🌱 City Hall Safe Rooms Proposal + Fentanyl Overdoses On Rise

It's Friday everyone and you know how I feel about Fridays. It's like the weekend came a day early. But before I get this party started, let me tell you about today.

First, today's weather:

Mostly cloudy today with a high of 60.

Here are the top five stories in Portland today:

1. As spring budget season begins, bureaus are asking City Council to fund the projects they deem most necessary. One of the requests: Protect City Hall officials from gun violence by making the century-old building partly bulletproof. The city’s Office of Management and Finance is requesting $2.2 million in one-time general funding to increase security at City Hall, asserting that “the measures identified can reasonably be expected to reduce the threat and impact of vehicle ramming attacks, concealed weapons, knife and gun violence, and unauthorized and forced entry.” (Willamette Week)
2. Hiring is a challenge in all industries across the country, including for the Portland Police Bureau (PPB), and those challenges are impacting the Bureau’s ability to respond in a timely matter to everything from car thefts to vandalism. To get people’s attention, PPB says it is offering hiring bonuses, including a competitive salary and retirement. PPB is also giving new hires opportunities for promotions within the Bureau and a more balanced lifestyle with a four-day work week. (KOIN)
3. Could the hospital emergency room be the place to slow Portland's surge in gun violence? More and more experts say yes, and an organization said the intervention will work in Portland with the right funding and staffing. Recent investments from the city and state allow Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center to expand its hospital intervention program, Healing Hurt People, to more hospitals with more teams. Roy Moore is the co-director of the community care team at Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center, and he also leads the Healing Hurt People program. Moore and his team have gone to the emergency room at Legacy Emanuel Hospital for several years and recently expanded to OHSU. (KATU)
4. Habitat for Humanity in the Portland region received a large private donation this week from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, and is putting the money toward affordable housing. More than $8 million will be used to create housing for low income families in the Portland area, especially historically marginalized communities of color who have been blocked from economic opportunities, the nonprofit said. According to the nonprofit, the median sales price for a single-family home was $511,000 in February, a 16% increase over the prior year. (OPB)
5. After two teens died in Multnomah County from suspected overdoses on fentanyl pills, local doctors and parents are raising awareness about the growing risk in Oregon. According to Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Oregon saw 472 overdoses in 2020. Between January and August of 2021, Oregon saw 473 more. Fake prescription pills are a big concern. Counterfeit pills sold on the black market are often billed as other drugs, but contain lethal amounts of fentanyl. (KGW)

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Today in Portland:

• For an evening of music join Starday Tavern in SE Portland to move and groove with Portland's rising stars! Enjoy smooth soul music and heavy-hitting hip-hop beats at the Starday's brand-new concert event. This show will feature performances from Kevin King, $OLOGANGD, Bo Legacy and surprise special guests. And, better yet, admission is free! Showtime is 8:00 PM.
• The Special People, an experimental art film, that explores technology induced hypnosis and the desire for freedom and authenticity, will be screening at the Clinton Street Theater. The audience goes through a hero’s journey while bathing in sparkling storybook sets, an eerie combination of VHS nostalgia and foreboding dilemmas, presented allegorically. Following the film will be a Q & A with the director, Erica Schreiner. And, hey, another free show! 7:00 - 10:00 PM.
• Come see Butter: The Comedy Show at the Funhouse Lounge in SE Portland. This butter has a live band, silly antics, a try-hard host, and a steady showing of the funniest stand-up comics around. Tonight's comedians will be Jaren George, Imani Denae, Nariko Ott, Amanda Lynn Deal and the house nonsense collective Victor and James. Showtime is 9:45 PM.
• Charming Disaster returns to Portland to perform at the World Famous Kenton Club, sharing the bill with Strange & the Familiars and Jet Black Pearl! Charming Disaster is a goth-folk musical duo based in Brooklyn, NY, formed in 2012 by Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris. Stephanie Strange can often be found on stage, delivering her messages to unsuspecting audiences with her band of fearsome Familiars. Jet Black Pearl is the fabulous accordion diva from the port of Amsterdam who has performed on more than a thousand stages all over Europe and the USA West Coast while singing, rapping and beat boxing about slugs in love, criminal gurus and hallucinating butterflies. Showtime is 8:00 PM.
• Come to Steeplejack in NE Portland to take a walking history tour of the building hosted by co-owner Brody Day. The walking with a beer tour will cover what it was like to renovate the building, talk about the history of the building, and discuss what's next at Steeplejack. This event starts at 3:00 PM.

From my notebook:

• Portland Audubon: "Enjoy this little Western Screech-Owl doing what it does best - pretending it's invisible while surveying the scene from the comfort of its roost hole. Funny enough, they don’t really “screech” as their name would imply but, rather, they..." (Instagram)
• Pro wrestling returns to Portland this weekend. On Saturday, talented fighters from all around the world are facing off at Defy Wrestling. Kohr Harlan jumped into the ring at the Oregon Pro Wrestling School in Hillsboro. He’s learning some moves from the prominent tag team, Midnight Heat. (KOIN)
• Empanada Festival is back at the Portland Mercado. Visit it to try a variety of empanadas from all over Latin America! These empanadas are made from traditional recipes and are representative of the origins of each business. It is your opportunity to travel to a new world of flavors from one place. Order to-go by phone, via a direct message to the business, or purchase in person when visiting. (Facebook)
• When bar crawling down SE Morrison, weaving through places like Dig a Pony and Creepy’s, you could land at Star Bar, a red-and-orange-hued watering hole complete with pinball machines and photos of famous 20th-century rockers on the walls. Here, you can order a drink and also pull a fentanyl test kit from a small clear bowl on the counter. Stuck to the cap, a QR code on a sticker directs visitors to a site with instructions on how to test. Along the side of the jar, text reads, “Test your drugs anonymously.” In other parts of the country like Oakland or Brooklyn, a jar of test strips on a bar counter might be more common; in Portland, it’s almost unheard of. (Eater PDX)
• We've all been looking for small solutions to Portland's homeless crisis, but now there's a job-skills training center in the Old Town area that's found success. The nonprofit is called Stone Soup. It finds good people at risk of becoming homeless who want to learn the food service industry. Participants get plenty of kitchen skills through the 12-week program, but also conflict resolution, how to deal with having a boss and personal budgeting. (KGW)
• Big news today! Gigantic Brewing is teaming up with Weird Portland United to bring you the 'Gigantic Weirdtastic' Beer Series, celebrating Portland's most unique people, places, and things, with proceeds directly supporting WPU! 🍻 First up is Unipiper Hazy IPA, with a brand new recipe incorporating Cosmic Punch, a crazy new strain of yeast that pulls even more tropical juiciness out of the hops! (Instagram)

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Have a great Friday, Portland. Have yourself a fine old day and come on back tomorrow, so I can tell you what your Saturday has in store.

— Dominic Anaya

About me: Doctor, educator and now a writer/artist, I'm just chillin' in Portland, OR with my wife, our ferrets, our chickens and our goats.