[Read all of the articles in our Portland Fun Guide HERE! Looking for a print copy? Look at this handy-dandy map!—eds.]
Group activities: they lead to friendship, romance, creative fulfillment, exercise, and exposure to nature. But getting involved can seem strange, alien. That’s why the Portland Mercury, your favorite newspaper, is here to help. Here are six starting points for getting your fun on with your fellow person(s) in the big city.
SALSA DANCING
A novel mix of Cuban, African, and American musical and dance influence, salsa dancing is a partnered ballroom dance form. Carolina Rahima, the owner of Vitalidad Movement Arts Center in East Portland, teaches salsa classes for dancers of all ages and experience levels. “It’s a partner dance,” she says. “Somebody leading, somebody following.” Think waltzing, but with way more kinesis and faster music. “And you also have solo stuff, where you get to shine and show off what you know.”
Salsa rose to global glory in New York City in the 1960s and has been a hot boogie for dancers ever since. “It’s a very sexy, very connected to your partner type of dance, and it’s a lot of fun.”
“We have different levels of classes, based on a curriculum we’ve developed over the last twenty years,” Rahima notes.”You learn the footwork without a partner, then you move onto partnering. We rotate partners, so you don’t need to bring someone. You’ll be dancing with different people, which is encouraged because the rules you have to learn as a lead or a follow [means] you gotta learn how to deal with different people.”
Another perk to salsa dancing, you can go out and strut your stuff after your first class. “You don’t have to be an expert to go out and have fun,” Rahima says. “Of course, the more you know, the more you can do on the dance floor. There are clubs all around town where you can go dancing, and we have social dancing on the first and third Sunday of the month.”
Vitalidad’s beginner classes are frequent and robust. Find more info at vmacpdx.com.
POTTERY
Clay has held the dreams, ambitions, and passions of craftspeople since the dawn of civilization. If you hear the call of the wheel, there are studios all around the Portland area, ready to supply you with the knowledge and materials you need to create anything you want from the Earth’s preferred material.
According to Alexa Evans-Pritchard, the owner of Morning Ceramics Studio, “A lot of people get into it because they had a class or two in school or have seen it looking methodic and relaxing on Instagram. The reality is, we’re working with dirt, and it can be a barrier to entry. It’s harder than it looks, but the failures just make the highs even higher.”
If you love going down rabbit holes, you can spend a lifetime in basic handheld clay formation, spinning on the wheel, obsessing over painted decoration that pops after a round in the kiln, obsessing over a carved detail on a single pot, or both at the same time. You can devote yourself to one pot for months at a time, or you can crack your neck and get busy producing 40 nearly identical coffee cups in one session.
Membership at Morning grants you 24/7 access to the studio. “Because ceramics can be so involved,” Evans-Pritchard says, “doing it alone can be a lot for people. We have some members who have their own home private studios, but they still choose to get a community membership so they can remain plugged into a social experience of pottery. People who work from home and are looking for a ‘third place’—I wanna get out, I wanna meet people, I’m looking for friendship, I’m looking for collaboration—that’s the core of the community studio and what we do here.”
Morning Ceramics Studio offers a constant stream of intro classes. Check them out at morningceramics.com.
ROLLER DERBY
Sure, sometimes bringing order to the chaos of a lump of clay is fun, but what if, in your heart, what you really want to do is roller skate head-first into a wall of people? Portland’s world famous roller derby club, the Rose City Rollers, offer classes and community for anyone looking to strap on a helmet and skates, and step into the ring.
The Rollers offer a four-week program covering the basics of the game. “We’ve created a really great program to make it as accessible for people as possible.” Loren Mutch, a star skater in the Rollers and the league’s comms person tells the Mercury. “As an adult, it’s kind of hard to get involved with a new sport. You don’t need to know the rules of roller derby, you don’t need to be a great roller skater—we’ll teach you everything you need to know.” No equipment needed, the Rollers provide.
“I think ultimately it’s the community and the people in it who make it so special,” Mutch says. “It’s super athletic, and it’s fun to be a player and work with your teammates. Everyone is very supportive and people feel very empowered. I think that’s why people stay.”
The Rollers’ next intro series starts May 31. Check out their website, rosecityrollers.com for more info. They also play league games every Friday and Saturday evening at the Rose City Rollers Hangar at Oaks Park, so you can check out their immaculate vibe without ever strapping on a skate.
REC LEAGUE BASKETBALL
Four nights a week across Portland, groups of roving people pack gyms across the metro area, and play competitive games of basketball. It’s the Portland Basketball League, consisting of 110 teams growing fat and powerful with the spirit of hooping.
If you already have a team you play with at the park or the gym, you can sign up to ball in one of three leagues for men or one for women. Or, if you’re not into the whole unity thing, you can live like a Ronin, going from team to team with the help of the leagues’ Pick-to-Pick portal, which can keep you in shorts and “running off screen” for up to four games a week.
“Basketball is just a really well-designed sport,” Mikal Dulio, the founder and owner of Portland Basketball says. Why should one choose a rec league, instead of hunting for pickup games? “Instead of going to a park or a 24 Hour Fitness—where there’s too few or too many people, never the right number of people, five-on-five with two subs—they get an exact game with an exact number of people that starts at an exact time,” Dulio continues. “It’s very efficient. They get time to be social, they get their cardio-vascular, it’s good for their bones, it’s good for their joints, it’s good for their mental health. Plus there’s friendships, and the game is fun. You get a lot of value.”
Info about Portland Basketball can be found at portlandbasketball.com. Seasons last only eight weeks, so you can get into a new round of play soon. PBB also runs volleyball leagues, if that’s more your speed.
MAGIC: THE GATHERING
In 1993, Wizards of the Coast published the first set of Magic: The Gathering cards. In the intervening 33 years, no one has made a trading card game that comes even close to prying daddy Magic’s grip from the hearts and minds of tabletop players the world over.
“It’s a great way to just get together, shoot the shit, and scratch the competitive itch a little,” says Keishi Ihara, a weekly participant at Guardian Games’ extraordinarily popular Thursday Commander night.
“It’s so fun, it’s the best game ever,” adds Peter LaRose, a local MTG enthusiast. If you’re looking for someone to play with, LaRose recommends checking out the people around you, many of whom are nursing a secret love for the dark arts. “You’d be surprised how many of your co-workers or neighbors play. Keishi was my co-worker, and we just started talking one day about Magic, and now we play together every week.”
Jules Morales, another player at the table, chimes in. “It’s not just for basement dwellers or anything like that, there’s a pretty solid group of people who play.”
“It’s inclusive enough to include those people, though,” says Ihara.
If you want to learn the basics of Magic: The Gathering, you can’t do better than MTG Arena, the official free app available on your application store of choice. If you would like to weaponize that knowledge in meatspace, you can buy a commander deck from Guardian Games and find a table at their Commander Night, every Thursday from 6 pm to 10 pm. Many other game stores in the area also host Magic nights.
JUGGLING
Every week from 7 to 9 pm in the gym at Reed College—a famous liberal arts college tucked away in Southeast Portland’s Woodstock neighborhood—a group of students work towards their PE credit in a juggling class, taught not by a professor of juggling, but by a group of enthusiastic volunteers who gather to work on their own craft and share the good word with the youth or anyone else who drops by looking to learn the ways of the circus arts.
“It’s good exercise, for one,” TJ Carlson, the director of the Portland Juggling Festival says. “It’s great for the brain—lots to think about, all the patterns, all that stuff. Plus, some of the greatest friends I’ve ever made, I made through juggling.”
“But it’s not just about juggling,” Carlson continues. “Juggling and ‘the flow arts’ are two very closely related things. The flow arts are more about making things just flow around: people waving fans, spinning poi (weighted objects, typically balls on strings), bounce juggling.” A few people in the gym were futzing with devil sticks, while another guy was working with his Diabolo, a silicone hourglass that you handle with a string attached to two sticks. One small group in the gym was even using a big piece of cardboard to steer a small indoor hang glider. If you can toss it or dance with it, you can learn it here in a welcoming environment.
“A lot of students have never tossed a ball before,” Carlson tells me, “but the members of the Portland Jugglers are willing to teach you.”
Classes take place every Wednesday in the gym at Reed College from 7-9 pm. They’ll start you on three balls and you can go from there. Find more info at portlandjugglers.org.