The Sunnyside Newsletter is looking for a new Delivery Coordinator! If you enjoy this community publication and would like to join the team that produces and distributes the newsletter, this might be the job for you. As Delivery Coordinator, you will oversee the monthly distribution of newsletters to the delivery volunteers, recruit new volunteers to fill gaps in the distribution, and update the list of volunteers and their assigned routes for each section of Sunnyside. This is a fun way to meet lots of lovely people in our neighborhood while serving the community! If you’re interested, or to learn more about what’s involved, contact Diana Deumling at [email protected].
Author: SNA
Getting to Know Your Neighbors
Q&A with Troy Douglass, co-owner of Back to the Basket.
Troy Douglass, who is half Native American (from the Grand Ronde tribe) and half Filipino, was born in Portland and raised in the suburbs in Rivergrove. Growing up, his parents loved the Blazers. Troy was always watching games on BlazerVision; he remembers manually changing the cable box from channel 3 all the way up channel 52 [BlazerVision] to get his fix. He grew up in the ‘90s, which was the Jordan era. Not only did he love the game of basketball, he was good at it. He played throughout his childhood and at Lakeridge High School and also played on Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball teams. He currently lives in downtown Portland with his partner, Sydney, and their son, Taj, who also loves basketball. He and his friend Jalen Thomas started Back to the Basket in 2020.
What’s the story of this place?
This store has been around for four years. Actually, October 12th is our official four year anniversary. But really, it’s allowing my 12-year-old self to stay alive. This is exactly what my inner 12 year old wanted. This store is telling the story of basketball from the perspective of someone that’s becoming past their prime. That was the original ethos of the business, which is why it was first called “Ball Was Life.” That name was a tongue-in-cheek satire of the name “Ball is Life,” which is a big company in Los Angeles. They ended up sending us a cease and desist letter because they said our name was too similar so we had to pivot—get the basketball reference?—and change our name to Back to the Basket.
You mentioned the ethos was basketball from the perspective of someone on the decline?
A lot of times, at least in athletics, you have that reflection moment when you look back at your career. So a lot of the stuff that we do is vintage, old-school stuff.
What is it about basketball culture that’s special?
I think it’s transcended the world. I think the game of basketball has an ability to connect people. I went to the Philippines in 2015 and played barefoot in Manila. On the court at four o’clock, the hoops get pushed out to the middle of the street, and the jeepneys and the tricycles move around the game. They respect the game so much that the flow of traffic moves around the game. It was the most beautiful thing I ever experienced, just being in the middle of the city and watching everything give way to basketball.
How did this store come to be?
I had another store at Lloyd Center that I opened in 2018. It was called Cultural Blends. I sold sports gear—football and baseball and streetwear type stuff—but I was just filling the space because it was 1200 square feet. I learned I only really liked selling things that I feel passionate about. I’ve been to Timbers games but I couldn’t tell you the Timbers players. But I was selling Timbers gear, you know? I didn’t feel good about selling it. Someone would come up and be like, “Oh man, this player, blah, blah, blah.” And I was like, “Yeah….” I say that to say I didn’t like that feeling. I just wanted to focus on things that I was truly passionate about. And the game of basketball—I speak that language fluently. So I felt comfortable opening up a buy-sell-trade store that was focused on something that I was truly passionate about when I was 12 and what I’m passionate about now. That love of the game hasn’t gone away.
What is it about Portland that contributes to your success?
I think the eclectic nature of the entire city. I think this shop bodes well in Portland because the city has a basketball culture. You really feel the passion, and you can really sense that basketball nerds live here. I think that bodes well because it’s cool, but it’s also not pretentious cool.
What do you love about being in Sunnyside?
Oh, I love it because you have a super eclectic neighborhood and I think we fit in well. We’re the basketball guys, but we’re not the basketball guys who get shunned, you know, like, “Oh man, those jocks!” It’s not like that. We are a part of the community, and we definitely represent basketball in a way that I think bodes well for the future.
So you’re trying to help locals by giving basketball fans a bigger canvas on which to practice their alternative selves.
One hundred percent. This is a place where a basketball geek can nerd out, a sneaker head can nerd out. This is a place where a lover of the game could be like, “Oh, this place is cool!” and it’s definitely a good place to build community.
Tell me about the communities you’re developing.
We host an event called Hoops in the Park. It’s basically pickup basketball but with nodes of networking. We encourage people to shake hands, to talk to each other, and really build a network. I used to go to networking events, and there was a lot of thinking like, “Are you going to be of value to me?” I thought that wasn’t the right approach. Instead, I want an approach of getting to know somebody, what they’re interested in, and then ask, “What do you do?” Human first, endeavor second.
Human first, endeavor second. Dang, that’s tight!
That’s the most important thing. You’ve got to know the human because… I don’t know, that’s the way. I don’t know how to describe it, but that’s the way.
You can follow Back to the Basket on Instagram at @backtothebasketdotcom
The store is at 3405 SE Hawthorne Blvd. It is open Mon–Sat. 11–7 p.m. and Sun 11–5 p.m.
Meet the Neighborhood Association Board
Chris Waldmann, President
My wife, Erika, and I moved to Portland a bit unexpectedly in 2017 when her father needed some help after a health crisis. We first rented a house on SE Washington and 36th as a transitional space, and we quickly learned that this was the absolute perfect neighborhood for us to resettle in after years on the east coast. My vision is pretty bad, so I don’t drive or bike (much), so I’ve always lived in very walkable neighborhoods with good transit options, but Sunnyside really takes it to a new level! I love living in a true 15-minute neighborhood with tons of locally-owned retail and restaurants as well as access to local parks. I joined the SNA Board during the pandemic not only to help the community I love, but also to create new friendships and connections. It’s been a great experience and I am proud to serve my third year as president. I live and work out of our graceful 1901 fixer-upper with Erika, our dog Mojie, and my father-in-law in our basement apartment.
Hannah Wallace, Vice President
I moved to Portland (and Sunnyside) in 2010 from Brooklyn, NY, and have chosen to stay in Sunnyside ever since. As someone who has never owned a car, the walkability of the neighborhood appealed to me and I loved—love!—its proximity to parks, buses, and restaurants, all of which reminded me of my Brooklyn neighborhood in Williamsburg. I got involved in the SNA in early 2021 when the Sunnyside Shower Project took off and then-president Ash Hester asked if I’d write a column for the newsletter (“Getting to Know your Neighbors.”) That May I ran for, and was elected to, the Board because, I figured, “I’m already doing the work!” Three years later, I’m still on the Board and have so enjoyed getting to know all my neighbors. I’m a freelance journalist—I write about regenerative agriculture, climate, wine, and social justice issues. I live with my husband, Don, who is also a journalist (and editor of the Northwest Labor Press) and who is sadly allergic to cats. (Which is why I befriend all the cats of Sunnyside.)
Eric Miller, Treasurer
Sunnyside has been my home for about two years. I love the architecture, people and convenience of the neighborhood. I enjoy the access to the coast for beach strolls and mountains for hiking. I love the mix of homes and stores, new and old houses and apartment buildings, and ability to spend most of my day without using a car. I also like all the interactions I have when just going for a walk – that’s rare in many American neighborhoods. After living in Dallas (Texas) for many years, I look forward to the short days and rainy weather. I’ve spent most of my career in communications, writing sentences and reorganizing words, keeping people on the same page and promoting everything from real estate to vintage markets. I live with my husband, Lin, mother-in-law, Zhen, three cats and a dog. You might find me at a coffee shop, at Laurelhurst Park, working on our old house, at a concert or one of the many art openings around Portland.
Crystal Bauer Feldman, Secretary
I relocated to Portland from Los Angeles where I worked with celebrities including Julian Marley, Mariah Carey, and Bobby Brown Jr. I have a background in marketing and public relations, but after the birth of my son, I decided to pursue a career in education. Today I work in Special Education at Lincoln High School and also write for Oregon Kid magazine. I have experience serving on several Boards. I also serve on the Design Team for the Center for Black Student Excellence. I directed a film shown at the Portland Film Festival—The Strangest Bridge in Portland—created with, and starring, students at Rosa Parks Elementary. I have a passion for social justice, racial equity, and for amplifying voices that can often be overlooked by traditional success stories. I hope to continue my work across the communities I live in, work in, and dutifully serve.
Dresden de Vera, Director-at-Large
I’ve lived in Sunnyside for four years and have been bouncing around Portland for nine. I make my income befriending travelers over good food, stiff drinks, and cool sights. I started Throw Snakes Tours as a means of signal boosting the heavenliness of this city to the larger world. I’m joining the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association to create more reasons to Love Portland! Specifically, I want to work on having a more intimate understanding of the businesses on Hawthorne and I want to be involved in creating community events. I’m envious of what the Overlook Neighborhood Association has accomplished with Porchfest, and I love the idea of Sunnyside having its own signature event!
Andru Morgan, Director-at-Large
I’m husband to Regina Morgan and father to our four young adult children and a fur kid named Seven. Regina and I are the founders of the Naturally Beautiful Project, a non-profit organization located in the heart of the Sunnyside community. I’m passionate about community service, teaching children media, and making documentaries. Aside from serving as a member of this Board, I also serve on the FLIP Children’s Museum and the NW Museum of Cartoon Arts Boards.
Note: we did a Q&A with Andru in the January 2024 issue of this newsletter.
Tim Quayle, Director-at-Large
My family and I relocated from California to Portland in 2019, and we lucked out in finding a home in Sunnyside within our price range. From Day One we were enamored with everything about our new community—the eclectic blend of housing (including beautiful early 20th century homes), the shaded, tree-lined streets, the close proximity to amenities, and the warm, welcoming nature of our neighbors. I love that the neighborhood provides a mix of rental and owner-occupied homes, as I feel strongly that stellar communities like Sunnyside should be available to folks at all income levels. I’ve spent much of my career working in public transportation, and one of things that drew my family to Sunnyside was its walk/bike-ability and excellent transit service. My goal in joining the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association Board is to enhance these aspects even further. While Sunnyside offers a variety of fantastic travel options, there is still much to be done to improve safety for all road users. I am eager to collaborate with fellow residents to promote traffic safety, particularly on high-risk routes like Cesar Chavez, and make our community even better for everyone.
News From Sunnyside Environmental School (SES)
Hello neighbors! This is the first in a series of columns that will report on news and events from your friendly neighborhood school, Sunnyside Environmental.
Located on SE Salmon St. between SE 34th and 35th, SES is a K-8 “focus option” neighborhood school. We guarantee admission to all elementary and middle school-aged children within the school boundary, and also welcome many students from other neighborhoods who gain admission through the district lottery. As a “focus option” school we provide a plethora of place-based learning experiences both on and off the school grounds, in addition to traditional academics. This includes visits to parks, rivers, and forests throughout the metro area, as well as to places such as OMSI, SCRAP, the Bird Alliance of Oregon, and a variety of art museums.
On campus, students are able to learn in the garden, cook in the community kitchen, and have weekly art, physical education, and library classes. Our teachers use the Scottish Storyline method in their curriculum, which uses a child’s natural enthusiasm for imagination and story-making to teach anything from science to socio-emotional skills. For example, my elementary-aged children have learned about animal habitats by helping (imaginary) lost baby squirrels decide where to live, and learned about emotional regulation by creating superhero personas with strengths such as “grit” and “mindfulness” who combat villains such as “Glass Man” (who gets disproportionately upset) and “Rock Brain” (who doesn’t like to listen to other people’s ideas). In other words, the Storyline method provides an opportunity for active learning. SES is a lovely learning community.
We welcomed students back on August 27th and it’s exciting to have the hallways full again. We have (slightly) different hours this year; school still begins at 8:45 am, but K-5 releases at 3:15 p.m., while the middle school gets out at 3:30 p.m., so be prepared for a little bit of traffic in the vicinity of the school around those times. Our school is closed to the public during school hours, but after 3:30 p.m. the yard becomes a public park, so feel free to stop by, walk your dog, have your kids play on the playground, and enjoy the space after that time.
If you see a group of school-aged kids with adults biking through the neighborhood in the direction of SES on a Wednesday morning, it’s probably Bike Bus! SES’s Bike Bus is led by SES parents, who organize groups of kids to ride bikes together to school on a weekly basis. This fosters a sense of camaraderie, helps reduce carbon emissions, and encourages kids to embrace cycling as a fun and social activity. SES’s Bike Bus meets at 8:20 a.m. on Wednesday mornings at four different intersections in the neighborhood, and then cycles to school. Each route is led by an experienced adult and SES students of all ages participate. Some SES students join on their own, while others bring one or more of their adults with them.
We will be having our first fundraising event of the year, Run Walk Move, at the SES campus on Friday, October 4th from 9 – 11:30 am. This is a super fun event that many students look forward to every year. Kids are grouped by age, then run, walk, or move in laps around the school yard. For those who would prefer to dance, we play energizing music while instructors lead dance routines on a separate part of the blacktop. Many teachers and family members stand on the side of the run/walk/move route cheering students on, waving streamers, and providing water and snacks, while others join in the running, walking, moving, and dancing. If you know a SES student and would like to sponsor their participation in this event, they would be very happy to receive your donation. Money raised through Run Walk Move is used to support our garden and field study programs.
As a public school, our unfortunate reality is that we are always fundraising. If you are interested in supporting your neighborhood’s place-based public K-8 learning community, we would be beyond grateful.
Donations to either the Run Walk Move event or the Back to School Ask fundraiser can be made at sesptsa.square.site. Thank you for helping us educate local children and for being a larger part of our wonderful school community.
Have questions about SES? Email [email protected] and maybe I’ll answer them in a future column!
Getting to Know Your Neighbors
Q&A with Ashley Doremire at Mix Tape
An Alaska native, Ashley Doremire moved to Sunnyside in 2012 to focus on her leatherwork business. A desire to expand her business and connect more deeply with the Sunnyside community led to her opening the consignment shop Mix Tape in 2018. (For those of you under 25, a “mix tape” was a compilation of favorite songs recorded on a cassette tape and usually given to a friend or lover.) Mix Tape has since grown to be a cornerstone of Sunnyside, offering art, vintage pieces, community resources and more.
How long have you run Mix Tape?
Six years.
Why did you choose Sunnyside for Mix Tape?
I always ended up in this area because it made me feel like it was a small town in a city. Even when you don’t know your neighbors, people still recognize you. If you don’t know their name, they still say hi. I just love this area and I always find myself coming back to it.
Could you tell me a little bit about Mix Tape and what you guys do?
We are a collective space; we have 168 vendors. Anything handmade, 70% goes back to the artist and the rest goes to keeping us up and running. For everything else, 60% goes back to the vendor unless I have to repair the item. I do leather work and repair; I fix leather jackets, zippers, purses, straps, etc., and it’s a great way to give back to the community. I started off being an artist in Portland and a lot of stores take half. I could never survive off that and I didn’t understand how other artists could either. You can’t invest in yourself when you’re struggling to pay your bills. So when I opened Mix Tape, I just really wanted to be able to give back as much as possible. We also host pop-ups, mostly on the weekends, and then the artist gets to keep their full profits for the day. We’re just really trying to change the way consignment is done in Portland.
What makes Mix Tape different from other stores or consignment shops in Portland?
We definitely try to be size-inclusive and help every person who comes in. We really pride ourselves on having something for everyone. From teenagers to older adults, we get a wide demographic, and I feel like it’s definitely a safe space. We also get a lot of people from the neighborhood who come to us when they are concerned with things in the neighborhood. Recently, a group of kids came in and they said this man was following them at the bus stop. They knew exactly where to go to feel safe; it made me really happy to be here for them. That being said, often times when houseless people need shoes or resources they’ll come to the store and they know that I’ll help them or point them in the right direction for, like, a cooling center or whatever their need may be.
So would you say that Mix Tape isn’t just a consignment shop but also a sort of community hub, or somewhere people in Sunnyside can go for resources or support?
Yes. All of our vendors come from the neighborhood except for two, and they’re both people who lived in the neighborhood and moved away.
Did you always have a dream of making a space like this?
It kind of came naturally. I was working at a restaurant and they were struggling to pay their employees. I was doing leather work at that point, just making stuff out of my house. Ihad a Craigslist ad, so people would come over (to buy leather), and my friend was just like,“This is nuts. You’re letting strangers in your house to do leatherwork? This is very dangerous. You’re a woman. You live alone.” We were walking down Belmont Street one day as we normally did and I passed this little store next to Belmont Books. (Belmont Books wasn’t even there yet – it was just a little empty space next to Hoda’s.) My friend called the number for me, and said, “You need to do this.” And it just kind of took off. I never envisioned Mix Tape to be what it is… I was thinking it would be more for leather at the time. I was like, ‘How cool would it be to have a little leather shop where it’s just, like, tons of different leather workers?’ and my friends were like, ‘Oh, kind of like a mix tape.’ and the name just stuck. But it’s really grown. When we first started, we had 12 vendors. Then we moved across the street and it allowed us to expand. Hopefully we just keep expanding and I can support more and more people.
What future plans do you have for Mix Tape?
I really want to grow into a bigger space where I can host classes and artists who want to teach classes. I’ve been doing leather work since 2010 and there’s so much that can be done with items that people think are ruined. I’m trying to help people figure out that kind of stuff, with sustainability and upcycling. A lot of times people bring stuff to donate to me and I’m able to fix it. We’re talking about something they’ve had in their closet that they thought was ruined. They’ll be like ‘Oh, this zipper’s just totaled,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Actually, it just needs a few teeth and a zipper pull.’ They thought they were going to have to replace the whole thing and it was going to be all of this money. I’m really wanting to teach classes where I can help people take care of the items they have for longevity, just to keep things well loved or recycled. I would also love to host other artists to do that. Our space now is great, and I love it, but we’ve definitely outgrown it. That’s exciting, but also a little scary because Sunnyside doesn’t have a lot of large spaces to rent. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can better serve the community where I’m at and with the vendors I have, because I love Sunnyside and I never want to leave.
What is your favorite part about Sunnyside?
I love that all of the local businesses are run by the people who own them. That’s very rare in Portland. Before I got my space a few years ago, I went over to Division and was looking at a space that was really lovely, and I just kept going to the block and hanging out and talking with different business owners, and I realized that no one there who owned their businesses worked in their stores. I think that’s something super special about Sunnyside. It’s definitely a neighborhood where people are looking out for each other, and checking in on each other. A couple weeks ago, I left town and went camping, and people thought I was sick or something. Everyone was like, “Where have you been? Are you okay?” I love that everyone noticed I was missing for a week. It’s a block where everyone’s kind of in tune with each other, looking out for each other.
What do you think could use some improvement in Sunnyside?
I think sometimes people are a little scared when they see someone who doesn’t want help. Sometimes there are houseless people or people in general who don’t want help, and it’s hard to know what to do in those situations because they have autonomy and they’re saying, “No, I don’t want any resources from you,” but you can see that they need help. This has been a hard thing even for me to handle. I’ll want to give someone shoes, but they’ll say they don’t want them from me. Sometimes I’ll just leave them outside and then they’ll be gone and I just hope they ended up with them. Besides that, I definitely feel that there’s a lot of empty buildings in this neighborhood that could be filled, but that’s happening all over Portland, not just Sunnyside. I think Sunnyside has a really good thing going right now.
Visit Mix Tape seven days a week at 3300 SE Belmont St.