breakfast sex pun south of Voodoo Doughnut.

POTLANDER

How the Canna Cookie Crumbles Six kinds of weed cookies to serve on a platter or stick in your stash box this season.

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

The most festive holiday season of all is almost upon us. Ooky-spooky season, fellowship casserole season, Mariah Carey season, these are all just precursors to the only season that really matters: cookie season.

Cookie season comes to an unofficial head in the calendar vortex between Christmas and New Year’s Day. But it officially starts with National Cookie Day, which arrives this year on Saturday, Dec. 5.

Before this season’s inevitable excess of family-friendly baked offerings

start piling up, consider National Cookie Day a reminder to refresh your weed cookie stash. And when all the afternoons spent baking finally deliver their ultimate payoff and those six days of ephemeral cookie season finally arrive, you’ll have more than enough cookies, medicated and otherwise, for a proper celebration.

Here are a few of our most recent biscuit stash additions to get you started:

Korova Mint Dip Mini Cookie

Korova creates an effigy to the classic black-andwhite cookie via this potent 50 mg mint chip-flecked cocoa confection, half dipped in muted green mint chocolate. Like black-and-white cookies, Korova’s Mint Dip Mini is festive, but in a way that works as well for Christmas as it does for Meemaw’s birthday. This hybrid infused mini-biscuit (about the size of a votive candle) has a stiff, biscotti-esque texture that rejects portioning but demands dunking, so consider it a varsity-stoner-only single serving—best furnished alongside a mug of hot chocolate, creamy coffee or fancy 2% dippin’ milk.

Get it from: Floyd’s Fine Cannabis, 1602 N Columbia Blvd., 503-895-9500. floydsfinecannabis.com.

Junk Minty Moly-O’s

Junk’s Holy Moly-O’s get a minty remix with its Minty Moly-O’s, a familiar chocolate sandwich cookie with minty cream filling and a rich coating of potent, THC-infused chocolate. These cookies come in a two-pack, with each cookie measuring out to around 25 mg THC. They’re great for sharing or gifting. We love this cookie for its mellow yet potent high, but more so we love blasting off by eating a highly medicated, dopely decorated version of America’s most popular chocolate sandwich cookie.

Get it from: The Kings of Canna,1465 NE Prescott St., 971-319-6945, thekingsofcanna.com.

Trout Chocolate Chip Majik Buttterscotch CBD Two-Pack

For cookie heads in search of a potent cannabis cookie that doesn’t liquefy their brains, consider Majik’s Butterscotch CBD two-pack. Even heady stoners with higher THC preferences can appreciate a cookie that relaxes and de-stresses without psychotropic effects. Even without THC, this cookie has the potential to deliver all the good feels of a premium spacecake without any of the galaxy brain aftertaste. Bonus: It’s far more shareable in mixed company than a high-potency edible might be.

Get it from: WeedLand, 4027 N Interstate Ave., 541-904-0000.

Laurie + MaryJane Chewy Spice Cookie

L+MJ’s Chewy Spice Cookie is a mouthful of holiday sentimentality. The soft chew and square edges recall a sheet of neatly cut molasses cookies, fresh from the oven. The delicate layering of ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom and cannabis creates a symphony of seasonal perfumes and flavors similar to the potpourri vapors lingering around the threshold of a Christmas shop. And the dissociative high the cookie delivers is precisely what the holiday season calls for, whether your cuddle-puddling with fam and friends or vibing solo.

Get it from: Electric Lettuce, 203 NE Weidler St., 971-4073150, electriclettuce.com.

Trout’s reputation for affordable, quality pre-roll packs suggests its foray into confections would be similarly accessible.

Sure enough, its chocolate chip cookie is a straightforward entry into the field—a no-frills 50 mg infusion into Lissa’s Tasty Treats Gourmet Cookie Dough. This cookie has the dense, chunky charm of an amateur bake sale entry, delivering a specific appeal certain to keep a cookie platter from feeling neither too pretentious nor trendily homogeneous. Pro tip: This cookie’s stiff texture can be softened with a three-second microwave blast, making it easier to parcel out for multiple doses.

Get it from: Rose Budz PDX, 2410 N Mississippi Ave., 503-208-3955, rosebudzpdx.com.

Elbe’s Edibles Lemondoodle

Elbe’s shakes up the standard snickerdoodle with a touch of brisk lemon and 50 mg of perky, full-spectrum THC. For fans of classic sugar cookies, doodles and lemon-ups, this tender doughball should satiate your cookie cravings, and though it’s on the smaller size (about 2 inches in diameter), its pliability makes dosing relatively easy.

I recommend nibbling this edible with a cup of herbal tea over the course of a long sit rather than chomping the whole thing at once. Then, instead of a big swooning onset, the high percolates gradually to a captivating, yet manageable, crescendo.

Get it from: Cannabis Curb, 4069 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 971-255-1542, cannabiscurb.com.

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

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PERFORMANCE

MUSIC

Editor: Andi Prewitt | Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com D AV I D K I N D E R

Written by: Daniel Bromfield | @bromf3

Now Hear This

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

SOMETHING OLD

HAT TRICK: Known for head accessories as bold as her personality, former Congresswoman Bella Abzug’s fascinating life is explored in Triangle’s latest production.

In the Bathroom With Battling Bella Bella Bella is a raucous and intimate portrait of New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug.

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

In 1995, former President George H.W. Bush and Bella Abzug both traveled to China. ‘’I feel somewhat sorry for the Chinese, having Bella Abzug running around,” he whined at a meeting with food production executives. “Bella Abzug is one who has always represented the extremes of the women’s movement.’’

Upon hearing of Bush’s remark, Abzug—a former congresswoman who had represented Manhattan’s West Side in the 1970s and was the first Jewish woman elected to the House of Representatives—retaliated with characteristic panache. “He was addressing a fertilizer group?” she asked. “That’s appropriate.’’

Bush was one of many politicians who earned Abzug’s ire. She may have apologized for the time she allegedly punched a campaign worker, but she wasn’t known for backing down, as President Richard Nixon learned when she told him during a White House reception that her constituents demanded a withdrawal from Vietnam.

The spirit of “Battling Bella” survives in Triangle’s production of Bella Bella, directed by Donald Horn. It’s a play that would have benefited from a broader scope—the sweeping saga of Abzug ’s work as a feminist and antiwar activist cries out for a colossal narrative canvas—but it’s a solid primer for Abzug newbies and a splendid showcase for its fearsome star, Wendy Westerwelle.

Written by Harvey Fierstein, Bella 26

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

Bella takes place in September 1976 in a bathroom at the Summit Hotel in Manhattan, where Abzug is stewing while she waits to see if she will triumph in a Senate primary. In an effort to kill time, she addresses the audience directly, reliving her political crusades and bemoaning the corrosive power of the patriarchy.

It’s hard to imagine a better Bella than Westerwelle. She doesn’t just have charisma—she has swagger, especially when Bella mentions that she knows Gloria Steinem, Lily Tomlin and Shirley MacLaine. “Am I name dropping?” she asks. While other actors would have slathered that line with self-deprecation, Westerwelle says it slyly, suggesting that Bella doesn’t care if we think she’s name dropping. She’s cool and she knows it.

While Westerwelle radiates confidence, she also captures Bella’s conflicted feelings about the tortured relationship between men, women and American politics. Bella declares that three female presidents wouldn’t have allowed America to become mired in Vietnam, but she also grudgingly admits, “Oh, you can’t blame it all on men. Sexism is systemic.”

Bella Bella is essentially a tale of two Bellas—the one who dreams of a utopian matriarchy and the one who witnessed women throwing rocks at Black children trying to integrate a school.

The friction between Bella’s idealism and her realism is the most intriguing part of the play, given that her many

rivals—including Pat Nixon, who Bella says patronizingly complimented her taste in hats—remain offstage.

Bella’s mention of Pat Nixon makes you wonder why Bella Bella had to be a one-woman show. A play about Abzug and that particular first lady arguing over beers could have been compelling, not least of all because it would have let Fierstein show Bella fighting instead of telling us that she’s a fighter.

It’s possible that Fierstein, who starred as Bella when Bella Bella premiered in 2019, had too much affection for his heroine to pit her against a formidable rival. You can’t blame him for wanting to celebrate Abzug, but his resistance to identifying a single character flaw drains much of the potential drama out of the play.

Abzug ’s achievements are admirable, but there’s nothing interesting about unrelenting hero worship. Fierstein might have considered it sacrilegious to bring up a 1972 report by Ralph Nader that estimated Abzug’s sponsorship of a measure often cost it 20 to 30 votes, but that’s the kind of detail that can separate a work of art from an act of faith.

Looked at in the arc of American history, Bella Bella is a profoundly tragic play. Abzug died in 1998—and if she’s looking down on America from the afterlife, she’s likely seething at the continued threat that the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority poses to her legacy as an advocate for abortion rights.

Yet Bella Bella makes it abundantly clear that Abzug was not to be discouraged. She may have lost her fair share of fights, but today’s progressives would do well to adopt the creed of resilience she lays out in the play: “You know, it’s amazing the things you can get people to do just by telling them to do it.”

SEE IT: Bella Bella plays at Triangle Productions! The Sanctuary at Sandy Plaza, 1785 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-2395919, trianglepro.org. 7:30 pm ThursdaySaturday and 2 pm Sunday, through Dec. 11. $15-$35.

As Perfume Genius, Mike Hadreas has made a name for himself as a slithering, sensual presence on festival stages across America (“no family is safe when I sashay,” goes one song). But back in 2010, he was a piano-playing hermit whose music sounded like it was recorded inside a monk’s cell. Learning might be his best record. A collection of ambient miniatures and heartbreaking songs, it barely scrapes 30 minutes, and it’s amazing that its best songs—“Learning,” “Mr. Petersen,” “Write to Your Brother”—aren’t standards.

SOMETHING NEW

Working in a woolly early ’70s mode this time around, Petunia is the newest expansion in scope, skill and budget from the shaggy-haired brothers in Tonstartssbandht. Its harmonies sound like Yes’ Jon Anderson doing Simon & Garfunkel, and the brothers have internalized the Dead’s way of making complex songs feel organic and free; it’s refreshing to see them bring some rigor to the noncommittal world of slacker rock.

SOMETHING LOCAL

The last year or so has been great for intimate, diaristic, field recording-based ambient music (see: Claire Rousay, More Eaze, Nick Zanca, Lucy Liyou, et al.)

Through the Eyes of Someone You Love, from local Bandcamp denizen Kaho Matsui (recording as Kazuma Matsui), is a fine addition to the canon. It burbles up bits of daily life and blindsiding moments of pop beauty while staying abrasive, tender, and sweet. After a few tracks, you really start to feel for the chipmunk-person whose heartfelt narration composes the core of the album.

SOMETHING ASKEW

The ambient and warm drone catalog of New York audio-visual duo Bengalfuel is thematically united around dramatically lit album artwork that often incorporates very cute cats. The cover of 2012’s Braemar boasts an all-star pettable cat and some of the most sumptuous drones imaginable—eight tracks lasting an hour, great for listening while half-awake in the middle of the night or slow-blinking with a feline friend.

MOVIES

GET YO UR REPS I N

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

HBO

SCREENER

Original G Before watching the new HBO doc Listening to Kenny G, read about how Portland jazz legend Mel Brown hired a young Kenneth Gorelick for his quintet.

BY JAY H O RTO N

@hortland

Temptations) before returning home in the ’70s to reignite the local jazz scene, spoke with WW about hiring a hardworking young horn player to jam with his band decades ago.

WW: When did you meet Kenny G? Mel Brown: Around the mid-’70s, I’d just come from New York after bouncing back and forth between the Supremes and the Temptations. Instead of going back to the whole Motown thing, I decided I really just wanted to play jazz here in Portland. So, I opened up the drum shop and put together a quintet. We had Thara Memory on trumpet.

Omar Yeoman played the bass. The piano player was Jeff Lorber, from Philadelphia, and a guy named Bob Hutchins played saxophone.

Hutchins ended up moving to New York.

That’s when Jeff Lorber brought to our attention this saxophone player going to school at the University of Washington and I got a chance to meet him—Kenny Gorelick! He was really a very nice young man, you know.

Hard worker.

Any hint of what was to come?

No, not at that point. That really doesn’t happen too often with younger players. You need the chance to hear them in different settings and find out their possibilities.

Was this Kenny’s first serious band?

I don’t know if my band was his first, but it was an early one, I’ll put it that way.

Why was that?

Because they didn’t think there was any music here! [laughs] Then, all of a sudden, people started discovering Portland, and it was like, “Hey, man, they have some talent!”

So, Lorber and Kenny played around Portland for a while?

Well, it wasn’t a long period of time. Around then, you usually traveled around trying for gigs in, say, Seattle or Tacoma or wherever.

I think they had a manager or some type of representation. They were getting the big shows, but they weren’t the big names. I don’t know when Kenny left Jeff. At that time, I was back into Motown and, on the road, we started hearing about this saxophone player. “Kenny G? Kenny G?” And, then it hit me—that’s Kenny Gorelick!

And what did you think?

Oh, it knocked me out! I mean, it sounded really good! What I think happened with Kenny, he kind of developed his own sound— just like Miles had his own sound and Coltrane had his, playing tenor. There are a lot of players around that play really well, but they don’t have their own sound. With my band, Kenny played alto. Not many guys were playing soprano so, when he started, that stood out. He wanted that different sound.

For anyone not well versed in that style of music, how would you describe the difference?

Most people can’t tell you who’s playing what instrument. The soprano sticks out. It’s a much, much lighter sound—pleasing when it hits the ear. With soprano, you kind of sing a little more.

SEE IT: Listening to Kenny G begins streaming on HBO and HBO Max on Thursday, Dec. 2. Mel Brown plays at the Jack London Revue, 529 SW 4th Ave., 866-777-8932, jacklondonrevue.com. 8 pm Thursday, Dec. 9. $20-$150. 21+.

Nostalghia (1983) Slow cinema master Andrei Tarkovsky directs this philosophical drama (his first non-Soviet film) about a Russian writer visiting Italy to research an 18th century composer. Soon, he unearths latent personal dilemmas in regards to homesickness, soul and memory, and the untranslatability of art and culture. 5th Avenue, Dec. 3-5.

Elf (2003)

Will Ferrell stars as Buddy, a human raised by Santa’s elves who travels from the North Pole to New York City on a quest to find his curmudgeonly long-lost father (James Caan). Zooey Deschanel plays an unenthusiastic retail worker who is somehow attracted to the childlike, elf suit-wearing Buddy. Academy, Dec. 3-9.

Miss Congeniality (2000) An unfeminine FBI agent (Sandra Bullock) goes undercover as a beauty queen to stop a terrorist threat at the Miss United States pageant in this hit comedy. Co-hosted by Elizabeth Teets and Anthony Hudson, this screening (part of the Hollywood’s Isn’t She Great series) will open with L.A. standup comedian Ella Gale. Hollywood, Dec. 4.

Tokyo Godfathers (2003) A N I M AT I O N M AG A Z I N E

Likely the world’s most famous instrumentalist and certainly its most successful, with some 75 million albums sold, Kenny G effectively birthed smooth jazz as a marketable format and forever earned the loathing of genre purists. New HBO documentary Listening to Kenny G, which won rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival, expects you’re already familiar with the much-maligned sax god and, absent any revelations, asks you to consider the man within the meme.

While most biographies of living legends focus on either vicariously reliving the triumph of artistry over family, country and economy, or relishing a salacious peek behind the music, Listening to Kenny G isn’t particularly interested in explaining the ways fortune found a hyper-ambitious man blessed with a perfect elevator pitch.

This even-handed portrait wonders instead just how an awkward noodler spun platinum from a moribund medium, and why so many, many critics took objection.

To some extent, the former Kenneth Gorelick could’ve come from anywhere, but the early Starbucks investor’s Seattle origins do seem especially apropos. Still, while Portland cannot claim him as our own, the path that brought the University of Washington accounting student to the attention of major record labels arguably begins in Puddletown. Portland drummer laureate Mel Brown, the Motown vet who kept the beat for a cavalcade of stars (Diana Ross, Tommy Chong, Martha Reeves, the

And, eventually, they…

What happened was that we started to change. Everybody’s ears opened around town, but these guys…they were hustlers, especially Jeff Lorber. One night, after paying the guys their money, Thara Memory let me know that Jeff had a few words with the club owner, saying he was starting his own band.

Jeff was getting ready to go into the fusion sound, and he had a band that could work for less money than I was charging. I was like, “OK, let’s just get some different people.”

Jeff started the Jeff Lorber Fusion project, and Kenny went with him. He was just trying to finish up school. The guys kept it going and, you know, bless their hearts, they got something happening and, from that point on, other bands started springing up. People started looking at Portland. It wasn’t a real strong jazz situation around here. Everybody used to come from San Francisco, skip us, and go to Seattle.

In this teen scream staple, a group of high schoolers are targeted by a hook-wielding killer who knows what they did, specifically, last summer. This screening, part of the Hollywood’s Queer Horror bimonthly series, will be hosted

by Portland’s premier drag clown Carla Rossi and opens with a summer flashback drag show.

Hollywood, Dec. 2.

NEW LINE CINEMA

G MAJOR: Kenny G’s path to stardom got an early start in Portland.

He was the youngest?

Everybody was pretty young, but I guess Kenny was the youngest member. He wasn’t too much younger than Jeff.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Directed by Satoshi Kon of Perfect Blue (1997), this anime tragicomedy adventure follows three unhoused Tokyo residents (a teen runaway, a trans woman and a middle-aged alcoholic) who find a newborn baby in the trash on Christmas Eve. With a bag containing clues to the baby’s parents’ identities, the motley crew sets out to find them. Clinton, Dec. 7.

ALSO PLAYING: Academy: Gun Crazy (1950), Dec. 1-2. Sunset Boulevard (1950), Dec. 1-2. Scrooged (1988), Dec. 3-9. Clinton: Rapsodia Satanica (1917) and The Faun (1917), Dec. 1. Crazy Mama (1975), Dec. 3. Mountain Miracle—An Unexpected Friendship (2017), Dec. 5. Hollywood: Chess of the Wind (1976), Dec. 3. Remember the Night (1940), Dec. 4-5. Golgo 13: The Professional (1983), Dec. 5.

The Perfect Weapon (1991), Dec. 7.

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

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MOVIES NETFLIX

NOW PLAYING TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

The Power of the Dog When Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) sees Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) watching him bathe outdoors in The Power of the Dog, he shouts and calls him a little bitch. It’s a terrifying moment, but it’s also the start of a twisted friendship that defines this triumphantly suspenseful Western directed by Jane Campion (The Piano, Top of the Lake). Based on a novel by Thomas Savage and set in 1925, The Power of the Dog takes place on a Montana cattle ranch where the stench of resentment is equal to the odor of manure. Seething over the marriage of his brother (Jesse Plemons) to a widow named Rose (Kirsten Dunst), Phil torments them both. His ultimate revenge on Rose? Grooming Peter, her teenage son, to be his protégé—and perhaps something more.

Violence is inevitable, but Campion is more interested in the tragic erosion of Rose’s dignity and the anguish that Phil experiences as a closeted gay man in a tyrannically heteronormative world.

By capturing Phil’s dangerous petulance and haunting vulnerability, Cumberbatch makes the character worthy of both our revulsion and our compassion. If you see the film, you may despise him, but like Peter, you won’t be able to look away. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Hollywood, Netflix.

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 House of Gucci When Aldo Gucci (Al Pacino) learns that his reign over the fashion empire that bears his name is over in House of Gucci, he howls, “I’m dead! Dead!” It’s a scene that lets Pacino turn hamming it up into high art—a talent he shares with all the actors in this sleek and sumptuous melodrama directed by Ridley Scott.

House of Gucci stars Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani, who in 1998 was convicted of ordering a hit on her ex-husband, Gucci heir Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver). As Patrizia and Maurizio, Lady Gaga and Driver have scorching chemistry— when she yanks him into a bubble bath, their erotic energy nearly vaporizes the screen. Yet House of Gucci is less a love story than it is Frankenstein as a soap opera, with Maurizio as the monster and Patrizia as his creator. She ignites his ambitions, tragically sealing her fate—to be cast aside when he ousts Aldo and takes command of Gucci. With obsessive fervor, Scott drinks in the grotesque magnificence of the Gucci dynasty, savoring their elegant possessions and their operatic emotions.

Maurizio Gucci may be dead, but thanks to the palpable enthusiasm of Scott and the cast, House of Gucci has hunger in its eyes, lust in its heart, and the sweet breath of decadence in its lungs. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinemagic, City Center, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sherwood, St. Johns Twin Cinemas, Studio One, Tigard.

Citizen Ashe Arthur Ashe may have broken tennis’s racial barriers in 28

the early 1960s, but when it came to finding his place among the era’s activist Black athletes, he was a late bloomer. At its most insightful, the new documentary from Rex Miller (Althea) and Sam Pollard (MLK/FBI) infers that Ashe’s gradual discovery of his voice on civil rights was due to his internalizing a back-breaking perfectionism and respectability streak while thriving in America’s whitest major sport. In this way, Citizen Ashe examines an athlete who’s reduced, however ironically, to groundbreaker status.

But what of the man himself?

Sometimes even the film isn’t sure.

The closing credits reveal Ashe’s widow, Jeanne MoutoussamyAshe, displaying the depths of his library. This evidence of an intellectual thirst stands out as one of the film’s few journalistic moments as opposed to straight biography.

Mostly, Citizen Ashe functions and compels as your average 30 for 30-level sports doc. The details of Ashe’s ingenious gambit against Jimmy Connors at Wimbledon in 1975 are riveting, and activist Harry Edwards fascinatingly assesses the covert radicalism of Ashe’s anti-apartheid rhetoric. In the end, saddled with the inevitable details of Ashe’s tragic health issues, Citizen Ashe settles for the simple conclusion that he was a great man. It’s not wrong. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. HBO Max.

They Say Nothing Stays the Same Every day, Toichi ferries villagers across a remote Japanese river in an unspecified age, watching the construction of a bridge that will mark his obsolescence.

Still, Toichi doesn’t much seem to care, as star Akira Emoto (Dr. Akagi) embodies a weathered loner accustomed to experiencing life, like the wind on the water,

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

just befalling him. The fabulist core of Japanese actor-musician Joe Odagiri’s directorial debut bolsters and deepens its twilight portrait of a community fixture that many passengers view as an Old World inconvenience soon to be resolved. But Toichi is also an impassable conduit for their aspirations, grief and violence unfolding beyond the little-seen banks, especially in the form of an abandoned young woman (Ririka Kawashima), whom he finds floating unconscious in the river and nurses to health. All the while, he questions whether she arrived at his shack as the result of some local crime or by more supernatural means. In this stretch of the plot, despite frequent Wong Kar-wai collaborator and cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s unmatched eye for beauty, the film suffers badly from leaping into interstitials of horror, folklore and dreamscapes nowhere near as convincing as the film’s main visual palette and pacing. Thankfully, it always returns to rowing up and down this boatman’s elegy—poignant, calming and inevitable with each oar stroke. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. On Demand, Virtual Cinema.

Belfast Near the end of director Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan dance to “Everlasting Love,” Love Affair’s lustrous anthem of desire, regret and hope. It’s an intoxicating scene, but it’s also an outlier.

Burdened by a suffocating cloak of nostalgia, Belfast is unable to reconcile the demands of a tale defined by trauma and a director who can’t stop gazing wistfully into the past. The setting is Ireland and the year is 1969, during the 30-year clash between Catholics and Protestants known as the Troubles. Sectarian violence rages, but religious battles hold no interest for Buddy (Jude Hill), a young Protestant who’s happiest watching movies like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with his parents (Balfe and Dornan).

Based in part on Branagh’s childhood, Belfast is a safe, smooth film where kids are adorably spunky and life has a never-ending Van

Morrison soundtrack. Branagh seems to be trying to get away from the glorious excesses of his Shakespeare films, but restraint doesn’t suit him—nothing in Belfast is so vibrant and truthful as the sight of him jubilantly frolicking in a fountain in 1993’s Much Ado About Nothing. If the play is still the thing for Branagh, it’s because he speaks more eloquently through the stories of others than he does through his own. PG-13.

BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cascade, Cinema 21, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Living Room, Sherwood, Vancouver Mall.

Encanto A dazzling swirl of color bursting with irrepressible joy in every frame, Disney’s 60th animated feature, Encanto, is a wonder to behold, but the story of a South American clan blessed with extraordinary powers becomes a struggle to endure.

Even though glowingly introduced by fiercely envious Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz), sole member of the Madrigals born without special abilities, the gifts bestowed on her family seem ones best returned. Everblossoming eldest sister Isabela (Diane Guerrero) rides her ability to conjure up flowers toward de facto princesshood, while curative culinary prowess keeps Mirabel’s mom (Angie Cepeda) in the kitchen and super-strong middle sis Luisa (Jessica Darrow) relegated to nonstop labor. More creepily, shape-shifting has turned cousin Camilo schizophrenic, perfect hearing renders his sister Dolores an incurable gossip, Aunt Pepa always walks under a miniature rain cloud, and the prophecies laid out in emerald flat screen for Mirabel’s uncle effectively forced his banishment years ago. Details of the disappearance of Bruno (John Leguizamo), the black sheep in the family, begin to emerge via Lin-Manuel Miranda’s original score. We learn that his special ability is predicting the future—unwanted fates foretold that are becoming all too true.

When powers begin to fade and cracks in the floorboards echo

familial fissures, Mirabel embarks on a quest to piece together her uncle’s most recent visions. In other words, despite the supposed wonders of the mighty Madrigals, our heroine prefers to ditch her family and zone out watching new stories appear on a jerry-rigged iPad. Judging from the murmured dismay of a progressively less-enchanted young audience, she’s far from alone. PG. JAY HORTON. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Dine-In Progress Ridge, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Lake Theater & Cafe, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Pioneer Place, Sherwood, Studio One, Tigard, Wunderland Beaverton, Wunderland Milwaukie.

13 Minutes Fans of Love Actually or the cursed Taylor Lautner-Taylor Swift vehicle Valentine’s Day may find elements of 13 Minutes familiar.

The film follows in the grand tradition of clunky ensemble flicks that are totally devoid of substance.

The only difference here is that most of those movies are lighthearted and actually fun to watch.

13 Minutes isn’t fun, nor is it meant to be. It follows the residents of a small Oklahoma town as they navigate their daily lives just before a tornado is about to hit. While the premise is interesting, writers Travis Farncombe and Lindsay Gossling are entirely to blame for the film’s many failures. The script is grisly and exploitative—a halfbaked tragedy porn about stock characters who feel like they were written by a bot. In fact, the whole script has an AI-generated quality. The writers seemed to pick from a grab bag of Important Social Topics, among them: abortion and crisis pregnancy centers, homophobia, racism, barriers to medical access, and immigration. Each plotline is introduced and then abruptly abandoned or, worse, wrapped up with a jerky, treacly sincerity that totally flattens the very real problems the characters face. You’d be better off streaming º. PG-13. GRACE CULHANE. On Demand.

JONESIN’

by Matt Jones

"What the H"--is it Cockney? Probably not.

Week of December 9

©2021 Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19) Aries filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) was experimental and innovative and influential. His imagery was often dreamlike, and his themes were metaphysical. He felt that the most crucial aspect of his creative process was his faith. If he could genuinely believe in the work he was doing, he was sure he'd succeed at even the most improbable projects. But that was a challenge for him. "There is nothing more difficult to achieve than a passionate, sincere, quiet faith," he said. In accordance with your astrological omens during the next 12 months, Aries, I suggest you draw inspiration from his approach. Cultivating a passionate, sincere, quiet faith will be more attainable than it has ever been.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) "All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware," said philosopher Martin Buber.

How true! I would add that the traveler is wise to prepare for the challenges and opportunities of those secret destinations . . . and be alert for them if they appear . . . and treat them with welcome and respect, not resistance and avoidance. When travelers follow those protocols, they are far more likely to be delightfully surprised than disappointingly surprised.

Everything I just said will apply to you in the coming weeks, Taurus.

GEMINI (May 21-June20)

ACROSS 1 ___-Magnon (early human) 4 Soda can meas.

7 '70s music genre 12 Muscle near a lat 13 Certain Greek consonants

either British singer Murs or a vitamin and supplement company?

58 Prefix before directional 59 Swiss psychologist who studied object permanence

15 "Let's keep moving!"

60 Booboo for an extended amount of time?

17 Student financial assistance that makes you groan?

62 Flashing effect that may require a warning

19 Brazilian Carnival city that's a World Heritage Site

63 Monetary unit of Chile

20 GPS instruction

65 "___ Boomer" (1980s TV dog drama)

21 Burden on a German opera composer?

64 "Sister Act" extra

66 Chihuahua of cartoons

23 Tale with the Trojan Horse

67 "___ up to you"

25 "I just thought of somethin'"

DOWN

26 "Either that wallpaper goes ___ do" (Oscar Wilde's last words) 27 "Romeo and Juliet" locale 29 Delta follower 31 Relative of a joule 32 "Eighth Grade" star Fisher 35 One of a deadly seven 36 American publishing pioneer who's not feeling so well?

39 6-point plays, for short 41 Elgort of the upcoming "West Side Story" remake 42 Org. that holds Renaissance Fairs 45 Get ready early?

48 Long-lasting lighters 50 "This Side of Paradise" singer Ocasek 51 Magnus Carlsen's game 54 Goes bad 55 Someone who seeks out

1 Processing speed measured in some desktops 2 Mundane 3 Tinting reddish-yellow, as with earth tones 4 Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby 5 "Eternals" director Chloe 6 "I Got You Babe" singer 7 '50s music genre 8 Post-wedding relatives 9 Hefty swallow 10 Dessert mentioned in "The Godfather" 11 Words before "our mobile app", for delivery services 14 IKEA storage box series that sounds destined to jam up?

33 Bond preference?

Gemini sleight-of-hand artist Apollo Robinson may be the best and most famous pickpocket in the world.

Fortunately, he uses his skill for entertainment purposes only. He doesn't steal strangers' money and valuables from their pockets and purses and jackets.

On one occasion, while in the company of former US President Jimmy Carter, he pilfered multiple items from a secret service agent assigned to protect Carter.

He gave the items back, of course. It was an amusing and humbling lesson that inspired many law-enforcement officials to seek him out as a consultant. I suspect that in the coming weeks, you may have comparable abilities to trick, fool, beguile, and enchant. I hope you will use your superpowers exclusively to carry out good deeds and attract inviting possibilities.

34 Quarterback Book of the New Orleans Saints

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

28 Nothing antithesis 30 Neighbor of Syr.

36 NetZero, once 37 Candy from a character?

38 Yale alums 39 Structure of three stones, like some parts of Stonehenge 40 Reveal to a customs inspector 42 Italian ice cream with multiple flavors 43 Really hard snack to eat?

44 Distributes, as tasks 45 Stage accessories 46 "Things Fall Apart" novelist Chinua ___ 47 Ladders' partners 49 It may have a shallow end 52 Eight-sided message at a four-way intersection 53 Ninja Turtles setting 56 Bela Lugosi's role in "Son of Frankenstein" (spelled differently from other appearances of this character!)

57 Gain in status 61 365 billion days

last week’s answers

Many sportswriters regard Michael Jordan as the greatest basketball player ever. He was the Most Valuable Player five times and had a higher scoring average than anyone else who has ever played. And yet he confesses, "I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life." He says the keys to his success are his familiarity with bungles and his determination to keep going despite his bungles. I invite you to meditate on Jordan's example in the coming days.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) In his poem "Song of Poplars," Leo author Aldous Huxley speaks to a stand of poplar trees. He asks them if they are an "agony of undefined desires." Now I will pose the same question to you, Leo. Are you an agony of undefined desires? Or are you a treasury of welldefined desires? I hope it's the latter. But if it's not, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to fix the problem. Learning to be precise about the nature of your longings is your growing edge, your frontier. Find out more about what you want, please.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Black is your lucky color for the foreseeable future.

I invite you to delve further than ever before into its mysteries and meanings and powers. I encourage you to celebrate blackness and honor blackness and nurture blackness in every way you can imagine.

For inspiration, meditate on how, in art, black is the presence of all colors. In printing, black is a color needed to produce other colors. In mythology, blackness is the primal source of all life and possibility. In psychology, blackness symbolizes the rich unconscious core from which all vitality emerges.

16 "Beyond the Sea" singer Bobby

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

18 Tiny buzzer

In the first season of the animated TV series South Park, its two creators produced an episode called

22 Gives a snotty look

"Make Love, Not Warcraft." The story lovingly mocked nerds and the culture of online gaming. Soon after sending his handiwork to executive producers, Libran co-creator Trey Parker decided it was a terrible show that would wreck his career. He begged for it to be withheld from broadcast. But the producers ignored his pleas. That turned out to be a lucky break.

The episode ultimately won an Emmy Award and became popular with fans. I foresee the possibility of comparable events in your life, Libra. Don't be too sure you know which of your efforts will work best.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) Nobel Prize-winning Scorpio author André Gide (1869–1951) had an unusual relationship with his wife Madeline Rondeaux. Although married for 43 years, they never had sex. As long as she was alive, he never mentioned her in his extensive writings. But after she died, he wrote a book about their complex relationship.

Here's the best thing he ever said about her: "I believe it was through her that I drew the need for truthfulness and sincerity." I'd love for you to be lit up by an influence like Madeline Rondeaux, Scorpio. I'd be excited for you to cultivate a bond with a person who will inspire your longing to be disarmingly candid and refreshingly genuine. If there are no such characters in your life, go looking for them. If there are, deepen your connection.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) A fashion company called Tibi sells a silver mini dress that features thousands of sequins. It's also available in gold. I wonder if the designers were inspired by poet Mark Doty's line: "No such thing, the queen said, as too many sequins." In my astrological estimation, the coming weeks will be a fun time to make this one of your mottoes. You will have a poetic license to be flashy, shiny, bold, swanky, glittery, splashy, sparkling, and extravagant. If expressing such themes in the way you dress isn't appealing, embody more metaphorical versions.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) "I have pasts inside me I did not bury properly," writes Nigerian poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo. Isn't that true for each of us? Don't we all carry around painful memories as if they were still fresh and current? With a little work, we could depotentize at least some of them and consign them to a final resting place where they wouldn't nag and sting us anymore. The good news, Capricorn, is that the coming weeks will be an excellent time to do just that: bury any pasts that you have not properly buried before now.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) In February 1967, the Beatles recorded their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in London. A man claiming to be Jesus Christ convinced Paul McCartney to let him weasel his way into the studio. McCartney later said that he was pretty sure it wasn't the real Jesus. But if by some remote chance it was, he said, he didn't want to make a big mistake. I bring this to your attention, Aquarius, because I suspect that comparable events may be brewing in your vicinity. My advice: Don't assume you already know who your teachers and helpers are. Here's the relevant verse from the Bible: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) According to Professor of Classics Anne Carson, ancient Greek author Homer "suggested we stand in time with our backs to the future, face to the past." And why would we do that? To "search for the meaning of the present—scanning history and myth for a precedent." I bring this to your attention, Pisces, because I think you should avoid such an approach in the coming months. In my view, the next chapter of your life story will be so new, so unpredicted, that it will have no antecedents, no precursory roots that might illuminate its plot and meaning. Your future is unprecedented.

HOMEWORK: Send your predictions for the new year—both for yourself and the world. https://Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology

24 "Hamilton" highlight

©2021 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JNZ990.

Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes

freewillastrology.com The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at

1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700 Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

29

COMiCS!

Jack Kent’s

Jack draws exactly what he sees from the streets of Portland.

IG @sketchypeoplepdx kentcomics.com

THIS WEEKEND!

PORTLAND NIGHT MARKET

30

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

SPOTLIGHT ARTIST Ridwana Rahman ridwanarahman.com @ridrhmn

Ridwana Rahman, is a 21-year-old queer, Muslim, Bangladeshi, American photo maker from Portland. Her work is exploratory, but focuses mostly on my relationship with home and straddling the lines of my identities. This is project she worked on this past summer, called Alone at home again, in the summertime.

The last two weeks of my summer break are the best and the loneliest. It’s when all my friends go back to school before me, and I’m left all alone at home again. I eat my mom’s cooking and reread the old books in my childhood bedroom and look at all the stuff I push-pinned to my walls in high school. I sit, and I watch a lot of self help videos, and I walk around my neighborhood, and then my city, and I think a whole lot. I think it’s where I’ve grown the most comfortable since leaving. I even like it sometimes.

Willamette Week DECEMBER 1, 2021 wweek.com

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