Hannah Wallace, Author at Sunnyside Neighborhood Association

Getting to Know Your Neighbors

Q&A with Anthony Myint, Executive Director of Zero Foodprint

In the midst of the pandemic, Anthony Myint and his wife Kara Leibowitz left San Francisco’s bustling Mission District and moved to Portland with their daughter Aviva. They settled in Sunnyside to be close to family and with the hopes of starting a garden. Myint, a former chef, is passionate about local, regeneratively-farmed food. Years earlier, he and Leibowitz had two of the most talked-about restaurants in San Francisco—Mission Chinese Restaurant and The Perennial. Knowing that agriculture and the food system are responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, they strove to make The Perennial carbon neutral. They did a great job but after a few years, they realized that if they really wanted to change the food system (and they did!), they needed to incentivize farmers to change their practices. In 2015, Myint co-founded Zero Foodprint, an environmentally-focused nonprofit that makes it easier for farmers to switch to regenerative farming practices. Zero Foodprint invites restaurants, grocery stores, wineries and other businesses committed to reversing climate change to accelerate regeneration. Most businesses accomplish this at no cost, by adding an optional 1% surcharge to consumers’ bills. That money is then pooled into a ZFP coffer to be equitably distributed to farmers via grants. (It’s akin to rounding up your bill in the checkout line at the grocery store to donate to the food bank.) ZFP is active in four states, including Oregon, and has affiliates in Asia and Scandinavia.

Zero Foodprint, which has so far given away $7.5 million to over 500 regenerative farming projects, won the James Beard Humanitarian of the Year Award in 2020. We talked with Myint about the importance of accelerating regenerative agriculture, the cool Oregon projects that are underway, and why “voting with your fork” is not enough. And what about that garden? It’s flourishing with decorative plants, euphorbia volunteers, and, in summer, cherry tomatoes and berries.

How long have you lived in Sunnyside?

Anthony: Three and a half-years.

What do you love about Sunnyside?

Anthony: I love the community vibes. We came from the Mission District and our reason for moving was to garden, and to be more involved in the community. In San Francisco, we had a tiny backyard, and it was pretty shady.

Tell me about Zero Foodprint. In a nutshell, what is it doing?

Anthony: It’s a nonprofit that enables every citizen, business, and government to accelerate regeneration. We’re doing that by making it possible for contributions to fund projects at farms & ranches like planting cover crops, switching from fertilizer to compost, reducing tillage, planting trees and perennials, and installing fencing for managed grazing.

New Seasons, Organically Grown, and Bob’s Red Mill have gotten involved?

Anthony: Yes and also Tillamook. They all have made and are making various contributions—New Seasons is going big on regeneration. They’re each funding regenerative ag projects in different ways. We have already funded eight projects and we just started the final phases of the next grant; another four or five will be funded. Two restaurants are contributing 1%: Hayward (in wine country) and Astera (Aaron Adams’ new restaurant).

Tell me about some of these projects.

Anthony: There are three projects with Tillamook producers that are implementing riparian restoration—planting new trees and willows along a creek that will provide shade. We are funding a compost application project with a producer in the Bob’s Red Mill supply chain. And Muddy Ranch, which is a part of the New Season supply chain, used the grant to implement a grazing technology that uses a radio collar on the cows so you don’t need a lot of physical fencing. (It beeps if they go too far.) That’s a really great project because it’s around 20,000 acres.

You mentioned that some wineries in California have signed on—Mariah vineyards in Mendocino and Massican in Napa. Are they donating a percentage of sales?

Anthony: Those two are sending 1% of sales. There is also a winery in Colorado called Carboy, and they are participating with 1% from their tasting rooms.

Have any Oregon wineries signed on?

Anthony: Not yet. But I think there’s a lot of room for growth in the wine industry.

Overall there still may be a disconnect where the food system, the public and consumers don’t know that they can make a direct intervention in agriculture. A lot of us, me included, have been trained to make better choices and then hope that farming will change—we’ve been trying to make the change happen by changing eating. But it’s too slow. The whole organic movement is just 1% of acreage after 50 years. So I think part of our mission and our message is: We can change farming directly. We don’t have to change our eating and hope that things will change someday. We can just change it now.

Not enough of us are “voting with our forks.”

Anthony: And also, that wouldn’t actually help a farmer make the transition to more regenerative practices.

I’m surprised that more Portland-area restaurants haven’t signed up to participate. Especially at PDX!

Anthony: What you’re getting at is fundamental; capitalism and business-as-usual is to not pay anything for the environment. So for any individual to make that decision, “I’m gonna raise my prices and give that money away” is a pretty radical act, even though it is very do-able. I think the airport would be the perfect organizing structure. They could do it and it could be part of their marketing and messaging. In a way, it should be central to tourism and hospitality anyway to benefit the community—even just slightly.

If you want to give to Zero Foodprint, go to www.zerofoodprint.org or visit Hayward (www.haywardrestaurant.com) or Astera (1407 SE Belmont) for dinner.

Getting to Know Your Neighbors

Q&A with Dresden de Vera, SNA Board Member-At-Large

If you’ve attended a Board meeting recently or stopped by our booth at the Belmont Street Fair, you’ve likely met Dresden de Vera. De Vera, 35, joined the SNA Board last May. He moved to Portland in 2015 and eventually landed in Sunnyside, which he chose, in part, because he leads his Throw Snakes Tours bar crawl along Hawthorne. Dresden is known for his gregarious personality and positive energy. And he’s already assumed some important roles on the Board. He runs both of the SNA’s social media channels (Facebook and Instagram, where you should follow us at @Sunnysidepdxna) and he’s also the Board’s liaison to the Hawthorne Boulevard Business Association. We talked to him about his fierce love of Portland, his past as a social worker, and his ideas for the future of the SNA.

What is it about Sunnyside that attracted you to live here?

Dresden: It was always where I was naturally magnetized to. Everything I wanted to do was here—Laurelhurst Park, Mount Tabor, cool bars. A lot of my friends would either be in the area or want to hang out here. It just made sense.

Tell me about your “weird bar crawl with a fanatical local” which you advertise on Airbnb Experiences. What year did you start the tour and how did you get the idea to do it?

Dresden: I started it in 2018. When I was traveling abroad, I did a bunch of bar crawls, and I thought, “This is fun and I could do this better!” They would take us to locations, but that would be it. They wouldn’t try to stir conversation between people. I was a huge fanboy of Portland. I’d tell my closest friends about how Portland is heaven on earth. I wanted to be able to talk about how great this place was all the time, and then I just combined it with my love for travelers and leading people through cool places.

You call your tour “Throw Snakes”—what does that mean?

Dresden: Throwing snakes means doing something memorable and unexpected.

Where does that come from?

Dresden: I read this column that was entitled, “How to make the most of your time at your first semester of college.” The columnist said, “Play fewer video games and throw more snakes at things.” He explains that what he means is: Be bold. And what could be more bold than throwing a snake? You could get bitten by the snake, but that’s just the consequence of doing something bold. There’s risk, and what is a good life but a collection of bold moments?

We live in a culture where it’s really difficult to be seen, and it’s to the point where being seen is being bold. The snake that a guest throws on a tour is being seen. I like to curate the experience in such a way where people know that it’s a safe space to be themselves. One of the recurring reviews that I receive is, “It feels like you’re hanging out with old friends.”

You mentioned earlier that you’ve met thousands of people since launching the tours—and renting a room out on Airbnb.

Dresden: I’ve met 3,000 people over the past six years.

My tours are an experience of being immersed in the values of Portland. There’s this idea by [British-American author] Alan Watts—“The menu is not the meal.” And I feel like what a lot of tour guides do is they give you the menu. And I think that the meal of Portland, the experience of Portland, is to be vulnerable and your authentic self and to realize that it can be accepted by strangers. There’s a sense of kinship and camaraderie that comes from that that’s very unique to Portland.

Tell me about the Day Oddities tour.

Dresden: I take people to see more of a buffet of locations along Mississippi. I take people to eccentric art shops, to oddly-themed bars, to hidden cafes. I take them to food carts that were featured on Netflix. It really paints a picture of what Portland offers.

You used to work for Transitions Project homeless shelter, right?

Dresden: I’ve always been in social work. I was working with youth at the Boys and Girls Club in California. When I got here, I wanted to continue in social work and what was available were homeless shelters. I did that for about five years.

What did you do at the shelters?

Dresden: The first half of my stint there, I was a residential advocate for Doreen’s Place, which is a hybrid program where half of the beds are for veterans. It wasn’t just a free bed—you had to be working toward self-sufficiency with the help of a case manager. That was more of an uplifting shelter.

The latter half of my time at Transitions Projects was supervising a low-barrier shelter, which, at the time, was the largest in Oregon. There were 200 beds. At this shelter, you didn’t have to be making progress. And that was kind of demoralizing because you saw people who just wanted to stop falling, and they didn’t have hope to climb because in their minds, they would climb to a position where they would fall from it again.

Did you burn out on that kind of work?

Dresden: It was definitely humbling, and it taught me a lot about leadership. But it ultimately led to wanting to go back to my roots of helping youth, because with youth, there’s still a lot of hope. I felt my influence would go farther.

Over the past couple years, I also picked up work for Weird Portland United, building their social media. Over those two years, their following grew by over 16,000 people.

What do you think could use improvement in Sunnyside?

Dresden: I’m glad that we have a graffiti abatement program. I just worry that the businesses are being discouraged by the types of vandalism that happen to their storefronts.

And I do think that mental health has been an issue of people who seemingly are houseless and causing a scene on the street. But I do think that investing in programs like Portland Street Response is important.

Our Street Fair [the Hawthorne Street Fair] is awesome but I would love to see more community events. I know that the upper end of Hawthorne has Volume Bomb Fest—a punk rock concert where they have several bars collaborate to host different shows. I’d like to see Volume Bomb be a street event.

What do you like about serving on the Board of the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association?

Dresden: I love that I get to interview local businesses and get a more rooted sense of the magic surrounding the entrepreneurs of the city. I do think a lot of them are driven by passion and by good networking etiquette. There seems to be a trend of a supportive community behind a successful business.

Portlanders love to support their small local businesses.

Dresden: This contributes to the idea that Portland is just a self aware place. And one of the parts of being self aware is realizing that when you prioritize convenience, you sacrifice community, and community is more important than convenience.

Getting to Know Your Neighbors

Q&A with Nate Lown of Nate’s Oatmeal Cookies

Nate Lown, 35, opened Nate’s Oatmeal Cookies on Belmont last June. Lown grew up in Southern California and moved to Portland in 2012 to attend Portland State University to study music. He fell in love with Sunnyside when he was a bartender at the Liquor Store. Though he lives in the Rocky Butte neighborhood, he thinks Sunnyside is a perfect spot for his business. “I love ingredients and I love ingredients with integrity,” says Lown, who uses all organic ingredients, Fair Trade chocolate, and makes his own vegan butter for his cookie dough. “Because, to me, that’s worth it. You know? I’m selling a $4 cookie but you’re getting quality.” We chatted about why oatmeal cookies get short shrift, the perks of a niche business, and why Belmont is a great spot for a cookie shop.

Why did you choose Sunnyside?

Nate: I’ve always loved this neighborhood. I used to bartend across the street, so I was always here. I was looking around for retail space, and I know Ashley from Mix Tape. She was like, “You know, the spot next to me is vacant. You should check it out.” It wasn’t even on the market.

Did you have to do much to fix it up?

Nate: We built a little “pony wall” [between the production kitchen and the public-facing area], we redid the floors and put on a coat of paint. That was pretty much it. These [gestures to the cookie case] are all on wheels. I wanted it to be really modular.You know how it is nowadays – people love having pop-ups. So when I was designing this place, I wanted it to be collaborative and flexible.

Why did you decide to focus on oatmeal cookies?

Nate: When the pandemic hit, I was bartending at two places. Let’s just say the pandemic changed the course of my work in the service industry. I’ve always loved food, being in the kitchen and coming up with new ideas—innovating. It started with my mom’s recipe for the raisin pecan oatmeal cookies. I said, “Mom, send me that recipe so I can make them” in early COVID days. So she sent me the recipe and a box with all the ingredients. I started making them and then I started selling them to friends and family on Instagram.

But a lot of people don’t like raisins. So I made a chocolate chip version. And then once I did chocolate chip, I did a peanut butter one. And then I did a cherry almond one. I got this idea of, “I love oatmeal cookies and they’re really good—in all sorts of flavors.” And you know, the more I peeked around online, I realized no one was doing a bunch of different flavors of oatmeal cookies. Nobody does that! The oatmeal cookie always gets shoved to the side. But people love ‘em.

After that, I got into the Beaverton Farmers Market. I did Hillsdale as well. Then I thought, “Let’s do brick and mortar!” I just needed to find the right place. This place is a great deal. And this building was built in 1890. It was the first Post Office of Sunnyside. [This space and the space that Mix Tape was in were the Post Office.]

Are all your cookies gluten-free?

Nate: Half of my cookies are gluten-free and half aren’t. I say, “We have gluten-free options, let me know if you want to know what they are.” [For the record, they are: Trailblazer, Triple chocolate and Snickerdoodle.] I don’t like too much signage that says gluten-free and vegan. It turns people away. They are moister than most gluten free cookies—not dry and sandy. I’ve worked really hard on my recipes to give the gluten-free ones a really good texture. People have been blown away with the results.

Oatmeal cookies are such a niche. Do you think your business will thrive?

Nate: We have tea and coffee, too, because people were asking for it. But staying focused is important to me. And, it means that there’s less food waste. I have almost no food waste, which is great.

Because you can estimate how many cookies you’ll sell?

Nate: That and we’re on Too Good to Go—that’s an app where anytime I have cookies at the end of the day I can post that. All these people who have the app can get them at 1/3 of the price. They can spend $5 and get $15 of food. And then I make granookie! That is, I make granola with the day-old cookies. So you can put it on your yogurt and have it for breakfast? Yep. I sell that in the store.

How many types of cookies do you have?

Nate: I have six kinds. I sell a new sample box of 12, so you get two of each. My goal with the niche business is that people really think of Nate’s Oatmeal cookies as something they can get for their party, their event, their wedding, etc. If you want to get something that’s a little bit healthier, a little bit better for you, you can get Nate’s Oatmeal Cookies. We use all organic ingredients, no animal products, no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives. We put a lot of the good stuff in there—nuts, fruits, chocolate. And instead of getting a box of donuts, something where everyone will have a stomach ache afterwards, I wanna be the place where people are like, “We should get something healthier this time.”

What’s the Trailblazer cookie?

Nate: It’s hazelnuts, almonds, dark chocolate, cranberries, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and — it’s like a handful of trail mix.

And triple chocolate?

Nate: We use three different type of chocolate chips – 70%, semi-sweet chocolate, and “milk chocolate” that’s made with rice milk.

You are dairy free?

Nate: Yeah. We make our own vegan butter from scratch. I use organic coconut oil, organic sunflower oil, sunflower lecithin, green pea milk. It’s made from peas—it has more protein. We go to all this trouble because the vegan butters out there use hydrogenated palm oil and canola oil, both of which are highly processed.

What do you like about Sunnyside?

Nate: I like the community. I like that there are always families walking around because you have the school right there. It’s just such a great little neighborhood!

What do you think could use improvement in Sunnyside?

Nate: I like it. It’s got its charm, you know? Nothing is meant to be perfect. If Sunnyside were an oatmeal cookie, it would be homemade. You know? Maybe it would have a cherry spilling out of the side or some chocolate. Maybe it wouldn’t be a perfect circle. But it’s perfect with its imperfections.

Nate’s Oatmeal Cookies, 3308 SE Belmont St., is open Thurs.-Monday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Stop by and grab a cookie and welcome Nate to the neighborhood!