Willamette Week, October 18, 2023 - Volume 49, Issue 49 - "Moving Target"

NEWS: Money Lost at the Vintage Mall. P. 8 DRINK: Get Apple Sauced. P. 21

“IT LOOKS LIKE A RIG FROM STRANGER THINGS TO PROBE THE UPSIDE DOWN.” P. 6

THEATER: Sleepless at Imago. P. 23

By Lucas Manfield WWEEK.COM VOL 49/49 1 0 .1 8 . 2 0 2 3

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Mike Schmidt, Portland’s embattled prosecutor, rises to his own defense.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

C H R I S T O P H E R VA L E N T I N E

FINDINGS

SOLAR ECLIPSE, PAGE 19

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 49, ISSUE 49 October is pretty late in the year for an algae bloom to crop up. 4 State contractors found perc gas beneath an old dry cleaner on North Williams Avenue. 6 A hand grenade forced the evacuation of the dump in Oregon City last year. 7 Corey Swim wants to be reimbursed for his stolen Turkish longsword. 9 Car thefts have plummeted

from around 900 per month last summer to about 600 a month this summer. 14

Multnomah County DA Mike Schmidt is charging fewer people with misdemeanors because big-box stores won’t stop shoplifters. 15 Despite public criticism, he gives himself an A grade. 17

ON THE COVER: Multnomah County DA Mike Schmidt, a target since taking office in 2020, tells his side of the story; photo illustration by Mick Hangland-Skill.

This year’s Portland Fermentation Festival will feature a Bacterial Petting Zoo. 20 Some 38,000 pounds of unwanted fruit from local backyards went into a new cider. 21 Montelupo Italian Market has spun off an eastside location with half a dozen different focaccia breads. 21 Everybody wants to hear the rich, luxurious tones of a 136-year-old pipe organ. 22 It takes a mighty Icelandic voice to drown out the noise of the streetcar. 23 The Age of Aquarius collides with the age of COVID-19 in PCS’s production of Hair. 23 It’s her, hi, Taylor Swift is the solution, it’s her. 24

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK: A bitter development feud left five empty townhouses in its wake.

Masthead PUBLISHER

Anna Zusman

EDITORIAL

Managing Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Andi Prewitt Assistant A&C Editor Bennett Campbell Ferguson Staff Writers Anthony Effinger Nigel Jaquiss Lucas Manfield Sophie Peel Rachel Saslow Copy Editor Matt Buckingham Editor Mark Zusman

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DIALOGUE

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A T R E A LRBO S ER E T •••• A E H T OCT 18

More people died in Multnomah County jails over three months this summer than in the previous five years combined. That’s led to scrutiny of Sheriff Nicole Morrissey O’Donnell and jail security. But last week, WW identified another jail condition worth considering: the jails’ attenuated staff of doctors and nurses [“The Doctor Is Out,” Oct. 11]. Multnomah County jails had no medical director for eight months and, for a few weeks over the summer, there wasn’t a single psychiatric nurse practitioner left. The task of replacing them falls on the Multnomah County Health Department, overseen by County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson—and county officials have struggled to compete with jobs that feature telehealth. Here’s what our readers had to say:

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

SCOTT RYON, VIA WWEEK.COM: “No surprise that people incarcerated have not been taking care of themselves.

However, the decadeslong failure of the state to provide adequate improvements to the mental health system stands out as a reason our jails are so crowded.

Many are in local jails that belong elsewhere. Had they been getting adequate treatment, many would have not run afoul of the law.”

PAUL R. GORMLEY, LP.D, VIA TWITTER: “Jails are where we send people to rot, out of sight, out of mind. Why would the government adequately fund medical services? Other than the Constitution and morality, you mean, right?”

JTECH0007, VIA REDDIT: “But, but, but we want government run health care like Canada and Europe has! DO YOU? These incompetent fools can’t solve the smallest of problems. I will gladly keep my so-so Kaiser plan if this is the best they can do with gobs and gobs of public money.”

KAT2211, VIA REDDIT: “It sounds to me like virtual appointments would be extremely appropriate in many situations, as it would allow the health professionals to maintain their own physical safety, cut out commute time (which would make working overtime less of a burden), and would also serve as a general benefit that would boost recruitment.

“Mental health and minor physical issues could be dealt with without in-person contact at all, and those with more serious physical issues could then be referred for an in-person appointment. Yes, it would require more of the guards as inmates would need to be brought to a private space to participate in the virtual session, but I think it’s likely the benefits would outweigh any downside.”

IF NOT NOW, WHEN? I have been shaking my head about local officials, both elected and institutional, so challenged by distinguishing universal right from wrong [“Multnomah County Commissioners Fail to Approve Statement on Israel Attack After Tense, Tearful Debate,” wweek. com, Oct. 12]. If condemnation was such a tortured decision, it’s reasonable to question the fitness to lead and serve a generation of America’s future.

It’s time these bodies gathered themselves up and defined leadership by starting with what shouldn’t be a difficult call about the barbarian acts of Hamas.

Having a spine is not in conflict with the right to dissent and free speech. The butchery of children, mothers, and innocent civilians, Israelis and Americans, is not the time to claim procedural inconvenience.

The world we live in demands leadership. I am not a purveyor in the art of moral equivalency.

Silence was not golden when it came to matters such as George Floyd’s heinous tragic death.

Woke has regrettably become the safe harbor for moral equivalency; our local leadership has a special obligation to set the standards for a moral foundation. It is time to stop the slide of decay and our faith in leaders in government and community institutions.

“If not now, when” is the question your statements leave distressingly unanswered.

Warren Rosenfeld Southwest Portland

JJINPDX, VIA WWEEK.COM: “[County Chair] Jessica Vega Pederson is just constantly overwhelmed. Please don’t vote for her again.”

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

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

Dr. Know

BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx As a proud orange-and-black Beaver, I have to ask: What’s with the mileslong UO-green algae streak in the good old Willamette? Has the river started doing recruitment for the Ducks? —Jay H. My first thought upon seeing the phenomenon you describe, Jay, was that I’d somehow wound up in Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day—an epic blackout even by my standards. After a closer look, however, I realized that slimy pond scum, green though it may be, is probably not the river-dyeing agent Chicagoans would choose to symbolize their heritage. Unless someone created a St. Donald’s Day when I wasn’t looking, the stain on our river is a natural phenomenon.

Spotting an algae bloom on the Willamette would not be a big deal except for two things: First, sometimes algae blooms are toxic and, second, the middle of a not especially warm October is pretty late in the year for a bloom to crop up.

The unusual timing may have interested scientists at Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality, who were on the river Monday collecting samples for analysis. The worry was

that this material might have been cyanobacteria, the organism that puts the “toxic” in “toxic algae bloom.” Fortunately, they found that this particular bloom was not dangerous—in fact, it’s not even algae, but the water fern Azolla.

Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, really do secrete exotic toxins that under the right circumstances will totally kill your dog, so it’s wise to be cautious. Then again, lots of the algae you see is plain old green algae you don’t need to worry about. Can you just look at the color and comport yourself accordingly?

Well, no. Annoyingly, not all blue-green algae are blue-green. Some are just green, others are white, brown, red or even purple.

Experts can (sometimes) distinguish the toxic from the benign by sight, but the rest of us will have to keep checking cyanobacteria advisories.

But don’t hate on cyanobacteria too much— in a way, they’re kindred spirits to humanity.

You see, 2.4 billion years ago, they invented oxygenic photosynthesis, releasing oxygen as a byproduct. Good news for us oxygen-breathers! Unfortunately, other species at the time found free oxygen toxic and, as it built up in the ancient atmosphere, most of them went extinct.

We now call this event the Oxygen Catastrophe, and it was the first time a species caused a mass extinction solely by polluting the atmosphere with the waste from its own activity. Bet it won’t be the last, though!

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

MURMURS ANTHONY EFFINGER

RUBBER LODE: The Global Eternity docked at the old Louis Dreyfus grain terminal.

COUNTY ADVISORY COMMITTEE DWINDLES TO ONE MEMBER: A volunteer committee to advise Multnomah County officials on the budget for the sheriff’s office has dwindled to one member, and evidence suggests the county is in no rush to refill the vacant positions. The county is required by law to support 10 community budget advisory committees, including the sheriff’s, that meet regularly beginning in the fall to provide formal feedback on the budgets of county departments in the spring. But the CBAC for the sheriff’s office is down to one member: Patrick Pangburn, a retired administrator at Oregon Health & Science University. Pangburn sent an email to County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson and the four county commissioners Aug. 15 asking for help. He tells WW he’s never heard back. “The statutory ‘voice of the people’ has been erased from the Multnomah County budget process,” Pangburn says. County spokeswoman Jessica Morkert-Shibley says the Office of Community Involvement is working with sheriff’s office staff “to coordinate an equitable recruitment process to reach communities who have been impacted by [sheriff’s office] services” and will “fill those vacancies before the start of the CBAC process” in November.

STATE SENDS MISTAKEN APPROVAL NOTICES TO OREGON HEALTH PLAN MEMBERS: An administrative error at the Oregon Health Authority resulted in more than 10,000 “approval” notices being sent to Medicaid recipients, when in reality their benefits were being terminated. During the pandemic, the federal government allowed people to remain on Medicaid without verifying their eligibility—an exception that is now being “unwound.” As a result, OHA is requesting documentation to verify eligibility from Oregon Health Plan members, and sending termination notices when it doesn’t get a response. So far, Oregon’s doing a relatively good job keeping people covered, renewing benefits for 85% of them. (Nationwide, the number is more like 65%). Still, the process hasn’t been without hiccups. OHA says it spotted the bug in August and temporarily restored benefits for everyone affected. Deloitte, which operates the system for OHA, is reaching out to all of them with further instructions. “Oregon has updated the ONE system to prevent this from occurring going forward,” OHA spokeswoman Erica Heartquist says.

SHIP ARRIVES TO REMOVE FIRE-PRONE TIRE SHREDS: The cargo ship Global Eternity arrived in Portland on Sunday to haul away the mountain of shredded tires at the old Louis Dreyfus grain elevator site on the Willamette River next door to Moda Center. The pile caught fire repeatedly in May, sending acrid smoke into the air over downtown Portland.

The elevator is owned by tire-shredding magnate Chandos Mahon and his business partner Beau Blixseth, son of Oregon timber baron Tim Blixseth. The tire pile may grow again after the Global Eternity leaves, but it will be smaller, at least for a while, because Mahon and Blixseth don’t have a permit to store “tire-derived product” on the site, according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Until they get one, they are allowed to keep no more than 200 cubic yards of tire shreds on the site.

That’s a big haircut. In May, DEQ inspected the site and found 3,000 cubic yards. Mahon, owner of Castle Tire Recycling, ships the tire chunks to Asia, where they are burned for fuel. Neither Mahon nor Blixseth returned an email message.

DEQ said they are seeking a permit so they can ramp up exports again. They’ve also appealed a $13,600 fine levied after the May fires. “The fine will not be due until the contested case process is complete,” a DEQ spokeswoman said in an email. Blixseth and Mahon don’t use the elevator to store tires. Rather, they are stacked around it. Castle Arden LLC, controlled by Mahon and Blixseth, paid $2.9 million for the property in 2021.

POLICE BUREAU TO BE PAID $185,000 FOR ROUND-THE-CLOCK SCHOOL LIAISON OFFICERS: As school districts debate the role of cops in schools, the Multnomah Education Service District has offered to pay the Portland Police Bureau $185,000 over the next year for dedicated around-the-clock school liaison officers to answer questions and channel information to school officials. The tax-funded MESD runs programs for 100,000 kids in Portland Public Schools and other school districts in Multnomah County. According to the unsigned agreement between PPB and MESD, it “is not a request for physical police presence on school district Campuses.” Instead, SLOs will be “the principal points of contact to receive MESD’s requests for information services and consultation both during and ‘after-hours.’”

The Portland City Council is set to approve the agreement at its meeting Oct. 18.

“I have put my whole soul into this symphony.”

TCHAIKOVSKY’S

PATHÉTIQUE

Plus, Andy Akiho’s West Coast Premiere of his piece, Sculptures, inspired by Jun Kaneko’s colossal sculptures

Sep 30, Oct 1 & 2

Nov 4, 5 & 6

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5

10/10/23 3:38 PM

CHASING GHOSTS

Cleaning Up

PHOTO CREDIT

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

A vacant lot on North Williams had a perc problem.

BY A N T H O N Y E F F I N G E R aef finger@wweek .com

ADDRESS: 3300 N Williams Ave. YEAR TORN DOWN: 2010 SQUARE FOOTAGE: N/A MARKET VALUE: $139,740 OWNER: 3300 N Williams Avenue LLC HOW LONG IT’S BEEN EMPTY: Since 1986 WHY IT’S EMPTY: A dry cleaner contaminated the site with perchloroethylene.

The empty lot at the corner of North Williams Avenue and Northeast Cook Street is weird, even for Portland.

A series of white plastic pipes run along the ground with short branch lines that plunge into the crabgrass.

They’re connected to a thing that looks like a horse trailer, which, in turn, is connected to two forbidding steel tanks.

It looks like a rig the kids from Stranger Things would use to probe the Upside Down.

History helps explain what’s going on. Back in the 1940s and ’50s, a building on this corner housed a saw sharpener, a lawn mower repair shop, and a real estate office. Ellis

Dry Cleaners opened in 1950 and operated for 36 years. Every week, according to filings with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the owner got rid of about a half-gallon of dry cleaning fluid containing perchloroethylene, a chemical that makes an excellent non-flammable solvent for food stains on fancy clothes. Unfortunately, it’s also been associated with bladder cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and multiple myeloma.

It’s not clear how the owner got rid of the perc. “Disposal site and method not known,” a filing at DEQ says. For many years, the store’s equipment was hooked up to a drain that may—or may not—have led to the sewer system. After the business closed in 1986, the state hired a contractor to drill a hole 32 feet deep. They found perc at 1½ feet and 29 feet. They discovered perc gas— the nasty vapor that comes off perc and collects in soil—at other levels.

Inhaling the gas can cause kidney dysfunction, dizziness and mood swings.

An entity called 3300 N Williams Avenue LLC bought the narrow property, and a similar one just

PIPELINE TO THE UNDERWORLD: A system of pipes and filters sucks chemicals out of the soil where a dry cleaner operated for almost four decades.

north of it, for $15,000 in April 2013, a screaming deal if not for all the carcinogens.

A filing at the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office lists Steven M. Berne as a member of the LLC, meaning he has

an ownership stake in it. But Berne, reached by phone, says that’s an error. He’s just the registered agent, a non-ownership position. The owner is a man named Lynn Green (who’s listed as the registered agent). The

names got switched, Berne says.

Green is the owner of Evren Northwest, a firm that does “natural resource and environmental investigations, regulatory compliance and permitting, cleanup and remedia-

AUDIT

DUMPSTER FIRE Metro’s auditor has found widespread issues at its two garbage transfer stations.

Perplexing items occasionally arrive at the dump in Oregon City.

Like, in December 2021: a box full of century-old medical supplies full of hazardous radioactive material. Employees packaged it up in lead and stored it in Metro South Transfer Station’s truck wash, which was temporarily shut down to hold it.

Then, three months later, a hand grenade, which forced the transfer station to evacuate 6

Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

employees—to a congregation point near that very truck wash.

Neither the Oregon Health Authority, whose radiation experts Metro consulted in figuring out what to do with the radioactive material, nor Oregon Occupational Safety & Health, which inspected the facility the following year, found that employees’ health was put at risk.

There wasn’t enough radium-228 leaking out to cause harm and, according to the department’s deputy director, dump employees followed protocol. But the seemingly haphazard handling of radioactive waste alarmed the auditor for Metro, the regional government that runs the transfer station in Oregon City and Metro Central Transfer Station in Northwest Portland.

Late last month, the auditor released a scathing report revealing the radium, the grenade, a botched plan to buy greener diesel fuel, a lack of safety training, a broken arm, five fires, and lax tracking of where Portland’s hazardous waste really ends up.

Metro is more commonly associated with its parks, convention venues, and the Oregon Zoo, but it also has a much less appealing job: sorting trash. Metro handles about 40% of the region’s

garbage, and it’s a hard job. People regularly toss things into the piles at transfer stations that don’t belong there, like old propane tanks and lithium batteries, both of which are flammable. They toss out paint thinner, syringes and fluorescent bulbs chock-full of mercury.

But it’s the agency’s job to deal with the errant hazards and, according to Metro Auditor Brian Evans, it’s failing. The 46-page report, released Sept. 27, highlights risky financial practices and safety concerns at Metro’s two garbage transfer stations, which sort and compact Portlanders’ trash before stuffing it into trucks and transporting it to a dry-side landfill in Arlington, 150 miles east along the Columbia River.

“It’s one of the most eye-opening series of incidents I’ve come across,” Evans tells WW, “and I’ve been the elected auditor for nine years now.”

The Metro Auditor’s Office produces a handful of these reports each year. But Evans decided to put extra time into this one after seeing how grim things were at the transfer stations.

“Every single time we found something that seemed concerning,” he says, “it was more concerning than we originally thought.”

The report faults “a lack of basic management practices and commitment to a long-term vision” and calls for “sustained attention at the highest levels” to fix it.

Metro Council President Lynn Peterson, who is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer for her congressional seat in 2024, declined to comment on the audit, saying through a spokesperson that she would hold off until after an official briefing on Thursday.

Metro’s official response to the audit offered some solutions. The agency said it hired a “safety specialist” in 2022 and is “in the process of developing a comprehensive safety program for all [Waste Prevention and Environmental Services] facilities.”

In a statement to WW, Metro noted that “risk is inherent in our scope of responsibility in the garbage and recycling system” and trumpeted its “excellent safety record as measured by lack of injuries.” And it offered a mea culpa. “Nonetheless, we agree that more consistent training will benefit our operations and we are taking action,” the statement to WW adds.

Here’s what else the audit found:

just for cleaning cuts, as it turns out).

To deal with any stray perc gas, Evren set up a “soil vapor extraction” system, a system of pipes connected to a blower that sucks the gas out of the ground, pushes it through a carbon filter (like in a fish tank), and vents the scrubbed gases into the atmosphere.

The rig ran through July 2022, sucking a total of 1,870 pounds of perc out of the ground, according to the 2022 work plan, which was Evren’s last filing with DEQ.

DOCUMENT

Zombie Audit Oregon’s secretary of state won’t take down agency audit implicated in Fagan scandal.

BY S O P H I E P E E L speel@wweek .com

“ This one is taking longer than we thought.”

tion, hydrogeologic and geotechnical studies, and assessment of human health and ecological risk.”

Evren got involved with the property in 2012, when DEQ asked for more testing, according to a work

plan filed by the company in November 2022 that gives the history. In July 2013, Evren started pumping compounds into the ground to oxidize the perc, including “iron catalyst” and hydrogen peroxide (it’s not

N I N ET Y-S E VE N PE RCE NT OF EMPLOYEES DIDN’T RECEIVE ANNUAL RADIATION SAFETY TRAINING IN 2022.

it. After someone raised questions, officials ordered tests in 2019 and discovered their trucks were being filled with the old fuel. Metro overpaid by at least $125,000, the auditor determined. The diesel supplier has since paid it back.

And more than half of employees weren’t trained as required in asbestos awareness or hazard communication. The auditor compiled a list of 27 incidents in 2022 “related to the topics covered in required training,” which included five fires, a broken arm, and the discovery of various explosives. Cary Stacey, deputy director of Waste Prevention and Environmental Services, says the pandemic limited training opportunities, and the department is now catching back up.

METRO PAID EXTRA FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY DIESEL FUEL IT DIDN’T GET.

The regional government signed a contract to buy the more expensive fuel, but never inspected the fueling station to ensure it actually got

THE 40-YEAR-OLD METRO SOUTH TRANSFER STATION HAS LONG NEEDED TO BE REPLACED. A 2008 master plan

found the facility, one of the busiest of its kind in the nation, had reached maximum capacity. Yet little has been done since. As recently as last year, Metro planned to replace the station and build a new one, before slashing the budget by half.

METRO WASN’T VERIFYING WHERE CONTRACTORS SEND ITS HAZARDOUS WASTE .

Some contractors haven’t submitted documentation since 2009, the auditor found, and 370 shipping

Reached by phone, Green confirmed he was a member of the LLC that owns the site. He got his share in return for doing the cleanup, he says. Green, who holds a Ph.D. in environmental engineering and a slew of other degrees and certifications, has experience. He remediated another dry cleaner farther north on Williams.

“This one is taking longer than we thought,” Green says. The pandemic played havoc with his partner on the project, a developer, and with the state’s bureaucracy. The cleanup has gone according to plan, though. He no longer must run the soil vapors through the carbon filters because the amount of contaminants is so diminished.

If all goes as planned, the Upside Down on North Williams could be turned right side up.

manifests lack “certification of treatment or disposal” since 2016.

“Without these documents, WPES cannot provide assurance to the public that their [household hazardous waste] materials were disposed of properly,” the report notes. Metro says this documentation wasn’t required—although, thanks to the auditor, it now is.

THE POINT-OF-SALE SYSTEM USED BY THE TRANSFER STATIONS IS WOEFULLY OUT OF DATE. A 2019 report found risks

associated with the system “unacceptable,” but Metro has yet to replace it, although it’s currently negotiating with a vendor to do so.

The 35-year-old system is so fragile that one employee told the auditor they had to get up in the middle of the night to reset it—and another had to come out of retirement to update it after the Metro Council instituted a fee increase. L U C A S M A N F I E L D .

The Oregon Department of Justice released a report last week by an independent investigator that recommended pulling down an audit of the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission implicated in former Secretary of State Shemia Fagan’s moonlighting scandal.

The investigator, California-based Sjoberg Evashenk Consulting, said state auditors had not adequately addressed the threat to its independence posed by Fagan’s moonlighting and should remove the audit.

But the audit remains online.

Current Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade tells WW she will conduct her own review of the audit before taking further action. Gov. Tina Kotek handpicked Griffin-Valade to serve out the remainder of Fagan’s term after her May 2 resignation.

“I will personally oversee a reevaluation of the evidence presented in the OLCC audit,” Griffin-Valade says. “With 16 years of experience as a government auditor...I am well equipped to ensure that every action is taken to restore the public trust in this report.”

Her staff added that Griffin-Valade would consider the investigator’s recommendation, “along with other information she is gathering,” to “draw her own conclusions.” But staff declined to answer questions about a timeline for her review or what it would entail.

Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum supported the investigator’s recommendation to take down the audit.

Investigators did not determine that the audit itself was corrupted, but they did fault state auditors— who remain in their jobs and now report to Griffin-Valade—for not heeding multiple warnings that Fagan’s conduct could compromise the independence of the audit. Fagan recused herself from the audit this spring after agreeing to work for two of her top campaign donors: embattled cannabis business owners Rosa Cazares and

Aaron Mitchell. Her recusal came after the audit was substantially finished.

The secretary of state’s Audits Division “did not take sufficient steps to identify and assess threats to independence (either ‘of mind’ or ‘of appearance’) at all levels,” the investigators wrote. “Nor did it adequately reassess those threats as new facts became known.”

Kip Memmott, current head of the Audits Division, also served in that capacity before Fagan resigned. He maintained that his staff followed best practices throughout the audit process, saying of Fagan shortly before her recusal, “I sincerely appreciate her transparency.”

As soon as she resigned, though, Memmott changed his tune.

“By taking a contract with a cannabis business, Secretary Fagan made a mistake that tarnished her credibility and put the Audits Division into a difficult situation,” Memmott wrote in a May 5 statement. “Her actions have cast a shadow over the good work of the audits team, and I join Deputy Secretary Myers in agreeing with the Secretary’s decision to resign.”

In 2022, Memmott made $216,000.

By keeping the audit online, Griffin-Valade may have averted rancor in her own office. But she is risking blowback from Kotek, who asked for the independent review, and Rosenblum, who oversaw it. (Disclosure: Rosenblum is married to the co-owner of WW’s parent company.)

Kotek did not respond to a request for comment on Griffin-Valade’s decision.

But Oregon House Speaker Dan Rayfield (D-Corvallis), who declared his candidacy for Oregon attorney general earlier this week, says he supports the investigator’s recommendations.

“It’s imperative that the state strengthens and improves Oregonians’ full trust in our audit process,” Rayfield said. “While I trust the secretary’s ability to thoroughly conduct the additional work recommended, I see no reason for the report to remain posted while that work is done.”

Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

7

NEWS MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

DEN OF DEBTS: The biggest vintage mall in Portland has big money problems.

Memory Hole Dozens of vendors at the city’s largest vintage mall say they went unpaid by the mall’s former owner. Then he vanished.

BY S O P H I E P E E L speel@wweek .com

The Memory Den Vintage Mall on the Central Eastside takes up an entire city block. In a city with more than its share of retro-shopping nuts, that makes it a real attraction—it’s the largest vintage mall in Portland.

The massive building at 125 SE Stark St. contains more than 140 vendors that sell bell-bottom jeans from the 1970s, Sears stationary bikes from the 1940s, and silverware that’s a half-century old. The layout is akin to that of a convention center filled with rows of booths, but instead of booths, cluttered closets spill into each other atop creaky floors. The place is bustling and jolly.

But Memory Den, barely a year old, is also in turmoil.

Less than six months after the vintage mall opened, dozens of vendors say they struggled to get paid consistently by Memory Den’s first owner. They allege the mall’s founder, Phil Sparks, sold their merchandise, then failed to pay them all of what they were owed; he’s since been impossible to track down. New owners now argue to some vendors that they’re not responsible for past debts Sparks accrued to vendors.

“I’m not going to lie: At first, I thought it was going to blow over,” says Alexandra Hauge, a Memory Den vendor of fashions from the 1970s to 2000s who left in July and says she’s still owed $1,244. “But I was so naïve. It’s just a slap in the face. It’s this moral thing of, that’s 8

Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

my money.”

Hauge is one of six vendors who spoke to WW about the yearlong saga of bounced or nonexistent checks and unanswered questions left by the disappearance of Sparks.

Those interviews, paired with court documents, emails, texts and video recordings shared by former and current vendors, paint a picture of chaos at a shopping destination that promised revival for a neighborhood that could use a boost.

“It’s been rough. I was doing so well at Memory Den that I got rid of two of my smaller locations,” says Sarah Langford, a vendor who says she’s owed $2,000. “It has essentially cut my income in half over the last six months.”

Vintage connotes rarity. But in Portland, vintage shops are anything but. Travel Portland estimates the city has at least 50 shops selling clothes, furniture and décor that smells faintly of mothballs.

In fact, Memory Den vendors say, it’s such a saturated market that it’s hard to find space to sell retro goods. Memory Den’s appeal when it first opened in the summer of 2022 was its abundance of space (50,000 square feet) and relatively cheap monthly rent of $300 for a small booth.

“ It’s just a slap in the face.

It’s this moral thing of, that’s my money.”

Phillip Sparks, 62, rented the massive building from real estate

mogul Jordan Schnitzer with grand promises of making it the largest vintage market in town.

By all accounts, Sparks was an eccentric character. His office at the Memory Den was low-lit and carpeted, featuring a fireplace and décor that reminded one vendor of Liberace. Vendors remember Sparks as friendly.

In 1983, then 22 years old, Sparks was crowned Mr. Gay Oregon by the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court of Oregon. He dabbled as a drag performer, then owned several design-related businesses, including a florist, according to state business records. None of the business registrations is still active.

His latest venture seemed promising. At its height last fall, Memory Den had more than 160 vendors in the building and it regularly teemed with customers.

The mall’s business model was unusual. Vendors paid Sparks monthly booth rent. Shoppers rifled through items from any of the vendors and brought them to a central front desk, where they paid a cashier who worked for Sparks.

At the end of the month, Sparks would pay vendors 85% of whatever was sold from their booths.

Just months after its opening, vendors’ checks began to bounce, or just never arrived, according to Memory Den vendors and dozens of emails and texts provided to WW by those vendors.

In a Sept. 22, 2022, letter to vendors, Sparks blamed the bounced checks on his credit union being unable to process the high number of transactions. He asked for patience with payment issues. “With all good planning and growth,” Sparks wrote, “also comes many growing pains that we had not expected.”

Melissa Halvorson began renting a booth in September 2022 selling Scandinavian objects and furniture. But in December, she says, the check Sparks gave her

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bounced.

“Sparks’ explanation was that they were in the process of switching banks, and the credit union that they used to use just wasn’t big enough to support the volume of checks,” Halvorson recalls. “It was kind of a plausible story.”

But then, Halvorson says, she didn’t receive checks for the next three months. She kept sending demands to Sparks and Memory Den director Tyler Gregory, to no avail.

By the following spring, a new message arrived: Sparks was selling the place.

Gregory wrote March 9 that Sparks was “finalizing a deal with a small group of investors.” Then, on March 15, he wrote that “the new owners fully intend to get everyone paid and current, it’s just a process and we were left with a lot to sift through unfortunately.”

Those new owners: Ben and Jay Fackler, who also own McMinnville-based Fackler Construction Company. (It’s unclear when, exactly, the Facklers officially took over the business. But they registered Retro Renaissance LLC with the state on Aug. 1, 2023.)

“ I’m not taking a dime out of this until everything is resolved.”

In a series of letters and emails to vendors over the course of the summer, the Facklers assured vendors they’d be paid in full. “We have committed to assuming the debt incurred prior to the sale of the business,” Fackler wrote in a May 9 letter, adding that the business had narrowly avoided eviction by Schnitzer Properties for unpaid back rent.

The brothers held two town hall meetings for vendors this summer in one of the furniture rooms. Recordings of those two meetings shared with WW show that the Facklers promised to make everyone whole financially but conceded that Sparks had left them with over $400,000 in debt.

“We didn’t cause this mess, and we’re doing our best to move through it,” Ben Fackler said, adding that some vendors were threatening to sue over unpaid debt. “I’m not taking a dime out of this until everything is resolved.”

Fackler said that vendors who “stick it out for the long haul will take priority over those that don’t.”

Then the Facklers appeared to change their tune. Their attorney, Craig Robinson, wrote a letter Sept. 7 to one vendor seeking over $2,000 in payment that the Facklers “are not successor-in-interests to Mr. Sparks and/or his legal entities; and, accordingly,

may not be held liable for any claims that may exist under your Rental Agreement with Memory Den Broadway Antique Mall, LLC.” Robinson also warned against “defamatory comments,” writing they would be “handled accordingly.”

Vendors—both those who have since left and those who remain— say the Facklers have paid them each month but have not settled Sparks’ prior debts. (Some vendors say they have sporadically received partial payments, either from Sparks or from the Facklers, over the past few months.)

Corey Swim, owner of Traveling Man Treasures, is still trying to get paid $2,000 for prior sales and $10,649 for ancient Egyptian artifacts and antiques stolen from his booth one night in May. He says the Facklers walked in to the business with their eyes wide open.

“They ultimately shrugged their shoulders at my, and many others’, situation as if it is our faults and our problems,” Swim says.

The Facklers did not answer WW’s questions, but a friend and employee of the Facklers, Jeremy Lodge, wrote in an email that “at present we are working our way through the migration from the old business to the newly formed Memory Den. “With the ex-owner filing bankruptcy,” Lodge wrote, “we have some extra things to move through and would suggest meeting at the end of October when we would have time to sit down and share the future plans.”

And what of Phillip Sparks?

Since he left Memory Den this summer, he’s been hard to find.

Vendors have texted and emailed him, with varied success.

This September, Sparks filed for bankruptcy in U.S. District Court, listing debts topping $1.2 million. They include money owed to Memory Den vendors, a half-dozen personal loans topping $128,000, numerous business loans (including $50,000 owed to Fackler Construction), and a slew of bills from materials companies for specialty stone, tile, carpet and countertops.

According to court filings, Sparks moved to a small home in Aurora, Ore.—one of the top antiquing towns in the nation—in October. He did not respond to requests for comment.

As for Memory Den, everything appeared jovial on a recent Saturday. Old-timey music flooded the unending rows of vendors. Two high school girls trying on sparkly dresses in the makeshift dressing rooms oohed and aahed at each other’s reflections in the mirror. A patron sat at a standup piano and played a melancholy melody.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

9

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

MOVING TARGET

Mike Schmidt says it’s not his fault. the only guy left doing his damn job.

Mike The unacceptable homicide rate, “We’re holding more people accountthe shootings, the open-air drug able,” he says. And when asked to Schmidt, dealing, the chronic offenders caught evaluate his term in office, he gave and released—the Multnomah Coun- himself an A. “I grade myself, quite Portland’s ty district attorney gets blamed for frankly, very highly,” he says. them all.

In a wide-ranging interview in WW’s embattled Schmidt, 42, reads the same lurid offices last week, Schmidt touched headlines as everybody else in Porton his rising budget, his rival down prosecutor, land, and in an on-the-record inter- the hall, and the trafficked teenagview with WW’s editorial staff, he ers dealing fentanyl on downtown acknowledges that the crim- Portland street corners. Overall, he rises to his readily inal justice system in Multnomah came across as well intentioned but is as busted as a Subaru Out- perhaps miscast—elevated to a role own defense. County back stripped of its catalytic convertthat’s been altered by events far outBY L U C A S M A N F I E L D lmanfield@wweek .com

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

er. He just doesn’t believe that any of this trouble comes from the decisions he has made as the county’s top prosecutor in the 38 months he has been in office.

To hear Schmidt tell it, he’s about

side his control. Schmidt ran for DA to make Portland’s criminal justice system more fair. After three years of violence and disorder, voters just want someone to make it work.

Continued on page 13

Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

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WESLEY LAPOINTE

Schmidt, a small-town kid from upstate New York, got a degree at Vassar, a liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie. Soon after came a law degree from Lewis & Clark. Schmidt, a talented dart thrower with a penchant for craft beer, made Portland home and did a six-year stint as a deputy district attorney for Multnomah County. (His most serious cases, he says, were robberies, burglaries and traffic fatalities.) In 2015, Schmidt was hired to lead the 20-member staff of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, a sort of state think tank that helps steer Oregon’s public safety policies.

In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, he ran a successful campaign for DA on promises to shrink Multnomah County’s criminal justice system. He billed himself a reform-minded, progressive prosecutor, attaching himself to a growing national movement that believes the best way to reduce incarceration is from the most powerful perch inside the system. Schmidt’s platform included eliminating cash bail, ending mandatory minimum sentences, and refocusing the office away from misdemeanors and toward more violent crime.

On May 19, 2020, Schmidt was swept into office with 77% of the vote. On May 25, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by a police officer, amplifying the calls for reform.

Times changed. Shootings in Portland have tripled since 2019. (By comparison, Seattle’s number more than doubled during the same period.) And progressive prosecutors like Schmidt are taking the heat. In San Francisco, Chesa Boudin was recalled.

Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner was impeached.

Fifty-seven percent of Multnomah County residents say Schmidt’s doing a bad job, according to a poll commissioned earlier this year by People for Portland, a political advocacy group that wants him gone.

Worse, perhaps, he seems to struggle to manage what amounts to one of the largest law firms in the state. His prosecutors say they’re not getting sufficient training, and the state issued a report saying it found “substantial evidence” of discrimination against a female employee—a real embarrassment after a report his office paid for vindicated him.

In seven months, Schmidt faces reelection and, already, he’s picked up a challenger from inside his

office who claims Schmidt’s policies have allowed criminals to sell fentanyl and assault vulnerable Portlanders without fear.

In Schmidt’s telling, however, he’s one of the most successful elected officials in the region. He’s grown his office’s budget (by 30% in the past three years), launched a handful of innovative new programs, and presided over a recent encouraging decline in crime—even though, as he points out, crime rates are a bad indicator of his success or failure.

And, Schmidt argues, he’s doing it all at a time when police officers take two hours to arrive at crime scenes, public defenders are scarce, and fentanyl mows through downtown like a wheat thresher.

In a conversation with WW’s newsroom that lasted nearly 90 minutes, Schmidt proved himself to be nimble. He was polished, unflappable, and quietly defiant.

What follows are highlights from our conversation with the most embattled politician in Portland.

ON TARGET: Schmidt, photographed here at the Oaks Park Labor Day Picnic in 2019, won in a landslide as a reformer.

Continued on page 14 Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

13

ALEX WITTWER

WW: Is it fair to use crime rates as a gauge of how well you are doing?

Mike Schmidt: What the district attorney can do to try to alter the trajectory of crime rates is: not a lot.

There is a billboard downtown that makes fun of your last name.

Let’s say that you had a billboard downtown.

What would my billboard say? Right now, the billboard would talk about the falling crime rates across the board in Portland.

We’re seeing in every single category, crime is coming down.

And I think that’s a message that people don’t get, and that they need to get. [Reported crime is up overall since Schmidt took office, but has declined in recent months. As of August, this year’s homicide count is on track to be slightly lower than last year’s record high. Car thefts, in contrast, have plummeted from around 900 per month last summer to about 600 a month this summer. —Ed.]

You just said that the crime rate is not a fair way to judge your performance.

I agree with that. But as long as I’m going to get blamed for the crime rates going up, I’d like to advertise that the crime rates are going down.

So what’s the best data by which to judge your success?

People like to go to the total case count and say, well, the total number of cases you’ve issued is way down. Well, that’s true because we’re getting so many fewer misdemeanor cases referred to our agency. But we’re prosecuting more felonies. And the cases that we are prosecuting are more complex. And our issuance rate, the percentage of the cases we receive from police officers that we end up charging, is at a seven-year high.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

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So why are you getting fewer cases?

We’re seeing dramatically fewer cases come from the Portland police. This is particularly true of misdemeanors.

The traffic unit was disbanded, and we saw a massive decrease in traffic crimes being referred to our agency.

Another area we saw a big drop is thefts. I asked the chief what’s going on here? It’s a mixed bag of reasons. Police have been stretched thin dealing with violent crimes. And there’s been a shift in policy across the country of retailers, especially big-box stores, telling their employees not to stop shoplifters and put themselves in harm’s way. The other big change comes from possession of controlled substances, which is no longer a misdemeanor.

Do you think that any of this is because the Portland police are on a sort of strike?

I don’t. And I appreciated the chief when he sent out an email to his officers and said, “Hey, stop telling people the DA won’t prosecute. It’s not true.”

But it does make me upset when I see people who are paid to do the work not necessarily doing everything they can to serve the community.

DREW MARTIN WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 25TH A CITY SCARRED: Portland cops have spoken out against Schmidt’s policies.

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PERFORMANCE & SIGNING

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Shortly after you took office, you announced that you weren’t going to prosecute hundreds of people arrested during the George Floyd protests. This is often brought up as evidence that you’re soft on crime, even though similar decisions were made by prosecutors across the country. So, do you have any regrets about dropping those charges—or making such a big deal about doing it?

When I came into office, we had over 500 cases on my desk.

Continued on page 17 Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

15

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LAKE OSWEGO

PORTLAND

SAM GEHRKE

The vast majority of these cases were arrests for people who were told to leave and they didn’t. So I said, look, we’re going to focus our resources on the people who are committing harm, but we’re not going to prosecute people for being there.

Nationally, that pretty much was the approach of most major cities.

I wish I would have had three or four years of run-up to make a decision like that. But, at the time, it was the right thing to do.

I think that is part of what has set me off on the wrong foot with a lot of law enforcement. We still have the scars of 2020 in our community in Portland, and I think the police had a really awful year. Some of the things that people said to them as they were doing their jobs to protect the community were just not acceptable. And I think the community had a really hard year.

We’ve seen after-action report after after-action report coming out talking about the use of force and the harm and damage it did to our community. Those scars are still very, very deep.

What grade would you give yourself so far?

I grade myself, quite frankly, very highly. I’d say A. This has been the toughest three years in the history of Multnomah County to be the district attorney. A pandemic, civil rights, gun violence, fentanyl hitting our streets, defense attorney crisis, a state hospital that’s overflowing. There have just never been more challenges. And yet, I ran to do something, which was to try to change the way that our system thinks about incarceration and disparity in the system, and to build trust in terms of fixing wrongful convictions. And we’ve been doing all of those things.

At the same time, I inherited an agency that had seen 15 years of decline in terms of staffing and investment from the county, and we’ve been able to change that trajectory. It’s been incredibly hard work—and still our prosecution rate’s increasing. We’re setting up interventions that are responsive to the challenges in our community, like the Auto Theft Task Force, where now, in 2023, car theft is down over 20%.

Several employees in your office have made complaints about the workplace. A report by a law firm paid for by your office

says there’s nothing to see here, and then the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries issued a report in July finding “substantial evidence” of gender discrimination and retaliation against a woman in your office. Did your office cover it up?

No. I was also surprised when BOLI made those findings after a much less exhaustive and rigorous process.

BROKEN WINDOWS: Car theft in Portland has fallen to near prepandemic levels.

Do you believe BOLI’s findings of gender discrimination in your office are wrong?

Yes, absolutely. One hundred percent.

Where could your office improve?

Areas where we need to improve are training and onboarding of staff. We’ve got a lot of newer attorneys, as we both grow and as we saw some turnover happen—when I took over and during the pandemic. We’re confronting old realities, but maybe they’re more pronounced now, about staff wellness. We deal with incredibly traumatic content on a regular basis. And we’re realizing that that really burns a lot of folks out.

Do you believe the people selling fentanyl downtown are themselves victims of human trafficking?

I do. We’ve seen juvenile Hondurans. And, of course, our concern, especially when you’re talking about juveniles, is that they’re being run up here. And it’s intentional. They know our laws. They know that we put an emphasis on trying not to lock kids up for crimes. So I think that they are intentionally exploiting those laws with young people from Honduras.

It seems that a lot of people are committing crimes in Portland while awaiting trial for crimes they already committed. What are you doing about it?

It’s frustrating to see somebody arrested for a crime who has failed to appear [in court] multiple times previously. A lot of it has to do with our lack of defense attorneys. When a person is in custody and there isn’t a defense attorney available, the judge is letting them out.

Continued on page 18 Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

17

BRIAN BURK

DOWNTOWN DISASTER: Law enforcement has struggled to curtail fentanyl dealing and the attendant misery and violence in Portland’s core.

Do you believe more people should be sitting in jail awaiting trial in Multnomah County?

Yes.

But aren’t you part of the problem? You campaigned on eliminating cash bail—and you helped push recent legislation that limited its use. Do you have any regrets about that?

No. How much money you have should not dictate whether or not you are released. We should be looking at risk.

At the time, you also promised to lobby for more money for supervision services to ensure people who have been charged with a crime but released don’t commit more crimes. How’s that going?

We do not have enough services to monitor people successfully.

Have you lobbied the county to fix this?

We’ve talked about it. [Since fiscal year 2021, when Schmidt took office, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office’s budget has increased 30%. During the same period, the budget for the Department of Community Justice, which runs the county’s supervision programs, increased 4%. —Ed.]

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

You’re facing a challenger in next year’s election, Nathan Vasquez, a prosecutor inside your office. How would an office under Nathan be different from yours?

You’d have to ask Nathan. You know, what I can tell you about Nathan is that when I was elected, he endorsed Ethan Knight [the federal prosecutor who ran against Schmidt] and was very public about that. He stayed on and has not left. Although, obviously, he is critical of things, he’s not been critical of those things internally. We have a very robust process internally for attorneys to bring ideas to the district attorney. He’s never come to propose anything.

STREET

SUN WORSHIPPERS Photos by Christopher Valentine On Instagram: @christopherfvalentine For the second time in six years, Oregon was in the path of a solar eclipse—the one that occurred on Saturday, Oct. 14, was annular, which means the moon does not entirely cover the sun.

The result is a stunning “ring of fire” effect that eclipse chasers were hoping to see. Unlike for 2017’s total eclipse, which happened in August, cloudy conditions persisted in much of the state, diminishing or completely obscuring visibility.

However, those who made the trip all the way to Klamath Falls were rewarded with a fairly clear view of the dramatic phenomenon.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

19

CHRIS NESSETH

GET BUSY OCT. 18-24

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

spooky season, the theme is scary movies—here, aerialist troupe Night Flight has two “Blockmonster” clerks doing battle with some of Hollywood’s best-known horror characters: a possessed doll, vampires, and a blood-covered prom queen.

The fear factor is amped up, of course, because everyone is dangling from the ceiling. Lincoln Performance Hall at Portland State University, 1620 SW Park Ave., nightflightaerial.com/frightnight. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday and 6:30 pm Sunday, Oct. 20-28. $44-$68. Show is considered R rated.

GO: The Oddities & Curiosities Expo

STRANGER THINGS: Things will get weird at the Oddities & Curiosities Expo this weekend.

WATCH: Hair

If all you know about Hair is that it’s about hippies and their manes, well, there’s a lot more in store for you as Portland Center Stage’s 2023-24 season opener unfolds.

Sure, expect amazing wigs, sex, drugs and plenty of rock and roll (the soundtrack includes classics like “Aquarius,” “Good Morning Starshine” and “Let the Sunshine In”), but the musical also explores the political unrest that defined 1968—the Vietnam War, racism, the fight for women’s rights and more. In our current tumultuous environment, sometimes traveling back in time and viewing things through the eyes of a group of optimistic, young bohemians is all you need to feel injected with hope (at least temporarily). Portland Center Stage at the Armory, 128 NW 11th Ave., 503-445-3700, pcs.org. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday. 2 pm select Thursdays, through Nov. 5. $25-$98.

DRINK: Battle of the Bartenders

Witness epic head-to-head matchups between some of the best mixologists in the city as they compete for a $1,000 grand prize and the coveted title of Battle of the Bartenders Champion. The six-week, March Madness-style journey will feature teams of two, whose every pour and flourish will be scrutinized by a distinguished panel of judges. Audience participation, however, is also a vital part of the contest, so come help crown the winner while tipping back a few drinks yourself. Ponderosa Lounge & Grill, 10350 N Vancouver Way, 503-345-0300, jubitz. com/ponderosa-lounge-country-bar. 7-9 pm Wednesday, Oct. 18-Nov. 29. $10 cover charge.

EAT: 2023 Portland Fermentation Festival

Do you smell that? It’s Stinkfest, aka the 20

Willamette Week OCTOBER 18, 2023 wweek.com

Portland Fermentation Festival, one of the oldest events of its kind in the nation, which is back following a three-year pandemic hiatus. Unlike other food-focused gatherings, you won’t be expected to purchase food or drink at booths. Instead, everything is available to sample for free (though there will be hard cider and more substantial dishes to buy on the rooftop for those who need to fuel up while they snack). Attendees are also encouraged to get hands-on: preserve some cabbage or carrots at the DIY Fermentation Station (a fan favorite), adopt a sourdough starter, or get to know the world of SCOBYs at the brand-new Bacterial Petting Zoo (though we can’t promise live cultures are anywhere near as cute as the critters found in traditional petting zoos). Ecotrust’s Irving Street Studio and Rooftop Terrace, 721 NW 9th Ave., portlandfermentationfestival. com. 6-9 pm Thursday, Oct. 19. $15-$30.

WATCH: Two Pints

Third Rail Repertory Theatre’s 2023-24 season opener will sit you down with two of the best bar flies you could ever hope to meet—if you can understand what’s coming out of their mouths, that is. Playwright Roddy Doyle is known for penning breakneck-speed dialogue, which in Two Pints covers a winding, wide range of topics as the old friends catch up in a Dublin pub. After several rounds, the conversation veers philosophical—as latenight bar stool banter tends to do, offering a compassionate portrait of the average person trying to wrestle with loss and search for meaning. CoHo Theatre, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 503-235-1101, thirdrailrep. org. Pay-what-you-will previews 7:30 pm Wednesday-Thursday, Oct. 18-19. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday and 2 pm Sunday, Oct. 20-29. $25-$47.

WATCH: Portland Dance Film Fest

Fresh off the heels of the Portland Film Festival is this lineup of screenings for anyone who needs even more time marveling at interesting images in a darkened theater. The Portland Dance Film Fest features 24 curated works from eight countries that all showcase the art form of choreography. This year’s event will be held at the newly renovated Dekum Street Theater, which is also the site of a filmmaking workshop and three-hour master class with Los Angeles writer and director Nadav Heyman. Dekum Street Theater, 814 NE Dekum St., portlanddancefilmfest.com.

Various times Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 1921. $12-$40.

EAT & DRINK: Taste of the Orchard

You may have never heard of the Home Orchard Education Center, which oversees 1.6 acres of fruit trees at Clackamas Community College, but that shouldn’t prevent you from tasting the results of the nonprofit’s hard work. Support the organization’s mission to provide community access to healthy food and preserve heirloom seeds by attending this dinner. You can expect appetizers, a buffet-style main course, desserts highlighting fruit from the orchard, and plenty of beer, wine and hard cider. A silent auction rounds out the evening’s events. The Tumwater Ballroom, 211 Tumwater Drive, Oregon City, 503-2985410, homeorchardeducationcenter.org/ taste-of-the-orchard. 6-9 pm Friday, Oct. 20. $100-$2,000.

WATCH: Night Flight’s 2023 Fright Night: A Halloween Circus

Nineties nostalgia has crept into Halloween, as this is the latest attraction that looks back at a time when a perfect Friday night meant scouring the aisles of the local video store for a rental and then hunkering down at home. This being

If you’re looking for items that will have your friends asking, “Where did you find that?!” then your search should come to an end at the Oddities & Curiosities Expo, which showcases a wide variety of rare, strange collectibles (some of which you can take home). Expect everything from preserved animal specimens to questionably effective medical devices—a perfect pre-Halloween pit stop or, perhaps, just a run-of-the-mill trip to stock up on home décor if cobwebs and skeletons are your thing year-round. Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-235-7575, odditiesandcuriositiesexpo. com. 10 am-6 pm Saturday and 10 am-4 pm Sunday, Oct. 21-22. $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Kids under 12 get in free.

GO: Knock Out: Plus-Size PopUp and Fashion Show

This month, yet another event is emerging from a pandemic pause: Knock Out, which celebrates curvy, body-positive feminine warriors, dapper darlings and beyond.

There is both a fashion show and a shopping pop-up, so you can immediately take runway inspiration back to your own closet. Designers are from Portland and across the U.S. (Knock Out’s website gives Ohio a special shout-out as if it were Milan, for some reason, so you better bring the style, Buckeye State). The Melody Event Center, 615 SE Alder St., knockoutpdx.com. Noon4 pm Sunday, Oct. 22. $33.

LISTEN: The Moth GrandSLAM Championship

Witness a collection of raconteurs battle it out in front of a live audience in this local competition of The Moth—the New Yorkbased nonprofit dedicated to the art of first-person oral storytelling. Performers are all winners from the open mic StorySLAM series and will share five-minute tales focused on the night’s given theme.

If you’ve never been to a Moth performance, the content ranges from hilarious to harrowing, so come prepared to ride an emotional roller coaster. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 503-234-9694, themoth.org/events. 8 pm Tuesday, Oct. 24. $34.

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Editor: Andi Prewitt Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

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WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.

WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.

1. PORTLAND CIDER COMPANY

1. MONTELUPO ITALIAN MARKET—EASTSIDE

2. GREAT NOTION BREWING

2. PAPA HAYDN

Various locations, portlandcider.com. Hours vary.

Portland Cider has spent the past few weeks working to save area fruit from an undignified, ugly death on a hot sidewalk. Every year, the company asks people to bring in unwanted apples and pears from trees growing on their property and then turns them into a crisp, delicious beverage.

The results of those efforts, Community Cider, are ready to enjoy. The flavor profile changes every year—the business is, after all, dealing with literal mixed bags of fruit—this year, 38,000 pounds were donated to its Clackamas facility. Go ahead and drink up; proceeds benefit an organization trying to expand free school lunch access to all Oregon students.

1613 SE Bybee Blvd., 503-719-5650, montelupo.co/sellwood. 11 am-7 pm daily.

Forget pumpkin spice. We’re all about cacio e pepe season. Sure, you could eat the simple yet stunning dish any time of year, but something about it says “peak fall.” And now Sellwood-Moreland residents have another source for adult mac and cheese: Montelupo, which boldly opened in Northeast Portland the summer of 2020, has spun off an eastside location. The intimate space offers take-home pasta that’s handmade daily as well as sauces, sandwiches and half-a-dozen focaccias—with toppings like Italian sausage, potato and guanciale, and goat cheese, you might just make a meal out of the bread and call it a night.

THOMAS TEAL

701 NW 23rd Ave., 503-228-7317; 5829 SE Milwaukie Ave., 503-232-9440; papahaydn.com. 11:30 am-10 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Whether you love Portland dessert institution Papa Haydn or simply great bargains on meals out, you’ll want to swing by one of the business’s two locations at some point during October. The brand turns 45 this year and is partying like it’s 1978, with throwback menu items and prices to match. Special entrees cost only $12(!) and these are full portions of dishes like chicken Genovese, torta rustica and currywurst. Featured desserts, including sachertorte, marjolaine and chocolate marquis, are a mere seven bucks.

3. PALOMAR CO U R T E SY PA LO M A R

Various locations, greatnotion.com. Hours vary.

Halloween has definitely evolved into a monthlong celebration, much like Christmas, so you better get your themed drinking on right out of the gate. And we’re not talking about pumpkin beers. Great Notion has produced its largest lineup of brews with spooky season names to date, including Orange Screamsicle, similar to the Creamsicle IPA only stronger and sour; Possessed, a strong tart ale with flavors of pineapple and black cherry; and Boo Berry Muffin, which tastes like the breakfast cereal its named after. You can find those beers in Great Notion’s four area taprooms, as well as unique scary-themed drops every Friday through October.

3. PONDEROSA LOUNGE & GRILL

10350 N Vancouver Way, 503-345-0300, jubitz.com/ponderosa-lounge-country-bar. 9 am-midnight Monday-Wednesday, 9 am-2 am Thursday-Friday, 8 am-2 am Saturday, 8 am-midnight Sunday.

In WW’s 2018 Bar Guide, we called the Ponderosa the “crown jewel” of Jubitz, which is more of a miniature city than a truck stop in far North Portland. The lineup of country music performers is as solid as it was back then, and now the rowdy lounge is hosting a six-week Battle of the Bartenders, in which teams of two will go head to head March Madness style every Wednesday beginning Oct. 18 (7-9 pm). Judges will score competitors based on their signature drinks and knowledge, but audience support is also factored in. Sounds like the makings of a scene from Cocktail, so consider us in.

4. SANDY HUT

1430 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-235-7972. 11:30 am-2:30 am daily.

We should all aim to be this much fun when we’re 100. The Wolf’s Den, the Sandy Hut, or the Hut of Huts is an idealized version of a midcentury bar and restaurant. The restored Hirschfeld mural, cozy booths and padded bartop add vintage flair, while a slushy machine, Big Buck Hunter and pinup calendars keep things from getting too fancy. The crowd is a mix of folks who’ve managed to survive the bar’s zhuzhing up by new ownership in 2015 and whatever counts for a hipster these days. No matter the name or the state of the interior, the bartenders will not stand for any of your lip but will be generous with the pours of liquor, essential for any top-tier dive.

5. HOLMAN’S BAR & GRILL

15 SE 28th Ave., 503-231-1093, holmanspdx.com. 8 am-2:30 am daily.

Holman’s is one of those bars where everyone knows your name—not because you are a regular, but because they are all off-duty bartenders and servers from other places you frequent. During our visit just days after it reopened following a long renovation, there was a murderer’s row of alcohol distributors, brewery reps and bussers lined up on the stools like they never left, even though the place closed for more than three years, initially due to the pandemic. The remodel may have slightly elevated the aesthetics, but the drink specials are still dive-bar cheap, including $2.50 well whiskey pours and tallboys during Tightwad Tuesday and $4 tumblers of Jameson every Monday.

959 SE Division St., #100, 971-357-8020, barpalomar.com. 5-10 pm Tuesday-Friday, 10 am-2 pm and 5-10 pm Saturday-Sunday.

All good things must come to an end, which, in the Pacific Northwest, means that many patios close down once the rainy season gets underway. While you may not have access to Palomar’s rooftop pop-up Tocayo for the next six months, the Cuban restaurant is using the seasonal shift to relaunch weekend brunch. Chef Ricky Bella’s new menu includes everything from a Frita McMuffin to a guava French toast soaked in Coco Lopez cream of coconut to a Benedict with roasted pork belly. And since Palomar knows how brutal those brunch lines can be, it offers reservations so you can skip the wait.

4. BULLARD TAVERN

813 SW Alder St., 503-222-1670, bullardpdx.com. 4-10 pm Sunday.

Given the fact that Bullard’s burger will set you back nearly 30 bucks, the Woodlark Hotel restaurant’s new $39 Sunday Supper Dinner is a bargain that shouldn’t be missed, especially since it’s a limited-time offer (albeit one that’s redundantly named). The three-course special features a mixed green salad with blue cheese crumbles and hazelnuts; a smoked half-chicken served with fresh tortillas, guac and salsa verde; and an ice cream sundae. You can add a $39 bottle of wine if you really feel like splurging. The best part: A portion of the proceeds raised from the dinners goes to the Maui Strong Fund to help victims of the devastating August fire.

5. GEORGE’S CORNER TAVERN

5501 N Interstate Ave., 503-289-0307, georgescornertaver.wixsite.com/my-site. 10 am-2 am daily.

At the corner of North Interstate Avenue and Killingsworth Street for nearly a century, George’s is like the longtime character actor you are always happy to see. And like a good ensemble player, George’s has a little something for everyone: a solid whiskey list, a killer back patio, Jell-O and pudding shots, and super-friendly service. And perhaps George’s best (un)kept secret is its fried chicken and jojos, which give Reel M Inn a run for its money. A three-piece basket with a jojo upgrade will run you $18, and arrives hot and juicy. The proportions of potato and bird aren’t as freakishly gargantuan as those at our Southeast Portland fave, but they’ll arrive in minutes, rather than hours.

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PERFORMANCE

SHOWS OF THE WEEK

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

BY DA N I E L B R O M F I E L D @ b r o m f 3

SUNDAY, OCT. 22:

C O U R T E S Y O F L I L YA C H T Y

KYLE DELAMARTER

W H AT TO S E E A N D W H AT TO H E A R

Lil Yachty has evolved from the neon-haired “King of the Teens” into one of the most unpredictable and mercurial musicians in the industry. Initially making his name on bubblegum singles like “1 Night,” “Broccoli” and “Minnesota,” Yachty dominated the mid-2010s happy-rap craze before branching off into bizarre stylistic territory such as Michigan-style punchline rap and—most spectacularly on his album Let’s Start Here from early this year—psychedelic pop. Where this boat will sail next is anyone’s guess. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St. 8 pm. $45. All ages.

SLEEP STUDIES: Anne Sorce and Whip.

Sorce Code

Imago’s My Bedroom Is an Installation stars the astounding Anne Sorce as an insomniac in a world of illusions.

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The Armed might not be the first band to make the connection between the euphoric joy of pop and the endorphin rush of hardcore punk, but perhaps no one is taking it to such an extreme—imagine Passion Pit if they emerged from the punk basement-show circuit. But while pop (and arguably hardcore as well) tends to privilege larger-than-life personalities, the punk-rock lifers that this continually revolving supergroup comprises prefers to blur their identities and individual contributions behind a wall of ecstatic noise.

Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St. 8 pm. $25. All ages.

MONDAY, OCT. 23:

Loscil and Lawrence English are two of the most respected names in ambient music, and though they’re separated by an ocean—Loscil is from British Columbia, English from Australia—they’re such prolific producers and collaborators that it’s surprising they haven’t worked together until now. Their collaborative album Colours of Air does not disappoint; drawn from the rich, luxurious tones of a 136-year-old pipe organ but electronically distorted beyond recognition, it’s one of the year’s best ambient records. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St. 9 pm. $20. 21+.

COURTESY OF LOSCIL

passenger on the voyage that is Cynthia’s insomnia.

And what a voyage. My Bedroom captures the monotony and loneliThere is a moment in Imago’s My Bedroom Is an Installation when ness of sleeplessness, but also an aura of eerie wonderment. Exhausted Cynthia, played by Anne Sorce, is confronted by a green window but alert, Cynthia acquires a mysterious sense of clarity, speaking frame descending from the heavens. It’s an invitation to step up to a words that land somewhere between wisdom and nonsense. higher plane of existence, where she ends up dancing with a floating Best of all is her monologue about Pandora’s box, which obliquely but pointedly mentions viruses. Is the entire play meant to be a white overcoat in a cosmic void.

My Bedroom Is an Installation only gets stranger metaphor for life in quarantine? Or the agony of living and more beautiful from there. Like much of Imago’s in a world refusing to reckon with the trauma of the theater for older audiences, the play is gleefully impandemic as it frantically embraces “normal” life?

A triumph penetrable—impish in the way it bends its own rules, Maybe not, but it’s a testament to the play’s power that it provokes such questions. reverent in its love of the bizarre. It’s a triumph from from a Only in its final moments does My Bedroom falter. a company that succeeds by risking failure.

The story is punctuated by letters projected on a company that While a climactic breaking of the fourth wall drew screen, all of them beginning with “Dear Occupant.” some appreciative chuckles on the night I saw the play, succeeds by it narrows the story’s scope. There’s a snake-eating-itsThat’s Cynthia, who suffers from insomnia. Supposedly, the god of sleep is keeping an eye on her, but he’s own-tail vibe to the concluding scenes, which shift the risking hardly an attentive deity. Abandoned to babble about narrative’s focus aways from weird, distant horizons violence, disease and skeletons, Cynthia is perpetually so the play can cheekily comment on itself. failure. awake without being fully conscious.

Still, the journey to that overly literal end is never All this could have easily drifted into nonsensical less than transfixing. In a classic Imago tradition, My musings, but Sorce is a grounding force. Her volcanic Bedroom Is an Installation embraces lostness without portrayal of Medea, also at Imago, was so persuasive that it was easy ever becoming lost itself. You always understand what Cynthia is to lose yourself in the character’s bloodlust—and, if anything, her feeling within the gloriously peculiar world Imago has created: the performance in My Bedroom is even more potent. desire to go from being dead and awake to being alive in slumber.

In addition to playing Cynthia, Sorce voices Whip, a wooden puppet carved by director Jerry Mouawad (who co-wrote the play with Drew SEE IT: My Bedroom Is an Installation plays at Imago Pisarra). Also present is a nameless, silent roommate (Sam Gordon) Theater, 17 SE 8th Ave., 503-231-9581, imagotheatre.com.

7:30 pm Friday-Saturday and 2 pm Sunday, through Oct. wearing white pajamas, which make him look like Pierrot. Cynthia recoils from his touch, but he seems less like an invader than a fellow 22. $23. Recommended for 16 years and up.

BY B E N N E T T C A M P B E L L F E R G U S O N @ t h o b e n n e t t

COURTESY OF THE ARMED

MONDAY, OCT. 23:

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

COURTESY OF RIOT ACT MEDIA

JINGZI ZHAO

SHOW REVIEW CULTURE

EYDÍS EVENSEN AT THE OLD CHURCH

BY R O B E R T H A M

Hair Today

An evening of solo piano music is a dicey proposition in any venue. The music and the performer are at the mercy of ambient noise coming from the audience—and, depending on the space, from the world outside.

The Old Church Concert Hall is less forgiving on that front than most. When Icelandic artist Eydís Evensen began her lovely set of exquisite instrumentals, a streetcar immediately started rumbling past the building. And throughout the hour, the creaks of the wooden pews, coughs, and various rustlings from the attendees cut through the delicate chords and gently fluttering melodies teased out by her right hand.

If the intrusions fazed Evensen, she didn’t show it. Her concentration was remarkable, pausing as she did before each song to center herself before beginning. In her quiet, lightly lilting voice, she talked about how she wrote one composition at age 7 as a response to a traumatic event, and that another was inspired by a nephew who had succumbed to leukemia.

She didn’t need to say anything. The emotion was palpable throughout each song, creating images of joyful and painful events alike. And opener Cyane, the new project of Sage Fisher, set the tone for an evening of self-reflection and healing through her baldly direct lyrics of injury and sensuality (which were enhanced by her tenderly piercing harp playing).

The power of the music was, however, undercut by the unnecessary visuals projected on the stage, which included sonogramlike images of the performers, clouds and, strangely, mermaids. They often served only to break the spell that Evensen and Fisher cast on us.

Portland Center Stage’s production of the 1968 musical takes on haunting new meaning in 2023.

BY L I N DA F E R G U S O N

Seeing Hair at Portland Center Stage raises a question: Is the trippy, hippie musical that opened on Broadway in 1968 still relevant today?

For some audience members, the Age of Aquarius depicted in the show, with its communal spirit and “love will steer the stars” mentality, is appealing, especially for those who are still haunted by the isolation of the Age of COVID. Yet with this new production, directed by Isaac Lamb, the connections between 1968 and 2023 are loud and clear.

Among the 43 songs in this impressionistic rock opera is one that’s a list of racial slurs, “Colored Spade,” and another about air pollution, both of which could be taken from today’s headlines.

Hair, though, embodies an aching hopefulness that might seem naïve to contemporary audiences. The play starts with Dionne (Olivia Lucy Phillip, mesmerizing), beckoning to her friends, a group of barefoot counterculturists, to join her on stage as she sings “Aquarius.” The song, which was popularized by The 5th Dimension in 1969 and became an upbeat favorite on mainstream radio, broke down barriers back in the day, appealing to people of all ages. Yet considering the ferocious division in our society now, the optimism of “Aquarius” and its hope for a new era of “harmony and understanding” is gut-wrenching.

Inevitably, some of the ’60s druggie cul-

ture in the play comes across as a little silly, like when the character Woof (Antonio Lopez-Villarreal) dreamily says things like “I love the flowers” and “we are all one” before howling at the moon. When the company lovingly chants the names of drugs in “Hashish” (“cocaine, marijuana, opium, LSD”), too, it’s impossible not to think, “Yeah, but what about the 70,000 fentanyl-related deaths in the U.S. last year?”

Still, the innocence of the characters’ pleasures is sincere. Taking place in a sort of urban garden with flower pots, rakes and stacks of potting soil, the set (designed by Diggle) suggests the characters have created their own version of the Garden of Eden.

Even a chain-link fence is softened with bright pink, blue and green whirligig-type flowers, which are reminiscent of kindergarten craft projects and lend an atmosphere of cheerful childhood sweetness to the production.

That sweetness can also be seen in a scene where the characters travel across the stage, melting into each other’s arms before moving on to another lover or joining a group of copulators in an undulating clump. Lucy Wells’ costume designs add to the feeling of fluidity—everyone is dressed in flowing garments, with vests hanging open or a long scarf cascading from a pocket.

The play blends easily from one song to another, smoothed by Muffie Delgado Connelly’s choreography. Instead of the formal dance routines of traditional Broadway pro-

ductions, the characters wave their arms above their heads and skip and twirl in a circle, much like children on a playground, unfettered by the inhibitions of adults.

Not all of Hair is so dreamy. The ensemble story eventually focuses on Claude (a warm and engaging Solomon Parker III), who’s about to be drafted and sent to Vietnam.

While rejecting his critical, conservative parents and their orders to get any job, no matter how meaningless, he also yearns to do more with his life and sings about wanting to “perform miracles.”

When Claude complies with the government’s demand to go to war anyway, he pays a heavy price. Even before that, though, it’s both shocking and heartbreaking to see him in uniform with his glorious afro—a symbol of personal freedom—shorn off.

The play ends with another popular song, “Let the Sunshine In,” as red and yellow leaves flutter to the ground like bits of autumn sunlight. Like “Aquarius,” with which it was often performed as a medley, the song was a buoyant pop anthem in 1969, but here it’s a plea for peace that we’ve yet to find in 2023.

SEE IT: Hair plays at Portland Center Stage at the Armory, 128 NW 11th Ave., 503-445-3700, boxoffice@pcs.org. 7:30 pm Wednesday–Saturday, 2 pm Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, through Nov. 5. $35.50-$91. 14+.

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GET YOUR REPS IN

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

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

The King of Comedy (1982) Those looking to pigeonhole the 50-year career of Martin Scorsese often invoke his penchant for gangsters, but it might be more accurate and encompassing to say Scorcese is drawn to strivers. From Henry Hill (Goodfellas) to Eddie Felson (The Color of Money) to Father ​​Rodrigues (Silence), Scorsese protagonists routinely harbor dreams that dwarf their ability to attain (or maintain) the meaning they seek through ascension.

That’s never more true than in The King of Comedy. In a performance unlike any other in his scowling career, Robert De Niro plays Rupert Pupkin, a glad-handing, aspiring standup comedian whose life’s mission is appearing on an ersatz Tonight Show. In Pupkin’s mind, he’ll conquer the airwaves not by working on his act, but by molding himself into a prepackaged talk show guest—and, to that end, he relentlessly stalks host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis).

Juxtaposing brilliant performances by De Niro, Lewis and Sandra Bernhard (as a Langford obsessive of a different stripe), Scorsese creates disturbing subjectivity around Pupkin’s delusions of grandeur. In witnessing how the comedian painfully rehearses his conversations, we partially understand the gulf between what Pupkin wants and his present reality, but other times, the bleed between fantasy and reality is a biting mystery.

Cinema 21 is screening Scorsese and De Niro classics all month to celebrate the arrival of their latest collaboration, Killers of the Flower Moon. Catch The King of Comedy there on Oct. 21.

ALSO PLAYING: 5th Avenue: The Descent (2005), Oct. 20-22.

Academy: Mad Monster Party? (1967), Oct. 20-26. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Oct. 20-26. Cinemagic: Swastika (1973), Oct. 19.

Clinton: Death Becomes Her (1992), Oct. 19.

The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920), Oct. 20.

Society (1989), Oct. 23. Hollywood: X: The Man With the X-ray Eyes (1963), Oct. 20. Free Willy (1993), Oct. 22. Wayne’s World (1992), Oct. 23.

Living Room: Psycho (1960), Oct. 22.

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TAYLOR SWIFT: THE ERAS TOUR An elusive goddess leaping into a sea of light. A swaggering showwoman in a sparkly jacket. A soulful yearner seated at a flower-painted piano. In just under three fleeting hours, the filmed version of Taylor Swift’s career-defining tour captures her countless artistic identities and the boundless sincerity that unites them. Culled from three August shows at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., The Eras Tour is at once intimate and galactic. Holding illuminated phones aloft, the audience becomes a starry screen onto which Swift seemingly projects her every feeling—defiance, joy, regret, belief. It’s exhilarating to watch her revel in her power (especially when she kisses one of her own biceps before belting out “The Man”), but she doesn’t beat us into submission with her fame. While the performance requires a truckload of props (bicycles! Umbrellas!), it always comes back to Swift on a dark and gleaming stage, baring her heart in tender songs like “My Tears Ricochet” and “All Too Well.” For what it’s worth, coming from a non-Swiftie, I think what makes her cool is her steadfast uncoolness. She is to music what James Cameron is to movies—an irony-immune entertainer whose unbowed earnestness stifles the cynical noise of pop culture. Sam Wrench (Billie Eilish: Live at the O2) directed The Eras Tour, but Swift plans to direct a film of her own for Searchlight Pictures, which feels inevitable and necessary. Cinema—like the world itself—needs her. NR. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bagdad, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Empirical Theater, Fox Tower, Joy Cinema, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin, Studio One, Wunderland Milwaukie.

I M D B / TAY L O R S W I F T P R O D U C T I O N S

20TH CENTURY STUDIOS

MOVIES

VERTICAL

manages to succeed by empowering her actors—whether they’re the star of last year’s Palme d’Or winner or 12 years old.

NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Living Room.

STRANGE WAY OF LIFE

SHE CAME TO ME There’s no way to describe the plot of She Came to Me—moody opera composer (Peter Dinklage) falls for lusty tugboat captain (Marissa Tomei)—without it sounding like a joke. Yet somehow, writer-director Rebecca Miller finds earnest emotion amid joyous absurdity, fashioning a tender romantic drama with a few acidic flourishes. Looking dapper beneath a mountainous goatee, Dinklage stars as Steven, whose in-the-works opus is marred by a “temporary blockage.” The cure? Capt. Karina Trento, whose fearsome sexual powers inspire him to write an opera about a murderous, ax-wielding siren of the high seas. Weaving a web of mythic coincidences, Miller intertwines Katrina and Steven’s affair—he’s married to Patricia (Anne Hathaway), a therapist— with a subplot about two young lovers (Evan Ellison and Harlow Jane) forced apart by a statutory rape allegation from a racist stenographer (Brian d’Arcy James).

Parts of She Came to Me are as uproarious as Miller’s Maggie’s Plan (2015), not least of all Patricia’s funny, moving quest to become a nun. Plan, however, was merry and mocking, whereas She Came to Me is a purehearted paean to true love, be it vibrant and youthful or weathered and real. A climactic elopement aboard Katrina’s tugboat is like something out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and like the Bard, Miller (yes, she’s Arthur’s daughter) reveals humanity through flights of fancy.

Are we all just composers and captains looking for love? If so, the joke’s beautifully on us. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Fox Tower.

REPTILE Music video director Grant Singer makes his feature debut with Reptile, a crime thriller he wrote with Benjamin Brewer and Benicio del Toro. After a real

estate agent is brutally murdered, veteran detective Tom Nichols (del Toro) is thrown into an investigation involving the realtor’s sleazy boyfriend, her mysterious husband, and other nefarious types. Reptile is a bit long and languid at 136 minutes, but Singer unfolds the story with confidence and a David Fincher-esque atmosphere.

All of the roles are well cast, from Justin Timberlake as a smug real estate agent to Michael Pitt as a creepy suspect who is obviously a red herring. Yet it’s del Toro who rises above the film’s more familiar aspects with an expertly understated performance.

He and Alicia Silverstone (who plays Tom’s wife, Judy) make for a believable couple, and Tom’s little quirks allow del Toro to be playful at times (one running joke about Tom wanting a new kitchen sink is a great touch). Eventually, Reptile becomes tangled and leaves some of its subplots as loose ends, but Singer’s film is an impressively solid and slimy procedural.

R. DANIEL RESTER. Netflix.

THE ROYAL HOTEL Director Kitty Green’s follow-up to her acclaimed #MeToo office drama The Assistant (2020) fully arrives during its first bartending scene. Two young women— American tourists who say they’re Canadian—are slinging drinks on their first night temping at a remote Australian mining bar.

In Green’s hyper-observant style, it’s a disquieting ecosystem: leathery men yelling dirty jokes, fighting, leering, shouting for swill from all 270 degrees of the bartop.

Hanna and Liv (Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick) also live above this pub. They are truly not in Kansas, uh, Canada anymore.

As subsequent scenes showcase the local charm and the desert’s vastness, Green plays with genre as much as her audience.

Is this about to be The Australian Chainsaw Massacre? Or wait, no…Eat Pray Love? That spectrum, though, is dependent on Han-

na’s and Liv’s fluctuating feelings of safety, and The Royal Hotel is constantly noting how the bar owner (Hugo Weaving) does and doesn’t contribute to his employees’ security. One drunken night’s ally is the next night’s enabler—and Liv might enjoy a 24/7 rager while Hanna’s discomfort coils ever tighter. In the end, there’s no chain saw, but the onslaught of threat—tangible, perceived, what’s the difference at a certain point?—fries your every last nerve ending into red Outback dust. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Bridgeport, City Center, Lake Theater, Living Room.

SCRAPPER Georgie (Lola Campbell) gets along OK by herself. Secretly living alone after her mother’s death, the 12-year-old cleans her suburban London flat, hauls out the trash, and nicks bicycles to make the rent.

It’s a sad state made nearly adorable by zippy filmmaking and Georgie’s precocious yet hard-bitten energy. In Scrapper, Campbell channels the soul of a grifter in ways not seen since teenage Kaitlyn Dever on Justified, but before neighbors and teachers detect that Georgie lives unsupervised, her long-lost father Jason (Harris Dickinson of Triangle of Sadness fame) surfaces after years of partying in Ibiza.

In her dad, Georgie finds her reflection— sometimes identical, sometimes inverse.

He may look like a soccer hooligan, but he shares Georgie’s industriousness and has a child’s kooky sense of humor, bringing out the dubious adult in his daughter. Scrapper director Charlotte Regan, who hails from this working-class London milieu, effortlessly captures how the community wildly crisscrosses in the shared spaces around their pastel, candy-colored flats.

While sudden detours into mockumentary, magical realism, and surveillance aesthetics make it seem like she’s emptying a bag of styles in her feature debut, Regan still

At just over a half-hour, it’s tempting to consider Strange Way of Life an episode of an old Western quasi-anthology broadcast from an infinitely queerer universe. Made under commission from Saint Laurent, Pedro Almodóvar’s soulful, frothy amuse bouche could’ve easily glided along familiar tropes with the droll grace of seafoam suede-bedecked Silva (Pedro Pascal), who crosses paths with Sheriff Jake (Ethan Hawke) for the first time since their extended south of the border fling decades ago. Though Almodóvar famously opted against helming Brokeback Mountain two decades ago, echoes of that film swirl about SWoL’s tale of the aging gunslingers’ heated reunion.

Blessedly, customary dithering over social stigma and repressive barriers are blithely evaded in favor of true mano a mano passions fueling climactic duels. At its Cannes premiere, Almodóvar teased that SWoL could be a prelude to an eventual feature, but however charming the protagonists, extending the narrative further would almost certainly engender diminishing returns. As Jake foresaw all those years ago, even the most alluring entanglements between intrinsically mismatched partners can prove over time all too easy to quit. R. JAY HORTON. Cinema 21.

THE BURIAL The Burial wants to be many things: a David-vs.-Goliath narrative reworked into a legal drama that’s also a buddy comedy, a commentary on the use of showmanship as a courtroom tactic, and a meditation on America’s terse history with its own racist roots. Unfortunately, it doesn’t commit to any one idea enough to make for a satisfying watch. Based on the story of how flashy personal injury lawyer Willie Gary (Jamie Foxx) stepped outside his expertise to take on the case of Mississippi funeral home owner Jeremiah O’Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones) against a corporation trying to throttle him into bankruptcy, The Burial is peppered with only fleeting moments of greatness. Foxx can proclamate and speechify with the best of them, and there’s strong supporting turns from Mamoudou Athie, Jurnee Smollett and Bill Camp, but Jones seems to get lost in the shuffle (his good-ol’-boy affectation is so subdued it robs him of his charm). The script by Doug Wright and director Maggie Betts, meanwhile, never rises above passable—and its attempts at being anti-racist, while noble, can’t change the fact that the story should have focused more intensely on the predatory nature of capitalism and the value of community and solidarity above profit and power. The Burial is earnest and emotional enough to please many a crowd, but it ends up being a stale, stilted, and clichéd trip down South. R. MORGAN SHAUNETTE. Amazon Prime.

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TRUE SCENES FROM THE STREETS! @sketchypeoplepdx

by Jack Kent

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JONESIN’

FREE WILL

B Y M AT T J O N E S

"Serve It Up"--time to dish it.

ASTROLOGY ARIES (March 21-April 19): JooHee Yoon is an

illustrator and designer. She says, “So much of artmaking is getting to know yourself through the creative process, of making mistakes and going down rabbit holes of research and experimentation that sometimes work out—and sometimes don’t.” She adds, “The failures are just as important as the successes.” I would extend this wisdom, applying it to how we create our personalities and lives. I hope you will keep it in mind as you improvise, experiment with, and transform yourself in the coming weeks.

TAURUS

(April 20-May 20): Sometimes, we droop and shrivel in the face of a challenge that dares us to grow stronger and smarter. Sometimes, we try our best to handle a pivotal riddle with aplomb but fall short. Neither of these two scenarios will be in play for you during the coming months. I believe you will tap into reserves of hidden power you didn’t realize you had access to. You will summon bold, innovative responses to tantalizing mysteries. I predict you will accomplish creative triumphs that may have once seemed beyond your capacities.

GEMINI

(May 21-June 20): Gemini novelist Meg Wolitzer suggests that "one of the goals of life is to be comfortable in your own skin and in your own bed and on your own land." I suspect you won't achieve that goal in the coming weeks, but you will lay the foundation for achieving that goal. You will figure out precisely what you need in order to feel at home in the world, and you will formulate plans to make that happen. Be patient with yourself, dear Gemini. Be extra tender, kind, and accommodating. Your golden hour will come.

CANCER

ACROSS 1. Tourney winner 6. Reaction to a sock 9. One and the other 13. Shot blocker 14. "Cool" amount of cash 15. 100 cents, in France 16. Like someone who spent a day at the beach without sunblock, maybe 19. Challenging kids 20. Character with multiple actors in a 2023 movie 21. "Reboot" actor _ _ _-Michael Key 22. Piece of neckwear 23. Spectra maker

53. Debut music releases, often

18. Make a wager

54. Irish sketch comedy group Foil Arms & _ _ _

24. Old Testament twin

55. Improper application 56. Soccer stadium shout 57. End-of-class notifier 58. Went completely astray, like the circles in the theme entries?

61. Stage item 62. College, in Canberra 63. Spasms of pain 64. Tax form IDs 65. Reason for some rental deposits 66. Cher's late spouse

24. Cafe customers 25. On-camera audition 28. See, that's the thing

DOWN 1. Of epic proportions

23. Uganda neighbor 26. German article 27. Ditch to get hitched 29. Greek goddess of night 32. Blows a fuse 34. Academic inst.

35. Indianans 36. Take advantage of 37. Football measurement 39. Say yes, but quieter 42. Accelerate 43. Characteristics 45. Drinks broth loudly 47. Word before contained or reflection 48. Best Actress winner for "Monster" 49. Cardinal under Henry VIII

30. Bach's "Minuet _ _ _ Major"

2. Lee who created Boo Radley

31. Animal abode

3. Pub orders

33. Twisted, like a smile

4. Average, these days

34. Like distracting objec-hey, what's that?

5. Getting high?

55. Baseball honorees, briefly

6. Its flag features a curved dagger

56. "By the looks _ _ _..."

7. Just Stop _ _ _ (U.K. protest group)

59. Single

37. "Hold _ _ _ in My Arms" (Ray LaMontagne song) 38. Subsidiary building 40. Frequent URL ender

8. Fluffy '70s area rug

41. Quickly, for short

9. Get noticed

43. Not lately

10. Gotten too big for

44. Beer ingredient

11. What an "X" may mark

46. Requested a Spanishspeaking agent, maybe

12. Rhino's feature

51. Performed unaccompanied

17. Senator's spot

13. Walking styles

50. Looks at creepily 52. Ending of sugar names

57. "Feel the _ _ _" 60. "Ah, I get it!"

last week’s answers

(June 21-July 22): Some astrologers say you Crabs are averse to adventure, preferring to loll in your comfort zones and entertain dreamy fantasies. As evidence that this is not always true, I direct your attention to a great Cancerian adventurer, the traveling chef Anthony Bourdain.

In the coming weeks, I hope you will be inspired by these Bourdain quotes: 1. "If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move." 2. “What a great way to live, if you could always do things that interest you, and do them with people who interest you." 3. "The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that's enlightenment enough—to know there is no final resting place of the mind."

4. “Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown.”

LEO

(July 23-Aug. 22): Author Iain S. Thomas writes, "The universe is desperately trying to move you into the only spot that truly belongs to you—a space that only you can stand in. It is up to you to decide every day whether you are moving towards or away from that spot." His ideas overlap with principles I expound in my book *Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings*. There I propose that life often works to help dissolve your ignorance and liberate you from your suffering. I hypothesize that you are continually being given opportunities to grow smarter and wilder and kinder. In the coming weeks, everything I've described here will be especially apropos to you. All of creation will be maneuvering you in the direction of feeling intensely at home with your best self. Cooperate, please!

VIRGO

(Aug. 23-Sept. 22): "Never do anything that others can do for you," said Virgo novelist Agatha Christie. That's not a very Virgo-like attitude, is it? Many astrologers would say that of all the zodiac’s signs, your tribe is the most eager to serve others but not aggressively seek the service of others on your behalf. But I suspect this dynamic could change in the coming weeks. Amazingly, cosmic rhythms will conspire to bring you more help and support than you're accustomed to. My advice: Welcome it. Gather it in with gusto.

WEEK OF OCTOBER 19

© 2023 ROB BREZSNY

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I'm not enamored of

Shakespeare's work. Though I enjoy his creative use of language, his worldview isn't appealing or interesting. The people in his stories don't resonate with me, and their problems don't feel realistic. If I want to commune with multi-faceted characters dealing with fascinating dilemmas, I turn to French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). I feel a kinship with his complex, nuanced understanding of human nature. Please note I am not asserting that Shakespeare is bad and Balzac is good. I'm merely stating the nature of my subjective personal tastes. Now I invite you to do what I have done here: In the coming weeks, stand up unflinchingly for your subjective personal tastes.

SCORPIO

(Oct. 23-Nov. 21): As much as I love logic and champion rational thinking, I'm granting you an exemption from their iron-grip supremacy in the coming weeks. To understand what's transpiring and to respond with intelligence, you must partly transcend logic and reason. They will not be sufficient guides as you wrestle with the Great Riddles that will be visiting. In a few weeks, you will be justified in quoting ancient Roman author Tertullian, who said the following about his religion, Christianity: "It is true because it is impossible."

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): As a Sun-con-

junct-Uranus person, I am fond of hyperbole and outrageousness. "Outlandish" is one of my middle names. My Burning Man moniker is "Friendly Shocker," and in my pagan community, I’m known as Irreverend Robbie. So take that into consideration when I suggest you meditate on Oscar Wilde's assertions that "all great ideas are dangerous" and "an idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea." Oscar and I don't mean that interesting possibilities must be a risk to one's health or safety. Rather, we're suggesting they are probably inconvenient for one's dogmas, habits, and comfort zones. I hope you will favor such disruptors in the coming days.

CAPRICORN

(Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Some people might feel they have achieved the peak of luxury if they find themselves sipping Moët & Chandon Imperial Vintage Champagne while lounging on a leather and diamond-encrusted PlumeBlanche sofa on a hand-knotted Agra wool rug aboard a 130-foot-long Sunseeker yacht. But I suspect you will be thoroughly pleased with the subtler forms of luxury that are possible for you these days. Like what? Like surges of appreciation and acknowledgment for your good work. Like growing connections with influences that will interest you and help you in the future. Like the emotional riches that come from acting with integrity and excellence.

AQUARIUS

(Jan. 20-Feb. 18): There are over 20 solutions to the riddle your higher mind is now contemplating. Several of them are smart intellectually but not emotionally intelligent.

Others make sense from a selfish perspective but would be less than a blessing for some people in your life. Then there are a few solutions that might technically be effective but wouldn’t be much fun. I estimate there may only be two or three answers that would be intellectually and emotionally intelligent, would be of service not only to you but also to others, and would generate productive fun.

PISCES

(Feb. 19-March 20): Naturalist John Muir didn't like the word "hiking." He believed people ought to saunter through the wilderness, not hike. "Hiking" implies straight-ahead, no-nonsense, purposeful movement, whereas "sauntering" is about wandering around, being reverent towards one's surroundings, and getting willingly distracted by where one's curiosity leads. I suggest you favor the sauntering approach in the coming weeks—not just in nature but in every area of your life. You're best suited for exploring, gallivanting, and meandering.

Homework: My new book is available: *Astrology Is Real: Revelations from My Life as an Oracle*. https://bit.ly/IsAstrologyReal

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