Ozone, real name Jessie Sponberg, is not at all afraid to speak his mind. He still manages to get along with people, for the most part, because he generally has good intentions. Best known throughout the community for organizing benefit shows for the less fortunate in the community, he has recently began promoting Friday and Saturday nights for Gilmore’s Meadows, located at 5823 SE Johnson Creek.
The nights home page asks the questions, “Hey SE Portland, Do you like to go dancing? Do you like
good music? good food? good people? cheap drinks? friendly staff and bartenders? WITHOUT HAVING TO GO DOWNTOWN AND GET SHOT?”
LMAO.
I can honestly answer yes to all of the above questions.
Below are some of my favorite sound bites from my phone interview with Ozone last Tuesday.
“I had realistic expectations, I had lofty expectations, and I had out of this world never gonna happen expectations. And it’s been crackin. It’s become a spot where rappers go and DJs go to just hang out and buy drinks. They just come drink for cheap and see a dope show every night. Especially since we’re bringing in the best talent from the area. Everybody’s been killing it. And there’s like a lot of chicks there.”
“There are some downtown events that are hip hop style, but you go there and the place is just made up of rap groups that are going to be on stage. Instead of working on real promotion, they just find some middle of the road rappers they want to feed this fake dream to. And then they don’t even pay them. And the beers are $4.75 and shots are $6 bucks. How do you think that in this economy you are going to build anything with that recipe for success? It’s just retarded.”
“You know who really does it right? Its DJ Wicked. He really does it right. The thing about Wicked is that it’s on Wednesdays and it’s like $5 for a beer. Now most rappers are broke, living a dream. What rappers are going to go somewhere and pay $50-$60 just to drink. Not many.”
“So what I did is I made a night with no cover, made it super cheap to drink there and super cool to drink there. And I don’t let suckers come in. And we don’t have rappers performing all night. Who wouldn’t rather listen to Tribe Called Quest mixed by Generik than some crappy rapper who’s never even put out an album before? It’s a no brainer.”
“It’s the end of the world. I do not want to be caught downtown at the end of the world. What am I going to do swim across the Damn bridge, that’s filled with cops, and bums and zombies and crazy bitches and shit. What do I want to be downtown for? I don’t. So if I can take the downtown environment and recreate it at a low price… ‘Winning’.”
You can catch Mic Krenshaw performing live at Hot Sauce on Friday, and Winkz and T-Webb on Saturday.
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