P o r tla n d , O r e g o n
V o l u m e 19 ♦ N u m b e r 11 ♦ A p r i i . 5 , 2 0 0 2
FR EE
PHOTO BY MARTY DAVIS
Emily H uffm an
A soulful
concern
A little bit of money
and a whole lot of dream
are behind
Venus Flytrack Records
by
K ronda A dair
T
Just Out
evaluates
the area’s
10 largest
private
em ployers
...
by Timothy Krause
P age 24
P rofessor fights hom ophobia
in college athletics
Page 13
C o p s investigated for
possible anti-gay assau lt
Page 17
he difference between people who talk
about doing things and people who actu­
ally do them can be summed up with one
word: action.
Emily Huffman is great proof of this. Last
summer, she and good friend Aisha Ayers were
sitting around daydreaming— Ayers, Portland
slam poet champion, wanted to record her
work, and Huffman wanted to start a record
label “someday.”
“We realized that what we were dreaming
wasn’t so far off from what could be reality, and
it was just a matter of taking the risk,” Huff­
man says. “ 1 actually had a little bit of
m oney...not a lot...and lord knows we’re still
trying to get out of the red. But just having
pushed it.. .that much— as far as what 1 wanted
to do set everything into motion.”
The result is Huffman’s new label, Venus
Hytrack Records, and Ayers’ new spoken word
C D , Letters to My Soul.
Although poetry, Huffman laughs, “was the
last thing 1 ever thought I would start a record
label with,” she saw an opportunity to support .
an artist she believed in, whose writing about
being a queer woman of color digs right at the
heart of some complicated issues. “Aisha had a
message that 1 was affected by, and 1 really
wanted other people to hear it.” Besides, the
Continued on Page 43
T obacco m arketing targets
sexu al m inorities com m unity
Page 19