Best Buys

Best House of Cards

Much has changed since 1982, but one thing has not: Serious sports card collectors head to Baseball Cards and More (11937 SE Stark St., 256-0202) when they've got cash to spend. Sure, it's not every day that owner Randy Archer digs through the more than 1 million cards he owns to sell a single card for $1,800 (1956, Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle) as he did last September.

Archer, 55, a ponytailed Seattle Mariners fan, can barely squeeze through the mountains of baseball, basketball, football and hockey cards that soar to the ceiling of his almost comically overstuffed shop. "We've got a couple of storage lockers off-site that are full as well," Archer says. Business was better in the '90s, he says—so good he gave up homebuilding to peddle cards.

In those days, the card-collecting bubble had not yet burst and eBay and Craigslist were not yet competing for his business. "But there's a good side, too: My customers sell cards they don't want online, and that allows them to buy more from me," Archer says. His best customers remain single men in their 20s, but women and couples make up a growing slice of his clientele. "There's something for everybody here," he says. NIGEL JAQUISS.

Best Revival of a Dead Medium

When highly lauded Brooklyn art rock band Dirty Projectors sent out promo copies of its new album, Bitte Orca, a curious thing happened: Many people couldn't play it on their home stereos. The reason? Bitte Orca came in a package smaller and more portable than a CD or vinyl record. It was a cassette tape. Suddenly, tapes are hip again.

Not surprisingly, Portland is at the forefront of the revival. Last month, fledgling local electropop duo Wampire released its debut album on cassette tape. "In the past year we've kind of become tape enthusiasts," says singer and guitarist Eric Phipps. "I think that CDs are the worst format; it diminishes all your shit by compressing it down to this tiny little sound. A tape retains the quality of what's hitting it."

Besides Wampire and 2009 Best New Band winner Explode Into Colors, a few small, homegrown local labels, including Karamazov Tapes, based in St. Johns, and Gnar Tapes, the label started by weird punks White Fang, are releasing music almost exclusively on cassette. It's a good bet, because it's much cheaper and easier to produce than vinyl. The medium has, in effect, become a viable outlet for experimental music.

Musician and barista Rafael Spielman started his own distributor, Eggy Records, last year. Spielman is also "curating" a limited series of cassette tapes at downtown cafe Half Half. Most of the bands represented are tiny and obscure; Spielman buys the tapes and then repackages them to sell for $3 to $7 at Half Half.

Staunch CD enthusiasts shouldn't worry too much; most of these tapes are still so weird you can find them at only a few local stores, including Mississippi Records and Exiled Records. Still, you can't deny the novelty of hearing something and having to rewind it afterward. "CDs don't really have a purpose anymore—most people just rip it to their iTunes," says Phipps. "Tapes are just in right now." MICHAEL MANNHEIMER.

Best Sustainable Sanitary Napkins

In 1993,

became an OG of sustainable business—by venturing to the final frontier. "Menstruation is the last taboo topic," she says. "A lot of people, no matter how interested in sustainability, don't go that last step." Mallory owns

a line of

for women who refuse to let Aunt Flo become an eco-terrorist. It's not as though GladRags are a new idea—women have dealt with their monthly visitor since the first egg dropped—butmodern disposable products have wreaked havoc on landfills:

according to Mallory. The company sells

and other blood-collecting tampon alternatives, but the washable GladRags have remained the bestseller, and the product lines shelves (and panties) nationwide. "Menstruation happens," says Mallory. "You really can make a difference in the environment every 28 days." AP KRYZA.

Best (Un)Dress Shop

In Strip City, anyone who has spent time at the rack knows the outfit makes the allure: After all, a naughty cop exposed from the get-go is just a naked chick. For nearly two years, the

has been scantily cladding our exotic dancers. Owner

a seamstress of 15 years, crafts

—and, on rare occasions, its drag queens. The Pole sells everything from cowgirl chaps, cheerleader uniforms, evening gowns and pirate-wench corsets to platform shoes and jewelry. Patterson says she got into the business accidentally, but has since become

"I was custom-making things for a lady. Next thing I know, she says, 'You just need to come to where I work because my friends want some of the outfits,'" she says, laughing. "I was like, 'Work?' I thought I was making summer attire!" Summer attire that keeps the dollars flying, the dancers swinging and Patterson's sewing machine humming. AP KRYZA.

Best Bed Maker

Despite the shuttering down of mom-and-pop retailers everywhere,

has survived despite the competition of national mass producers by serving a niche market, making custom beds for yachts and motor homes, and the occasional circular bed.

who started the company 20 years ago, says Bedtime makes the beds the competition doesn't want to. "I guess

" Sparks said. "Usually they just line those with newspaper. Guess they wanted the person to be comfortable." It's been tough to compete with manufacturers who charge next to nothing, but Sparks' willingness to create oddities keeps him stitching. ALLISON FERRÉ.

Best Place to Get Shot

"Zdravstvujtye!!" the leathery man in the white lab coat shouts at the startled foreigner in his beat-up Northwest PDX office. That means "hello" in Russian. Al Torres, M.D., also has a little French, Spanish and, these days, Ukrainian and Burmese in his verbal arsenal. It comes in handy when you run Portland Industrial Travel Clinic (2220 NW Pettygrove St., 224-0103), whichprovides some of the cheapest, sweetest service in town to travelers looking for vaccinations for overseas trips, as well as care for refugees who've just landed in Portland.

Travel care can be spendy, with clinic fees and shots often totaling $300 to $400 per person for a vacation. But Torres, a native Costa Rican in his 60s, gives patients a dose of straight talk when it comes to what shots they need (and don't need) for their backpacking trips or for immigration services—and he doesn't even charge a clinic visit fee.

"I'm not in it for the money; to spend my winters in Cancun, eh?" he laughs. His office is packed to standing room only with walk-in patients and lit like a torture-porn flick, but the caring doc makes up for the decor with rapid-fire Sarah Palin jokes and advice on what insect repellent will help keep you malaria-free. "And the last thing you need to bring on your trip?" he says, his face cracking into a Grand Canyon-wide smile. "Me!" KELLY CLARKE.

Best Barn Burner

There are few local crematories willing to casually roast the remains of a family dog or cat, but the respectful, dedicated staff at

gets major paws up for running

—complete with dog urns, cat caskets and a$250,000 stainless-steel a crematorium big enough to herd a 3,000-pound pet Holstein into the great pasture in the sky.

"All the other places in the state have to 'section' an animal that big, like a horse," explains Sam Heinlein, a soft-voiced giant who spends his days turning beloved pets into beloved little flowered tins of "cremains." "We are gentle when we pick them up." Michael Remsing, who owns Dignified along his partner, Randy Tjaden, says animal cremation is a booming biz—the base cost to cremate a midsize dog is $175 (a cow nearly $1,000).

Dignified processes mostly dogs and cats—but it's done llamas and mice, birds, goldfish, a monkey and a scorpion. "It just feels good to help people through the grieving process," Heinlein shrugs. One lady asked him to hold the phone up next to the oven while a cremation was taking place. "She spent 20 minutes singing, 'You Are My Sunshine,'" he says, "to her rabbit." KELLY CLARKE.

Best Strippers

Naked women are second only to raw, smooth architectural wood in my pantheon of beauty. We've got plenty of the former in Portland, but it's the rare gem indeed that helps you achieve the latter. Cue

It takes old furniture, window sashes, moldings and whatever else you've got and

I discovered the company after spending 12 hard hours sloughing paint off a door with a chemical that gave me acid burns. For a mere $45, I was able to have a chair stripped of its offending frippery, right down to the beautiful, bare wood—and I barely had to lift a finger. It saved me hours of labor and looked, to be honest, far better than my clumsy efforts with the door. The process is "EPA-approved" and takes a slow—but satisfying—two weeks. HANNA NEUSCHWANDER.

Best Crafty Collective

Emily Baker sells the cheapest engine parts most of us will ever buy, turning cast-off pieces of old metal into jewelry that sells for $35 to $45 at

The nonprofit store sells

who use at least 50 percent recycled or reclaimed materials. "We offer green, eco-friendly shopping options for customers, and small-business support services for our artisans," says program coordinator

Trillium is now helping 44 crafters build "sustainable microenterprises." With materials for etched glassware and bike-chain bracelets being rescued from landfills, the adage proves true—one person's trash

another's treasure. ALLISON FERRÉ.

Best Use of a VW Bus

If you thought the coolest thing ever to roll out of the back of a VW bus was Spicoli in

prepare to have your mind blown:

retro set of wheels squires a

about town to weddings, parties and any event looking to add a little pictographic pizazz. "I have been a wedding and event photographer for 13 years, and I knew a photo booth would be great fun at my events, but they were just too big and hard to get to venues," explains Glaser. "So I went about trying to invent one I could fit in my car and was more environmentally friendly." Glaser's booth uses recyclable materials, non-chemical-ink print photos and an old VW bus equipped with an electric motor and 24 deep-cycle batteries instead of a gas tank and engine. Righteous.

EMILY JENSEN.

Best Way to Ruin Yourself Forever for Clothes Shopping

Or—perhaps more kindly—Best Fitting and Most Beautiful Article of Clothing You'll Ever Own.

Retail Therapist recently seized an opportunity to purchase an original creation she had long admired from afar from

Little did she know this experience would be unlike her usual leave-the-gun, take-the-dress approach to shopping. Not willing to simply sell an off-the-rack sample, Arnold subjected RT to the whole nine yards—including measurements, two fittings and several errant straight pins. The result? An amazing dress with

And a burning desire to torch the contents of your closet and start over. SHAWNA MCKEOWN.

Best Way to Boost Flagging Interest

Now

an advertisement.

can watch your back as you drill for oil underneath the asphalt—or whatever other construction you need to do—and the company's 50 employees also work as unofficial tour guides of Portland, directing discombobulated drivers and smiling at grumbling commuters. But what

turns heads is the

on the back of the trucks.

named her company

so she wouldn't be pigeonholed into any one occupation. After working as a records manager in Beaverton for 13 years, Solorzano created a home remodel contracting service, and then C.O.A.T. Flagging. Wave hello when you see a flagger working on the new streetcar loop downtown; her company won the contract for the city's latest project. KATIE LITVIN.

WWeek 2015