Willamette Week, April 20, 2022 - Volume 48, Issue 24 - "The Future of Cannabis is Female"

“THOSE RUNS OF STATIC TAKE PEOPLE BACK.” P. 35 WWEEK.COM VOL 48/24 04.20.2022

News:

Who Is Vadim Mozyrsky? P. 10

Crime:

FBI Probes Thallium Poisoning. P. 13

Food:

Oracle Wellness Founder and CEO

Welcome to Bluto’s Pita Party. P. 28

Megon Dee

THE FUTURE OF CANNABIS IS FEMALE Welcome to a time of turbulence and promise for Oregon-grown weed. PAGE 15

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Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

FINDINGS AARON LEE

BLUTO’S, PAGE 28

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 48, ISSUE 24 The snow that snapped Portland trees this month was unusually sticky. 4 More than 7 in 10 voters in state Rep. Maxine Dexter’s district have college degrees. 8 Vadim Mozyrsky learned English by watching Bewitched. 10 FBI agents tested the hair of Joe Gilliam’s daughter for thallium.

13

Oregon’s largest cannabis store is in Tualatin. 19 Cannabinoid wellness exploration is at best inconveniently profuse. 21

Earl Blumenauer is speaking at the Electric Lettuce dispensary.

22

A company-wide outbreak of the flu canceled four performances of Hamilton last weekend. 26 Approximately 98% of the seaweed consumed in the U.S. is imported. 27 Yes, the new fast-casual restaurant Bluto’s is named after John Belushi’s character in Animal House. 28 Mss Oregon’s favorite dispensary is a hole in the wall in a WinCo parking lot on Northeast 102nd Avenue. 33 Artists Repertory Theatre is staging a play about two retired nuclear engineers. 34 If you like your men handsome, violent and oozing self-pity, you’ll get a kick out of The Northman. 36

ON THE COVER:

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

The 4/20 Issue: Oracle Wellness founder and CEO Megon Dee, photo

by Christine Dong.

Fleeing Portland?

We have bad news about home prices in surrounding bedroom towns.

Masthead EDITOR & PUBLISHER ART DEPARTMENT

Mark Zusman

EDITORIAL

News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Andi Prewitt Assistant A&C Editor Bennett Campbell Ferguson Staff Writers Anthony Effinger, Nigel Jaquiss, Rachel Monahan, Sophie Peel, Tess Riski Copy Editor Matt Buckingham

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DIALOGUE

THE BURGER YOUR MAMA

Last week’s edition of WW took note of a recent phenomenon: Median home prices in Milwaukie, Beaverton and Happy Valley are all more expensive than in Portland proper. A “doughnut effect” of people who can work remotely—and are no longer interested in experiencing urban grit—has home prices in the suburbs rising at a faster clip than in Portland. We gauged what $400,000 could buy in five nearby towns—as well as in the Rose City. Here’s what our readers had to say:

WARNED YOU ABOUT PEANUT BUTTER PICKLE BACON BURGER

STEVERINO, VIA WWEEK. COM: “I really wouldn’t count

GET IT DELIVERED

condos since HOAs go up faster than rent on these projects lately. Especially the older ones or new ones with construction defects.”

KILLERBURGER.COM

SALEM CITY COUNCILOR VANESSA NORDYKE, VIA FACEBOOK: “Housing costs

NOW AT FOOTWISE!

are skyrocketing in Salem, too.

The city of Salem is working with private and public sector partners to build tiny homes and low-income multifamily housing, redevelop the former Salem Nordstrom into apartments, and redevelop former hotels into shelters for the unhoused.”

MON-SAT 10-6 PM SUNDAY 11-5 PM

1433 NE Broadway, Portland

SCRAPPYMUTT, VIA WWEEK. COM: “Talking to people who

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grew up in Portland, they make it sound like the past twenty years were the outlier, and this city is returning to what it was in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s…

“Every city goes through its ups and downs. It is time to see who really cares about this city, and who runs away to the

DANCE THEATRE OF HARLEM Artistic Director, Virginia Johnson

Photo by Rachel Neville

ARLENE SCHNITZER CONCERT HALL TICKETS AVAILABLE AT WHITEBIRD.ORG SPONSORED BY LISA AND SHAWN K. MANGUM 4

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MONKEYBOY2311, VIA REDDIT: “I’d wager a bet a lot

of longtime Portlanders (like myself ) are eyeing the suburbs while rich Californians are buying houses in the inner eastside.

Some people are willing to put up with car thefts and open drug use so they can walk to their favorite brunch spot.”

JESUS ANN, VIA FACEBOOK:

“I have been looking in places like McMinnville, Amity, even coastal areas where the ability to make money in that local economy to support these sorts of prices is not really that possible. I was very surprised to see that even if I got top dollar for my house, it would likely be an even trade, or higher than what we have going on here. Remote work opportunities have their trade-offs. If you aren’t in a line of work you can do remotely, things might be tight, depending on location.”

DOT HALFORD, VIA WWEEK. COM: “I live just ‘over the hill’

Dr. Know

“The arts ignite the mind, they give you the possibility to dream and hope.”

-Arthur Mitchell, Co-Founder

WEDNESDAY| MAY 4 | 7:30PM

suburbs when things get hard.”

in close-in, unincorporated Washington County. What a difference a mile or two makes.

You can literally see the main roads improve the second you cross the county line from Multnomah. Our parks are expertly managed by [Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District], a service for which I’m happy to pay a modest tax.

If there is a security issue, the police will come when called and do so promptly. Mixed-race, diverse neighborhood: young Indian families, gay couples, old timers, etc. It CAN be done. I work downtown but minimize all my other time spent in Portland. I didn’t want it to be like this (I’ve lived in and enjoyed other major cities with all their complexities and issues), but the completely dysfunctional city and county leadership brought this on themselves.”

KATHY MAROE PETERSON, VIA FACEBOOK: “Same exact

thing is happening to Seattle residents who want to move to the suburbs.”

TREY WITTERIED, VIA TWITTER: “Not to sound crass,

but tbh a hobophobia-driven flight of squares to the suburbs sounds like an OK way in theory to reempower the bohemian artist types that gave this city so much of its identity.”

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author's street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words.

Mail to: P.O. Box 10770, Portland OR, 97296 Email: mzusman@wweek.com

BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx

Why did so many trees break and split with the freak April snow? Do they soften up and become less tough in the spring? —Sarah RK Until last week, Portland had never had any snow this late in the season, much less the 2 to 5 inches we recently enjoyed.* I also note that this once-in-a-lifetime event came less than a year after a once-in-a-lifetime heat wave that reached 116 degrees. (And, a year before that, the sky turned orange for a month, but who’s counting?)

If that’s not weird enough, recall that the two events actually happened at roughly the same time of year—in April and June, respectively.

Thank God climate change is just a hoax perpetrated by satanic liberal pedophiles; otherwise I might worry.

Anyway, let’s talk happy little trees. I will confess that I briefly entertained a theory similar to yours, Sarah, except in my version the rising springtime sap actually hydrated winter’s dry branches, making them supple and strong. You’ll be pleased to learn, however, that both of us are full of rising springtime shit. According to Paul Ries, director of the urban forestry program at Oregon State University, tree branches have the

same load-bearing ability year round. That said, in a springtime snowstorm, events can conspire to make that load heavier than it might be in winter.

Even in a snowstorm, April is warmer than January—the temperature throughout our storm never even dipped below freezing. That means wetter snow—not only heavier than the fluffy stuff we get in colder months, but stickier too, so the trees holds more of it. The problem is compounded by the fact that by April many trees have sprouted leaves, providing more surface area for snow to stick to.

Finally, while it’s true that tree branches can hold the same weight in every season, the branches themselves are heavier in the spring and summer, with the weight of new leaves, buds and sap all counting against the total.

Still, trees are resilient; presumably they (and we) will recover in time to be flattened by whatever sandstorm, monsoon, rain of frogs, or molasses tidal wave that fate has in store. I liked it better when “once in a lifetime” meant “less than once a year,” but what are ya gonna do? *Or tried to! Amirite, ladies?

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

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LAKE OSWEGO

PORTLAND

• •••• ••••

MURMURS BRIAN BURK

A T R E A LRBO S ER E T •••• A E H T

JUDY BLUE EYES

APR 21 APR 22

Celebrating the music of CSNY

featuring CSN guitarist Jeff Pevar and members of The Nowhere Band, Decemberists and more!

tribute to Billie Holiday

APR 23

LADY SINGS THE BLUES

feat. LaRhonda

Steele Danielle M. Barker Arietta Ward • Anandi Emily Wilder • Marcia Hocker

APR 27

APR 29

Booklover's Burlesque the Sci-Fi edition

infused with the spirit of Hawai‘i

MAK A NA

SAFE TRAVELS: Masks are no longer required on MAX or at the airport.

MEASURE 110 MONEY SEEPING OUT: As WW reported recently, the Oregon Health Authority and its 20-member oversight panel are struggling to deploy nearly $270 million earmarked by Measure 110 for addiction treatment. That 2020 ballot measure decriminalized the personal use of most hard drugs and diverted a lucrative stream of recreational cannabis tax revenue to addiction treatment. This week, the agency announced a small step forward: On April 15, it notified providers in the first two counties, Baker and Morrow, of its intention to award funds. The agency expects to make awards to at least six more counties this week, although none yet in the Portland metro area. The backlog is a result of OHA receiving 333 applications from addiction treatment service providers across the state. Each of those applications requires two reviews of more than 300 questions.

OHA said in April it had completed 429 of the 666 reviews. Blue Valentine, a co-chair of the Oversight and Accountability Council, says everybody is working as fast as possible. “OAC members want to get funds into the community without further delay.”

THREE EXPO CENTER PARKING LOTS COULD HOLD CAR CAMPING: Staff for the regional government Metro identified on April 18 three portions of the Expo Center parking lot that city officials could use as a safe parking site for houseless Portlanders. Discussions between the city and Metro for a car camping site fell apart late last year because the city wanted a paved lot, but Metro would only offer a graveled one. Earlier this month, Metro President Lynn Peterson revealed to WW that the talks had been revived. This time around, one of the three lots Metro could offer is paved; the other two are not. Peterson and City Commissioners Dan Ryan and Jo Ann Hardesty made a joint request Monday to the Metro Exposition Recreation Commission, which must approve uses of the Expo Center, to greenlight moving forward with a safe parking site at one of the lots identi-

fied. The commission will discuss it at their next meeting May 4.

TRIMET ENDS MASK MANDATE: TriMet has dropped its mask mandate, hours after a federal judge in Florida ruled that the U.S. government lacked the authority to require the wearing of face masks on transportation. The ruling had the high-profile effect of ending mask mandates on airplanes and in airports (including Portland International Airport), but it also affected rules for public transit. New York is among the cities that are keeping mask mandates on local buses and trains. Not Portland: “Masks are now optional on our buses and trains due to yesterday’s federal court decision and the new [Transportation Security Administration] directive,” says TriMet spokesman Tyler Graf. “With the [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] still recommending that masks be used on transit, we do welcome their continued use and ask that everyone be respectful of others.”

METRO SPENDING BIG ON ADMIN COSTS FOR PARKS BOND: Back in November 2019, voters overwhelmingly approved giving Metro $475 million to purchase new greenspaces and maintain existing ones. Although the agency presented a thorough and specific project list at the time, it has been heavily engaged in outreach and stakeholder consultation since then, resulting in relatively limited purchases of new land and high administrative costs. Last week, the agency presented its annual report on progress to date, noting that through Dec. 31, it had spent $18.3 million of the $475 million. “With little capital investment spent to date, the current administrative rate of 23% of total bond spending to date or $4.17 million, is high,” the report said. But in adopting the report, the Metro Council also approved a plan that staff expects to speed up acquisition and bring administrative costs down to about 10% over the long term.

MAY 1

60 years of Green Onions

BOOKER T. JONES APR 30

MAY 6

STEPHANIE SCHNEIDERMAN BAND +

strings

SWANSEA MAY 12

NPR radio show live taping

JON MOOALLEM KEANON LOWE JOHN CRAIGIE MAY 21

two shows

UPCOMING SHOWS

MAY 14

JOHN GORKA JUL 2

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4/28 • CHAMBER MUSIC NORTHWEST PRESENTS IMANI WINDS: WE CANNOT WALK ALONE 5/7 • TWO OF A KIND feat. LANI MISALUCHA & TIM PAVINO 5/11 • CONSIDER THIS WITH LAURA KIPNIS

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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE

BLACK LIVES MATTER ARTIST GRANTEES on exhibition at the

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU AnAkA Annabelle Araya Julia Bond J’reyesha Brannon Amirah Chatman

Steven Christian Baba Wagué Diakité Sadé DuBoise Austin Gardner Leila Haile

Elijah Hasan Edmund Holmes Willie Little Latoya Lovely Aiyana Monae McClinton

Jessica Mehta Christine Miller Annie Schutz Sharita Towne Kyra Watkins

Public In-Person Closing Celebration Tuesday, April 26 • 4:00-7:00pm Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU • 1855 SW Broadway, Portland, OR In the wake of social unrest and national reflection that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Jordan Schnitzer, president of The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, established the Black Lives Matter Artist Grant program. The grant awarded 60 artists total with $2,500 to support new or recent artwork reflecting on social justice efforts in response to systemic racism. The PSU exhibition includes 20 artists selected by jury from Clackamas, Multnomah, Washington, and Columbia counties.

Left: Willie Little, Key to American Culture 2016/2019, multimedia oil with object floating canvas, 96 x 60 inches Center: Aiyana Monae McClinton, in this skin (installation) 2020, cotton woven on TC2 loom variable Right: Amirah Chatman, Heaven’s Probably in Phoenix (detail), 2020, pastel on chipboard, Diptych, 44 x 56 inches 8

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

NEWS

1

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

DONOR

4

MAPPED

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A Matter of Degrees New census data shows the most educated districts in Oregon elect Democrats in and around Portland.

BY N I G E L J AQ U I S S

njaquiss@wweek .com

As the May 17 primary draws near, Oregon Democrats and Republicans are making sure voters understand the differences between the two parties. A big one: educational attainment.

This week, Portland pollster John Horvick of DHM Research drew on 2020 census data to illustrate the wide variance in college graduates among Oregon’s 60 House districts. As of 2018, the year about which census takers asked, the median level of college graduates across all districts was 34%. But every district above that level belonged to a Democrat.

“It’s part of the education polarization that’s happening in Oregon and across the country,” Horvick says. “I think it’s worth pointing out that the Democratic Party in some districts is really pulling away from the median voter.”

In addition to the differences between parties, the numbers show big spreads among Democrats. House District 22 (Woodburn) had the lowest college graduation level (14%) but is solidly Democratic.

Here are the five districts with the highest percentage of college graduates:

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

ONE QUESTION

Should Oregon Ban Abortion?

With Republicans eyeing the governor’s office, we asked about reproductive rights.

Abortion rights as protected by the U.S. Supreme Court may quickly be a thing of the past. Republican statehouses have been passing bans on abortions, including so-called heartbeat billsin Texas and Idaho. That places the fight over reproductive rights on Oregon’s doorstep.

Democrats may be unpopular this election cycle, but abortion rights are still cherished by a majority of Americans. And the issue may soon have more currency: The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to weigh in before the November election.

In Oregon, the abortion rights of Roe v. Wade have been enshrined in law. That means a Republican governor would need legislative action to overturn them. But it’s still a good test of whether a candidate would hold the line as other states seek legal action against abortion providers who treat women fleeing here. We asked leading candidates for governor about their preferences.

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

WW asked: Do you support a law banning abortions and providing a private right of

$2,900 on March 30

WHO GOT IT?

2 1. House District 33 (Northwest Portland, northeast Washington County) Rep. Maxine Dexter 72%

Elizabeth Vaintrob, of Eugene, who works for the Oxford-based Centre for Effective Altruism.

Rep. Andrea Salinas 71%

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

3. House District 36 (Southwest Portland) Rep. Lisa Reynolds 66%

4. House District 43 (Northeast and North Portland) Rep. Tawna Sanchez 61%

5. House District 42 (inner Southeast Portland)

Rep. Rob Nosse 59% Sources: DHM Research, U.S. Census Bureau, Oregon Legislature

OPPOSES

Christine Drazan (R) I’ve never shied away from my pro-life values, but a private right of action is a dangerous precedent that could just as easily be used to curtail constitutional rights that conservatives value such as the Second Amendment, religious freedom, and free speech.

Betsy Johnson (unaffiliated) I am pro-choice and Oregon will remain a prochoice state when I am governor. I believe every woman in Oregon has the right to bear arms and bear children as she wishes.

Tina Kotek (D) Everyone should be able to make personal health care decisions for themselves. Texas’ archaic abortion ban is backwards and wrong. Under my leadership as House speaker, Oregon passed the nation’s strongest abortion access law, ensuring that every Oregonian who needs access to reproductive health care can get it, no matter what the Supreme Court decides.

Tobias Read (D) I oppose these efforts to limit an individual’s reproductive rights. As governor, I will ensure that Oregon continues to be a bright spot amidst a wave of concerning threats and rollbacks and will stand up to attacks on abortion access here in Oregon.

Carrick Flynn, candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for Oregon’s 6th Congressional District.

WHO GAVE IT?

2. House District 38 (Lake Oswego, Dunthorpe)

legal action to enforce the law, as passed in Texas?

SUPPORTS

HOW MUCH?

3

—Jamie McLeod Skinner to U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) during a WW endorsement interview. McLeod Skinner, who is challenging the seven-term congressman from the left in the Democratic primary, derided Schrader for a campaign mailer that showed him bucking hay with his bare hands.

“If you work for a living, you have calluses on

“I’ve shaken your hands. You have very soft hands.”

CONTRIBUTION OF THE WEEK

your hands,” Schrader said. That’s what drew McLeod Skinner’s appraisal of his palms.

That comment was just one memorable moment amid WW’s nearly three dozen joint interviews of candidates in contested May races. Watch all the videos at wweek.com/tags/endorsement-highlights.

AARON MESH.

Stan Pulliam (R) If you describe an abortion procedure and the stages at which they happen in Oregon (up to the moment of birth), most Oregonians support more restrictions than what we have now, which is absolutely nothing. Oregon is a taxpayer-funded abortion tourist destination. Politicians are more concerned with propping up the abortion industry than actually helping women and children. It’s time we recognize the value of the unborn by protecting their right to life in our laws. As governor, I would propose and support any common sense limits on abortion that are allowed by current Supreme Court decisions.

IDENTIFIES AS PRO-LIFE BUT DECLINED TO SAY

Bridget Barton (R) I’m a mom, soon-to-be grandmother and a woman of faith. Oregonians should know state officials place no limits on abortion through the third trimester up to the moment of birth. My efforts as governor will focus on support for all human life, including all our most vulnerable people from conception, through foster kids, the sex-trafficked, mentally ill, to our fragile seniors. As an outsider, I’m not afraid to hold accountable the career politicians of both parties who have run our beautiful state into the ground.

Bob Tiernan (R) I believe in the right to life with limited exemptions.

DECLINED TO COMMENT

Vaintrob is among just 10 Oregonians who have given enough to the Flynn campaign that their names have been disclosed. Their total contributions account for $20,220, just 2.4% of his campaign’s $830,000 in donations, as the Salem Statesman-Journal first reported last week. That total is itself a tiny fraction of the $6 million being spent by the cryptocurrency-backed Protect Our Future PAC that is supporting Flynn’s candidacy.

Effective altruism is a philosophy of making charitable donations with an aim to have the maximum impact—think utilitarianism, but for venture capitalists—and is in vogue with Silicon Valley investors, including some who favor cryptocurrency.

Flynn has connections to the effective altruism community. A friend of Flynn’s posted on the Centre’s online forum under the initials “ASB” soliciting donations for the Flynn campaign on the grounds that his election would support pandemic preparedness.

“The Biden administration released a fantastic $65 billion plan that aims to prevent future pandemics,” he writes. “Congress has funded practically none of it. Part of the problem is that nobody in Congress has made pandemic preparedness a ‘core issue.’”

Flynn, he argues, will do that.

WHAT DOES THE CAMPAIGN SAY?

The Flynn campaign says Flynn has built a record through his anti-poverty and public health work that has attracted interest from the philanthropic community.

“As we approach the primary, we are soliciting votes more than soliciting money—but will continue to develop our grassroots donor base,” says Flynn campaign manager Avital Balwit. “It is also worth noting that we have dozens more in-state donors than initially reported—many smaller contributions that are not itemized but reflective of our growing base of support.” R AC H E L M O N A H A N .

Bud Pierce (R)

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NEWS

Detail Work Vadim Mozyrsky’s neatnik persona makes him a perfect match for voters sick of a messy city.

BY SOPH IE PE E L

speel @w week .com

Anyone who’s visited Vadim Mozyrsky’s three-bedroom Colonial in Goose Hollow says it doesn’t have a speck of dust, one unfolded blanket or a single crooked photo hanging on the wall. “It matches his personality perfectly,” says his friend Lisa Sparks.

It’s perhaps a preview of Mozyrsky’s vision for Portland.

The 49-year-old Social Security judge wants to bring back dissolved neighborhood watch programs and speed up trash cleanup and graffiti removal. He supports constructing large emergency homeless shelters, “whether that be temporary shelters in open spaces or garages,” and sees Bybee Lakes Hope Center as a successful model. He thinks Portland has lost its way: tolerating vandalism of small businesses while dismissing reservations voiced in corporate boardrooms and neighborhood association meetings.

In short, Mozyrsky is the ideal foil to Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty.

Mozyrsky defends the Social Security Administration’s coffers from applicants with hard-luck tales; Hardesty is a fierce advocate for the downtrodden. She wears her heart on her sleeve; Mozyrsky’s personality is nearly impossible to gauge in public settings. Hardesty is critical of the Portland Police Bureau; Mozyrsky wants accountability but thinks the city should applaud the cops for what they’ve done right (see “Apples to Apples,” page 11).

And in this political environment, that means Mozyrsky has a healthy chance of unseating Hardesty, whose criticism of police has alienated Portlanders moving to the political center during the past four years as homeless camps grew and shootings soared.

“At some point in time, you have to listen to the people,” Mozyrsky tells WW. “And if they’re saying, ‘I would like to have more police out there so I feel safe,’ do I know enough to tell them no?”

Critics of Mozyrsky say he’s pandering to wealthy, white Portlanders.

Taji Chesimet, who served on a police accountability board with Mozyrsky for two years, is one of those critics. “He’ll lean into the wealthier, whiter Portland who want a safer community,” Chesimet says, “people who want to act as if we’re progressive but want the status quo.”

After four years, few Portlanders haven’t formed an opinion of Hardesty, one of the city’s most polarizing figures. Her two leading challengers are less well known. Rene Gonzalez is a lawyer with hardline views on increasing police in Portland and not tolerating what he calls the “anything goes” attitude regarding Portland’s unhoused population.

And Mozyrsky, who has stolen many of the 10

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

endorsements Hardesty would most like to have—including that of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 189, which represents more than 1,000 city workers—remains largely an enigma.

WW interviewed more than two dozen people who have worked alongside and across from Mozyrsky. They describe a pragmatic and reserved man whose insistence on bringing more voices to the table can be seen one of two ways: as a betrayal of Portlanders who have historically been silenced by the more affluent or as a unifying force that Portland is hungry for.

Mozyrsky’s family fled to America from Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, when he was 7 years old. He learned English by watching television sitcoms like Bewitched and Three’s Company.

His family bounced around the U.S. As an adult, he lived in Washington, D.C., New Orleans, California and then Texas before moving to Portland in 2014. He came here for a vacation, solo, and remembers walking out of his hotel downtown and coming across live music at Pioneer Courthouse Square. That was the moment, he says, when he decided Portland would be his home.

Two of his closest friends describe him as an adventurous, warm friend who hosts carefully thought out holiday dinners where he cooks ethnic food and tells the stories behind each dish. Mozyrsky listens to wellness podcasts and intermittently fasts, takes cold showers, and follows the Wim Hof breathing method.

He snowboards and hikes on weekends.

Everyone WW spoke to, whether they like or dislike Mozyrsky, say he’s a stickler for details.

“He did his homework. He always read every word of every proposal by one of our colleagues,” says Andrew Kalloch, who once served with Mozyrsky on the volunteer Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing. “When you’re trying to rebuild trust in something as challenging as public safety, he has no interest in cutting corners.”

For 10 years, Mozyrsky has served as a federal administrative law judge—first in San Bernardino, Calif., then Houston, and then in Portland.

Applicants seeking Social Security benefits end up in Mozyrsky’s courtroom after they’ve been denied benefits twice. If they appeal the second denial, the case goes to Mozyrsky.

Some administrative law judges in Portland award benefits in up to 80% of those appeals, while other judges deny awards in up to 70% of them. Records show Mozyrsky routinely denies more awards than he approves.

Three lawyers who have brought clients seeking disability insurance in front of him for years say he’s a tough judge who asks prying questions of their clients. They asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation against future

clients.

“He runs a tight ship, and you got the feeling that he was looking for ways to deny people,” one lawyer tells WW. Mozyrsky maintains he’s fair: “I take pride in knowing what’s in the case file and asking specific questions in respect to that. This is taxpayer money, and this is also people who are having difficulties in their lives, and you need to reconcile those two.”

In 2017, Mozyrsky began volunteering on the now-dissolved Portland Commission on Disability. He would go on to join six other boards and committees in the next seven years, including two police advisory committees, neighborhood groups, and an immigrant and refugee organization.

He’s advocated for more unarmed Police Bureau employees to patrol neighborhoods and body-worn cameras for officers.

That’s made him unpopular on some of the left-leaning boards and commissions he’s served on, like the Citizen Review Committee and the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing.

A dozen colleagues on boards and commissions who mostly aligned with Mozyrsky’s stances characterize him to WW as evenkeeled, considerate and respectful.

“As far as I can determine, he’s someone who’s genuinely sincere,” says Matthew Baron, who served alongside Mozyrsky at the Portland Public Safety Action Coalition, which primarily advocates for livability issues. “He almost carries himself as the encyclopedia in the room.”

But half a dozen others who have served on boards with him and largely disagreed with him ideologically on policy matters tell WW he’s cold and sometimes petulant; two even describe his behavior at times as bullying.

“Vadim could get pretty aggressive when someone challenged him or his ideas,” says former PCCEP co-chair Elliott Young, who did not describe his behavior as bullying, “and it

often made other members and the public feel uncomfortable.”

That alleged behavior became more public this spring, when Shaina Pomerantz, a Black woman who serves on the Citizen Review Committee alongside Mozyrsky, accused him during a public meeting of using an “anti-Black” tone in emails directed toward the committee’s chair, Candace Avalos, regarding a forum on body-worn cameras.

While no one accused Mozyrsky of using racial slurs—or of making any reference to race at all—the controversy quickly turned into an election-year donnybrook. And the obvious backdrop was that Mozyrsky had dared to challenge the reelection of Hardesty, the first Black woman to serve on the Portland City Council.

Mozyrsky called the accusation a “political smear campaign” and filed twin elections complaints against Avalos and Pomerantz on both the city and state levels, alleging they broke city employee guidelines and state elections rules by talking about Mozyrsky’s campaign during a sanctioned meeting.

The City Attorney’s Office is outsourcing the investigation to an independent firm, which will also look at the racial bias allegations. (During the meeting in question, a number of other CRC members, some of them white, also expressed concern with Mozyrsky’s tone in the emails.

Mozyrsky did not mention those members in his complaints.)

Mozyrsky and his accusers have gone through two mediation sessions, which don’t appear to have resolved much. The elections complaints remain outstanding, and Mozyrsky won’t say if he still thinks the allegation was a smear campaign.

Mozyrsky tells WW he knows his positions have sometimes alienated him from his colleagues, but he disputes that he was ever unkind. “In no way do I think anything I’ve ever done could be considered bullying,” he says.

“I’m fighting for what I think is a voice that’s

BLAKE BENARD

APPLES TO APPLES This City Council race could be a bellwether for policing in Portland

BY T E S S R I S K I

NEW NEIGHBOR: Mozyrsky meets with a small business owner in Northwest Portland on the campaign trail.

not heard or represented in those halls.”

That search for balance could appeal to many frustrated Portlanders.

He thinks the citizens not being listened to most at City Hall are neighborhood associations, whose cries about crime and homelessness he says are going ignored. He supports bringing back neighborhood watches, a program weakened by then-Commissioner Chloe Eudaly in 2019 due to concerns that it encouraged vigilantism.

Business leaders and neighborhood association leaders spoke highly of Mozyrsky, calling him pragmatic, sensible and focused on the right issues: cracking down on crime, homelessness and trash.

He’s received the endorsement of the Portland Business Alliance, the powerful chamber of commerce that backed Mayor Wheeler’s reelection in 2020. He declined to take a position on the business-backed advocacy group People for Portland or its plan to compel local governments to move houseless people into shelters: “I’m agnostic about it. If the majority of Portland voters support it, that’ll be the new law.”

Mozyrsky can be stiff and guarded in public settings, lacking the charisma of a successful politician.

But in a city whose form of government means that strong personalities are often blamed for bureaucratic stalemates and lack of progress, a plain personality and a penchant for rules might be exactly what Portland voters crave.

Stan Penkin, who led the Portland Public Safety Action Coalition for a time, says Mozyrsky’s sometimes aloof public persona shouldn’t matter.

“How important is that, really?” Penkin asks.

“Everyone wants to feel that someone is jovial, friendly, and homey. But is that really important for someone in office who’s doing a job?”

tess@wweek .com

The formidable reelection challenge Vadim Mosyrsky poses to Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty may ultimately double as a referendum on policing in Portland.

By nearly all accounts, Mozyrsky—a self-identified “center-left” candidate—is running to the right of Hardesty, the first Black woman elected to Portland City Council and a longtime critic of the Portland Police Bureau.

“I’m not a cheerleader for the police,” Mozyrsky tells WW. “We need people out there addressing crimes in one way or the other. That’s what differentiates society from, perhaps, anarchy.”

Since his move to Portland in 2014, Mozyrsky has served on multiple public safety boards in the city, including the Public Safety Action Coalition, the Citizen Review Committee, and the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing, known as PCCEP. That experience is germane to this race: Mozyrsky faces an incumbent whose career centers on police reform.

For the past two years, Hardesty has been effective at implementing reform measures: She created and expanded Portland Street Response, the city’s first unarmed alternative to police, and she championed the 2020 passage of Measure 26-217, which dissolves the city’s current police oversight board, Independent Police Review, and replaces it with a community-led one that has the authority to discipline and terminate officers.

But Hardesty has also made several key missteps that have widened the chasm between her and law enforcement.

In June 2020, Hardesty pushed for the City Council’s vote to reduce PPB’s budget by $15 million, effectively disbanding the bureau’s Gun Violence Reduction Team. That decision was generally celebrated at the time but has become increasingly unpopular as Portlanders’ support for protests waned by the fall of 2020 and the city’s murder rate reached historic levels last year.

Hardesty has also struggled to rebuild the credibility she lost in July 2020 when she claimed without evidence during an interview with Marie Claire magazine that Portland police officers were starting fires at protests (she later recanted and apologized). Nearly two years later, that false claim is still a regular talking point for law enforcement and conservatives seeking to draw a correlation between Black Lives Matter protests, the $15 million cut from PPB’s budget in 2020, and the city’s subsequent rise in gun violence.

Mozyrsky, who describes his views on policing as nuanced, does not disagree with all of Hardesty’s ideas. Take, for example, his support of Portland Street Response. But people who have interacted with Mozyrsky in the criminal justice world say his stances on police accountability and reform are not particularly progressive.

“I think Vadim has always been on the side of giving the police the benefit of the doubt,” said Elliot Young, former PCCEP co-chair. “Ultimately, when you get into the details, his accountability would give a lot of leeway to the police. Vadim, in general, has been against redirecting resources from the police to alternatives.”

WW spoke to Mozyrsky about policing. Here are three key points from that conversation:

1. He thinks “bad apples” are to blame.

Asked whether he believes policing issues arise from systemic inequities or the actions of individual officers, Mozyrsky said there are “institutional problems that those handful of cops” perpetuate.

Last month, for example, Mayor Ted Wheeler fired former Portland Police Association president Brian Hunzeker, who leaked a police dispatch report that mistakenly identified Commissioner Hardesty as a suspect in a hit-and-run crash. PPB’s internal affairs unit had determined that Hunzeker’s actions were retaliatory, in part because he admitted during IA interviews that he was motivated by Hardesty’s longtime criticism of the police as well as the false claim she made during the Marie Claire interview.

Mozyrsky said he considers Hunzeker a “bad

apple” rather than an indication of wider systemic, cultural or political problems within the Police Bureau. He added that he supported the mayor’s decision to terminate Hunzeker, and that doing so could help rebuild the community’s trust.

“You have bad doctors out there, and they get sued, and you have malpractice insurance, and those people get fines because of malpractice,” Mozyrsky said. “They might lose their license. But we don’t eliminate hospitals because there is a doctor that had malpractice. There’s things that we do to take out bad apples but make sure that things still function. And that’s what we need to do with the police.”

Jesse Merrithew, a Portland criminal defense lawyer, was skeptical of that argument.

“If he truly believes that all the problems in policing can be reduced to bad apples, then that should mean he also supports strong accountability measures with the removal of those bad apples immediately,” Merrithew said. “It’s just a deflection to say ‘bad apples.’ It’s a way to avoid taking on these greater, systemic problems that have existed for a long time with policing in America.”

2. He aligns closely with Commissioner Mingus Mapps.

WW asked Mozyrsky which of the five commissioners (including the mayor) he aligns with most closely on the Portland City Council.

“I’d say Mingus Mapps,” he said. Mozyrsky pointed to Mapps’ comments at a recent city budget hearing in which the commissioner advocated the hiring of 200 sworn officers and 100 public safety support specialists as an example of the “nuanced” approach he takes to policing.

Mozyrsky did not elaborate on the specific similarities between him and Mapps, who was endorsed by the PPA in 2020 and whose voting record on the City Council has been favorable to law enforcement.

Young said Mozyrsky’s support of Mapps “makes perfect sense.” Young adds: “He has not been in favor of the measures that people have brought to PCCEP that are actually about holding the police accountable.”

3. He believes disbanding the GVRT led to more homicides.

“I think there’s a correlation between cutting the GVRT and homicides,” Mozyrsky said, adding that if the unit hadn’t been cut, there would have been fewer murders.

Prior to the budget cut, Hardesty had been highly critical of the unit, formerly known as the Gang Enforcement Team, after a 2018 city audit found that 59% of the unit’s traffic stops were of Black people.

Mozyrsky argues the solution was not to dissolve the unit altogether, but to replace the bad actors with good officers, and discipline the former accordingly.

“There were accusations that they treated people disproportionately. And the way you work with that is, you fix it. If that’s the case, you make sure that you get those officers out of there—assign them something else, discipline them, whatever it might be,” he said.

Mozyrsky, who advocates community-style policing, said the GVRT played a key role in keeping Portland safe. “These [officers] were out in the community. They knew what the needs were, they knew who was involved and they kept crime from escalating—whatever that might look like. And then, because of objections, I think, on the part of Commissioner Hardesty, that unit was eliminated.”

Juan Chavez, a Portland civil rights lawyer, disagrees with the premise that more police officers mean less crime.

“Somehow we’ve convinced ourselves that the number line on a budget for the Police Bureau is the indicator of whether or not there’s crime.

We don’t talk about law-and-order jurisdictions having higher crime rates, higher murder rates,” he said. “These things aren’t correlated. Low crime rates could look like New Zealand, or they could look like North Korea.”

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

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NEWS OLIVIA GILLIAM

Still Waters

BETTER DAYS: Joe Gilliam in Cannon Beach in 2020, after his first poisoning.

There are new developments in Joe Gilliam’s poisoning, but the mystery of who tried to kill him remains.

BY N I G E L J AQ U I S S

njaquiss@wweek .com

A lot has happened since WW first reported on the poisoning of Joe Gilliam last November. The new developments include a lie detector test, a lawsuit, and the entry of the FBI into the case.

But the question of who twice tried to kill Gilliam with the heavy metal thallium remains a mystery.

Gilliam, once among the most influential men in the state Capitol, will turn 60 in three weeks.

His friends and family say police appear to be no closer to making an arrest in his poisoning than they were when WW first reported on Gilliam’s plight last year (“Who Poisoned Joe Gilliam—Twice?” Nov. 3, 2021). Gilliam remains unable to speak or feed himself, a prisoner in his own body at a very expensive Clark County, Wash., long-term care facility.

The lack of progress has members of Gilliam’s inner circle pointing fingers at each other—and concerns for his safety have left Gilliam more isolated than ever.

“We’re all really frustrated with the pace of the investigation,” says Dan Floyd, a Gilliam protégé who is now chief operating officer of the Hood to Coast Relay.

For more than two decades, Gilliam, a Lake Oswego resident, led the Northwest Grocery Association, which represents the industry’s biggest players in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. He played a lead role in the privatization of Washington’s liquor sales a decade ago and occupied a central position in workers’ compensation and tax battles in Oregon.

But, in 2020, Gilliam, a hiker, golfer and bon vivant in the pink of health, abruptly and dramatically fell ill: In excruciating pain, he could not walk or digest food. He lost his eyesight at times and, most tellingly, his hair.

That hair loss provided one of the clues for doctors at the Mayo Clinic near Gilliam’s vacation home in Cave Creek, Ariz.: A person or

“The family told me I couldn’t see Joe, to protect the integrity of the investigation,” Marini says. “The detective in Arizona said I’m a ‘person of interest’ even though they’ve done nothing to solve the case.” persons unknown poisoned Gilliam twice with thallium, a rodent poison banned in the U.S. in 1965.

Initially, according to a search warrant served at Gilliam’s Cave Creek home in January 2021, police suspected Ron Smith, a longtime friend of Gilliam’s. Smith, a former lobbyist, had a felony conviction in Colorado for threatening an ex-wife, and he and Gilliam got into a dispute over money before Gilliam fell ill the first time. Smith lived in the guest house on Gilliam’s Arizona property.

But events in the past few months have muddied the suspect pool. Tim Mooney, a longtime friend of both Gilliam’s and Smith’s, says Smith is innocent. (Smith did not respond to a request for comment.)

“There’s no way in hell Ron did this. He had no motivation to do it,” says Mooney, an Arizona political consultant who did work for Gilliam in Oregon and encouraged him to buy the property in Cave Creek. “Ron and Joe were great friends for 30 years, and that friendship never died.”

For much of the past year, Christina Marini, Gilliam’s girlfriend, visited him several times a week at the care facility where he was admitted in early 2021 after being diagnosed with thallium poisoning.

But last November, Gilliam’s guardian, his older sister Felicia Capps, blocked Marini from visiting.

“The family told me I couldn’t see Joe, to protect the integrity of the investigation,” Marini says. “The detective in Arizona said I’m a ‘person of interest’ even though they’ve done nothing to solve the case.” (Gilliam traveled to Arizona before both poisonings.)

Marini says she talked to the Lake Oswego detective assigned to Gilliam’s case and he advised her to take a polygraph test. (Neither the Lake Oswego Police Department nor the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office would comment.)

Marini says she took the lie detector test, spending a few hours with a detective for the Oregon City police. She got the results in

mid-December of last year. “I sent an email to Felicia saying, ‘I passed—when can I see Joe?’” Marini says.

The answer: She couldn’t.

Marini says Capps told her she could send Gilliam a greeting card or video, but Marini thought that might upset him. She also believed others were pointing fingers at her.

“I know Tim Mooney has sent Felicia letters saying that I did it,” Marini says. “And Olivia thinks I poisoned her, too. It’s totally ridiculous.”

Olivia Gilliam is Joe Gilliam’s daughter, now 22. She stayed with her father while home from college in June 2020. She says both she and her father got very ill after an evening with Marini.

This January, Gilliam says, FBI agents visited her in Dallas, where her mother lives. They had an unusual request, she says.

“Two agents came to my house with a forensics kit,” Gilliam says. “They took four strands of my hair and packed them up.” (Her mother, Lisa Gilliam, confirms the FBI’s visit, saying the agents showed their badges.)

The agents were looking for traces of thallium, which the body excretes over time. But if Olivia Gilliam and her father had been poisoned on the same June evening in 2020, her hair might still contain traces of thallium. Gilliam says she has heard nothing further from the agents. (Capps, Joe Gilliam’s guardian, says she gave the FBI permission to take a sample of her brother’s hair but wouldn’t say more.)

The FBI declined to comment.

Then, in February, another surprise: Ron Smith filed a lawsuit against Joe Gilliam in Maricopa County, seeking the return of $60,000 he had loaned to Gilliam to buy the house in Cave Creek.

The lawsuit is pending, but some of Gilliam’s friends are puzzled by Smith’s gambit. They speculate that if he were guilty, he probably wouldn’t want to call further attention to himself by going to court.

Marini says she still suspects Smith and that she’s done everything she can to help Gilliam.

She says she’s considering walking into the FBI’s office and demanding that the bureau ramp up the investigation. “I just want justice for Joe,” Marini says.

Two people who have visited Gilliam recently, Olivia Gilliam and Floyd, came away with mixed reactions. Gilliam thought she detected improvement in her father. “It was incredibly emotional,” she says. “You are thinking, ‘I can’t believe someone did this to you,’ but the more you sit with him and talk to him, there are moments when you feel you are talking to the old Joe.” Floyd visited Gilliam last month but wasn’t sure how much his friend comprehended. “The medical staff say he’s able to understand people, but I have my doubts,” Floyd says.

In a court filing April 1, Capps noted the cost of Gilliam’s room and board alone were $21,288 per month and that doctors had told her the damage that the thallium did to her brother “is likely irreversible, and the chances of recovery are minuscule.”

Olivia Gilliam says she just wants to be able to have a conversation with her father again.

“The poisoning still doesn’t feel real—that somebody close to him handed him a drink and truly wanted him to die,” she says. “That still doesn’t feel real.”

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

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Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

CHRISTINE DONG

THE FUTURE OF CANNABIS IS FEMALE Welcome to a time of turbulence and promise for Oregon-grown weed.

It’s official: Portland is the second-best weed city in America.

On April 4, a real estate data company published a study claiming that in the United States, only Denver is a better place to get a buzz. The numbers don’t lie: Here, we have 7.9 dispensaries and 1.1 head shops per capita (plus, Portlanders spend a greater percentage of their income on weed than residents of Denver or Sacramento, the other city that made the top three).

So why does the future of pot in Portland seem uncertain?

For one thing, the U.S. Senate bill that would legalize marijuana at the federal level is likely to languish, given the chamber’s 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans. That means interstate weed sales will probably remain verboten, a problem for a state that produces more cannabis that its residents can possibly smoke.

Also, weed has lost some of its deep-pandemic luster. We’re a long way from March 2020, when Gov. Kate Brown deemed cannabis dispensaries as essential as grocery stores and gas stations, warranting a stoner victory lap. With that particular honeymoon over, now is the time to take stock of the industry’s growth and its growing pains.

For our 4/20 issue, we’ve put together a package of stories that illustrate the continuing joys, challenges and possibilities of our post-legalization world.

Looking for new accouterments to enhance your high? Check out our list of the best cannabis accessories created by local femme-identifying artisans (page 17). Ready to visit the state’s largest cannabis store? We’ll tell you what you need to know before you go (page 19). Want to know the difference between bullshit and beautiful CBD wellness products? We have some advice to offer (page 21).

Finally, we profiled two very different cannabis producers: Phoenix Rising Farm (page 22) and LUVLI (page 23), which are physically miles apart, but are both helping to chart a more sustainable future for the industry.

4/20 is cheekily called “the highest of high holidays”—and like all holidays, it’s as much about reflection as it is about pleasure.

We’ve spent over half a decade free of the dark ages of pre-legalization. Now, Oregon is on the most important part of that journey: figuring out what to do with the light.

—Bennett Campbell Ferguson, Assistant Arts & Culture Editor Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

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CHRISTINE DONG

THE FIVE BEST CANNABIS ACCESSORIES CREATED

BY LOCAL FEMMEIDENTIFYING ARTISANS 16

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

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Don’t know an eye wand from a micro pipe? This guide can help.

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

No high holiday is complete without an appropriate spread of canna-accessories—and we’re talking about more than just a glasstastic collection of pipes and bowls.

Contemporary cannabis accessories have outgrown the classic head-shop selection of hand-blown smoke tools and ironic tie-dye merch. Today’s adjunct cannabis industry is far more robust, complex and femme led than ever before.

That change has manifested in these six canna-companies, which have eschewed the established THC-driven, heavy-lidded, mostly white and male stoner archetype for something arguably truer to the cannabis plant entirely— big womana energy.

So whether you’re an old-school water pipe aficionado, a spoon pipe enthusiast, a stick-sucking vape lord, or any manner of cannabis consumer in between, consider rounding out not just your stash box but your notions of cannabis accessories altogether with a little something from one of these femme-founded and -led companies.

1

4

2

5

CLARITY AROMATHERAPY INHALER (MAKE & MARY)

The feeling you get when you go nostril deep into a new container of top-shelf buds is an aromatherapeutic reaction that can positively affect your mood before you even light up—and Make & Mary has captured a mild, mollifying version of that fragrance in its sleek, rose-gold aromatherapy inhalers. These could be especially calming and rejuvenating for desk-bound stoners looking for a super-low-stakes pick me up.

GET IT FROM: Make & Mary, 2506 NE Sandy Blvd., 503444-7608, makeandmary.com.

EYE WAND (HIGH SOCIETY COLLECTION)

Most joint holders have graduated from bent bobby pins and surplus medical clips. Now we can choose slick works of wearable art that can decorate a pocket square, dangle from a gold chain, or secure a topknot. Case in point, High Society Collection’s Eye Wand joint holder is one of several such handmade smoking accessories. High Society’s entire line of Portland-made wearable art employs familiar designs to subvert antiquated cannabis constructs while looking positively charming on just about anyone.

GET IT FROM: highsocietycollection.com

BUDDY PERSONALIZED ONE-HITTER (BUDWELL)

FUNCTIONAL GLASS MICRO PIPE NECKLACE (BLUNTED OBJECTS)

VIXEN HERB BLEND (ORACLE WELLNESS)

Even before COVID, Buddy’s personalized one-hitters were stash box must-haves. And now that we’ve established that maybe pipes should no longer be passed to new pals, streamlined units such as the Buddy have become the next best way to share a gram with a friend. These pipes disassemble for easy cleaning and even come with gold mouthpieces for those in need of an extra flex.

Another one-hitter for the stoner on the go is the functional micro pipe from Blunted Objects. These eensy bowls hang from long chains and hold just enough nug crumbs to lighten the mood. It’s more of a novelty than a functional pipe, so when layered with other statement pieces or in between T-shirts it becomes virtually invisible. That is, until you light it up and start blowing skunky smoke rings.

Herbal blends like Oracle Wellness’ Vixen blend can be rolled with cannabis to create a smooth-smoking, floral-tinged spliff, or steeped for a lightly medicated tea, or even sprinkled over a foamy bath for maximum DIY opulence. Oracle Wellness’ THC-free formulation includes Oregon Cherry hemp-CBD flower, rose petals, blue lotus, damiana, lavender and hibiscus to create an aromatherapeutic smokable, sippable and soakable botanical blend.

GET IT FROM: budwell.shop

GET IT FROM: bluntedobjects.com

GET IT FROM: oraclewellnessco.com Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

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Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

CO U R T E SY O F N O R T H W E S T C A N N A B I S CO M PA N Y

THIS IS OREGON’S LARGEST CANNABIS SUPERSTORE Northwest Cannabis Company aims to be the Albertson’s for stoners.

BY C A L L E Y H A I R

For the people behind Northwest Cannabis Company, the weed superstore isn’t just the place to find an enormous selection of strains and brands. It’s an oasis in a desert.

The company is the first and only marijuana dispensary to pop up in Tualatin since a city ordinance significantly eased its restrictions on cannabis businesses in late 2020, decreasing the mandatory distance from schools, parks, libraries and residential districts from 3,000 to 1,000 feet.

“Lake Oswego has a ban, Wilsonville has a ban. Tualatin, this is the only location,” says Bobby Saberi, a consultant for the business. “People had to go 20, 30 minutes to get their pot.”

General manager Jeremy Hall chimes in: “We are the weed desert people.”

With the new ordinance, a 2,400-square-foot space—located just off Lower Boones Ferry Road, at the northernmost tip of the city—was already being eyed by Hall and company owner Stephanie Carmichael when it suddenly became available. And they weren’t the only business to covet the spot.

“We beat the next closest competitor by 15 seconds,” Hall says.

The goal was to assemble the largest selection of brands and strains available in Oregon. Hall, who’s been managing cannabis dispensaries for about four years and growing medical cannabis for another 12, says he’s confident they succeeded. Northwest Cannabis currently carries 50 brands and more than 100 strains.

“That was the goal: supercenter,” he says. “Offer the biggest selection we can as a onestop option.”

Forming a Community Around 4/20 Hall and Saberi see the business as a way to fill a weed vacuum in towns south of Portland.

And with 4/20 approaching, they see another opportunity: to establish their brand and form a community with Northwest Cannafest, a major, mission statement-establishing event.

Northwest Cannafest, which will start at around noon on April 20, will feature a live glass-blowing demonstration in the parking lot. The store will also offer a 30% discount on all its products, a free Voodoo doughnut with each purchase, and giveaways of merch and gourmet s’mores.

At 4:20 pm, a bus will shuttle attendees across the street to restaurant and concert venue At the Garages for three performances by Tom Petty tribute band Petty Fever, Prince tribute band Erotic City, and Beastie Boys tribute band Grand Royal. The concert will be hosted by Ben Zabin of the marijuana-themed magic show Smokus Pocus.

“A lot of companies will have vendors in store, and goodies and swag for customers to have on that day to celebrate,” Hall says. “We’re taking it a step further. We definitely want to create an event that is really independent of our business, but still creates cross promotion. With the event, the idea was to go as big as we can because we want to create something that people can truly gather around.”

And, he adds, “It’s just a great excuse to party.”

GO: Northwest Cannafest is at Northwest Cannabis Company, 17937 SW McEwan Road, Tualatin, and At the Garages, 17880 SW McEwan Road, Lake Oswego. Noon Wednesday, April 20. Tickets $17.50 at atthegarages.net/event/petty-fever-and-grand-royale.

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

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CASEY BRANHAM

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CANNABIS WELLNESS PRODUCTS Here’s what to look for— and what to avoid.

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

In the past few years, plant medicines—namely nonpsychoactive cannabinoids like CBD, CBG, CBC and CBN— have rapidly transcended their surreptitious reputations, grabbing headlines as mainstream celebrities like Martha Stewart released their own cannabis brands (even Gwyneth Paltrow invested in a cannabis-infused beverage brand).

But despite formulations backed by A-listers, dubious endeavors promoted by quasi-celebs like Dan Bilzerian have muddied the waters. Whether promoted by an Oscar winner or just some wiener, the manufactured therapeutic cannabinoid industry can be just as pernicious and unregulated as the rest of the weed industry.

With more than 100 known cannabinoids in the cannabis plant, new discoveries, both pharmacological and recreational, are shaking out almost daily. That makes the process of cannabinoid wellness exploration at best inconveniently profuse and at worst, downright treacherous.

The alternative cannabinoid market is positively flooded with fly-by-night producers importing questionably grown and processed hemp to formulate products with outrageous health claims. But despite a crowded field, there are several cannabis companies creating wholesome, high-quality, ethically grown and lovingly processed cannabinoid products.

WW considered anecdotal data, published studies, and our own relevant experiences to figure out just what exactly we need to know when integrating alternative cannabinoids into our wellness routines.

Here’s what to look for (and what to avoid) when exploring new cannabis brands:

GREEN FLAG: An easy-to-discover certificate of analysis, or COA, with testing results published plainly on the brand’s website.

RED FLAG: Cannabis grown way out of state or out of the country. In order to produce therapeutic-quality cannabis, the process should be controlled from seed to counter by its own team of cultivators and techs.

GREEN FLAG: A full-spectrum formulation that includes all the cannabinoids, terpenes and flavonoids present in the cultivar.

These products are typically the least processed and usually closest to heritage concentrations and extracts.

RED FLAG: Isolates. Sure, cannabinoids show therapeutic promise on their own, but the process of isolating cannabinoids is complex and invasive, stripping away the natural entourage created by the plant’s essential profile.

GREEN FLAG: Founder-CEOs with real-life experience medicating with cannabis. When shopping for therapeutic cannabis oils,

tinctures, salves and edibles, look for products produced through a therapeutic lens.

RED FLAG: A wildly diverse product selection with no apparent focus.

Therapeutic cannabis cultivation can be highly specialized, so any brand that touts miracle results from a laundry list of disparate products raises red flags.

GREEN FLAG: Organic, sungrown, minimally processed.

RED FLAG: Artificially flavored, colored or scented.

BOTTOM LINE:

Cannabis is ancestral medicine, and while advancements in canna tech have led to groundbreaking discoveries, we should also maintain the traditional recipes that led to so many of these newfangled formulations.

Luckily, there are several cannabis brands that use contemporary means to live up to that tradition. Here are a few I personally endorse: Luminous Botanicals, Nesa’s Hemp, Greater Goods, and Lazarus Naturals are all excellent brands worth exploring when shopping for cannabinoid wellness.

And remember, results may vary, so experiment with caution.

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CASEY BRANHAM

THIS IS WHY A HIGH THC PERCENTAGE ISN’T EVERYTHING A regenerative organic cannabis farmer talks consumer education—and why quality matters more than potency in the quest to find the perfect high.

BY B E N N E T T C A M P B E LL FE RG U SO N

@thobennett

Casey Branham’s regenerative organic cannabis farm in Jackson, Ore., isn’t called Phoenix Rising Farm because it sounds badass, but because the name captures the possibilities born of legalization.

“Phoenix Rising Farm came from this vision of the traditional market—or black market, if you will—falling away and [the emergence of ] this new, legalized market where we can put our money in the bank and have access to these things like a normal business would,” Branham says.

It sounds pretty utopian, and it is—Branham, who co-founded the farm with his wife, Toni Branham, in 2014 (the year that recreational cannabis was effectively legalized in Oregon by the passage of Measure 91), has cultivated a 25-plus-year career in cannabis. Yet he can’t help fretting about the future of the industry, partly because he worries about its environmental impact.

“All these indoor farms are using a tremendous amount of electricity, which is increasing the carbon emissions into the atmosphere,” Branham says. That’s one reason he joined Weed Like Change, a public consumer education campaign created to raise awareness of the importance of ethically produced, environmentally sustainable cannabis.

Weed Like Change was created by the nonprofit Sun+Earth, an organization that offers third-party certification of cannabis grown under the sun, sans chemicals by fairly paid farmers. It has already attracted the attention of Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who is 22

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

supporting the campaign by speaking at Electric Lettuce on Southeast Holgate Boulevard this Friday.

But the success of Weed Like Change may depend on how effectively farmers like Branham advocate for their products. “It’s a very competitive market, and mostly the consumer is focused on price and THC percentage,” he says. “But there is the base that cares about how the product was grown and how it was produced. Branding matters.”

WW: IN 2015, YOU RAISED CONCERNS ABOUT THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIAL HEMP. DO YOU FEEL THOSE FEARS HAVE BEEN REALIZED? Casey Branham: Farms like mine and a small handful of others in Oregon have taken steps to be regenerative in the way we produce cannabis—growing directly from native soil, using different techniques like mulching, not buying bottled nutrients, growing plants in companion with cannabis that we then use to feed the soil.

Those are ways to not only lower the carbon footprint and make a more sustainable product, but also provide the consumer with a product that we know is much more healthy, much more rich in all the cannabinoids, terpenoids and other products that come out of cannabis grown in that way.

HOW DOES THE PROCESS OF THIRD-PARTY CERTIFICATION WORK AT SUN+EARTH? There’s a few things that are set up—growing practices, community involvement, what you’re contributing not only to the production of cannabis, but to the community.

How do you treat your employees? Are you trying to pay them a living wage?

ARE CONSUMERS FOCUSED ON GETTING AS HIGH AS POSSIBLE AS OPPOSED TO THE QUALITY OF THE HIGH? I think so, yeah. I think it’s kind of an American thing, like more is better. There’s a lot of people who are like, “Oh my God, I want the IPA that’s 8% alcohol or 9.2,” who are going for the heavy craft beer stuff. When [consumers are] equating THC percentage with quality, they’re missing out on the fact that that’s not the only thing.

In Oregon, it didn’t matter until 2014 when it went legal, and then it was required to get these potency tests. Until then, no one really cared—it was just whether it tasted good, whether it smelled good, and whether the effects were good. And I think regeneratively grown cannabis, you’re going to get the full experience, because when it’s grown in the native soil under the sun, you’re going to get the fullest expression of all those.

THIS IS WHY EVERYBODY LOVES LEFTOVERS How Portlanders’ love for a modern hybrid saved one of the city’s most influential old-school farms.

BY L AU R E N YO S H I KO T E R R Y

@ L a u r e nY Te r r y

In Portland’s advanced cultivation scene, everyone’s a connoisseur. The innovative techniques and unparalleled quality of our local growers and plant breeders are renowned throughout the country, and the saturation of power players means we get to enjoy the fruits of their labors at some of the most affordable prices anywhere.

That means that Portland flower shoppers are so spoiled with a never-ending supply of stoney, high-THC strains like GMO and Gorilla Glue, that novel strains with less name recognition can take a while to catch on. Some don’t at all, as the growers at the indoor cultivation company LUVLI learned the hard way.

“The different things we tried did not resonate with customers at all,” recalls LUVLI co-owner Tim Zimmerman.

“I was always pheno hunting [seeking out new cannabis seeds with novel genetic lineages], and when I found a

cross of GMO and Biscotti Sundae, it caught my attention.”

That cross went by the name Leftovers, and, as Zimmerman puts it, “Leftovers kind of saved our company.”

Although the competitive cannabis space is no cakewalk for anyone right now, Zimmerman’s exaggerating a bit here. LUVLI took home second place at last year’s Oregon Growers Cup, and it’s earned a customer base of a decent size through sheer longevity.

“We weren’t necessarily failing as a company, but it reinvigorated us in a big way,” says Zimmerman. “I’d gotten so frustrated by watching great, interesting genetics flop on the market, it really bummed me out. It made me question if I was totally out of touch.”

When he first found some Leftovers seeds, it was a total gamble. Six of them were female, which meant six shots at something great. Pretty much as soon as the plants began to flower, two of those seeds stood out.

“I know #11 was something special, it just smelled so

amazing, and then #2 had this old-school quality—super-dank, gassy aroma—that I knew would test well,” recalls Zimmerman. “Then we got it tested, and we couldn’t believe it. Forty percent THC.” Zimmerman acknowledged the skeptical look on my face at this point in the interview, and clarified that he’s typically the first person to complain about lab accuracy.

“I honestly don’t believe the 40% either, but the reality is that testing is really random,” he adds. “They’re grabbing select buds off a plant, and the cannabinoids really vary depending on the part of the plant and which bud on which branch.”

High test results are the best kind of advertising to the average dispensary shopper, but the night-and-day difference in how fast these Leftovers drops were repeatedly selling out validated everything LUVLI was doing. It also got Zimmerman excited to experiment again, which resulted in Pressure, the strain that propelled the company to victory at the Oregon Growers Cup. Since first introducing Leftovers #2 and #11 to the market in 2019, LUVLI saw a spike in demand, but it chose not to meet it with a bigger supply. That’s the true gift of Leftovers: It’s helping LUVLI keep doing its thing, its way.

“I don’t want to grow more weed, I want to keep being able to drop my kid off at school every morning,” he says.

“I’m happy.”

GET IT: Find LUVLI flower at Archive, Oregon Grown, Refinery, Kaleafa and other dispensaries in Portland and beyond.

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STREET

24

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I SAW THE SIGN Photos by Chris Nesseth On Instagram: @chrisnesseth

To kick off WW’s new street sign series in which we ask readers to submit photos of their favorite signs around town, we visited the experts first. Portland has a wide variety of signmakers who go beyond letting you know whether a business is “open” or “closed.”

They’ve turned their medium into an art.

Pictured here are The Tiny Spoon (left) Studio Signs Company (above, center) and Variety Shop (bottom). To have your photo of a sign published, email art@wweek.com no later than 5 pm Monday each week.

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STARTERS

T H E MOST I MP ORTANT P O RTLA N D C U LTU R E STORI E S OF T H E W E E K—G RA P H E D .

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

RIDICULOUS

April 23 is the day record labels roll out 100’s of limited-edition titles on vinyl.

Pickathon is back after a two-year pause with a genre-busting lineup of artists.

Check out both the Burnside & Sandy stores!

Quantities limited!

Improv artist extraordinaire Wayne Brady guest stars in Portland Center Stage’s production of Freestyle Love Supreme.

Stop in our Sandy store before closing on May 7th for great deals during our Close-out Sale!

OPEN EVERYDAY 11am - 6pm

Portland Center Stage also shares its 202223 schedule, which should satisfy theater and film fanatics.

APPROPRIATE WRITTEN BY

BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS

The Japanese American Museum of Oregon and the Architectural Heritage Center receive a $25,000 award.

DIRECTED BY

JERRY RUIZ

Broadway in Portland announces a diverse lineup of plays for its 2022-23 season.

Oregonians raise $125,508 through BottleDrop to help the people of Ukraine.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss perform at Edgefield this August.

201 AWA 4-15 OB RD IE AME : BEST N RICA E N PL W AY Sasquatch Brewing’s Northwest Portland location is one of the last breweries to reemerge from its pandemic hibernation.

at IMAGO THEATRE 17 SE 8th AVENUE 26

•••••••••••••

MAY 5-22, 2022

TICKETS at 503.242.0080 & PROFILETHEATRE.ORG

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

Lager-focused Living Haüs Beer Company will open in the former Modern Times space this summer.

PROFILE T H E AT R E

A companywide flu outbreak postpones performances of Hamilton at Keller Auditorium.

AW F U L

“...an exceptionally brilliant piece of writing...gut-punchingly honest work.” –Time Out

AW E S O M E

Check out everydaymusic.com or recordstoreday.com for details.

The Bloody Mary Festival returns to the Redd on Salmon in June.

SERIOUS

Bitch Media, the scrappy, independent zine that grew into a multimedia nonprofit based in Portland, will cease all operations.

GET BUSY

STUFF TO DO IN PORTLAND THIS WEEK, INDOORS AND OUT.

�

LISTEN: The Ballroom Thieves From relationships to environmentalism to Harry Styles, no topic is off-limits for Calin Peters and Martin Earley, the duo known as the Ballroom Thieves. In advance of the July release of their album Clouds (which actually does include a song titled “Harry Styles”), they’re bringing their eclectic brand of indie rock to Portland. Folk, pop and indie-rock visionary Lady Lamb also performs. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895, mississippistudios.com. 8 pm Saturday-Sunday, April 23-24. $22. 21+.

 SEE: #ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence

Third Rail Repertory Theatre is participating in a nationwide reading of eight plays that confront the American epidemic of gun violence. All were written by high schoolers and the selection committee included Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin was murdered in 2018 in Parkland, Fla. The date of the performance is significant: It marks the 23rd anniversary of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, where 12 students and a teacher were massacred and 21 others were wounded. Congregation Beth Israel, 1972 NW Flanders St., 503235-1101, thirdrailrep.org. 7 pm Wednesday, April 20. Also streams live on YouTube. Free.

�

WATCH: When Harry Met Sally…

Remember when the romantic comedy genre wasn’t dominated by made-for-Netflix dreck? The Hollywood Theatre does. It’s screening director Rob Reiner and writer Nora Ephron’s 1989 masterpiece, which puts Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal on the front lines of the battle of the sexes for a blissful 95 minutes. Ironically but fittingly, a movie with a famous fake-orgasm scene is one of the most beautifully honest portrayals of women, men, love and longing. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.org. 7:30 pm Saturday, April 23. $8-$10.

 EAT: Veganizer Seaweed & Foraged Ingredients Dinner You probably don’t think about where restaurants source their seaweed when biting into your favorite sushi roll, but roughly 98% of the edible algae consumed in the U.S. is imported. Blue Evolution is working to change that. The California-based company cultivates all of its own aquatic organisms in farms along the Pacific Coast. At this fivecourse dinner, guests can taste some of that seaweed, kelp and sea lettuce in unexpected dishes like linguini and crème brûlée, all prepared by Morchella chef Cameron Dunlap. You can get even more adventurous by pairing each plate with a seaweed-based cocktail. Morchella, 1315 NE Fremont St., 503-764-9941, morchellapdx.com. 6 and 8 pm seatings SundayMonday, April 24-25. $90, optional $45 wine pairing.

The Music of Queen

 GO: Earth Day Every Day Celebration

tickets start at

thurs, may 5

$29

MAKING EARTH COOL

From the deadly 2020 Labor Day weekend wildfires to last year’s new record-high, triple-digit temperatures, it’s clear that global warming is wreaking havoc on our environment.

Founders of the grassroots organization Making Earth Cool know the problem feels overwhelming, which is why they’re using science, comedy and creativity to inspire individuals to become better environmental stewards. At their first-ever Earth Day celebration at Revolution Hall, there will be speakers, eco-friendly vendors and live music. After a full afternoon of activities, you can then join Making Earth Cool in a parade—complete with costumes and tools to collect litter along the route—to Clinton Street Theater, where there will be a screening of Earth Day-themed short films. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St., #203, 971-8085094, makingearthcool.com. 1 pm Friday, April 22. Free entry to Revolution Hall, $10 for the Clinton Street Theater screening.

with the Oregon Symphony

for tickets: orsymphony.org | 503-228-1353 909 sw washington, portland, or 97205 Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

27

Top 5

Buzz List WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.

1. THE EMERALD ROOM THE EMERALD ROOM

2117 NE Oregon St., Suite 202, 971-213-1085, aimsiremerald.com. 4-10 pm Wednesday-Saturday.

Portland’s Aimsir Distilling Company just nabbed three awards from the prestigious San Francisco Spirits Competition, so if you haven’t made your way into the brand’s swanky bar the Emerald Room, now you have as good an excuse as any to book a reservation. Be sure to sample the Aimsir Bourbon, its first whiskey that won double gold, and the Cold Brew Bourbon, which took home silver. The latter can be ordered in a boulevardier starting April 20, National Cold Brew Day.

2. URDANETA

3033 NE Alberta St., 503-288-1990, urdanetapdx.com. 5-10 pm Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday, 5-11 pm Friday-Saturday.

If you live by the slogan “Rosé all day,” then you’ll want a standing reservation at Urdaneta this spring. The tapas restaurant just announced its wine of the season is Punctum Petulante Pét Nat—essentially a wilder version of Champagne with a vibrant pink hue, bright berry aroma and red summer fruit notes. Urdaneta’s wine director chose this particular rosé because it pairs perfectly with chef Javier Canteras’ Spanish-inspired dishes, such as burrata drizzled with harissa honey, tortilla de bacalao (confit salt cod), and croquetas de jamon filled with béchamel.

3. 503 DISTILLING LOUNGE

4784 SE 17th Ave., Suite 150, 503-975-5669, 503distilling.com. 3-9 pm Thursday-Saturday, 1-7 pm Sunday.

Portland has a new outlet where you can sample draft cocktails right next door to the source. 503 Distilling recently opened a lounge adjacent to its distillery inside the Iron Fireman Collective building. That’s where you’ll find six rotating cocktails on tap, plus made-to-order mixed drinks, beer and wine. The draft options offer visitors first tastes of some of the newest concoctions coming out of the distillery, acting as something of a laboratory. And once you’ve had your fill of spirits, Ruse Brewing is a short stumble away.

4. STEEPLEJACK BREWING COMPANY

2400 NE Broadway, 503-206-8880, steeplejackbeer.com. 9 am-10 pm daily.

Like so many beloved Portland buildings lost to redevelopment, the 1909 Metropolitan Community Church appeared to be destined for the backhoe. But a pair of old college buddies looking to open their own brewery stumbled across the real estate listing and decided it would be the perfect place for Steeplejack.

The breathtaking architecture and stained glass are reason enough to visit, but for a limited time you can also find a rare beer on tap: a Dortmund-style lager made with oysters and seaweed. Collaborator Flying Fish is also pouring the brew while it lasts.

5. VON EBERT BREWING

133 NW 13th Ave., 503-820-7721; 14021 NE Glisan St., 503-878-8708; vonebertbrewing. com. Pearl: 11:30 am-10 pm Monday-Saturday, 11:30 am-9 pm Sunday. Glendoveer: 11:30 am-9 pm Tuesday-Sunday.

Two Portland obsessions—basketball and beer—have come together for Parkinson’s Awareness Month this April. Former Blazer Brian Grant, who was diagnosed with the condition in 2008, raises money through a beer-centric campaign every spring for his foundation, which helps others who have Parkinson’s. This year, he went behind the scenes at Von Ebert and brewed Rasta Monsta, a 4.9% ABV tropical Pilsner named after Grant’s on-court persona. You can get it for a limited time at both brewery pubs.

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Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

FOOD & DRINK Greek Life Upscale, fast-casual newcomer Bluto’s is a pita and souvlaki party best enjoyed with a group.

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

There’s nowhere to hide on a small menu: no place to tuck a less than excellent but high-profit-margin chicken dish, no spot for a sneaky, sad seasonal salad. Fortunately, there is no need to bury mediocre food on the menu at Bluto’s, a new “wood-fired, Greek-inspired” restaurant on Southeast Belmont Street. Almost every single dish is a banger.

Bluto’s, named after John Belushi’s hard-partying frat brother character in Animal House, comes from Lardo and Grassa mastermind Rick Gencarelli and the ChefStable restaurant group (see also: St. Jack and Ox). Like Lardo and Grassa, Bluto’s aims for that fancy, fast-casual niche, with counter service and midrange prices belying some seriously tasty cooking.

Staples include the lineup of five souvlaki skewers along with a pair of hummus plates. The rest of the menu is rounded out by a handful of salads, roasted veggie dishes, and some solid breaded Greek fries dusted with tangy, shredded haloumi cheese and lemon zest.

The portion sizes are perfect for sharing, so covering a table in a variety of dishes and allowing the flavors to mingle is the right way to eat here. The bright, zippy citrus and sour labneh in the chicory salad ($12) should be eaten in between bites of the savory skewers ($6-$12) and hummus scooped up with pita bread.

That dip ($6-$10) is a true treat: It’s as smooth as Bruno Mars on a satin waterbed, dolloped with herby green schug, whole soft chickpeas, and olive oil.

The pita bread might be even better. A departure from the UFO-sized rounds at restaurants like Nicholas, these are hand-sized, impossibly fluffy discs served in individual paper pouches. The outsides are crispy thanks to the wood oven and coated with salt and oregano, while the insides are steamy and dense. A warning: They are $3 each and do not come with hummus.

When it comes to the skewers, the ground, spiced lamb and the Olympia Provisions pork loukaniko sausage are the standouts (don’t ignore the spicy pickles served alongside the latter, either). If you’re with a group, get one of each and share.

I’ve seen Bluto’s busy at lunch on a Wednesday, during dinner on a Friday and all times in between, so it’s already going just fine for Gencarelli and company, but as someone who often needs a work-from-home lunch break, I’m personally begging that they add a gyro to the menu. Ostensibly, the ingredients are already there: the $3 pita, the $9 lamb skewer, the $3 tzatziki…but what if it were like $13 and assembled for the diner?

Pleeeaaaassse?

When you’re not rushing around in the middle of the day and have time to lounge at dinner, don’t skip the ouzo. The anise-flavored aperitif is similar to sambuca or arak, and it shows up all over the cocktail menu. It gives an edge to the mojito ($11), an often too sweet drink, and comes as a $5 shot for those of us (me) who want to throw back two or three straight.

Although Bluto’s offers some nice soft serve, which you can get served in a tahini magic shell, ouzo straight is how I always want to end a meal there.

EAT: Bluto’s, 2838 SE Belmont St., 971-383-1619, blutospdx. com. 11 am-10 pm daily.

Editor: Andi Prewitt Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

Top 5

Hot Plates WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.

1. EAST GLISAN PIZZA LOUNGE AARON LEE

8001 NE Glisan St., 971-279-4273, eastglisan.com.

Meatless lasagna available 4-8 pm Sunday, new lasagna pinwheels available 9-11 pm Friday-Saturday.

Though best known for its Detroit-style pies, East Glisan makes room on its menu for lasagna every Sunday, and the pasta is just as hefty as the shop’s square pizzas. With 12 lustrous layers, each slice is as thick as a brick and feels sturdy enough to construct a wall. The whisper-thin noodles are every bit as important as the creamy ricotta and crushed DiNapoli San Marzano-style tomatoes since there are no fillings like meat or spinach. This is filling food. This is comforting food. This is “slow down and pay attention” food.

2. KING TIDE FISH & SHELL

1510 S Harbor Way, 503-295-6166, kingtidefishandshell.com. 7 am-1 pm and 4-9 pm Monday-Thursday, 7 am-1 pm and 4-10 pm Friday, 8 am-1 pm and 4-10 pm Saturday, 8 am-1 pm and 4-9 pm Sunday.

One of Portland’s rare downtown riverfront restaurants has a new chef helming the kitchen. Alexander Diestra is a familiar name to anyone who pays attention to the city’s culinary scene, boasting more than 18 years of experience at places like Saucebox, Clarklewis and Andina. The Peruvian native is now shaking up the menu at King Tide by introducing new items such as bluefin tuna tartare, kanpachi crudo, ono ceviche, Wagyu coulotte and a seafood risotto with prawns and scallops—lively dishes that are a mashup of the flavors of his home country and Japan.

Conceived By

ANTHONY VENEZIALE Created By

THOMAS KAIL LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA ANTHONY VENEZIALE

3. GABBIANO’S

5411 NE 30th Ave., 503-719-4373, gabbianospdx. com. 4-10 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Certain restaurants are just like certain people: You know you’re gonna like them from the first moment you lay eyes on them. We clicked with Gabbiano’s right away thanks to its warm, bustling interior with hand-painted Italian fresco walls and a “When you’re here, you’re family” vibe that Olive Garden can only fake. The classics (chicken Parm, chitarra, calamari, the Caesar) are all dialed in. But you must order the mozzarella cups—breaded and fried cheese served as a molded shot glass and then filled with marinara.

ON STAGE THROUGH MAY 1, 2022 503.445.3700 | PCS.ORG SEASON SUPERSTARS

L-R: Anthony Veneziale, Aneesa Folds, and Kurt Crowley (on keyboard) in Freestyle Love Supreme. Photo by Joan Marcus.

4. CAFE OLLI

3925 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-2068604, cafeolli.com. 9 am-2 pm Tuesday, 9 am-9 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Cafe Olli is a lot of restaurants. By day, it’s a casual counter-service spot, with your pick of pastries, sandwiches and square Roman-style “pizza alla pala” by the slice. At night, the room darkens.

There’s wait staff on the floor, and the cooks get busy with the wood-fired oven, which remains from the space’s previous occupant, Ned Ludd. No matter when you visit, the menus have a choose-yourown-adventure feel, suitable for anyone in need of a quick meal, or a customer looking to sample every dish. Pro tip: Get there early for dinner to guarantee yourself a slice of classic chocolate fudge cake.

Get Busy Tonight OUR EVENT PICKS, E M A I L E D W E E K LY.

5. THE SPORTS BRA

2512 NE Broadway, 503-327-8401, thesportsbrapdx. com. 11 am-11 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Billed as the first and only bar whose screens feature only women’s athletics, the Sports Bra is a unique concept that has generated excitement on a national scale. But the pub also promises to distinguish itself by serving food all made from scratch that will please carnivores, vegans, gluten-free patrons and everyone in between. We’re most excited to try owner-chef Jenny Nguyen’s family recipes for dishes like Mom’s Baby Back Ribs—Vietnamese-style pork caramelized with coconut milk—and Aunt Tina’s Vietna-Wings, fried-and-glazed chicken on a bed of cabbage slaw.

THE SPORTS BRA

MY BIG FAT GREEK PLACE SETTING: Bluto’s menu may be small, but the flavors are bold and portion sizes are perfect for sharing.

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29

420 GUIDE sponsored content

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Dispensaries all around Portland will be serving serious discounts and deals all month. Our recommendation?

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Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug | For use only by adults twenty-one years of age and older | Keep out reach of children 30

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

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220 SW 1st Ave

Northwest Cannabis Company Oregon’s Largest Selection of Cannabis Event:

Northwest Cannabis Company presents its first annual Northwest Cannafest 420 Celebration. All day, Northwest Cannabis Company is offering 30% off cannabis and will give away VooDoo Donuts, 1927 S’mores, Mary Jane’s glass and Swag. Plus live glass blowing, magic provided by Ben Zabin from Smokus Pocus and a dope DJ. At 4:20, there will be a concert and party At the Garages, just across the street from Northwest Cannabis Company and an exciting cannabis vendor showcase featuring Noblecraft, Mary Jane’s and others.

northwestcannabis.com Contact:

971-634-4400 | 17937 SW McEwan Rd., Tigard, OR 97224

Laurie + MaryJane Elevating the Edible Discount:

Get ready for the best-tasting gummies to hit the market! In addition to being mind-blowingly delicious, Bleublees are the only gummies made with a full-spectrum coconut oil infusion.. Visit your local Electric Lettuce store and enjoy 30% off any Laurie + MaryJane product when you mention the secret passphrase “I Love Bleublees”

laurieandmaryjane.com Contact:

503-765-8061 | 7958 Southeast Foster Road

Stumptown Cannabis Deals:

40% off all Fire Department - prerolls, edible treats & more Orekron preroll 5 packs for $10 • Dabs starting at $10/gram from Orekron & more • Buddies 1 gram cartridges $16 and up • $69 premium flower ounces •plus many more specials in store

Got Munchies? Stumptown Cannabis got you covered: Voo Doo Donuts in store for breakfast at 10:00 am Jimmy John’s Sandwiches at 4:20 for that mid afternoon snack

Happy Hour:

Additional 10% off flower wall purchases from 4:20 to close

stumptown-cannabis.com Contact:

503-908-8642 | 10587 SE 82nd Ave

Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug | For use only by adults twenty-one years of age and older | Keep out reach of children Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

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2022

The Historic

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May

8

Billy Bob Thornton and

June

11

“I Melt With You”

Aug

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GranadaTheatreTheDalles.com 221 E Second St. The Dalles - 815-993-6585

CLOSEOUT

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75% off all used CDs & DVDS 50% off all used vinyl 25% off all new CDs

BEST oF ’22 PORTLANd R E A D E R S ’

P O L L

Portland.... we're looking for the BEST. Nominate your favorite local bagel, yoga studio, dive bar and more.

Nominations open until midnight on 4/20 bop.wweek.com S P O N S O R E D BY

1931 NE Sandy Blvd location ONLY

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POTLANDER

M C K E N Z I E YO U N G - R OY

Best Buds Cannabis expert Mss Oregon describes what makes three of her favorite dispensaries stand out.

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

Aside from affordable weed, what makes a dispensary worth visiting?

In Portland, there’s a pot shop in just about every neighborhood, and many of them have great daily deals, smiling budtenders and glistening interiors. But deep discounts and a glossy sheen can sometimes distract from what is a less than exemplary business behind the scenes. The onus is on us, consumers, to support shops that work to create an equitable and diverse industry rather than exclusively visiting vendors with the most outrageous deals.

That’s not to suggest Portland’s overall retail weed scene is anything less than stellar.

In fact, states that have recently legalized recreational cannabis often cite our dispensary culture as a model worth replicating. But the field is crowded, and not every shop in the metro area is living up to the unofficial Oregon Standard, so we reached out to cannabis expert, event coordinator and weed luminary Mss Oregon in advance of her upcoming and highly anticipated 4/20 party, Recess, to find out what makes a dispensary great.

Mongoose Cannabis Co.

Club Sky High

1234 NE 102nd Ave., 503-384-2959, trees.menu/102nd. Noon-8:55 pm daily.

“My personal favorite dispo is Trees on 102nd and Northeast Halsey,” says Mss Oregon.

Strain hunters will likely appreciate where she’s coming from. Trees, a blink-and-you’llmiss-it storefront in a WinCo Foods parking lot, has a super-affordable, curated flower menu as well as a savvy budtending staff with a solid knowledge base about the products that they’re more than happy to share with customers.

Trees is a multistate operation, with two brick-and-mortars in Portland and one in Colorado, but the eastside location is our go-to thanks to its easy-to-navigate sales floor and quality selection. For those seeking rare cultivars along with exceptional advice, check out this shop the next time you need to make a grocery run.

GO: Mss Oregon’s Recess 4.20 takes place at Rainbow City, 21 SE 11th Ave., 971-212-2097, eventbrite.com. 2-6 pm Wednesday, April 20. $10-$20.

8975 N Lombard St., 503-719-5801, clubskyhigh.net. 9 am-9 pm daily.

Two factors that make a dispensary stand out, according to Mss Oregon, are “keeping a diverse team of employees” and “strong management who are fun, knowledgeable and can educate their staff and customers about the plant.”

Club Sky High, which has served St. Johns for nine years, meets both of those standards, while staying true to its medicinal roots and evolving to serve a recreational customer base.

To ensure quality, its product is grown outdoors in Southern Oregon and indoors in its North Portland warehouse, which also serves as a processing facility. The family-owned enterprise works to foster community as an active member of the St. Johns Boosters, a nonprofit that supports local businesses, and holds an annual drive for the Oregon Food Bank. Pro tip: Check out the housemade moon rocks, nugs soaked in extracts and dusted with kief. They are legit legendary.

3123 SE Belmont St., 541-933-8032, mongoosecannabis.com. 10 am-9 pm daily.

What makes Mongoose unique is its quintessential boutique vibe, walk-up window and dog-friendly sales floor. But beyond offering an exemplary customer experience, the business takes care of its employees by encouraging internal career growth and prioritizing a safe workplace (one employee described the shop as “free from toxic masculinity.”)

Mongoose also supports diversity in the industry by sourcing cannabis from BIPOC- and women-owned farms.

Husband-and-wife owners Deb and Chuck Grant have lived in the neighborhood for more than 20 years and opened the store as a way to keep the small-business environment alive in the ever-developing area. “The mongoose stands up to the cobra, and the cobra is like big business,” says Deb Grant in reference to a decal next to the walk-up window.

Trees Dispensary

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

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PERFORMANCE

MUSIC

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson | Contact: bennett@wweek.com

L AVA A L A PA I ( A R T R E S I D E N T A R T I S T )

EXPLOSIVELY TALENTED: Michael Mendelson, Elizabeth Elias Huffman and Linda Alper.

Children of the Atom Artists Rep’s The Children is a tale of two nuclear engineers.

BY J O H N R U D O F F

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A R T I S T S R E P E R T O R Y T H E AT R E

The Children, Lucy Kirkwood’s fine 2016 play, is about what we owe ourselves, each other and the future. It’s the final onstage production of Artists Repertory Theatre’s 2021-22 season—and it’s a dramatic, funny and surprisingly meditative note to end on (until the start of the 2022-23 season, of course).

While The Children has been described as a climate-change play and an anti-nuclear one, Kirkwood deals with those themes deftly, using them as lenses through which to explore human conflict and the nature of obligation. To her credit, the play doesn’t preach, it shows.

Directed by Luan Schooler, Artists Rep’s production stars Linda Alper and Michael Mendelson as Hazel and Robin, a married couple. A nuclear family only in the literal sense, they are nuclear engineers who live in an isolated cottage in England near the heavily contaminated site of a ruined power plant they built that has been destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami.

The couple is joined by Rose (Elizabeth Elias Huffman), a colleague who unexpectedly visits after a decadeslong absence. Childless, self-absorbed and successful, she initially seems to be the opposite of Hazel and Robin, who have four grown children. Yet Rose, who feels drawn to the nuclear reactor and its staff, remains troubled by unfulfilled desires.

Rose’s arrival reveals other struggles. Hazel’s incessant talk of healthy food and yoga exposes her rage against death and decay (“the slow descent into the coffin starts with two black hairs on your chin”) while Robin’s incessant activity seems designed to hide the frailties of illness.

But what does Rose’s reserve conceal? Is it merely regret about relationship roads not taken? Or is there something more?

Kirkwood is clearly meditating on the many conflicts of duty inherent in familial life. Kids can be irritating disappointments, yet are still owed something by their parents. Spouses and lovers ask the

unwieldy or the impossible, yet are still obliged by their significant others. Having a child may represent a commitment to the future, but what about four children? Duty, after all, demands sacrifice.

Thanks to Kirkwood’s treatment of these issues, The Children is an engaging play, not an ethics text, which is why the final conflict of duties that she depicts is as stark as it is unexpected. Also, the play’s concluding (and greatest) clash of morals echoes a historical event in a way that, thankfully, does not diminish the story’s narrative elegance.

It’s a compelling saga, not only because of Kirkwood’s writing, but because the actors inhabit their dramatic roles flawlessly. While a lesser performer might have allowed us to snicker at Hazel, for instance, Alper infuses the character with dignity by showing the depth of her relationship with Robin (this performance compares favorably with her work in Artists Rep’s 2017 production of Jordan Harrison’s science-fiction drama Marjorie Prime).

Equally impressive are Huffman—who captures Rose’s self-determination and reserve to the hilt, making her final decision all the more striking—and Mendelson, who reveals his gift for underacting, displaying sardonic humor effortlessly. He’s the perfect actor to play Robin, who enters the play with a busy flourish, then is caught in a web of obligations, tending to the upkeep of the cottage and Hazel’s beloved cows.

In short, the production is a highly successful piece of work—in terms of its staging, its performances, and its exploration of Kirkwood’s themes. Despite being set in England (the use of possibly too-rapid British cadences could be a problem for some playgoers), its reflections on duty, conflict, aging and illness are, as in all great theater, universal.

SEE IT: The Children plays at Portland Center Stage at The Armory: Ellen Bye Studio, 128 NW 11th Ave., 503-241-9807, artistsrep.org. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, through May 15. $5-$45.

Now Hear This Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery.

BY DANIEL BROMFIELD // @BROMF3

SOMETHING OLD By setting a traditional British folk weeper to a rock beat, Fairport Convention’s “A Sailor’s Life” set the tone for the British folk-rock boom of the late ’60s and early ’70s—and gave the Decemberists about half of their ideas. Yet it’s not even the best song on their 1969 album, Unhalfbricking: That’d be the brutal, Bob Dylan-penned “Percy’s Song,” featuring one of the most vivid descriptions of a car crash in rock history and brilliant fretwork from the band’s then-19-year-old guitar wizard Richard Thompson.

SOMETHING NEW Claire Rousay sits astride the “emo ambient” movement with an abstract but accessible sound built from field recordings, snippets of Auto-Tuned vocals, and samples of blunt conversations about happiness and mental health. Her music can get pretty out there, but in a pop landscape where relatability is king, her new two-tracker Everything Perfect Is Already Here (out this Friday) might just be the perfect gateway into the realms of pop-infused experimental music bubbling beneath the mainstream.

SOMETHING LOCAL Why local synth-pop legends Chromatics broke up is still a mystery, and lead singer Ruth Radelet’s debut original solo single “Crimes” provides more questions than answers: a song about “the exploitation of others in order to get ahead” that bluntly asks, “Is it easy to start over?” With songs of this caliber, it shouldn’t be too hard for Radelet. If Chromatics’ best work was an abstraction of ’80s pop, this is closer to the real thing, striking a fine balance between claustrophobia and power-ballad bombast.

SOMETHING ASKEW If Actress didn’t kick off the lo-fi house movement with R.I.P.—released 10 years ago this month—he at least alerted much of the world to how much stranger and more mysterious house music could sound when submerged beneath distortion and ambient gauze. Rich with literary and mythological symbolism, the English producer’s third album is a smoke-shrouded trip down the river Styx. Even after a decade of imitation, R.I.P. still sounds as unfamiliar as a journey into the afterlife should sound.

G ET YO U R R E P S I N

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson Contact: bennett@wweek.com

ALAMY

CINEMAGIC

SCREENER

MOVIES

Mississippi Mermaid (1969)

GO BIG OR GO HOME: Cinemagic brings VHS classics to the big screen.

All Wound Up Cinemagic shows tape fanatics some love with its monthly VHS Night.

BY C H A N C E S O L E M - P F E I F E R

@chance_ s _ p

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)

On a darky and stormy night in Taipei, a motley crew of souls gathers at a historic movie theater for its farewell screening of the real-life 1967 wuxia film Dragon Inn. Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul called this love letter to cinema, directed by Tsai Ming-liang and restored in 4K, “THE best film of the last 125 years.” Hollywood, April 22-24.

When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

Correctly hailed as one of the greatest rom-coms of all time, When Harry Met Sally… stars Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal as two neurotic New Yorkers who careen between being friends and lovers over the course of 12 years. Hosted by Elizabeth Teets and Anthony Hudson, this screening will open with standup by Lana Schwartz, author of Build Your Own Romantic Comedy. Hollywood, April 23.

The Apartment (1960)

After an insurance clerk (Jack Lemmon) with ideas of climbing the corporate ladder offers his apartment to married higher-ups to have trysts in, he discovers that the company’s elevator girl (Shirley MacLaine), whom he’s fallen in love with, is also his boss’s mistress. This screening will be introduced by film programmer Elliot Lavine. Cinema 21, April 23.

Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997)

Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino co-star as the titular best friends who go to extreme lengths to impress their former classmates at their 10-year high school reunion.

The film also features an unforgettable dance sequence set to “Time After Time” between the leads and Alan Cumming. Screens in celebration of the Hollywood’s Fashion in Film series’ eighth anniversary.

Hollywood, April 25.

B U E N A V I S TA P I C T U R E S

On May 6, Cinemagic will open Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which marks Spider-Man trilogy director Sam Raimi’s return to superhero movies and continues the saga of Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Marvel’s psychedelic world-bender.

But after the credits roll, Cinemagic’s audience will be invited just before midnight to enter yet another reality: a universe with slightly cheaper tickets, where analog imperfections crackle across the big screen and a lo-fi version of Doctor Strange reigns under a different name.

In this world, the sorcerer goes by Doctor Mordrid, and is played by beloved cult actor Jeffrey Combs, star of the Re-Animator films.

Cinemagic’s monthly VHS Night is a celebration of straight-to-video curios like 1992’s Doctor Mordrid: Master of the Unknown. It’s become the Hawthorne movie theater’s flagship specialty series since two longtime employees, Ryan Frakes and Nicholas Kuechler, purchased Cinemagic last August.

From the jump, Frakes and Kuechler knew their core audience had “adventurous taste.” Now they’re feeding that appetite every first Friday of the month with largely forgotten VHS titles like Traxx, Trancers and Doctor Mordrid.

“Most people that come out to VHS Night don’t know what they’re in for,” Frakes says. “Portland filmgoers go out and try new things constantly.”

The series started almost by accident last December, when Cinemagic programmed a Joe Dante double feature but could only find Small Soldiers (1998) on VHS. Frakes and Kuechler immediately fell in love with the experience of seeing the tape aesthetic projected at auditorium proportions.

“There’s a nostalgic aspect of plugging in the VCR and seeing that blue screen,” Frakes says. “Every now and then, you get those runs of static through the feature that take people back.”

When it comes to VHS Nights, nostalgia is certainly a draw. Kuechler recalls grabbing Doctor Mordrid off a video store shelf in Sandy, Ore., circa 1996, and etching the image of Combs wielding fire and asteroids into his memory. Similarly, when Cinemagic advertised its screening of Trancers last winter, visitors who’d never seen the movie commented that they immediately remembered

the box art.

But there are other, more cinephilic reasons to explore the straight-to-video era. Kuechler affectionately likens it to an extension of the Roger Corman ethos. Talented, burgeoning artists tackled science fiction, horror and action schlock with equal parts haste and ingenuity.

“For a lot of these movies, they were made for VHS from day one, so they can be filled with props, makeup and effects that look completely good on VHS,” Kuechler says. “I think a lot of them are just properly good movies, budget notwithstanding.” (Whether Doctor Mordrid is a “properly good movie” probably depends on the viewer’s ability to balance amusement and appreciation.)

When Doctor Mordrid ’s studio, Full Moon Features, lost the rights to make a Doctor Strange movie, the father-son directing duo Albert and Charles Band went ahead and did it anyway, making tweaks to differentiate their Doctor from Marvel’s.

Despite the behind-the-scenes chaos, the film entertains, thanks to the bizarre and highly watchable Combs (an actor so versatile that he played 10 different Star Trek characters). Playing a would-be charming hero who doesn’t quite know how to converse with mere mortals, he’s a perfect fit for a peculiar film filled with amulets, pet ravens and stop-motion dinosaur fights to savor.

Like all the VHS Night choices, Doctor Mordrid hails from the theater’s own tape collection. The owners hope that more standout titles, like the otherwise unavailable Traxx, will be screened every year or so, carving Cinemagic’s local niche outside the first-run space.

Frakes says eight months into owning Cinemagic that he is committed to listening to regulars. Many nights after special screenings he and Kuechler could easily head home, but they always wait in the lobby to take an exit survey. Gauging their core audience’s enthusiasm is how Cinemagic crafted this after-dark aesthetic, devoted to genre movies and a dead technology in front of an audience that is very much alive.

“I’m still waiting for the day we run one and I’m going up to say hi and there’s just one person in the auditorium,” Kuechler jokes. “But apparently not!”

French New Wave auteur François Truffaut directs this romance about a tobacco planter (Jean-Paul Belmondo) who falls for a mysterious woman (Catherine Deneuve) whom he’s only communicated with via mail. When she arrives, she doesn’t look like her photograph…proof that catfishing is not just a product of our modern times.

Screens in 35 mm. 5th Avenue, April 22-24.

ALSO PLAYING: Clinton: The Tall Shadows of the Wind (1979), April 20.

The Prey (1983), April 22. Fitzcarraldo (1982), April 23.

The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (2002) and Lessons of Darkness (1992), April 25. Hollywood: Pufnstuf (1970), April 20. Maniac (1980), April 26.

SEE IT: Dr. Mordrid: Master of the Unknown plays at Cinemagic, 2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 971-420-9350, thecinemagictheater.com. Doors 11:30 pm Friday, May 6. $5.

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

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MOVIES OUR KEY UTOPIA

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

: THIS MOVIE IS EXCELLENT, ONE OF THE BEST OF THE YEAR. : THIS MOVIE IS GOOD. WE RECOMMEND YOU WATCH IT. : THIS MOVIE IS ENTERTAINING BUT FLAWED. : THIS MOVIE IS A STEAMING PILE.

WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s debut is a distressing game of digital chicken. Essentially alone in the world, teenage Casey (newcomer Anna Cobb) grows immersed in an online role-playing game called World’s Fair. It’s a horror RPG, and Casey crafts videos suggesting increasingly dark personal fantasies and, like many users, plays at transforming into a new being.

Both Casey and her online followers seem to know it’s all staged, but their joint push toward the terrifying cusp of believability adds to the game’s natural momentum. Even more, participatory concern is the movie audience’s role. Interspersed between YouTube and Skype collages, we glimpse a lonely girl packaging her unknown disturbance into a fantastical realm. The more we ask, “Wait, but could this part be real?” or “What actual trauma is driving this?” the more we’re also playing World’s Fair. It’s a fascinating investigation of the liminal space that fear inhabits once a filmmaker all but mediates reality out of scary movies, though that makes for a better concept than story. Likewise, Cobb’s terrifically vulnerable performance becomes more textual than emotional. Still, don’t doubt the psychological weight of a film this creative and intelligent.

Zooming miles past Unfriended and its ilk, Schoenbrun’s work lives at the piercing edge of modern horror. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. PAM CUT, April 22-23.

AMBULANCE

Michael Bay’s Ambulance is stupid beyond belief, but it’s also thrilling, terrifying and impressively brutal. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Danny, a career criminal who enlists his adopted brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) to help steal $32 million from a Los Angeles bank in broad daylight. It’s an insultingly improbable setup—even if Will needs money for his wife’s “experimental surgery,” why would he agree to Danny’s delusional scheme in minutes? But once they steal an ambulance to escape the army of police officers on their trail, the movie gets into a volatile groove. By trapping a bleeding cop (Jackson White) and a hardened EMT named Cam (Eiza González) in the ambulance with the brothers, Bay creates countless possibilities for triumphant tension.

When Cam has to use a hair clip to perform surgery, your heart skips a beat—and when snipers prepare to fire shots that could kill everyone in the ambulance, it nearly stops. Hyperactive editing and swooping camera movements make too much of the action a frantic blur, but there’s no denying Bay’s control over the exhilarating currents of fear that course through your mind and body as you watch.

Based on a 2005 Danish film, Ambulance strikes its share of false notes, but unlike most modern action movies, it understands the difference between bombast and suspense. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Evergreen

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Parkway, Fox Tower, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, Studio One, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

A hyperkinetic sci-fi/ martial arts (kung fusion?) fever dream grounded in Asian American family dynamics, Everything Everywhere All at Once will be absolutely adored by some moviegoers from its very first moments. It’s a film made to be loved—and, given the sheer eye-popping technical wizardry at play throughout, nearly impossible to hate. Michelle Yeoh is typically dazzling as Evelyn Wong, a misanthropic laundromat owner called upon to save the multiverse from her daughter’s worst self (Stephanie Hsu, in a role intended for Awkwafina). Evelyn is an underwritten character, but Yeoh brings a welcome authenticity to the film, even if a performance of such finely shaded nuance isn’t the best fit for the DayGlo sensationalism of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the filmmaking duo known as Daniels (Swiss Army Man). As with Terry Gilliam, Edgar Wright or any other avant-garde sentimentalist pressing restless rhythms and visual inventiveness into the service of a wholly undeserving story, the directors effortlessly pep up the slow parts and paper over the plot holes, but when the pace calms and the fireworks die down for an emotional climax, the film moves

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

glacially. Inevitable? Perhaps, but it’s still disappointing that Everything Everywhere All at Once is less than the sum of its dazzling parts. R. JAY HORTON. Bridgeport, Cinema 21, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Hollywood, Laurelhurst, Lloyd Center.

FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE SECRETS OF DUMBLEDORE

When it was announced that J.K. Rowling was unleashing five films based on a faux-academic textbook that she had assembled for charity, Harry Potter fans instantly knew two things about the coming Fantastic Beasts pentalogy: An epic saga wrung from a whimsical taxonomy was a terrible idea, and that mattered not at all. Despite the irrelevance of the concept, the IP-that-lived held enough power to birth a third adventure for cryptozoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), despite the recasting of big bad Johnny Depp, the transphobic rants from Rowling, and the tonal sea change from earlier entries’ Dr. Dolittle-esque period travelogue toward a secret agent yarn about a failed affair between arch-mages. While replacement Grindelwald Mads Mikkelsen lacks Depp’s cartoonish self-regard—which provided a romantic counterweight to the incandescence of Jude Law’s Dumbledore—his Hannibal/ Bond villain brand of drolly effete cruelty brings a necessary gravitas to a story that moves through a Disney-fied Weimar

Berlin with bounce and verve. It also helps that the screenplay (by Rowling and Steve Kloves) expertly seeds the voluminous exposition with fan-servicing nods, but scarcely requires prior knowledge of the titular future headmaster. Yes, this is still the Potterverse, but to the film’s eternal blessing, it needn’t always be. PG-13. JAY HORTON. Academy, Bagdad, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Evergreen Parkway, Eastport, Fox Tower, Pioneer Place, Lloyd Center, St. Johns, St. Johns Twin, Studio One, Tigard.

MEMORIA

The latest from “slow cinema” master Apichatpong Weerasethakul starts with a bang—but only literally. Jessica (Tilda Swinton), an orchid grower living in Medellín, Colombia, is awakened one night by a booming, unidentifiable sound. Along with insomnia, the noise becomes a fixture in Jessica’s life, heard only by her.

In a long-term waking daze, she eventually heads into the mountains toward the sound’s origins. That said, to fixate on a Weerasethakul movie’s plot misrepresents its appeal; sensory exploration is the main attraction. In Memoria, time slows, stalls and reconstitutes itself in minuteslong unbroken takes of jazz quartets, hospital visits and even deeply poetic naps.

Swinton is as committed as ever, giving a performance seemingly bare of desire, charisma and even makeup. Fans of Weerasethakul standouts like Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives may be easily swept away in the Thai director’s first (partly) English-language film, but it’s difficult to speculate whether the uninitiated will find Memoria more transcendent or just tedious. There’s little spiritual enrichment to Jessica’s alienation—rather, the movie gradually positions her and the audience as infinitesimal, with identity and logic as mere blips and coincidences in spacetime. The metaphysical mysteries of the universe boom and then retreat. PG. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Cinema 21.

THE NORTHMAN

If you like your men handsome, violent and oozing self-pity, you’ll get a kick out of The Northman, a new take on the Scandinavian legend that inspired Hamlet. It’s a satisfyingly brutish mystical epic directed

by Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse, The Witch) and starring Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth, a comically obsessive Viking prince. When Amleth was a boy, his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke) was murdered by his uncle, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), who then married Amleth’s mother, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman). By the time Amleth is old enough to seek

revenge, Fjölnir has lost the kingdom to a rival ruler and become a farmer, which is one of the film’s many perverse jokes—Fjölnir can never fall far enough to sate Amleth’s fury.

While Amleth’s macho theatrics could have been intolerable, they’re undercut by the film’s peculiar humor. There’s a charming self-amusement behind the exaggerated Scandinavian accents of the actors—they know they’re in a bonkers movie and they’re loving it. Plenty of audiences probably will too, but save for Queen Gudrún mocking her son with a beautifully mad cackle, Eggers is a director of divided loyalties—he rebukes toxic masculinity while reveling in it. Hypocrisy is by no means fatal, but despite a glorious climactic duel on a lava-drenched volcano, The Northman leaves weary familiarity in its wake.

Critiquing men like Amleth and Fjölnir? Good. Leaving them behind? Better. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Clackamas, Cinemagic, Cinema 21, City Center, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Studio One, Tigard, Vancouver Plaza.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2

For the past decade, film studios have chased the culture-shattering impact of The Avengers with mixed results. Yet Sonic the Hedgehog 2 understands what made Marvel’s 2012 superhero mashup a success: not apologizing for making a children’s movie starring a cast of shiny action figures that repeatedly get smacked together. Sonic’s latest adventure is unlikely to change the lives of anyone above the age of 12, but if Sega Sammy silliness is your jam, you’re in for a wild ride.

Directed by Jeff Fowler, the sequel is dominated by a sense of exploration, earnestness and, above all, fun. The action is fastpaced and creative, some of the gags are genuinely funny, and the cast is game—Idris Elba in particular has a ball voicing the ever-stoic Knuckles the Echidna, making the character both an unflappable warrior and an overgrown child trying to convince everyone of his seriousness. Outside of Jim Carrey’s gleefully maniacal Dr. Robotnik, however, the film struggles to find a purpose for its human supporting cast, to the point you begin to wonder why they even bother. Ultimately, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is at best a mostly harmless romp that keeps you entertained, or at least distracted. PG. MORGAN SHAUNETTE. Academy, Cedar Hills, City Center, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Joy Cinema, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, Roseway, St. Johns Twin, Studio One, Tigard, Wunderland, Wunderland Milwaukie.

JONESIN’

FREE WILL

B Y M AT T J O N E S

"I'm Gonna Have Some Words"--themeless time again!

ASTROLOGY ARIES

(March 21-April 19): I recommend you adopt a limitation that will enable you to claim more freedom. For example, you could de-emphasize your involvement with a lukewarm dream so as to liberate time and energy for a passionate dream. Or you could minimize your fascination with a certain negative emotion to make more room for invigorating emotions. Any other ideas?

You're in a phase when increased discipline and discernment can be liberating.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "Imagining anything

is the first step toward creating it," wrote author and activist Gloria Steinem. "Believing in a true self is what allows a true self to be born," she added. Those are excellent meditations for you to focus on right now, Taurus. The time is ripe for you to envision in detail a specific new situation or adventure you would like to manifest in the future. It's also a perfect moment to picture a truer, deeper, more robust version of your beautiful self—an expanded version of your identity that you hope to give birth to in the coming months.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Gemini author William

ACROSS 1. "Git _ _ _, little dogies!"

6. Trebuchet trajectory

reggae album) 63. Completely different Bulgarian currency?

31. Bedard who voiced Pocahontas 32. Agree to take part

66. Red card

33. "Nicely done!"

67. "Equal" prefix

34. Acid in proteins

14. Furniture hauler

68. Much, to a musician

35. Peak performance?

15. Indigo Girls, for example

69. Opener

16. 32 degrees, maybe

70. Bagpiper's accessory

40. Bulb power measurement

17. Did some aviation, but only with way awesome instruction?

71. Boxer Fury

9. "Paper Moon" Oscar winner O'Neal

42. Swing a scythe

DOWN

44. "The Daily Show" correspondent Sloan

20. Comedian/podcaster Maron

1. Radio options

45. Hoarder's secret

21. Seasoned veteran

2. Kinks title woman 3. Done

48. Venetian shopping district

22. British medical org. honoured by "Clap For Our Carers" early in the pandemic 23. This mo.

25. Soul, in France 27. Jewelry store, but only for fun?

36. Totality 37. Olympic swimmer Ian or track athlete Jim 38. Wrestler in a mawashi 39. Streams 41. Palindromic holiday 42. Took another shot at 43. Greek salad topper 44. Richards of "Starship Troopers" 46. Key near Tab 47. Essential Spanish word for "sun"?

50. "_ _ _ death do us part" 51. Tailless primate 52. Touch grass (by shortening it) 55. They may be absolute Legends 59. "_ _ _-Nomics" (1988

4. Game show prize with a smell?

5. "Despicable Me" supervillain 6. Extra, for short 7. Cursed the day 8. "Dream _ _ _ LLC" (Adult Swim show) 9. Microsoft font named for Mount Rainier

49. Jenkins of "World of Warcraft"-related memes 52. Doubled, a Hawaiian food fish 53. John Irving's "A Prayer for _ _ _ Meany" 54. "Do you need something?"

56. Bushel, byte, or becquerel

10. Pilot with skills

57. "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" character

11. Get on another road?

58. Tiniest bit

12. Ogden's state

60. Pipe bends

13. Pharmacy supply

61. Low-carb, high-fat diet

18. "Come Away With Me" singer Jones

62. Shakespeare's river

19. "Giant Steps" saxophonist, familiarly 24. They're hopefully housebroken 26. "Who _ _ _ But Quagmire?" ("Family Guy" bit) 27. "Baby Beluga" singer 28. Pulitzer-winning novelist Glasgow 29. Stops streaming 30. Alaskan carving

©2022 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.

64. 1967 NHL Rookie of the Year 65. Rescue squad initials

last week’s answers

Butler Yeats won a Nobel Prize for Literature, so I conclude he had considerable talent and wisdom. But he cultivated interests and ideas that were at variance with most other literary figures.

For example, he believed fairies are real. He was a student of occult magic. Two of his books were dictated by spirits during séances. In the coming weeks, I invite you to draw inspiration from his versatile repertoire. Welcome knowledge in whatever unusual ways it might materialize. Be eager to accept power and inspiration wherever they are offered. For inspiration, here's a Yeats' quote: "I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know."

CANCER

(June 21-July 22): You know what's always good for your well-being? Helping people who are less fortunate and less privileged than you.

To enhance your health, you can also fight bigotry, campaign against the abuse of animals, and remedy damage to the natural world. If you carry out tasks like these in the coming weeks, you will boost your vigor and vitality even more than usual. You may be amazed at the power of your compassion to generate selfish benefits for yourself. Working in behalf of others will uplift and nurture you. To further motivate you, here are inspirational words from designer Santiago Bautista: "I am in love with all the gifts of the world, and especially those destined for others to enjoy."

LEO

(July 23-Aug. 22): "There is a moment in each day that Satan cannot find," wrote author and artist William Blake. Here's how I interpret his poetic words: On a regular basis, you become relatively immune from the debilitating effects of melancholy, apathy, and fear. At those times, you are blessed with the freedom to be exactly who you want to be. You can satisfy your soul completely. In the next six weeks, I suspect there will be more of these interludes for you than usual.

How do you plan to use your exalted respite from Satan's nagging?

VIRGO

(Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Poet Louis Little Coon Oliver (1904–1991) was a member of the indigenous Mvskoke people. He declared, "I do not waste what is wild." That might mean something different for him than what it would mean for you, but it's an excellent principle for you to work with in the coming weeks. You will have more access than usual to wildness, and you might be tempted to use it casually or recklessly. I hope that instead you harness all that raw mojo with precision and grace. Amazingly, being disciplined in your use of the wildness will ensure that it enriches you to the max and generates potent transformative energy.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I suspect you will have

the skills of an acrobat in the coming weeks—at least metaphorically. You will be psychically nimble. Your soul will have an exceptional ability

WEEK OF APRIL 28

© 2022 ROB BREZSNY

to carry out spry maneuvers that keep you sane and sound. Even more than usual, you will have the power to adjust on the fly and adapt to shifting circumstances. People you know may marvel at your lithe flexibility. They will compliment you for your classiness under pressure. But I suspect the feats you accomplish may feel surprisingly easy and breezy!

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): A Tumblr blogger

named Af-70 gives copious advice. From his wide selection of wise counsel, I have selected six tips that are right for your needs in the coming weeks.

Please study the following counsel. 1. "Real feelings don't change fast." 2. "Connect deeply or not at all." 3. "Build a relationship in which you and your ally can be active in each other's growth." 4.

"Sometimes what you get is better than what you wanted." 5. "Enjoy the space between where you are and where you are going." 6. "Keep it real with me even if it makes us tremble and shimmer."

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Consider putting

a sign on your door or a message on your social media that says something like the following: "I've still got some healing to do. While I'm making progress, I'm only partway there. Am open to your suggestions, practical tips, and suggestions for cures I don't know about." Though the process is as yet incomplete, Sagittarius, I am proud of how diligent and resourceful you have been in seeking corrections and fixes. My only suggestions: 1. Be bold about seeking help and support.

2. Be aggressive about accessing your creativity.

Expand your imagination about what might be therapeutic.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): "To uncover what is hidden in my soul might take me a week or two," my friend Allie told me. I told her she would be lucky if her brave and challenging exploration required such a short time. In contrast, some people I know have spent years trying to find what is buried and lost in their souls: me, for instance. There was one period of my life when I sought for over a decade to find and identify the missing treasure. According to my astrological analysis, you will soon enjoy multiple discoveries and revelations that will be more like Allie's timeline than mine: relatively rapid and complete. Get ready! Be alert!

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): A Thai cook named

Nattapong Kaweenuntawong has a unique method for cooking the soup served in his Bangkok restaurant. At the end of each night, he saves the broth for use the next day. He has been doing that daily for 45 years. Theoretically, there may be molecules of noodles that were originally thrown in the pot back in 1977. In accordance with current astrological omens, I urge you to dream up a new tradition that borrows from his approach. What experience could you begin soon that would benefit you for years to come?

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Pisces-born Casimir

Pulaski (1745–1779) was a Polish nobleman and military commander. As a young man, he fought unsuccessfully to free Poland from Russian domination. Driven into exile, he fled to America, arriving during the Revolutionary War with Britain in 1777. General George Washington was impressed with Pulaski's skills, making the immigrant a brigadier general. He distinguished himself as a leader of American forces, exhibiting brilliance and bravery. For that excellence, he has been honored. But now, over two centuries later, his identity is in flux. DNA analyses of Pulaski's remains suggest he was an intersex person with both male and female qualities. (Read more: tinyurl.com/PulaskiSmithsonian.) I bring this to your attention, Pisces, because the coming months will be a favorable time to question and revise your understanding of your identity. May you be inspired by Pulaski's evolving distinctiveness.

Homework: Make a guess about when you will fulfill your next sweet ambition. https://Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology

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COMiCS!

38

Willamette Week APRIL 20, 2022 wweek.com

Jack Kent’s

Jack draws exactly what he sees from the streets of Portland. @sketchypeoplepdx kentcomics.com

SPOTLIGHT ARTIST ALEX BLAIS Instagram: @alexblaisart Website: Alexblais.com

Alex Blais is an illustrator and ceramicist living right outside of Portland in Vancouver, Washington.

Her illustrations are deeply inspired by nature, baked goods, and animals. She mainly works in gouache and colored pencils to bring stories to life. She is currently working on freelance projects while developing children’s books behind the scenes. When she’s not drawing she is spending time with her favorite cat, Sweetpea, and reading a great book.

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