The Tomorrow Theater, and a neighborhood today

Published 11:30 am Tuesday, October 24, 2023

For all the negative attention and hand-wringing downtown and Old Town have received amidst post-pandemic struggles with vacancies, homelessness and crime, few seem to acknowledge the natural flip-side of that coin: a positive economic impact on neighborhoods.

Put another way, it’s not every day you wind up playing a Theramin.

This was supposed to be a column about visiting the Tomorrow Theater, the Portland Art Museum’s new outpost for its PAM CUT (Center for an Untold Tomorrow) cinema and new-media wing. But the urban setting in its Richmond Neighborhood around Southeast 35th and Division, which I encountered before and after my theater tour, was equally captivating, almost like a movie scene of its own.

The renovated Tomorrow Theater, first constructed for Vaudeville theatrical performances in 1926 but more recently screening pornography, is today a G-rated delight, ironically celebrating its past. The imaginatively colorful refurbish, overseen by architect Brett Schulz and interior designer Andee Hess, includes a Mylar-covered mattress hanging from the ceiling in its foyer (an homage to the adults-only Oregon Theater, as it was known), and walls festooned with reclaimed movie-seat cushions for softened acoustics. PAM CUT director Amy Dotson says the stylistic inspiration was Peewee’s Playhouse meets Vivian Westwood, and it is clear Hess had fun with the marriage of high and low culture.

The Tomorrow Theater’s first season marks a new beginning for PAM CUT, formerly known as the Northwest Film Center, with upcoming appearances by legendary musician David Byrne and Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter. As the Portland Art Museum breaks ground on its new Rothko Pavillion, connecting its two downtown buildings, the Tomorrow Theatre is modest by comparison, like an appetizer while the roast is being carved. Yet that is precisely its charm.

That afternoon, approaching the Tomorrow Theater on foot, I had noted the cluster of thriving businesses here: a hardware store, a tattoo parlor, a food cart pod. My favorite was Really Good Stuff, an antiques-and-collectibles store I’d first visited over a quarter-century ago.

Last year the store’s previous Hawthorne Boulevard location was destroyed by fire. Owner Evan Schlaes had no fire insurance and lost the entire inventory. When this Division Street location became available, friends and family pitched in to help bring Really Good Stuff back.

Stepping inside to purchase a contributory knickknack, I instead was enthralled. Shlaes encouraged me to try playing a Theramin, that rare musical instrument (used in many a midcentury sci-fi movie soundtrack) you can play simply by waving your hands.

Not long after Shlaes first opened Really Good Stuff in 1993, he had tried to also purchase a house next door to the Oregon Theater, back when it was still showing porn, but the bank refused his loan application, specifically because of the theater’s presence. Three decades later, hopefully the opposite will be true: that events headlined by the likes of Byrne and Carter will also drive customers here, and maybe even the former Talking Head himself. Byrne’s upcoming Tomorrow Theater show is called Reasons to Be Cheerful, and I think a Theramin would fit into the show well.