Got a good
buzz item?
 
Get in touch with our Buzzmeister:
 jschrag@wweek.com
(503) 243-2122 FAX: (503) 243-1115

Site Navigator
Home
Personals
Classified
How to Reach Us
Music
Headout/Clublist
Dish
Restaurants

Burton

Sizemore

 They decided to take their cause directly to the voters in the form a ballot measure. Giving their organization a catchy name--The Real Joint Ways and Means Committee--Jon E. Zimmer and Frederick J. Oerther began gathering signatures for a "reeferendum" that would prevent the law from taking effect.

Before long, things got testy. A dispute over campaign strategy led to a split between the pro-pot forces, and a separate group, Oregonians for Sensible Law Enforcement, started its own campaign to re-legalize pot and is circulating its own petitions for a separate measure that is worded exactly the same.

Zimmer is bitter. The competing referendum is "a completely parallel and identical action," he says. "They didn't want me or my co-chief petitioner to have anything to do with it."

The problem, according to organizers of the competing campaign, was one of style rather than substance. Rather than talking about the right to get high, Michael Rose and co-chief petitioner Todd Olson are focusing on the fact that recriminalization gives police broadened search and seizure powers. "Treating this as a smoke-in is the wrong approach," says Rose, a criminal-defense lawyer. "That approach is counterproductive in terms of garnering mainstream support."

The two identical referendums are now in a pitched battle for nearly 50,000 signatures, which they must gather before Oct. 4. With the clock ticking, competing signature-gatherers have been out on the streets touting the benefits of their particular petition--even though both do exactly the same thing. "There's a lot of confusion out there," Zimmer says, noting that voters can sign both petitions if they choose.

Zimmer's petition is currently in the lead, with more than 26,000 signatures at last count.
-MO

SWOOSH BE GONE
 
Footwear designer Trip Allen, who retired after nearly 20 years with Nike last week, is something of a legend at the company's Beaverton headquarters. It's a good bet, however, that management won't be naming a building after Trip.

Allen's bitter resignation letter, which referred to "crack baby marketeering" and "arrogant corporate greed," was typical of his outspoken and cynical criticisms of Nike.

 After signing on with Nike in 1979 to get its hiking footwear off to a running start, Allen became an outspoken critic. Most recently, Allen, 44, spoke up at Beaverton City Council meetings against the company's appropriation of local land originally slated for mixed-use development. Indeed, in his sign-off letter he wrote, "Nike's...recent bully tactics with the Beaverton City Council and Planning Commission was the last straw for me. When your employer is big enough to steamroller over wise land-use planning and have adverse effects on the quality-of-life in the community in which you live, then something is very wrong."

Allen, in fact, thought a lot of things were wrong with Nike, and made a name for himself pointing them out. One hot day two summers ago, Allen poked fun at the uptight rules-and-regulations atmosphere on campus by taking a forbidden plunge in the campus lake.

 More recently, after the company allowed Michael Jordan to smoke a cigar on the non-smoking campus, Allen showed up at a management meeting billowing a stogie of his own. He also adorned the Jordan Building with Jordan "jump man" posters refashioned to feature a cigar rather than a basketball in the superstar's outstretched hand.

Allen's parting shot at Nike came last week at his going away party, at O'Connor's Yamhill Market Rooftop in downtown Portland, where more than 100 friends (past and present Nike employees) showed up to wish him well and gossip about Nike.

"Management wasn't invited," Allen says about the bash. "It was a management free zone. I wanted people to feel comfortable."

 Management wasn't the only thing in absentia. In glaring contrast to the Nike campus, there wasn't a Swoosh in sight. Maybe that was due to the "Swoosh Be Gone" spray cans that were making the rounds. "Just Remove It" the mocked up Glade bottles read, sporting a Swoosh with a red strike through it. "Use new Swoosh Be Gone to purge yourself of any and all remaining Nike contamination. Save all your friends from this dreaded and lingering infestation."

Allen took home a full can. --JF

MEN IN RED
 
The notorious Santa brothers have struck again, this time taking their unique brand of good cheer to last Saturday night's Dada Ball.

One would think that the six jolly men would have fit right in among the high-concept costumes at the event, presented by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Not so. Portland police ended up tossing the Santas from the ball, which was held at Oaks Park, after learning that the Kringle clan was wielding fake guns.

 The strong reaction among police and Oaks Park security may have stemmed from an incident late last year, in which dozens of Santas cavorted around town in drunken glee, passing out "gifts" wrapped in old copies of Playboy magazine. At that time, the Santas reportedly invaded the skating rink at Oaks Park on a Saturday afternoon and mooned fellow skaters.

"They're like revolutionary guys trying to pull some pranks," says Erin Boberg, a PICA staffer who knew of last year's incident. "I think they're trying to see how far they can go."

In any case, law enforcement came down hard at the Dada Ball. Initially, Oaks Park security guards merely confiscated the guns. Then they called the real police, who escorted the Santas to their sleighs. "Apparently, being dressed like Santa Claus was guilt by association," Santa Bob told WW. "Were we a threat? Were [the security guards'] earlier references to youth gangs an implication that we were all dressed alike and might be prone to
 violence? The officers were all dressed alike and carried real weapons."

 The Santas left peaceably, but Boberg says those who knew about the incident were shaken. "If a police officer perceives someone to have a weapon, he might shoot them," she told WW. "Our hearts were beating fast. How do they know what's an artistic statement and what's a gun?" --MO
 

Missing Links
 
Portlanders mourning the loss of one of the city's most eccentric museums will be happy to hear that the nation's largest collection of Bigfoot memorabilia is staying here in Oregon and may soon have a new home along Interstate 5.

 The old museum, housed in the basement of a North Portland bookstore, closed for a variety of reasons. First, bookseller and Western Bigfoot Society director Ray Crowe says, the museum provided great foot traffic, but little revenue. More people were coming to see Sasquatch scat and tracks than to buy books, says Crowe. For safety reasons, the fire marshal had also banned meetings larger than 10 people in the cluttered basement. In July, faced with a rent increase, Crowe sold the bookstore and packed up the memorabilia.

Crowe says the new museum, which will most likely be located in either Tigard or Tualatin, will be bigger and better. Dinosaur and early-man exhibits will draw in Bigfoot nonbelievers and expose them to a wealth of evidence. "We'll waltz them past the Bigfoot exhibit first," says Crowe. "The more public exposure we have, the more reports [of Bigfoot sightings] come in."

 While funding for the center is not yet secure, Crowe says the involvement of Peter Byrne, another Bigfoot expert, should help. Thanks to the largess of an unnamed millionaire, Byrne operated a Bigfoot exhibition out of a trailer near The Dalles back in the 1970s. "He has financial sources that come out of the woodwork," says Crowe.

Crowe, whose home and garage is packed to the gills with the Bigfoot stuff, says he hopes the new center will open by January: "I'm getting bored sitting around the house doing nothing." --EM
 

Follow-up: Off the RACC
 
For small arts organizations in the Portland area, obtaining public funding just got a little bit harder. The Regional Arts & Culture Council restructured its grants programs for the 1997-98 fiscal year, excluding groups with annual budgets of less than $100,000 from applying for operating support grants. Such grants previously were available to all arts groups and could be used for a variety of purposes. Now, a theater or dance group without the monetary muscle of an Artists Rep or an Oregon Ballet Theater will need to submit grant proposals on a project-by-project basis.

The roots of the situation lie in Oregon's dreadfully low public support of the arts ("Starving Art," WW, July 2, 1997). RACC, the nonprofit organization that invests taxpayers' cash in arts, was faced with a stagnant budget and rising costs this year. The council's director of grants and community programs, Alberto Ráfols, says that restricting grants given for operating support will help RACC avoid cuts to specific arts projects.

 Under the new system, several dozen organizations that once received operational grants from RACC had to apply for project grants Monday. Not everyone's happy about the change.

Nonprofit groups often find it easier to raise money for a performance or project--where a corporate donor, for example, can get some nice PR--than to secure a grant to pay the rent.

Given a choice between the two types of grants, Susan Addy, the director of the Homowa Foundation for African Arts & Culture, says, "Operating support is broader, so we'd rather have that." --RM

Sizemore Learns a Lesson
 
Anti-tax hero Bill Sizemore, who's been known to mesmerize hostile crowds in a single debate, lost his superpowers during his first clash with Metro Executive Mike Burton. The showdown, which drew more than 200 people to Lake Oswego High School on Sept. 10, officially kicked off the battle over Metro's existence.

 Sizemore, author of the infamous Measure 47 property-tax cap, plans to ask voters in November '98 to dump the regional government. Normally Sizemore has his anti-tax rap as fine-tuned as a 100,000-watt radio station. Against Burton, however, he was all static as he tried to make the case against Metro and its mandate to regulate regional growth.

Visibly shaken, Sizemore chewed on his nails and smiled nervously as Burton ticked off Metro's accomplishments and explained the benefits of light rail, high density and green spaces. Sizemore abandoned his well-oiled anti-government bandwagon and tried to argue land-use laws. Showing a glaring lack of preparation, he eventually resorted to flimsy defensive posturing. At one point, after Burton had deftly backed him into a corner on the sprawl issue, Sizemore felt compelled to profess, "I love farmers."

Sizemore is the first to admit that he wasn't up to speed on the new turf. "I didn't want to do this debate this early," he says."Usually I'll study an issue back and forth before I debate it. I'm not entirely articulate on the issue yet."

The Portland populist vows to be better prepared next time. He indicated that he'd gladly resort to attacking government rather than growth. "Eventually this is going to move beyond land-use arguments and come down to the basic issue of whether or not people want layers and layers of big government," he says. --JF

corrections
 
Due to incorrect information provided by the city's Bureau of Buildings, we reported in last week's cover story ["Attack of the 50-foot Hefeweizen," WW, Sept. 10, 1997] that the Towne Storage sign near the east end of the Burnside Bridge was illegal. In fact, the sign was issued a permit in 1993.

In addition, due to a production error in the same story, we ran a photo caption that did not match the photo (page 21). It should have depicted the trompe l'oeil mural on the Oregon History Center; instead, it depicted an Audubon Society sign that didn't fall under the sign regulations discussed in the caption.

Last week's Scoreboard also contained an error. It wrongly implied that $5.5 million of the proposed library levy would go to non-library services. In fact, the proposed levy may free up $5.5 million in general funds that can be used for health care or other non-library services.

WW regrets the errors.