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Street roots
14
April 13, 2012
•W Jliy
Spreading the wealth of St. Johns, one cash mob at a time
BY JA Y THIEM EYER
C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T
t is indeed choice entertainment to
watch “Portlandia” if you live in
Stumptown. The home of John Reed and
Louise Bryant. A frequent stop for Emma
Goldman and where Joe Hill claimed
membership in the Industrial Workers of
the World Local. Amusing, I think, because
while it captures the comic foil the self-
involved politically correct set provide and
the endless energy spent on parsing
inanities, it misses the underlying generosity
and political outrage at injustice, local and
abroad. Moreover, instead of “one stripe fits
all,” there are various tribes here that
stretch belief. Nowhere more than in St
Johns, I would argue. A world apart from the
rest of this fabled oddity called Portland.
An instance is the recent phenom called a
cash mob. It’s not peculiar to St Johns; it
started in the East. In Cleveland, last fall.
But how it began in St Johns, and who
stumbled across it and sent the word out, is
unique. The story says a lot about the
character of this neighborhood — my
neighborhood these days.
While most other parts of the country are
encrusted in cynicism and a vague sense
that everything we know is dying, that
Grover Norquist, Rush, and Roger Ailes and
FOX News, the Koch Brothers, Adelson,
Fries, and ALEC are winning, and
everything precious, real or fantastic, that
we think this country has been about is
spiraling down the bunghole of history,
Portland is thriving as a mosh pit of activism
and idealism. It’s willingness to challenge
almost any injustice is indeed rare. And ripe
for fun.
The New York Times recently fretted over
the demise of Occupy Wall Street because it
lacked leadership and direction.
I
F ret not y e n w w Yon; Timers? Thag£------
poor culturati in the Big Apple. They just
don’t get it. There is no pecking order that
applies with Occupy. An example of how it’s
doing is better provided, for example, in St
Johns. An example of viability here would be
the explosion of activity around monthly
cash mobs. Tip of the iceberg that says a
lot.
By way of explanation, let me describe a
piece of my day. I walked into Proper Eats,
the vegan eatery and grocery, and stood in
line as a customer talked with the fella at
the register about Edgar Cayce and the
Mayan Calendar. The counter guy’s tattoos
had prompted the conversation, which held
up business for nearly half an hour. But the
several of us in line said nothing. We didn’t
want to interrupt and miss something. In
fact, I couldn’t wait to get my turn to say I
was from Virginia Beach and in the early
seventies lived in a communal house
including several people who worked in the
A.R.E. print shop. The counter guy was
unimpressed...conversations like this
apparently are nothing out of the ordinary.
PD Ouspenski, Gurdjieff, Blavatsky, and
their spawn — what’s the deal? Show me
something new!
I left with my broccoli and bananas and
Hemp milk (chocolate) and made my way to
Neena’s bookstore, St Johns Booksellers. I
picked up Richard Wright’s book of Haiku
that I ordered through Neena’s store. The
book was hand stitched in Tennessee and
took a while to get here. I was browsing
through it when someone came in and asked
when the cash mob was scheduled. Last
Friday of the month, Neena said. Same
night as the St. Johns artwalk. Shame, the
woman volunteered, I’ll be in Costa Rica.
She was a naturopath in a natural medicine
clinic off the Costa Rican coast.
Now, this is nothing extraordinary in
Portland, I don’t suppose, but all this energy
is concentrated in about 4 square blocks.
And next door to what I’ve described is the
old St. Johns, leaning or sitting in a stupor
against a wall (mushroom faces, tadpole
bodies, straight out of Lionel Rogosin’s
famous film “On The Bowery”), or wheeling
in a chair back to the sing-room-occupancy
hotel after a day’s outing at Brad’s (called
something else this week from last and due
to be returned to its former life as an old
hotel. (Pictures of the old incarnation bring
to mind something out of Deadwood, the
town, or the HBO series.)
I browsed some more in Neena’s store
and picked up a book of poetry by Paulann
Peterson. Come in to browse, and it’s
amazing what you wind up buying. Neena is
co-administrator of the cash Mob (check out
Cash Mob St Johns on Facebook) with
Micah Perry. Both of them are totally in
touch with community and buying locally
and su p p o rtin g new "small b u sin e sse s in th e ”
area. That’s what this cash mob is about,
essentially. Occupy local business and resist
the corporate franchise octopus.
As you’ve no doubt noticed, I’m mixing
Occupy with the old “buy local” effort and
there’s a reason for it. Occupy has moved on
while the NYT’ers, for example, are
wondering what they’re going to do next.
The reality is they’re already doing it.
Taking the country back, one neighborhood,
one locale at a time. No ideology, no
pretense or ego needed.
Take Micah Perry and HELD, his vegan
belt shop just around the corner from
Neena’s bookstore. Micah doesn’t do media.
What he knows he is given from the people
who come into his shop. Or who he sees on
the street in various places. “If I don’t hear
it directly from another person I know, I
don’t accept it.” (Take that, NYT!)
Having said no egos, I’ll have to back up,
because Micah’s story and the short,
P H O T O B Y J A Y T H IE M E Y E R
Micah Perry o f HELD, one o f the founders
o f the cash mob movement in St. Johns.
ongoing evolution of HELD is revealing.
Micah first had his shop on Alberta St.
He was located very near the Alberta Rose
Theatre. With a residence in St Johns, at the
end of Syracuse, close to the fence
separating the living from the pollution and
immunity of Vigor Industries and Terminal 4
(there’s a big sign for the relentless traffic
of long-haul truckers directing them to the
terminal outside his shop), Micah would
ride his bike to Alberta Street every day.
Even after his diagnosis for the Big C, he’d
make the trek. Even after his first
operation, he’d make the daily trek.
However, Micah’s routine changed when he
realized he wasn’t healing. His body wasn’t
the same. His head, where the cancer lived,
wasn’t the same.
So he rented a niche in St Johns. Next to
the old wrestling arena, itself now
transformed to an imported car repair shop.
Occasionally I spy, since I live nearby, an old
bow-legged wrestler walking past his old
haunts, scowling at the Porsches and Volvos.
No sooner had he got his place than he
was further seriously incapacited by his
inner demon. As he weathered repeated
operations, recoveries, operation, recovery,
etc., his shop, which was nothing but a
space when Micah first entered his
treacherous trek, filled up from handiwork
of his many friends. As with Micah, their
performance art is a 24/7 deal and is based
in community, generosity, non-corporate
kinds of things, a myriad of performance
artforms, including music, visual art and
now his shop. Micah’s momentary setback,
momentary dysfunction, did not kill the
dream. His dream, of which cash mob is a
recent aspect, is to have a shop where
people can come in and make their own
JL
belts, or repair old belts; where people can
learn and develop a business of their own, a
community hub. His belts are made from
conveyor belts from dead factories. From
dead inner tubes. The bench for the belts
was built by a friend while Micah was in
momentary disrepair, up on the blocks you
might say, from an old grain silo in Eastern
Oregon. Out where the antelope roam. He
dispatches the belts ordered online in cut
off Hemp milk cartons. And so it goes.
Nothing wasted if avoidable. Simple
economy.
In February then, roaming the Internet,
Micah came across the topic of cash mobs,
and the light went on. A way to give back
after all he’d been given. He had not even
completed his Facebook request for a
response to his idea of a cash mob in St.
Johns when he started getting multiple hits.
And so it came to pass. Last Friday of
February, his friends on Facebook selected
a shop - Etcetera - that had just moved
into a new location across the street from St
Johns Booksellers (and Brad’s). And literally
hundreds of folks descended on the place to
spend, as is recommended in what are now
roughly 200 cash mobs around the country,
20 big ones or whatever you can afford.
Micah, now in full remission, bought
some soap made from biofuel derived from
cooking oil.
Micah, let’s be clear, is a non-violent sort
of person and what surprised me was when
he told me that all those long-haul truckers?
Well, after driving repeatedly by the banner
proclaiming the strongest belts in the world,
a few have stopped to check his place out.
One has already returned to get a new
buckle (there are hundreds spilling off the
butcher block-like workbench) for his belt.
Micah offers exchanges free to belt
purchasers. In fact, Micah encourages
people to come in and make their own belts
with his materials, at a discount.
One day when I was there, a young fella
was making a belt with loops and cartridges
and a small replica derringer for a buckle.
The future is golden for the HELD
concept. Several other artists are displaying
their T-shirts and scarves and hats (that
look like baskets), as well as dresses made
from free box fare. Very unique. Very DIY.
All made by people with shops of their own
in mind.
As a friend suggests, leave the stress to
the NYT’ers. And don’t believe all you read.
The people are doing great things
somewhat off the radar. The people like
folks in St. Johns and elsewhere in our fair
city are, in fact, becoming the radar.
Check out ‘s trongestbeltsintheworld.com’ and
cash mobs S t Johns on Facebook.
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