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"Burn the Town Down"

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The striking similarities between Portland's 1967 race riot and our city's current relationship with people of color. by Santi Elijah Holley

Tensions had been building for weeks.

Portland Police, emboldened by the newly established Intelligence Division, had become a regular presence in North/Northeast’s Albina neighborhood, monitoring civil rights activity and “agitators.” Police relations with Portland’s African American community had never been positive, but in the summer of 1967, two years after the devastating Watts Riots, distrust between the police and the Black community ratcheted to new heights. In the opinion of many local residents, in particular young Blacks, Albina had come to resemble a police state.

“Where else but in Albina do cops hang around the streets and parks all day like plantation overseers?” commented one young man to an Oregonian reporter. “Just their presence antagonizes us. We feel like we’re being watched all the time.”

In North Portland, as in the rest of the country, tensions between police and the Black community were at an all-time high, and the city was primed to explode.

The summer of 1967 was racked by nationwide uprisings. The “long hot summer” saw 159 racially motivated riots across the United States, beginning in June with violent events in Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and Tampa, followed in July with more outbreaks in Birmingham, Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, and elsewhere. The largest and most extensive riots occurred in Newark, New Jersey (26 dead, 1,500 arrests) and Detroit, Michigan (43 dead, 7,200 arrests).

By the middle of July it seemed as though Portland would escape the violence sweeping the country, but 50 years ago next month, the city’s decades-long practice of discrimination and displacement had finally reached its boiling point.


The Frustrations Start

Oregon’s history of legal discrimination is well-documented, and is much a part of state lore as the Lewis and Clark expedition. Upon being granted statehood in 1859, Oregon was the only state in the union to prohibit Blacks from living on or owning property within its borders—and this ban was not officially revoked until 1926. The Ku Klux Klan was prominent in the state in the 1920s, holding considerable sway over Oregon police and political leaders. The 15th Amendment—giving African Americans the right to vote—did not become state law until 1959, nearly 90 years after being ratified by the US Congress.

What could be considered Portland’s first Black community was situated west of the Willamette River on Broadway Avenue, since many African American men worked for the train station and the downtown hotels. With the arrival of World War II, the Black population skyrocketed, from 2,000 to 20,000. Most of these newcomers were housed in a newly and hastily constructed public housing community called Vanport, situated between Portland and Vancouver in the floodplain of the Columbia River. In the early 1940s, it was Oregon’s second-largest city, and the largest public housing project in the nation, with African Americans making up 40 percent of its population. When the Columbia River flooded on May 30, 1948, Vanport was home to 18,500 people who suddenly found themselves without a place to live. 6,300 of those who lost their homes in the flood were Black, and quickly had to find their way in an unwelcoming and at times hostile city—a city listed by the Journal of Social Work in 1945 as “the worst Northern City in Racial Relations.”

Following the war, Blacks began moving in large numbers across the Willamette River to Albina. Originally home to a large European immigrant community, the neighborhood, straddling the border of North and Northeast Portland, had seen a slow influx of African American residents as early as 1910, but after the Vanport flood the Black population of Albina surged. This was no accident, but a calculated bit of legal and commercial maneuvering, as a city-approved Code of Ethics forbade realtors and bankers from selling or giving property loans to minorities in white neighborhoods. “Redlining” effectively confined 73 percent of the city’s African American population to Albina. In the 10 years between 1950 and 1960, 7,000 more Blacks had moved into the neighborhood, while 23,000 whites had moved out—many of them relocating to the recently built suburbs. By the beginning of the decade, African Americans comprised four percent of the city’s population, while 80 percent of Black Portlanders were crowded into Albina.

Darrell Millner, professor emeritus of Black studies at Portland State University, explains that what’s often referred to as the “Black community” is not an organically formed entity, but a product of the existing power structure.

“The Black community was an artificial creation of a segregated society as we knew it in the ’50s and ’60s,” he says. “The composition of the neighborhood is not in the control of the Black population. The Black population is always reacting to what the dominant population is doing. And that’s the key dynamic.”

During the war years, Central Albina—the area around Williams and Russell in particular—became the heart of the community with bustling jazz clubs, salons, record stores, and restaurants. By the mid-1950s, however, the area was beset by encroaching blight, and city officials had singled out the area for urban renewal. Rather than invest in the existing community, the city decimated it. Construction of the I-5 freeway, Memorial Coliseum, and a proposed Emanuel hospital expansion (later abandoned) led to the loss of more than 1,100 homes and hundreds of businesses in Central Albina. Residents were given 90 days to find new housing. Many African American residents viewed urban renewal as yet one more example of “Negro removal.”


“Black folk had it rough in Portland... The system, especially the police, had a whole lot of feet on Black peoples’ necks.”


The Black population in the Eliot neighborhood shrank by two-thirds, and many relocated to King, Boise, and Humboldt, an area taking up roughly two-and-a-half square miles. Black residents made up 84 percent of the Boise neighborhood, while remaining only six percent of the city’s total population. Since African Americans made up just one percent of Portland’s 700-plus police officers, friction between the Black residents of Albina and Portland Police was inescapable. A clash was inevitable.

Henry Stevenson, a military veteran who moved from Washington, DC, to Portland in 1960 recalls, “Black folk had it rough in Portland... The system, especially the police, had a whole lot of feet on Black peoples’ necks.”

Frank Fair, a youth worker with the Church Community Action Program, put it this way: “When you get to feeling locked in—that’s when the frustrations start.”


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Sunday at the Park

The afternoon of Sunday, July 30, 1967 was bright and warm. Around 100 people—most of them young and Black—congregated in Irving Park, directly south of Fremont, anticipating a rumored demonstration with speakers and events. Ostensibly promoted by the Ad Hoc Committee for Black Culture, the “Sunday at the Park” was to feature a performance by the Black Arts Theatre from San Francisco, live music, a photo exhibit from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and a special visit from Black Panther Party Minister of Information and Soul on Ice author, Eldridge Cleaver. During the week leading up to the demonstration, many of the city’s older Black leaders and clergy members, including respected pastor and civil rights activist Reverend John H. Jackson from Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, had gone around the neighborhood trying to dissuade young people from attending, but their efforts were roundly rebuffed.

Though riots had been exploding across the country, Oregon Governor Tom McCall, speaking at a news conference in late July days before the park rally, acknowledged race relations in Oregon were not ideal, yet claimed they were better than in other states. He did not believe that the waves of violence visiting other states would hit Oregon. Regardless, the governor’s assessment didn’t stop local law enforcement from amping up surveillance of the park. Increased police presence—including seven cars of plainclothes detectives and two officers posted on a nearby hill, watching the park through binoculars—only further inflamed tensions.

As the afternoon wore on, there was no sign of Eldridge Cleaver or the Black Arts Theatre, prompting new rumors they had been detained by law enforcement somewhere along the way. Young Black activists set up a platform with a PA system and microphone to address the crowd about police brutality and resistance. Some of the more militant activists led chants of “kill the honkies,”“Whitey, go home,” and “burn the town down.”

Neighborhood Service Center worker Erma Hepburn, who had been dispatched to survey the scene at the park, later reported to the Oregonian: “I heard one of them say it was rumored they were there to incite a riot. He said that wasn’t true. But he added, ‘If you’re here to talk revolution, then that’s something else.’”

The first reported incident happened at 5:18 pm, when a group of Black youths began to throw bottles and rocks through the windows of the Lampus discount store. Shortly after, at around 5:30 pm, a group of four or five young Black men—in their late teens and early 20s—surrounded and attacked Ira Williamson, a 51-year-old white employee of the Portland Parks Department who was there watching the rally. Williamson suffered bruises to his ribs, cuts to his mouth, and five broken teeth. His wristwatch and wallet were also stolen. He was rescued and brought to the hospital by Linzi Roy, an African American school teacher then working in the Park Bureau’s summer program. Another white man, Vernon Wolvert, who lived across the street from the park, was also allegedly attacked, but not severely injured and didn’t require medical attention.

By 6:30 pm, the small rally at the park had developed into a neighborhood-wide clash. Reports of rock throwing directed towards cops and motorists motivated police to the seal off a 30-block area of the neighborhood and request additional officers to the scene. Many businesses along the single block between Fremont and Beech on Union Avenue (now Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard) had their windows broken by rocks or bottles.

And soon after came the first reports of firebombing.

Just after 10 pm, fires destroyed the Sav-Mor Food Market on Mississippi Avenue, and a two-story building on Union Avenue—housing both the Union Coin Operated Laundromat and American Auto Parts, Inc. Police officers fired on 18-year-old Jesse Johnson after witnessing him allegedly tossing a Molotov cocktail through the window of the Alberta Furniture Store. Johnson survived, but suffered buckshot injuries to his back, legs, and stomach. He was booked on arson charges with a $5,000 bail.

One of the cops on the scene was a young white officer named Tom Potter, who would eventually go on to become North Precinct captain, chief of police, and then mayor of Portland from 2005 to 2009. However, on the night of July 30, 1967, he was just a young beat cop in over his head.

“At the time, Portland was very unprepared for anything like this,” Potter recalled in an interview for OPB’s Oregon Experience. “We didn’t have any riot gear. What I was told was, ‘Bring whatever long gun you have from home, and we’re going to be going out on patrol....’ During the night, I can remember standing on what was then Union Avenue and Fremont, and every building I could see was on fire, and I could hear the ‘pop pop’ of guns.”

Police Inspector Frank Springer, speaking at an evening news conference, insisted that the disturbances happening at that moment should not be considered a riot. Yet the situation had gotten serious enough to warrant an emergency visit by Governor McCall. The governor arrived in Portland at around 9 pm, and convened with Mayor Terry Schrunk at the governor’s suite at the Hilton Hotel, along with heads of the Oregon National Guard, Oregon’s adjutant general, the head of the state police, and other members of the governor’s staff. McCall and Schrunk then reconvened at the mayor’s office, where they set up a command post for the night.

At the height of the disturbance, approximately 300 young men and women—predominantly African American, but with some whites—were in the streets, largely confined by police to the vicinity of Upper Albina. Two hundred police officers had been ordered into the area, with another 200 nearby, ready to provide assistance. Helmeted officers rode four and five to a car, ordered to keep their rifles and shotguns inside the vehicle, out of public view. The Oregon National Guard’s 2nd Battalion of the 218th Field Artillery, with 500 men in reserve at the Portland Air Base, was on notice with another 6,000 reservists at home.


“Tell them Portland stinks behind its roses. Tell them we’re not monkeys and this isn’t a zoo.”


Nineteen people were arrested by midnight, including six juveniles and three whites, mostly on charges of vandalism. After midnight, police continued to arrest both Blacks and whites for being in violation of a newly imposed city curfew ordinance. By 12:30 am Monday morning, Police Inspector Springer declared that the situation “remains clear and under control.” Before the sun came up Monday morning, however, the police would make 28 more arrests, and the Portland Fire Department would receive 15 more fire calls, bringing the total number of reported fires to 26, with extensive property damage to the immediate area surrounding Fremont and Union Avenue.

Covering the unrest for the Oregon Journal, Ralph Friedman quoted a male African American resident of the area who wanted readers to understand the root cause of the violence. “Tell them the white merchants on Union Avenue could have 10 Union Avenues for all the profit they’ve drained out of us,” the man said. “Tell them Portland stinks behind its roses. Tell them we’re not monkeys and this isn’t a zoo.”


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Separate and Unequal

After the disturbance, public reaction was mixed, with a majority of residents on record renouncing the violence and praising the relatively subdued police reaction. Older Black residents of Albina were especially critical of the disturbance, attributing it to the influence of outside agitators. Reverend John H. Jackson asserted that people had driven up to Portland from California specifically to stir up local youths.

Portland’s two leading newspapers at the time, the Oregon Journal and the Oregonian, published photos, statements, and reactions to the disturbance, some less nuanced than others. Few of the articles connected the events in Albina to the uprisings taking place in other cities across the country. In a front-page article in the Oregonian, under the headline “Negroes Break Windows, Set Fires,” staff writer Stan Federman reported: “Roving bands of Negroes, most of them teen-agers, surged through the streets Sunday night in a sudden outburst of vandalism in the Albina section of Portland.” (Not mentioned were several white males who had also been arrested, many of whom were picked up in the area for carrying guns in their cars.) A photograph of a broken window superimposed with a small white arrow was captioned: “Arrow points to billiard ball which was tossed through window of Oregon State Liquor Store at 3532 NE Union Ave. by gang of Negro teenagers.”

At a joint press conference, Governor McCall and Mayor Schrunk acknowledged the Black community’s frustration over inadequate education funding and programs, but neither considered the event a race riot, and they, too, blamed the violence on a small group of outsiders. The troublemakers, Governor McCall claimed, did not represent the larger Black community.

“The mood of Portland’s non-whites is one of intolerance toward violence,” the governor said. “The seeds of hatred find inhospitable soil here in the city of Portland.”

A 15-year-old African American boy, who had been arrested during the disturbance and taken to Donald E. Lang Juvenile Detention, had a different opinion: “The riot spirit is catching,” he told the Oregonian. “As long as there are riots and trouble in other cities, there will be riots here. I know it’s not going to do anyone any good... but there’s nothing I can do about that.”

Later that Monday afternoon, at about 4:30 pm, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into a pile of tires at a service station on Union Avenue, while a crowd of approximately 80 young Black men and women had gathered near Irving Park, throwing rocks and bottles at the windows of passing vehicles. Police set up a traffic barricade at Union and Fremont, as the crowd continued to throw objects at police cars, motorists, and homes. By 8 pm, Mayor Schrunk ordered police to clear the park and “start making plenty of arrests.” Nearly 150 police officers, carrying rifles and shotguns, again moved into the area, supported by three 18-man tactical operations platoons specializing in riot control. By midnight, after several reports of firebombing and arson, police declared the situation calm and under control. There were 68 arrests and 13 reports of fires.

As the city awoke following a second night of violence, residents—both in Albina and throughout the city—were appalled. Letters to newspaper editors, chief of police, and the mayor all denounced the violence, reasserting the popular view that outsiders from California, or else a small group of local rabble-rousers, were responsible. Some Portland residents, like Margaret Luyben, suggested Mayor Schrunk authorize Portland Police to shoot any “militant black negroes” seen destroying property.

Despite a brief flare-up on that Tuesday—which saw the firebombing of a fuel company and arrests of 10 adults and 15 juveniles—there were no further reports of disturbances in the area. Police returned to their normal duties after being subjected to 12-hour workdays. As the public mostly heaped praise on the police for their swift and effective response, the mayor then contended with those who saw his response as too reliant on force and large-scale arrests, while others believed the mayor had been too accommodating to vandalism.

Nevertheless, the disturbances near Irving Park sparked a citywide conversation over the city’s disengagement from the Albina community, a draconian police presence, inadequate housing, and lack of jobs. Though the overwhelming majority of participants in the clashes were young—and many older residents renounced the violence—these concerns were not unique to the young, nor were they anything new. In the view of some participants, the insurrections in Albina on July 30 and 31 were a show of solidarity with the mood spreading across the United States that summer.

While riots were still taking place throughout the country, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the Kerner Commission on July 28, 1967 to study the causes of recent violence and to make recommendations. The report addressed problems stemming from racism, white entitlement, and the failure of federal and state governments to provide housing and education. “Our nation is moving toward two societies,” the report warned, “one Black, one white—separate and unequal.” President Johnson ultimately rejected the Commission’s recommendations and, after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s assassination on April 4, 1968, over 100 cities again erupted in large-scale rioting.

Albina saw turmoil once more, beginning on the night of Friday, June 13, 1969. Following a violent confrontation with police—outside the popular hangout spot Lidio’s Drive-In on Union and Shaver—hundreds of young Black residents traveled throughout the area, throwing bottles and firebombs, assaulting motorists and police officers, and vandalizing property. By early Monday morning, after dozens of arrests and thousands of dollars of property damage, the altercation had come to an end.

In the aftermath of this new disturbance Kent Ford, along with Percy Hampton, announced the formation of the Portland Black Panther Party. During their decade-long tenure, the Panthers ran a children’s breakfast program, operated free medical and dental clinics, and condemned what they saw as a racist and repressive police presence in Albina.

“We want fascist pigs out of the Albina district,” Ford declared. “We don’t need those pigs here.”


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Then and Now

The 1970s and ’80s were acutely devastating to Albina, owing largely to city disinvestment and housing abandonment. As Black families moved out, gangs and drug pushers moved in, taking advantage of an untapped market and introducing crack cocaine to the troubled district. Afflicted by gang warfare, economic stagnation, predatory lenders, speculators, and absentee landlords, the percentage of Black Portlanders in Albina ultimately shrank by more than a fifth toward the end of the ’80s, with many of Portland’s Black population moving east of Albina, to outer Southeast and Gresham, known now as “the numbers.” Albina’s population decreased by nearly 27,000 since 1950, and the value of homes dropped to 58 percent of the city’s median.

And then in the ’90s, for the first in 50 years, Albina’s population began to grow again—though not with African Americans. Attracted by affordable home prices and city reinvestment, whites descended on the area. By the turn of the century, less than one-third of Black Portlanders remained in Albina.

In her 2007 study “Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment, 1940-2000,” Karen J. Gibson, associate professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University, offers a view of gentrification as “not just a matter of individual preferences for older centrally located neighborhoods; it is a matter of financial and governmental decisions. When capital is withheld from certain areas, predatory lenders move in to fill the void.”

The Albina community today is nearly unrecognizable compared to 50 years ago. Northeast Portland is now popular for its boutiques, art galleries, and artisanal ice cream shops, while North Williams Avenue is once again a thriving community—albeit one in which African Americans are largely absent. If the Black community had been created artificially by the existing power structure—the dominant population—then that same system has been responsible for destroying it.

Since the last presidential election, cities across the country have been beset by street protests and riots, often accompanied by property destruction, but Portland has arguably seen more than any other American city. While addressing different grievances, some similarities can be made to the riots of 1967, namely nonhierarchical (and at times chaotic) strategies, a heavy-handed police response, and a mayor on the defensive. Black Lives Matter and Don’t Shoot PDX have more in common with the direct action mobilizations of the late '60s and '70s than with the nonviolent marches of their parents’ or grandparents’ generation.

But not until the May 26 deaths of two innocent white men on the MAX train—murdered while defending two Black girls from a white supremacist—had the veil of Portland’s long history of racism been so violently pulled back. While white residents have subsequently begun to make an effort to listen to the concerns of Portland’s vulnerable people of color, it’s too soon to know whether these efforts will bring about any changes, or whether they are merely symbolic. In the meantime, Black Portlanders continue to move further away from the city, away from a familiar and supportive community, and—with a population still lingering near six percent—they have reason to feel, as they did 50 years ago, like second-class citizens. The city has long taken for granted its status as a progressive paradise, but the Albina riots, while not widely known or studied, can serve as a caution for the present day.

As Shelton Hill, executive director of the Urban League, said on the Monday following the two days of rioting in 1967: “The only good that could possibly come out of a thing like this is that it may shake Portland out of its complacency. It shows that these things can happen anywhere.”

Further reading: Karen J. Gibson, Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment: 1940-2000and The Portland Black Panthers: Empowering Albina and Remaking a City; Lucas N.N. Burke and Judson L. Jeffries. Special thanks to Dr. Darrell Millner, and Joshua Joe Bryan for his 2013 PSU thesis, Portland, Oregon’s Long Hot Summers: Racial Unrest and Public Response, 1967-1969.

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Sister Cities

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True Portland: Our town through the lens of Tokyo. by Andrea Damewood

If Japan were to launch an intercontinental bullet train, odds are good it would run straight to Oregon.

Portland and Tokyo are in the midst of an intense love affair, and prominent Tokyo designer Teruo Kurosaki has played a big role in drawing his city’s trendiest to ours with a local guidebook, True Portland. This month, Hawthorne Books’ English translation launches with a trans-Pacific release party on June 22 at Reverend Nat’s Cidery.

Portland and Tokyo have had a free-flowing commercial exchange over the last few years, with Blue Star Donuts, Navarre, Voodoo Doughnut, Columbia Sportswear, and NikeLab opening stores in the Japanese capital, and acclaimed ramen shops (Marukin, Kizuki, and Afuri among them) putting down PDX roots.

“I think there’s a deeper relationship that’s been well established now,” says True Portland editor Liz Crain. “It’s not a fad anymore. That’s one of the many reasons we really wanted to publish this book.”

Crain says the guide is a love letter to makers and niche businesses around town, while to Tokyoites, Portland is a smaller, greener, and less dense version of their city—our metro area has some 2 million people to their 37 million.

“[Portland] combines a lot of what Tokyoites love about their city and then some, without the crush and with an outstanding ease of access,” she explains via email. “There’s a real focus on people and businesses that do one thing or a small handful of things extremely well—400-plus of them. Both Portland and Tokyo have heaps of niche-focused businesses with careful and appealing modern design, both cities are art-centric, and both cities—all of this lucky for us—have excellent gastronomy.”

While True Portland is mainly for visitors, residents can definitely glean a few novel ideas for a weekend staycation from the 48-hour itineraries by local art-scene insiders featuring favorite galleries and boutiques that may not be known to most.

“The primary reason why we wanted to publish it is that it’s a really smart, and smartly designed, well-curated guide to our city,” Crain says.


True Portland
by Teruo Kurosaki, edited by Liz Crain
(Hawthorne Books/Bridge Lab)

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26 Miles: Get Out of Here, Jack Kerouac

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Quiara Alegría Hudes and the Dream of the Female Road Narrative by Megan Burbank

“Lewis and Clark, Jack Kerouac, and me: hitting the road!” That’s the cheesiest line in Quiara Alegría Hudes’26 Miles, now showing at Profile Theatre. It may also be the most important, as a nerdy teenage girl, Olivia (Alex Ramirez de Cruz), earnestly announces her place in a pantheon of iconic road narratives.

26 Miles is the latest in Profile’s season of plays by Quiara Alegría Hudes. Following last year’s focus on Sarah Ruhl, this season reflects the company’s relatively new initiative to spotlight work by women and people of color. It’s a sensible approach to counterbalancing theater’s well-documented diversity problem, and one the company, which each year dedicates an entire season to work by a single playwright, is uniquely positioned to take.

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It’s exciting to see this in practice with Hudes’ plays, which are varied in structure and storytelling. 26 Miles follows the company’s previous production of Hudes’ much darker Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue. In 26 Miles, Olivia and her estranged mother, Beatriz (Julana Torres), drive west from suburban Pennsylvania without a plan. They crash in motel rooms and eat tamales and dream of spotting bison in Wyoming. They talk about sex and race and the various ways men—Olivia’s father (Chris Harder), Beatriz’ partner (Jimmy Garcia)—have disappointed them. Olivia is gawky and kind of annoying, which is a testament to Hudes’ writing, because it’s how teenagers actually are. Beatriz is flamboyant and smart and a little bitter. The cast does well with Hudes’ funny, warm material, but Torres stands out; her Beatriz is charismatic and fun, but she’s also multidimensional, with a legible sense of underlying pain.

26 Miles may seem less ambitious than a play like Eliot, but it also feels more personal, and in that sense it may be a braver story. Hudes grew up with a Jewish father and a Puerto Rican mother, and she’s known for the way her plays incorporate music into their storytelling. It’s easy to see Olivia, who likes Chopin’s nocturnes and writes obsessively and grapples with her biracial identity, as a stand-in for the playwright.

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There’s also something exciting about seeing a road narrative that focuses on a mother and a daughter, and digs into issues of race and immigration complications, as well as the way the world can be a cruel place for smart teenage girls. Maybe because we’re so starved for this in a cultural landscape where female-led road narratives are so few and far between. There are exceptions: Thelma and Louise, plenty of YA odysseys, and Agnès Varda’s Vagabond, which in 1986 set the gold standard for the genre with a rebellious wandering heroine played perfectly by Sandrine Bonnaire—and hasn’t been equaled since. Women’s travelogues tend to be dismissed outright as unserious, and that’s a shame because iconic stories of travel tend not to include us, or to include us in ways that are offensive and flattened. I’ve always loved traveling, but a lot of the stories about hitting the road that are tagged as important make me bored if not mildly queasy. I tried to read On the Road after a year of living abroad and traveling aimlessly in my early 20s—a time that book is arguably most relevant—and I couldn’t finish it. I found its masculine swagger affected, its sexism and racism embarrassingly dated, its insights shallow and uninspiring.

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Conversely, in a talk before the play’s opening show, Profile’s Artistic Director Josh Hecht described 26 Miles as a relatable story, and it is, in the best way possible. I’ve never hit the road with my bros to slum it up and do a bunch of drugs until my trust fund kicks in, but I have gone on a road trip with my mom. I have freaked out over seeing a bison in real life.

Of course, the subtext here is important, too: Maybe we have so many of these Men Traveling and Having Thoughts stories because it’s logistically easier to be a freewheeling young white straight man in a road narrative, because freewheeling young white straight men enjoy the privilege of unfettered movement. For women and people of color, this is rarely the case. This is why a play like 26 Miles is so useful, and even instructive: It reclaims the road for those of us who’ve never gone through a Kerouac phase. It nods at all those other journeys, the ones we don’t read about in books or see in movies—journeys across borders and state lines and across divisions of age and identity. By standing in for these other, invisible stories, 26 Miles transforms a tired genre into something full of new possibilities and wonder, and like hitting I-94 and driving until you can’t drive anymore, it makes the ordinary world look new.

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This Week’s Featured I, Anonymous!

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Why don’t you people have goals?

I’ve lived here a decade, and I’m still shocked by how many people in Portland have absolutely no goals. Some own homes, have pets, have good jobs—but that’s it. They maybe have a few hobbies that focus on their home or dog, but they seemingly have no purpose in life. One does not need to be religious or spiritual to have a stake in the most common goal: to make the world better. And yet, even this goal is seemingly lost within the vapid mind of locals too busy focusing on the next best pop-up club, where to sit on bluffs, or if their dog loves them. I constantly meet people whose entire existence seems focused on the idea that pleasure for the sake of pleasure is a meaningful goal. It’s not. It’s selfish and childish. And if they’re not wrapped up in themselves, they’ve seemingly given up. With everything life now has to offer, if all you have are the trappings of a mundane life, I really feel sorry for you.—Anonymous

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Good Morning, News: Montavilla Steps Up for Homeless, the Attorney General's New Attorney, and Calm Down About Georgia Already

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by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey

GOOD MORNING, BLOGTOWN! Can I get a little closer so I can get to know you, and exchange names and thangs before the night is over. LET'S GO TO PRESS.

Here's a switch: The Montavilla Neighborhood Association is asking the city to STOP doing homeless sweeps in their area, saying they are a waste of time, money, and violate the rights of the campers.

An ex-official for the Oregon Department of Energy has admitted that he took nearly $300,000 in bribes.

Georgia's Karen Handel wins her district's special election against Democrat Jon Ossoff, and of course the Democrats, Republicans, and media are overreacting BIG TIME. Republicans in these districts are not suddenly going to say, "Oh dear, I've been wrong this entire time! I better switch party affiliation quick!" Everybody calm down, grit your teeth, and realize we didn't get into this mess overnight, and it'll take much longer to get out of it. /END RANT



Dear President Dummy—You might want to read this: The wildly unpopular GOP healthcare bill is now more wildly unpopular than ever. Oh, and read the following as well.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has hired his own attorney. No word yet on who will be the Attorney General's attorney's attorney. You know when you type a word like "attorney" enough times, it doesn't even look like a word anymore. Attorney. Attorney. Attorney.

Even though it was known that incoming national security adviser Mike Flynn was susceptible to Russian blackmail, new CIA director Mike Pompeo continued to pump him with secrets.

The CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, has stepped down from his position after the company's shareholders staged a revolt.

Dashcam video of a police officer shooting Black motorist Philando Castile to death has been released, adding more furor about the decision to acquit the officer of all charges.


The directors of the Star Wars Han Solo movie have left the film due to... you guessed it... "creative differences."

Now let's look outside, in the sky, at the WEATHER: The sky tells us it's going to be a nice, sunny day with a comfortable high of 77. But a HOT weekend lies ahead!

And finally, looks like a nice day, so let's go swimming! (Pause, watches video.) On second thought, MAYBE NOT.

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Top Chef Buds Mei Lin and Doug Adams Will Make You Dinner Sunday

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by Andrea Damewood

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Courtesy Doug and Mei

Portland Chef Doug Adams is between gigs: he's finished up his legendary time at Imperial, and is in the process of opening his own restaurant downtown, Bullard.

In the meantime, Adams has been popping up all over town lately, pulling grill duty at Bit House Saloon, cooking up vittles at his friend William Oben's Park Avenue Fine Wines, and planning to man the coals at a Tournant oyster social.

But hot damn if I'm not stoked to see him cooking a spontaneous Sunday Supper with fellow Top Chef Season 12 contestant (and winner) Mei Lin. The two are serving up a six course meal this Sunday at 7 pm at the former Hamlet space in the Pearl (232 NW 12th).

Tix are $125 and include a boatload of rosè. They are available here and are sure to go fast, so if you've got the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

Peep the menu and get ready to eat:

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Timbers v. Minnesota Match Preview

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by Abe Asher

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Craig Mitchelldyer/Portland Timbers

The Portland Timbers are in the midst of their first trip north to Minnesota for an MLS game, where they'll play Minnesota United this evening at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis (5:00 pm, TV on KPDX).

It's a game that has taken on added importance for a Timbers team that blew a second half lead and was defeated 2-1 by the Colorado Rapids over the weekend in Commerce City. With Seattle looming on Sunday back at home, Portland will want to end its road trip with a positive result.

The History

Minnesota United made its MLS debut in the opening game of the season at Providence Park in March, and were summarily routed 5-1 by a Timbers team that began the season in rampant form.

Things didn't get better from there for Minnesota. The Loons were outscored in their next three games by a combined 13-5, and exited their first month of top flight existence with one point and a goal differential of -12.

From there, though, things stabilized. The Loons haven't exactly been good — their still in dead last in the league with just fourteen points from fifteen games and have struggled in June — but they're three times the team they were in Portland. Getting Jermaine Taylor out of the lineup certainly helped.

This will be the Timbers' first game in Minnesota since August of 2010, when a Ryan Pore penalty gave Portland a 1-0 win over the Minnesota Stars in front of a crowd of 1,429 at the National Sports Center in Blaine. Seven years later, soccer in the Twin Cities has come an awfully long way.

The Tactics

This game comes on just three days rest for the Timbers, who played and lost on Saturday night in Colorado and are looking forward to a massive game on Sunday afternoon at home against Seattle.

Thus, we should see Caleb Porter rotate his team as much as he feels he can. Alvas Powell will likely make his first start in over a month at right back in place of Zarek Valentin, while Porter would do well to rest Vytas and get Marco Farfan back in the lineup for the first time since April at left back.

The Timbers remain shorthanded at center back — where Liam Ridgewell is out through at least the Seattle game — and up top, where Darren Mattocks could be available off the bench on Wednesday night but isn't fit to start.

Portland does have David Guzman coming back from suspension, and he should start in midfield. The question is how much — if at all — Porter wants to change his attacking unit. Darlington Nagbe, for one, has traveled plenty in the last several weeks, and looked extremely tired at the end of the game on Saturday.

It's an interesting game for Porter to manage. The Seattle game on Sunday is, for obvious reasons, the primary focus of this week. But tonight's game is still an intra-conference match — and one that the Timbers should be gunning for a minimum of a point in. We'll see how Porter decides to play it.

Minnesota has been in a rut recently, having lost and been shutout in their last three matches across all competitions. United is down left back Marc Burch, who has an adductor injury, and only named five substitutes for their game last Saturday at Real Salt Lake.

The Lineup

90 - Gleeson
32 - Farfan
7 - Miller
13 - Olum
2 - Powell
20 - Guzman
21 - Chara
6 - Nagbe
8 - Valeri
10 - Blanco
9 - Adi

The Pick

Minnesota has been tough at home, but expect the Timbers to respond after the disappointment of that second half at Colorado. 1-1 draw.

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One Day at a Time: Trump and the GOP’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

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by Ann Romano

DONALD TRUMP  What, is it 4 am already? Well, time to write an unhinged tweet.
DONALD TRUMP"What, is it 4 am already? Well, time to write an unhinged tweet."Pool / Getty

MONDAY, JUNE 12

Greetings, loved ones! You know, as Donald Trump—who lost the popular vote by 2,864,974 votes, don’tchaknow—continues to use the Constitution as his personal wet wipe, it’s easy to forget there are other terrible people in our government also doing terrible things... say, for example, the Senate GOP. Quick history lesson: Just last month, White House mouthpiece Sean Spicer told us that when the Senate GOP finally got the chance to rejigger Obamacare, it wouldn’t be in secret. “When it was done last time,” Spicer crowed, “it was jammed down people’s throats, and look what happened.” (What happened was millions of Americans finally got the life-saving coverage they needed... but we digress.) Anyway, the GOP was going to do their health care plan differently, right? Hahahahahaaaaa... NO. According to the Washington Post, not only are Senate Republicans writing their health care revision in absolute secrecy, today they also outlawed television cameras in the hallways of the Capitol in order to avoid taking questions about their shenanigans. When asked by a reporter why it was so important at this moment to deny television cameras in the hallways, GOP Sen. Tim Scott said, “Cameras could catch the pin numbers of Senators at ATM machines.” Wow. WOW. WOW. WOW. WOW. WOW.That’s it for today, dears. Excuse us while we submerge ourselves in a bathtub filled with martinis.

TUESDAY, JUNE 13

Look! In the distance! Atop a dark steed and shrouded in a haze of cigarette smoke, garbled tweets, and spray-tan mist is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—One Day veteran Lindsay Lohan. As the newest harbinger of our impending doom, LiLo has actually landed herself (wait for it...) an actual, paying acting gig. True, that’s a real jaw dropper, but careful! You don’t want spray-tan particulates in your mouth. According to Dlisted, “Lindsay has joined the second season of the British comedy series Sick Note.” The show—which we haven’t heard of either—“stars Rupert Grint as an insurance rep who is misdiagnosed with a terminal illness and decides to hide the misdiagnosis from everyone.” So Ron Weasley and Lindsay Lohan together? We always suspected LiLo was a Horcrux. MEANWHILE... On the one-year anniversary of the tragic Pulse nightclub shootings that left 49 dead, the Trace reports that an Orlando, Florida, cemetery caretaker named Don Price is a very, very good person. “About a week after the shooting... Price worried that the services might be picketed by the fervently anti-gay members of the Westboro Baptist Church. So he acquired a parade permit from the city, which allowed him to shut down a lane of the adjacent road. For further privacy, he overlaid a dark screen over the chain-link fence that separates the road from the graves.” Then this prince of a man “decorated the barrier’s interior with rainbow and American flags.” Now that’s a master lesson in decency. “I’ve met hundreds of people connected to Pulse,” he said. “And I’ve given out a lot of hugs.” Excuse us, I think we got some of Lindsay’s spray-tan mist in our eye.

A New Bill Is Pitting Recreational Growers Against Medical Growers

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by Josh Jardine

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MORRISON1977 / GETTY IMAGES

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about two Oregon legislative bills: one that had just been signed into law, and another that was imminent in passage. I looked at what these bills might mean for the medical and recreational communities, both the good and the bad.

A very small portion of the readership had a very big problem with one of my conclusions, which suggested that allowing medical growers to transfer up to 20 pounds into the recreational market would upend the industry, in a bad way. My hot take led to War and Peace-length responses in the comments section, a few rather ugly insults and accusations on social media, and one angry five-minute voicemail.

Although I’m missing the gene that makes me care about being cursed at by sad trolls on Facebook, I thought I should hear more from the other side. I don’t grow or retail cannabis in Oregon, so I sought input from those who do.

The Prince of Darkness Returns to Portland After Releasing 2016's Skeleton Tree

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by Santi Elijah Holley

NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS Wed 6/21 Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS Wed 6/21 Arlene Schnitzer Concert HallKerry Brown

Throughout his four-decade career as a songwriter, poet, and novelist, Nick Cave has conjured up a long litany of fictitious serial killers, thieves, madmen, demons, ghosts, and ghouls. But none of these make-believe horrors could rival the very real and unimaginable terror that visited him on July 14, 2015, when his 15-year-old son Arthur fell to his death from a cliff near Brighton, England, after experimenting with LSD.

Cave and his band had already begun recording a new album, so he was confronted with two options: abandon the record or continue working, using the exercise as an outlet for his grief. Skeleton Tree, the 16th studio album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, continues the bleak minimalism of 2013’s Push the Sky Away, with Cave not singing so much as intoning and lamenting over Warren Ellis & Co.’s ambient dirges. It’s as though the band stripped these songs down to the bone, and then poured bleach over the bones. The 2016 documentary One More Time with Feeling follows the album’s recording process, and shows Cave as vulnerable, doubtful, and self-conscious about everything from his hair to his motivation to continue as a performing artist.

After being worshiped for years as the Prince of Darkness, Cave reveals that he is but a mere mortal like the rest of us, susceptible to the same hurt and loss, but burdened perhaps with a greater responsibility to keep the show going, for us just as much as for himself. Because, as he says toward the end of the film, “Someone’s got to sing the stars, and someone’s got to sing the rain, and someone’s got to sing the blood, and someone’s got to sing the pain.”

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Have You Ever Considered NOT Bagpiping?

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by Anonymous

I get it. We all need to make some cold hard cash to get by. That's why I spend the nicest, most beautiful days of summer cloistered in a soulless downtown office. An office where, almost every day, you stand outside playing your bagpipes endlessly, and I have no choice but to listen. I don't love being stuck here, but being stuck listening to your droning air sack segue between Scottish folk tunes and the Star Wars theme makes it about 1000x worse. Is your financial plan just to play until someone pays you to go away? If so, it is working. You can have my fifty bucks. Just please, stand somewhere else today.

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Go Back Home!

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by Anonymous

My original Go Home post grabbed some attention. Some people railed that they couldn't go home—they were political refugees escaping cultures that had become unsafe for non-majority groups, particularly LGBTQ people. Many called me a homophobe, a racist, a xenophobe. But I remember Robert Altom. I know that Portland hasn't always been safe and it still isn't. I remember Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche. It was our activism that made it safer and progressive but we have more work to do.

I hereby revise my message: stay here! Stay and fight with us. But when in Rome, do as the Romans. And when you move to Portland, act like an Oregonian. Go home unless you want to help preserve our unique Portland culture. Keep Portland Weird and Oregon Small or GTFO.

(This post is dedicated to the man with California plates who called her a bitch and me a cunt in the HD parking lot today. Go back to California if you can't treat our women with respect.)

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Win Tickets to See La Luz at Mississippi Studios Wednesday, July 5!

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by Ciara Dolan

LA LUZ Wednesday 7/5 Mississippi Studios
LA LUZ Wednesday 7/5 Mississippi StudiosAndrew Imanaka

Seattle doesn't have much in the way of waves, but the city produced one of surf rock's all-time greatest bands: La Luz, the beloved quartet known for their twangy guitar riffs and doo-wop harmonies. They released their debut LP It's Alive in 2013, and shortly thereafter were in a near-fatal van accident that heavily influenced 2015's haunting Weirdo Shrine, which was produced by garage mastermind Ty Segall. They've since moved to Los Angeles, but fear not—La Luz returns to Portland Wednesday, July 5 to play Mississippi Studios with local psychedelic cumbia band Savila. And great news! The Mercury is giving away one pair of tickets.

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Japanese Breakfast's New Record Is Outer Space Electro-Pop

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by Ciara Dolan

JAPANESE BREAKFAST Thurs 6/22 Holocene
JAPANESE BREAKFAST Thurs 6/22 HoloceneEbru Yildiz

Last year, Philadelphia-based musician Michelle Zauner released her debut LP under the moniker Japanese Breakfast: Psychopomp, nine glittering pop songs that pass like an electric storm, with blinding flashes of nostalgia, grief, and momentary joy.

In 2014 Zauner’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, so she moved home to rural Oregon. Written in the wake of her death, it’s the product of all kinds of emptiness—the void her mother left, the strangeness of returning to your hometown, the people who let you down—but Zauner processes the pain freely, and lets light poke holes through the grayness. On opening track “In Heaven” she sings, “I came here for the long haul/Now I leave here as an empty fucking hole,” but she’s surrounded by gorgeous, crystalline swirls of twinkling piano and strings. This contrast between hollow anguish and striking beauty is what makes Psychopomp so great: It’s Zauner’s self-portrait from life’s darkest moments, but even there, she finds hope.

Next month she’s releasing another Japanese Breakfast record, Soft Sounds from Another Planet. True to the name, the new album sounds like it was recorded in outer space, with heavy synth and electro-pop beats. Zauner commands its gigantic, wildly expansive tracks with grace and power—just see the “Boyish,” an orchestral ode to romantic suffering and unrequited desire. “I can’t get you off my mind,” she croons, “I can’t get you off in general/So here we are, we’re just two losers/I want you and you want something more beautiful.” It’s shocking, that this mini-masterpiece fits into just three-and-a-half minutes. But that’s Soft Sounds from Another Planet—Zauner unfolds an entire universe, and for 12 songs, we get to visit.

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Savage Love Letter of the Day: It's Okay to Share Dick Pics at Work, Just Not His Dick Pics

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by Dan Savage

DAN.jpg

I'm a 36-year-old homo in a large metropolitan city with a sizable gay community. I'm out, proud and being single. I'm also on the promiscuous side. Being that I'm a slut (a label I'm not afraid of) and that it's also 2017, there exists a number of photographs of me in a number of sexual positions. My face isn't clearly visible in any of them, but some photos show more of me than others, including tattoos.

I've sent these photos out over the gay hookup apps. Now, in my mild defense, I'm 36. I remember IRC chat rooms, which predate even AOL. When I used gay.com it took more than ten minutes to attach a photo to an email. I've sent and received dick pics thousands of times in 16 years.

So imagine my surprise when I was setting up work at my restaurant—where I've been employed for only three months—and I glance over and spot a busboy showing photos I recognize to a manager. I step closer and it's very obvious to me—having seen and sent this photo for over a year—that it's my mouth with a dick in it. I watch as he scrolls and it's a photo of me in a mask (my lower jaw visible) at IML, he scrolls again and it's me with another dick in my mouth.

I confronted him and asked, "Where did you get those?" Busboy told me he got them from his cousin who talked to me and I apparently told the cousin I worked in the neighborhood. Cousin sent Busboy my pics asking if he recognized me, and Busboy (allegedly) didn't recognize me and was asking Manager if he did. I demanded to see pictures of the cousin, and he showed me one bad photo of a guy I didn't recognize.

I was willing in that moment to forgive Busboy and acknowledge I'd been catfished and forget it all if Busboy deleted my photos and we all just moved on. But eighteen hours later, I'm feeling skeezy about it. When I was newer to the job, Busboy showed me a video of himself fucking someone, and I humored him by watching after listening to him tell me some hookup story. But why was he showing those pics to Manager? Did he know they were me and was trying to show them and saying "do you recognize him" or did he really just not know?

There were so many questions I didn't even think to ask in the moment and now I'm wondering what, if anything, to do.

Manager was standing right there when Busboy told the story, and he didn't refute it, so I am inclined to believe he's just dense, he was doing what he said he was doing, and that it was an innocent mistake. When he was clocking out I happened to be at the computer and I asked "did you delete those?" He said he did and I asked if I could see his phone, but he said his ride was outside and left in a hurry. He also said he only had two photos of me but I definitely saw at least four. But on the other hand maybe he doesn't know those other ones are me?

I don't know what to do. I only see Manager once a week and if it's truly nothing I don't want to involve the whole management team and owners. I'd hate to think what might happen if the owners learn their employee is sending out photos of them having sex. I live and work in a prominent gay area, every single homo I work with has waited on people they've slept with, or swapped pics with. It shouldn't be a big deal, but I'm reluctant to peruse it if it means everyone knows these photos exist.

Sigh. I don't know what to do.

Improperly Tossed My Fotos Around

Let's think this through: You work as a waiter in a gay neighborhood, you're gay yourself, and, like millions of other gays (and straights and bis and pans and on and on), you've swapped dirty pics with prospective partners online. By your own account you've released hundreds of dirty pictures into the wild over the last 16 years.

I can't imagine this news—there's proof circulating online that one their gay waiters had a dick in his mouth—is going to come as a huge shock to the rest of the management team or the owners. It shouldn't be a big deal, ITMFA, like you said. But that doesn't make what Busboy did acceptable—or what Manager failed to do, i.e. shut Busboy down. Busboy was sharing intimate-if-semi-widely-shared pictures of you with a coworker and for a transparently bullshit reason. This could create—what's it called? Oh, yeah: a hostile work environment. And that creation could in turn create large legal headaches for the owners if you decided to make a big deal out of this or if the same thing happened to another employee who decided to make a big deal out of it—and could, if they learned of it, point to your experience to prove a pattern.

You're in a predicament, ITMFA. Pursue this—complain about exactly what happened to you the other day—and you'll be forced to have an awkward conversation with your employers about the cocks you've had in your mouth and the photos you've shared. Let it go and asshole Busboy and negligent Manager will continue to behave in ways that make you and others feel uncomfortable, singled out, or harassed.

If I were in your shoes, ITMFA, I would be to go to the managers over Manager's head—or go to the owners directly—and ask if to speak confidentially. Then I would tell the owners there's far too much dick pic swapping and dirty video sharing going on during work hours. I would tell them it's distracting, it's unprofessional, and that while I don't have a problem with it personally—goodness no—I'm concerned a customer or a fellow coworker might.

If they're concerned—and they should be (this is how sexual harassment lawsuits happen)—they can direct their management team to put a stop to dirty pic-and-video sharing during work hours. That won't magically delete your photos from Busboy's phone, and it won't make Manager any less complicit in Busboy's assholery, but it might keep it from happening again.

HUMP! 2017 Call for Submissions!

Listen to my podcast, the Savage Lovecast, at www.savagelovecast.com.

Impeach the motherfucker already! Get your ITMFA buttons, t-shirts, hats and lapel pins and coffee mugs at www.ITMFA.org!

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City Council Allocates $800,000 to Prop Up Portland's Public Golf Courses

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by Dirk VanderHart

The City of Portlands RedTail Golf Course
The City of Portland's RedTail Golf CourseCity of Portland

Amid a litany of pressing needs that face this city, it was Portland's publicly owned golf courses getting a bailout from Portland City Council this morning.

It turns out that apart from bumming everyone out, the intense winter and spring rains further dampened revenue in Portland's typically self-sustaining fund for operating five golf facilities around town. With the city's current fiscal year set to end June 30, the Golf Fund required $800,000 to finish in the black, as required by law. City Council approved a transfer from the Parks Bureau's budget as part of a routine ordinance shoring up accounts at year's end.

The optics of the move—as Portland hosts a growing homeless population and ongoing housing crisis—were plainly not lost on officials at Portland Parks and Recreation, which runs the golf program.

Parks Commissioner Amanda Fritz took time at Wednesday morning's council meeting to acknowledge the bailout, and vowed it would never be repeated—even if she had to suspend the golf program to make that happen.

"The golf fund has in the past been completely self sustaining," Fritz said. "This is the first time general fund resources have been used for the golf program and it will be the last." Fritz said she and Parks Director Mike Abbaté would be taking a detailed look at the issue, and that "all options will be on the table, up to and including suspending the golf program."

Asked about the fund's poor performance this year, Portland Parks and Recreation spokesperson Mark Ross sent along a lengthy account of the fund's issues, which he attributed to the meteorological atrocities the city just suffered through, along with recent down years as golf's popularity wanes.

"Golf had a hard few years and in particular, literally weathered a difficult spring," Ross writes. "The Fund wasn’t able to make up all the ground we had hoped for, and we ended up needing the transfer of funds."

Ross characterizes the $800,000 transfer as a conservative number, meant to give the golf fund plenty of breathing room. He says profits from the golf program in May, once the weather improved, were nearly $228,000.

"The recent weather and robust play on City courses definitely gives reason for optimism," Ross says. "For overall context, it is important to note that we must consider long-term trends—such as those evident over the past 100 years—over recent tendencies."

Over its nearly 100 year history, PP&R says the golf program has been a money maker. Beyond routinely paying for itself, Ross says the program has kicked $4 million into the city's general fund in that time.

Even so, news of this year's downturn comes as some are plotting on Portland's public courses. Willamette Weekreported in May that developer Homer Williams and others have suggested converting courses into land for housing.

That sentiment was echoed by some on Twitter earlier today, after we tweeted about the $800,000 transfer.



Don't expect the city to sell off its courses quite yet. Despite Fritz's promise that she won't rule out suspending the golf program, Ross laid out a host of steps PP&R plans to take to get it healthy. Those include shuffling five greenskeeper positions elsewhere in the parks bureau, "surplussing more expensive and underutilized equipment, and deferring significant materials purchases until next fiscal year," Ross says.

Through a "Golf Strategic Plan" the bureau is also hoping to sell the sport to new customers, including youth, people of color, and women, Ross says. "We want to expand the sport's reach and better serve Portland's changing demographics simultaneously."

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Sorry

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by Anonymous

Dear all non-human life: Sorry that we broke the weather. We just really wanted all our comforts and to have all the nice things. I guess that's what matters most to us. So here we are. Hopefully we'll die before all of you do. From your friend (sort of).

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Here's a Sneak Peek at the Stumptown Improv Fest Lineup!

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by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey

Hip.Bang
Hip.BangCourtesy the Artists

If you haven't experienced the unbridled hilarity of the annual Stumptown Improv Fest, you really have some catching up to do! It's the fourth go-around for this fest (coming at ya August 3-5) which brings in some of the best local and national improv groups to strut their stuff in Portland, and this year's line up which has just been leaked to us is killer. Check it out!

Dasariski (LA)
Hip.Bang (Vancouver, BC)
Summerland (LA)
Orange Tuxedo (LA)
Broke Gravy (PDX)
Big Bang (East Coast)
Outside Dog (LA)
The Future (PHI)
Tunnel (PDX)
The Bloody Marys (Toronto)
Curious Comedy (PDX)
Brody Theater (PDX)
The Right Now (SF/LA)
Local Ensemble (PDX)
Peachy Chicken (PDX)

From the above list, we're most excited about seeing LA's Desariski (considered to be one of the best improv groups in the nation), Vancouver, BC's Hip.Bang (an award-winning duo that's whip-smart, fast on their feet, and absurd as all get out), and the return of the beloved Orange Tuxedo (Craig and Carla Cackowski) and Summerland who both killed it at last year's fest.

There's a ton to see and love from this list (plus a couple of secret additions that haven't been announced yet), so keep an eye on the Stumptown Improv site for more announcements and when you can start snapping up those tickets!

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Shoe Scramble Shart

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by Anonymous

This memory cane flooding back to me yesterday as I walked a group of fourth grade students around at the annual favorite, field day. It was warm and in the 70s but being as I was the same age some odd years ago, it rained on our field day and we had to hold it indoors. That's where the shoe scramble came in. Everyone in our class had to put their shoes in a mixed up pile. The winning team was the first team to have all members tie their shoes back on their feet first. I couldn't abandon my team, even though I felt I was about to fart. Unfortunately, though silent, it was more than a fart. After the shoe scramble ended, I fled to the bathroom across the hall only to find I had left a streak in my favorite, yellow Snoopy underwear. I didn't want to throw them out, but I was too embarrassed to let my mom know. I hid them under the mattress of my captain's bed from Sears. They might still be there. I hope my students didn't have to have their own field day faux paus. At any rate, check under your child's mattress.

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Confession: I Don't Like You

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by Anonymous

Yeah you, the person reading these words right this second. Even the person who chose to post this. I don't like you for a couple of reasons. First, I don't know you. How can I like you if I don't know you? Why is their social pressure to be polite to people you don't know? When I say polite, I don't so much mean being pleasant, rather the social conventions of showing fake interest in each other dumbfounds me. "Hi how are you?" Why the fuck do we say that at a grocery store. The checker is mind numb from answering that question a few hundred times a day. Do you really feel like a better person when the checker says "how are you?" How fucking ludicrous. It doesn't make you feel better, it just makes you feel like the world is right and everyone is following the "treat people with kindness" rule. Second, most likely I won't like you even if I took the time to know you. Why? Because most people suck and most people are boring. Everyone hates to work, most hate the job they are doing, most are in debt and stressed beyond their mind, they fake niceness to counteract the pending panic attack, then go blow their money on overpriced bar food, rainer, and shitty tattoos of a bird landing on the tip of MT hood - we fucking get it, you love mossy trees and rain and can't wait to eye fuck a hummingbird in the spring. Third. Art is stupid. You're not clever.

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