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This letter is in response to the article written by Kim Colton, "Night Avenger: Nightlife Misadventures" [
, Feb. 12, 2003]. It is with regret that we have to respond to an article that is falsely written by a member of your staff, when we the owners of the New Copper Penny have always been in good relationship with the
newspaper.
As a point of reference for comments made, let me inform you that our [black-dress] contest starts each week at 12:30 am and our contestants can sign up as early as 8 pm. We also choose our winner based on the response of our crowd. In her article, Kim has the audacity to insult our customers as being "toothless hicks [that] mingle with turtlenecked bleach-blond pretty boys."
The dresses she refers to are purchased from reputable beer distributing companies such as Coors Light and Miller, and they are professionally cleaned each week. Our contestants have the opportunity to change in a separate private room, but we cannot help when the girls choose to change in the restrooms. Many girls also choose to wear their own black dress in the contest.
We take pride in our business, New Copper Penny (N.C.P.), as being recognized as a clean and safe environment for nightlife of young adults. Needless to say, after being in business for over 30 years, your continued negative comments to put our business down is not acceptable, and a retraction should be made in your newspaper for the false accusations made by Kim. We as a business N.C.P. support Clackamas, Beaverton, Milwaukie and Portland Police Departments, Southeast Uplift, Boys and Girls Club, Kids 'N' Cancer, 82nd/Foster Business Association; and as President of Association of Greek Restaurant Owners and other Business owners (A.G.R.O) we support Doernbecher's Hospital Foundation; and we cooperate with rules and regulations of O.L.C.C.
What was Kim's motive when she refers to the false statement, "the blonde is drunk and confident"?
Unfortunately, the businesses in the Southeast section of Portland never receive the proper credibility they deserve.
The one thing we cannot understand is how Willamette Week feels comfortable dropping off newspapers at the doors of the New Copper Penny after writing such a negative article about us.
Saki Tzantarmas
New Copper Penny
Southeast 92nd Avenue
ALL ABOARD RUSSIAN ARK
Thank God I ignored Brian Libby's misguided March 5 review of Russian Ark ("a great experiment gone wrong"), as the film was the most astonishing artistic work I've seen on screen.
With any foreign film, one has to understand that there are going to be certain nuances that will be impossible to grasp, especially in translation. The concept of cinema outside the U.S. is at a level of expression we have trouble understanding. A film like Russian Ark is not for the passive viewer; we have to intellectually engage in it.
Brian stated that the "two mumbling leads never articulate the history or identify the people they see." Knowledge of Russian history is completely beside the point of the film. The narrator clearly names the significant figures and historical points. If director Aleksandr Sokurov had Prince Menshikov or Pavel I running through the halls, then the confusion would be understandable. But any educated viewer--anyone who recognizes history and art's significance in the modern world--could understand Russian Ark's splendor and significance, without being a Russophile.
Sokurov's attempt at asking Russia (and even the West) to accept and appreciate her tumultuous past seemed to be the point of the film. I recognized this after the climax of the ball when the 18th-century French diplomat, refusing to go, tells our narrator to leave with the attendees. Sokurov seemed to be saying here that Russia still is alive, not dead as economists declare.
Dostoevsky wrote, "Beauty will save the world." It will save Russia; it has to.
Annie Lundgren
Milwaukie
CHARGE THE LIGHT-TRUCK BRIGADE
Taylor Clark mentioned several good reasons why owners of hybrids shouldn't be charged twice as much to register their cars as everyone else ["The Hybrid Penalty," WW, Jan. 29]. We have a few to add:
Why target hybrids rather than studded tires? The revenue lost from not charging a studded-tire fee is more than 400 times greater than the revenue lost from fuel-efficient hybrids.
Why target hybrids rather than other fuel-efficient cars? Many cars get significantly better gas mileage than the state average of 19.2 miles per gallon.
Hybrids should pay less for congestion-driven road capacity projects because they don't take up as much space on the road as gas-guzzling SUVs and light trucks.
Hybrids cut down on costs associated with air pollution. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that every mile driven by the average car results in 1.1 cents in air- pollution costs. Hybrids are the next best thing to "zero emission" vehicles.
Hybrids cut down on the costs associated with climate change. The reinsurance giant Munich Re estimates $300 billion in annual global costs by 2050 in weather damage, pollution, industrial and agricultural losses, and other expenses related to global warming. Hybrids produce far fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than the average car on Oregon's roads.
Sen. Ryan Deckert of Beaverton's Senate Bill 312, which would eliminate the registration fee on hybrids, will be heard on Feb. 25, and the Oregon Environmental Council is proposing legislation to charge gas-guzzling cars and trucks a somewhat higher registration fee and fuel-efficient vehicles a somewhat lower registration fee.
Chris Hagerbaumer
Program Director, Oregon Environmental Council
Southwest 6th Avenue
NO POSTER CHILD
The visage on the cover of the Feb. 19 WW looked vaguely familiar, but the Troy Lee Ford depicted in "Public Enemy No. 4" by Nick Budnick was not the one I met in the mid-1980s. Back then, Mr. Ford was a cross-dressing hitchhiker who had a habit of threatening to blow the brains out of anyone who picked him up, on the premise they would never testify in court--for fear of being publicly humiliated on the witness stand for having picked up a hooker. In my case he targeted a naive, some have said stupid, victim, not a potential "trick." For years I mused about how sexually desperate one would have to be to pick up a "woman" dressed in a baggy white and green polka-dotted dress, torn and saggy white mesh stockings and wild wig.
Unlike the string of Mr. Ford's victims who preceded me, I did testify to the grand jury, which indicted him for robbery. He subsequently plea-bargained a reduced sentence, once he realized I would not be intimidated off the witness stand.
I agree with Nick Budnick's thesis that many drug-addicted people are in need of drug treatment, not incarceration. But Troy Lee Ford is the wrong poster child for Budnick's case. While I'm glad to know Mr. Ford is no longer threatening to blow the brains out of potential tricks or naive would-be good Samaritans, your readers should know his past is far more violent than depicted in Budnick's story. I sincerely wish Mr. Ford well and hope he does choose to undertake the treatment he has been offered on several occasions. But I hope his release is based on a realistic evaluation of his potential threat to Portlanders.
Mike Houck
Northwest Quimby Street
WWeek 2015