programming by the Portland Art Museum’s Center for an Untold Tomorrow. But Middleton’s plans for the Offbeat are ambitious. He wants to create a truly inclusive, all-ages venue that helps develop young talent — and whose business model is sustainable over the long haul. Middleton’s plans for the space include a recording booth where all shows can be recorded, so every band that plays has a demo; a print-on-demand T-shirt shop; record sales, through a unique partnership with Kenton’s Speck’s Records; a viewing area accessible to those with mobility devices; and benches for those who’d prefer to sit during shows. He says the owner’s plan for the complex includes leasing the upstairs spaces as office space and offering food carts in the parking lot. One thing not on the menu, though, is alcohol. “The hardest thing we’ll sell will be kombucha,” Middleton says. All-ages venues have struggled in many markets, some due to local laws restricting youth behavior, like Seattle’s infamous Teen Dance Ordinance — which placed heavy restrictions on all-ages events and remained in place from 1985 until 2002. Former Seattle mayoral aide Sheila Ater Capestany recounts on Let the Kids Dance!, a KUOW-produced podcast about the ordinance released this summer, that as a teenager in Portland, police stopped her on the way home from jazz concerts, using a youth curfew as a pretext. (Multnomah County still has a youth curfew on the books, though the cutoff time varies by age and whether or not it’s a school night, with youth between 14 and 17 legally allowed to stay out as late as midnight on weekend nights.) But even in the absence of restrictive laws, there’s a more fundamental problem that can hamstring all-ages venues—and technically, it isn’t limited to them. It’s that most small venues make most of their money on alcohol sales; entertainers are just the hook that gets customers in the door. Some larger venues find a way to have it both ways — physically separating customers who are over 21 and drinking from those who aren’t, or slapping wristbands on the arms of concertgoers who choose to buy alcohol. But that creates a level of liability Middleton doesn’t want, and he and his team have worked hard to find a different way to do business. Nonprofit, all-ages venues aren’t totally without precedent: Middleton cites as inspirations the legendary 924 Gilman Street, a nonprofit, collectively run all-ages club in Berkeley, and the Vera Project in Seattle, a nonprofit all-ages venue created shortly before the demise of the Teen Dance Ordinance (which included language exempting nonprofits). But Friends of Noise’s model differs in some ways. One is a focus on economic development and job creation. Youth who’ve gone through Friends of Noise’s sound engineer training program — a six-month paid training program in partnership with Middleton's plans for the space include a recording booth where all shows can be recorded, so that every band that plays obtains a demo. 38
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