“FIRST OF ALL, QUENTIN TARANTINO—NO SMOKE, PLEASE.” P. 19
NEWS: Nervous Hours at Bamboo Sushi. P. 8
WEED: Multiverse Staycationing in Lake O. P. 20
FILM: Mark Orton’s Musical Movie Magic. P. 24
The county’s big plans to fund universal preschool have so far produced pint-sized results. WWEEK.COM VOL 49/52 11.08.2023
By Sophie Peel | Page 10
TICKETS AVAILABLE AT PDXJAZZ.ORG 2
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
FINDINGS MICHAEL RAINES
BAMBOO SUSHI, PAGE 8
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 49, ISSUE 52 Multnomah County has a backlog of 15,000 people seeking to expunge their criminal histories. 6 The Bureau of Environmental Services is trying to boost stormwater fees for boat people again. 7
Portland actress Claire Phillips achieved acclaim offstage in the role of international spy. 17 Old Asia Teahouse & Restaurant is the first Top Burmese spinoff not bearing its name. 18
Handy Andy’s auto repair shop was selling gas for $5 a gallon before it was cool. 7
One of John Brown’s raiders, Dangerfield Newby, likely inspired Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. 19
A former Sortis Holdings employee says coffee business expansion is causing trouble for Bamboo Sushi. 8
You can book an Airbnb in Lake Oswego with a disorienting infinity bedroom completely encased in mirrors.
More than half of the preschool seats subsidized by Multnomah County existed before a new tax. 11
21
Preschool for All spent none of its $8 million budget to expand classrooms. 14 Striking teachers endured an atmospheric river. 16
ON THE COVER: Preschool for All spells meager results for Multnomah County families; photo illustration by Mick Hangland-Skill.
If music is therapy, therapists make great musicians. 22 The “Masked Villain of Sellwood” just needs a little love. 23 The Holdovers composer Mark Orton won’t be leading a folkrock band on the open road anytime soon. 24
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK: The Portland company that owns Bamboo Sushi is struggling.
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Anna Zusman
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• ••••
DIALOGUE
••••
TA R E B A LRO S ER E T A •••• E H T deeply rooted NOV 8 yet fresh folk rock
THE STEEL WHEELS stunning interpretations of traditional Irish music
NOV 9
DERVISH
The race to succeed U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer began moments after he told WW on Oct. 30 that he would not seek a 15th term representing Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District. Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal and Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales are running; state Reps. Maxine Dexter and Thuy Tran are considering it. (But not former County Chair Deborah Kafoury or state Rep. Travis Nelson. See page 5.) What nobody can do is replace Blumenauer, a singular figure in Oregon public life whose signature bow tie and annual holiday fruitcakes belied a cutting intelligence and disdain for fools. Blumenauer offered a gloomy self-assessment to our newsroom (“Exit Interview: Earl Blumenauer,” Nov. 1) but said he hoped to help Portland recover its equilibrium. Readers were more generous in their appraisal of him.
STREETSBLOG NEW YORK, VIA TWITTER: “America, we
have lost a giant in Congress.”
town papers rather than D.C. outlets.” SOPHLADY, VIA WWEEK.COM:
DAVERO, VIA WWEEK.COM:
“Not sure what he ever did for anyone other than bicycle riders or pot smokers, but he himself became fabulously wealthy during his career of public service.”
THE HEART OF SATURDAY NIGHT Portland’s TOM WAITS tribute experience
NOV 12
feat. Kris Deelane - Dan Gildea Bre Gregg - Jet Black Pearl - Paul K Ward Ed Pierce - Jason Wells - James Latham
ALASDAIR FRASER NOV 14 AND NATALIE HAAS
JOHN JORGENSON NOV 15 BLUEGRASS BAND
SUNDOWN NOV 17
NOV 16
a salute to GORDON LIGHTFOOT
the Share Your Embarassment Tour NOV 24 NOV 25 NOV 26
Portland’s ALL-STAR tribute to the Band’s “Last Waltz”
UPCOMING SHOWS
•••••••••••••
11/18 : GARCIA BIRTHDAY BAND 11/19 : WHISKEY RIVER – A TRIBUTE TO WILLIE NELSON BY THE ADRIAN MARTIN SEPTET FEAT. JAMES LOW 11/30 - 12/16 : WHITE ALBUM XMAS
•••••
albertarosetheatre.com
3000 NE Alberta • 503.764.4131 4
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
DIZZY DJANGO, VIA REDDIT:
“He’s a good egg. He always makes himself visible, open to interviews and isn’t afraid to take stances. “Politics aside, he embraces the ‘public’ in public servant. Something we desperately need more.” MATT RICE, VIA TWITTER: “I
genuinely love to see members give exclusives to their home-
“U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer is mistaken in his assumption that no Willamette Week readers care about issues of public policy, such as flood insurance and other environmental concerns. Some of us do. Having kept his nose to the grindstone has helped society.”
FLASHSTEVE, VIA WWEEK. COM: “I was listening to Earl
being interviewed on OPB on Tuesday. The fawning host allowed him to spew about his great success, particularly in the area of transportation. I no longer live in Portland (left in ’94), but when I return to visit, transportation via any mode (bike, MAX, driving, etc.) is much less
Dr. Know
BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx Remember 11 years ago, when we voted to give the corporate kicker to K-12 education so that there would never be rat-infested saunas in schools—i.e., Measure 85? What happened to this golden goose? Is it possible that there’s a lost pot of money that would solve all the school issues? —Jessie G. If your kid’s school has a sauna, Jessie, how bad could its budget problems be? Just kidding! We all know Oregon schools aren’t exactly ballin’ these days—I’ll assume that by “sauna” you mean “classroom where the A/C hasn’t worked since 1991.” As touched on in a previous column, education funding has been a challenge statewide since at least 1990, when Measure 5 dumped responsibility for around 70% of K-12 education funding into our Legislature’s hummus-stained lap. Oregon’s income tax rebate program, aka “the kicker,” only makes things harder. Since it’s notoriously difficult to get people to vote against getting free money, the personal income tax kicker isn’t going anywhere. It’s not quite as difficult to get people to vote against
efficient, and much more dangerous than when I lived there. During the Earl years, things have gone downhill dramatically. Of course, it is not his fault, but I would love to see someone do a bit of a mega-analysis of the impact of government policies/ decisions on the worsening of transport in PDX.” ADVANCEDINSTRUCTION, VIA REDDIT: “2024 is going to be a
bloodbath in Portland. “An open CD3 primary, all 12 City Council seats up for grabs, several county commission and Metro Council seats, the mayorship, ballot measures, the three central-city state senate seats being up for reelection, as well as every state rep seat. “People are going to be jostling and jockeying for what races to run in, and we’re going to have some very odd outcomes because of the sheer number of people running and low percentages to win primaries. “There are already three candidate boot camps, one for the Democratic Socialists of America, one for labor, one for the Portland Business Alliance... and I’m sure there are more that Willamette Week hasn’t reported on. “A game of thrones, with (at least for CD3) all of the candidates being worse than the person being replaced. Kill me.” 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
free money for somebody else, however: Enter 2012’s Measure 85, the Oregon Corporate Tax “Kicker” Funds for Education Initiative. Saying you’re going to take money from corporations—let’s just go ahead and call them “greedy corporations”—and give it to schoolchildren (many of whom are probably orphans with enormous, Keane-painting eyes) is about the best spin you can put on a tax increase. Measure 85 cruised to a 20-point victory. Unfortunately, Oregon’s corporate income tax only raises about one-eighth as much revenue as the personal tax. The total corporate kicker clawback—when there is one—is usually something between $50 million and $200 million. Given that the annual K-12 budget is around $5 billion, you can see how Measure 85 isn’t exactly a magic bullet. (There’s also the fact that, strictly speaking, Measure 85 doesn’t actually bind the Legislature to use the money for education; it just goes into the general fund.) Still, there’s one silver lining for us tax-andspend liberals: If it weren’t for the kicker, our current $5.6 billion budget surplus might well prompt tea party types to demand permanent tax cuts—ones that, unlike the kicker, would bite in lean years as well as fat ones. Sending out these checks, stupid as it is, seems to mollify the anti-tax zealots. When it comes to bribery, there’s nothing like money. Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.
MURMURS ANTHONY EFFINGER
GRANT BOWL CONGRESSIONAL FIELD IN FLUX: The jockeying to succeed U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer in the 3rd Congressional District, which includes most of Portland, continues apace. Former Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury, who would have likely been the favorite had she entered the race, told The Oregonian she won’t run, and state Rep. Travis Nelson (D-Portland) told Oregon Public Broadcasting he’s out too. Former Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal, who, along with Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales, entered the race Nov. 1, announced she’d raised more than $109,000 in her first 72 hours as a candidate. That flexing has not dissuaded two other House Democrats in Portland—state Reps. Maxine Dexter and Thuy Tran—from also considering entering the race. Dexter said she would decide soon whether to run, while Tran, a first-term representative from Northeast Portland who works as an optometrist and serves in the Oregon Air National Guard, didn’t respond to a request for comment. GRANT BOWL GETS NEW TURF: To the delight of student athletes and their parents, workers began replacing the artificial turf on Grant High School’s football field this week, even though Portland Parks & Recreation and Portland Public Schools don’t have a deal on who will control the property. PPS, which is negotiating a long-term lease from the parks bureau, is paying for the $1.5 million renovations. Grant parents have been lobbying for PPS to take control since August, when the parks bureau closed the field just days before the fall soccer and football seasons started. Deferred maintenance had left the field compacted, posing concussion risks. “We’re thrilled to see the turf replacement work begin,” says Kim McGair, mother of a varsity girls soccer player and co-founder of the Grant Bowl Community Coalition. “We’re thankful to our community for speaking out and to PPS for acting with urgency. We appreciate Commissioner [Dan] Ryan meeting with us and agreeing to turn the Bowl over to PPS.” Now, parents would like to see a formal lease signed, McGair says, so Grant can install lights and stands. It’s the only school of its size in the state where games must be played in daylight and spectators sit on grass berms. Lease negotiations hit a snag late last month over a smaller field used for softball and baseball that is jointly owned by PPS and the parks bureau. Commissioner Ryan, who oversees the parks bureau, wants to guarantee community access to the other field when it’s not being used by students, a spokesman says. The Grant Park Neighborhood Association has complained that PPS locks the field, keeping neighbors out even when it’s not in use by Grant teams.
AMR STRUGGLES TO STAFF AMBULANCES IN WASHINGTON COUNTY: American Medical Response, the beleaguered ambulance contractor that faces fines in Multnomah County for short staffing and poor performance, is already running into similar problems in Washington County, where it just took over the ambulance service contract in August. In a Nov. 2 email obtained by WW, Forest Grove Fire Chief Jim Geering, who oversees the Cornelius Fire Department as well, said he was fed up with AMR’s tardy ambulances—which were forcing his staff to neglect other duties to transport patients to hospitals. The two cities operate one ambulance each that respond to 911 calls and, when AMR isn’t available, transport patients to the hospital. “We are taking firefighters away from the fire engine they are assigned to,” he wrote. “We can no longer support this level of risk to our public’s safety.” Beginning in December, he wrote, both cities would “remove our ambulance transport vehicle identifiers from an ‘available status’ in our 9-1-1 center CAD system.” Geering and Cornelius city manager Peter Brandom emphasized ambulances would remain on call to respond to emergencies. “There’s absolutely no reason for anyone in our communities to be concerned about diminished public safety,” Brandom said. AMR says it plans to be fully staffed by the end of the year: “One of AMR’s goals was to relieve the fire department from having to transport patients from emergency scenes and we feel the removal of their ambulances from the 911 CAD is a step in the right direction.” BEACHFRONT PROPERTY FOR SALE: Hotelier Mark Hemstreet will see one of his company’s trophy properties sold this month. A court-appointed receiver is currently soliciting bids for the beachfront Shilo Inn in Seaside. At its peak more than two decades ago, Hemstreet’s Shilo Inn chain numbered nearly 50 hotels scattered across the West. But beginning with the travel hiatus after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Shilo has dwindled and Hemstreet has faced a series of financial setbacks (“Battle of Shilo,” WW, Feb. 8). Last year, California-based Cathay Bank filed suit against Hemstreet and his companies in Multnomah County Circuit Court, seeking to collect a long-standing debt. The judge appointed a receiver who could then sell various assets held in the receivership estate, including Shilo Inns in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Texas, to repay money owed. Now, the receiver will sell the 113-room Seaside Shilo to the highest bidder. The hotel is a moneymaker, according to its listing, having earned $1.93 million in net operating income last year. Bids are due by Nov. 22.
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
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NEWS
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK
TRENDING
with my expungement?’” says Sonya Good Stefani, a lawyer at Metropolitan Public Defender who runs the nonprofit’s community law division. The backlog casts a pall over what should be a victory for criminal justice reformers, including Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, who trumpeted the popularity of the program in an interview with WW last month. He cited the statistics as evidence that he’s doing his job well. “The number of expungements that we’re processing is incredible,” he said. “More than 10,000 last year.” It’s certainly true that many people have already benefited from the new reforms. But thousands more have been left waiting, thanks in part to bottlenecks in his office, which, according to statute, has 120 days to review and object to an expungement request.
Stuck in the Past A new criminal justice reform is so popular it’s clogged the system. BY L U C A S M A N F I E L D lmanfield@wweek .com
A statewide effort to help people wipe their past criminal records is off to a rocky start in Multnomah County. Lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 that eliminated fees and widened eligibility criteria for “setting aside” convictions, charges and arrests—effectively hiding them from employer or landlord background checks. It’s been wildly popular. Too popular for its own good. The deluge of expungement applications has overwhelmed county and court officials in Portland. There’s now a 15,000-case backlog and a 16-month wait for an application to be reviewed. People who expected relief are now mad. “We get phone calls almost every day saying, ‘What is going on
“ We simply no longer had enough bodies.” “We are not responding within 120 days,” admits Kelley Rhoades, a senior prosecutor in Schmidt’s office who oversees the process. There’s been a shortage of staff and
delays running federal background checks, Rhoades explains. “But we’re getting much closer,” she adds. When someone convicted of a crime in Oregon files for expungement, a clerk in the DA’s office for that county verifies the charges are eligible and notifies any victims. (Class B felonies, like aggravated theft, are the most serious crimes eligible for expungement. Applicants must pay all outstanding fees and enter a waiting period, the length of which depends on the severity of the crime, before they can apply.) The Oregon State Police run a background check to ensure there’s been no warrants or open cases out of state. A court clerk contacts other law enforcement agencies involved and draws up the paperwork. Then a judge signs off. Aaron Knott, the Multnomah County DA’s policy director, advocated for Senate Bill 397 in Salem. At the time, he expected the number of applications in the county to go up 60%. Instead, court data shows, it jumped from 50 in a typical month to more than 800. The DA’s office had a single clerk winnowing down the backlog, and she soon quit. The office hadn’t asked for money to hire more. “We simply no longer had enough bodies,” Knott says. The resulting delays have cascaded into the courtroom, where judges oversee hearings each time the DA’s office submits an objection, almost
always on technicalities—like ineligible charges or a recent conviction. “The number of days from the motion being filed to the order being entered is unacceptably high,” agrees court spokeswoman Rachel McCarthy. The court “didn’t have sufficient resources” as it grappled with other crises like an unprecedented spike in murders and a shortage of public defenders. “But we do expect to meet the expectation of 120 days once we are caught up,” she explains. To do that, the court and the DA’s office have implemented a series of stopgap measures, including reassigning staff from other duties to review the onslaught of applications. The DA now has five expungement
clerks. The court assigned staffers in its records department to focus solely on expungements and is training additional judges. The county even paid for a clerk at a local public defense firm to help review eligibility. “We’ve started to turn the corner on this,” Knott says. “We are righting the ship.” Chris LaFave, 57, is one of the people left waiting. He became addicted to painkillers nearly three decades ago, after being prescribed Vicodin following dental surgery. Then came heroin and stints on the street. To fund his habit, he’d steal electronics from big-box stores, once attempting to drop in from the ceiling through an air vent. “I didn’t hurt
Cumulative Backlog of Pending Expungements in Multnomah County SOURCE: Multnomah County Circuit Court
UNSCIENTIFIC POLLING
Rage Against the Machine One week into the strike and Portland Public Schools parents have some choice words. Maybe check on the public school parents in your life. Chances are, they are activated. Schools have been closed for a week now due to a Portland Association of Teachers strike. Some parents have been supporting teachers on the picket line, bringing snacks, marching and chanting in the rain. What do they want? Safe schools! When do they want them? Now! Other parents—and it could be the same ones from the picket line—are watching their children loaf about 6
the house, asking for snacks and screen time, and it all feels a lot like 2020. “The uncertainty is the hardest part,” said one mom, trying to decide if she could cobble together enough playdates for her elementary-aged children this week while she works from home or she’d have to cough up $375 for five days of sports camp. The teachers’ union and Portland Public Schools have been bargaining for 10 months, with teachers working under an expired contract since June. The two sides remain about
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
$200 million apart in their proposals, which chiefly differ on wages, class-size caps, and planning time. With emotions running high for PPS families, we asked, “What are you furious about?” Here’s what a few parents are most angry about, rated on a heat index from one to three chile peppers. R AC H E L S A S L OW.
HANNA NEUSCHWANDER, PARENT AT SUNNYSIDE ENVIRONMENTAL SCHOOL PPS communications Neuschwander did not appreciate the school district’s “editorializing” emails to parents in mid-September. “There was just something about the angle of those communications that totally radicalized me. I’m organizing strike stuff at my school now.”
School infrastructure During a June heat wave, her then-third grader’s room exceeded 90 degrees. Children suffered signs of heat exhaustion, includ-
ing nausea and lethargy. The teacher brought in ice cubes for students, parents donated fans, and the class moved to the auditorium. “I think it’s very reasonable for teachers to be flagging this as unsafe and unacceptable learning conditions.”
do,” she says.
Disrespect for teachers “They’re expected to suck it up for the sake of our kids,” von Geldern says. “How long do we expect people to take on more and not be compensated fairly? It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Bargaining breaks PPS and PAT did not bargain for the first two days of the strike. “If we have kids out of school, there should not be a day that anyone is allowed to not be sitting at the table. Why was that even possible?”
MAYA PUEO VON GELDERN, PARENT AT VERNON K-8 SCHOOL Class sizes Von Geldern, the Vernon PTA’s vice president of communications, says ballooning class sizes have taxed even the most veteran teachers. “When a kid is dysregulated in a class of 33 and there’s no one there to help, there’s nothing that teacher can
State government “I’m upset that the day before the strike, [Gov. Tina] Kotek chimes in to plead with the teachers to stay at the bargaining table,” von Geldern says. “They’ve been there for 10 months! She wants them to stay at the table, but she needs to get the state also at the table.” Von Geldern thinks the state should take a hard look at the largest kicker tax credit in state history and use it to better fund education.
ERIC HAPPEL, PARENT AT LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL Students missing school “First and foremost, my concern
CHASING GHOSTS
HIKING GUIDE anybody,” he says. “I was just being dumb. I thought I was a cat burglar.” Convictions for theft and drug possession followed, most recently in 2010, which continue to haunt him to this day. After he went back to school for a degree in electrical engineering, he says, prospective employers balked at his criminal record. He now earns $15 an hour working for Avis Car Rental. Wiping his record would have cost him thousands of dollars he didn’t have. Then, in 2022, a counselor at his methadone clinic told him about a new law that eliminated those fees, and directed LaFave to Portland Community College, which was running a free legal clinic out of its North Portland campus. In September 2022, LaFave walked in. Volunteers took his fingerprints and walked him through the process. Using specialized software developed by a team of volunteer coders, they extracted a list of his eligible charges from state court databases. The entire process takes less than an hour. But the wait in Multnomah County’s court system has taken 14 months, and counting. LaFave’s initial excitement has given way to frustration. His dozen or so charges in Clackamas and Washington counties have long been “set aside,” but his four felonies in Multnomah County stubbornly remain. “I can’t wait until it’s cleared,” he says. “We’ve paid the price and earned the chance to rejoin society.”
is for the kids that are missing school,” he says. “I feel that is not on the front line of anybody’s thoughts anymore.”
State government Happel used the phrase “utter disgust” three times when talking about the letter 16 state lawmakers wrote to the Portland School Board last week warning that they would not appropriate state money to settle the strike. “What they’re really doing is trying to point their finger away from themselves,” he says. “Reality check: The state has underfunded education for years.”
Third-party mediation PPS and PAT would benefit from making actual eye contact, Happel says, rather than bargaining through a mediator. “They don’t even talk to each other,” he says. “They are teaching students that the best way to solve a problem is to not solve it directly but to be passive-aggressive about it. Horrible.”
Stormwater Shitstorm The return of a “rain tax” has the owners of floating homes raising hell. To hear the city of Portland tell it, proposed changes to how citizens pay to deal with stormwater are going to be heralded because a lot of people are going to pay less. People who live in floating homes have another take. They call the changes a “rain tax.” There are only about 650 floating homes in Portland, but their opposition is turning a ho-hum “rate case,” as these processes are known, into a battleground. If you pay a water bill in Portland, you pay to keep the rain that falls on roofs, driveways and streets from overflowing our sewers and running into our rivers. That’s important because stormwater picks up filth and chemicals as it runs down these non-permeable surfaces. The city’s Bureau of Environmental Services wants to change the formula for stormwater. Right now, residents are billed about the same, regardless of the size of solid surfaces on their properties. Under the new formula, people in smaller dwellings would pay less. BES also wants to charge more for stormwater and less for sewer because the cost of coping with stormwater has risen, thanks to massive projects like the Big Pipe. One small plank in the new plan proposes charging owners of floating homes for the stormwater that runs off their roofs and overriver walkways into the river, even though it takes no city infrastructure to get the water from roof to river. The plan has water dwellers up in arms. “Stormwater is all about water that can’t soak into the earth,” says Tim Gorman, 61, whose home floats in the Columbia just east of the Interstate Bridge. “We pay stormwater fees because we have parking lots. Why would someone charge me a tax for rain that hits my roof and hits the water?” Gorman, who bought his house in July 2020, says his
Stormwater Charges Per Month Source: Bureau of Environmental Services
NOW
PROPOSED
CHANGE
AVERAGE ONLAND HOME $79.47
$78.37
-1.38%
HOME AT BRIDGETON HARBOR MOORAGE
$20
900%
$2
monthly stormwater bill is going to rise to $20 a month from $2, a tenfold increase (see chart above). That may not sound like a lot, but floating-homeowner George Whitney says many of his neighbors aren’t exactly living Jimmy Buffett’s best life. He paid $210,000 for his one-bedroom, one-bath house in October 2020, far less than even one-bedroom apartments sell for now. “There are a lot of people on Social Security out here,” Whitney, 56, says. The new stormwater rates were supposed to go before the City Council on Oct. 18. Gorman and other water dwellers met with Commissioner Mingus Mapps, who oversees BES, on Oct. 6. Soon after, the rate case disappeared from the council agenda. It was rescheduled for Nov. 8, but Mapps removed it again Friday to “ensure that stakeholders are adequately heard,” a Mapps spokesman says.
" Why would someone charge me a tax for rain that hits my roof and hits the water?" The city says floating homes should pay more in part because projects like the Big Pipe benefit them, too, in terms of flood control beyond their houses. “The bill is for services like making sure the grocery store stays open and isn’t flooded,” BES program manager Aaron Abrams says. BES has tried to boost stormwater fees for boat people before. Robin Smith, 65, remembers it. She has lived at Tomahawk Island Moorage for 13 years. Tomahawk has a homeowners association that charges dues and pays such fees
from a pool of money. In 2015, the city started charging her HOA for stormwater coming off the 72 roofs in her community. The change meant Tomahawk would have to pay another $20,000. “When your budget is $200,000, that’s a lot of money,” Smith recalls. River dwellers protested, as did Vigor Industrial, which repairs ships at a vast dry dock on the Willamette River. Vigor’s argument turned on the definition of an “impervious area” as one that didn’t let stormwater percolate into the ground, according to BES. If a structure is over the water, there is no ground for water to percolate into, Vigor argued. A code hearings officer agreed. BES tried to revise the definition, but in 2018, three years after the fight began, the City Council declined to vote on it. Instead, it instructed BES to conduct a rate study. In the meantime, the council said, overwater structures would be exempt. BES got on with the rate study, paying a company called Galardi Rothstein Group $350,000. The firm made five recommendations, including cutting rates for people who live in smaller dwellings, charging less for sewer and more for stormwater, and billing floating homes for their roofs and walkways. Smith says she was surprised that the “rain tax” was back. Owners of floating homes already pay stormwater charges on their parking lot, which holds 100 cars. “A lot of people who live on our moorage are women who live alone,” she said. “When you’re on a fixed income, fees like this matter.”
FUEL FOSSILS The new owner of a gas station dreams of electric vehicle charging. ADDRESS: 7991 SW Capitol Highway YEAR BUILT: 1974 SQUARE FOOTAGE: 1,200 MARKET VALUE: $450,020 OWNER: SMART VENTURES LLC HOW LONG IT’S BEEN EMPTY: 5 years WHY IT’S EMPTY: Soil contamination Known by neighbors for its skilled mechanics and surprisingly expensive gas, Handy Andy’s auto repair shop was a Multnomah Village fixture for decades. “When gas went to $4 a gallon, he was already at five,” recalls a befuddled neighbor, Bill Gallagher. But when Andy Anderegg died in 2018, the business had fallen deeply in debt. His children were forced to sell it off. It wasn’t easy. Oil from leaking storage tanks had contaminated the dirt under the nearly century-old service station, and gas had leaked into the basements of nearby homes. One potential buyer, interested in turning the site into an apartment complex, was reportedly quoted $500,000 for cleanup alone. Then, in 2021, Barbara Butaeva stumbled upon the property. She needed storage space for her residential remodeling business, and she knew a thing or two about navigating the convoluted city and state permitting process. Butaeva’s company purchased the lot for a bargain, $350,000, and hired a contractor to drain the old storage tanks and remove the contaminated dirt. Now, two years and $200,000 in environmental cleanup later, she still hasn’t broken ground on a planned remodel of the building, which she hopes to eventually turn into a showroom for her business—or perhaps a neighborhood pub. She dreams of installing an electric vehicle charging station and maybe some food carts in the parking lot. But, first, she has to find money to fix the leaking roof. And repeated break-ins haven’t helped. Someone broke the glass garage door and stole all the tools inside, she says. The windows are now boarded up and scrawled with graffiti. Last year, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality gave her efforts a thumbs up: an official “no further action is required” letter arrived in the mail. Now, she has to get city approval for her remodel. “I’m trying to do my best,” she says. “Permitting in Portland takes a long time.” L U C A S M A N F I E L D . Every week, WW examines one mysteriously vacant property in the city of Portland, explains why it’s empty, and considers what might arrive there next. Send addresses to newstips@wweek.com.
ANTHONY EFFINGER.
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NEWS MICHAEL RAINES
Loar says. “I’m hoping they double down and focus on what they have.” A Sortis Holdings spokesperson declined to respond to specific questions about Mike Loar’s building in Hollywood or the lawsuits, instead issuing a statement. “Our beloved local venues employ over 1,500 individuals, providing essential benefits and allowing them to contribute to Portland’s vibrancy,” Sortis said. “However, sensationalist news undermines this progress, adding stress and jeopardizing our recovery, making it harder to fulfill our commitments and support our partners.” The name Sortis Holdings may not register for most Portlanders. But in addition to Bamboo, Sizzle Pie and Rudy’s, Sortis owns restaurants such as Ava Gene’s, Tusk, Cicoria, See See Motor Coffee and, through an affiliate, Portland’s Ace Hotel. For the past three years, Brenneke, Sortis’ executive chairman, has assembled a collection of consumer-facing businesses as the region recovers from the pandemic (Sortis has extensive holdings in Seattle as well). But the recent lawsuits suggest Sortis’ plan may not be working. As recently as Nov. 2, a contractor
of 2021, Brenneke reorganized his companies and continued buying. Ken Batali, a Seattle-area restaurant consultant who also works in Portland, says the Sortis model— bringing service businesses like restaurants, coffee shops and barbershops under one roof—holds some appeal for investors. “On paper, it’s great,” Batali says. “The businesses share accounting and other back office services. The risk is, you have your hands in a multitude of businesses and it’s hard to be an expert in all of them.” Sortis announced its biggest acquisition in January, when it said it was paying $85 million cash for Ace Group International, which included Ace hotels in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Kyoto, Sydney and other cities. “The Sortis platform is rooted in innovation, purpose, and impact, and aims to foster consumer brands that are at the forefront of culture,” Brenneke said in a statement at the time. Throughout 2023, as the Business Journal reported, Sortis and the Ace chain’s owners sparred over the terms of their deal in Delaware court. The first local public record suggesting that Sortis’ strategy might not be working came in September, as part of a lawsuit filed in Mult-
“We are not a faceless corporation but a collective of original owners and entrepreneurs.” PIZZA PARTY: Sortis Holdings owns one of Portland’s best places to get a slice.
All Sizzle
What the struggles of a holding company mean for the popular brands it bought, including Bamboo Sushi and Sizzle Pie. BY NIGEL JAQUISS njaquiss@wweek.com
In July 2022, Portland food blogger Meg Cotner broke some news: Water Avenue Coffee, the highly touted, independent Portland roaster, would open a shop in a storefront at 4615 NE Sandy Blvd. “They posted a barista job listing on Poached about a couple of weeks ago, so they are definitely getting closer to opening,” Cotner wrote. “Water Avenue is one of my favorite cafes in Portland. Their coffee is delicious.” 8
Sixteen months later, faded butcher paper still covers the windows. The landlord isn’t thrilled with the lack of progress. “Around Sept. 20, 2022, things came to a complete stop,” says Mike Loar, whose family owns the building. Worse, Loar says Water Avenue’s parent company, Portland-based Sortis Holdings, failed to pay rent for October. “I am definitely concerned,” Loar says. “The thing that bothers me is the lack of communication on the lease. I’ve sent two emails to Sortis
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and I’ve gotten nothing back.” Cotner’s excitement about Water Avenue Coffee moving into Hollywood mirrors the way many Portlanders feel about the companies Sortis owns: Bamboo Sushi, Sizzle Pie, Rudy’s Barbershops, and other pillars of local indie culture. Many signature Portland institutions are no longer independently owned. Instead, they are part of a stable of brands acquired over the past three years by Sortis Holdings, led by Paul Brenneke. As WW, The Oregonian and the Portland Business Journal reported last week, Sortis faces the collapse of a hotel deal the company said was key to its future, and a spate of new lawsuits for unpaid bills and the alleged wrongful termination of a top manager. Patrons of Sortis-owned businesses now wonder about the fate of treasured brands. And landlords wonder whether they’ll get paid. “I hold no ill will against them. I’m hoping it all works out for the best,”
sued a Sortis affiliate in Multnomah County Circuit Court, alleging unpaid bills for the buildout of a Sizzle Pie restaurant. Records show it’s the fourth lawsuit filed against Sortis or an affiliate since Sept. 15. On Nov. 3, the Portland Business Journal reported that Sortis’ acquisition of the boutique hotel chain Ace Group International, announced in January, had failed after litigation with the seller. Sortis told the Business Journal it was laying off 30 employees (2% of its workforce) but would continue stronger than ever. Brenneke is a scion of a Portland real estate family and, prior to founding Sortis, a longtime commercial real estate developer. Among his top executives at Sortis are chief financial officer Ryan Smith, a former senior Nike finance manager, and Sortis’ culinary chief, the chef and cookbook author Joshua McFadden. (McFadden founded Portland’s Submarine Hospitality group, which includes the Portland restaurants Tusk, Ava Gene’s and Cicoria.) Brenneke-led funds took advantage of the pandemic, investing in Blue Star Donuts and acquiring Bamboo Sushi’s parent, the Sustainable Restaurant Company. At the end
nomah County Circuit Court by Michelle Andersen, who says she ran Bamboo Sushi for Sortis. In legal filings, Andersen explained the circumstances behind her wrongful termination claim. (Sortis told The Oregonian the lawsuit lacks merit.) Andersen alleges she built Bamboo into “the largest asset and revenue source on Sortis’ consolidated financial statements.” Sortis took good care of her, promised her stock worth about $1.5 million, and paid her a salary of $325,000 with the expectation of a 40% bonus, she says. But in June 2023, Andersen alleges in her lawsuit, Brenneke told her she had to go, attributing the decision to overexpansion in the coffee business, in which she was also involved. Andersen further claims in the lawsuit Brenneke told her he could not afford to pay her severance of six months’ salary and 12 months’ health insurance. Andersen also claims Sortis never paid her the $1.5 million in stock she was promised. Andersen’s lawsuit was followed by three subsequent, unrelated lawsuits and one contractor’s lien in Multnomah County, all of which would appear to support Andersen’s contention that Sortis is struggling.
MICHAEL RAINES
GIVE US YOUR LIST. WE’LL GIVE YOU YOUR WEEKENDS BACK.
CATCHING FISH: Bamboo Sushi operates six metro-area locations.
On Oct. 6, a company called Hancock PDX filed a lawsuit in Multnomah County, alleging that Coffee Business LLC, a Sortis affiliate whose lease the parent company guaranteed, stopped paying its $25,000 monthly rent after July. That triggered a default, and Hancock says the lease required Coffee Business LLC to pay abated rent, penalties and other costs totaling about $260,000. (Sortis told The Oregonian it has resolved that dispute.) On Oct. 27, a company called Thirteenth Avenue LLC filed suit in Multnomah County against Sortis Barbershops LLC, seeking to evict Rudy’s Barbershop in Sellwood for alleged nonpayment of rent. (A hearing on that is scheduled Nov. 15.) On Oct. 30, Green Gables Design and Restoration Inc. filed a contractor’s lien against Sortis Ace PDX RE LLC, which owns the Ace Hotel, with the Multnomah County recorder’s office, seeking $75,518 for work at the hotel on Southwest Harvey Milk Street. In the lawsuit filed Nov. 2, a firm called Bartel Contracting sued Sortis Holdings and a Sortis affiliate called Nice Chip LLC. The Sortis affiliate hired Bartel to build out a Sizzle Pie pizza restaurant in Hillsboro this summer. When the job was finished in July, the lawsuit alleges, Sortis/Nice Chip asked Bartel to extend payment terms. In an agreement attached to the lawsuit and signed by Brenneke, Sortis agreed to pay the full amount by Sept. 30—including interest at a steep 12%. Brenneke also agreed to pay an extra 10% if his company didn’t meet the Sept. 30 payment date. Sortis allegedly missed that deadline and Bartel is now suing for $239,000. It’s not uncommon for a company to pay a bill a little late. But Sortis’ problems may be bigger than that. The Business Journal noted that Sortis’ financial condition was an issue in the litigation in the failed Ace Hotels acquisition: “Ace’s owners argued Sortis Holdings ‘did not have sufficient cash on hand to tender the closing date payment.’ Meanwhile, Sortis Holdings claimed the owners
had cut a side deal with a separate company that imperiled the acquisition’s long-term success.” Sortis Holdings’ stock, which trades over the counter, has slumped to 25 cents a share, down from $1.98 in January. Out-of-town investors have regularly snapped up Portland brands, including Dave’s Killer Bread, Stumptown Coffee and Voodoo Doughnut. What’s different with Sortis is that it’s based here. Although all involved parties generally say that corporate ownership won’t change anything, that’s hard to ensure. Scott Gilkey, a Northwest restaurant consultant, says transitioning from chef or founder ownership to investor ownership is hard to pull off. “There’s always something lost,” Gilkey says, “because people who are in it for a financial return don’t have the same passion as somebody who built the business themselves.” Consolidation can go wrong. In 2019, Seattle-based Restaurants Unlimited, which owned 35 restaurants in six Western states, including the Portland City Grill, Henry’s Tavern and Stanford’s locally, went bankrupt. A national operator, Landry’s, bought the chain’s assets. Portland City Grill still spins atop the U.S. Tower, but Stanford’s at Lloyd Center and Henry’s in the Pearl are dark. Sortis says it is in fine shape and will only grow stronger. “We’re nearing a sustainable model, after a voluntary withdrawal from our agreement to purchase the Ace brand, that promises more jobs and benefits in our community,” Sortis said. “We are not a faceless corporation but a collective of original owners and entrepreneurs committed to aiding the post-pandemic recovery of Portland’s struggling hospitality and culinary sector. The depiction of us as a corporate entity has negative repercussions for those who fear for their jobs due to such narratives.” Meg Cotner hopes Sortis succeeds: “I’m still excited about the idea of Water Avenue Coffee opening in Hollywood.”
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The Itsy-Bitsy Project The county’s big plans to fund universal preschool have so far produced pint-sized results. BY S O P H I E P E E L s p e e l @ w w e e k . c o m
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utside a yellow house on Southeast 142nd Avenue, 10 children in yellow, blue and pink rain jackets gambol through a large backyard adorned with a giant plastic airplane, multicolored slides and—the hottest attraction of the month—a growing hole that they take turns digging with a plastic trowel. None of the families who send their tots to Melody’s Munchkins pay a dime. For these families—all of whom are low-income and most families of color—the impact of free preschool is enormous. “The stability,” says Melody Norris, who owns Melody’s Munchkins, “is just amazing.” That was the promise of Preschool for All, the tax on high-income earners that Multnomah County voters passed in the fall of 2020. The pledge? To fund a program that within a decade would provide free preschool to every family living in the county that might want it. The initiative, which is expected to generate $152 million in tax revenue this year and was championed by Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson while she was still a county commissioner, promised to create 12,000 new publicly funded preschool seats by 2030. But what’s happening at Melody’s Munchkins is also a warning about the long-term prospects of Preschool for All. The 10 preschool spots at Melody Munchkins existed before the measure’s passage. In other words, the county didn’t create Melody’s Munchkins; it merely subsidized an existing preschool. To the families receiving the free child care, it’s wonderful. But for families waiting their turn, the distinction matters quite a bit. A WW review of the program’s spending raises questions whether the county is building enough new capacity to scale up Preschool for All so that it serves, well, all.
BRIAN BROSE
In its official planning report in July 2020, the program said it would create 1,500 to 2,000 new publicly funded seats by the 2023-24 school year. Thanks in part to the pandemic, it’s financed only 1,200. More crucially, the county has in two years created only 507 entirely new preschool seats that didn’t exist before the tax. A WW review of county budget documents, as well as interviews with key figures, shows that Preschool for All, just like the county’s share of Metro’s massive homeless services measure, has vastly underspent its budget. It’s created few seats that didn’t exist before the measure and has failed to spend dollars on the most stubborn problems that the program promised to address. Vega Pederson, who is under duress these days for the county’s flagging response to homelessness, disputes the idea that the county is falling behind on her signature achievement. “Anybody who says that we’re not doing hard work doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” Vega Pederson tells WW. “As we bring more providers into our system, there’s going to be a multiplying effect of them being able to expand their classrooms.” In truth, there’s been little external oversight of Preschool for All, so all the public can rely on is information the county chooses to divulge. But spending reports, obtained through a public records request, show that the county spent only half of what it budgeted for the program last year. And the underspending? It’s in the areas most needed to create new capacity. Most notable: The program spent none of the $8 million the county set aside for creating entirely new preschool seats. “Everybody has an interest in making sure the public sector services are delivered effectively and efficiently,” says local economist Joe Cor-
tright, who adds that the county’s struggle to spend its tax dollars is a recurrent theme. “This is something that people should be concerned about, and it’s something the county ought to be very responsive to.”
WHAT DID THE MEASURE PROMISE?
In 2018, Vega Pederson had big plans, both for herself and for county parents. As a county commissioner from East Portland’s low-income Hazelwood neighborhood, she came to office as a champion for the county’s have-nots, and she received steady support from the nonprofits that provide a social safety net. Vega Pederson, now 48, was in her second year as county commissioner but was already eyeing a run for county chair. She needed a signature initiative, and she set her sights on a shiny object: universal preschool. Portland’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America had proffered a similar idea, and Vega Pederson wrangled it into the measure that appeared on county ballots that November. “For a commissioner to have done really deep community work, to be building a program that’s going to be a game changer, and doing it as a commissioner and not as a chair,” Vega Pederson reflected recently, “that was a really big thing.” In the fall of 2020, Multnomah County voters approved Measure 26-214 by almost 2 to 1, agreeing to tax high-income earners so every 3- and 4-year-old in the county could attend preschool for free within a decade. It wasn’t a novel idea. Other blue cities (New York City and Washington, D.C.) had implemented similar programs, and both had enjoyed accolades—but they weren’t funded by an income tax. Multnomah County’s premise was progressive:
STABILITY: Melody Norris hugs a preschooler at one of three home-based preschools she owns.
tax 1.5% of taxable income over $200,000 for joint filers ($125,000 for single filers) with another 1.5% on income over $400,000 for joint filers ($250,000 for single filers). With that money, the county would create new preschool classrooms, subsidize existing ones, offer teachers higher pay (between $19.91 and $37 an hour), and expand the system by adding 12,000 “publicly funded” preschool slots by the year 2030, according to county officials. Unlike a bond or levy, there was no expiration date on the tax—it is never supposed to end. The program would in the first couple of years prioritize families of color, low-income families, and children with developmental disabilities. Perhaps most importantly, the program would remove one of the biggest barriers to wealth creation for working moms: lack of child care. “Parents who are unable to afford preschool aren’t able to work as much as they’d like to, and the U.S. has been falling behind in women’s labor force participation,” says Dr. Mary King, a professor emerita of economics at Portland State University who researches early childhood services. “When women don’t work, we end up with higher poverty rates for older women. This program will make a big difference.” The program also promised to stabilize an extremely unstable industry. Over time, money raised by the tax would combat the two biggest hurdles faced by the early childhood services industry: a lack of teachers and a shortage of physical classroom space.
WHERE WAS THE MONEY SPENT?
Multnomah County started collecting the tax in 2021. Like fishermen who luck into a Pacific school of king salmon, officials could barely be-
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“ Anybody who says that we’re not doing hard work doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” For a decade, Norris had run the 142nd Avenue classroom on a razor-thin margin, repeatedly shedding teachers as they sought higher-paying jobs elsewhere. About half of Norris’ families paid out of pocket. The others received a monthly state stipend of $1,000 to pay for preschool. Even the families paying privately, though, Norris says, “were holding on by a thread.” Preschool for All changed all that. “I thought it was amazing that preschoolers were going to get to go to school for free,” Norris says. “I saw the benefits of the program and I said, ‘I’m on it.’” Norris is now paid between $15,600 and $21,840 per child per year by Preschool for All. All 30 slots are funded by the program. Norris upped the hourly wage for her 20 aides and teachers to between $24 and $28, plus benefits, reducing the temptation to jump ship. Small, private preschools are what the county pledged to make its top priority. Backers said in campaign materials that the measure didn’t want to funnel most of its money 12
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into “large programs—such as school districts and large centers—that are easier to scale than small centers and home-based settings,” the campaign wrote. They feared such an approach wouldn’t allow small, BIPOC-run preschools to receive adequate funding. Yet $4.7 million of the first year’s budget went to large child care or community centers. Another $2 million of the program’s first-year budget went to classrooms in the David Douglas, Portland and Parkrose school districts, documents show. Portland Public Schools hosts 120 of the 507 entirely new preschool seats the program created in its first two years. David Douglas hosts 90 of them. Over half of the seats that didn’t exist before Preschool for All were housed in school districts, which backers said they wished to avoid. Lisa Rau, a senior researcher at the social policy research firm MEF Associates, says seeking volume in the first few years makes sense. “You get the numbers by putting money at schools that already have the infrastructure,” Rau says. Economics professor John Gallup at PSU agrees. “It makes sense to do the easy stuff first,” Gallup
says. There are also huge overhead costs. In the first year, $5.7 million went to the city of Portland for tax collection; that will be an ongoing expense, costing no more than $6.4 million annually. (For comparison, Metro paid the city $9.3 million last year to collect its homeless tax across three counties.) The county spent $5 million internally to administer the program, including payroll for 18 program staff. To onlookers, such high overhead is alarming. “The costs are extraordinary,” says PSU professor emeritus of real estate Gerry Mildner.
IS THE PROGRAM ON PACE TO MEET ITS GOALS? BIG MOVES: Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson calls Preschool for All her greatest accomplishment.
What the measure has not done, data shows, is meaningfully expand the preschool system’s capacity. More than half of the Preschool for All-funded seats existed before the tax, just like the ones Norris runs. Some observers say that’s to be expected with a new program: It will pick the low-hanging fruit CONTINUED ON PAGE 14
JOSEPH BLAKE JR.
lieve what they hauled in. In its first year of tax collection, Preschool for All raked in $68 million more than it had projected, bringing the first-year total to $187 million. In its second year, the tax brought in $199 million. County economist Jeff Renfro told officials this spring that the surplus was largely due to higher-than-expected capital gains, or revenue made from selling bonds, stocks or property. Remarkably, the county has never previously disclosed how the first-year dollars were spent, only how they’d been budgeted. On Oct. 3, county officials shared documents with WW that revealed a surprise: Preschool for All underspent its first-year budget by almost half. The county budgeted $59 million in its first year and only spent $30 million, according to the figures. Of that spending, the records revealed, 23 preschools similar to Melody’s Munchkins, in that they were home-based small businesses, received a total of $8.8 million. Those businesses include success stories. Melody Norris runs two other homes just like the Melody’s Munchkins preschool on 142nd. Across all three homes, she serves 30 low-income preschoolers. (A fourth preschool Norris just opened this year is located in a converted shed in the Corbett woods.)
Pay Bump Preschool for All threatens to siphon teachers and classrooms from Head Start programs. Portland in 2023 is a worker’s economy. Because employers are desperate for workers, job searchers have their pick—and the child care industry is no exception. Enter into this market Preschool for All, a new program that requires its providers to pay teachers between $19.91 and $37 an hour. (The average Oregon child care worker is paid $13.39 an hour.) Preschool for All proponents knew that handsome pay was necessary to create a robust and stable preschool system. But it also creates a system where Preschool for All-funded classrooms are a temptation for teachers who already have jobs—especially those working for publicly funded programs that serve extremely poor families, like Head Start. Indeed, Head Start is a federal program that serves the poorest families. To qualify for Oregon Head Start, a family of four must make $30,000 or less per year. A similar state-funded program called Preschool Promise serves families living at or below 200% of the poverty line. Preschool for All intends to serve the middle swath of families: families not poor enough to qualify for Head Start, but too poor to pay—at least comfortably—for private preschool. In the program’s first year, 82% of the program’s preschoolers came from families who made 350% or less of the federal poverty level, which amounts to $105,000 annually for a family of four. The concern is that a program serving families with modest incomes could siphon classrooms and teachers from programs serving the poorest families. Four Head Start programs operate in Multnomah County. WW spoke to the leaders of all four. Three of those leaders said Preschool for All had no negative impact on their program. In fact, for some, it had helped. But in Gresham, Dr. Hilda Pena-Alfaro tells a different tale. Pena-Alfaro is the director of the Head Start program at Mt. Hood Community College. “The intent of the program was so good. But the impact is that we’re competing,” Pena-Alfaro said in a September interview with WW. “And we shouldn’t compete. We have the same goal.” Pena-Alfaro offered an example: Head Start for years leased five classrooms in the David Douglas School District to serve about 100 preschoolers. But this spring, the school district said it would be taking those classrooms back—David Douglas would receive $2.1 million from Preschool for All to support seven classrooms and 126 preschoolers. The school district disputes Pena-Alfaro’s characterization. “David Douglas did not take any classrooms away from Head Start,” says spokeswoman Aidé Juárez Valerio. “Head Start was unable to staff the five classrooms returning from the pandemic due to staffing shortages.” Head Start has struggled to retain teachers. This year, Pena-Alfaro’s program has funding for 885 kids but only has enough teachers to serve 441. Pena-Alfaro and Nancy Perin, executive
director of the Oregon Head Start Association, said in the September interview that a number of their teachers left for better pay at Preschool for All. A letter written by Head Start teachers this spring would suggest there is, indeed, a temptation. “We love our job and the work we do, but we need to support our families and ourselves,” an unspecified number of teachers wrote to Head Start leaders in June, one week after attending an early childhood learning conference where Preschool for All set up a booth advertising teacher salaries. “We hope that MHCC Head Start values its employees like the Preschool for All Program does,” they wrote. “We are afraid our co-workers will continue to leave us and we will struggle even more so to provide the high-quality care we strive to give our kids and families.” After the WW interview with Pena-Alfaro and Perin, Mt. Hood Community College administrators stepped in to take over communications—and appeared to backtrack. The administrators said they “were able to move the families” who had been served by the David Douglas classrooms “to other locations.” One possible reason why: The college itself is a major Preschool for All contractor. In the program’s first fiscal year, MHCC was granted $4.4 million (it spent only $2.4 million of that); this year, it’s budgeted to receive $4.7 million. College administrators also wrote that they “have no data” linking the Head Start staffing shortages to Preschool for All. County spokesman Ryan Yambra wrote, “Since those remarks, Mt. Hood leadership has apologized to the county for mischaracterizing the current situation.” Perin says she stands by her statements about Preschool for All wooing away Head Start teachers. “Competition for teachers is real,” Perin says, adding that “Preschool for All and Head Start do compete for the same children.” Vega Pederson says she has not spoken with any Head Start directors since the start of the program about its possible effects. SOPHIE PEEL .
“ The intent of the program was so good. But the impact is that we’re competing.”
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PHOTOS BY BRIAN BROSE
Counting Is Hard Multnomah County said it provided 1,400 preschool seats this year. It only funded 1,200 of those. Multnomah County has said for months that Preschool for All created 1,400 new publicly funded seats this school year. But upon questioning by WW, the county conceded it actually funded only 1,200 of those seats. Seven classrooms in East Portland offer publicly funded preschool to kids with special needs, and offer very cheap preschool rates (at most $32 a month) for families who want to send their neurotypical kids to an integrated classroom that includes children with special needs. Jeanett Sealy, the program director of these Multnomah Early Childhood Program classrooms, says the preschool landscape has shifted in recent years—due to COVID-19 and school districts adding classrooms (mostly through Preschool for All)—making it harder for her program to find families who want half-day slots for their neurotypical kids. It was, in simple terms, a matter of competition, although Sealy doesn’t describe it that way. So this year, MECP and Preschool for All forged a deal: The county would find 200 neurotypical kids to place in Sealy’s classrooms—but it wouldn’t pay for those slots. Instead, a reserve fund built up from years of parents’ monthly fees to MECP would fund the 200 seats this year. But the county still included those 200 seats— which existed prior to Preschool for All and weren’t funded by the program—among the 1,400 publicly funded seats that PFA claimed to have created this year. So although PFA funded only 1,200 seats this year, county officials did not divulge that fact until WW pressed them. The county defends its accounting. “Preschool for All is directly funding 1,200 of its 1,400 slots this year, but we think that’s missing the point,” county spokesman Ryan Yambra says. “The program committed to almost 1,400 slots this year and that’s what they delivered. The MECP slots are PFA slots. They were embedded within the PFA family application system, and we have the same expectations of MECP with these slots as we do with all our other slots.” However, MECP’s Sealy tells WW, only 143 of the 200 slots set aside for Preschool for All kids are currently occupied. Fifty-seven of the slots that the county agreed to fill remain vacant. It’s unclear whether the county knew about these vacancies before WW pointed them out. “In the summer, the county and MECP agreed that any unfilled slots would be returned beginning Nov. 1,” Yambra says. “We anticipate returning just under 60 slots.… The county was aware that vacancies would likely play a role in this partnership from the beginning.” Next year, the county says, it intends to fund all 200 of those slots. (They will also turn into full-day slots.) The county’s figures for how many Preschool for All seats were new also shifted dramatically as WW inched closer to publication. For four weeks, the county told WW it had created 350 entirely new seats. Five days before publication, that number changed to 435. Two days before publication, and one day after a searing Oregonian story about Vega Pederson’s fraught first 10 months in office, the county upped that number again, this time to 507. The county says the first miscalculation was due to an incomplete pull of data. The second, it says, was a matter of human error. “Now that we’ve done a more thorough and comprehensive double-check of our data and calculations,” Yambra says, “we’re confident what we share today is accurate information.” S O P H I E P E E L . 14
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first while it builds capacity. “It’s a silly sort of thing to think is happening too slowly. It’s a brand-new program and they’re being cautious in terms of how they expand, which is smart,” says King, the PSU economics professor. “We don’t just have empty spaces waiting for unemployed people to move into who are ready to provide preschool.” Preschool for All promises to create 12,000 publicly funded slots by 2030, on top of the estimated 3,000 publicly funded slots that already exist. But the county says it doesn’t know just how many of those 12,000 seats must be entirely new preschool seats, meaning they didn’t exist prior to the tax. But a 2018 legislative report by the measure’s backers does offer an estimate of how much new capacity must be added: between 260 and 580 new classrooms and 2,300 teachers. That means Multnomah County will need to add at least 43 new classrooms each year over the next six years to meet its goal for 2030. Only 18 of the 83 classrooms in which Preschool for All is currently funding slots are entirely new. Vega Pederson calls the new seats created in two years a “huge win.” (At the time, Vega Pederson thought the number was 350; see “Counting Is Hard,” at left.) The pace, she says, will only speed up from here. “We have 10 years to get to universal access,” Vega Pederson says. “As we bring more providers into our system, there’s going to be a multiplying effect of them being able to expand their classrooms.”
WHERE DIDN’T IT SPEND?
Preschool for All underspent its first-year budget by $29 million—and particularly failed to spend on building new facilities and recruiting a workforce. The program budgeted $8 million in its first year to what it called a “Facilities Fund”: money that existing providers could use to expand the number of preschool seats, either by expanding existing space or finding entirely new spaces. Yet the program spent not a single dollar of the $8 million Facilities Fund in its first year. Instead, it rolled over the entire fund into the current fiscal year. Creating new classrooms and expanding existing ones is the first of two basic charges the program is tasked with to achieve universality by 2030. “Throwing money at the problem directly through subsidies isn’t going to solve the lack of access and space,” Rau says. “You have to open up doors around space and access.” Economics professor Gallup says it’s not “a good idea for them to push the money out the
door quickly if the conditions are not right for them yet,” but adds that “it may be an indication that they’re falling behind.” The program also failed to spend $5 million the county had budgeted in its first year to develop a preschool teacher pipeline. A lack of workforce is the other fundamental crisis the child care industry faces: The number of early child care providers, according to state economic estimates, shrank from 1,200 to 800 in the first two years of the pandemic. “We are struggling to bring people into this industry, despite the wage,” says Preschool for All director Leslee Barnes. “Fast food was paying $20 an hour, and fast food isn’t going to ask you to do all these things. We’re trying to figure out what will bring people back.” Vega Pederson says it’s unfair to view the county’s underspending on facilities and workforce as a failure. “The stubborn things are stubborn for a reason. To expect us to solve this problem in the first two years, that’s not a very realistic statement,” Vega Pederson tells WW. “We’re creating the program from scratch.” Other places the program underspent or failed to spend in its first year: professional development opportunities for pilot preschools and coaching for pilot classrooms. In other words, the program failed to spend money to break down the two barriers it needed to overcome most to reach universality. Multnomah County Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards says she’s unhappy with the underspending, which is new information to her. “The program has clearly fallen short of expec-
tations in these two critical areas,” Brim-Edwards says. “With these resources, I and many in the community expect that there would be many new opportunities for our youngest learners.”
WHAT’S NEXT?
Jeff Renfro is the longtime economist for Multnomah County. He has all the attributes of a Portland dad: He transports his children by cargo bike, prefers to wear plaid and, like any good numbers nerd, twinkles when he sits in front of the board of commissioners and explains PowerPoint graphs. When voters passed the Preschool for All measure in November 2020, Renfro tacked on another task to his job duties: tracking the whereabouts and business dealings of the 100 richest taxpayers in Portland. That’s because fewer than 100 taxpayers in Portland account for 17% of the $152 million raised annually by the Preschool for All tax. At a Feb. 7 briefing of the board of commissioners, Renfro said he seeks to “understand who these people are and track them over time.” That matters because the addition of the preschool tax pushed Multnomah County into a league of few: If you stack all the income taxes on top of one another, the county has the second-highest income tax rate of any large jurisdiction in the U.S., second only to New York City, according to a report from Ernst & Young commissioned by Oregon Business & Industry. But unlike NYC’s highest tax rate, which applies only to incomes over $25 million, Multnomah County reaches its income tax peak for a single filer that makes in excess of $125,000. And while in its first two years Preschool for All struggled to do the hardest part of its decadelong mission—create new preschools—it now
must climb the rest of that hill with disgruntled taxpayers looking on from the sidelines. There, frustrations are mounting at the county’s inability to spend the hundreds of millions of tax dollars it gets to combat the county’s most pressing issues (“They Left,” WW, Feb. 1). In spring meetings of the Preschool for All advisory committee, Renfro shared concerns about the volatility of the tax and its reliance on so few wealthy Portlanders. “I definitely heard some stories about people who wrote their first Preschool for All check and then left the county,” he said. Unlike other new tax measures, such as the Metro Supportive Housing Services measure, the Preschool for All tax has no end date. The likely effect of that, Mildner the real estate professor says, is that it will turn away businesses that might otherwise have sought a home in Portland. Trying to revive downtown real estate, he says, “involves convincing rich people to make investments in your city. This tax may change that.”
YOU’RE IT: Preschoolers who attend Melody’s Munchkins for free play tag in the backyard.
Vega Pederson now finds herself in the hot seat. Her first 10 months in office have been rife with controversy—most prominently, resisting a corrective action plan Metro placed on the county after four consecutive quarters of underspending its homelessness dollars. In some ways, those issues are mirrored in the county’s rollout so far of Preschool for All. The county struggled to spend the tax money, and struggled to spend it how it promised it would. In the meantime, the tax is building an enormous surplus. Program leaders have always maintained that it needs to frontload tax reserves for the years when the program will cost more to operate than the tax it collects. (In about 15 years, county economists say, the tax and cost of the program will march in lockstep.) But the tax rate is also set to rise by 0.8% in 2026. In mid-July, a dozen developers and business leaders ate Potbelly sandwiches from platters alongside Vega Pederson in a downtown office building. They talked to her about homelessness, economic recovery, and the sorry state of Portland’s streets. Among their suggestions: cap the Preschool for All tax, or at the very least don’t raise it in 2026. According to sources at the meeting, Vega Pederson gently but firmly said no. Brim-Edwards says the county “risks our credibility and taxpayer support for programs in which we need public support” if it can’t produce stronger results soon. “We need to have a plan. We need to be taking urgent action. We need to be transparent and show results,” Brim-Edwards says. “That is what rebuilds trust.” Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
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STREET
HOLD THE LINE Photos by Mick Hangland-Skill On Instagram: @mick.jpg The Portland Association of Teachers strike has hit the one-week mark of shuttered schools and morning picketing. Bargaining is slow and contentious, but PAT members are sticking it out despite getting soaked by at least one “atmospheric river.” “Nobody wants students back in the classroom more than educators,” said Jacque Dixon, PAT’s vice president and a language arts teacher, from the state Capitol on Monday. “Educators will stay on the picket lines until the district comes to the table ready to reach a fair deal that gives every student in Portland the education they’ve been promised.” RACHEL SASLOW.
Katarina Juarez, Kellogg Middle School
Wayne Bund, Sunnyside Environmental School
Angela Bonilla, Portland Association of Teachers president
Kristina Brinton, Kellogg Middle School
Trevor Strang, Boise-Eliot Elementary School
Monica Keymolen, Kellogg Middle School
Maggie Raczek, Lincoln High School
Chris Knab, Rosa Parks Elementary School (retired)
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ONE DAY MORE: Travel back to 19th century France with Jean Valjean (Nick Cartell) at the Keller Auditorium this week.
WATCH: Les Misérables
Billed as “the world’s most popular musical,” Les Miserables has been seen by more than 130 million people around the globe in 53 countries and translated into 22 languages. The show is so beloved, it’s nearly impossible to picture the theatrical landscape without “One Day More,” “Master of the House” or “I Dreamed a Dream.” Though nearly 40 years old, Les Mis and its themes of oppression and liberation may resonate even more strongly with audiences now than they did when it premiered—which is why even if you’ve seen it a dozen times, you’ll still tear up when Fantine sings her death ballad. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 503-2484335, portland.broadway.com. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, 1 and 6:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 8-12. No tickets currently available. Check website for openings.
WATCH: awe/struck.
This is the second of three plays by christopher oscar peña that Profile Theatre is producing during its 2023-24 season titled “The American Generation.” This time, the writer best known for his work on HBO’s Insecure and Jane the Virgin on The CW, explores the struggles of navigating a new country and how those stresses are compounded when relocation is prompted by violence. Profile is also using this production to debut AI technology—don’t worry, the actors aren’t robots (yet). Computer science will map video onto the set, which should make for compelling scenery. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., Portland, 503242-0080, profiletheatre.org. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 and 7 pm Sunday, Nov. 9-19. $20 for previews Nov. 9-10, $45 all other performances.
LAUGH: Wonderland COURTESY JASON ROUSE
M AT T H E W M U R P H Y & E VA N Z I M M E R M A N F O R M U R P H Y M A D E
GET BUSY NOV. 8-14
STUFF TO DO IN PORTLAND THIS WEEK, INDOORS AND OUT.
Multihyphenate artist Jason Rouse is headed back to The Siren Theater for his fourth installment of Wonderland, a sketch comedy show that will feature six up-andcoming teenage performers (he assures audiences that these kids can hold their own onstage with the vets). This genre of vignettes is always a grab bag of topics, but a few that are teased by the production include “mediocre men, nepo babies, discouraged magicians, punchable faces and amateur ASMR.” The Siren Theater, 3913 N Mississippi Ave., sirentheater.com. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday, Nov. 10-11 and 17-18. $20.
EAT: Portland Cheese and Meat Festival Even though Oregon is blessed with an abundance of meat and cheese festivals, you can never have too many celebrations of dairy and protein (unless you’re lactose intolerant or vegan), which is why we welcome the return of this event that debuted last year at Leftbank Annex. At the entrance, you’ll be welcomed with a Drambuie coffee cocktail and a miniature wooden charcuterie board, which sure comes in handy when you’re trying to wolf down as many samples of brie, cheddar and Manchego as possible during your two-hour tasting session (it even has a wine glass holder). In addition to the mar-
quee foods, expect samples of everything from smoked seafood to hot sauce to Henry Higgins boiled bagel bites. Every type of alcohol seems to be represented except, oddly enough, beer. For those in need, just wander across the street to Upright for a pint after the fest. Leftbank Annex, 101 N Weidler St., 503-937-1069, cheeseandmeatfestival.com. Noon and 4 pm tasting sessions Saturday, Nov. 11. $75 general admission, $129 VIP early access.
DRINK: Gresham Beer Fest
Sure, everyone knows about Portland’s beer scene, but Gresham also has suds producers, and one of them thought it was about damn time those folks in east county got some recognition. Thus, the creation of this festival. MadCow Brewing has rounded up more than a dozen breweries for the inaugural event, including Captured by Porches, Freebridge, Gateway and Krauski’s. None of those brands sound familiar? Consider this a convenient way to bar hop your way through the eastern suburban beer landscape. Gresham Town Fair, 590 NW Eastman Parkway, 833-8004343, greshambeerfest.com. Noon-8 pm Saturday, Nov. 11. $30 in advance, $35 at the door. Tickets include a souvenir cup and 10 tasting tickets. 21+.
LISTEN: Portland Youth Philharmonic Centennial Season Opener
Portland Youth Philharmonic—the first orchestra made up of young people in the country to turn 100—will open its milestone season with three dynamic works. The program includes Anna Clyne’s “This Midnight Hour,” described by PYP’s musical director as “darker and spookier” than your typical orchestral performance; Antonín Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony; and
Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2, featuring 17-year-old pianist and 2023 Portland Piano International Concerto Competition winner Nolan Tu. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 503-223-5939, portlandyouthphil. org. 7:30 pm Saturday, Nov. 11. $8-$63 in person, $13 livestream.
LISTEN: I Was an American Spy
The latest lecture in the Reser’s Presentations That Inspire series focuses on Claire Phillips, a Portland actress and singer during the first half of the 20th century who didn’t gain fame in her profession, but managed to achieve acclaim in another role: international spy. Author Sig Unander will tell Phillips’ remarkable life story— she not only helped smuggle medicine and food to prisoners of war during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, she ended up one herself. Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, 12625 SW Crescent St., Beaverton, 971-501-7722, thereser.org. 3 pm Sunday, Nov. 12. $10.
EAT: Celebration of Local Food Systems Fundraiser Dinner Rangoon Bistro is opening its dining room this coming Tuesday—the one day of the week it’s normally closed—to host this fundraiser for a collection of local nonprofits: Grow Portland, Growing Gardens, Sauvie Island Center and Zenger Farm. If you’re a fan of any of those organizations, or simply love gloriously large rice noodle dumplings and pork belly, make dinner plans to eat at the Southeast Portland restaurant between 5:30 and 8 pm on Nov. 14. Proceeds from food and drink sold during that period will be donated. Rangoon Bistro, 2311 SE 50th Ave., 503953-5385, rangoonbistropdx.com. 5:30-8 pm Tuesday, Nov. 14.
SEE MORE GET BUSY EVENTS AT WWEEK.COM/CALENDAR Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK
Editor: Andi Prewitt Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com
Top 5
Top 5
Buzz List
Hot Plates
1. OLD ASIA TEAHOUSE & RESTAURANT
1. SIBEIHO MAMAK DELI AT THE MINNOW
WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.
WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.
ANDI PREWITT
740 NW 23rd Ave., 503-406-8438, sibeiho.com, theminnowpdx.com. 11 am-5:30 pm Wednesday-Sunday. Supper club turned sambal sauce-maker Sibeiho and food delivery business The Minnow teamed up in August to launch this outlet, which features pantry items, including jars of that chile paste, as well as meal kits. More recently, the deli began offering ready-to-eat and -drink items like coffee made from Portland Cà Phê beans, malted chocolate topped with whipped cream and sprinkles, and snacks that will satisfy fans of both sweet and savory foods. The former should order buns smeared with coconut milk jam, while the Spam-and-mayo-stuffed version was made specifically for salt lovers.
2. MONTELUPO ITALIAN MARKET–EASTSIDE DEVIN WHITE
12055 SW 1st St., Beaverton, 971-249-3763, oldasia.co. 4-9 pm Thursday-Friday, noon-9 pm Saturday-Sunday. Top Burmese, the miniature empire known for its curries and cute robot servers, has opened a new property—the first not bearing its name. In late October, the company launched Old Asia, dubbed “The Biggest Little Restaurant,” because the dining area is about as big as a generously sized walk-in closet—though one that is ornately decorated. Shelves behind the counter are filled with jars containing tea leaves (green, black, oolong and pu-erh), but if it’s booze you’re after, we recommend the Koji Afternoon Coffee, which has deeper, more satisfying flavors than an espresso martini thanks to the combination of Vietnamese milk coffee and Jameson whiskey. Though if you’ve already had your daily allowance of caffeine, opt for First Love: an effervescent blend of passion fruit, ginger beer and rose vodka.
2. 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 through Nov. 29 (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.
3. GIGANTIC BREWING HAWTHORNE PORTRAIT ROOM
4343 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-889-0190, giganticbrewing.com. 3-9 pm Monday-Friday, noon-9 pm Saturday-Sunday. Nearly one year after opening its third location—the first one with a full food menu—Gigantic has finished the pub’s intimate Portrait Room (though those portraits are still in the works). The clubby space, which is now open to the public, is lined with inviting ruby-hued banquettes and rare English brown oak paneling as well as tchotchkes that founders Ben Love and Van Havig mined from estate sales. Moodier and cozier than the bright blue and white restaurant, the venue is pretty much the perfect place to hunker down with a beer when the rain is coming down in sheets this fall. We recommend the fresh hop Pilsner while it’s still on or the very drinkable Pay Czech dark lager once the final keg kicks.
4. BIRD CREEK DISTILLERY
815 SE Oak St., Suite B, birdcreekwhiskey.com. Noon-5 pm Tuesday-Saturday or by appointment. Oregon may be best known for craft beer and wine, but it turns out we also work wonders with whiskey. Bird Creek is the latest brand to join established names in Portland like Westward, Bull Run and Aimsir. Its pint-sized tasting room is located in the same building as Portland Coffee Roasters (Mark Stell founded both), and all of the barley used to make the whiskeys is sourced from Oregon and Washington. Now’s the time to try a flight; the business’s Baronesse variety just nabbed the title of Best American Single Malt Whiskey 2023 at the ASCOT Awards, and Full Pint, named after the barley developed at Oregon State University, won a platinum in the same competition.
5. PORTLAND CIDER COMPANY
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 the ground. 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.
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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.
3. WORLD VEGAN MONTH
Various locations, instagram.com/veganizerpdx. Through Nov. 30; check participating restaurant websites for specific hours and days of operation. Portland Dining Month may never be resurrected (another casualty of the pandemic), but now we do have a World Vegan Month dining program. The inaugural Veganizer PDX-organized event involves more than 20 restaurants—from Fermenter to Gnarlys to Obon Shokudo—offering specials starting as low as five bucks each. A portion of the sales of those items will go to selected nonprofits, while customers have the chance to earn gift cards by completing a World Vegan Month passport. It’s a win-win!
4. LA FLORIDITA PDX
4680 SW Watson Ave., B, Beaverton, 503-747-0509, laflocafe.com. 7:30 am-3 pm Wednesday-Saturday, 8 am-3 pm Sunday.
The latest Beaverton Farmers Market pop-up to graduate to brick-and-mortar is this Latin bakery. For the past two years, La Floridita has been the suburb’s go-to for croquetas and pastelitos—Cuban puff pastries with a variety of sweet or savory fillings. To prepare for growth, the business expanded its menu over the summer, so be sure to check out the papa rellenas (potato orbs stuffed with ground beef or chicken), pandebono (a cheese bread common in Colombia), tequeños (picture T.G.I. Friday’s mozzarella sticks, only made with queso blanco and dough), and paletas. The cafe also serves coffee made with beans from Tourist Coffee, a woman-owned roaster in Bogotá.
5. PALOMAR
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.
BOOKS COURTESY OF BRIANNA WHEELER / KORZA BOOKS
Family Ties
WW contributor Brianna Wheeler explores the connection between family history and identity in her new memoir, Altogether Different.
BY L AU R E N YO S H I KO
You might recognize Brianna Wheeler’s name from her weekly Potlander columns in this newspaper, but that isn’t her only claim to fame. Wheeler is a descendant of Dangerfield Newby, a free Black man who was the first of famed abolitionist John Brown’s forces to die during the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859—often considered the event that sparked the Civil War. Following the death of her mother and grandmother, Wheeler was compelled to delve into this history to gain a better understanding of how her mixedraced identity mirrored Newby’s. The journey reopened old wounds and helped her process present-day trauma as her family clashed over her grandmother’s estate, resulting in an engaging book titled Altogether Different: A Memoir About Identity, Inheritance, and the Raid That Started the Civil War (Korza Books, 214 pages, $17) that explores the contradictions of mixed-race heritage, Newby’s legacy, and all notions of inheritance with unflinching self-awareness. WW spoke with Wheeler about how the idea for a book began, the challenges of writing about family members who are still alive, and whether her ancestor was the source of inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.
WW: As you started sorting through your grandmother’s notes, at what point did you decide to write a book?
Brianna Wheeler: Like, immediately. Before my grandma even died, I was observing my family drama—all that really intense, impending death of a matriarch/greedy estate division business—and thinking, “I’m gonna publish so many bitchy essays about this on Medium, I don’t even care who gets mad about it.” Then there was a kind of spiritual moment when I laid out
all of my grandma’s work across the living room floor and saw all of it for the first time. Between that and my emotional-ass sketchbook scribbles and journal entries, the book I was meant to write was very much there.
How did the connection with publisher Korza Books come about? I first explored the subject of my mother’s and grandmother’s deaths while taking Joshua James Amberson’s creative nonfiction class at Portland Community College. His novel, How to Forget Almost Everything, was being published by Korza at the time, and when Korza’s founder inquired about any students with promising manuscripts, my name came up. This was during the pandemic lockdowns, so over the course of my 10-week writing course, Anderson essentially mentored me through my first draft of the book. With my blessing, he shared my manuscript, and that was that.
Was it difficult airing out family drama knowing your relatives would read it? Nope. I’ll do it again, too. That shit was cathartic as hell.
Your grandma decided Django Unchained was based on Dangerfield. After all your research and reflection, do you agree?
First of all, Quentin Tarantino—no smoke, please. Second of all, yes, but only fractionally. The clearest parallel is that Dangerfield was a free man earning money to buy the freedom of his wife from a real-life villain. The thing is, those who had gained freedom often attempted to do just that. So, while I think the particularly heartwrenching details of Dangerfield’s life served as some inspiration, this is not an uncommon story.
What’s one question that endures for you about the life of Dangerfield Newby?
I want to know about his mother and father, Elsey and Henry Newby. Elsey was a young enslaved girl to whom Henry professed his love, only 13 years old when she was given to him as a gift when he was in his early 30s. He made Elsey his wife (de facto, since interracial marriage remained illegal), and they went on to have 11 children together. I want to know if when Dangerfield looked at his parents, he saw two adults in love, who respected and maybe even adored each other. I understand what an outrageous privilege that would have been, and I want it for him. Probably because I’m a mother, I want to understand the love he was raised with.
Do you think this memoir is exactly what your grandmother hoped for when she handed you her stack of notes?
Yes, definitely. We never really talked much about my career; I was doing a lot of boring marketing writing in the years before her health began to fail. I tried to explain search engine optimization to her once and the light kind of went out of her eyes when I got to keywords. On her deathbed, when she pressed me to read a chapter about the Newby family in the book Migrants Against Slavery, the subtext was “Maybe use this story I’ve been telling you your whole life to get your ain’t-shit career moving in a legitimate direction.” She would never say that out loud, though, only through grandma mind-speak.
What do you hope your descendants get from reading this book?
Perspective. I watched my family fall apart over the division of an estate while learning what our ancestors went through to put us in a comfortable enough position to have an estate in the first place. It was humbling and very hard to write, but it gave me perspective, the value of which far outweighs any estate payout. Well, subjectively. I suppose if we were fighting over billions I might be singing a different tune...and driving a nicer car. GO: Brianna Wheeler will speak about Altogether Different: A Memoir About Identity, Inheritance, and the Raid That Started the Civil War at two locations: Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323, powells.com. 7 pm Wednesday, Nov. 8. Third Eye Books Accessories & Gifts, 2518 SE 33rd Ave., 503-688-7008, thirdeyebag.com. 5 pm Saturday, Nov. 11. Free. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
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MUSIC
BROADSIDE
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
POTLANDER STEVEN OCHS, SOURCE: AIRBNB
Loosey Goosey Staying at Goose Cube: The Portal, a new overnight experience in Lake Oswego, is like a night at the museum on psychedelics (with or without actual psychedelics). BY B R I A N N A W H E E L E R
In a city that offers numerous ways to interact with art—from technicolor murals to breathtaking museum displays—it may come as a surprise to learn that one of the most exciting art experiences in the Portland area right now is Goose Cube: a psychedelic, immersive exhibition hiding in plain sight. The location? A nondescript home nestled in a quiet Lake Oswego neighborhood. Built by Steven Ochs, a self-described “outsider artist,” Goose Cube: The Portal is, first and foremost, a house. But unlike the other dwellings that line the surrounding blocks, it’s a collection of trippy portals arranged as though the single-story, ranchstyle residence were a spacious gallery. The experience is on par with such world-class museums as Meow Wolf and Hopscotch, but here you can stay the night. Great for families or a small group of friends for a weekend getaway, the venue is also perfect for adults who yearn to walk through immersive art venues while riding a psychedelic high but would rather not be tripping balls in public. For less than the price of a luxury hotel suite, you can spend an evening at Goose Cube responsibly astro-traveling without ever venturing beyond its simultaneously sensorially exciting and soothing walls. Although guests are welcome to; the outdoor patio and garden are both lovely and cannabis friendly. While getting high and geeking out on interactive art in Lake Oswego was not on my 2023 bingo card, by the end of my visit, it was clear that Goose Cube is rewriting the playbook for staycations, vacation rentals, and tourism in insular bedroom communities. Here’s how our experience shook out:
Portal One: Arrival
After crossing the threshold, I was greeted by a tiled anteroom with a shoe cubby and a desk. On the desk was a sign instructing me to activate the home’s computer by voice command, which was followed by a brief monologue about how to navigate the space delivered by the device.
The first portal—the living/media room—featured cushioned, rippling walls, which offered at least half-a-dozen ways to lounge and stare at the ceiling, where cat videos or hypnotizing patterns played on a loop. There was also an intimate nook with what looked like a mirror, but it was actually an iridescent piece of art whose scalelike pattern is repeated on consoles holding a large flat-screen TV and potted plants (it is a home, after all). Above a midcentury-style davenport I discovered an installation hanging from the ceiling: a room in miniature that guests must interact with (no spoilers) headfirst. As I exited the living room and entered the dining area, behind me was the face of a cartoon space cat also covered in those shimmering scales, and I began to realize that the ripples I was just crawling around on were its innards. More art covered the walls as I made my way through the kitchen toward the three bedrooms. The primary suite at the end of the hallway contained a faux fur-covered cube. Inside was a disorienting (yet stunning) infinity room completely surrounded by mirrors. A door behind the cube led to the sculpture-decorated patio. After smoking a big backyard joint, I headed back inside to prep some mushrooms for a proper immersive art experience.
Portal Two: To Infinity and Beyond
After lemon tekking (soaking crushed shrooms in lemon juice to make them easier to digest) about 3 grams of Golden Teacher psilocybin mushrooms for about 30 minutes, I connected to
the home’s Bluetooth, told the computer to start my favorite playlist, and then danced down the hall toward the chamber of mirrors. As breathtaking as I found Space Cat, Ochs’ infinity room, or the Portal Interdimensional Travel Device, is really the centerpiece of Goose Cube. At face value, it’s a fun novelty, but ask the home’s computer to tell the piece’s origin story and this becomes much more significant than an Instagram-worthy backdrop. Knowledge about Ochs’ work with multiverse theory helps bring context to the portal, and while taking the 5-minute ride down this rabbit hole via computer narration, visitors have the chance to explore parallel universes and emerge as an entirely different version of themselves.
Portal Three: Transformation
Whether or not guests use Goose Cube as an adult recreational playspace, a family-friendly getaway, or a therapeutic retreat, the bottom line is that the experience offers a new model for both immersive experimental art displays and contemporary luxury accommodations. Ochs’ work is whimsically exuberant while also encouraging deep introspection. And because powerful art can be transformative, my trip to Goose Cube was just that, regardless of the psychotropics. GO: Lake Oswego address provided once booked at airbnb.com; goosecubeproject.com.
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
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SHOWS OF THE WEEK
MUSIC
Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson | Contact: bennett@wweek.com
C O U R T E S Y O F L AY P E R S O N
W H AT TO S E E A N D W H AT TO H E A R BY DA N I E L B R O M F I E L D @ b r o m f 3
C O U R T E S Y O F LO N N I E H O L L E Y
MONDAY, NOV. 13:
Long acclaimed as a sculptor, Birmingham, Ala., native Lonnie Holley commenced an astonishing recording career in his 60s, working with indie-rockers like Richard Swift, Matthew E. White and Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox to bring life and color to the alternately meditative and tempestuous avant-blues songs he improvises onstage and in the studio. Holley will play two sets at Polaris Hall, the first in collaboration with local guitarist Marisa Anderson, the second with Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group. Polaris Hall, 635 N Killingsworth Court. 8 pm. $15. 21+.
C O U R T E S Y O F A N K L E PA N T S
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 15:
Describing Anklepants in words is such a futile endeavor that even the project’s creator, a maybe-alien, maybe-Australian calling themselves Reecard Farché, resorts to umlauted gibberish when describing its inspiration. But understanding Anklepants requires little more than a trip to YouTube, where you can see terrified Boiler Room attendees running from a creature in alien-overlord drag with a remote-controlled penis nose, screaming obscenities through chipmunk effects over candy-colored rave music. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave. 8 pm. $20. 21+.
U.K. producer Derwin Dicker debuted his Gold Panda project in the legendary late 2000s, when weed was still illegal, beat music was still challenging, and “lo-fi hip-hop” meant Three 6 Mafia. Inspired by hip-hop, Chinese music, and pointillist minimal techno, his original trilogy of albums from 2010 through 2016 ranks among the era’s best runs in electronic music. Though the producer has spent the intervening years on collabs and side projects, his new album, The Work, proves he’s in as fine a form as ever. The Get Down, 615 Alder St., Suite B. 8 pm. $22. 21+. 22
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
Layperson’s latest album merges music and therapy.
BY N E I L F E R G U S O N
C O U R T E S Y O F G O L D PA N DA
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 15:
In Treatment We’ve all heard the cliché that music is therapy, so what happens when a therapist creates music? The answer can be found in the new album by Layperson, the project of Portland musician Julian Morris. Recorded over a period of nearly three years, Massive Leaning (due out Nov. 10), grew out of a feeling of overwhelming grief that resulted from the worst breakup of Morris’ life. This intensely personal experience resulted in an album filled with resonant, timeless emotions. “There’s a therapist I love who’s really influential named Carl Rogers, and he has this quote: ‘What is most personal is most universal,’” Morris says. “If you dig deep enough into your own experience, it’s bound to hit somebody else.” A lot of other things happened during that time too: the pandemic, Morris’ journey through graduate school (which ultimately led to his career as a therapist), and a deep dive into meditation. He even moved into a Buddhist collective in North Portland, gaining not just a more focused approach to the lifestyle, but also an audience to share his songs with. All of these experiences came together in a musical vision that’s one of the most impressive Portland releases this year. Despite the dark point in time at which it was written and recorded, Massive Leaning feels like a hopeful work of psychedelia-laced indie pop. Morris admits that being a therapist “can help and it can also get in the way if you overinterpret yourself,” and the album feels like a swirling combination of cathartic moments alongside poetic self-analysis. “I do a lot of therapy that’s rooted in existentialism, which is really about figuring out what the base experience is of the moment,” Morris says. “If I’m really present and I really dig down, I might find out what’s happening here. Or, what am I using to get away from here and how can I come back? I have a few clients that I know have listened to my music, and I don’t think they’re necessarily surprised by what they
hear because I am pretty raw and I really try to just be myself.” When it came to crafting songs, Morris took his time as he experimented with new sounds and layered in different instruments. He plays most of the parts by himself, but he also made the wise choice to incorporate the dreamy pedal steel playing of his friend Sam Wenc as well as a few other musicians contributing drums and clarinet. But it’s the pedal steel that really stands out on songs like the ridiculously catchy title track, the airy Americana-meets-indie on “Black Pool,” and the Tom Petty-esque “My Loneliness Rings Like a Bell.” While Morris cites artists like Fleetwood Mac and Sam Evian as influences, the music on Massive Leaning also brings to mind the rich production of acts like The Shins, Lord Huron, and Jim James. The sheer musicality of each song is accentuated by Morris’ bright harmonies, inducing a rush of excitement as you marvel at how an artist could translate such a painful experience into a sound so euphoric and infectious. Reflecting on the album’s departure from his folkier early material, Morris says, “From a production standpoint, it’s just really dense. There’s a lot of instrumentation. With vocal layering, I went really hard on this album and came up with a lot of different parts. It’s a big kind of fat sound, more so than other records I’ve made.” At its core, Massive Leaning is essentially a breakup album, but one that is far more complex and nuanced than what we associate with that style. For Morris, writing and recording is a form of therapy that he hopes can guide listeners through their own grief. “I think I’m just aware in this moment of how strange it is to put four years of your life into something and just let go of it,” he says. “I hope that people connect with it.” SEE IT: Layperson, Corinne Sharlet and Alex Crowson play Laurelthirst Public House, 2958 NE Glisan St., 503232-1504, laurelthirst.com. 9 pm Saturday, Nov. 18. $10.
CULTURE
Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson | Contact: bennett@wweek.com
How at-risk Portland youth helped create The Masked Villain of Sellwood.
BY C H A N C E S O L E M - P F E I F E R @ c h a n c e _ s _ p
Ever since Randy Sean Schulman moved to Sellwood from Los Angeles 13 years ago, he’s wanted to shoot a silent movie in the Portland enclave. “It just felt like a little village,” Schulman says, citing Sellwood’s Oaks Park, Oaks Pioneer Church, Sellwood Community House, and abundant train tracks as ideal for invoking the early 20th century era of film. All those locations sustain the aesthetic illusion of The Masked Villain of Sellwood, the new silent film written and directed by Schulman. The 35-minute short rifles through references and genres: It’s a black-and-white, lightly surrealist, sci-fi, meta character study about a teenager in a plague mask (the titular villain) who kidnaps a bride on her wedding day. In turn, an Our Gang-esque gaggle of street urchins seeks to rescue The Bride (Raz Mostaghimi)—and maybe The Villain (Sam Santer) in the process. The film’s community roots extend far deeper than the Sellwood train tracks on which its action unfolds. It’s a production from Rogue Pack, a local nonprofit that serves at-risk youth and operates a nonprofit theater school. While the at-risk youth on “The Pack” side of Rogue Pack couldn’t appear in the film for legal reasons, stories like theirs directly inspired Masked Villain. Schulman and Ann Singer, Rogue Pack’s founder and executive director, solicited more than 20 poems and short stories from Oregon Youth Authority teens in custody. Excerpts of their writing can be heard at the end of the film, and their works sparked Schulman to invent a phantom villain whose trauma and abandonment have overtaken his self-concept. Schulman himself, a veteran actor from Wild, Grimm and the forthcoming Portland-made film Cellar Door (starring Laurence Fishburne), appears onscreen as the agent of the film’s flexible fatalism. He plays a tramp-styled writer—bowler hat, eyeliner—tapping out the story we’re witnessing on a typewriter, while benevolent child gang leader The Daughter (Lucy Lee Lamb) lobbies him for a happier ending. “This [film] is really about speaking to the storyteller inside each of us,” Schulman says. “It’s only when you confront that storyteller that you can accept your history and not be weighed down by darkness.” Those are familiar themes to Simon Fulford, one of the film’s cinematographers and the executive director of Oregon City’s Parrott Creek Child and Family Services. During pre-production, Fulford wondered aloud to his friend Schulman how the writer-director would tell a story of at-risk youth that didn’t rehash old representations. “We have enough realism out there,” Fulford remembers saying.
“How is your voice going to be different but still address the trauma these kids have experienced?” The answer was to do something that abstracted but honored the experiences of struggling Oregon youth, kids who’ve told advocates like Fulford that they’ve felt “like monsters.” “It was a very different experience from who I am,” says 15-yearold Sam Santer (the Masked Villain), “but I think it’s important that we tell those stories.” While the century-old cinema aesthetics in Masked Villain are modernized by pumping beats, acrobatic drone shots, and music video-style editing, Portland artists like Zoë Della Rocca helped give the film a distinctive look. Inspired by silent film luminaries like Clara Bow and Mary Pickford, Della Roca oversaw the styling and application of the kids’ grubby eye makeup (fittingly sold in a giant makeup pot labeled “Dirt”). “[In black-and-white], the makeup has to be that much more impactful for it to show up on screen,” Della Rocca says. Amid their technical ambition, the adult craftspeople constantly reminded themselves their cast was largely under the age of 16. “How dare they stop and eat something and spoil my lipstick!?” Della Roca jokes. One of Masked Villain’s most prevalent visual motifs is the Our Gang-type troupe sprinting back and forth along a half-mile of south Sellwood train track, which they did countless times from January through June 2023 as production unfolded on weekends. Nine-year-old Lucy Lee Lamb remains split on her favorite part of the onset experience: It was either eating her dad’s pesto pasta during breaks or acting the scene where she yanks on the lapels of The Writer (aka her director), insisting he course-correct this kidnapping tragedy. The latter demonstrates the tenacity Lamb admired most in her character. “She didn’t stop,” Lamb says. “She was really, really determined.” After premiering Masked Villain at a sold-out Moreland Theater in September, Schulman is in the process of submitting to festivals, hoping the film’s unique production and cast could be a draw. Meanwhile, Santer and Lamb are eager to act more—Santer onstage and Lamb in another silent movie, ideally. The 9-year-old says she doesn’t like the sound of her recorded voice. She loves Singin’ in the Rain, though, so talkies could be in her future. If Masked Villain tells us anything, the off-screen ending of this Sellwood saga is still free to be written. SEE IT: The Masked Villain of Sellwood plays at Sellwood Community House, 1436 SE Spokane St., 503-894-9496, sellwoodcommunityhouse.org. 6 pm Saturday, Nov. 11. $5.
WIMPS
R O G U E PAC K T H E AT R E C O L L E C T I V E
Age of Heroes
SHOW REVIEW
Wimps at the Fixin’ To BY R O B E R T H A M
Artists sharing instruments at a show or being forced to cobble together enough gear to play the gig has been a hallmark of underground rock for decades. But no matter how often I’ve seen it go down at small clubs and basements, I’m charmed by it every time. Here’s the communal spirit of punk put into practice in one small, practical way. Such was the case this past Saturday when Seattle trio Wimps visited the Fixin’ To in support of their recently released full-length City Lights. All three acts on the bill, which included locals Mini Blinds and Scorch, used Wimps drummer Dave Ramm’s kit. That band’s bassist/vocalist, Matt Nyce, had to admit that he left for Portland without a bunch of necessary pieces, like cymbals and his own amp head—and Scorch frontperson Kyle Raquipiso noted that his band’s usual guitars were in the shop (temporary replacements were borrowed and the show went on). Would anyone have noticed if those changes to the regularly scheduled programming hadn’t been mentioned? I doubt it. It’s almost a requirement for the power pop, punk, and dream pop that these Northwest artists truck in to sound as scrappy and slightly askew as it all did. No one was perfect, with little rhythmic hiccups and unexpected bouts of dissonance and slight confusion over what song to play next popping up all night. Wimps are perfectly happy in that zone. All three members are in their 40s and have day jobs and have all moved their lives well beyond the notion of music being anything more than a side hustle. They were there to have fun with zero expectations—and everything about their loose, buoyant set, replete with songs about pizza, procrastinating, and being the old guy at the punk show, made that abundantly clear. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
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GET YOUR REPS IN IMDB
MOVIES
Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson Contact: bennett@wweek.com
screener
COURTESY OF MARK ORTON
Buffalo ’66 (1998) “These photos are us, in love, spanning time,” repeats miserable ex-con Billy (Vincent Gallo) like a mantra. He’s wedged himself into a bowling alley photo booth with a young woman he’s more or less kidnapped, Layla (Christina Ricci), trying to capture a happy-couple snapshot for his parents. Fresh out of jail and back on his hometown streets in 1998, Billy might as well be experiencing Buffalo in ’66, the year of his birth…presumably when the trouble began. Everything and everyone he encounters betrays a childhood wound. Most notably, his parents—played by Anjelica Houston and Ben Gazzara—appear suspended in time with their absent affection, rabid football fandom and broken dreams. Then there are the metatextual layers of Buffalo ’66. Ironically, it’s a document of better times, from before Gallo slipped deeper into self-aggrandizing hustler caricature and right-wing diatribes (Ricci, for her part, said working on the film was a terrible experience). Buffalo ’66 is all about the sway of delusions and dreams, and it harks back to a moment when independent filmmakers could marshal incredible resources (the cast also includes Mickey Rourke and Rosanna Arquette) to shoot a debut feature on reversal film stock and render an aesthetically ambitious and geographically specific story. Hollywood, Nov. 10-11.
ALSO PLAYING: Academy: The Lost Weekend (1945), Nov. 9. Scarlet Street (1945), Nov. 9. Cinema 21: Scarface (1932), Nov. 11. Cinemagic: The Cat (1992), Nov. 10. The Rock (1996), Nov. 11, 12 and 14. Con Air (1997), Nov. 10 and 13. Face/Off (1997), Nov. 11, 12 and 16. Hollywood: Opera (1987), Nov. 9. Fear and Desire (1952), Nov. 11-12. Victims of Sin (1951), Nov. 12. Carrie (1976), Nov. 13. Fatal Flying Guillotine (1977), Nov. 14. Living Room: The Great Beauty (2013), Nov. 9. 24
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
Settling Old Scores
Portland composer Mark Orton discusses his collaboration with director Alexander Payne on The Holdovers. BY JAY H O R TO N @ h o r t l a n d
A founding member of tastemaker-beloved avant-chamber pop combo Tin Hat, Mark Orton is no stranger to high-profile gigs, even after a midcareer shift from album release parties to red carpet premieres. Ever since a fellowship at the Sundance Institute led Orton to compose the music for 2002 indie sensation The Good Girl, the longtime Portland resident has been asked to contribute original music to a dizzying range of projects, from Laika’s The Boxtrolls to Ken Burns’ The Roosevelts. Still, Orton is best known for writing the spare, haunting, rootless score accompanying Alexander Payne’s Nebraska. And this Saturday, the composer will appear at the Hollywood Theatre to answer questions about his and Payne’s second collaboration, The Holdovers, an atmospheric character study frozen in time and place at a New England prep school at the dawn of the 1970s. He will also play music from the film, backed by a lineup of PDX music luminaries. Orton is currently overseeing the imminent launch of a double-album soundtrack blending his original instrumental passages with era-appropriate FM hits from the film. Shortly after a meeting regarding the album, WW caught up with Orton on the shoulder of Interstate 5 and asked about the peculiar challenges of assembling retro soundscapes in the digital age.
WW: How and when did you start working with Alexander Payne?
Mark Orton: Years ago, I scored his film Nebraska. That actually came about after he’d been using some of my music from other movies and Tin Hat as temp [score] for the early edits. Time went by, he just really loved it and couldn’t divorce the music from the film. He knew I was a composer and got in touch to have me flesh out (and reorchestrate and rerecord) what he’d already been using.
Did Payne ask you for something similar for The Holdovers?
Um, no. This isn’t just a period film per se. What they set out to do was make a film as if it were 1970. It’s not just a conceit. It really permeates all aspects of the entire film.
Meaning, like, vintage equipment?
More than that. I mean, it’s to the extent where the literal soundtrack on the film itself was in mono, like it would’ve been in 1970. Forget Dolby Atmos, the soundtrack is actually mono, which is really something. Trying to mic a piano mono wasn’t a very fun challenge for Mark the engineer, but it really does bring you back to that town and that time. So, truthfully, my job with this—much more so than Nebraska, which he saw as Italian cinema on the plains—was about putting us into this
prep school in Western Massachusetts in 1970, turning 1971, where these kids are holding over for the winter break. I mean, I lived in the part of the world where this was filmed. I drove those roads around Western Massachusetts. It’s one of my favorite places in the world—a close second to Portland when I was deciding where to live. So, yeah, I took real pleasure in [evoking] that side of things.
Tonally, is this more comedic?
About a third of the score ties into the humor and the place and the fact that they’re held over and, you know, Christmas—there are literal sleigh bells. Another third gets into the drama and melancholy. The scoring’s more thematic, but still rootsy and organic—not the big orchestral sound, something like a Jim Croce or Cat Stevens B-side. I wanted the music to be able to meld with Allman Brothers and Badfinger and feel comfortable with a heavy source score that has lots of songs. For that last third of the score, I’m actually using a rock band with horns and writing instrumental rock music that feels of the era. For me, that was super fun. I never get to do that, you know? Go back and pull out my Gibson Les Paul to actually use on a score instead of noodling in the dark? I brought in some really great players, and many of them will be at the Hollywood event. Ryan Smith, the set designer, will talk a bit about the pre-production side.
Were there any favorite tunes they couldn’t use in the film?
It’s more what I wrote early on based on the script. Most of the time, in the early stages, I’m writing in broader strokes. Then, I can put on my arranger’s hat and spend more time making the material already there work with a particular performance or style of filmmaking that I didn’t foresee. It’s funny because now I have, like, a dozen early ’70s tunes sitting in my library without a place to go. The music’s near and dear to me. I’m a little young for 1970 stuff, but that was prime time for my brother. He’s eight years older, and I coveted his LP collection, which had all of the music we’ve been talking about—plus prog rock. So for me, the songs hit really close to home. Putting that hat on feels very much like connecting with a rooted nostalgia. None of it feels hollow. That said, I think I’m destined to stick with film and studio these days. I won’t be leading a folk-rock band on the open road anytime soon. SEE IT: Mark Orton will discuss The Holdovers at a screening at the Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.org. 7:30 pm Saturday, Nov. 11. $15.
TOP PICK OF THE WEEK
FO CU
PRISCILLA
E S F AT UR ES
THE HOLDOVERS Although director Alexander Payne (The Descendants) can be a cheeky SOB, he’s at his best when he’s observing the quieter, bittersweet moments that are part of growing up or growing old. So it goes with The Holdovers, which follows the brilliant but inflexible history teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) as he’s tasked with looking after students stuck at a New England prep school over the 1970 winter break—including the smart but troubled Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa). Grief becomes a unifying theme for our heroes: Angus mourning his lost father, head cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) facing Christmas for the first time since her son’s death, and Hunham despairing over the state of the world (and his own stalled academic career) in general. Yet Payne and writer David Hemingson find humor, heart and humanity buried beneath the snowy landscape. Giamatti manages to make Hunham compelling despite his snobbery, and Sessa makes a fantastic debut as someone too witty for his own good—the pair have a crackling, acerbic chemistry that makes the movie sing. The Holdovers is perhaps a touch on the schmaltzy side, but it earns that schmaltz through great performances, a sharp script, and a director with an eye for finding beauty and meaning in the ordinary. R. MORGAN SHAUNETTE. Bridgeport, Cinema 21.
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
Martin Scorsese’s final act is that of an American tragedian, and in Killers of the Flower Moon, the 80-year-old film icon unflinchingly dramatizes the history of white, 1920s Oklahomans wreaking intrafamily genocide on the Osage people after oil is discovered beneath the tribe’s lands. The murders are underway when Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns from World War I to work for his uncle (Robert De Niro), a cattle baron whose actual business is infiltrating the Osage community and plotting to steal their fortunes. Thus, Ernest’s personal sins will become inextricable from his work, even if DiCaprio wears a perfectly dumb underbite to suggest the character is straining not to comprehend his deeds. There’s no such underplaying of intelligence by Lily Gladstone (Certain Women), whose acting superpower is gentle directness. She plays Mollie, an Osage woman who loses family members fast when she marries Ernest. In the film’s only glaring flaw, the script leaves Mollie, its most important Osage character, wanting for moments of dynamism amid her suffering. That said, Killers of the Flower Moon isn’t about dynamism or change; like The Irishman, it commits over three hours to study crushing inevitability. The film is at once a crime epic, a spiritual exorcism, a portrait of a ne’er-do-well, a black comedy about the FBI’s birth, and a ballad for those who didn’t see modernity coming. It is also about movies, as Scorsese reminds us with a brilliant closing comment on the nature of true crime and mass media. If this is one of Scorsese’s last films, behold the bracing reflection of a murderer, a nation, and a legendary artist all asking: “What have I done?” R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Cedar Hills, Cinemagic, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Lake Theater, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin, Studio One.
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S
Five Nights at Freddy’s, based on the popular video game franchise, is the latest animatronics-run-amok horror film following The Banana Splits Movie (2019) and
Willy’s Wonderland (2021). The always likable Josh Hutcherson plays Mike Schmidt, who accepts a nightly security position at an abandoned family entertainment center called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. He soon finds that the place’s colorful mascots are actually deadly and have an interest in his little sister Abby (Piper Rubio). Director Emma Tammi’s adaptation of the games remains faithful in many ways, which isn’t too surprising given that Freddy’s creator Scott Cawthon is a co-writer on the project. The animatronics are impressively designed by the folks at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, while Tammi’s production designer, Marc Fisichella, has gone to great lengths to bring the pizzeria setting alive. Lulls settle in when Mike’s backstory is belabored or when a cop shows up repeatedly just to drop exposition, but the film should serve as a macabre-cute gateway horror picture for younger audiences and fans of the franchise. PG-13. DANIEL RESTER. Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport Plaza, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, St. Johns Twin, Studio One.
THE KILLER
“Forbid empathy.” The nameless assassin (Michael Fassbender) at the corroded core of David Fincher’s The Killer chants that command throughout the film, conditioning himself to be cruel. Reunited with Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, the director has made a thriller that makes you feel as if the icy blood of its protagonist is coursing through your veins, an experience that is as exhilarating as it is unnerving. When we first meet the Killer, he’s killing nothing but time, feasting on McDonald’s and listening to The Smiths as he awaits the arrival of a target in Paris. He’s methodical to a fault, but he makes a catastrophic mistake—and the woman he loves (Sophie Charlotte) pays the price. Incidentally, who is she? The Killer’s girlfriend? His wife? Revolting against the niceties of backstory, Fincher trusts the faces of his actors (including Tilda Swinton, who plays a rival assassin with haunting poise) to speak the story. His faith in Fassbender is amply rewarded—even the
seek, twist and elide the truth with every page. Does that make The Pigeon Tunnel an exercise in futility? More like a pleasant evening constitutional with futility. Tell us one last time—in a pretty way—how we’ll never know you, John. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Apple TV+.
way the actor’s arms smoothly swing past his hips is expressive—but Fincher is the true star of the film. Adapting a French graphic novel series, he transforms a deliberately spare plot into a banquet of suspense that leaves a troubling aftertaste. It can’t be an accident that all of the Killer’s victims are women and people of color—or that the one life he spares is that of a Caucasian male. Some will interpret The Killer as an uncompromising attack on white supremacy; others will see Fincher as, at best, a white filmmaker bumbling into a conversation he can barely understand. How he responds to the audience’s reaction will determine whether, unlike the Killer, he understands the difference between precision and comprehension. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Hollywood.
THE PIGEON TUNNEL
Through decades of incisive interview-centric documentaries (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War), Errol Morris chose his subjects brilliantly and interrogated them doggedly. Lately, the subjects seem to choose him. The late spy novelist John le Carré (né David Cornwell) suggests as much in Morris’ latest film. Luckily, it’s not as dangerous to let Cornwell wax poetic as it is Steve Bannon (the subject of Morris’ 2018 film American Dharma). But you still feel in The Pigeon Tunnel—the name borrows the working title for almost all John le Carré novels—that Cornwell runs the show. He speaks in perfect paragraphs about the self-deceptions and contradictions of spies, writers and his own con artist father: “Whether he believed in God was mysterious, but he was certain God believed in him.” Elegiac to a fault, the film offers a chance to return one last time to the mind of a genius who passed away in 2020 and left behind 30 novels that
Sofia Coppola didn’t just make a masterpiece called Lost in Translation—she’s become contemporary cinema’s reigning expert on lostness. She shows us what it is to be adrift, alone, yearning—the way Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny) is when she wanders through the luxuriant chambers of Graceland in Coppola’s flawed and entrancing biographical film. Elvis (a superb Jacob Elordi) spends most of the movie preoccupied with his celebrity and his infidelity, though he’s slightly more attentive to Priscilla when they meet in Germany in 1959 (when she’s 14 and he’s 24). In these scenes, the film’s best, Elvis bewitches his future bride with his manly brooding over whether he’ll have a musical career when he completes his military service. “Sure you will!” Priscilla insists, her face radiating belief. Yes, Elvis will have a career, but she won’t be a part of it. Instead, she’ll be reduced to a virginal plaything for him to gaslight, neglect and abuse (in one scene, he hurls a chair at her head). Rapturously alive with desire but unflinching in its portrait of Elvis as a predator, Priscilla shreds the mythmaking of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. It is a superior film in every respect, but once it gets to Graceland, the beautifully measured pace of the Germany prologue evaporates. Rushing through years of betrayal and bliss, the film starts to feel as if it’s checking boxes on a timeline rather than evoking Priscilla’s experience. As always, she’s lost in her own story. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cascade, Cedar Hills, Cinema 21, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Studio One, Vancouver Mall.
QUIZ LADY
It’s rather appropriate that Quiz Lady, with its love for the escapist entertainment of game shows, is itself a solid piece of escapist fiction: light, breezy, a tad unambitious but well crafted and heartfelt enough to be worth your while. The film follows the Yum sisters, who try to pay back their mother’s gambling debts by having introverted Anne (Awkwafina) put her lifetime of trivia knowledge to the test and compete on her favorite game show. Awkwafina is perfectly at home as an awkward shut-in, but it’s Sandra Oh who shines as the chaotic Jenny. Oh handles broad comedy effortlessly, and the two leads have a fast-paced and earnest rapport. The jokes are fairly basic, but there are more hits than misses, and the film gets a lot of mileage out of supporting performances by Holland Taylor, Jason Schwartzman, and Will Ferrell as the genial game show host (a far cry from his SNL days as a cynical Alex Trebek). Quiz Lady is unlikely to change anyone’s life, but it’s a vehicle for compelling performances with some good laughs and an unexpected emotional core. Survey says: See it. R. MORGAN SHAUNETTE. Hulu.
OUR KEY
: THIS MOVIE IS EXCELLENT, ONE OF THE BEST OF THE YEAR. : THIS MOVIE IS GOOD. WE RECOMMEND YOU WATCH IT. : THIS MOVIE IS ENTERTAINING BUT FLAWED. : THIS MOVIE IS A STEAMING PILE. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2023 wweek.com
TRUE SCENES FROM THE STREETS! @sketchypeoplepdx
by Jack Kent
JONESIN’
FREE WILL
B Y M AT T J O N E S
"Free-Flowing"--it's that time again!
ASTROLOGY ARIES (March 21-April 19): Your victories-in-prog-
ress are subtle. They may not be totally visible to you yet. Let me describe them so you can feel properly confident about what you are in the process of accomplishing. 1. A sustained surge of hard-earned personal growth is rendering one of your problems mostly irrelevant. 2. You have been redefining what rewards are meaningful to you, and that’s motivating you to infuse your ambitions with more soulfulness. 3. You are losing interest in a manipulative game that doesn’t serve you as well as it should. 4. You are cultivating more appreciation for fascinating and useful problems.
TAURUS
(April 20-May 20): Taurus physicist Richard Feynman was a smart and accomplished person who won a Nobel Prize. He articulated a perspective that will be healthy for you to experiment with in the coming weeks. He said, "I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and there are many things I don’t know anything about." Give Feynman’s approach a try, dear Taurus. Now is an excellent time to explore the perks of questioning everything. I bet you'll be pleased with how free and easy it makes you feel.
GEMINI
ACROSS
46. "See ya"
Williams
1. Way to travel from Victor Hugo to Voltaire
48. Lack
26. Returns something late, maybe
6. 1962 Crystals hit "_ _ _ a Rebel"
51. Nickname of an ex in a big 2023 memoir
9. Toast site 12. _ _ _ Frisé (poofy breed) 13. Bus. numbers
50. "Euphoria" network
52. Like some Navy rescues 53. Key below X 54. Good thing to feel?
27. Call routing systems 28. Five-in-a-row board game created in 1978 31. Often-imitated 1976 movie character
55. Zombielike
32. Docs that use endoscopes
56. Rooibos or oolong
34. Check beneficiary
17. Superior to
57. Conductor _ _ _-Pekka Salonen
35. Silica gel pack warning
18. _ _ _ & Bradstreet (creditrating firm)
58. Harassed
19. Like scratch-and-sniff stickers
DOWN
15. _ _ _ B. Wells (civil rights icon) 16. Suck it up?
20. The "real me", maybe 22. Arctic reindeer herder 23. Append 24. "Ugly Betty" actress Ortiz 25. Ice cream stripe 29. Outdated name in a Beatles title 30. Summer 2023 phenomenon that takes about five hours to complete 33. "You've changed my mind" 36. Vocal range featured by The King's Singers 38. Sit and mope 41. Big name on a cup? 42. Genetic blueprint 43. In trouble, perhaps 45. Expresses disapproval
1. Philippines' secondlargest island
37. Actress Phylicia of "Creed" 38. In order to 39. Lacking the know-how 40. Crazy Horse, for one
2. Neighborhood near Dodger Stadium
44. Cringe-inducing things, in recent slang
3. "Movin' Out" choreographer Twyla
45. Singing D&D classes
4. Lead, for one
47. Mode of "The Incredibles"
5. Linear
48. Apply haphazardly
6. What poblano peppers passably pack
49. Essen article
7. Some mushroom payoffs, in most Mario games
10. Full-grown animals 11. Sought, as an office 12. Sci. locale with microscopes 14. Tore 21. Footnote material 25. Action film adventurer
CANCER
(June 21-July 22): There are so many kinds of sweetness. Zesty spicy sweetness. Tender balmy fragrant sweetness. Sour or bitter sweetness. Musky piquant sweetness. Luscious succulent sweetness. One of my favorite types of sweetness is described by Cancerian poet Stephen Dunn. He wrote, "Often a sweetness comes as if on loan, stays just long enough to make sense of what it means to be alive, then returns to its dark source. As for me, I don’t care where it’s been, or what bitter road it’s traveled to come so far, to taste so good." My analysis of the astrological omens suggests to me that you are about to commune with at least three of these sweetnesses, Cancerian. Maybe most of them.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Author Dan Savage advo-
cates regular indulgence in sloth. He notes that few of us can "get through 24 hours without a little downtime. Human beings need to stare off into space, look out the window, daydream, and spend time every day being indolent and useless." I concur, and I hope you will indulge in more downtime than usual during the coming weeks. For the sake of your long-term mental and physical health, you need to relax extra deep and strong now—to recharge your battery with delicious and delightful abandon.
VIRGO
8. 2003 NBA Rookie of the Year Amar'e 9. Commander's superiors?
(May 21-June 20): To earn money, I have worked as a janitor, dishwasher, olive picker, ditch-digger, newspaper deliverer, and 23 other jobs involving hard labor. In addition, I have done eight artistic jobs better suited to my sensitive temperament and creative talents. Am I regretful or resentful about the thousands of hours I toiled at tasks I didn't enjoy? A little. But mostly I'm thankful for them. They taught me how to interact harmoniously with a wide array of people. They helped forge my robust social conscience. And they motivated me to eventually figure out how to get jobs I really loved. Now I invite you to take an inventory of your own work life, Gemini. It's an excellent time to evaluate where you've been and where you want to go in the future.
last week’s answers
(Aug. 23-Sept. 22): According to my deep and thorough analysis of your astrological rhythms, your mouth will soon be a wonder of nature. The words emerging from your lips will be extra colorful, precise, and persuasive. Your taste buds will have an enhanced vividness as they commune with the joys of food and drink. And I suspect your tongue and lips will exult in an upgrade of aptitude and pleasure while plying the arts of sex and intimate love. Congratulations, Mouthy Maestro!
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In addition to being a
masterful composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
WEEK OF NOVEMBER 9
© 2023 ROB BREZSNY
(1756–1791) played the piano, violin, harp, bassoon, clarinet, horn, flute, oboe, and trumpet. His experience led him to believe that musicians best express their skills when they play fast. It’s more challenging to be excellent when playing slowly, he thought. But I will invite you to adopt the reverse attitude and approach in the coming weeks, Libra. According to my astrological analysis, you will be most successful if you work gradually and incrementally, with careful diligence and measured craftiness.
SCORPIO
(Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In my horoscopes for Scorpios, I tend to write complex messages. My ideas are especially thick and rich and lush. Why? Because I imagine you as being complex, thick, rich, and lush. Your destiny is labyrinthine and mysterious and intriguing, and I aspire to reflect its intricate, tricky beauty. But this time, in accordance with current astrological omens, I will offer you my simplest, most straightforward oracle ever. I borrowed it from author Mary Anne Hershey: "Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Play with abandon. Choose with no regret. Continue to learn. Appreciate your friends. Do what you love."
SAGITTARIUS
(Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In her poem "Requiem," Anna Akhmatova says, "I must kill off memory . . . and I must learn to live anew." I think most of us can benefit from periodically engaging in this brave and robust exercise. It's not a feat to be taken lightly—not to be done more than once or twice a year. But guess what: The coming weeks will be a time when such a ritual might be wise for you. Are you ready to purge old business and prepare the way for a fresh start? Here are your words of power: forgiveness, clearing, cleaning, release, absolution, liberation.
CAPRICORN
(Dec. 22-Jan. 19): We need stories almost as much as we need to breathe, eat, sleep, and move. It’s impossible to live without them. The best stories nourish our souls, stimulate our imagination, and make life exciting. That’s not to say that all stories are healthy for us. We sometimes cling to narratives that make us miserable and sap our energy. I think we have a sacred duty to de-emphasize and even jettison those stories— even as we honor and relish the rich stories that empower and inspire us. I bring these thoughts to your attention, Capricorn, because you’re in a phase of your cycle when you will especially thrive by disposing of the bad old stories and celebrating the good ones.
AQUARIUS
(Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I could be wrong, but I don’t think so: You are smarter and wiser than you realize about the pressing issues that are now vying for your attention. You know more than you know you know. I suspect this will soon become apparent, as streams of fresh insights rise up from the depths of your psyche and guide your conscious awareness toward clarity. It’s OK to squeal with glee every time a healing intuition shows up. You have earned this welcome phase of lucid certainty.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In Indigenous cultures
throughout history, shamans have claimed they have the power to converse with and even temporarily become hawks, coyotes, snakes, and other creatures. Why do they do that? It’s a long story, but one answer is that they believe animals have intelligences that are different from what humans have. The shamans aspire to learn from those alternate ways of seeing and comprehending the world. Many of us who live in Western culture dismiss this venerable practice, although I’ve known animal lovers who sympathize with it. If you are game for a fun experiment, Pisces, I invite you to try your own version. Choose an animal to learn from. Study and commune with it. Ask it to reveal intuitions that surprise and enrich you.
Homework: What increasingly unnecessary duty could you abandon and thereby fuel your drive to be free? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology. com
CHECK OUT ROB BREZSNY’S EXPANDED WEEKLY AUDIO HOROSCOPES & DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES
©2023 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JNZ990.
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