Portland's Cannabis Café Closes. NORML to Woodlawn Neighbors: 'We Should Have Listened'

A quiet battle is being waged, virtually unknown to those outside of the medical marijuana community. After just six months in business, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law (NORML), closed the doors of its Cannabis Café on Northeast Dekum Street. Their quiet departure was a far cry from the uproar that accompanied the opening last fall, when members of the Woodlawn community expressed their concerns regarding the café. 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.

Rumpspankers has been a lot of things in its two-plus-years in the historic Village Ballroom. It started out as a café specializing in “American Pho,” took a turn as a nightclub, and spent a lot of time as a private venue for adult parties, often of a sexual nature, before joining forces with NORML last November. 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.

Madeline Martinez, Executive Director of Oregon NORML

“We should have heeded the warning,” Madeline Martinez, executive director of Oregon NORML admits. I met her in Woodlawn Park, where she was holding an impromptu meeting for NORML members. The meeting was originally to be held in Rumpspankers—where the Cannabis Café had resided for the past six months, but according to Martinez, the Solomons cancelled the meeting at the last minute, and locked them out of the building. The Solomons were unveiling their plan to continue the medical marijuana café themselves, under the new name, The Vapor Room, and without the support or partnership of Oregon NORML.

The doors to Rumpspankers, or The Vapor Room (the large, hand-painted Rumppankers sign still hung above the window, and was now accompanied by a piece of computer paper taped to a sandwich board, calling the place The Vapor Room), was guarded by security when I walked by. 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.” Obviously, a divide was forming.

The NORML meeting consisted of maybe 20 or 30 people of all ages milling about Woodlawn Park (they were setting up for a barbeque; no one was smoking marijuana which would be illegal in public view). The general consensus from the people I spoke to was that while they were disappointed that NORML’s café would be temporarily closed, they were glad to be out of the  partnership with Rumpspankers.

Days old dirty dishes piled in the kitchen. Photo courtesy of Oregon NORML.

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.

More days old dirty dishes. Photo courtesy of OR NORML.

“It was a privately owned place, though” Gates says. “I didn’t know what I could do besides suggest better ways to store the food.” He says there was a rodent problem in the kitchen, and recalls the feeling of a mouse or rat that ran across his feet as he stood at the kitchen sink. He claims that after his comments to the Solomons about the condition of the kitchen, they fired him.

“They said that I planted the rats in the glue traps,” he says, referring to photos taken in the kitchen. “Why would I do that?”

Dead mice in a glue trap in the kitchen. Photo courtesy OR NORML.

Martinez says she is hard at work looking for a new spot to open up the Cannabis Café.

“I won’t say anything until a lease is signed,” she says, “but it is very important to us to stay in Portland.” Many of the medical marijuana patients who go to the café rely on public transportation, and so she would like to remain as close as possible to the former spot.

It is also important to Martinez that people understand that they closed the café out of concern for their patients. Comments on a recent Oregonian story on the closure reveal both the rift in the medical marijuana community and also the fact that many people believe that it was NORML’s inability to run the café that closed its doors.

“We worked very hard to be good neighbors,” Martinez asserts. “We made sure to be respectful, to try and contain the smell of smoke, to keep our outdoor area neat and clean.

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.”

Eric Solomon, owner of Rumpspankers

Eric Solomon, who did not respond to my request for a comment, did tell the Oregonian that, "Madeline Martinez was never more than a guest here. Rumpspankers has been here for three years. I can name my business anything I want."

This is a far cry from the attitude he expressed about the collaboration when I spoke to him last November, when he expressed a “personal connection” to the project and to NORML, which, he said, “saved my life.”

According to Martinez, the rift started when she asked Solomon, who claims to have been a chef both here and in the midwest for the past thirty years, for a resume. Although she only wanted to use it to help promote the café, she claims that he was incensed by the request, and told her it was “insulting.” She thought that was strange.

Also unsettling to Martinez was the fact that he had never followed through with installing security cameras as was stipulated in their contract.

“He doesn’t know the law, and doesn’t know how to protect himself,” Martinez asserts. She says that it is of the utmost importance for the Cannabis Café to operate within the law; as the first of its kind for NORML, they want to do all they can to set a postitive example.

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.

Pallets stacked in front of the Solomon's residence.

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. Unfortunately, the Solomons again did not respond to my request for comment.

Martinez says she is anxious to put this all behind her and reopen a cafe to serve medical marijuana patients. It seems as though the Woodlawn neighborhood will have to wait and see what happens next in its continuing saga with the Solomons.