DailyAstorian.com // MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 2016
144TH YEAR, NO. 37
ONE DOLLAR
Seaside, Hood to Coast
hope for brand-new start
After calamitous year, organizers want blue skies
By KATHERINE LACAZE
For EO Media Group
SEASIDE — Hood to Coast organiz-
ers and city offi cials are crossing their fi n-
gers this year.
High winds and rains all but stymied
last year’s Hood to Coast, a treacherous
mess when winds of up to 85 mph hit the
North Coast. Some tents were completely
knocked over. O rganizers were forced to
cancel the traditional fi nish party on the
beach .
Runners crossed the fi nish line, but the
storms continued.
The Seaside City Council threatened
to sever ties to the 200-mile relay event
after complaints of bad behavior and traf-
fi c nightmares.
Dozens of local business owners
signed a letter expressing discontent “that
the overall impact of hosting this massive
event during the busy summer tourist sea-
sons is negative.”
Organizers made it clear they could
not accommodate a date change, and their
only alternative was to alter the route so
the race ended in a different city. Not
EO Media Group/File Photo
See HOOD TO COAST, Page 10A
The scene on the beach after high winds dismantled the
Hood to Coast stage and tents last year.
BLIND PILOT ROARS AT LIBERTY THEATER
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Blind Pilot played their new album, “And Then Like Lions,” during sold-out shows Friday and Saturday in Astoria’s Liberty Theater. From left to right are bassist Luke Ydstie, trum-
peteer and keyboardist Dave Jorgensen, lead singer Israel Nebeker, drummer Ryan Dobrowski, percussionist Ian Krist and multi-instrumentalist Kati Claborn.
The Daily Astorian
Hometown indie folk band Blind Pilot packed the Liberty Theater Friday and Saturday, playing their third album, “And Then Like Lions,” released
earlier this month. ¶ The performance kicked off a nationwide tour for the band and was part of the Liberty Theater’s Sunset Series, an effort to
attract younger audiences with independent folk, pop and rock acts. The series will run once a month, with acts announced on astoriasunsetseries.com
‘White Out’: Talking about race is still a challenge
Professor prompts
lively exchanges
By LYRA FONTAINE
The Daily Astorian
Lyra Fontaine/The Daily Astorian
Willamette University associate professor Emily Drew encourages the au-
dience to discuss racial diversity at the Astoria Library event.
Talking about race can be dif-
fi cult, but uncomfortable discus-
sions were encouraged at the Asto-
ria Library on Friday.
Emily Drew, a Willamette Uni-
versity associate professor in sociol-
ogy, led a community conversation
“White Out? The Future of Racial
Diversity in Oregon,” hosted by the
Lower Columbia Diversity Proj-
ect and Astor Family Friends Asso-
ciation and sponsored by Oregon
Humanities.
Discussion prompts from Drew
— such as what people are willing
to do to interrupt systematic rac-
ism — led to lively exchanges about
personal experiences or challenges
dealing with race.
Both history and recent events
informed the conversations. Over
the summer , police shootings of Afri-
can-American men — and attacks on
police — have led to unrest .
“If we’re going to survive as a
country, we have to start looking
at institutionalized racism,” said
Astoria City Councilor Drew Her-
zig, a leader in the Lower Columbia
Diversity Project, which recently
prepared a brochure on what to do
when stopped by police. “There’s no
avoiding it … If you’re a person of
color and you get pulled over, you
could die.”
Race after the
Civil Rights era
lynching was a spectacle, W.E.B.
Du Bois wrote the problem of the
next century would be “the problem
of the color line.” The U.S. Supreme
Court decision Plessy v. Fergu-
son made racial segregation lawful
under the “separate but equal” doc-
trine until 1954.
Drew said racism today is illegal,
but institutionalized.
“Racism isn’t just the egregious
racial rhetoric of politicians; it isn’t
just the poisoning of water in Port-
land public schools, disproportion-
ately schools that people of color go
to,” Drew said. “It is actually about
a system in place that we all collude
in and participate in.”
Drew said past approaches to
solving racism — 1980s multicultur-
alism and 1990s “colorblindedness”
More than 100 years ago, when
See ‘WHITE OUT’, Page 10A
From looking backward to making things happen
Marketer makes
his home in
Cannon Beach
C
ANNON BEACH —
Though he moved to Can-
non Beach just last summer,
Kevan Ridgway is already a
key part of the local business
community.
For more than 20 years,
Ridgway was president and
CEO of a regional destination
marketing organization for Van-
couver, British Columbia . His
job included helping organiza-
tions, such as different market-
ing groups in British Columbia’s
Sunshine Coast, work together
to achieve goals — like a hotel
tax to fund tourism initiatives.
Now, as the Cannon Beach
Chamber of Commerce mar-
keting committee chairman,
Ridgway hopes to bring some of
that cooperation to festivals and
events.
“When you look at those
doing promotional work, they’re
all using Cannon Beach in dif-
ferent ways,” Ridgway said.
“We need a solid brand that we
can all get behind.”
The committee is also
expanding its marketing to
social media — including posts
by visitors themselves.
The c hamber’s market-
ing committee uses a plan that
focuses on visitors, not busi-
nesses, Ridgway said
The “visitor economy” is
an important part of Cannon
Beach, he said, but the mar-
keting plan takes residents into
account as well.
“One of the other key princi-
ples is we won’t do anything for
tourism that isn’t good for our
residents,” he said.
Ridgway is also a c ham-
ber board member and trea-
surer for the Cannon Beach
Arts Association. He owns a
small business, Minds Aligned,
which provides consulting and
marketing services to tourism
industry clients.
Ridgway was born near
Coventry, England.
“I still support Coventry C ity
football,” he said of the soccer
team. “I can watch three football
matches on a Saturday.”
He misses pub culture, which
did not revolve around drinking
when he was growing up.
“It was where all the families
congregated,” he said. “When
you went to the pub with your
mum and dad, the kids had a
play area. It became a real fam-
ily outing.”
See RIDGWAY, Page 10A
Kevan
Ridgway