ortland music, and Portland in general, is currently experiencing a renaissance, and all that goes along with periods of accelerated growth and creativity. On one hand, so many artists are incredibly active right now, putting out albums, hosting shows in both DIY and traditional venues, making music videos again, planning tours, and giving a shit about scenes outside of direct personal involvement. On the other hand, venues are closing up shop, festivals are shutting down, ticketing fees continue to make live music inaccessible, and the monstrosity being built in Industrial SE looms large, promising to be a wrecking
The Trash Report . .
ball for Portland’s already delicate music venue ecosystem.
Our governments continue to fail us. Our bosses continue to exploit us. All while this one planet we have hurdles toward human-facilitated destruction. What can be done? Music isn’t the answer to this hellish game of Monopoly, but it’s not not the answer either. For music as salve to governmental woes, see The Honey Drippers’ track “Impeach the President” and Amiri Baraka’s “Who Will Survive America.” A balm for shitty bosses is found in “Stress Builds Character” by Dystopia and Dolly’s “9 to 5.” Whenever you’re feeling down about the expedited destruction of planet Earth, listen to Hiroshi Yoshimura and breathe deep (while you still can).
At the risk of sounding like a broken
record, now is always the time to lock in with the music around you. It’s everywhere in Portland, taking on so many different shapes and sounds. You want free late-night jazz? Try Keys Lounge. Looking to throw ass in community with queers? Check out Judy, Twirl, and Hickey Machine. The under 21 set is well covered with the recent openings of The Off Beat and High Limit Room. The Portland FM dial punches way above its weight with KMHD Jazz, XRAY FM, Freeform Portland, KBOO, and the rest. It’s an embarrassment of music riches on the banks of the mighty Willamette. It wasn’t until the editing of the Music Issue was almost done that the issue’s unofficial theme revealed itself: “All genres, all generations, all genders.” The phrase, a signoff at the bottom of
Table of Contents
7
Hot music goss—including Cardi B, Lizzo, Megan Thee Stallion, and more!
A Place For Weirdos? “I Hope So” 9 Turn! Turn! Turn! is back, back, back! Meet the new owners and check out their plans.
Mercury May Election Endorsements 11
Vote early and often with the Mercury’s top picks for the May 19 election.
Mercury Election Cheat Sheet .
Cast your ballot lickety-split with our handy-dandy cheat sheet!
Justin Townes Earle’s Portland Years
The late singer-songwriter’s time in town was both pivotal and painful.
17
19
Get Into the Groove 22
How Discogs evolved from a vinyl collector’s dream to a worldwide phenomenon.
The Food That Keeps Portland Musicians Playing
We asked six local artists about their favorite places to fill their bellies.
Your Map to Portland Music
A handy visual guide to the city’s finest record shops, venues, and more!
Afterschool Programming
a recent Björk newsletter, was coupled with “support your local scene.” Two powerful statements gushing with the beauty of the now and the near future, as well as boiling over with justified anger spanning the length of human history. It’s up to you—right now—to build the frameworks of community and care that shape tomorrow. A better world is possible in our lifetimes, filled with music and love and food and kinship. Look outside yourself to create for yourself and those around you, let music accompany you on whatever journey lay before you.
I hope you enjoy this, the Mercury ’s first Music Issue since pre-pandemic, just as much as I enjoyed pulling it together.
In love and solidarity, — Nolan Parker
THE TRASH REPORT
BY ELINOR JONES HOT MUSIC GOSS!
Hello Trash Pandas! Welcome to this very special Trash Report for this very special music issue of the Portland Mercury. So pretend I’m singing it to you. To set the scene, I am not a very good singer, but I do try. This column is very similar: the content won’t be high quality, but I will be passionate as I scream it at you. Let’s gossip!
The Trashional Anthem
This first part doesn’t have anything to do with music, but I have to talk about it: Trump had yet another attempt on his life last month at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner couple days pretty much no one cared , not even him. When asked if this would make him want to wear a bulletproof vest, Trump said no, because he didn’t want to look any fatter—which is a real missed oppor tunity. If he felt bad about his waistline he should have said he’s been wearing one the entire time and that’s the reason he has such weird posture and an inexplicable body shape. But it wasn’t only Trump who shrugged off the attack; from videos taken during the shooting, people at the event barely even seemed fazed. I’m guessing most of them just assumed that the “pop pop” sounds were Kristi Noem’s husband’s tits popping somewhere in the back of the ballroom.
Upcoming AdapTrashions
Because good things can still happen in this dark, dark world, Neko Case has written the songs to an upcoming stage adaptation of a Thelma & Louise musical that will debut this fall in London. Hey, do you guys think that if we get enough speed, we can drive the convertible off the edge of the East Coast and make it to England? I am willing to get some vintage kerchiefs and give it a shot. Can you imagine the audience of those performances?
On the opposite side of the presidency decency meter, the late president Jimmy Carter made a special appearance at a recent Cardi B concert in Atlanta. No, it wasn’t a hologram (remember in like 2010 when suddenly everybody was super into holograms? What was up with that?), but rather in a book: Carter’s daughter Amy attended the concert, and presented noted history-lover Cardi B with a copy of the president’s diaries that he signed before he passed. Cardi B was thrilled, not just because she loves presidents, but because she loves cool presidents. In fact, her favorite president is FDR, whose wife Eleanor was (probably) gay, and Cardi herself is bisexual, which means that if their timelines had aligned she could have been their third.
I feel like everyone’s periods will immediately sync. Similarly, I learned on a recent episode of Las Culturistas that Brandi Carlisle was once tapped to write the songs for a stage adaptation of Fried Green Tomatoes (which sadly never got off the ground). And now I feel like we are being fucked with. Are producers just throwing darts at a wall of iconic feminist musicians and properties? Next thing I know they’re going to tell me Phoebe Bridgers is in talks to pen the music for a Broadway production of, like, Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken (God, that’s actually such a good idea. Oh wow, it would be so good.)
Trash Hurts
Lizzo is releasing a new album this year called Bitch . This is an interesting choice for a woman who’s been a bit of a lightning rod over the past couple of years, but good for her. But also, good luck, because “Bitch” in music is strongly
tied to the Meredith Brooks ’90s banger of the same name, and it will have to be one hell of an album to knock that earworm out of the top spot for pieces of music we associate with that word. (Did you know that Meredith Brooks is from Oregon? It’s true! She should have put that in her song so we’d all know. “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother, I’m a sinner, I’m from Oregon, I do not feel ashamed.” It works, right?)
Olivia Rodrigo also has a new album coming out soon and she just released her tour dates for later this year. I want to go, but I worry it would be weird due to my age. I know that Liz Phair and Sleater Kinney are also touring this year, and I feel like that would be a more age-appropriate place for me to wear ripped tights and scream-sing—but I want both, damnit! Aging is impossible. I kind of understand why baby boomers keep all the good jobs and houses for themselves: ‘cuz if I do go to Olivia Rodrigo, I’m definitely buying the best tickets for myself and my 1900s-era friends.
And finally, the music and gossip worlds were equally shook by news that Thee Stallion Thompson on her, which she announced on Instagram. Then the day after, she broke down in tears at her job in the Moulin Rouge play. I have cried plenty of times at work and it’s always embar rassing, and that’s without an audience. The nerve to cheat on a woman as stunning as Megan Thee Stallion! This woman needs to be set up by an auntie. Or does anybody have a cute accountant?
be AI, to be in contention. This is good. Lying about using AI to write a script will provide great acting examples for the humanoid models to study.
A Near Trashterpiece
I saw a headline the other day that said “ Anna Nicole Smith and Larry Birkhead ’s Daughter’s Kentucky Derby Look Is All About Her ‘Coming Into Her Own,’ Dad Says.” And I didn’t see the apostrophe after “daughter” so it looked like it said that the name Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter was Kentucky Derby , and I found myself smiling at what a charming name Kentucky Derby is for a girl, and how lucky we were to have had a woman as kind and whimsical as Anna Nicole Smith exist on this earthly plane. Alas, I misread. (The daughter is named Danielynn. Basement-level whimsy.)
Trash on My Parade
Trash of a Spider Woman
Brett Goldstein and Jennifer Lopez have a rom-com called Office Romance coming out soon that looks excellent, and is also supposed to be raunchy. Hell yeah. Goldstein said that he’d always had a crush on J. Lo, so he wrote the movie so that the two of them could star in it together. I didn’t know it was as easy as just writing a movie? I guess I’m going to write a raunchy movie starring me and Brett Goldstein?
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said that only people can Oscars from here on out. Scripts have to be written by humans, and actors cannot
Portland’s annual Rose Festival is just around the corner, which includes the Rose Parade and its marching bands. Imagine the first king who demanded music as he traversed the countryside, which definitely would have been way before iPods, or even Walkmen. And all of the kingsmen were like, “Sir, the instruments are very heavy, and there are so many,” and the king said, “Ask me if I care?” Then the musicians who were used to playing sitting down had to learn how to play their instruments walking, and not only that, stomping in lines, and in unison. I would have quit right then. But people did it, even after the invention of speakers and motorized forms of transportation. Even though it must be so hard to carry those instruments around all day while playing them, they do it because it makes people happy. That’s so nice. Anyway, that’s what I’ll be thinking about when I go to the Rose Parade.
If you see me there, please tell me a secret. If you don’t see me there, please blow bubbles in the face of a small child. It may feel mean, but they actually really love it. Thanks for reading, and (remember, I’m singing this all) thank you for being a friend.
Goldenly,
Cardi B
Brett Goldstein
Megan Thee Stallion ANTONYJONES - GETTYIMAGES
A Place For Weirdos? “I Hope So”
Turn!
Turn! Turn! has new owners. Artistic freedom is welcome.
BY JEREMIAH HAYDEN
PHOTO BY CHAR HARRIS
On a recent weekend, the small music venue at the corner of North Williams and Northeast Killingsworth felt like a celebration. The new owners of Turn! Turn! Turn! (TTT) had just taken over, and their first weekend featured four sold out shows in three days. The unofficial opening weekend wasn’t contrived, or even advertised as such; it happened for the same reasons that have made TTT a mainstay in the Portland music scene. It was an organic community effort.
“It kind of feels like we’re continuing on something that’s already been built up,”
Annie Ostrowski, one of the venue’s two new owners, told the Mercury Ostrowski and Joel Christerson bought the venue after its previous owners announced last year that they would no longer continue. It was the third threat of TTT closing in recent years, after Scott Derr— who opened the venue in 2014—moved on in 2020. COVID-19 did a number on music venues, including TTT. Ownership changed hands twice more since then, as the building’s short leases left it in limbo year after year. Now, the lease provides for another two years, and the place appears on the up and up.
Their first weekend kicked off with three shows by legendary local duo Quasi, including an all-ages matinee that Saturday, and a record release by the experimental songwriter Dragging an Ox Through Water. The sound was more dialed compared with prior TTT years, with a host of equipment upgrades by local engineer Thomas Hoganson. Beyond a slightly expanded bar program and some new tables, they won’t be making many changes to the space just yet.
“The expectations are realistic,” Ostrowski said. “People know the space and know what to expect. Any improvement we do is just an added bonus—not really a reworking of the whole framing of the space.”
TTT’s neighborhood has seen a lot of change over the years. Over the past decades, the North Portland area repeatedly experienced rapid real estate development and gentrification, leading to displacement and dispossession of Blackowned land and homes. TTT occupies one corner of the Albina Arts Center building, which has been a hub for arts, community events, and gatherings for Portland’s Black community for more than 60 years. But activity waned a handful of times over the years. The center faced economic uncertainty in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Oregon Department of Justice took over the building in 2015.
In the early 2020s, the Albina Arts Cen-
ter building went through a grant process managed by the Oregon Community Foundation to select a new, nonprofit owner and activate the space. A committee of
“We can do whatever we want here. Let’s do some fun, weird stuff.”
more than two-dozen members helped inform the vision, and another committee—including members of the 1803 Fund and Albina Vision Trust—sifted through proposals for a nonprofit owner that fit the vision. The local arts and education social
justice organization Don’t Shoot Portland launched a campaign to reclaim the building in 2022, but in 2023, the local education and job placement nonprofit Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center was awarded ownership.
Ostrowski said they are conscious that long term plans for the building may not include their venue. But for now, TTT is happy to fill the space with people and take care of the building and the area.
“It is very temporary, but it’s for a good cause and a good reason,” Ostrowski said.
Christerson said all of the previous TTT owners were a part of the changeover when they bought the venue, highlighting the ongoing space TTT holds in the music community. In fact, Sad Horse—a
local band made up of TTT’s most recent previous owners Elizabeth Venable and Geoff Soule—played one of the opening weekend shows. Mark Davies and Kate Horn—another set of previous owners who will continue hosting monthly karaoke nights—have helped with the transition, offering ongoing care for the space, even if unofficial.
“None of them have really stopped,” Christerson said. “They technically don’t own this space, but they’re all still very, very involved.”
Both Ostrowski and Christerson have long been active in the local music scene. Ostrowski worked at the indie publicity firm Riot Act Media, the radio station X-Ray, Doug Fir Lounge, and helped book the all-ages music non-profit festival PDX Pop Now! Christerson got his start booking shows and tending bar at the now-defunct, matchbox-sized bar Valentine’s. He also produced shows at East End, Church, Fixin’ To, and Swan Dive, where he still presents shows under the name Lonely God.
Under the new ownership, the bar will offer expanded cocktail options, including negronis and old fashioneds on tap, creative amaro cocktails, and a beer-and-scoot deal. TTT now sells advance tickets through the site as well, a welcome change for those who like to plan ahead.
Christerson said he expects to branch out genre-wise to include heavier music, noise music, and experimental hip-hop. But TTT will also expand the types of events it offers to include broader swaths of the local arts scene. If the curation seems all over the place, that’s intentional.
“We can do whatever we want here,” Christerson said. “Let’s do some fun, weird stuff.”
That might be a DJ night, karaoke, comedy shows, book and poetry readings, and certainly more matinees where people of all ages can play and attend, since the venue is ages 21 and over after 8 pm. In the coming weeks, TTT will host a celebration of Enya’s birthday (May 17) and an all-ages afternoon Cheerleader Roadkill show (May 24).
“We want to grow with the space,” Ostrowski said. “We want to have younger bands come in and different genres come in. So, it’s both honoring the community that’s already been built here, [while also] hoping to reach out and extend it more to other groups in Portland.”
Asked if it’s a place for weirdos, Christerson didn’t hesitate.
“I hope so,” he said. “Whatever that means.”
“Nice weirdos,” Osterowski added.
Joel Christerson and Annie Ostrowski are the new owners of Turn! Turn! Turn!.
The Mercury’s May 2026 Election Endorsements
Grab your ballot and a pen, and let’s GO!
BY THE MERCURY ELECTION STRIKE FORCE
ILLUSTRATION
BY TERESA GRASSESCHI
This year’s primary election on May 19, 2026 will see voters choose Democratic and Republican nominees for governor, state legislative seats, and Congress. Ballots will also include several Multnomah County judicial races, a few Metro Council seats, a labor commissioner, and local revenue measures. Helpful hint: If your ballot is missing any of the above races, it’s because Oregon has closed primaries—meaning you can only vote on a Democrat or Republican nominee if you’re registered with one of those political parties. But hey, don’t worry! The prevailing candidates will come back around in November.
Already feeling exhausted? Need help deciding how to vote? Enter the Mercury Election Strike Force! We grilled the candidates and brushed up on their policy positions all IN SERVICE TO YOU! The Mercury Editorial Board discussed, then discussed some more, debated, cried at times (not really, but we came close), and almost got into a few fist fights while decid-
ing which candidates to endorse. Read the full descriptions to see where we landed, or check out our handy cheat sheet (page 17) if you’re short on time. The Mercury does not endorse in uncontested races. Sometimes we don’t even endorse in contested races. Deal with it.
The Mercury Election Strike Force is News Editor Courtney Vaughn, Reporters Taylor Griggs and Jeremiah Hayden, Managing Editor Katherine Chew Hamilton, and Editor-in-Chief Wm. Steven Humphrey.
OREGON GOVERNOR
No endorsement
The Mercury is forgoing an endorsement in the governor’s race until the general election. Realistically, this will come down to which Republican the incumbent governor Tina Kotek will face in November. None of Kotek’s Democratic challengers mounted a serious campaign, despite Kotek’s low polling among voters. In case you haven’t noticed, Kotek has soured many Oregonians with her constant need to court
conservative interests, her efforts to torpedo Preschool for All, her narrow vision of what “prosperity” means for a state steeped in arts and culture, and her hyper focus on Portland. Kotek should take note, or risk losing the governor’s seat to a transphobic dud or an anti-abortion, climate change denier who thinks the answer to homelessness is more cops.
OREGON STATE SENATE
District 17: Lisa Reynolds
Senator Reynolds is a pediatrician and politician who’s sponsored legislation focused on maternal and child health, gun
violence prevention, immigrant rights and privacy, as well as bills aimed at preventing large real estate investment firms from snatching up single family homes. She took heat earlier this year for voting against a bill aimed at keeping needle exchange programs away from schools, but later explained the bill was narrowly written with a 2,000-foot buffer zone that would’ve prevented nearly any harm reduction program from being operable in the city.
Reynolds faces a challenger, Democrat Autumn Sharp. Largely fueled by disapproval of Senator Reynolds’ vote on that Senate bill, Sharp says she’s eager to bring a “pragmatic approach” to issues like public safety and livability. That sounds nice on paper, but light on specifics. It’s hard to make heads or tails of what Sharp’s leadership vision is or how she’d tackle serious issues.
Reynolds, on the other hand, has been a reliable vote for common sense legislation and uses her legislative power to try to make things easier for families with young children.
Oregon House District 38:
John “Waz” Wasielewski
John Wasielewski’s challenge to Rep. Daniel Nguyen for Oregon’s 38th District has been seen as representative of a larger progressive push to oust more moderate Democratic incumbents. That broader effort may have its merits, but we have specific reasons for supporting Wasielewski to represent the district. Wasielewski, who refers to himself as “Waz,” is new to politics, currently working as a middle school teacher and track coach. We believe he’ll be a strong asset in Salem for important conversations about the state’s education system, and also appreciate his focus on affordability, mental health treatment, and climate. While Nguyen offered largely uncritical support for a large public investment in the Moda Center, Wasielewski appears far more skeptical, saying his “number one priority is improving the lives of working families, which requires us to be careful stewards of public dollars.” We think Wasielewski’s perspective lines up more evenly with what Oregonians want at this moment. Though Nguyen has admirable business acumen and has put up a strong fight against federal overreach, we were very concerned that he voted “no” on House Bill 4134, which increased the state’s hospitality tax by 1.25 percent to fund wildlife conservation efforts. Nguyen told the Mercury he thought the state could’ve found “a better way to find the funding.” The wildlife funding bill, which passed the legislature this year, is a thoughtful policy developed over many years, with support from people across the political spectrum. It’s concerning that Nguyen couldn’t overcome his blindspots to support it. For that reason and more, we support Waz.
Oregon House District 41:
The current representative in the 41st District, Mark Gamba, deserves another term. Gamba has remained a strong advocate on climate and transportation issues, and cosponsored a bill in the last session allowing individuals to sue if law enforcement enters their property without a warrant. He also serves on the housing committee, where he’s cosponsored multiple pieces of legislation to protect renters. His challenger, Priyesh Krishnan, didn’t get so far
as making a campaign website. We’re going Gamba on this one.
Oregon House District 43:
Tawna Sanchez
Tawna Sanchez has served Oregon’s 43rd District since 2017, and while we don’t agree with her on everything, we think she should be re-elected for another term. Sanchez, who is one of the first people of Native American descent to serve on the Oregon Legislature, has served as a much-needed advocate for Oregon’s tribal populations during her time in office, helping improve communication between tribes and state agencies, among other efforts. Her work in addiction treatment and mental health is also notable—Sanchez was a key champion of the effort to fund the 988 mental health crisis hotline. We wish she would take a more critical stance on the legislature’s Moda Center funding push, among other things. But we support her bid for reelection, especially since her primary challenger, Cye Sterling, does not appear to have put a lot of effort into his attempt to defeat her.
LABOR COMMISSIONER
Christina Stephenson
Christina Stephenson has served as the Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) commissioner since 2023, coming from a background as an attorney representing employees in civil rights cases in the workplace. Stephenson came on as BOLI commissioner at a tough time. The bureau’s many woes were outlined in a bruising state audit last fall, which essentially said internal issues at BOLI have led to worse outcomes for Oregon workers. These problems are not new, and Stephenson has been open about the need to address them—in fact, she requested the audit shortly after being elected to lead the agency. She has demonstrated a commitment and shared a plan to make the changes suggested in the audit, and we’d like to see her get the chance to do so. But Stephenson’s opponent, Chris Lynch, deserves a shout-out too. Lynch has worked on the ground as a compliance officer at BOLI, and knows the agency’s problems well. He is a strong candidate who would likely be a good leader at the bureau. But the Secretary of State’s audit cited turnover in leadership as a key reason for BOLI’s instability, and we think electing
a new commissioner—regardless of how qualified they are—could be detrimental to the agency’s progress. Stephenson deserves another term.
METRO COUNCIL
Metro Council President:
Juan Carlos González
Juan Carlos González has been a strong member of Metro Council since he was elected to represent District 4 in 2018. It’s clear González, who was born and raised in Forest Grove and Cornelius, is a strong advocate for the western Portland suburbs he represents. But he has also proven to be well-known and respected across the region for his work on the Council, particularly on housing and transportation. Metro Council is perhaps the least-understood local government body, partially due to the wonky topics the body is meant to address. This is unfortunate, because the decisions it makes are consequential for Portland-area residents. If anyone can change that, it’s González, with his approachable style and deep familiarity of the policy work that Metro Council does. We will note González has the tendency to be a cheerleader, which can be a double-edged sword when it comes to some of the more questionable projects the Metro Council has to sign off on. (Ahem… the Rose Quarter freeway expansion.) But in his responses to the Mercury, González noted that he will work to “keep ODOT’s management and spending in check,” hoping to prioritize “building what we have money for.” Seems like common sense, but that approach has not always been utilized at the state transportation department. At any rate, González is the natural choice to lead the body as president, and we enthusiastically endorse his candidacy.
should be reelected for another term representing Metro Council’s District 1, which includes the easternmost part of Metro’s jurisdiction. Simpson, who has represented District 1 since 2023, is a dedicated steward for East Multnomah County, which historically has been considered last in major local planning decisions. Prior to taking his position on the Council, Simpson served as the executive director of Oregon Walks. He took that experience
with him to Metro, where he’s been a dedicated advocate for transportation safety in his district—particularly those walking, biking, and taking transit. This is in comparison to his opponent, Noah Ernst, who comes to the candidacy with a list of grievances that do not always seem catered to the job he’s applying for. We agree with Ernst, who ran for City Council in 2024, when he says Metro Council should do more to engage residents, especially those in District 1. But Simpson is already doing the work to connect with constituents on the issues that matter to them, and Ernst’s approach to community engagement seems primarily based in grievance and cynicism. Simpson is willing to admit Metro’s shortcomings (he told the Mercury Metro’s 2020 “Get Moving” measure failed “because the public didn’t trust that the money would be spent well, and we haven’t fully grappled with that”) and is working to change them. Vote him in for another term.
Metro Council District 4:
Alex Phan
Metro does a lot of quiet work and rarely gets the attention as other local government entities (ahem, we love you, Portland). But Metro focuses on and has the money for a lot of issues close to the hearts of people living in all three Metro counties. Alex Phan’s experience in affordable housing development is badly needed in the region, and we think his service on the Supportive Housing Services (SHS) committee will be invaluable. In the endorsement process, a lot of candidates talk at length about the issues they perceive from the outside—like whether SHS is getting the results people want, or whether the tax rates are too high for middle-income earners. It takes a lot more to dig in and understand the machinations to critique it with nuance. Phan said Metro was right to bring frontline providers into the SHS committee, and that Metro should show “a willingness to adjust strategies and funding when outcomes are not being achieved to better serve people experiencing homelessness.” Phan’s opponent, Miles Palacios, focused a bit more on the business line about taxes and empty shelter beds, and the need for addiction services. That’s all a part of it for some people, but homelessness is caused by and exacerbated by a lack of affordable housing, and Phan has the right experience to address the gap.
Phan also had this to say about Metro focusing less on transportation mega projects and more on basic bus and train service: “At a time when the state is experiencing a major funding gap for transportation and the federal government is not providing assistance we need, Metro must put focus back on basics: safe streets for families, well-lit crosswalks for community members of all ages, protected bus stops away
Mark Gamba
Metro Council District 1: Ashton Simpson Ashton Simpson
from traffic, and reliable transportation that gets people where they need to go quickly and affordably.” We agree.
MULTNOMAH COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT
Multnomah County Circuit Court, Position 2: Diane Sykes
There are multiple highly qualified candidates in the race to fill the seat left by the retirement of Nan Waller, but Diane Sykes stands out for a few reasons. Sykes currently owns her own law firm. Prior to that, she worked for the Oregon Department of Justice, where she developed and led the department’s first civil rights division. Sykes has also worked as a public defender, representing some of the most vulnerable communities in need of legal representation, including migrant and seasonal farm workers. She grew up in a bilingual household, and told the Mercury it impacted her decisions and legal path. When asked about her approach to sentencing—arguably the most impactful decision a judge can make with the limited discretion they have—Sykes alluded to “evidence-based approaches that promote rehabilitation and reduce recidivism” and said she’d ensure victims are heard and “accountability is clear.” While Sykes is our top choice, the Mercury team is also incredibly impressed by Chris Behre, a public defender who helped develop the Strategic Treatment and Engagement Program (STEP) aimed at rehabilitation and intervention for first time serious offenders. The courts would be well served by either of these candidates.
Multnomah County Circuit Court, Position 5: Joanna Perini-Abbott Joanna Perini-Abbott’s legal experience runs the gamut, from representing defendants and victims, to large businesses. She outlined her philosophy for the Mercury , and generally gave us the impression that she’ll be a fair judge if elected. Perini-Abbott is in favor of drug treatment courts, saying “when issues like mental health and substance abuse disorder overlap with criminal conduct, simply putting someone in jail or prison is not going to fix anything.” Perini-Abbott’s husband is an officer with the Portland Police Bureau, and she said they often share their perspectives on the legal system. Here’s hoping those conversations elucidate more
compassion and a less punitive approach, particularly for homeless Portlanders facing ever worsening conditions—“jail or prison is not going to fix anything,” after all. But Perini-Abbott appears strong on issues of privacy, freedom of expression, and a general sense of fairness.
Multnomah County Circuit Court, Position 12: Peter Klym
This race was far and away the most contentious decision the Mercury made this election season. The incumbent is Judge Adrian Brown, who’s held this position for five years, and is being challenged by defense lawyer Peter Klym who hopped into the race literally 30 minutes before the election deadline. Why so contentious? Brown has found herself on the receiving end of a mostly unfair smear campaign from Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez, whose obsession with her is, frankly, kind of weird. And at the same time, Brown made some unrelated and unforced errors around workplace conduct which cast further doubt on her campaign. Some background: Last year, Vasquez filed a draft of a judicial disqualification against Brown which accused her of making mistakes in six out of the hundreds of cases she’s presided over for the past five years. According to independent legal experts interviewed by the Oregonian, none of these so-called errors were ethical violations, and the majority were, as they defined them, “mere procedural hiccups.” Nevertheless, the always camera-hungry Vasquez demanded that Brown be blackballed from presiding over major trials (such as murder or Measure 11 cases), and began his shit-talking campaign to the press in the days before the election filing deadline—and as a result of seeing the coverage, Klym saw an opportunity to jump into the race at the last second.
To be sure, Vasquez’s actions were shameful, self-serving, and will certainly be remembered when he attempts to hold on to his position in 2028. (Good luck, pal! You’ll need it!) That said, the DA’s disinformation campaign did inspire the press to dig deeper into Brown’s behavior outside the courtroom—specifically her interactions with coworkers, which struck us as troubling. Public records revealed Brown used insensitive language in an online coworker group chat during a criminal trial in which a twoyear-old boy was gravely and permanently injured, made disparaging (but probably true) comments toward a prosecutor, and engaged in a petty interoffice feud with a now former Multnomah County judicial clerk over coffee pods (a story too stupid to recount here). Brown also seemed to assume no one would dare challenge her for this position, failing to hit the deadline to submit her bio for the voters’ guide, and complaining about having to campaign in yet
another office online chat. These incidents were hard to square with Brown’s respectable performance inside the court, where she presided over hundreds of cases in a fair, judicious manner, but in the end was the sticking point for our editorial board. Voters elected Brown to be fair and thoughtful both inside and outside the courtroom, and these incidents were too glaring for the majority of our board to ignore.
This brings us to the Johnny-come-lately candidate in this race, Peter Klym, who, by most metrics, appears to be decently qualified, if a bit opportunistic. He’s spent the last decade as a public defender, and says he’s represented more than 500 clients in hearings and trials, making him qualified to handle the huge backlog of cases in Multnomah County Court. Klym also says he is an advocate for alternative solutions and restorative justice (when appropriate), and as an appellate attorney, is very familiar with the subtleties of the law that can often be overlooked by many on the bench. And not for nothing, he worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and has been gassed during Portland’s racial justice protests (same, girl!). Soooo… yeah. Peter Klym seems fine. By a divided vote, this is who we are endorsing, though feel free to follow your own heart in this matter. (But more importantly, vote Nathan Vasquez out of office in 2028.)
Multnomah County Circuit Court, Position 14: Joe Hagedorn Joe Hagedorn was one of a bevy of impressive candidates seeking a family court seat (these endorsements ain’t easy!). Hagedorn is already serving as a full-time family law judge pro-tem in Multnomah County and prior to that, he was a public defender for 17 years, where he worked in treatment courts and with children and families in the juvenile court system. He previously served on a committee that worked to ensure more Portland police officers receive enhanced crisis intervention training and de-escalation techniques, and helped develop a treatment court program focused on offering substance use treatment to certain offenders in lieu of prison time.
Family law court deals with everything from child custody decisions, to domestic violence cases, and juvenile offenders. Like any other courtroom, it can be high stress and high stakes. We think Hagedorn has the right temperament, experience, and perspective to serve children, families, and those who find themselves at odds with the law before reaching adulthood. That said, an honorable mention goes to Elizabeth Savage, whose explanations of her approach to presiding over a courtroom impressed us. Savage talked about the value of her own diverse life experience, and how it helped her recognize barriers to justice, but she
also emphasized the importance of making sure her own experiences don’t create unconscious bias. That kind of measured approach is essential and we think she’d do well in the role, if elected.
MEASURES
Measure 120: Transportation Services—Yes Raises state gas tax by six cents per gallon, increases annual registration fees from $43 to $85 for passenger vehicles, increases passenger vehicle title fees from $77 to $216. Expected to generate more than $4 billion over the next decade for the Oregon Department of Transportation, as well as county and city transportation departments.
With Measure 120, Oregon voters are being asked to weigh in on the much-needed transportation package state Democrats passed by the skin of their teeth in a special legislative session last fall. We encourage a “yes” vote because Oregon is in desperate need of more funding in order to provide basic transportation services to its residents, and because the debate here has been exploited by Republicans who are misrepresenting the Oregon Department of Transportation’s (ODOT) accountability problems for their own political purposes. But we aren’t going to try that hard to convince you to vote for this, either—why would we, when Oregon Democrats aren’t even putting in the effort to campaign for the bill they worked so hard to pass? ODOT has been unaccountable with its excessive spending on unnecessary freeway megaprojects, and that needs to be addressed. But freeway expansions or not, the state still needs more money to pay for crucial maintenance and safety programs. If this bill doesn’t pass, Oregon legislators will spend the next legislative session (and possibly beyond) locked in the exact same fight over transportation funding. But the most important reason to vote yes is to send a message to Oregon Republicans that governing by referendum is a losing strategy.
Measure 26-261: Five Year Levy, Oregon Historical Society—Yes
If you’re one of those people who think that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, then this should be an easy “yes” decision. The Oregon Historical Society (OHS) is back on the ballot this year, and hoping you will renew the levy you approved in 2021 that will help keep their library, museum, and educational programs going strong. Besides their tireless research and preservation of Oregon historical artifacts, the Society’s work also benefits museums in East County, Gresham, Troutdale, and Crown Point, and is a seemingly bottomless treasure chest of fascinating stories of our state’s collective history. And for all you get from OHS, the levy we’re being asked to pay remains a bargain. It continues to be only five cents per $1,000 assessed property value—which works out to between $12 and $14 per year for the average homeowner. And while some people blanch at the idea of continuing to pay yet another tax (hello, libertarians and the Taxpayer Association of Oregon), knowing
who we are and where we came from is critical to making progress in our future. So throw the Oregon Historical Society a sawbuck and some change to help keep Oregon history alive.
US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
US House, 1st District:
Suzanne Bonamici
Suzanne Bonamici is seeking another term in Congress and we think she deserves to be reelected. Here’s the thing about Bonamici: She’s pretty much your traditional Dem. You can rely on her to fight for expanded health care access, uphold abortion rights and defend mail-in voting, while fighting against the Trump administration (she’s currently trying to keep ICE agents out of sensitive locations like schools and has introduced legislation to prevent immigration agents from wearing masks while snatching people off the streets). Just don’t expect her to push the envelope or do anything to ruffle too many feathers.
In 2024, she voted to send military aid to Israel—a move that led her Democratic
challenger, Jamil Ahmad, to enter the race.
To be clear, Ahmad didn’t mount a serious challenge. In fact, he said he’d withdraw from the election if Bonamici committed in writing to deny any military aid to Israel, but the sentiment fueling the campaign should be noted.
Bonamici defended her vote, noting she did so because it provided crucial humanitarian aid to Palestinians. Since then, she’s opposed defense spending on military aid to Israel. She also disputes the amount of campaign contributions and campaign spending from pro-Israel lobbying groups on her behalf that sites like AIPAC Tracker list for her, and says she won’t accept AIPAC donations during this election cycle. No politician is perfect, and Bonamici has shown up for her district in meaningful ways.
US House, 3rd District: Maxine Dexter
It was not so long ago that Maxine Dexter failed to denounce AIPAC-aligned donations to her campaign for the 3rd District seat she now holds, and that was concerning for a lot of voters. But she has largely
made good and shown independence, signing onto the Block the Bombs Act, the War Powers resolution, and more. Dexter has also used her congressional oversight powers fairly well in the fight against ICE, visiting facilities in the Pacific Northwest and in Texas, and helping to free a constituent family—including four children— from detention. Dexter’s nominal challenger, Jessica Salas, certainly has some idealistic views that fall on the right side of history. But the campaign seems largely fueled by Instagram influencer vibes and impromptu shoutdowns of Dexter in the streets, not the effective representation everyone deserves.
US House, 5th District: No endorsement
The incumbent, Janelle Bynum, will almost surely be the Democratic nominee. Her challenger, Zeva Rosenbaum, didn’t run a serious campaign and did not respond to the Mercury’s questions about her policy stances. That said, Bynum should take note. Her opponent did rack up an endorsement from Clackamas County Democrats and zeroed in on key issues like Bynum’s vote in favor of the Laken Riley Act—deemed by many as a bill that exploited a tragic murder to demonize immigrants—as a source of frustration among the congresswoman’s constituents on the left. Bynum also didn’t curry much favor with voters after her support for a resolution to “express gratitude” for law enforcement officers, including ICE. We’ll revisit the 5th District race in November.
US Senator: Jeff Merkley
Jeff Merkley has been a consistent force for good, showing the kind of leadership on the left that many of his congressional colleagues cannot find the courage for. Since Trump’s first term, Merkley has hardly wavered in standing up to his bully tactics, and hasn’t wavered a bit on rejecting military aid for Israel’s wars in Gaza and Iran. Merkley has voted against a ton of Trump’s nominees, but it’s worth noting he did vote to confirm Marco Rubio alongside every other Senate colleague, which history will prove quite a regrettable decision.
IN A HURRY TO VOTE?
See our handy-dandy election cheat sheet on page 17. Read all these endorsements and more online at portlandmercury.com. The Mercury Election Strike Force is News Editor Courtney Vaughn, Reporters Taylor Griggs and Jeremiah Hayden, Managing Editor Katherine Chew Hamilton, and Editor-inChief Wm. Steven Humphrey.
CELEBRATES
MILES DAVIS
May 13, 2026
KMHD and Hollywood Theatre Present “Miles Ahead” a 2015 American semi-autobiographical drama film directed by Don Cheadle in his feature directorial debut.
Hollywood Theatre
4122 NE Sandy Blvd
7:30 p.m.
(Free to attend)
KMHD and Hollywood Members receive first access.
May 24, 2026
KMHD celebrates Miles Davis’s 100th Birthday with a live performance of “Birth of the Cool” led by Portland trumpeter, Noah Simpson, a nonet of local musicians recreates the 1957 classic in its entirety. Opening set by KMHD DJ Derek Smith.
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave
7 p.m.
(Ticketed)
May 27, 2026
KMHD Celebrates Miles Davis’s 100th Birthday with KMHD Hosts Alex Newman and Rev Shines spinning Miles’ hits.
Daydream 2615 SE Clinton St
7 p.m.
(Free to attend)
Learn more at kmhd.org/monthofmiles
Your Mercury May Election Cheat Sheet!
Cast your vote lickety-split with our quick ‘n’ easy ballot roadmap.
BY
THE MERCURY ELECTION STRIKE FORCE
Make Kitsap County your Pacific Northwest getaway— where scenic beauty meets rich culture. Stay to enjoy local restaurants, wineries, and warm hospitality—visit Bainbridge Island Museum of Art to experience contemporary art and craft during the celebration of Handwork
OREGON STATE SENATE District 17 Lisa Reynolds
OREGON HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Oregon House District 38: John Wasielewski
Oregon House District 41: Mark Gamba
Oregon House District 43: Tawna Sanchez
LABOR COMISSIONER
Christina Stephenson METRO COUNCIL
Metro Council President: Juan Carlos González
Metro Council District 1: Ashton Simpson
Metro Council District 4: Alex Phan
Position 2: Diane Sykes
Position 5: Joanna Perini-Abbott
Position 12: Peter Klym
Position 14: Joe Hagedorn
MEASURES
Measure 120: Transportation Services Yes
Measure 26-261: Five Year Levy, Oregon Historical Society Yes
US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
US House, 1st District: Suzanne Bonamici
US House, 3rd District: Maxine Dexter
US House, 5th District: No endorsement US SENATE Jeff Merkley
Want to learn more about these candidates? See our full endorsements on page 11 and online at portlandmercury.com. The Mercury Election Strike Force is News Editor Courtney Vaughn, Reporters Taylor Griggs and Jeremiah Hayden, Managing Editor Katherine Chew Hamilton, and Editor-in-Chief Wm. Steven Humphrey.
Mercury does not endorse in uncontested
Justin Townes Earle’s Portland Years
The late singer-songwriter’s time in town was pivotal and painful.
BY JONATHAN BERNSTEIN
On November 6, 2016, Justin Townes Earle made an important proclamation: He was moving to Portland.
“Another new town another new home,” he declared on Twitter, just two days before the Presidential election. “Northwest growing on me. I like this rainy motherfucker!”
Over the previous decade, the folk-roots singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle had developed a loud reputation. He was the tall, tattooed, blustery troubadour who’d overcome the pressure and pain of being the son of country legend Steve Earle, moved to New York City at the height of his rise in the late 2000s, and since had established himself as one of the forebears of contemporary Americana music with records like Harlem River Blues
Justin’s time in Portland was one of the most pivotal periods of his life: It was where, as a man in his mid thirties, he started a
family and where he wrote his triumphant album, 2019’s The Saint of Lost Causes. It was also roughly the longest period—and, geographically, the farthest—that he ever lived away from his hometown of Nashville. But over his brief period in town (just a bit over two years), Portland would also end up becoming the setting for Justin’s
“Another new town another new home... I like this rainy motherfucker!”
full-blown relapse into substance use. “He liked Portland and some of the things that, legally, Portland had to offer,” as one of Justin’s oldest friends once put it. It was the last place he lived before temporarily relocating, under difficult circumstances, back
to Nashville, where he was eventually found dead in a temporary apartment from a fentanyl overdose in 2020.
But back in the fall of 2016, on the precipice of moving, Justin was at an exciting crossroads. In 2015, he’d fled the trappings of Nashville with his wife Jenn Marie Earle, spending that year in a remote seaside village in Northern California. He’d sought solitude far from home on the West Coast, where he was seldom recognized in coffee shops the way he was back in Tennessee. Then, in the fall of 2016, the couple received life-changing news that filled them with joy and also precipitated their move: They were going to be parents.
The decision was mostly practical. After a year in rural California, Justin knew he’d be revving up his touring. Driving over three hours to an airport every time he needed to fly to a gig wasn’t feasible. “We needed to move to a place that was better in reach to hospitals and things like that,”
Justin told journalist Brian Wise in 2017. “The choices where we were were either San Francisco or Portland, and nobody can afford to live in San Francisco.”
Justin and Jenn Marie began settling into their first place in Portland, an old, spacious house on Imperial Avenue in Laurelhurst. Justin told his wife it was the nicest home he’d ever lived in. Justin started exploring the city, finding his favorite places to eat and spend money: They’d get dinner at Pok Pok, shop at Hollywood Vintage, or take long neighborhood walks to City State Diner for brunch or Staccato Gelato for dessert. But as they prepared to have their daughter, they mostly spent their first six months in town nesting. One of their favorite places to go together was the local hardware store.
“He’d say, ‘This is the first time in my life I was happy to be home,’” Jenn Marie remembered. “And I’d say, ‘You’re learn -
Folk-roots singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle spent two creative, yet catastrophic years in Portland .
JOSHUA BLACK WILKINS
ing how to be home.’ It was kind of a joke, but it was a real thing: He was learning how to not be on the road. To do laundry, to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and sleep normal hours.”
Justin’s move to Portland was encouraged by a few friends in town. One was Josh Taylor. As owner of Oregon’s Cannabis Concierge, Taylor was known by just about every touring band in the country. He’d grown close with Justin over the years, even serving on and off as Justin’s touring manager throughout the 2010s. Justin, Taylor recalled, told him that Portland had always felt like a second home.
Then there was Andy Moore, Justin’s old friend and bandmate from Nashville. The two old friends—both Nashvillians new to town—began exploring the city together. Frank’s Noodle House was a Justin favorite dating back to his touring days. The Iron Horse out in Sellwood reminded them of a beloved Mexican restaurant back in Nashville. They went to Full Moon Thai, where Justin favored the pad kee mao, or Blind Onion Pizza, where Justin ordered the barbecue chicken pie. They wandered around, two old friends 2,000 miles away from their hometown, and had long, self-reflective talks about their dads, their new phases of life, and how far they’d come as adults.
“There is a sober and well-adjusted Justin that I know to have had some of the deepest and most heartfelt conversations,” Moore told Rolling Stone in 2020. “We talked about the shortcomings of our own families and paternal lines and ‘How are we going to be better than [them].’”
Justin’s first full year in Portland, 2017, was busy. He released his album Kids in the Street and spent much of the year touring in support of the record (that March, he had a residency at the original Doug Fir). He wanted to make as much money on the road as he could before his daughter, Etta St. James Earle, was born that June. In October, during a brief period at home in Portland, Justin showed up and sang a gorgeous cover of Paul Simon’s “Graceland” at a benefit show for refugees with his father, Emmylou Harris, Dave Matthews, and Brandi Carlile at the Aladdin Theater.
saying that also became his personal email signature: “Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living.” And he tweeted in support of left-wing protestors countering farright violence with violence: “I deeply truly believe,” Justin wrote that August, “that there is nothing wrong with putting some needle dick Nazi fuck on his ass. Fuck ‘em!”
All of this found its way into his music. The songs Justin began drafting for The Saint of Lost Causes were unlike anything he’d written. They were topically minded, Woody Guthrie-inspired third-person tales
his own increased suffering. He began self-isolating, locking himself in his basement office, or leaving home to court trouble. Oftentimes, his destination was Chopsticks, the karaoke dive bar a stone’s throw from his home in Laurelhurst that quickly became the locus for Justin’s substance use. Justin had loved Portland from the moment he started touring as a solo artist in the late 2000s, but his history with the town had long been troubled. Justin once told a reporter that it was in Portland that he broke the only truly sustained sobriety
four years. But, as Justin put it to journalist Chris Talbott in 2011, he “relapsed” on marijuana at a Portland festival (almost certainly Pickathon, where he played that year) in August 2008.
Those around him could begin to feel the city’s negative influence. “It wasn’t a good place for him,” said Jenn Marie. “There were bars on every corner, there were drugs everywhere. It was where things really picked up.”
The last few years of Justin’s life would be filled with turmoil and tragedy. There would be increased struggles with mental health and addiction. There would be violence: Justin was charged in June 2018 with fourth-degree assault in a domestic violence case after swinging his arms at his wife (despite there being documented evidence of Justin’s assault, the charges were dropped after he went to rehab). There would be a few isolated happy memories still to come, like when, in the fall of 2018, after rehab and his final recording session, Justin played back mixes for Etta and Jenn Marie of The Saint of Lost Causes (“He was so proud of them,” said Jenn Marie).
But there would ultimately be increased distance between Justin and his family. Justin relocated back to Nashville in 2019, a move Jenn Marie hoped and believed would be temporary.
“We won’t stay there forever,” Justin said of Portland to journalist Joanne Will in 2017, back when Justin had his mind set on raising his daughter in New York. “Not that there’s anything wrong with [Portland], there’s just a little bit more culture needed for me to want to raise a kid there.”
Justin lived in town for little more than two years, and for much of that time he was on the road. But just as the city shaped him during that time, Justin also left a mark on his adopted hometown. When he died in 2020, Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers, another native Southerner making Portland home, wrote a song about the man he so wished he’d been able to spend more time with. It was called “We will never wake you up in the morning.”
“Hearts broken by your actions,” Hood wrote. “But you had the best intentions.”
But Justin also spent quite a bit of his 2017 in the basement of his home on Imperial Avenue, where he was working on what would end up becoming his final album. Like many Americans, Justin was animated following the 2016 election of Donald Trump. He started tweeting at and about the administration. He described then-attorney general Jeff Sessions as “part time garden gnome and full time Confederate memorial.” He quoted a Mother Jones
of social strife and economic alienation: the stories of someone living through the recent Flint water crisis, a ballad about a man who grows up in the housing projects of South Central Los Angeles, the tale of an Appalachian criminal whose life was destroyed by the raging opioid crisis.
“I feel that we’re in a place in the world… where we have been marginalizing people for such a long time that we’re going to find that they are going to strike back at us,” Justin told the Australian magazine Scenestr upon the album’s release. “And we’re not gonna like it.”
Those songs marked a new creative highpoint for Justin, but they also documented
“I truly believe that there is nothing wrong with putting some needle dick Nazi fuck on his ass. Fuck ’em!”
of his life. At that point, he’d been devoted to twelve-step recovery and refrained from anything stronger than a cigarette for over
When Jenn Marie thought back on her time with Justin in Portland, she tried to focus on when they first arrived. It was when their future as parents was in front of them, when their new surroundings provided a source of energy and excitement towards their uncertain yet hopeful future. “Portland was great for six months, until it wasn’t,” she said. “Those were the last moments of just real life together, when we were really working as a complete team, and there were no secrets, and it was all for this dream together…. We had a wonderful time there before it went crumbling.”
During his time living in Portland, Justin wrote his triumphant album The Saint of Lost Causes
JOSHUA BLACK WILKINS
Get Into the Groove
How Discogs evolved from a Portland vinyl collector’s dream to a worldwide phenomenon.
BY RYAN J. PRADO
ILLUSTRATION BY LIAM EISENBERG
Like many dot-com era ideas ushered into use just below the radar in the early 2000s, the Discogs project was poised to solve a niche problem. Floating among the flotsam web forums and message boards were calls for what, in theory, would be an IMDb (Internet Movie Database) for vinyl records—an online place to catalog and organize data for physical albums.
Former Intel programmer, Portland resident, and electronic music enthusiast Kevin Lewandowski was in the thick of those discussions, and in 2000, he began a labor of love to code and log the first couple hundred entries from his own collection
into a database of recorded music that now boasts over 136,000 contributors, 19 million
“It’s all about making Discogs easier to use and simplifying things while still being able to research deeply.”
releases, and nearly 79 million listings in a robust online archive and marketplace.
Though it began as an electronic music database, it’s now a hub for pretty much every genre of music imaginable, and includes titles ranging from the ultra-rare to the multi-platinum. The doors have blown wide open for Discogs in the ensuing 25 years as everything from a market value pacer, a user-generated wiki of physical music media, and—newly—a hub for purchasing new releases.
Lewandowski moved to Portland after college in New Orleans. An affiliation with club DJs and his love for electronic music set the stage for what Discogs has become. And while Portland as an incubator may not have played a conscious role
in his decision to launch the company, Lewandowski cites copious trips to the now-shuttered Ozone Records, which operated at West Burnside and 11th, and other Portland record shops, as a psychic foundation for flipping the switch. The vinyl market in 2000 was essentially in a flatline, with the more mobile compact disc dominating the physical media landscape. But a vibrant, stubborn community of vinyl collectors was still active online. The fact that buying actual vinyl records was thought of as something only your stoner uncle with a Ford Econoline might be into, ended up being something of a beacon for Lewandowski’s efforts.
“[That vinyl sales weren’t as big] probably allowed me to stay focused,” says Lewandowski. “In my mind, at the time, vinyl was only for DJs. I think it was a smaller world, and probably its own tight community that helped gather a bunch of people with a common interest to start building Discogs, to participate.”
The buzz amongst the community helped build the site during its early years, with user-generated feedback encouraging site improvements and new feature additions. In 2002, two of the site’s most used features—the Wantlist and Collection—were introduced. The broadening Discogs features sowed the seeds for more curious collectors, and with them, calls for a buyers and sellers marketplace. In 2005, the call was answered, and Discogs’ Marketplace was rolled out to fanfare, hatching a revenue stream enabling Discogs to hire its first employee. The company now employs upward of 110 people, about half of whom live in the Portland metro area.
For Lewandowski, the site’s forum and the user engagement therein was critical to the evolution of Discogs into the wide-ranging juggernaut it is today. That users had Lewandowski’s ear, often in realtime, for bug fixes or feature suggestions, helped buy-in and word-of-mouth for collectors of every level.
“We were all talking to each other every day in the forums,” says Lewandowski. “There was a fast feedback cycle, which I think helped out. I really enjoyed being able to do something and get quick feedback. I think it kept [users] interested that things [were able to] change and improve so quickly.”
Craig Moerer owns Records by Mail, a seller of vinyl LPs and 45s since the mid1970s, with a 8,000-square-foot Portland warehouse housing some 2 million records. Moerer has been a longtime Discogs user, but diversifies his online selling presence with other marketplace entities, like eBay. As a record seller, Moerer is both a critical voice and an advocate for Discogs as a marketplace option. He has no beef with Discogs—he makes that clear—though there are objections in the public sphere he agrees with in terms of what the advent of Discogs has done to the vinyl market at large.
“On one hand, the eBays and the Discogs of the world have harmed our business because they’ve lowered the bar for entry,” explains Moerer. “But on the positive side, it’s injected some dynamism that wouldn’t exist if these platforms weren’t there.”
Bob Ham—owner of Super-Electric Records in Portland—concurs with Moerer’s cited conundrums of buying and selling on Discogs, despite it being his go-to destination for titles that have sat on the shelves a bit too long at his Eliot neighborhood brick-and-mortar.
“There are plenty of people who sell records at places like vintage malls or Facebook Marketplace or at estate sales that will use Discogs as their benchmark for how to price a record,” says Ham. “But on Discogs, the price only goes to the highest number that someone has paid for a particular copy of a record. And they will use that instead of actually considering things like
the condition of the vinyl, condition of the sleeve, etc.”
So digging for rare deals has essentially become impossible. For his part in the marketplace debate, Lewandowski agrees.
“We decided to publish our historical sales prices, so you can see when it was sold, in what condition, and for how much,” he says. “I think that made the market more transparent, but by doing that, those rare deals are gone. I can understand people having that frustration, but I think if Discogs didn’t do it, somebody else would. And this type of thing has happened to all kinds of other markets, all the collectible markets.”
Cataloging, too, can occasionally be a clunky endeavor. When uploading media information beyond the basic data identifying the record label, release year, or even the pressing plant where the record was actually forged, things can and do get granular. Attempting to decipher the etchings on a matrix runout of a vinyl album (located on the blank area in the middle of the record, sometimes called “deadwax”), and laboring over the minutiae of special LP versions and colored vinyl is intimidating. In short, it’s a whole lot of information to get nice and specific about, and a casual collector’s hill to die on when faced with the prospect of beginning their own Discogs cataloging.
“There’s definitely a sense that it’s an exclusive club,” admits Lewandowski. “I
“People’s record collections are part of their identity.”
personally do think it’s difficult to use. A lot of it was designed by a programmer: me. I wasn’t always thinking about the ease of use. But today, I’m thinking about that.”
Boasting 81 percent growth in contributors since the great vinyl resuscitation of 2020, and with 4 million active users in the past year adding 2.2 million items to their Discogs collections every week, the site, despite the above grumbles, is thriving. And just like in the early days, the company is listening to user feedback and improving the experience of Discogs.
In the short-term, there’s Discogs’ new release sister site, newreleases. discogs.com, which in its infancy is already a destination for buying brand new sealed records through Discogs. Longterm, the vision from the head honcho is steadfast.
“It’s all about making Discogs easier to use and simplifying things while still being able to research deeply,” says Lewandowski. “Our mission is to build the complete record collecting journey. I think people’s record collections are part of their identity, whether you’re just starting with your first record or you’ve been collecting for years. Everyone is on some type of journey with that, to learn about music, to create something that resembles their personality, and what they identify with.”
The Food That Keeps Portland Musicians Playing
We asked six local artists about their favorite places to fill their bellies.
BY KATHERINE CHEW HAMILTON ILLUSTRATIONS BY JORDAN KAY
C POWERS
is an electronic musician and DJ.
What do you eat to give you energy before a show?
Ethiopian food has lots of protein and fiber. Enat (300 N Killingsworth) is great. I am an absolute fiend for doro wat, which is the Ethiopian national dish, a chicken stew. They make the sauce out of a shit ton of onions, which I love. I grew up in an Italian-American family, and Italians have a pasta called genovese, which is also a shit ton of onions. If it has lots of onions, I’m usually pretty sold on it.
What’s your favorite late-night spot?
If music be the food of love, play on. But what’s the food that musicians love? These musicians’ tastes in local eats are just as refined as their tastes in music.
We’ve gone to Short Round/Crying Tigers (3962 SE Hawthorne) a few times. It’s Vietnamese style street food. They have one of my favorite dishes in the world, which is bo la lot. It’s like beef kebabs that are wrapped in betel leaf and grilled, so you get all this char.
ISABEAUWALKERWAIA’U KEEKS
is a singer-songwriter who performs solo, with her band the Noise Boyz, and with Y La Bamba.
What do you eat to fuel up before a show or a long day of recording?
Pie Spot (521 NE 24th) has this breakfast sandwich, and you can get it with Spam. Sunrice (4090 N Williams) has a whole fried fish that you can get with a side of rice, but you can also get it on a milk bun, like a breakfast sandwich. I almost felt embarrassed because of how often I was going to get it.
What’s a place whose food feels really comforting to you?
I love Kau Kau (2026 NE Alberta). If I go with friends, we’ll each get a plate and split everything up. I love having your rice, your mac salad, meat jun, mochiko chicken, or lau lau all on one plate. You just pull in a bite from this, a bite from this, you get the savory, the sweet, the tangy.
is a rapper, singer, dancer, and multimedia artist.
What’s your favorite place for a treatyourself meal?
Grits ‘N’ Gravy (215 SW 6th) is quintessential Southern food, and I’m from the South, so I’m very picky about my Southern food. I always get their fried catfish or their fried trout plate with rice and gravy. That’s me and my boyfriend’s spot. Or if I’m going for a solo brunch date moment, I’ll go to Sweedeedee (5202 N Albina), and I’m getting a nicoise salad with a big piece of what they call Grandma’s bread with butter and jam— yes, honey —and a matcha or vanilla latte. And I’m taking home some kind of to-go pastry. Last time I got a honey cake.
Are you a dessert person?
I love dessert. I don’t know what kind of sorcery they’ve got over at Kate’s Ice Cream (3713 N Mississippi and 1430 NW 23rd), but my boyfriend and I got the cookie monster ice cream sandwich and the salted peanut brittle sandwich. It was expensive, not gonna lie. Whole way home, we’re like “This better be the best damn ice cream sandwich I’ve ever had.” And we got home, and we’re smashing these ice cream sandwiches, they were so good.
MARIA MAITAKEPPELER
is the guitaristsongwritersinger-and behind indie rock band MAITA.
What’s your favorite spot to eat after a show?
My favorite spot is Ka-Te (3554 SE 82nd). It’s a Vietnamese spot, and they’re open till 2 am. So after a show, we head over with the band and get some fried rice and snails. The flower snails especially are so good—super garlicky and buttery with salt and pepper. You eat them with a toothpick and just go to town.
Where do you go for special occasions?
If you’re a musician, you might not have the budget to go out and eat a really fancy meal. So when I want to celebrate, I go to Nostrana (1401 SE Morrison) for their happy hour. They have a really good margarita pizza for $10, red sauce pasta for $12, and the most delicious little radicchio salad for $7.
PAPI FIMBRES
is a multi-instrumentalist, percussionist, and composer who performs solo and with 16 different bands, including Orquestra Pacífico Tropical.
What’s one of your most-visited spots in town?
One of my favorite taco places in Portland is La Sirenita (2817 NE Alberta).Their carnitas and their pastor are amazing—it’s street style, simple, with a double tortilla dipped in oil so the tortilla isn’t dry. They’ve been around for like 20 years. I’m from Los Angeles, but I’ve lived in Portland since ’99, and I’ve been living off of Alberta forever.
Where do you like to go out to eat with the band?
We usually have to separate into two tables, but if we get lucky, all 11 of us from Orquestra Pacífico Tropical can all sit at one table at Hat Yai (1605 NE Killingsworth). We love their whole fried chicken plate with the sauce and the roti. They also have an amazing brisket curry that’s out of this world. It’s incredibly spicy, and for me, the spicier the better.
SALLIE FORD
is a whosinger-songwriter leads the doo-wop/countrysurf/band The Barbaras with her sister Weezy.
What’s one of your frequently visited restaurants?
I love Korean BBQ, so I go to K Town (5450 SE 82nd) a lot. I just went there last night for all-you-can-eat, which is ridiculous—it’s so good. I get galbi, pork belly, and these little rice cakes that you grill.
Which venue has the best food?
A lot of times I’ll go to the LaurelThirst (2958 NE Glisan) after work for food. I play gigs there at least one or two times a year, and it’s kind of my go-to venue for seeing shows. I like the banh mi salad.
MICHAELSELL
Portland Music Map
Gear Shops
1 Cedar Mountain Drums Inc 2237 E Burnside St, Portland, OR 97214
2 Control Voltage 3742 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR 97227
3 Fred’s Sound Of Music Audio Video Inc. 3760 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214
4 Old Town Music 55 SE 11th Ave, Portland, OR 97214
5 Revival Drum Shop 902 SE Sherman St, Portland, OR 97214
6 Rhythm Traders 3904 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd Suite A, Portland, OR 97212
7 Strum 1415 SE Stark St #C, Portland, OR 97214
8 Trade Up Music (SE Division) 4701 SE Division St, Portland, OR 97206
9 Trade Up Music (NE Alberta) 1834 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR 97211
Record Shops
1 2nd Avenue Records 121 SW 2nd Ave, Portland, OR 97204
2 Beacon Sound 2730 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Portland, OR 97212
3 Clinton Street Record & Stereo 2510 SE Clinton St, Portland, OR 97202
4 Echoes In Space Records 6315 SE Holgate Blvd, Portland, OR 97206
5 Jackpot Records 3574 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214
6 Little Axe Records 4142 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland, OR 97212
7 Mississippi Records 5202 N Albina Ave, Portland, OR 97217
8 Music History
NE 30th Ave STE 106, Portland, OR 97211
9 Music Millennium
E Burnside St, Portland, OR 97214
10 Musique Plastique 640 SE Stark St, Portland, OR 97214
11 My Vinyl Underground 1401 SE Division St (basement), Portland, OR 97202
12 Speck’s Records & Tapes
13 Super-Electric Records
NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Portland, OR 97212
visual guide to music establishments in
Bars & Restaurants
1 13th Moon Gravity Well
SE 41st Ave, Portland, OR 97206
2 Beulahland
NE 28th Ave, Portland, OR 97232
3 Clyde’s Prime Rib Restaurant and Bar
NE Sandy Blvd, Portland, OR 97213
4 Dream House Bar 412 NE Beech St, Portland, OR 97212
5 Keys Lounge
NE Killingsworth St, Portland, OR 97211
6 Laurelthirst Public House
NE Glisan St, Portland, OR 97232
7 LaVerne’s
NE Dekum St, Portland, OR 97211
8 Star Bar 639
9
44
45
St, Portland, OR 97214
Division St, Portland, OR 97206
97214
Yamhill St, Portland, OR 97204
Venues
1 The
4
5
6
7
HAWTHORNE
POWELL
POWELL
BURNSIDE
After-School Programming Never Sounded So Good
Electronic Music Club takes modern approaches in teaching students music.
BY KENDALL PORTER
The “lightbulb” moment behind Electronic Music Club (EMC) started when Erik Carlson, founder of EMC and a piano teacher of 12 years at the time, was in the middle of a lesson when his student announced that he was “sick of piano” and would rather be making techno instead.
Years later, Electronic Music Club offers hour-long after-school lessons on site at over 30 schools in the Portland area, and continues expanding throughout Portland, Beaverton, and Eugene. Instructors provide laptops preloaded with Ableton, a popular music production software, and walk students through the basics of the program before giving them time to experiment on their own. Projects each term range from making beats to creating a producer tag to scripting and recording fictional radio broadcast ads, each lesson teaching new functions within the program. At the end of the term, students take home a flash drive loaded with everything they’ve created.
In traditional elementary education, visual art has a lot more room for experimentation, while music has more “prescribed paths,” Carlson says. Electronic Music Club allows kids to suspend music theory for a little while and have fun with questions like “does this sound cool?” Over the five years he’s run the program, Carlson has received feedback from kids and parents alike about how EMC was the highlight of the school year, and how it helped with difficult transitions.
For Andrea Caudill, a parent of two, the after-school program was a way to get her kids excited about making music outside of the more structured classical music pedigree she grew up with.
“Music is a big deal in our house, but I haven’t had any success in having either one of [my kids] be interested in a more traditional approach,” she says. When her son, Henry, was interested in signing up for Electronic Music Club, it was a new outlet for him to explore and learn music.
“I didn’t realize how fun it would be to create all this music on a computer,” Henry says. Through EMC, he gets the opportunity to experiment with different sounds and the freedom to have control over everything he makes. “It’s my music, my way, the entire way.”
Cole Johnston, administrator and substitute instructor at EMC, says the biggest thing Electronic Music Club does is
build students’ confidence in their ability to create. They learn new hard skills and can leave with a song that they really like, he says.
Another instructor, Alina Kulakevich, has watched students stand up and dance while presenting their song to the class.
Sauvie Yurek-Naiman, an EMC student of three years, decided to present one of her songs she created through the club for her school’s talent show, using Ableton and a Novation Launchpad. Leading up to the talent show, Carlson, along with other members of EMC staff met with Sauvie to help her feel well-prepared. Sauvie says she plans to create a new song for her talent show this year as well. “It’s like a little community,” says Emily Yurek-Naiman, Sauvie’s mom.
Electronic Music Club also offers more specialized summer camp programs such as “Video Game Music Camp” and “Pop Star Boot Camp!,” in which students write, record, and produce their own original songs. At “Intro to Electronic Music” camp, kids are introduced to—and taught how to produce—a new electronic music subgenre each day.
Electronic Music Club has the same struggles as any after-school club: The kids are sometimes tired after sitting in class all day, hungry, restless, and ready to go home. It also has challenges unique to the program. For some students, especially those on the younger end and long past the days when schools taught mandatory typing classes, Electronic Music Club is their first
time working with technology that isn’t centered around a touchscreen. Alongside learning how to create their own beats, kids are also learning skills like file management and how to use a laptop’s trackpad.
Despite that, instructor Skyler Pia says students have done an impressive job figuring out an “admittedly daunting interface” like Ableton.
Another instructor, Jonathan Nasrallah, echoes a similar sentiment, and sees Ableton as a cool introduction to com -
“I didn’t realize how fun it would be to create all this music on a computer. It’s my music, my way, the entire way.”
puters in a context of self-expression and autonomy. “I want kids to know that technology is something that empowers them,” Nasrallah says. “Not something that has power over them.”
While Nasrallah emphasizes the importance of learning traditional analog instruments, through EMC, students are able to reduce the mechanical learning curve of the piano or flute, and jump much faster into the creative self-expression part of playing music with synths and software.
Pia also says that it’s been a fun challenge as an educator to balance the needs of students who are “prodigious” and super interested in music, and those who are starting out.
“Finding a way to explain [music production] to kids of all levels of skill and interest is not easy,” she says, “and I think Erik and Cole have done a good job of giving us a template for how to do that.”
As for the future of Electronic Music Club, Carlson is hoping to expand its programming into middle schools, as well as introducing more advanced lesson plans for students returning to EMC year after year. The summer camps, once based out of Lloyd Center, are finding new homes at Childpeace Montessori in NW Portland and Marylhurst School in Oregon City. For parents and adults wanting to participate themselves, EMC offers “Beats ‘n Brews,” a hands-on class with catered food and drink.
You never know who the next Arca will be...
COURTESY OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC CLUB
The Only Summer 2026 Festival Guide You’ll Need
It’s summer in Portland, and you know what that means… music festivals!
BY NOLAN PARKER
COLLAGE BY ANTHONY KEO
The most common adjectives tossed around when describing Portland in the summer include incredible, beautiful, perfect, and “the only reason anyone lives in the Pacific Northwest.” While I don’t fully agree with that last one, Portland and the PNW are something to behold in the warmer months—booties and bikes are out, the rivers and the lakes we’re used to are warm, and Portland’s music festivals are in full swing.
Music festivals aren’t for everyone, and that’s understandable. But the festivals we have ‘round these here parts are elevated, a cut above the Brochellas of the world. Our genre-expansive festivals are at dispersed locations with icon headliners, many of them forested and/or on a river. They’re campouts, feasts for the ears and bellies, and most importantly, communities where artists and music lovers are able to connect, even if just briefly, through the deeply nourishing power of music.
First, we gotta pour a few out for the fallen festival soldiers of 2026. Not coming back this year are two Portland favorites and a Central Oregon hoedown: Lose Yr Mind, Project Pabst, and FairWell Festival, respectively. Project Pabst—FKA Music Fest Northwest—and Lose Yr Mind
The festivals we have ’round these here parts are elevated, a cut above the Brochellas of the world.
have both been in the Portland game a minute, taking many forms over the years. Portland summer is gonna be a little different this year without the two stalwart festivals. And though Redmond’s FairWell was still in its infancy, the country music
festival had a huge impact on Central Oregon, both energetically and economically. We hope all three festivals make their grand returns in 2027.
But now, it’s 2026’s turn.
Summer festival season officially opened in May with the forever-stacked St. Johns Bizarre music programming, and the next in line to ascend the summer festival throne is Lonely God Fest, dispersed across Portland between June 10–14. The coronation takes place at Dream House with Dwelling Unit and Carny Cumm playing live, and Government Palace (AKA yours truly) DJing. Festival highlights include Martin Rev of Suicide, the cosmic dreamings of the Space Lady, musicmeets-puppetry act Quintron & Miss Pussycat, and Anthers, one of Seattle’s best bands ATM. Local heat provided by Carny Cumm, Ogre, Conspire, Black Shelton, WL, a Bijoux Cone DJ set, and more. More info at lonelygodpdx.com.
Since 1988, Portland’s brilliant Waterfront Blues Festival has uplifted attendees
with its expansive definitions of the blues. This year from July 2–4, the Blues Festival is back with a Portland-dense lineup. Ural Thomas & the Pain, Toody Cole and Her Band, Orquestra Pacífico Tropical, Jenny Don’t and the Spurs, Lo & the Steele Family Band, and Larry Peace-Love Yes take the stage, an eclectic representation of the artists in Portland singing the blues. The biggie out-of-towner artists to check out this year are original Addis Ababa Ethiojazz all-star Hailu Mergia and NOLA soul-funk instigators Tank and the Bangas. Being the champions of accessibility they are, the Waterfront Blues Festival is free for blues fans 12 and under, as it is for those with SNAP/EBT benefits. More info at waterfrontbluesfest.com.
With Project Pabst taking a break this year (and hopefully only this year), Pickathon is Portland’s premiere, large-scale festival. And we love her! If you’ve checked out the lineup and, like so many Pickathons past, you don’t know a ton of the artists, you’re in good company, and, in fact, that is
part of the magic. It’s easy to wax poetic— and I have—about how special Pickathon is: the incredible food lineup, literary and kids’ programming, and the late night party atmosphere all come to mind as selling points, but we’re here to talk music. Though the festival made a valiant effort to expand beyond its folky Americana roots last year, we’re back with a lot of that this year. However, this year’s roster features heaps of good music from all over the world, including El Khat, Folk Bitch Trio, Marcos Valle, Mary Halvorson, Mexican Institute of Sound, Ora Cogan, Piss, Terror/Cactus, and the Womack Sisters. Local (and world-class) talent will be provided by Buddy Wynkoop, the Cosmic Tones Research Trio, Quasi, and more. One of the most unique aspects of Pickathon is that every artist plays two, sometimes three or four sets—meaning that after night one, there’s always a lot more on your to-see list than when you walked onto Pendarvis Farm. Pickathon is July 30 to August 2; more info at pickathon.com.
Last and certainly not least, Homie Fest is back again for the second year in a row after taking an extended seven-year sabbatical. Helmed by Portland’s busiest artist, Papi Fimbres, Homie Fest takes to the forests of Camp Colton—about 45 minutes southeast of Portland—in a return to campout form. $50 gets you access to 25+ bands, parking, camping, swimming, and hiking, and what’s more, kiddos 12 and under are free. Explicitly curated by and for BIPOC and LGBTQIA2+ PNW artists, Homie Fest is just that, for the homies. For this edition of the fest, Fimbres is bringing Karma Rivera, Kusikia, Mnemonic Pulse, Nick Normal, Obedient, Queen Rodeo, Vueltas, Yawa, and many more to Camp Colton. As is tradition, Papi’s band
Orquestra Pacífico Tropical will play the final slot of the festival, shutting it down the only way he knows how: with a massive cumbia-fueled dance party not likely to be forgotten soon. Homie Fest pops off August 14–16; tickets and more info at instagram.com/homiefestpdx.
If, like us, you love a road trip with a reason, there’s a plethora of music festivals within driving distance of Portland. Pendleton, Oregon’s Jackalope Jamboree from June 25–27 is absolutely the festival for those mourning the loss of FairWell, featuring some of country music’s finest doing it today. Canyon Vibration, taking place August 7–9 in Tygh Valley, Oregon, will twinkle the toes of those spending most their weekends at Process and Barn Radio, with DJs including C Powers, Dissolve, Black Daria, and LéMix.
For my money, and maybe I’m biased because I grew up going to the festival, the best out-of-towner is Seattle’s Bumbershoot. Taking place every Labor Day Weekend between 1971 and 2019, and 2023 to the present—unlike most festivals, where you hear old heads saying “It’s not as good as it used to be,” Bumbershoot is back and better than ever since the pandemic. The festival is smaller, the programming is dialed the fuck in, and it’s in the heart of one of the best cities in the world. This year’s lineup is nuts and includes Turnstile, De La Soul, Bikini Kill, Noname, Orville Peck, Takuya Nakamura, Peaches, Yves Tumor, Blood Orange, Death Cab for Cutie, Anthers, and more. The festival takes over the Seattle Center campus September 5 and 6, kids 12 and under are free, and they’ve added a new “Ins + Outs” option. Tickets and more info at bumbershoot.com.
Hope to catch you at one (or all) of the above!
Spin Cycle
Dispatches on three
wildly different artists just doing what they gotta do, man.
BY RYAN J. PRADO
Year of the Coyote Hell Wall
Self-release
Few sludge crews have been as integral to Portland’s underground metal scene as Year of the Coyote. The trio’s
Jai’Len Josey Serial Romantic Def Jam Recordings
My relationship with pop music being slightly frayed, it’s with a degree of relief and excitement to have come across Jai’len Josey’s vibrant debut
pedigree, with members having logged time with yesteryear hardcore bruisers like Brutal Fight and Twohands, speaks to a long memory of sweaty basement shows, cramped nights at former Portland haunts like the Know, and thousands of hours of riff-honing. On the band’s second full-length, Hell Wall, that dedication to the unruly is borne out in an avalanche of heaviness that leaves a definite mark.
Dispensing with any notion of fucking around right off the bat, album opener “Inhuman” unfurls with reckless intentions, an onslaught of odd-time signatures and downtuned sneers leading you through a gauntlet of ferocity. The band’s power trio bones are filled out with seismic guitars courtesy of vocalist/guitarist Matt Hagan, whose punishing growl
album, Serial Romantic . Redolent of 1990s R&B, house, and soul, Josey’s psychological concept LP follows her alter ego (also called Josey) through an obstacle course of emotional compromises, persona shifts, and lovelorn dispositions that lay the groundwork for a monster pop record. It’s the sort of stylistic coming-out that seems altogether poised for a big, deserved breakthrough.
A string-laden “Heart & Strings” intro backdrops the spoken-word theme, introducing Josey as “a woman caught in the relentless pursuit of perfection and acceptance.” Immediately, Josey’s seamless flow flutters in, laying tracks for the alter-ego Josey’s amorous experiments. While every track could well be
Followers of cross-the-pond punk might wonder if the band in question here is the ’90s London group Snuff, minus the umlaut. And while that isn’t correct, it’s a fun bit of trivia that both bands feature drummer-vocalists. This is only one of the reasons I have fallen in deep with Snüff, despite the fact that their drummer-vocalist Giorgia Malagò also plays standing up, Victor DeLorenzo style. On Silly Not Silly, the band’s second album, the Italian garagepop trio transcends all that aesthetic bullshit anyway, delivering a high-energy dose of pogo-ready pageantry.
For fans of Coalesce, Isis, Armed for Apocalypse
throws in a grumpy fourth layer to the record’s intensity. Ample evidence of metal’s many second cousins permeate the dynamism on songs like “In the Water” and “Man Alive,” the latter of which dips its sludgy big toe into propulsive thrash. “Bitter Root” announces itself as a dissonant piledriver of a track that permits welcomed opportunities for air during breakdowns that allow the rhythm section of bassist Jesse Schneider and drummer Travis Wisner to systematically lull you into complacency before uncorking a battering ram of heavy damage. Throughout the LP, tracks segue into each other through squalls of feedback, radio static, and ambient loops that make
construed as a bonafide banger, the first moonshot is “Housewife,” a peppy spritz of feminist trade-off that finds Josey admitting to the potential for domestic acquiescence for the right partner. Here, the inherent groove comingles with a quippy bass and Josey’s elastic, sensual voice. “New Girl” pulses like a dancefloor destroyer, with blippy synths and a motorik percussive beat. Josey’s timing and sass catapult the sexy cut into new stratospheres, with addictive tempo changes and depth that delve into ghettotech traditions while maintaining its pop pockets.
The eminently singable “Love Ain’t Shit” ought to be held in reverence as the de facto anti-love grail for a new generation with lyrics like “I should just leave you / and avoid all the bullshit we’re gonna go through / I’m
“Luciana,” in all its simplistic poppunk plumage, writhes in a raw catchiness that shows off the band’s melodic sensibilities beyond their more sinister turns. High-octane numbers like “I’ll Be Around” harken to trenchant punk roots with chorus-pedal distortion and oodles of left-turn guitar lead zigs and zags. The band’s aggressive allegiances to rock ‘n’ roll’s ballyhooed abandon comes through loud and clear on “Be Cool,” a two-minute stomper further elucidating Malagó’s powerhouse vocals (which sometimes sound like Eleanor Friedberger, in what is most definitely a compliment), punctuated by guitarist/vocalist Andrea Davì’s saccharine harmonies.
for a compelling, nonstop assault on your senses. When the transition finally clears way for the album’s title-track finale, Hagan’s jarring guitar scrawl unfolds through three minutes of cacophony before finally dropping the hammer on one of the chunkiest riffs on the whole album—a slow, pissed-off bookend replete with energy to spare, even though you’ve gotta think his voice would basically be scattered into a thousand shreds of viscera at this point in the record. But what the doom-stretched adieu, “Hell Wall,” amounts to is close to what the titular barricade purports: You are now up against a wall of hell, and it starts to sound that way near the nine-minute mark of the track. You may be well advised to towel off, but good luck getting the grime to wash out anytime soon.
sorry in advance / but we never had a chance.” Here, the album tempo slows, revealing new dimensions to Josey’s songwriting. That respite continues as the genre-splicing “Truce” spreads a chill, muted groove pulling the covers over an intimate lover’s quarrel, warming itself in crisp bass and a slow-burn beat that stands as adequate backdrop for Josey’s liquid vibrato runs. When the oomph returns, “Won’t You” shimmers in a glam-pop sheen, Josey’s chorus stating, in no uncertain terms, “If you don’t wanna be here / I won’t force you to love me.”
On Serial Romanticism , the candid immediacy of Josey’s transmutations are dissected into musical moments of profound liberation that only sizzle more by way of her obvious talents. Sleeping on this album ought to be illegal.
The album’s unmitigated pep is only rarely watered down, as heard on the minimalist “By the River,” which takes the vocal tandem to contemplative depths, like an early Lou Reed meditation, only to be summarily blown apart by an onrush of heavy-lidded psych at the song’s extended conclusion. Setting the table for the LP’s end is the explosive “T-Man,” another in a string of combustible singalongs that also includes the vaguely Black Francis-Kim Deal-esque “The Experiment.”
It’s enough to make you wonder how much you’d need to save to catch the band on their home turf sometime in the very near future. Until then, ciao bella
Snüff
Silly Not Silly Wild Honey Records
For fans of Mary J. Blige, Black Box, Missy Elliott
For fans of the Gories, Hey Lover, Sonny and the Sunsets
Attending Your First Ball
Ten tips from the Rebound on what to do and how to dress for the Gaymer Ball.
BY ERIC LEE aka DOC 007
At the end of 2023 I attended my first ball. I had no idea what to expect, and to be honest, I was nervous about attending. It felt a bit intimidating! Two hours and 10 categories later, I felt completely different. I left in awe—ballroom is exhilarating, inspiring, and profoundly queer. I loved the diversity of body type and gender I saw. And I loved how competitive it was!
To quote Daniel ‘Papi’ Giron, our founder at the Rebound: “Ballroom is like gay sports.” A ball is a series of short competitions (called categories) that performers participate (or ‘walk’) in. Classic ballroom categories include vogue (also called performance), runway, face, and body. “Ballroom gives queer folks the chance to compete that a lot of us didn’t have growing up,” says Papi.
Like many sports, ballroom has a lot of rules. With ballroom, these rules often go unspoken! I think this is why I felt nervous attending my first ball—would I do something wrong? Would my presence be frowned upon?
It’s not like you can look it up online!
I stuck around the ballroom scene as a supporter, and now I’m involved with administration at the Rebound, a local nonprofit dedicated to advancing ballroom in the Pacific Northwest.
The Rebound’s first ball of 2026 is coming up on May 15! With the Gaymer Ball on the horizon, I felt like it would be a great time to write this article. Papi pitched in to help me share 10 tips for anyone hoping to attend our ball!
Papi’s 10 Tips for Folks Attending Their First Ball (with my commentary):
Come To Observe First. It takes years for a performer to prepare to walk for their first time! There are outlets in Portland to learn ballroom, but the ball itself is for those who have spent a lot of time practicing their category.
Respect the Culture. People who walk ballroom have an incredible dedication to it. It takes a lot of practice and tutelage to successfully walk. The ball reflects this—the seats lining the performance area are saved exclusively for members of the ballroom community. If you sit, you might be asked to move!
Confront Any Potential Biases. Ballroom was created by oppressed
people. Trans folks and people of color are not just present in our scene, they are venerated. Queerness is a norm. If a person chooses to attend a ball, they should accept and celebrate all of its participants.
Get Into the Theme! Dressing up makes you feel like part of the event, and outfits are a great icebreaker. Our first ball of 2026 is called the Gaymer Ball, so come as your favorite video game character!
Tip the Performers. Each round has an assigned prize amount and is also followed by a collection for prize money. That’s your chance to tip the performers! At our ball we’ll also have a QR code available.
5 6
Do Your Own Research on Categories. Watching some videos beforehand can help provide context on categories, so that you can better appreciate what happens during the ball. The categories featured at this ball are: new runway, new vogue, face, realness, runway, performance, sex appeal, and hand performance.
After Doing Research, Ask Questions (Respectfully). The Portland ballroom scene is quite nurturing and supportive, compared to other cities. The performers are generally happy to engage with the audience after a round!
Hype People Up! It is gay sports after all! It takes a lot of courage to walk in a ball. Months or years of training boil down to a 20 second performance!
Stay Humble. If it’s really your first time at a ball, there will probably be some things that you don’t know, and that’s okay. For those interested in learning MORE about ballroom, there are a lot of avenues in Portland to dip your toe into vogue. The sister ball of the Rebound, called the Dojo, is an excellent starting point for those seeking con nection in the community.
Have Fun and Feel the Love! There’s an element of competi tion at a ball, but the community is tight-knit, and off the floor there’s a lot of mutual support. I think that’s evident at our balls. The perfor mances and events are fun, but the truly addicting part of ballroom is the queer, supportive, and vibrant chosen family.
Hey, sis! How did you go from watching to participating? How long did it take and I spectated my first ball in summer of 2023, and I loved the confidence and energy I felt when watching others walk. This led me to start taking vogue classes from Papi in 2024! I went
every week and made sure to practice in my free time, and eventually I walked my first ball at the Ada 10 Year Anniversary Ball, in October 2024. I now regularly train in ballroom categories including performance and runway. I think the key to joining the scene is consistency and dedication to learning the craft.
The Rebound: The Gaymer Kiki Ball will be held at the Get Down, 680 SE 6th, Fri May 15, pre-show at 10 pm, show-show at 11 pm. $15-20, reboundpdx.com, 18+
GIANNA
Candy PinkLady on Her First Ball
The Kiki House of Glossier poses during their debut at a Rebound ball.
Candy PinkLady
SpongeBob Versus the Apocalypse
Singing sea creatures stare down Armageddon at Portland Playhouse.
BY JOE STRECKERT
Portland Playhouse is going somewhere it’s never been: to a pineapple under the sea via The SpongeBob Musical. The Playhouse has put on plenty of musicals before, but according to the director Brian Weaver, “we’ve never done anything as shamelessly ridiculous as this.”
Just because it’s ridiculous doesn’t mean that The SpongeBob Musical lacks meaning. The story kicks off as an undersea volcano begins to rumble and threatens to annihilate SpongeBob’s home of Bikini Bottom. The undersea town’s inhabitants are suddenly staring doom in the face. Each takes a different approach to imminent annihilation.
“Everyone reacts in a very specific way,” says Weaver, who is also one of the Playhouse’s co-founders. “Mr. Krabs takes it as an opportunity to make as much money as possible. Plankton takes it as an opportunity to take over the world and mind control everybody. Patrick sits on his couch and watches reruns. A lot of the townspeople start rioting and turning against people who are different from them, like Sandy the Squirrel. I think it’s a pretty accurate depiction of our world and how people react in extreme adversity.”
Portraying popular cartoon characters is less about creating a one-to-one costume, or stage actors performing vocal impressions. It’s more about capturing the attitude and essence of Spongebob and friends and creating distinct characters for the individual production. “We do nod to the character voices and physicality,” says Weaver, “but people know Squidward because he’s a pessimist, and he has a migraine. And SpongeBob because he’s an optimist, Pat rick because he’s sedentary. The characters have core attri butes that the actors are able to bring alive so people instantly know who they are.”
For Ben Tis sell, who plays SpongeBob, that means tapping into his own better nature.
“I’m trying to look for as much over lap between me and SpongeBob as possible,” says Tissell. “He’s such
an optimist and has such a bright outlook. Sometimes I’m that way to a fault. I’m enjoying those commonalities.”
Susannah Mars, who plays Squidward, goes somewhere else when she plays the grumpy cephalopod. “I have a very strong recollection of my Jewish grandma,” she says. “That’s where he’s coming from. A place of a lot of angst, a lot of annoyance. He complains a lot, but then again, SpongeBob’s annoying as hell.”
By necessity, this production is more compact than the Broadway show, which featured moving sets and pyrotechnics. However, Portland Playhouse’s production of The SpongeBob Musical has something the Broadway production lacked: It’s what’s known as an actor-muso show. That means that the people on stage, portraying the characters, are also the orchestra. SpongeBob plays the guitar. Karen Plankton plays the accordion. To portray Squidward, Mars learned to play clarinet. As the cast sings, dances, and tells jokes, they also provide the music that would usually emerge from an orchestra pit.
The Portland Playhouse is based in an old church, and has a much more intimate setting than most Broadway theaters. “Actors with instruments can create the soundscape and architecture of the story themselves,” says Weaver. “The theatrical technique is sometimes called ‘poor theater.’ Not that we’re broke, but we’re not Broadway, which means it has to be human-powered. I think it makes the comedy much more about the actors.”
It’s not really a spoiler to say that Bikini Bottom isn’t destroyed by a volcano at the The SpongeBob Musical. It’s based on a lighthearted cartoon, after all. “Ultimately in the story of the show, SpongeBob is an undying optimist,” says Weaver. “He teams up with Patrick and Sandy, and they band together to save the world. Everybody who was running around doing foolish things realizes how foolish they were.”
Positivity, smarts and friendship win the day. The apocalypse never comes.
The SpongeBob Musical at Portland Playhouse, 602 NE Prescott, through June 7, $5 - $59.95, portlandplayhouse. org, all ages
Jimmy Garcia as Eugene Krabs. CASSIE GREER
Hot, New, and AAPI-Owned
These newcomers offer Filipino diaspora food, Vietnamese bar snacks, and Thai street skewers.
BY KATHERINE CHEW HAMILTON
PHOTOS BY TRANG NGUYEN
Dear Lola
When Danté Fernandez was growing up in Portland, many other Filipinos told him he wasn’t really Filipino—because he didn’t speak the language, because his family had immigrated from the Philippines too many generations ago, because the food he ate wasn’t exactly like back in the islands, or because his family was a mix of Filipino, Black, and Native American.
his grandmother’s flavors were spot-on.
“You adapt and you grow, and you become an embodiment of your environment and what you’re surrounded by, but you’re still at your core Filipino,” says Fernandez.
“You adapt and you grow... but you’re still at your core Filipino.”
Try telling that to Fernandez now—he was part of the opening team at Magna Kusina, Portland’s bestknown Filipino restaurant, and worked as its operations manager and chef de cuisine until last year. In December 2025, Fernandez opened his own Filipino eatery, Dear Lola, inside cocktail bar Too Soon on Northeast 28th.
Lola means grandmother in Tagalog, and Dear Lola is named in honor of his grandmother, who died a month before he opened his business. In the years before Asian supermarkets were commonplace in Portland, his lola often didn’t have access to Filipino ingredients like soy sauce or fish sauce, so she substituted other umami-heavy ingredients like tomatoes. But when Fernandez started cooking the same dishes at Magna using so-called “real” Filipino ingredients, he found that
At Dear Lola, Fernandez serves what he calls diaspora Filipino cooking—sometimes sticking to widely known Filipino dishes, other times diving into regional specialties, and often cooking dishes unique to his own experience. Classics include crispy lumpiang shanghai straight from the fryer and impossibly crackly pork belly adobo. He recently made chicken piaparan skewers, a handheld take on a spicy, coconutty, herbaceous stew that originates in Muslim communities in the southern Philippines.
Then there’s that third category of dishes that only Fernandez could create. He’s working on a fried chicken dish— something that both the Southern United States and Jollibee have in common, he notes—where the chicken is rubbed in adobo and fried, then smothered with sauce inspired by a Filipino dish called laing. Laing is traditionally made with taro leaves and coconut milk—but here, he’s keeping the coconut milk and swapping in Southern-style collards, ham hock and all.
“It’s me at my core,” says Fernandez. “The
marrying of two cultures—I grew up eating like that. That’s how my grandma cooked.” 18 NE 28th, @dearlola_pdx
After Ours
There’s a Vietnamese term, nhau, that embodies what After Ours is all about: the act of eating and drinking with friends.
“It’s a gathering of elders—they sit on the floor or around the table, and it’s a bunch of Heineken and Hennessy, and different foods that you’d eat while drinking,” explains Richard Le, one of the co-owners of After Ours.
Le, the chef behind now-closed food cart Matta, opened the bar in August 2025 with Kim Danh, the owner of Vietnamese-inspired coffee shop Portland Ca Phe; they’re also part-owners of Vietnamese American brunch spot Memoire Ca Phe. The bar’s third co-owner, Mikey Nguyen, runs the sneaker shop Index. The goal was to build a bar with good food that celebrated Vietnamese American culture and acted as a gathering space not only for events, but also for just lounging around. On a recent Friday night, it was so busy that Le could barely walk past the bar.
“It’s cool to see that if you build it, they will come,” Le says.
Some of the menu draws from Matta’s Vietnamese-meets-fast-food vibe: a burger marinated in fish sauce, a fried catfish
sandwich with American cheese. But the rest is built for sharing. Wings are served whole and delicately breaded—try them dusted with sweet-sour tamarind powder. Garlic noodles, which originated in the Bay Area’s Vietnamese American community where Le grew up, are the bar’s bestseller. But if you order just one thing, let it be the walnut shrimp, tossed in lime leaf aioli with fish sauce-caramelized walnuts that are so crunchy you can’t hear the person next to you talking.
On most nights, a DJ will be spinning at the booth; records are displayed on the wall, from Saigon Supersound Vol. 3 to Madvillainy. Portraits of Danh’s father, Le’s mother, and Nguyen’s father are perched above, an homage to parents that each of the owners have lost. Amidst the shelves of records, there’s the head of a lion dance costume, and behind the bar, bottles of Hennessy in Lunar New Year-themed red packaging line the shelves—memories of the bar’s not one, but three parties celebrating its first Tết, the Vietnamese new year.
“We had a line of people waiting to get in,” Le says. “Hennessy brought in an ice sculpture, we had $7 VSOP shots, we had White Lotus do a lion dance. We had the longest string of fireworks. I was like, ‘The neighbors are gonna hate us so bad.’ But
Above: Hojicha leche flan, chicken piaparan skewers, and pork belly adobo from Dear Lola. Right: Danté Fernandez, chef-owner of Filipino eatery Dear Lola.
we’re celebrating a cultural holiday—so hate on us if you want.”
2226 NE Broadway, afterours.toast.site, @afterours.pdx
Bangkok Belly
There’s no shortage of Thai restaurants in Portland, from noodle soup specialists to fine dining tasting menus. But what Kat Thirakomen really missed from her childhood in Bangkok was the simple things, like the moo ping skewers she’d get after school.
“Every Thai has a memory of that,” says Thirakomen. “You want it caramelized on the outside, tender on the inside, a little bit crispy and charred.”
Thirakomen and her husband, David Fiske, opened Bangkok Belly in a modest-sized storefront on SE Belmont in November 2025. The menu is a curation of fewer than a dozen dishes that the cou-
ple missed most from living in Thailand. Get a couple skewers, a salad, a main, and a side, and flit from one dish to the other to balance the sweet, the sour, the meaty, and the seriously spicy. Even the cocktails draw from Thai cuisine, incorporating tom yum spices or pandan.
“We hope to create a symphony on the table,” says Thirakomen.
The moo ping lives up to its charcoal-kissed, coconut milk-glazed promise, with jeow sauce that’s full of chiles, herbs, and tang. The chicken satay is a tier above others in town, with peanut sauce that combines housemade curry, peanuts, and coconut milk. It’s sided by grilled bread for swiping up sauce, plus pickled cucumbers. Herb salad with cilantro, mint, and watercress obscures fiery slices of Thai chile, while seasonal salads might include pomelo with dried shrimp and toasty coco-
nut, or local snap peas with lots of lime, coconut, and herbs. Dishes like yellow curry with squid or namtok kor moo yang (grilled pork collar salad) are ideal for mains, but don’t skip the laab mac salad.
The creation was born during a Labor Day potluck when Thirakomen combined her leftover laab with the remnants of a friend’s Hawaiian mac salad. The creamy mayo contrasts the tang and spice of the laab, making you want to eat more.
I stopped in one afternoon for an afterwork snack: moo ping, sticky rice, and a pandan daiquiri with silky coconut-washed
rums. Meanwhile, a couple kids and their dad rolled in on a cargo bike, were warmly greeted by Thirakomen with a “welcome back,” and ordered a skewer each. Maybe Bangkok Belly’s about to start a Thai street food snack revolution for all of us.
“There’s a really fantastic Thai food scene here, but there are some dishes that aren’t represented still,” says Thirakomen. “There’s room to bring that in and share it with everybody.”
3342 SE Belmont, bangkokbellypdx.com, @bangkokbellypdx
Above: The crew at After Ours. Right: walnut shrimp and garlic noodles.
Above: Bangkok Belly’s chicken satay skewers, laab mac salad, herb salad, and moo ping. Right: Bangkok Belly owners Kat Thirakomen and David Fiske.
Greek Tradition, Served Hot
Food cart Yanni’s Greek Donuts offers loukoumades year-round, not just at the annual Greek festival.
BY CAITLIN PANGARES
PHOTOS BY TRANG NGUYEN
There’s good news for Portlanders who wait all year to snack on puffy, honeydrenched loukoumades served in a paper boat in a church parking lot. Ever since Yanni’s opened, the bite-sized Greek donuts are available at any time of the year.
Tucked in a corner of the Lucky Labrador Brewing parking lot sits a cyan blue and white food cart—painted to match the Greek flag, naturally. Brothers Theo and Luke Geist started the cart together in mid-2025, but it’s predominantly run by Theo now.
“We had a family connection with the people at Lucky Lab, so the space was a natural fit,” Theo says. He cheekily adds, “In our extensive research, we found beer and Greek food to be an exquisite combination.”
The loukoumades at Yanni’s are madeto-order, as fresh as it gets. Traditionally, they are drizzled with honey and topped with a hearty sprinkling of cinnamon. Since they’re served directly from the fryer and are inherently sticky, pronged skewers are provided for digging in. The donuts can also be topped with flaky coconut or drizzled chocolate and chopped pistachios. But the enduring appeal of the classic combo is what inspired Theo and Luke to build something of their own.
The brothers grew up going to Portland’s historic, brick Greek Orthodox cathedral in Laurelhurst, as did I. The Holy Trinity congregation might embody a few of the “put some Windex on it” tropes, like everyone being named some iteration of Chris, George, Nick, or Tom (said as someone with a dad named Chris and brother named Nick). But it’s tight-knit among all the Chrises and Georges! It’s a community earnestly rooted in family and tradition. There’s real value placed on shared history and, of course, on delicious food.
“Our Greek heritage is an inseparable part of our lives,” Theo agrees. He grew up going to the church for service every Sunday, attending Greek school and Sunday School, and performing traditional dances at the Greek Festival every October. “Every year when we finished our last performance at the festival, our Yiayia Catherine would get us an absurd amount of loukoumades,” he remembers. This festival tradition with his yiayia (Greek for grandmother) sparked the idea for Yanni’s, but it’s his papou (Greek for grandfather) who has the bigger sweet tooth. “He would bring a full-size suitcase filled with pastries home every time he went to Greece,” Theo laughs. “So our Greek sweet snack shop had to be named for him.” Beyond the nostalgia
factor, Theo has reverence for the fact that loukoumades are a staple of ancient Greece, allegedly given out as awards for the winners of the early Olympic Games. Honoring original recipes and the spirit of Greek hospitality is important to him. “Our priority is sharing Greek kafenio (coffee shop) culture and the best tasting, most authentic Greek street food we possibly can,” he says. “We even headbang traditional village music from open to close! We grew up on everything we cook, and it’s our privilege and honor to serve it.”
mixed with milk and shaken vigorously to create a foamy texture. Frappes are served at the Greek Festival, but hard to come by otherwise. “One of the signature sights in modern Greece is an iced frappe in the hand of everyone you pass,” Theo says.
Yanni’s recently launched a new savory menu, too. Some items will be familiar, like spanakopita, a spinach filo pie, while others like loukanikopita, a spicy version of a sausage roll made with puff pastry, might be new even for seasoned Greek diners.
Coffee is another pillar of the menu at Yanni’s. They offer frappes—a Greek coffee drink that combines Nescafé and sugar,
“We grew up on everything we cook, and it’s our privilege and honor to serve it.”
“The super foamy nature allows it to be drunk for hours—as the ice melts into the foam, it rejuvenates it.”
While drinking coffee on-the-go is the norm, Theo wishes more Portlanders knew not to order loukamades for takeaway.
“They really are best eaten hot!” he says, a bit exasperated. “We can do it to-go, but it breaks our hearts.”
Theo and Luke grew up hearing stories about the different eras of Greek-owned
businesses in Portland. It’s an age-old tale of things changing hands, moving locations, or being bought and sold. Now, people wax nostalgic about the “Greek fries” (jojos by another name) at the original Mad Greek Deli, the iconic inflatable purple octopus of Greek Cusina, or late nights spent dancing at Greek-owned nightclub New Copper Penny. My own papou owned a small grocery store, Stanley’s, on Sandy and 58th. It too sold, became a brewery for a bit, and now is back on the market. Theo, however, thinks that we’re gearing up for a new boom. Friends of his opened Trela, a new Greek restaurant on 60th and Glisan, around the same time that he and Luke opened Yanni’s. It’s his favorite spot to go out for Greek in town, specifically for their home-style gyros and whole fish on the bone.
“Festival may be when our star shines the brightest, but with new Greek businesses around town and the next generation carrying on the traditions and recipes of our ancestors, the community is here to stay,” he says. “We’re looking forward to the next golden age of Greek food in Portland.”
Yanni’s Greek Donuts, 1400 SE 9th Ave, 11 am-9 pm Fri-Sat, Sun 11 am-6 pm, yannisgreekdonuts.com, @yannispdx
Theo Geist stands in front of his loukoumades cart, named after his grandfather.
DO THIS, DO THAT
A Selection of the City’s Coolest Upcoming Events
EDITED BY LINDSAY COSTELLO
Carlos Niño & Friends
MAY 16
(MUSIC) Carlos Niño came to town on André 3000’s New Blue Sun tour, where he played, among other things, a tree branch. It made sense within the context of André’s ascent into a jazzy, spiritual realm, and makes even more sense when you consider Niño
cites Alice Coltrane, the Sun Ra Arkestra, and Pharoah Sanders as inspirations. Niño and his band pack their flutes, gongs, and leaf bundles for two shows in Portland, describing their new album Bubble Bath for Giants as “a reverence for Oceans, for the Mighty Magnificent Power of Fairies, to the energy that we are all everything, whole, well, but in different sized and shaped vessels at times.” Multiinstrumentalist Aaron Shaw opens; grab your corporeal vessel and fill your cup. (Jack London Revue, 529 SW 4th, 8 pm, $25+, jacklondonrevue.com, 21+) LINDSAY COSTELLO
Monét X Change
MAY 17
(PERFORMANCE) If you’ve seen drag superstar Monét X Change’s quick reads on Drag Race or The Traitors or heard her witty banter with bestie Bob the Drag Queen on their podcast Sibling Rivalry, you know she’s got a knack for comedy. We love a comedy queen in this house! And while most drag queens are multitalented, Monét is a classically trained opera singer. How’s that for Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and TALENT?! My fingers are crossed she incorporates an opera number into her latest comedy tour, “High Heels, Bad Knees,” which promises “unhinged and filthy stand-up about adulting and coming to terms with the fact that most of her joints are serviceable.”
(Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark, 7:30 pm, $29.50+, revolutionhall.com, 18+) JANEY WONG
Dry Cleaning
MAY 17
(MUSIC) It may catch your attention that Dry Cleaning’s new record, Secret Love, was produced by angel diva of the avant garde Cate Le Bon. But the no wave-influenced Londoners bring something singular to the table, too: Singer Florence Shaw’s spoken word witticisms stand out, as does the album’s unexpected catchiness and caustic response to the violent political atmosphere. Take the lyrics to “Blood,” par exemple: “I’m in an underground bunker with my computer-controlled flying bomb / It’s numbness without end or change.” If that sounds like your thing, you already know it—and if not, get into it. YHWH Nailgun was originally slated to open Dry Cleaning’s Portland show, but after tour rescheduling due to “hostile economic forces,” Hotline TNT has slotted in instead. (Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell, 8 pm, $39.25+, wonderballroom.com, all ages) LC
Rex Marshall with Michelle Kicherer
MAY 19
(BOOKS) Trying to categorize Mattress, the long-running music project of “the man in the gold suit” Rex Marshall, has always been a little tricky. It’s funny, but is it comedy? There are beats, but should you dance? Marshall’s memoirella All the Work I Never Wanted may be the easiest concept he’s ever floated:
It’s a “fantastic, enthralling, hardly-embellished” collection of stories about all the minimum wage jobs he held between 1987-2002. Within the 100ish page volume—published by local press Banana Pitch—you’ll find tales of the McDonald’s grill, quality control at Columbia Sportswear, and a gig that started out with an old man on SE Hawthorne waving his arms at him and asking: “Hey! Hey you! You need a job?” Marshall will be joined in conversation by Michelle Kicherer, founder of Banana Pitch and author of Sexy Life, Hello. (Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand, 6:30 pm, FREE, literary-arts.org, all ages fit for minimum wages) SUZETTE SMITH
Ballets Jazz Montréal: DanceMe—Musicby Leonard Cohen
MAY 20
(PERFORMANCE) With all there is to know and love about the life of Leonard Cohen, you’ll be forgiven if you kinda forgot he was Québécois. The fifty-fouryear-old dance company Ballets Jazz Montréal remembered, though. Presenting Dance Me—Music by Leonard Cohen , a full-evening performance inspired by the singer-songwriter’s oeuvre, the troupe’s twirls will be framed by “vivid lighting design and videography.” The show’s multimedia approach crafts a series of vignettes that reflect on Cohen’s poetic preoccupations—transience,
MAX MIECHOWSKI
TODD WEAVER
intimacy, and so on. Expect and embrace light corniness in the form of fedoras and microphone props. (Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay, 7:30 pm, $29+, portland5.com , all ages) LC
American Football
MAY 20
(MUSIC) I consider American Football vocalist Mike Kinsella a good friend. We both love Danzig, me a little more than him. I once took a few bucks off him throwing snowballs at a Vail, Colorado ski resort. Not to make him sound like some kind of coastal elite—Mike is Midwest nice. I’ve never seen him wear socks. The rest of the guys in the band are also great, I just don’t know them as well. One time I crashed into Mike’s nice new car and broke the mirror and he didn’t even get that mad. Great guys and pretty good music. (Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside, 8 pm, $53.25+, mcmenamins.com, all ages) JAMES DEELEY
Marisa Anderson
MAY 21
(MUSIC) Marisa Anderson’s American primitive fingerstyle continually transforms, but it’s always infused with bluesy, folksy, drony spirit. A longtime Portlander and longer-time adventurer, Anderson’s albums act as reactions—2018’s Cloud Corner responded to Trump’s America, for instance–but also feel timeless. She’s full of subtle contradictions like that. The experimental guitarist-composer’s latest Thrill Jockey release, The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music, keeps plucking at strings with tunes responding to musicologist Harry Smith’s expansive folk archives. Expect Southeast Asian, Soviet, and Islamic world influence at this album release show; Anderson deliberately chose to interpret music from “places that the United States has been in conflict with since 1970,” per her Bandcamp. (Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi, 8 pm, $17, mississippistudios.com, 21+) LC
Melody’s Echo Chamber / Strange Lot
MAY 22
(MUSIC) When the debut self-titled album by Melody’s Echo Chamber came out in 2012, it was played on repeat at Heart Coffee Roasters’ Burnside location, to the extent that owner Rebekah Yli-Luoma told the baristas to stop playing it. It’s thanks to Reebs that I still love this album and Melody’s Echo Chamber period. That 2012 album was produced by Kevin Parker at the height of Tame Impala’s power; Parker’s fingerprints are deeply felt all over the LP. Melody released Unclouded last year, the prompt for this tour. Unclouded is just that, a beguilingly stripped-back album by an artist intimately familiar with texture. (Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark, 8 pm, $35, revolutionhall.com, all ages) NOLAN PARKER
Fancy Dance
MAY 17
(FILM) Not to be confused with the also awesome 2023 film Fancy Dance, Masayuki Suô’s ’89 flick follows Yohei, a punk rocker with a half-shaved head who shaves the other half to become a Buddhist monk. His end goal? To inherit his family’s temple in the mountains, duh. Predictably, monastic life is grueling and highly disciplined, which sort of kills his vibe. When Yohei’s girlfriend shows up, it may be game over. Fancy Dance is the kind of film that was only made in the ’80s, somehow marrying its very wacky plot with beauty and asceticism. (Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division, 7 pm, $15, tomorrowtheater.org, PG-13) LC
Purity Ring
MAY 24
(MUSIC) When I first listened to the track “Ungirthed” back in 2011, I was immediately hooked by Purity Ring’s singular sound. Corin Roddick’s production pairs with macabre lyrics performed with vocalist Megan James’ childlike delivery, coalescing into a futuristic sonic signature. Their live show features custom-built light rigs synched to Roddick’s Ableton Live, and the lighting and sound work in tandem for an enrapturing, otherworldly experience. Longtime Purity Ring fans are in for something new at the band’s “Place of My Own Tour,” during which James will debut her solo project mmj, opening each show with an acoustic set. Wear a high-filtration mask for this one; the band is committed to creating a safe space for immunocompromised fans. (Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark, 8 pm, $36+, revolutionhall.com, all ages) JW
KristinaWong,
MAY 26-JUNE 7
(PERFORMANCE) Artist, writer, activist, and former elected official Kristina Wong brings her one-woman karaoke musical comedy to Portland Center Stage.
in an audience Q&A. She’s fresh off the release of her 2025 album For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) and is currently working on her second book. If you’ve ever listened to her music or read her memoir, Crying in H Mart, you know how devastating yet beautifully poignant her prose and lyrics can be. (Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division, 7 pm, $65, tomorrowtheater.org, all ages) KCH
Live Wire with W. Kamau Bell, Lindy West, and Okaidja Afroso
MAY 29
(BOOKS/MUSIC) At this edition of Live Wire, prolific essayist (and beloved former Stranger writer) Lindy West, author of the think-piecey new memoir Adult Braces: Driving Myself Sane, will chat with W. Kamau Bell, who hosted the CNN docuseries United Shades of America for seven years. The event’s musical act is worth your attention, too: Ghanaian percussionist, dancer, and singer-songwriter Okaidja Afroso pulls from the traditions of Ghana’s Indigenous Ga-Dangme ethnic group to craft a range of ambient and percussive tracks he calls “Afro-Zeng.” The results are layered with vibrant instrumentation and ecological wisdom. (Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, 12625 SW Crescent, Beaverton, 7:30 pm, $24.50+, livewireradio.org) LC
Sierra Ferrell
MAY 30
Wong loves food banks and their bountiful harvests, but hates the oppressive systems that created the wealth gaps that make food banks necessary. It takes a particular type of talent to handle heavy issues like food justice with a balance of humor and anger at the system, but Wong, a 2022 Pulitzer Prize drama finalist, just might be the one to do it. (Portland Center Stage, 128 NW 11th, Wed-Sun at 7:30 pm, 2 pm matinees on Sat, Sun, and select Thurs, $25-$98, pcs.org, all ages) KATHERINE CHEW HAMILTON
Carte Blanche: Michelle Zauner
MAY 27
(BOOKS) Fans of writer/musician Michelle Zauner and her musical project, Japanese Breakfast, should jump on this chance to see Zauner read her work live, reflect on her career, and participate
(MUSIC) Getting ready for the second day of Redmond, Oregon’s FairWell Fest last year, I asked my host, Howl Goods head haunch Alicia Renner, if she knew any artists playing that day at the now-defunct country music festival. Her biggest shout for the day was Sierra Ferrell, an artist I had never heard of, an artist that is now, hands down, one of my favorites—country or otherwise. Ferrell’s lyrics and music are so infectious you might be shushed in your own office for singing her songs. You might fall in love with her smile, her stage outfits, and the fact that she’s mad religious but loves the gays. Sierra, if you’re reading this, I’d love to take you to the dollar bill bar. (Edgefield, 2126 SW Halsey St, Troutdale, 6:30 pm, SOLD OUT, edgefieldconcerts.com, all ages) NP
Rhododendron
MAY 30
(MUSIC) I’m a sucker for a beautiful band name, so Portland’s post-everything rockers Rhododendron had my heart in their talons long before I heard “Like Spitting Out Copper” off their tense and heavy forthcoming album, Ascent Effort. Just don’t Google “Rhododendron Portland” and try to find them. You’ll be redirected to information on the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden. Actually, I take that back—the garden rules. Go there with some headphones and zone in. Rhodo hits Aladdin with noisy duo Sea Moss to celebrate their album release. (Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie, 8 pm, $18, aladdin-theater.com, all ages) LC
Holocene’s 23rd Birthday Party
JUNE 4
(MUSIC) Holocene fills an essential niche in the city’s experimental, indie, and queer-centric music scenes. Don’t we owe them, like, the best birthday ever? Bring
Hunx & His Punx / Slippers
June 9, Mississippi Studios
a gift (yourself) and dig DJ sets by indie-synth heroes STRFKR and Troubled Youth (Judy on Duty’s resident DJ), plus Kiwi & Fifi’s album release performance— that’s Keil Corcoran of STRFKR and Ian Anderson of Guidance Counselor, IYKYK. The venue turns 23, so nothing’s stopping you from pretending it’s 2003 again. Wear a Juicy tracksuit for me, mmkay? (Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison, 8 pm, FREE with RSVP, holocene.org, 21+) LC
Therapy Gecko
JUNE 5
(PERFORMANCE) You might have caught him at a music festival—he’s performed at Bonnaroo, Electric Forest, and Beyond Wonderland—or heard one of his podcast interviews with Doja Cat, Lil Yachty, or Danny Brown. But while Therapy Gecko often taps into musical scenes, he’s also devised an entirely singular schtick as a soft-voiced, wholesome counselor version of Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. It’s understandable if you haven’t considered that a man-sized, anthropomorphic gecko might be the answer to your problems, but you should take a chance on Therapy Gecko, a dude who is, coincidentally, also named Lyle. He grants an empathetic, reptilian ear to all manner of odd questions from anonymous callers on his podcast. I’m assuming he’ll offer a lending hand (do geckos have hands?) to the audience at this performance. (Polaris Hall, 635 N Killingsworth, 7 pm, $25+, polarishall.com, 21+) LC
Hunx & His Punx / Slippers
JUNE 9
(MUSIC) “Do you ever get the feeling that you wanna hold me? / Well do it now, cause I want everyone to see / I wanna take you, take you way down / To my favorite place in town / Lovers Lane / I wanna go to Lovers Lane / I wanna run my fingers through your hair / My whole life would pass and I wouldn’t even care / Just gotta touch you and squeeze you, make you mine / I wanna hold to the end of time / Lovers Lane / I wanna go to Lovers Lane / And when you left I was doing fine / I wish I woulda kissed him one last time / What happened next no one woulda ever have known / My boy was killed and now he’s gone / And I could never go
back / Now I’ll never get to see him ever again / But I won’t forget the time we got to spend / At Lovers Lane”—Hunx (Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi, 8 pm, $30, mississippistudios.com, 21+) NP
Gameravs.Zigra
JUNE 12-13
(FILM) Noriaki Yuasa’s Gamera vs. Zigra (1971) is considered a cult classic in the world of kaiju (giant monster) movies. Massive turtle-like Gamera is a benevolent monster, a protector and friend of children, but will he be able to defend them from colossal shark-esque Zigra and a bunch of evil aliens? In this House of Scordatura production, watch the action go down to the tune of a live score written by Portland composer Justin Ralls, played by a full ensemble. Foley sound effects join the chaos along with live voiceovers. (Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy, June 12 7 pm, June 13 1 pm and 7 pm, $25-$35, hollywoodtheatre.org, all ages) KCH
HedwigandtheAngryInch
with the Clinton Street Cabaret
JUNE 13
(FILM/PERFORMANCE) One cannot call themselves a true Portlander until they’ve attended at least one of the Clinton Street Theater’s biweekly midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show , presented with help from the always excellent and fun Clinton Street Cabaret. Performing live alongside the film—what they call “shadowcasting”—the Cabaret cuties dress in full Rocky regalia and perform their chosen characters with endless enthusiasm. Now you can see members of the Cabaret step into different roles, as they shadowcast John Cameron Mitchell’s 2001 classic, Hedwig and the Angry Inch —an off-the-rails musical extravaganza about a gender-queer punk rocker who tours America singing autobiographical numbers while stalking the ex-boyfriend who stole her songs. Expect wild costumes, infectious music, and the over-the-top fun you’ve come to love and expect from the Cabaret. (Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton, 7 pm, $15, cstpdx.com rated R) WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
The Top Five Places in Portland To Avoid Tourists
Where can a Portlander find some peace?
BY RILEY M c CARTHY
ILLUSTRATION BY ADAM SNEED
Warmer weather means tourists are now descending on our fair city, like raccoons advancing on a New Seasons dumpster. As any true Portlander will tell you, no restaurant, bar, or public park is safe from the rows of California plates or the dreaded daytripper. The impending plague of interlopers means that the sacred “locals only” spot will soon become a precious resource. With that in mind, here are five Portland spots that not only offer a premium hang year round, but are also guaranteed to be tourist-free.
9th Avenue Mini Mart, 1028 NW 9th
In a city full of boutique markets and organic grocery stores, a humble convenience store can often serve as a much needed oasis from more tourist laden shopping experiences. Straddling the border of Old Town and the Pearl, this quaint bodega manages to embody both the charmingyet-rough-hewn sleaze of old Portland, in addition to the manic, plastic, gleam of new Portland. Plus, you can literally find anything here. Though it may only have the square footage of the average Portland studio apartment, there is some combination of wizardry and non-Euclidean geometry that stocks this corner store with the inventory of two full-sized Walmarts. I’ve gotten everything here from rice paper to winter gloves, from cat litter to tinned fish. If you walked 9th Avenue’s three narrow aisles long enough, I swear you could find a Fabergé egg. But not a single tourist.
Hillsdale Cleaners Laundromat, 6324 SW Capitol Hwy Did you know you don’t need to be doing laundry to hang out in a laundromat? Just put three quarters in the powdered detergent dispenser and… boom, you’re a customer. You are now free to spend as much time there as you want. It’s like a public library without all the boring books to clutter the ambiance. A laundromat is a haven of liminality, a safe space between work and recreation, a chore that mostly involves staring blankly at the wall. Nothing is expected of you at a laundromat, and is thus a portal through which an afternoon of true peace can be achieved. When I first moved to Portland, I was couch surfing for six months without any real money or ambition, and I would spend many after-
noons watching Nic Cage movies on my laptop as the low rumble of an industrial dryer thrummed gentle melodies throughout this soapy sanctuary. And although the video rental spot next door is no longer there, a few tranquil hours can still be requisitioned within the four walls of this bastion of cleanliness. And while tourists may occasionally require laundry services during their trip, I’d bet a month’s tips that you won’t encounter any past the 6000 block of Capitol Highway.
The Postal Annex, 1631 NE Broadway
They elegantly stride through the motions of what could otherwise be a dull retail job with the grace and serenity of a flock of swans. It’s as if there’s some essential cosmic truth that can only be gleaned in the fibrous depths of our country’s mail system. Perhaps by frequenting this unassuming stationery store, a meager portion of that truth can be absorbed through osmosis.
Bardy Trophy Company, 2500 NE MLK Jr. Blvd
then you have no whimsy in your heart and are beyond saving.
1
Unity Center for Behavioral Health, 1225 NE 2nd
Riley McCarthy is an award-winning stand up comic, writer, and artist currently based in Portland. Their full schedule of stand up gigs can be found every month on Instagram @Rileycandunk. 5 4 3 2
Much in the way a lonely person might patronize a strip club to experience intimacy in a controlled environment, I (as a pathologically disorganized person) like to walk the aisles of the Postal Annex and fantasize about what my life would be like if it was structured by planners, highlighters, and cute Post-its in the shape of clouds. This combination mail service, print shop, and stationery store is a guaranteed tourist-free zone. I mean, who sends packages or gets business cards printed while on vacation? Not to mention that the vibes in this store are absolutely radiant. The staff here seem genuinely delighted to be processing your mail and printing your fliers.
The quickest way to inject joy into your life is by lowering your threshold of celebration. Were you on time to work every day this week? You deserve a trophy! Did you go the whole day without looking at your ex’s Instagram? Trophy! Who’s to say this morning’s breakfast burrito isn’t the best in history? Certainly a plaque-worthy accomplishment. Upon request, the staff at Bard Trophy will grant you warehouse access. This cavernous space hidden behind the showroom is where the REAL goods are—and not a tourist in sight. Here you’ll find rows and rows of old trophies as well as trophy parts; all salvaged from garage/estate sales from which you can construct your own magnificent trophy Frankenstein. Recently, I constructed a custom trophy for a chicken strip fashion show, and if that’s a concept that I have to explain,
Sometimes the best way to avoid vacationers is to take a vacation yourself. Can’t afford an out of town trip? Then check if your insurance will cover a visit to Unity and treat yourself to a purely psychological journey with a good, old-fashioned nervous breakdown! Truly the Ritz Carlton of psych wards, Unity is a perfect place to kick off your shoes (you’ll be required to relinquish your laces), slip into some grippy socks, and enjoy the kind of escapism found only in the throws of a severe mental health crisis. I did a week-long stint at Unity in 2018 and can vouch for its sumptuous and opulent amenities. And while they might not have a pool or a golf course like at a five-star resort, you won’t find any better staff than the heroes who work at Unity, and I PROMISE the contents of their pharmacy beats the hell out of even the best stocked hotel mini-bar.
The Faults in Our Stars
The only horoscope column in the universe, for May 2026.
BY ANTHONY HUDSON
Grood news, Ozians! After the breakaway success of my humble astrology column led to the breakthrough riseand-fall of my dietary supplement cult—and my eventual breakout from prison—the Wizard President has pardoned me, and I am now unquestionably cleared of all moral and political stain. Freshly recalibrated by my stay at a Supreme Court-sanctioned conversion camp (it’s honestly more like a spa), I am more ready than ever to return to monthly astrological forecasting as a fulfilling life
Aries
(March 21–April 19)
You’ve spent decades building your career as an unflinching millennial who never compromises and calls it as you see it. Now it’s time you own your generation’s shit-upon legacy and rebuild your brand as someone who does, in fact, compromise: the industry you trained for no longer exists, you’d rather have healthcare than believe in your job, and maybe your husband is right about starting a throuple. You should write a book about it! I bet it will help.
Taurus
(April 20–May 20)
Strong as a bull and unflinching in your convictions, you are uniquely positioned to advocate for yourself in that you, Taurus, know exactly what you do and do not want—as long as it’s the opposite of whatever’s popular, healthy, or in your best interest. But with just the right amount of reactionary, oppositional decision making, you’ll eventually be back in a class all your own, just like your glory days on the elementary school debate team.
Stupid Ex Larry Gemini
(May 21–June 20)
Just because one of you did me (historically, mortally, gravely, unforgivably) wrong doesn’t make it fair to cast out your whole lot. No—you deserve love and rest and a break, so treat the twins. Have you ever heard of those fun submarine tube rides they take all the way down to the Titanic? I hear they’re more affordable than ever!
Cancer
(June 21–July 22)
You’re thoughtful, tenacious, and attractive, but you have to stop doing this every time we come to the Home Town Buffet. I’m sorry they don’t have your Jell-O, but I really don’t think the man at the carving station meant to make you feel weird when you asked for a different cut. Do you want my ham? Oh, you don’t
path and stipulation of my community service hours.
As an admitted space junkie, I’m also freshly inspired by NASA’s recent Artemis II mission to the moon. A Super New Moon on May 16—indeed, the first of two Super New Moons this year—heralds this time of cosmic investigation and new potential, but also begs the question: If the moon disappears every month, how were the astronauts able to find it? We may never know the answer—but more importantly, let’s gaze at what the stars have in store for you, personally.
wanna talk about it? Here, just take it! And now your tummy hurts. Yes, I’ll watch your fork while you’re in the bathroom.
Leo
(July 23–August 22)
Leo, you’re a star, not a narcissist, and it’s high time people knew the difference. You’re merely self-absorbed, like The Real Housewives of New York City’ s Countess Luann, but you aren’t a malignant, egocentric sociopath like The Real Housewives of New York City’s Bethenny Frankel. When you got coked out and engaged to Tom in (West) Palm Beach, you made it everyone’s business because you’re confident, attention-seeking, and incredibly high; completely unlike when the egregiously self-involved Bethenny raked actual princess Carol Radziwil over the coals for not trading a business contact. In today’s world of pop psychology and reality TV, why can’t anyone tell the difference between someone born in July or August and an antisocial personality disorder? Be cool, people—don’t be all, like, uncool.
Virgo
(August 23–September 22)
Your brain is like a Rube Goldberg device—if this, then that; if not that, then this. Maybe life would be more pleasurable if you stopped aimlessly fidgeting with a psychic abacus representative of all your life choices… or if you simply left me out of it. You know what else is like a Rube Goldberg device? The elaborate deaths in the Final Destination film franchise, and, after trying to figure out what you want for lunch, I’m ready to be hit by a bus! Do you hear John Denver playing?
Libra
(September 23–October 22)
Conflict avoidance may be your weakness, but in today’s rough-and-Tumblr world, it’s necessary to survive. So put in your sound-filtering Loop earplugs, Brick your smartphone, cancel your Apple
News subscription, paint made-up eyes over your eyelids, and cash in that crypto toward the doomsday bunker you’ve been eyeing just outside Queenstown. Willful ignorance? Capitalist delusion? Simple dissociation? No—it’s called mindfulness, thank you, and it’s the only way to get by in 2026.
Scorpio
(October 23–November 21)
Scorpio, you’re absolutely not a serial killer. Like any of your neighbors on a breaking news broadcast would attest, there aren’t many signs to look for: You’re so naturally charismatic, and silent, and brooding, and sexy, and controlling, and intense, and charismatic, and brooding, and sexy, and sure, I’ll help you move this heavy box to your car—oh, those are fun lampshades! And so unique. How did you get that cast on your arm again?
Sagittarius (November 22–December 21)
With your consciousness rooted in your hips and thighs, you’ve freaked, twerked, and dropped it like it’s hot. But your hips don’t lie, especially as you get older, and you’re just beginning to put the “sag” in “Sag.” Don’t worry! You can still go wild on a nice, safe, structured cruise with the gals, and I hear the AARP discounts are not for nothing. To ease your transition from tax-fraudin’ Shakira to love-boatin’ Charo, try investing in supplements, collagen, and cushy knee pads—since you’re on them often enough.
Capricorn (December 22–January 19)
I get it: you were born around the holidays, and this has set you up for a driven life full of competition with resurrected deities, magnetic pole-based saints, white elephants, and various configurations of religious candles and candelabras—but does everyone else need to suffer? I mean, it’s really cool that Kegels and AI assistants (remember when we just had Clippy?) have dramatically shifted your workflow process and increased personal produc-
tivity, but maybe I don’t need to be confronted with so much task-managing synergy in one person. Maybe you should relax and try this THC soda instead—it’s full spectrum, like you!
Aquarius
(January 20–February 18)
It’s your Age, Aquarius, and you’re precisely the forward-thinking Humanitarian Universalist to lead us through this mess. So could you get on with it? You’re ripe to write a revolutionary manifesto—or a they-ifesto, I’m not here to judge! Considering Valerie Solanas and Ted Kaczynski are no longer around, the mighty pen falls to you. Maybe include some bits about universal healthcare or expanding the Supreme Court? Perhaps there’s a general reset button for the last ten years? Or maybe we could bypass the bureaucracy and start over entirely, which shouldn’t be too catastrophic or violent, and I’m sure will be easily embraced by millions of dysregulated conspiracy theorists with shattered nervous systems. At the very least, put in a good word with Luigi for me? You’ve got this!
Pisces
(February 19–March 20)
All this time, we treated you like the black sheep—just because of that one day in kindergarten show and tell, or all the psychedelics you did in wood shop, or when that seagull pooped on you last week and you said it was your dead aunt—but when I stop and look at all your cosmic siblings gathered in a row (Narcissist Leo, Serial Killer Scorpio, LARRY!) I can only contemplate your dreamy specialness with wonder. You’ve got a good, weird head on your shaggy shoulders, Pisces—but can you cover up those goddamn feet already? I’m not one of your subscribers, and this isn’t a Quentin Tarantino film! (And if it was, we know where the entire word count would go.)
Anthony Hudson is a Grand Ronde and Siletz artist, writer, and former clown. His first book, Lamp Back: Plays and Other Grievances—collecting nearly a decade of Carla Rossi performances and more—is being published this fall by Northwestern University Press.
MATTYNEWTON
Savage Love
BY DAN SAVAGE
Quickies
1. My spouse and I haven’t had sex for almost two years. No kids, jobs aren’t stressful, and we still enjoy each other’s company. (At least I enjoy theirs.) The subject of sex never comes up. I don’t miss it, honestly, and I suspect they don’t either. But I don’t know.
It’s possible your spouse doesn’t miss sex either—it’s also possible your spouse isn’t missing sex because they’re getting it elsewhere. Seeing as you don’t have kids to worry about, I don’t think raising the subject presents an existential risk. Tell your spouse you’re content with your companionate/ sexless marriage and you want to make sure they are too. If they are, great. If they’re not, well, better to hear it from them now than to find out when they file for divorce. That doesn’t mean you have to start having sex you don’t wanna have and it doesn’t mean you have to file for divorce; it just means that you will have to figure out—together—what needs to change so your spouse can live as happily within your marriage as you do.
2. I’m 37-year-old cis woman from the NY-metro area. For a long while, I’ve had this gut feeling I’m meant to be partnered with a trans man. Where do I begin? Where do I go to put myself in spaces to meet more trans men? How do I go about getting over the nerves about trying something new and not making trans men I encounter feel as if they’re being fetishized? As an ally, I want to approach exploration from a place of respect. Advice would be appreciated!
I shared your question with Nico Carney, a trans man and standup comedian based in New York City.
“Hello 37-year-old cis woman looking for a trans guy to love,” Carney responded via email. “As a trans man, it certainly always feels good to feel like someone is looking for me specifically. The fact that you’re already considering how your excitement could make a trans guy feel fetishized is a sign that
your heart and head are in the right place. I think the key is to remember each trans person will feel differently about how they’re being perceived. Some will be more anxious about being fetishized, while others may crave your complimenting of their specific body. It’s all about communication and building to a place of mutual trust, respect, and care. And if you want to meet trans guys out in the wild, NYC is a great place to be! Check out your favorite gay bars for any trans-dude specific meetups. A few months ago, a bar in Bushwick called All Night Skate hosted a Trans Guy Arm Wrestling Tournament. I’m a standup comedian and trans man and my audiences have lots of trans guys in them. Come see my show on June 18 in Brooklyn and maybe you’ll meet the love of your life!”
Follow Nico Carney on Instagram @NicoCarney.
3. I’m right-handed, and I do everything with my right hand—except anything sexual, whether it’s touching myself or touching a sexual partner, my hand of choice is naturally my left. Am I the only one in this situation? Any thoughts about where it could come from?
No idea whether you’re the only person who uses his non-dominant hand when touching himself and/or others in a sexual way… and no idea where this could come from. Perhaps you started using your non-dominant hand to masturbate because it replicated, in a low-key way, “the stranger,” where someone intentionally puts their arm to sleep before masturbating. (It’s supposed to feel like someone else is touching their genitals—at least in theory.)
4. A white male friend in Vancouver has had three serious girlfriends over the last
If your friend had had three white girlfriends in a row, you probably wouldn’t have noticed—even though a case could be made that his preference for white women was shaped by racist beauty standards and cultural conditioning. Also, maybe it was a coincidence that he dated three Asian women in a row— you live in Vancouver —or maybe your friend likes what he likes and policing his dick isn’t your responsibility.
5. I enjoy sucking dick, but I have an aversion to letting my partner cum in my mouth. There have been a few times where I’ve cut off what seems to be a very enjoyable situation because I’m not ready to get a mouthful. The thought of swallowing makes me nervous but spitting seems rude. If I were to ever be brave enough to let him finish during oral, what could I expect? Taste? Would I get a tummy ache if I swallow? Help!
There’s a middle ground between spitting and swallowing: if you let your partner come in your mouth and you don’t swallow and your lips aren’t sealed around his shaft, his cum will run out of your mouth and—depending on the position you’re blowing him in—onto his crotch or onto the floor or onto your tits.
P.S. You’ve seen your partner’s loads, which means you already have a pretty good idea what to expect volume-and-consistency-wise. As for taste, well, some tastes are worth acquiring. (Does anyone really like their first sip of beer?)
P.P.S. You might get a stomachache—you might even get the runs—because semen contains prostaglandins, which can have a
6. Is flirting cheating if nothing physical happened?
It is not—but a distinction can be made between flirting with intent, e.g. getting on the apps, swapping pics, gaming out a time and place to meet, etc., and harmless flirting, e.g. flirtatious banter with an attractive stranger in a bar or an attractive colleague at a work function. Now, some people who engage in flirtwith-intent behaviors have no plans to actually go through with it; those people are only guilty of fantasizing about cheating. (They’re also guilty of wasting other people’s time.) And there are people who fucked strangers in bar bathrooms or colleagues in empty conference rooms after some “harmless flirtation” escalated quickly. But as a general rule, if nothing happened… nothing happened.
7. Why do some men build consistent communication, emotional connection, and even physical chemistry with a woman only to suddenly withdraw or ghost instead of communicating where they stand? It just happened to me. This wasn’t a casual or surface-level interaction, and mutual interest was confirmed days before the switch, so I’m trying to understand what typically causes that shift from a psychological or behavioral standpoint.
The short answer: Because some men are assholes.
For the longer answer, I asked Dr. Jennie Young, author of Burn the Haystack: Decode Dating, Torch the Duds, and Make Room for Men Who Matter , to weigh in on your question.
“What’s happened to you is incredibly painful, and incredibly common,” Dr. Young replied via email. “It’s happened to me too. It’s tempting to engage in some post-game analysis that might go on forever, but the truth is that you don’t even have access to the details of that game, let alone its history, and it’s better to cut your losses and move on. I know that’s easier said than done, but it’s true. Try to sit through the discomfort of not knowing, and over time that discomfort will dissipate. It’s a wacky universe, and we’re just never going to have all the answers, to anything, unfortunately. I find that oddly comforting, and I hope that you might too. Be well.”
GOT PROBLEMS? YES, YOU DO!
Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love!
Or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan! Podcasts, columns, and more at Savage.Love
FEMME QUEENS COLORING PAGE
Featuring La Isla Electronica, Keeks, The Barbaras, and Isabeau Waia’u Walker
