Rumpspankers smaller, non-medical marijuana card-holding guests.
Oregon NORML closed its Cannabis Café on May 5th. I’ve been privy to nearly every aspect of the operation, even though I’m no longer on the Oregon NORML Board. I contracted out to help with IT and audio/video installations and I hosted many episodes of NORML SHOW LIVE from the café.
So you may find it odd that it’s been almost a month before I have written my perspective on the closing of the café after just six months operating. I’ve known so much more than I’ve told, even during my interview with Madeline Martinez on NORML SHOW LIVE about this issue on Friday, May 28.
I always try to look forward and not get mired in battles and grudges over past offenses. I’ve been looking forward to the re-opening of the Cannabis Café in a much better environment, as part of a Cannabis Commons, a all-in-one mini-mall for all things cannabis. Along with the Cannabis Café, I envision hemp clothing vendors, hempseed-infused food stuffs, library of marijuana literature, free wi-fi, Oregon NORML offices, onsite glass blowers, neighboring medical marijuana referral clinic, and if the I-28 initiative gets on the ballot and passes, a dispensary. The time at Rumpspankers would just be the launching pad; no need to revisit that now.
But today the story is out from the Woodlawn Neighborhood Notes, and I have to weigh in on some of it.
As I got directions from a NORML representative to the new venue for the meeting, a woman yelled to me, “Yeah, NORML’s gone because they didn’t want to pay their rent.”
Oregon NORML has always paid its rent. Additionally, Oregon NORML put many volunteer hours into cleaning and renovating their portion of the business. The woman in question is one who had been a longtime NORML volunteer who, along with her husband, put a bug in the ear of the Rumpspankers owners to cut out NORML and create their own “Vapor Bar”. The woman and her husband have since been working for this new “Vapor Bar”.
Let’s back up. Rumpspankers is the bottom floor of a two-story building. On the top floor is the Village Ballroom, where Oregon NORML had been holding their twice-monthly Cardholders Meetings. On the ground floor is the Rumpspankers café/restaurant and an adjoining second-hand clothing store. Rumpspankers had been a bar, with an alcohol license, and hosted various parties for the Portland alt-fetish scene, like a “pants-off dance off”, “masturbate-a-thons”, and “naked macaroni wrestling”.
Business wasn’t very good and the neighborhood was not excited about late night loud music, drunken behavior, urination in neighborhood lawns. Enter Oregon NORML, which offered to split the rent if they could operate a Cannabis Café in the downstairs bar area. Oregon NORML would charge its members a $20 monthly Café membership and a $5 door charge and split those proceeds with Rumpspankers. Rumpspankers would host the café and make a killing selling its restaurant food to a roomful of medicated patients and Oregon NORML would attract more membership. Should be like shooting fish in a barrel, right?
Well, it worked out well for Oregon NORML. The Café was very popular. Many new members joined Oregon NORML just to get into the Café at the rate of $35 annually. Rumpspankers would then see someone come in for $35 Oregon NORML + $20 for Café + $5 door charge = $60, but would only receive $12.50 out of that. It would seem unfair, except that Oregon NORML has not much else but membership and some logo trinkets to sell – selling cannabis is strictly forbidden, even medically, in Oregon. Once that $35 is paid for the year, Oregon NORML’s getting the same $10 each month and $2.50 each day that Rumpspankers is getting every time that member returns. All Rumpspankers needed to do was sell $35 worth of food profit to each member over the course of a year to match Oregon NORML.
Rumpspankers dishes piled up in kitchen, long enough to grow mold.
So how is it you can’t sell food to a room full of medicated patients?
One woman, who did not wish to be identified, explained that many of the patrons of the café have compromised immune systems, and delicate digestive systems.
“People were literally getting sick from the food,” she said. “We have patients with HIV, cancer—they can’t play Russian Roulette like that.”
Another NORML member said that one of the “budtenders (like bartenders, but they served up free marijuana instead of alcohol from behind the bar)” told her, “Don’t eat anything here.” He had seen the kitchen, and said it was filthy.
One man, James Michael Gates, shared his experience of working as a dishwasher in the Rumpspankers kitchen. A veteran of the food service industry, he said the conditions in the Rumpankers facility were not normal. Gates claims that the Solomons had no kitchen in their home (not clear if this was a temporary situation or not) and so used the commercial kitchen at Rumpspankers for their personal use as well as for the café. He recalls half-molded drink glasses in the ballroom (“mold doesn’t grow overnight,” he says), a dirty ice machine, and filthy sinks filled with days old dirty dishes. He said that he knew that the way they stored food in the refrigerator was improper—with raw meat on top of vegetables—and that they were knowingly selling meat that was turning bad.
OK, back to this “Vapor Bar”. Part of the contract with Rumpspankers indicated that the medical marijuana side of the business was Oregon NORML’s and the food side of the business was Rumpspankers. They were clearly in violation of every tenet of sanitation I’ve learned from years of restaurant jobs. And if the food was bad, the service was worse. I witnessed the Rumpspankers crew sell a cheeseburger to a patient, bring it to them cooked without a slice a cheese, saying “we’re out of cheese”. OK, maybe you just ran out… but then not five minutes later I saw the same crewmember sell another cheeseburger without informing the patient there was no cheese. In both cases, the patient still paid the same $4.20 for the burger, which comes alone, no fries, no chips, no pickle spear, no drink. Then there was the soda fountain I never saw anyone get a soda from, probably because the price listed for a 22 ounce fountain drink was $3.00. The only thing I ever ate there were the over-priced expired sealed candy and soft drinks they’d picked up at some dollar store.
But the straw that broke the camel’s back was the establishment of this “Vapor Bar”. Rumpspankers had been trying to sell t-shirts that said “Rumpspankers Vapor Bar – Est. 2009″ in their side of business (along with the expired dollar store candy) for months. Nobody I know bought one, but plenty of people bought the Oregon NORML Cannabis Café t-shirts and hoodies because, you know, they were the ones actually running the vapor bar.
On Saturday, May 1, Oregon NORML presented the Global Cannabis March XI in Pioneer Courthouse Square. All volunteers and board were involved, so the Cannabis Café would be closed for the day. Or so we thought. Soon we were getting reports from our members who’d gone to the Café, unaware of the March, that Rumpspankers crew had opened up the Oregon NORML side, using Oregon NORML’s equipment, were charging people $10 cover charge to come in, following none of Oregon NORML’s procedures to verify membership or a cardholder’s legal status. Already in violation of their food side of the deal, Rumpspankers was now stealing the business on the medical marijuana side of the deal. So when May 5, the next date to pay rent came along, Madeline Martinez and Oregon NORML vacated the Rumpspankers location (I was there, painting over the walls and hauling away the books I’d donated.)
The neighborhood is sad to see Oregon NORML go. They’ve never enjoyed having the Rumpspankers presence:
As reported by Neighborhood Notes, the community’s beef dealt much more with the business practices of Rumpspankers’ owners Eric and Shelley Solomon, than with the fact that the café would be serving medical marijuana.
Prior to the opening of the NORML café, there were many complaints against the Solomons and the various iterations of their Rumpspankers business, ranging from noise complaints, to patrons leaving their establishment and urinating in front of neighboring homes and businesses to complaints about the quality of the food and cleanliness of the restaurant.
Neighbors in Woodlawn agree that while NORML operated out of the Village Ballroom, there was little to complain about.
“Before NORML, when the Solomons operated a variety of different businesses, there was trouble,” explains Woodlawn neighbor TJ Juon. “Noise from inside and spilling out into the streets. Garbage. People parking in our driveway. When NORML was there, all of that pretty much went away.”
So you can bet the neighbors are really excited about this:
Sharon and Ryan Flegal, owners of the Village Ballroom, have recently terminated their lease with Rumpspankers. Ryan Flegal says they are looking for new tenants for the ballroom and café storefront “that the community would embrace.” But the eviction does not appear to be slowing down the Solomons.
According to neighbors, an enormous amount of wooden pallets, some more than 6 feet tall and 12 feet long, have been piling up in front of the rented house in which the Solomons reside. Anonymous sources say that the Solomons are planning on moving The Vapor Room into this residence, and will use the pallets to “fence in” the property, and perhaps a property adjacent to theirs.
That house is literally about three houses down from the location of Rumpspankers.
There you have it, the reason Oregon NORML suddenly vacated the Rumpspankers location without a new location to move to secured first. The photos of the mice and moldy dishes surfaced in late April and the violation of contract on May 1 made it impossible to stay.
The new location, while a lease hasn’t been signed yet, will be so much better - easily accessible by light rail, trendy neighborhood, all the public outreach stuff on top of having the Cannabis Café. Also, there is likely to be a new entry system that just charges a day pass for the Café and gives a discount to Oregon NORML members, so that any Oregon medical marijuana patient can visit, since now Oregon NORML won’t have to charge a monthly fee to help Rumpspankers.
