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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (July 26, 2017)
DailyAstorian.com // WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 2017 145TH YEAR, NO. 18 ONE DOLLAR Neighbors tepid over warming center spot Say it’s necessary, but waste, safety are issues By KATIE FRANKOWICZ The Daily Astorian Pilot House Distilling Joseph Haggard of Crossroads Mobile Canning helped package 2,500 cans of Astoria Mary, a bloody mary in a can created by Pilot House Distilling. The business is developing more canned cocktails like Moscow mules and margaritas. COCKTAIL IN A CAN Astoria distillery fi rst in state to offer vodka drink See WARMING CENTER, Page 4A By EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian ince opening Pilot House Distill- ing three years ago, Larry Cary has faced numerous hurdles, from the usual permitting requirements for selling spirits to legal threats over trademarks that have forced the distillery to change names twice. But with some help from state regula- tors and the Legislature, he and his wife, Christina, were recently able to change state law and begin selling the Astoria Mary, Oregon’s fi rst commercially pro- duced cocktail in a can. Larry Cary said a canned cocktail was the logical next step for the distillery, like a brewery canning beer. The Astoria Mary combines the distillery’s jalapeño -lime vodka with Bloody Knuckles Bloody Mary mix and a tomatillo -jalapeño drinking vinegar from Grumpy Dog Shrub Co., a sister company owned by Christina. The drink, sold in four-packs of 12- ounce cans, comes in at 10 percent alcohol by volume. “For us, it was like, ‘Why hasn’t any- body in Oregon done it? There’s got to be something,’” Christina Cary said. “But there was nothing.” By May, the Carys were shipping out the fi rst batch of Astoria Mary to the Ore- gon Liquor Control Commission’s ware- houses to be distributed at other liquor stores. But then the couple found out Asto- ria Mary was not alcoholic enough to be legal. State law had allowed distillery license holders to concoct blends that were 17 percent alcohol . Because Astoria Mary had only 10 percent alcohol by volume, it was technically illegal to sell in the state’s liquor stores. Barbara Balseiro’s favorite shift was from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. As a former nurse, the volunteer for the Astoria Warming Center was used to late hours. If one of the homeless people waiting out a cold winter night at the center wanted to talk, well she had nothing to do anyway, but try to stay awake. One night a man told her how he never felt he had a home. When he was child liv- ing on a farm in rural Oregon, his dinner plate was set out on the back porch next to the dog’s dish. At 6 years old, aggressive and unmanageable, he was admitted to a treat- ment program at Oregon State Hospital for “the most dangerous and self-destructive kids in the whole state,” where Balseiro her- self had once worked. He loved the classes he attended there, especially poetry. As an adult, he found himself on the streets. He stopped taking his medications. Then he spent a number of nights at the w arming c enter one winter. He told Bal- seiro: “I feel like I have a home. I can make it through the day knowing I have a place to go.” S Photos by Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian ABOVE: Larry Cary, left, and Christina Cary received support from state liquor regulators and the state Legislature to get their new product, the Astoria Mary canned bloody mary, to market. BELOW: The Astoria Mary combines Pilot House Distilling’s jalapeño -lime vodka and Grumpy Dog Shrub Co.’s jalapeño drinking vinegar and Bloody Knuckles Bloody Mary mix. Child care center to move near the Port Shooting Stars at old state police location By KATIE FRANKOWICZ and EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian An education and child care center will rub shoulders with log trucks and fi sh pro- cessors when it moves into a building at the Port of Astoria this year. Amid concerns about putting a center for children in an industrial area, the Astoria Plan- ning Commission approved a conditional use request Tuesday night from Shooting Stars Child Development Center to relocate to a building previously used by the Oregon State Police. The building is across the street from Bornstein Seafoods on Gateway Avenue, near log-handling operations at Piers 1 and 3. Planning Commission President David Pearson pointed out that other small busi- nesses not industrial in nature are located along Gateway. The Port had identifi ed the former state police outpost as a good candi- date for “adaptive reuse,” he said. The Port of Astoria Commission approved a lease to the center on Tuesday , contingent See COCKTAIL, Page 9A See MOVE, Page 9A Hood to Coast runs all the way to China Asian nation starts version of state’s big race By STEVE BRANDON Portland Tribune Thirty-fi ve years ago, with little fanfare, eight teams con- sisting of 10 runners each took off downhill from Timberline Lodge, wound their way one at a time through Portland and small communities, and ended up at a relatively quiet fi nish line in Pacifi c City. That was Hood to Coast Relay I. Who could have foreseen that 2017 would be the year of Hood to Coast Relay XXXVI, and that this one race would now be part of a series of road -run- ning events, and that another Hood to Coast I — in the world’s most-populated country — would have just been launched successfully in partnership with a company featuring China’s most popular athlete, Yao Ming. “I would never have imag- ined this,” says Felicia Hubber, Hood to Coast Race Series pres- ident and the daughter of HTC Relay founder Bob Foote. “It feels so surreal.” Hubber was on hand this month for the July 8 Hood to Coast China — the fi rst of what is expected to be many of its kind in the Asian country of 1.4 billion. Yao Ming and Starz Inter- national Sports were co-pro- ducers of the race. The 7-foot- 6-inch, 310-pound former NBA center doesn’t run, but his mere involvement helped ensure the 104-mile inaugural had plenty of support and publicity. “The race got more media than we get here,” Hubber says. “It was the top -trending topic on WeChat, the leading social media platform in China, and it got coverage on CCTV (China Central Television).” The Hood to Coast Relay recently debuted in China. See HOOD TO COAST, Page 9A Felicia Hubber
