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As of August 30th, we’ve raised $32,684 — 29.0% of our crowdfunding goal.
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Photo of Vicki Bock (colloquially known as the Organ Grinder’s “Monkey Lady”) with two good friends.
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Yesterday, we returned to the Architectural Heritage Center in Portland, Oregon. The AHC had just unearthed a set of slides from the architecture firm Martin, Soderstrom and Matteson (now Soderstrom Architects), originally co-founded by Will Martin, the architect who designed the Organ Grinder building. The slides feature the Organ Grinder building in 1973 around the…
Today, I met with a charming person who a lot of people might remember from the Organ Grinder’s heyday. This person was in possession of a trove of documents and memorabilia, including multiple scrapbooks kept by Paul Forchuk, one of the Organ Grinder’s co-founders. These scrapbooks were previously thought to be lost. (Obviously, the person…
This childhood drawing was provided by an Organ Grinder fan who spent hours creating elaborate scenes of their dream pipe organ. This instrument has everything – note the inclusion of not one, but two pianos! Sign up for our email newsletter and receive updates about the project. First name Last name Email
Will the real “World’s Only” female Organ Grinder please stand up? Frame from a 1970’s episode of “To Tell the Truth” featuring the Organ Grinder’s “Monkey Lady”- can you guess which person is the genuine article? It’s important for a documentary to reveal the the truth about its subject. Sometimes, that truth involves subterfuge –…
There is a connection between the Organ Grinder restaurants and the legendary Earthquake Ethel’s Roadhouse nightclub in Beaverton. Several of the same people were involved, and Ethel’s will have a chapter in the documentary. And here, we are happy to present to you, an original painting of the mythical Ethel herself, loaned to the production…
Happy Valentine’s Day! High school sweethearts Brad and Debbie Avakian describe going out to the Organ Grinder in their teenage years, and then later recount a humorous interaction between their parents during one family outing to the restaurant. Brad and Debbie have been together 40 years, after dating over six years before getting married. In…
