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Stroganoff
Beef
The spectacular Stroganoff exhibition at the Portland
Art Museum has taken the town by storm, delighting thousands
of visitors with five centuries of splendor. But local Orthodox
Christians are incensed over one of the exhibit's tackier
spinoffs--a set of cardboard drink coasters sporting icons
sacred to the Orthodox faith.
The coasters, which are on sale at the Museum Store, Powell's
and Nature's Fresh Northwest, depict details from five 16th-
and 17th-century icons, including St. George, St. Nicholas
of Myra and the Virgin of Vladimir. "They're nicely done,"
admits Father Demetri Tsigas, associate pastor of the Holy
Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. "But for us, icons are not
just pictures but objects of veneration. It's scandalous
for us to see them on something you'd put a beer on. It's
desecrating an icon."
Local Orthodox pastors told WW they have no objections
to putting icons on calendars, postcards or refrigerator
magnets--but the idea of Christ's face on a disposable suds-soaker
is hard to swallow.
Last week Tsigas and several other local Orthodox clergymen
wrote a letter of protest to museum director John Buchanan.
"You have no idea how abhorrent this is to the sensibilities
of the Orthodox faithful in Portland," the letter states.
"Please understand that this is a very serious sacrilege
in our eyes."
The pastors would like to see the coasters cleared from
shelves and destroyed appropriately--preferably by burning
them and burying the ashes. The museum store no longer sells
the coaster sets, though patrons can still buy the coasters
individually. As WW went to press, Buchanan was unavailable
for comment.
--Chris Lydgate
Hogging the
Spotlight
Oregon Steel is in line for an unwelcome trophy on Friday
when the Jobs With Justice campaign hosts a spoof of the
Oscars outside City Hall.
The Silver Sow award goes to "the biggest hog at the public
trough," and Oregon Steel is the "obvious front-runner"
for the award, says activist Jamie Partridge, whose coalition
of labor and community groups is organizing the event.
The jab from a labor coalition isn't that surprising, since
Oregon Steel has been locked in trench warfare with the
steelworkers union over a lockout in Pueblo, Colo.
However, in addition to bashing the company's workplace
practices and environmental record, the coalition is also
attacking its city tax break. In 1994, when the City Council
voted to award it a five-year, $10 million tax break, the
company promised to maintain its workforce of 700 and hire
a quarter of all new employees from low-income sections
of North and Northeast Portland.
But that hasn't come to pass. Since 1994, only 10 percent
of the 346 new employees have come from the designated area,
according to Worksystems Inc., the nonprofit employment
agency contracted by Oregon Steel.
In their defense, city officials say they had to weaken
the agreement after the U.S. Supreme Court barred companies
from hiring someone based on their ZIP code. But Oregon
Steel spokeswoman Vicki Tagliafico says the city got its
money's worth anyway, through corporate charitable contributions
and a plant that "provides more than 650 family-wage jobs."
Bob Alexander of the Portland Development Commission notes
that Oregon Steel attracted three other small spin-off companies
that use the steel produced here. "I think you've got to
consider the total picture," he said.
Alexander says the company need only maintain about 750
workers over the final year of the tax break, in 2001, to
meet its terms.
This, however, seems more and more unlikely. Last week,
the company's stock price had dropped to $4 a share, down
from $15.67 a year ago.
For City Commissioner Erik Sten, the company is a poster
child for what's wrong with tax breaks. He calls Oregon
Steel "a great example of a tax break based on bad information
and false assumptions."
--Nick Budnick
Step
LIVELY
Justice, even when long delayed, is always sweet, and this
week Catherine Stauffer is relishing it.
In October 1991, during the heat of the battle over Ballot
Measure 9, Stauffer was covering the premiere of an anti-gay
video at the Foursquare Church in Southeast Portland for
Just Out newspaper. She was spotted by Scott Lively,
the burly mouthpiece of the Oregon Citizens Alliance. He
wasn't exactly glad to see her.
"He picked me up, threw me into a wall and dragged me out
into the street," says Stauffer.
In 1992, she sued Lively and the OCA over the incident
and won a $20,000 settlement from Lively and another $10,000
from the OCA.
But until last week, Stauffer didn't see a penny.
Lively, an activist-turned-writer (in 1995 he self-published
a book comparing gays with Nazis), recently got a law degree
from a Southern California Christian school. Lively could
not be reached for comment, but according to correspondence
Stauffer received from him, he plans to do pro bono work
as a Christian missionary.
Problem is, you can't join the California Bar with outstanding
judgments. Before he can practice law, Lively has to pay
up, and last week Stauffer received a first installment
of $10,000.
As for the OCA's payment, Stauffer is still waiting. The
group is circulating another anti-gay initiative this year,
and she's watching it closely.
"I still have $10,000 due from the OCA, and I intend to
get it," says Stauffer, who is now a fine-arts photographer.
"If they gear up with a big campaign, I'm going to go after
their money."
--Patty Wentz
The
Malling of Alberta
On April 1, Northeast Alberta Street took on the appearance
of a shopping mall on the verge of white-bread greatness.
All the usual suspects were there, corporate monikers lovingly
drawn on massive posters that had been slapped up onto empty
buildings: Starbucks...coming soon! Sharper Image, Banana
Republic, Nike, Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch.
But bad news for any soccer moms in the 'hood: April
Fools was written on the bottom of each sign.
It's true that Alberta is going through a change. Longtime
residents have been joined by artists, young people and
low-paid workers who count on neighborhoods like Alberta
for affordable housing.
For years, new restaurants and shops have been popping
up on Alberta, and more are on the way. But, according to
the Sabin Community Development Corporation, Starbucks,
Sharper Image and the rest aren't among them.
That leaves Roslyn Hill, the owner of Roslyn's Coffee,
scratching her head about what point the secret pranksters
were trying to make. In addition to her java joint on the
corner of 14th Avenue, she owns the empty building one block
east where a Gap sign showed up. She is decidedly not renting
space to the Gap, she says. Instead, a neighborhood food
co-op and a secondhand clothing store are going into her
building.
She says she isn't bothered by the sign, though, and may
leave it up for a while.
"I just think the person has a very good sense of humor,"
she says, "unless it's supposed to be a political statement,
and I don't take it that way. I think it's kind of neat
for someone to do something like that. I haven't heard anyone
complaining."
--Patty Wentz
Murmurs
The Unkindest Cut of All
In a move that's sending shockwaves through better homes
and anchor desks around Portland, Hickox Salon and Spa,
one of the city's toniest trim, color and massage spots,
unceremoniously shut down over the weekend.
To longtime customer Megan Brown, the call from her colorist
on Sunday at first seemed like a belated April Fool's joke.
After all, Hickox, featured regularly on AM Northwest
(and on the subtly hued hair of host Rebecca Webb) and in
a recent edition of Elle magazine, had been around
since 1975 and employed more than 50 people at its lavishly
renovated Southwest Alder Street digs. "It's a total surprise,"
says Brown's aunt Ann Shapland, who recently became a Hickox
customer.
On the surface, all seemed well. As late as this week Hickox
ran its customary large ad in Our Town, and the salon
renewed its business license just last month. But there
were signs of rot behind the operation's glitzy front.
In recent months, the Internal Revenue Service slapped
three liens on Hickox, the last in mid-February. Earlier
this week, four employees filed claims with the Bureau of
Labor and Industries for unpaid wages and 11 more picked
up forms. And customers say that Hickox, which completed
a major remodeling in 1998, was aggressively marketing prepaid
"Goldcards," a possible sign of cash flow difficulties.
Owners John and Sharon Hickox couldn't be reached for comment.
Shapland, who plunked down $480 for one of the cards last
month, is angry about being ripped off. "I think it's pretty
shady," she says. But her loss transcends dollars. "They
gave the best haircut and color I've ever had," she says.
--Nigel Jaquiss
HEARSAY AND IDOL GOSSIPIt would take a lot of cars to fetch
what Scott Thomason recently got for his West Hills
abode. Word in the real-estate biz is that he unloaded his
home to local money manager John von Schlegell for
a cool $3 million.
He may try to pass himself off as a simple pea-packer from
Pendleton, but U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith is clearly
at home in the GOP country-club set. The Washington Post
reports that at a February meeting for big donors at the
Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Oregon's junior senator (who
collects antique clubs) finished at the top of the golf
tournament and won the prize for the drive closest to the
hole.
The latte literati are buzzing that local word-slinger
Karen Karbo has a new book, set in Portland, coming
out in June. Published by Bloomsbury, the book is called
Motherhood Made a Man out of Me.
Murmurs hears that Multnomah County officials have narrowed
contestants in the great animal-control director search
down to two. Look for the top dog to be trotted out
next week.
It's way too early to break out the champagne, but at least
the two sides battling over how to word a police-oversight
initiative are talking. Last week WW reported that
the Police Accountability Campaign 2000 was miffed
at the city attorney's office over ballot language for the
group's initiative ("War of Words," WW, March 29,
2000). Following the story, PAC 2000 contacted the city
attorney's office and agreed to sit down later this week
and try to reword the initiative before an April 13 court
date.
Brainstorm Magazine, the local libertarian
monthly, gets an F for fact-checking in a mid-term assessment
of schools superintendent Ben Canada this month.
The article refers to Ron Saxton as school board
chairman (a job he relinquished in early January) and on
six occasions misidentifies Canada's biggest critic, Hispanic
activist Richard Luccetti as Richard Leonetti
--a prominent anti-tax activist whose views on Canada
remain unknown.
We're not sure about The Oregonian's indispensability,
but former sports columnist Dwight Jaynes is looking
more and more irreplaceable. Now that nearly every sports
scribe on the West Coast has turned down Jaynes' job, Murmurs
hears the O is working the B list. The latest names to surface:
Tacoma, Wash., News Tribune's Dave Boling and
the current front runner, Chuck Culpepper of the
Lexington Herald-Leader.
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