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Go: Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival
Surely you’ve seen the photos on your Instagram over the last few weeks: friends in light summer wear, posing in front of technicolor fields of flora like that movie where Robin Williams wanders around the afterlife. And just as surely, it’s caused you to feel the first twinges of FOMO you’ve experienced in over a year. The Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival, held 30 minutes outside Portland in Woodburn, is one of those quaint regional traditions that’s grown in popularity every year social media has been around, which means the weekend crowds can be huge—but like Multnomah Falls, if you’ve never been, it’s worth dealing with the masses. The blooms are at their peak, and the festival wraps up May 2, so expect an even bigger rush this week. But just think of the engagement! Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm, 33814 S Meridian Rd., Woodburn, Ore., woodenshoe.com. 9 am-6 pm Monday-Friday, 8 am-7 pm Saturday-Sunday. Daily through May 2.
Watch: Seconds
As more people get vaccinated and a less-isolated world looms on the horizon, it can feel as though we’re torn between two selves: the one who’s excited to get back out there and socialize again, and the one who wants to stay in bed and work from home forever. If you’re suffering from a similarly fractured identity, you’ll relate to this 1966 sci-fi thriller from John Frankenheimer. In Seconds, dissatisfied banker Arthur is looking for a second chance at life. Salvation comes in the form of an experimental procedure that allows him to fake his own death and form a completely new look and identity, and he is reborn as a handsome artist named Tony. Regret predictably ensues as he realizes his dream life is a nightmare. Streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV Kanopy and other platforms.
Drink: Pour Oregon
Last year, the pandemic wiped out pretty much every single soiree, cellar tour and pairing supper scheduled for Oregon Wine Month. This May won’t see a return of the typical slate of extravagant in-person activities, but some organizers have now had enough time to plan virtual events, so prepare to engage in more sophisticated tastings beyond just downing a magnum alone on the couch while doomscrolling. Pour Oregon, an annual festival that features wines personally curated by the owner of Oregon-focused wine club Cellar 503, will take place online for the first time over the course of four days starting April 29. Interactive sessions include everything from cheese and wine pairings to a cookalong with award-winning chef Vitaly Paley, making for a series of Zoom meetings you’ll actually want to attend. Pour Packs can be purchased at pouroregon.com. Thursday-Sunday, April 29-May 2. $85-$150.
Explore: #foraging on Tiktok
If there’s ever a time and place to get really into foraging, it’s springtime in Portland, and Tiktok’s growing foraging community is arguably the easiest place for newby foragers to get started. Alexis Nicole (@alexisnicole) is by far the most popular and trusted forager on the app. Her page is full of cutesy recipes for plants that are currently all over the city, like dog violet simple syrup, cherry blossom milk tea and magnolia leaf cookies. Mushroom- and foraged-flavored pasta-enthusiast @chaoticforager has a sizable following, too. Just be sure to double check your information before actually eating anything you find outside—there are a lot of poisonous plants that look like nonpoisonous plants, and not every cottagecore influencer actually knows what they’re talking about.
Watch: Michelle Zauner in Conversation with Ben Gibbard
Michelle Zauner’s just-released memoir, Crying in H Mart, is a touching account of her complicated relationship with her mother and her Korean heritage. In a way, it’s also about her complicated relationship with Oregon. Best known for the music she makes under the moniker Japanese Breakfast, Zauner grew up in an isolated, woody area outside of Eugene, and wrote the first Japanese Breakfast songs while caring for her dying mother in her home state. For her virtual Powell’s talk about the new book, she’ll be joined in conversation with Ben Gibbard, which should be a novel experience, given that it will probably be the only Powell’s talk you’ll ever attend hosted by Death Cab For Cutie’s frontman. 8 pm Thursday, April 29. Register at powells.com.
Watch: Sasquatch
No, this engrossing three-part documentary from the team behind the Rajneesh-reviving phenomenon Wild Wild Country is not about hunting Bigfoot...well, maybe it is a little. A non-spoilery synopsis: In 1993, while working on a pot farm in Northern California’s fabled Emerald Triangle, two methed-up dudes burst into a cabin where David Holthouse was staying, babbling about finding three bodies torn to shreds among the crops and swearing that a Sasquatch did it. Now a successful journalist, Holthouse puts his reporting skills to use investigating his own memory, first confirming if he really heard what he thought he did, and if so, who was it that got killed, and who (or what) did it. In its examination of how myths are used to control reality, Sasquatch bears some links to HBO’s recent QAnon series—except much less dense, infuriating and, at half the runtime, less of a slog to get through. Streaming on Hulu.
Stream: Under the Overpass: Episode 4
Last fall, Resonance Ensemble started Under the Overpass, a series of short concerts performed and recorded under Portland bridges. This episode will offer a sneak peak of Sanctuaries, a much-anticipated, in-the-works “jazz opera” by veteran pianist Darrell Grant. Plus, it’s a collaboration with Third Angle Music, another organization offering some of the most innovative local pandemic programming. Resonance Ensemble, resonancechoral.org. Premieres Thursday, April 28 on YouTube.
Stream: Mt. Hood Jazz Festival
In a year when just about every concert has been canceled or postponed, one local institution is making a return. This spring, Mt. Hood Jazz Festival will hold its first event in over a decade—virtually, of course, but still. The lineup includes world-class musicians like Wycliffe Gordon, Gerald Watkins Jr. and local legend Mel Brown. Friday-Sunday, April 30-May 2. See mhcc.edu/NorthwestJazzBandFestival for lineup and streaming information.
Hear: Fearless (Taylor’s Version) by Taylor Swift
The bad news is that Folklore wasn’t the practice run for the re-recordings of her old catalog Taylor Swift had promised for years. The good news is that Fearless (Taylor’s Version) sounds just a little better than the thinly produced but stunningly written 2008 original—and that her now-31-year-old voice makes the contrast between her protagonists’ fantasies and the writer’s knowledge that love isn’t always a fairytale even more delicious. Stream on Spotify.