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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 7, 2007)
4, JU?tjpUt DECEMBER 7. 2007 iustout J NEWSMAGAZINE Founded 1983 • Jay Brown and Renée LaChance PUBLISHER & MANAGING EDITOR Marty Davis NEWS EDITOR Jaymee R. Cuti ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR Jim Radosta STAFF WRITER Julie Sabatier ART DIRECTOR Anabel Ramirez PRODUCTION & AD DESIGNER Barb McClendon ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Larry Lewis ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES Roger Curtis, Ben Nystrom, Lynda Wilkinson ADMINISTRATIVE MANAGER Jedidiah Chavez CONTRIBUTORS Yvonne R Behrens, Stephen Blair, Teresa Coates, Meryl Cohn, West Duncan, Jemiah Jefferson, Timothy Krause, Tony LeTigre, Patricia L. MacAodha, Gary Morris, Rebecca Ragain, Floyd Sklaver, George Winborn, Rex Wockner EDITORIAL INTERNS letters Tiara-Shaking Good Times To the E ditor : We, the youth of the Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center, are writing in response to the letter “SMYRC Youth Underwhelmed” in the Nov. 2 issue. Here is why we love SMYRC: SMYRC is governed hy a youth steering committee, which is open to all youth. We invite and encourage every youth who accesses the space to vote on all issues, rules and activities. Rules are proposed and written hy us and are approved or changed hy at least an 80 percent youth majority. We propose rules we feel are necessary in order to create a safer atmos phere. SMYRC is open to all youth 23 and younger, and we strive to create a hate-free zone with our first rule being “Respect for all people at all times.” At SMYRC we have access to countless free resources, including counseling and crisis interven tion, f<xxJ, clothing, educational and informational workshops, support groups, exercise programs, drag shows, open mikes and more fun than you can shake a tiara at! SMYRC has saved hundreds of youth during the past 10 years, serving and empowering approximate ly 1,000 youth a year. Nowhere else in Portland have we cried this much, laughed so hard and cried so much from laughing so hard. Together we’ve built rhe biggest and most supportive family any of us have ever had. Melanie Altaras, Alex Baldino, Julius Calasicas, Neethu Ramchandar, Julie Stegall DISTRIBUTION Harry Bonfill, Youme Inhofe, Pat Kilmer- Cramer, Chance Schwartz, Dan White Just Out is published on the first and third Friday of each month. Copyright © 2007 by Just Out. No part of Just Out may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Editorial guidelines: Letters to the editor should be limited to 500 words. Announcements regarding life transitions (births, deaths, unions, etc.) should be limited to 200 words; photos are welcome. Deadline for submissions to the editorial department and for the Calendar is the Thursday 15 days before the next publication date. Just Out reserves the right to edit for grammar, punctuation, style, liability concerns and length. Views expressed in letters to the editor, columns and features are not necessarily those of the publisher. Advertising policy: The display advertising deadline is the Monday J 2 days before the next publication date. Classified ads must be received at the Just Out office by 5 p.m. on the Sunday five days before the next publication date, along with payment. Classifieds may be placed via www.justout.com, by mail or in person at our office. Just Out reserves the right to reject or edit any advertisement. Compensation for errors in, or cancellation of, advertising will be made with credit toward future advertising. Advertising rates available upon request. Distribution policy: Just Out is available free of charge. Just Out is delivered only to authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission, take more than one copy. Any person who takes more than one copy may be held liable for theft, including but not limited to civil damages and/or criminal prosecution. Subsenptions are $22.50 for 12 issues. First Class (in an envelope) is $40 for 12 issues. Contact: Just Out at PO. Box 14400, Portland, OR 97293 0400; 503-236-1252, advertising 503-236-1253, fax 503-236-1257; e-mail justout@justout.com. Visit us on the web at www.justout.com. T ori S cott , A aron G uerrero , D om B olds , A my C lark , E li C orbin , M olly N orris , M artha S mith , A ngel V erdugo , C onnor G reene , E nreche B uckner , G rae O berhausen , C hris K ing SMYRC Youth Raves for the Rose City To the E ditor : 1 read with shock the recent piece in just Out regarding two gay travel writers and their proposed boycott of Portland (“Thom of the Rose,” Nov. 16]. Did they visit the same Portland I have? Did they interact with the same staff at the Portland Area Visitors Association that I did? 1 can’t see how that’s possible, given their article. I’m the editor in chief of The Out Traveler, the world’s largest publication serving gay and lesbian readers (with 275,000 subscribing households), as well as the corporate director of travel media for PlanetOut. As such I oversee all travel content at the world’s largest media and entertainment com pany for gays and lesbians. PlanetOut’s combined media network gets approximately 5 million unique monthly visitors. In addition, as a widely respected gay travel expert, I am invited to speak about the subject frequently (including travel shows sponsored by The Miami Herald, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Boston Globe and The New York Times). I have regular radio show segments on Sirius Satellite Radio, XM and WFNX in the Boston area. 1 also oversee three syndicated newspaper columns. In my visits to Portland, I’ve never had anything short of a completely delightful time. The neighbor- hoods that 1 visited, including the Pearl, were vibrant and interesting. The welcome I received from kx:als and official tourism representatives alike werewarm and friendly. The folks at POVA were the utmost profession als. In fact, Deborah Wakefield is widely regarded in the industry as one of the smartest, nicest and most helpful and responsive executives in the busi ness. If she said she didn’t receive their e-mails, I’d take her at her word and trust she’d bend over backward to accommixJate their (or any visitor’s) reasonable needs. E d S alvato The Out Traveler Praise of POVA To the E ditor : 1 was astounded to read about travel writers Don Pile and Ray Williams’ boycott of Portland and their complaints about the Portland Oregon Visitors Association. As a travel writer and editor with some of the most widely read LGBT publica tions, I have been fortunate enough to visit hun dreds of cities. I rate Portland as one of the most LGBT-friendly destinations in the United States. I have nothing but praise for POVA. Every call or e-mail 1 have ever made to Deborah Wakefield and her staff has been returned within hours. They are a pleasure to work with. 1 have visited Portland dozens of times, including on two POVA-hosted gay press visits. The POVA staff could not have been more attentive, helpful and enthusiastic about showing me their city. I would be most interested to know where these “celebrity travel" columns appear. I’ve been writing about travel for more than a decade and have nev er heard of either of these writers. I eventually found a column in Palm Spring’s Talk magazine. In rhe column Mr. Pile and Mr. Williams complain about many things in Portland, including people reading books, talking on cell phones or using a “lap top (sic]” in bars when, they prix:laim, “the purpose of going to a bar is for social interaction.” As one who has happily whiled away hours on my laptop and read Powell’s purchases in Portland’s bars, 1 hang my head in shame. They go on to comment on “homeless and poor people right downtown on the streets and sidewalks and sleeping in door entry ways (sic] with their grocery carts, etc.” and then declare this “a rather disgusting site (sic] to see.” If people this shallow chixise to boycott Portland, it doesn’t seem like a ter rible loss. A eea M ulholland Vancouver, British Columbia Loving the Locale To the E ditor : As a widely published gay travel journalist who visited Portland for the first time earlier this year and instantly fell in love with the place, my only thoughts upon reading “Thorn of the Rose” (high lighting a Missouri couple’s recent sour take on the city) were a) how very bizarre and b) how very wrong. Not only did I find Portland denizens to be overtly LGBT-friendly, but the folks at POVA were honestly among the most responsive and indulgent I’ve ever encountered. Of course, people experience different places differently, and travel writing is consequently often subjective. But many of Pile’s and Williams’ highly personalized perceptions about Portland were either seriously skewed, downright offensive or both. To wit, regarding the pxn and homeless they comment, “One would think that the City (sic] would do something about that as they do in other cities." (And that “something” would be? Run them out? Snuff them out?) The men also came to the unusual conclusion after reading about Portland’s two especially gay-friendly districts that the rest of the city must therefore be queer-hostile. Apart from making no sense, this betrays a certain blindness to contemporary American civic life, wherein forward-leaning and inclusive cities like Portland no longer need to concentrate all of their gays into old-sch<x>l ghettos. The gents are certainly entitled to their opinions, and other than their “thousands” of readers, no one would have been the wiser were it not for their ludi crous threat of calling for a national gay boycott of the city. Rather than draw gay attention to their pur ported “quite dreadful” nature of Portland, however, it seems the men have done little more than to draw Portland’s (and POVA’s) attention to the quite dread ful nature of some gays. D an A llen New York Opinions from Amateurs To the E ditor : I am writing in response to the article about “award-winning" gay travel writers Donald Pile and Ray Williams and their negative experience in Portland. Personally, 1 have never heard of these guys. I did a search on the Web for them to find out what kinds of awards they claim to have won, how they are famous, etc. I could barely find anything other than a tetter from Elizabeth Taylor on the couple’s 35th anniversary. I did find their Web site, www.hometown.aol.com/gaytravelers. I think their amateur-kxiking Web site speaks for itself. It sounds to me that they didn’t get the “star treatment” they were looking for, but to boycott a city because they didn’t get their asses kissed seems a bit ridiculous! D ebbie C aselton Portland Bring in the Clowns To the E ditor : So you’re telling me that—based on the insular experiences of two upper-class, fuddy-dud queens crowning 60, looking like Corky St. Clair from Waiting for Guffman and dressed like the Prom King from 1976’s Carrie— Portland should be boycotted as a gay destination? Their evident distaste arises solely from non- immediate and sycophantic service from a city agency and their negative experience on a guided tour. Admittedly, they were working on some mis information if their packet of gay-friendly destina tions did not include Nob Hill or—apparently—any bars on Stark Street. And did they assume rhe hous ing costs are high in Portland based upon only their experience talking to a bunch of other older, upper- middle-class queens living beyond their means? 1 live in the excluded Nob Hill neighborhood, in between two of the trendiest shopping streets in Portland (guess which two), and 1 pay as much in rent as I paid back in Boise, Idaho. All over, magazines have praised Portland’s cheap housing prices and cited them as a lure for artists and young people. The fact that they only consider the status of upper-middle-class homeowners is exactly Don Pile’s and Ray Williams’ problem. Did they consid er the experiences of teen, 20-, 30-, 40-something queers, many of whom move from conservative surrounding states such as Idaho or Montana? Were
