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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 26, 2016)
New s Page 12 Street Roots • Aug. 26-Sept. 1,2016 A N K EN Y, from page 7 space, making an income for himself. Gardner plans to schedule performances every day of the week except Sunday. “That’s homework time,” Gardner said, laughing. “Kids don’t need to be out here on a Sunday.” Gardner is at Ankeny Square every day; he feels a fierce ownership over the space. “I’m the face of the community,” he said. “When someone’s dog poops, I’m the one who walks over and asks them to pick it up.” He looks over at the food carts. “I don’t want them to do anything but cook,” he said. “I want the artists to do their art.” During a break between music sets, two men can be heard shouting at each other and walking down the median on Burnside. Gardner follows them, intending to break the argument up, but the men separate before he catches up to them. PHO TO BY A M A N D A W ALDRO UPE A couple of hours later, two men get into Johnny Helmka performs bluegrass a t Ankeny Square in Portland. an argument about a pipe and how much it costs. Gardner defuses the encounter. One of the men offers him a Negra Modelo, and he turns it down. ardner first heard the word “grubbin’” GET INVOLVED “I know I have to re-educate the during a Thanksgiving meal more than community,” he said. “That’s not what this a decade ago. His eyes shine when he tells If you're a performer interested in space is being used for anymore. It is a the story. The food and the company was so performing at Ankeny Square. Jama! proactive and positive space.” good that a friend said, “Ah, man, this is Gardner can be contacted at He hopes that in a few years, no one grubbin’.” grubbinpdx@gmail.com. associates Ankeny Square with its seedy “Grubbin’ became a feeling,” Gardner past. said - that feeling a person gets when, “Hopefully, people think of this as the they’re hanging out with friends or family, Anything else was unheard of, unrealistic.” community,” he said.. “My job' is to change a enjoying a meal together, connecting, He adopted the attitude of the streets, Jot of those perspectives.” creating a community together. which he now describes as greedy. “It During the performance, a man with a Gardner grew up in Brooklyn, on Ocean allows you to justify any goddamned thing severely hunched back was balled up on the Avenue in the Flatbush neighborhood, you want. It’s full of scapegoats.” ground, as if he had fallen over. Gardner which was predominantly Jamaican, Puerto He dealt drugs and moved to Portland in walked over to check on him. Rican and Dominican. the mid-1990s to be closer to his mother “I have a certain way of being in this “It was rough,” he said. “I came through and three siblings. community, and it includes helping the whole crack epidemic.” And then, he did go to prison - but it was someone, it includes asking someone if He witnessed a murder when he was 9 well after his 18th birthday, for charges they’re all right,” Gardner said. “I’m not years old. At that point, he learned he had related to domestic violence toward his burying my head in my phone or acting like to be mean. then-fiancée. someone else will get it or acting like it’s “I knew where I was headed - I would be He served a 10-year sentence at the not my problem. That’s where a lot of our dead or in jail by the time I was 18,” he communities are headed these days.” Columbia River Correctional Institution, a said. “I was a statistic. That was my fate, my only chance of a destiny that I could have. minimal-security prison in Portland. G n e Æ n l e ’s FARMERS’ MARKET WEDNESDAYS 2-7PM ■ M Ä ... . . S UP TO $10 MATCH WITH EBT CARD We’re passionate about helping our community access healthy food that they can trust. By shopping our market, you'll get extra food dollars while supporting local farmers and community. 3029 SE 21st Ave. btwn Powell & Division Gardner, a musician who raps and writes rhythm and blues “like it’s going out of style,” became a fervent participant in a group called Arts in Prison. He said it helped him learn how to be vulnerable. He also took business and entrepreneurship classes and began to formulate plans for Grubbin’ before his release Dec. 4, 2015. Gardner cried like he’d won the lottery when the parks bureau told him his proposal had been accepted. He was walking across the Morrison Bridge when he got the call. He was told during an interview with finalists that the bureau would notify him with a decision within two days. But it had been two weeks. He didn’t think he had gotten it. He said the parks employee told him: We wanted to just congratulate you and let you know that you got it. ‘ “I just started screaming in the middle of the bridge,” Gardner said. He thinks he cried for nearly half an hour. fter Irving performed, a solo guitarist performed a set of folk rock songs. Then a 20-something young man got on the stage with an acoustic guitar. He was a bluegrass singer, but you wouldn’t guess it by looking at him - he was wearing baggy jean shorts, a large red t-shirt and a blue bandana on his head. He closed his eyes and hollered into the microphone, singing about heartbreak and love. Anyone listening could close their eyes and be in a 1950s-era Texas honky-tonk bar. The next act was a friend of Gardner’s, who DJs ’90s pop and rock power ballads. Michael Jackson. Whitney Houston. People danced as they walked by. A homeless woman in a wheelchair danced in her seat to every song, each musician throughout the afternoon. Gardner walked up to her and introduced himself. “I’ve inspired her to get her life in order,” Gardner said, smiling. “All I did was me. I didn’t do anything special.” Ankeny Square’s new mission is already working. A
