News From Sunnyside Environmental School (SES)

Hello neighbors!

Thank you to everyone who came to our Riparian Festival last month. We hope you enjoyed visiting our school and seeing what our students have been working on so far this year.

Read-A-Thon Is Back!

One of SES’s most beloved fundraisers begins on February 19th and runs until March 6th. During Read-A-Thon we encourage students to read as much as possible by having them track their reading and compete to see which individual, class, and grade can read (and fundraise) the most. Reading independently, being read to, or listening to an audiobook all count. Students may read whatever suits their fancy—books, comics, magazines, news articles, instructional manuals. Similar to a run-a-thon, students collect pledges for the time they spend reading, as well as flat donations. Prizes are awarded to the individuals, classes, and grades that read the most, as well as to those that raise the largest amount of money.

The competition gets fierce inside the school, where each class has a huge jar to which teachers add dyed beans corresponding to the number of minutes each student in their class read the previous day. This helps students see their progress, as well as motivates them to read more to compete with other classes. Students enjoy Dress As Your Favorite Book Character Day, and decorate their lockers to look like the spines of their favorite books.

Perhaps the best part of Read-A-Thon is the author visits. During these two weeks, a diverse group of local authors and illustrators come to SES to speak about their books, authorship, and share their own personal stories. All grade levels get to attend at least one of these assemblies, and all SES families and community members have the opportunity to purchase signed copies of the works of these local artists. This year, our list of authors who have kindly agreed to present include Mike Lawrence, Lilah Sturges, Cathy Camper, Waka T Brown, Aron Nels Steinke, and Whitney Gardner. Please consider supporting local authors, illustrators, and SES by buying signed copies of our speakers’ books from this website: sesptsa.square.site/shop/read-a-thon/6. If you do not currently have a student at SES please add “community member” in the order notes and we will contact you with pickup options when the books arrive. These are really special books and also make great gifts!

Additionally, if you know an SES student and would like to support them during Read-A-Thon, please reach out to them and make a donation. They will be very excited to receive it. If you would like to donate and do not know a SES student, you can use the QR code or website above and click on “Read-a-thon Pledge.”

Help Our Neighborhood Get a Soccer Field

A coalition of SES parents and neighborhood community members (“Soccer Coalition”) are working together to raise money to get a soccer field placed on the SES grounds. As mentioned in my first column, the school grounds become a public park open to the community after 3:15 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends and during the summer. While this park is lovely, it has a large amount of grassy space that kids struggle to play soccer on because there aren’t any goals. The Soccer Coalition is trying to change that.

The Soccer Coalition has secured a contract from Portland Public Schools for two soccer goals. They are now raising funds to cover the cost of the goals and for ongoing maintenance, such as periodically replacing nets. These goals will be on the grounds both during school and outside of school hours, and everyone in the community will be welcome to play soccer here when school is not in session.

The Soccer Coalition is trying to raise $6,000 by this coming spring. Please help bring access to pick-up soccer to the whole neighborhood by donating here: www.gofundme.com/f/help-bring-soccer-to-sunnyside-this-spring.

Have questions about SES? Email [email protected] and maybe I’ll answer them in a future column!

Seeking Newsletter Delivery Coordinator

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—and it only takes 2-3 hours per month. If you’re interested, or to learn more about what’s involved, contact Diana Deumling at
[email protected].

Getting to Know Your Neighbors

Q&A with Spencer Bone and Reed Lamb of Trails End Bar   

Spencer Bone (right), lives in the Woodstock neighborhood, and is co-founder of Bottle Rocket, a burger-focused food cart at Cartopia on Hawthorne. Reed Lamb (left), lives in the Parkrose neighborhood and is the founder of The Standard, a dive bar in the Kerns neighborhood. The two joined together to start Trails End Bar, on the eastern edge of Sunnyside.

Although Trails End is themed after the Oregon Trail, the menu doesn’t necessarily reflect that. What inspired the menu?

Spencer: Every food I make is pulled from the past. I grew up in California’s Salinas Valley. That’s major farmland and there are lots of immigrant farmworkers. I lived in a town where half of them were Mexican; one of the plates on the menu was linguica sausage. The linguica on our menu is like the one from California that I remember eating as a kid.

You were running a food cart before this that also served alcohol, so why open this place?

Spencer: With a brick and mortar restaurant, it’s more like a community, a group with the same goal. Maybe I’m more like a cult leader here. Having a crew that feels like they’re involved and invested in the menu themselves breeds a want to make it good.

Reed has been a friend of mine for over a decade. We’re camping buddies with lots of similar ideas. He’d been looking for something for a long time, and then this spot opened up with a kitchen. It was turnkey, technically; there was a bar in here and tables. You could come in with product and start selling. We didn’t have to apply for a new permit. The layout of the bar is the same. All the sinks are in the same place.

How did he get you on board?

Spencer: Reed doesn’t know much about kitchens. So he just kind of said, “Hey, come down and look at this kitchen for me. Tell me what you think.” And then that’s when I was like, “We should do this together.” When I was driving home I thought of the name, Trails End.

Why do you think that name came to you?

Spencer: I’ve always liked western-theme bars. Like, when you drive out to the middle of nowhere and nothing’s changed in a bar in 40 years. It’s just always been the kind of places I like.

Reed, what’s your motive for owning another bar?

Reed: It’s nice to get to express yourself in something that resembles an artistic manner. I get  precious little of it in my life. Even my wife is like, “You’re so much happier when you’re on a project.”

What kind of aura do you want this bar to have?

Spencer: A place that’s gonna be here forever, that was here forever. Almost like a Cheers vibe. You come after work, or you come after playing video games, whatever. As time goes on, we’d like to be able to go until 2:30 a.m. It’s the Trails End—it’s the end of the night, you come here.

Reed: I want it to seem a bit more grown up than the dive bars that I drink at normally, but not by a lot. I want it to still be fun. I want the bar to be smaller and more homey. A little bit more intimate, but still warm and familiar. It’s like a family bar that doesn’t allow kids. I want us to bring out the working people that are around here and still sling $2 Hamms and still have really good burger specials.

Where does this come from, the desire to cater to the service industry?

Spencer: That’s who we are!

Reed: I still work shifts at my bar [The Standard] when they pop up and I can’t get anyone else to work. You want to make a place that represents who you are.

Tell me about the aesthetic choices.

Spencer: As soon as I knew I was opening a bar, I reached out to one of my good friends, Matt Stinger. He’s a local artist, and I told him I wanted a mural of Oregon. I made a couple of funny requests. Like, we gotta have Bigfoot. And then there’s two lakes, or even three, called Lost Lake, and they’re all really hard to find. So he was like, “Where are they?” And I was like, “Just put them anywhere.”

Do you feel that a lot of the reason why this bar has come together the way it has, is because you developed a network of friends who were the perfect people to help you?

Spencer: Exactly. My friend Patrick—who is now in charge of the kitchen here— helped me open Bottle Rocket. He was one of my first employees there as well. So having him here is great, because he has great ideas. I would have just bought pickles. He’s like, “We can just make them. It’s cheaper, and it will taste better.”

I mean, you can go through life without friends, but it’s a lot easier to have them. You know that song, “Friends, you can depend onnnn.”

What do you have to say about Sunnyside as a neighborhood?

Spencer: There’s always been a working class vibe to most of southeast.

Reed: It seems like other places—like the Alberta neighborhood, nothing against them—kind of were an up and coming thing and a ton of out-of-towners moved in and made it cool. This neighborhood, though, it seems like Portlanders made it cool before the out-of-towners got here.

Earlier, you said that you believed that things were meant to be. How do you know when something’s meant to be?

Spencer: You have to take a leap, and then when you land on your feet, well, I guess that was meant to be. You’ll know, and you’ll definitely know if it’s not working.

Reed: I don’t know about “meant to be.” I do things logically some of the time, but a lot more often, I’m doing by feel. Something feels right and you just have that instinctual reaction. You’re like, “Yes, this is gonna work.” Other times, even if it seems like everything’s adding up, I’m like, “No, I’m pulling back from this.”

Is there anything I didn’t cover that you feel people should know?

Spencer: I just want to make sure that people know it came together through the work of everybody. It wasn’t just me and Reed. It was our friends and community. There’s no way it would have happened if it was just me and Reed by ourselves. We probably would just be drinking in a half torn out room. We would’ve been perfectly happy drinking in a half built bar by ourselves. At least it’s got whiskey in it.

Trails End Bar is located at 4601 SE Hawthorne Blvd, and open noon–midnight daily. For more info, check out their Instagram: @portlandtrailsend.

News From Sunnyside Environmental School (SES)

Hello neighbors!

A huge thank you to everyone who came out to support local artisans young and old at our Winter Craft Fair last month. We hope you found lots of lovely handmade items for you and your loved ones. Thank you also to everyone who contributed to our Circle of Giving this year. You really brightened the holiday season of families in need.

Support SES by Having a Pint at Away Days Brewing Co. on January 8

Want to shake off the mid-winter blues? Gather with friends at Away Days Brewing Co. (1234 SE Cora St.) from 3–9 p.m. on Wednesday, January 8 and support SES! Away Days is a European-inspired brewery and taproom with a curated tap list featuring pilsners, bitters, barleywine, cider, and non-alcoholic beer. Come have a drink and support a local school. All ages are welcome—and dogs can hang on the patio! There will be juice boxes and snacks for the kiddos!

Riparian Festival

The Riparian Festival (Jan. 23rd, 5:30-7:30pm) is a charming event our students look forward to every year. This month students in grades 3-8 will be displaying their work from their study of forests, rivers, oceans, and mountains throughout the school. During the festival, all third through middle school classrooms will be open for viewing so students and families can explore the many projects completed by our kids. While K-2nd grade students do not participate in the showcase directly, they are encouraged to attend and see the ways their learning will progress over time. Homemade lasagna, sweets, and hot chocolate will be available for sale, and the evening concludes with a sing-along in the auditorium.

Our Home Grown Musical Opens in March

This month, 50 students are beginning rehearsals for a musical written by our own Mo Phillips. Last month these students joined Mo for two brainstorming sessions during which they shared their most creative, wacky, wonderful ideas and worked together to decide some of the key elements of the play. Mo drafted the production over winter break, using the kids’ ideas as inspiration. Keep your eyes on this space for more information about the musical. Last year’s production was called “Where Is My Cat? An Adventure Through Space” and we anticipate that this year’s show will be equally creative and enjoyable.

Calendars Featuring Student Art Available for Purchase

Our marvelous art teacher, Indigo, has led her middle school students in making a beautiful 2025 calendar, which is available for purchase. Each month features a different student artist’s work. I am continually blown away by the artistic talent of our student body, and highly recommend checking this out if you are in the market for a calendar. We are selling them on a sliding scale, from $10 – $50. All proceeds directly support SES’s art program. If you are interested in buying a calendar or would like to preview the art, please reach out to [email protected] for a link.

Seeking Newsletter Delivery Coordinator

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].