Re-post from joaochao.com

The buzz of springtime began during the third week of February in Portland, Oregon at the 68th annual Portland Home & Garden show at Expo Center.  Vendors began setting on Tuesday, the 18th, together with a dozen or so landscaping crews who created various indoor patio, garden and landscaping exhibitions. Continue reading “Home, Garden & Patio Spring Expos 2015”

Re-posted from joaochao.com

Known by local motorcycle industry enthusiasts as ‘The 1 Show,’ this event that began on February 13th was a weekend-long celebration of motorbike themed photography and artifacts, showcasing vintage and antique restorations juxtapose the region’s latest motorcycle industry best.

Taking place at a repurposed industrial warehouse space in inner southeast Portland, it drew a thrillingly hipster and Mad Max sort of montly crew.

The Portland-based motorcycle company Icon had a number of their latest specialty street style riders and an exceptional spread of quality promotional materials.

Front-of-house, music played throughout, adding to an already cinematic ambiance. Timeless, western country-style rock and roll (in the vein of Quicksilver Messenger Service) mixed with Venice beach thrash-era punk.

Friday night, one of several bands started at around 8:30. Thanks Nigel from the Portland band 1776 for that free beer claim stub, great show!

In the lot outside there was a minicycle derby, vendors and several blocks of portapotty. Late night there was an appearance by Sasquatch, who was seen riding a mini.

The event coincided whilst fashion week in other cities and so everyone was dressed really nicely in their biker gear and memorabilias.

Why isn’t the movie Tron on Netflix was a popular topic of conversation. That of course, and also Mad Max World (coming soon).

Slab City.

Keep your eyes peeled for tumbleweed, later that night the line went around the block!

Like The Portland One Show on Facebook, this event is not to miss!

Thanks readers, did you like this blog post? Let me know, leave a comment!

Fin.

Re-posted from joaochao.com

On East Burnside at Rontoms in Portland, at 8pm on Thursday evening David Miller – OPB’s host of Think Out Loud – welcomed guests to a festive, live special edition to discuss the future of marijuana in Oregon. A participant in the audience described their switch from “traditional, narcotic painkillers”, and David acknowledged a big question being what should happen to Oregon’s existing medicinal program after legalization in 2016.

In a state where there are currently 27 thousand medicinal prescriptions and forty seven thousand licensed growers, Oregonians said YES to Measure 91 by 56 percent this year. Invited to Think Out Loud, forum guest Hillary Bricken – free market, commercial lobbyist and editor of a cannabis law blog – described her clients’ current and future tax rate concerns and other challenges surrounding the work taking place in Salem where the laws are to be written.

Acknowledging how the medicinal and recreational systems can work together, Matt Walstatter – owner of a medical marijuana dispensary – explained differences between the needs of medicinal patients and retail consumers. Amy Margolis – shareholder at the Emerge Law Group and founder of Oregon Grower’s PAC – mentioned Dave Kopilak in attendance, an attorney from Portland who helped draft Oregon’s New Approach initiative.

Ushered a microphone after his response from the audience – that there’s “everything” wrong with an enterprise level, commercial marijuana industry – one Oregonian said how “marijuana is something you share, not something you sell.” The opportunity for cities and local counties in Oregon to piggy back tax revenues from the sale of recreational products was debated in terms of how and to what extent taxation will occur. Continue reading “Measure 91 Town Hall Portland, Oregon”

Re-post from joaochao.com

A group of natives and local area activists, at the site of the proposed coal exports terminal Coyote Island, were disappointed by water quality certification coordinators and the Oregon DEQ, at a public hearing on Tuesday evening in Boardman, Oregon. Herald as wage labor opportunity boon to rural, riverside community east of the Columbia River Gorge scenic area, the proposed industrial exports facility would lend to an upward spiraling 150 million tons of coal shipments traversing the Columbia River each year. Continue reading “Oregon DEQ Hearing: Morrow Pacific Coal”

Re-post from community discussion summary by joaochao.com

Portland, Ore. – I attended this event on Thursday evening and heard from guest speakers at a community discussion regarding drone control.

Continue reading “Portland, Oregon Talks Drone Control”

Re-post from joaochao.com

Ever curious to learn about the city of Charlotte? Here are six neighborhood videos I’ve recently made, care of and in collaboration with the charming folks at Dickens Mitchener & Associates

Myers Park

Southpark

Eastover

Plaza Midwood

Dilworth

Ballantyne

Re-post of public discussion summary from joaochao.com

Charlotte – Attendees at Tuesday evening’s public conversation regarding public water quality in Mecklenburg County discussed the community’s various concerns.  In recent months, the environmental impact of commercial activities adjoining the Catawba river watershed has revived conservationist alarm in the shape of zealous appeals to regulatory reform.  Reports state frequent, worrisome levels of toxic elements in proximity to the drinking water supply chain, caused by commercial development runoff and that of chemical engineering byproduct waste.  11 man-made “ponds” are connected by the Catawba River, the natural relaying cycle of which urban center infrastructures could not exist without. Continue reading “Charlotte, What’s In The Water?”

Re-posted from joaochao.com

CHICAGO – Published the 3rd week of October 2013, in an article titled A Scorching Jobs Desert, editorial staff at the Chicago Tribune called on readership and Chicagoland organizations to engage with discussion of the city’s future. The plethora of inauspicious, stark realities for many low income families here, predominate inadequate social support systems. Throughout a series of columns, writers at the Tribune have with urgent questions, bespoke alarm. The evening of Tuesday, March 25th, 2014 I attended one of their (Trib Nation) events titled Continue reading “Chicago Forward: Jobs for the Future”

Re-post from joaochao.com

Tuesday evening, the moderator of the WFAE’s public conversation on the future of Charlotte’s arts & cultural groups, Mark Rumsey, began the discussion of how the challenges of a longterm funding shortage are to be addressed. Presenting statistics of the Arts & Science Council funding crisis evincing the 50% fall in workplace giving atop a 40% decline in number of corporate donors from 2007 to 2011, Mark welcomed three panelists to the conversation who began discussing the increasing declines.

Kathleen Jameson, president of the Mint Museum, spoke of the difficulty budgeting to accommodate rising attendance while experiencing lesser demands for special event and rental services that have contributed to downturning revenues. Executive director at the Carolina Raptor Center, the United State’s largest raptor medical facility, Jim Warren acknowledged a substantial drop in annual funding that compromised nearly 50% of his staff, and that during which time the amount of visitors to the park and the number of birds in rehabilitation at the facility were rising, “we had less resources and were doing more.” Jim Riley, president of the Allen Tate real estate company and co-chair of the recently established Charlotte-Mecklenburg Cultural Life Task Force, emphasized the private sector’s pivotal role in the sustenance of arts and cultural endowments, refraining such as “the only thing that brings together diverse communities,” and encouraging us to decide as citizens what we’re going to do, and how we’re going to do it.

As the Cultural Life Task Force is charged to develop recommendations for the Arts & Science Council, Moderator Rumsey asked the panel to describe how new models of support might look, and a comment from the audience questioned why direct philanthropy is such a primary wellspring of mana and success to Charlotte’s cultural programming. From the audience in response, the director of Opera Carolina spoke up to explain the cultural sector as that which offers to connect people with their humanity, with centuries of artistic creativity, expressions of our very human emotions and who we are as people. Kathleen Jameson, having recently returned from Boston where she attended a national Arts Strategy Convention, expressed how with its community willing to embrace different kinds of thinking, Charlotte has an opportunity to craft a new model less dependent on private partnerships.

A woman who served on the ASC board for seven years, who has been away from Charlotte for seven years and flew from New York to be a part of the discussion, voiced her concern for maintaining morale throughout the funding debacle, fearing that in order to meet budget requirements the community will need settle with mediocrity. Pat Riley of the Cultural Life Task Force, regarding why their meetings after November will be closed sessions, said that they are not public officials, that they want creative freedom and to remain away from being clammed up by harbingers of the press. Kathleen corroborated that successful recovery is essential to creating a robust 21st century society, that the old way of integrating arts with the community has shifted. ASC interim-president Robert Bush answered audience concern for supporting individual artists, saying the ASC has continued to serve them through artist grants, that the ASC is an employer of sorts and that totaling the number of spin off jobs created by the cultural sector’s 4,000 is 6,200. Along with the Metropolitan Arts Council, the ASC is working towards a 5—10 year plan, the next meeting for which is scheduled for November 25th. The forum was held at the Duke Energy Theater of Spirit Square in uptown Charlotte

Re-post from joaochao.com

Companies in the film industry will soon be receiving 70 million from the State of North Carolina, thanks to an incentives program offered to bring their business to the state. At Discovery Place museum on Thursday, September 19th, 2023 On Location: The Charlotte Area Film Industry was an event hosted by the public radio station WFAE as part of their Public Conversations Series. The series is meant to convene Charlotte-area residents for the discussion of timely matters, hoping “to serve as a catalyst for community dialogue” and encourage “a stimulating and enlightening exchange of ideas.” The auditorium was filled to capacity with folks eager to learn more about and discuss the region’s film industry and debate the pros and cons of the incentives package. Moderator Ben Bradford from WFAE opened the ceremony by introducing his two first panel guests, John Schwert from Fourth Ward Productions, and Paige Johnston Thomas, of C&J Casting. The conversation provided an overview of facilities and personnel on top of recent film, television and commercial production activities happening close to Charlotte and elsewhere in North Carolina. The dialogue opened to questions from the audience several times throughout the evening.

Audience members identified by their work in association with the film industry were called on to explain their businesses. Given the big business the film industry has brought to the state in recent years, each contributed to a diorama of how nicely different ancillary markets have been colliding. The owner of a grand-format printer made comments about how production companies filming on the east coast are ordering less from back home in Los Angeles, adding “we have been becoming the east coast Los Angeles.” John Schwert spoke of places they go for the likes of big generators and cranes, keying in on how there is no one-stop-shop for the type of “bigger film problems, smaller [budget] films don’t have.” Mrs. Thomas, who has worked in casting for over twenty years, said “I never thought I would say this: Thank God for NASCAR,” telling that of the casting for commercial advertisements her office does, nearly seventy percent relates to NASCAR. Paige said for a company like Miller Light, it’s a “big New York or Los Angeles ad agency coming here and we cast everything except the driver.” In Mrs. Thomas’ response to general topics of what we have here in Charlotte she spoke of vivacity, saying “North Carolina has become a new hot market, we’re getting a lot of calls and repeated calls from customers we worked with years ago, we’re constantly busy and the actors are working.”

While there are more and more opportunities opening up for local actors to move through the ranks, for local crew and personnel to fill lead roles, larger film companies are still bringing their production leads and big names from out of town. Insignificant Others was mentioned as entirely North Carolina cast, highlighting the on-going talent surge occurring since more films have started being shot here. Several questions from the audience during the first panel were from actors, about things like how to improve the presentation of their auditions and the level of opportunities for African-American females. An individual asked if casting is influenced by whether or not an actor is a member of the Screen Actors Guild (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ Union), another asked if in the foreseeable future there might be more post-production opportunities remaining in the state following principal cinematography, and a gentleman who owns a music and audio production studio in Charlotte asked about the nature of opportunities for audio engineers.

Mrs. Thomas suggests going to an audition “in the essence of your character,” that casting agencies “want to feel they are hiring someone who embodies that character.” Mrs. Thomas acknowledged the importance of diversity especially in commercials, and that throughout the business “the African-American race is just as strong as any other.” Where Mrs. Thomas explained that being a member of the union has no effect on casting, again that it is about whether the person can fill the role successfully, Mr. Schwert pointed out that potential issues might arise during the production of a film and it is not looked at during casting. Mr. Schwert named Concentrix Audio as one that has worked closely on sound design for several major features, explaining how companies will look for an audio house to handle the soundtracks for an entire project. It was interesting to hear that Homeland and Hunger Games built their own sound stages in Charlotte. He introduced the term runway productions, as such became known in Hollywood when packages were offered by different parts of California (paid hotel, etc.) and more productions began choosing to film outside the 100-mile radius of Hollywood & Vine.

During the second part of the conversation, panelist NC State Representative Becky Carney of Mecklenburg County, alongside panelist Jon Sanders, a John Locke Foundation economist, both held court on respectively opposing sides of the table and both offered frank, earnest arguments. The second half elucidated various arguments for and against the legislation, bifurcated opinions providing various pieces of inferential evidence as to how the program proffers the state. Passionate questions and remarks from the audience filled the second half of the conversation, attesting to many a personal take and angles regarding with uncertainty whether the industry would continue to thrive here without the incentives. North Carolina, competes with 36 others states that also offer film industry incentives. Currently, and what will be reevaluated leading up to when when this program expires in 2015, when a film company spends $250,000 or more (in North Carolina) they qualify for a 25% cost payback. Georgia offers the most, a redeemable 35%, and in the early nineties the first state to offer such a program was Louisiana. The economist Mr. Sanders, posited the hypothetical of why you might choose not to cut corporate taxes in order to grow the economy, saying that “tax breaks increase investment.” A woman from the North Carolina Film Office floated the question of the amount going back to tax revenue, stating that the current estimate is 67 million out of the 110 million the state has paid back since 2007.

North Carolina Representative Kelly Alexander, also in attendance, described the film industry as an unprecedented form of manufacturing, a unique and invaluable player stimulating various levels of the local and regional economy that invariably profits a diverse sphere of businesses. Representative Alexander spoke comically, introducing himself with relevant information on his second job, “I’m prejudiced as a funeral director, one of my cars has been in a film, but I haven’t” and talking about how “the incentives are to develop an industry as opposed to something specific like a whale skinning factory.” A Charlotte businessman and the owner of Reelworks Studios (Homeland dallies) stated his confidence based on his knowledge of film financing that without the incentives companies would not come here, period. A large contingency of the audience at the event on Thursday showed support for continuing what the state has already offered the big film biz. The voice of different actors, advocates of the arts, business owners and industry experts contributed to the conversation, stressing the importance of this bill for retaining an active film industry that promotes the sustenance of culture within North Carolina.