Category: Portland, Oregon Local News

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Good Morning, Portland! It’s going to be a cold, cold weekend, so please bundle up and watch out for your neighbors. Let’s get to the news.

IN LOCAL NEWS:

• Right after Border Patrol agents shot and injured two people in East Portland earlier this month, protests at Portland’s ICE facility ramped up. The Portland shooting happened one day after ICE agents shot and killed Renée Good in Minnesota. During those protests, a Portland Police officer was filmed punching a protester in the head after they appeared to be restrained on the ground. The next day, another officer was recorded giving his unsavory take on Good’s death, shrugging it off. “Sometimes criminals get shot,” he told a protester who recorded him, acknowledging he too would’ve shot the 37-year-old mother if she drove a car at him (video from the shooting in Minnesota suggests Good was just trying to leave and wasn’t trying to aim her car at the agent who placed himself in front of her headlight.) Both officers were identified in a Mercury story yesterday, because they didn’t have their names displayed while policing the protests. Turns out, they’re likely related. Read more about the events here. 
• (No) thanks to freezing overnight temperatures, many of the area’s warming centers have extended their hours, and are expected to stay open through Sunday. These shelters include Burnside Shelter (30 SW 2nd), CityTeam Grant (526 SE Grand), Moore Street Shelter (5325 N Williams), NW Northrup Shelter (1435 NE Northrup), and St. Stephen’s Shelter (1432 SW 13th). Temperatures are expected to stay extremely chilly through the weekend, with an expected low of 26 on Saturday and 24 degrees on Sunday, before warming up into the low 30s on Monday. Keep an eye out for your neighbors who may need help!
• A group of activists have been trying for months to get the city of Portland to revoke the land use permit for the local ICE facility. On Wednesday, during a City Council meeting, a large group swarmed City Hall to give public testimony. Apparently they were frustrated when the Council didn’t address the land use issue (it wasn’t on the agenda and the Council can’t legally take up issues or items that aren’t on the agenda, and Council doesn’t have the authority to do what the activists are demanding in the first place) and made their way over to councilors’ offices, where they tried to rush their way in, only to be greeted by City Hall security, who pepper sprayed them. The bizarre incident made Mayor Keith Wilson’s statement from just an hour before make a little more sense. He hadn’t provided much context for why he was issuing his comments, but it appears (like at least one of the group’s leaders) he may have the gift of second sight and could see the indirect action before it happened. 
  

 

• The state transportation funding situation is a complete nightmare. And that nightmare just took another twist, because evidently, state lawmakers are considering dipping into funding meant to help children walk and bike to school safely. That’s right, they want to eat up Safe Routes to School funding to fix a crisis that is solely of their own making. To be fair, the blame mostly lies on the Republican legislators who ran a referendum campaign on the only funding package lawmakers could come up with last year, after several botched attempts during the 2025 legislative session. (Also, blame falls on the sole Democratic lawmaker who refused to vote for the initial funding package back in June.) It’s seriously a whole mess that cannot be easily summed up in a short blurb. Long story short: when you try to take money from kids, people get rightfully pissed. Check out BikePortland’s story for more.
• There’s something so sweet about Claire Hall—Lincoln County commissioner for many years and a trailblazing LGBTQI+ political figure—writing a utopian novel that imagined a world where former Oregon Gov. Tom McCall became president. One of the first openly trans politicians in the state, Hall championed expanding housing and homelessness services and increasing access to health care for two decades. She died early this year, on January 4. She was 66, and facing a recall campaign. According to this Oregonian memorial piece, her death was related to stress. But her life was one of hope, bravery, and service.

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:

• It has to be more than one day’s news that federal agents used a five-year-old boy as a decoy, then detained him and his father and sent them to Texas. The news cycle usually moves on, but we can’t have a society that just does this and then moves on to brunch. Read up here.
• Minnesota leaders are going on a general strike today to protest ICE in their community and beyond. Organizers are demanding that Jonathan Ross—the officer who shot Renée Good in early January—be held accountable, that elected officials defund ICE, and that the agency be investigated for human rights violations. One can, in fact, decline to purchase goods in solidarity with Minnesotans and immigrants everywhere, just to be clear. If you’re interested in good local journalism, and we know you are, Minnesota’s alt-weekly The Racket has dropped its paywall as part of strike, and thrown its recent ICE coverage on the home page.
• Meanwhile, some Democrats, including Pacific Northwesterner Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, have decided to join their Republican colleagues in sending more money to DHS. “Is this 4D chess?” a group of biennial runners-up ask every election cycle.

NEW: DHS appropriations bill funding ICE passes 220-207 7 Democrats voted YES on the bill: – Jared Golden – Marie Gluesenkamp Perez – Henry Cuellar – Tom Suozzi – Laura Gillen – Don Davis – Vicente Gonzalez One Republican voted NO: Thomas Massie

— Andrew Solender (@andrewsolender.bsky.social) January 22, 2026 at 1:42 PM

• Ryan Coogler’s Sinners debuted in a box office dump month, April 2025, with a story about singing / dancing vampires in the prohibition era American South. It sounded risky but burned beautifully across IMAX screens, scored with music that—in the words of our review—“gets so wild it dissolves the boundaries of space and time.” Oscar nominations don’t always go to the good films, but it’s not surprising that Sinners received more than a nod. In fact, the Coogler’s first film since Black Panther: Wakanda Forever received 16 nominations in total, more than any other film in Academy Award history.
• Wait, how many Amendments do we need to know again?

2026: the year so bad that even the Third Amendment is suddenly relevant

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— John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) January 22, 2026 at 7:13 AM

• As a potentially deadly ice storm sweeps across the southern part of the nation, most Texans are bracing for the dangerous conditions… that is, except for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz who, of course, was spotted slipping out of the state on Tuesday, flying out to the much sunnier, warmer climate of Laguna Beach, California. And those of you with good memories will recall this isn’t the first time Cruz ran away from inclement weather (and his constituents)—in 2021, he famously escaped to Cancun to avoid a wild, winter storm that left Texans without heat or electricity for several days. Oh, and then there was last July when he was conveniently vacationing in Greece when deadly floods killed at least 135 people in Central Texas. So maybe the next time he runs for the hills, he can just stay there?

 

A Portland Police officer who was filmed punching a protester earlier this month during an anti-ICE protest was also named in a lawsuit years earlier by a different protester who was injured by police.

Records obtained by the Mercury indicate Tyler Brunelle was the officer recorded using force on a protester who was already on the ground, being restrained by police. 

The incident occurred January 9, one day after two people were shot and injured by a Border Patrol agent in East Portland, triggering heightened protests against federal forces stationed at Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. Video shows the officer was working with Portland Police Bureau’s (PPB) bicycle patrol squad that night.

The video was captured by Kevin Foster, a local independent journalist who has contributed work to the Mercury.

Following the incident, PPB said the officer’s use of force would undergo an internal review to determine whether it was within policy. As of Thursday, January 22, the Bureau noted Tyler Brunelle is “active with no changes to his duty status.”

A state law enforcement database shows he was hired by PPB in 2017.

Officer has clashed with protesters before 

Tyler Brunelle was one of four officers named in a lawsuit filed by Dexter Pearce in 2022. Pearce alleged that PPB officers shot him with an impact munition as he walked away from them during a protest on July 4, 2020. At the time, Portland was experiencing prolonged protests following the murder of George Floyd.

“Sometime between 11:45 p.m. and 12:10 a.m., while [Pearce] was walking away, a PPB officer shot him in the back of his calf with an impact munition,” the complaint states, noting Pearce didn’t see which officer fired at him because he had his back turned to them. Pearce’s lawsuit alleged that he was shot at by officers “in retaliation for protesting the police,” noting the officer never attempted to detain or arrest Pearce for any criminal activity, indicating no justification for the use of force. 

The city eventually settled with Pearce. 

The day after Tyler Brunelle was recorded punching a protester, another officer who shares the same last name was recorded justifying the shooting death of Renée Good in Minnesota by ICE agents. 

Brandon Brunelle, a PPB officer assigned to the Bureau’s bike squad, was policing an anti-ICE protest on January 10 when a protester engaged him in conversation.

“Sometimes criminals get shot,” the officer told an anti-ICE protester, referring to Good, the 37-year-old mother fatally shot by ICE as she tried to drive away. “It happens.”

Officer Brandon Brunelle’s comments enraged the protester, whose video caught the attention of local city councilors and the police chief.

The officer’s remarks triggered a complaint and led Portland Police Chief Bob Day to issue a statement in response to the widely circulated video.

“PPB has been made aware of a video circulating online of an officer’s interaction with community members at a recent protest event,” Day said in a January 11 statement provided to the Mercury. “The complaint is under review and during that review this officer has been assigned to other duties.”

Day said tensions were high following the recent events with ICE and Border Patrol agents, and said his agency’s goal is “to ensure that community trust is maintained and that members of the Bureau consistently represent the professional standards that everyone deserves…”

Brandon Brunelle, who joined the Bureau in 2022, was reassigned shortly after the video circulated. PPB confirmed that he was pulled from protest monitoring duties and assigned to work “outside of front-line public order work while the incident is reviewed.”

It’s unclear whether Tyler and Brandon Brunelle are related. PPB declined to share any information beyond identifying the officers in both videos. Attempts to contact the officers by phone were unsuccessful, but public records show two people with those same first and last names have shared an address in Sandy.

Who’s ready to have some fun? Well, the Mercury is here to help with FREE TICKETS to see some of Portland’s best concerts and events; our way of saying thanks to our great readers and spread the word about some fantastic upcoming performances! (Psst… if you want to say thanks to the Mercury, please consider making a small monthly contribution to keep us alive and kickin’!) And oh boy, do we have some fun events coming at ya this week! CHECK IT OUT!

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A fuzzed-out, high-energy indie rock trio from Portland, Maine, Weakened Friends visits Portland, Oregon with their punchy hooks, raw lyricism, and intense live show! Get your tickets now or enter to win a free pair!

Polaris Hall, 635 N. Killingsworth Ct, Thurs January 29, 8 pm, $24.25, 21+

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Soulful female-led trio Say She She consistently tops charts and sells out shows worldwide. Listen LIVE when they return to Portland with gorgeous three-part harmonies from their new album, Cut & Rewind! Get your tickets now or enter to win a free pair!

Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave, Thurs January 29, 8 pm, $45.78+, All Ages

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Keola Beamer is one of Hawai’i’s premier singer-songwriters, arrangers and composers. Grammy-nominated Henry Kapono helped forge the sound of ’70s Hawaiian music. Touring together, Keola & Henry have been greeted by wildly enthusiastic audiences wherever they go. Enjoy their contemporary Hawaiian classics when these legends return to the Aladdin stage! Get your tickets now or enter to win a free pair!

Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave, Fri January 30, 8 pm, $56.30, All Ages

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Prepare for a dazzling night with friends under the sparkling lights. The Taylor Party, the Taylor Swift Inspired Dance Party, returns to Rev Hall! Come shake it off at our enchanting evening of Swifties, singing and dancing through all TS iconic Eras. Pick your Eras outfit, bring your besties, and come party in style! Get your tickets now or enter to win a free pair!

Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark Street, Fri January 30, 9 pm, $26.05, 21+

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Featuring members with vast musical experience (R.E.M., Screaming Trees, Eleven, and more), Drink The Sea shares tunes from their two brand-new debut albums, classics from their former bands, and films from PBS filmmaker Tad Fettig. Get your tickets now or enter to win a free pair!

Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave, Sat January 31, 8 pm, $43.73, All Ages

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Fans love him from Bob’s Burgers, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Louie, and beyond—catch Todd Barry LIVE when he returns to Portland with hilarious stand-up comedy! Get your tickets now or enter to win a free pair!

Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave, Tues February 3, 8 pm, $32.18, All Ages

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The ALT Awards honor the achievements that truly define a movie year: sleaze, chaos, emotional devastation, questionable wig work, and feelings you can’t quite name but absolutely understand. Get your tickets now or enter to win a free pair!

PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater, 3530 SE Division St, January 21 through February 27, $15, All Ages

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GOOD LUCK! Winners will be notified on Monday, and check back next week for more FREE TIX from the Mercury.

GREETINGS, BRAINY PANTS! It’s time once again to put your brainy-brain to the test with this week’s edition of POP QUIZ PDX—our weekly, local, sassy-ass trivia quiz. And this week, since I’m going on a well-deserved vacation, I’ve gathered together some of the BEST past Pop Quiz questions to see how much YOU know about a) Portland, b) Oregon, and c) disposing of a dead body. (You can’t call yourself a “true Portlander” if you haven’t composted at least one person. 💀)

But first! How did you do on our last quiz? Simply smashing, darling! And I love that, in our New Year’s resolution-themed “subjective question,” you had trouble deciding whether to destroy billionaires, slap fascists, or take a nap. SAME, friends. SAME.

Anywaaaaaay… READY TO START? Take this week’s quiz below, take our previous pop quizzes here, and come back next week for a brand spankin’ new quiz! (Having a tough time answering this quiz? It’s probably because you aren’t getting Mercury newsletters! HINT! HINT!) Now crank up that cerebellum, because it’s time to get BRAINY!

Create your own user feedback survey

Did you enjoy that? Take our past Pop Quizzes HERE!

If you appreciate the Mercury‘s interesting and useful news & culture reporting, consider making a small monthly contribution to support our editorial team. Your donation is tax-deductible. You can also subscribe and have our papers delivered!

Good Morning, Portland! The cold continues this week and into next with low lows of 24 and 25 degrees possible. When it gets more reasonable, we get more rain. You’ve got two options, cold and bright or dank and wet. I know that I prefer dank and wet—let’s hit the news!

IN LOCAL NEWS:
• Multnomah County leaders announced in a memo on Wednesday that they do not plan to install metal detectors in the Multnomah County’s Central Library downtown. The library’s research does not indicate metal detectors would meaningfully impact the “most frequent security incidents or alleviate community concerns,” County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson wrote.

• Today in homegrown true crime horror: A jury in Clark County found 52-year-old Kevin West guilty of his wife’s murder, after swift deliberation on Tuesday. Medical evidence suggested that West strangled his wife, but he tried to explain away the bruising around her neck and the back of her head as the result of a “deep and firm” massage that the Wests’ 22-year-old son gave to his mother the day before her death. At the time of Marcelle West’s murder, Kevin West was battalion chief at Camas-Washogual Fire Department, and he made several strange remarks to some of his firefighter colleagues around the time of his wife’s death, which they testified about in court.

• Today in LOGS ON LAKE, heavy flooding of the Clackamas River has left the North Fork Reservoir, above the Faraday Dam, cluttered with logs and log-adjacent debris. Portland General Electric has made plan to clear the logs in February. That’s leaves plenty of time before the boat docks reopen, you waterways weirdos.

• No one has been awaiting this, but I AM PERSONALLY EXCITED that Art Snack is back. Portland’s art, culture, and food scenes are super messy, and they get all over one another. Could one ambitious culture editor round-up stuff you should know about? I made a newsletter like this during the pandemic, and now I’m doing it again here. This week we’ve got three artsy and two foodsy—and one of the foodsy is paczki.

• Women’s basketball team Portland Fire (not Portland Fire and Rescue) announced its game schedule for its 2026 season, with an opening game at Moda Center on May 9. They’ll face off against the Chicago Sky. Wait, are all the Women’s Major Basketball Association names like… ponderous?

• Table tennis is an allegedly deep and entertaining sport that’s popular overseas, but in the US it’s been relegated to a mere club activity. Earlier this month—infused with enthusiasm from viewing Marty Supreme—writer and photographer Corbin Smith attended a Major League Table Tennis event in Portland that attracted players from all over the world.

• The James Beard Awards has announced businesses and chefs that made its semifinalist round for the competition’s annually awarded titles. While semifinals are still two rounds away from winning an actual award, this is your early early warning that an already busy restaurant in Portland could become impossibly busy very soon (June). This could also be a romance win, if you can get reservations at one of these spots for Valentines or the night of the month we set aside to picture Timothée Chalamet in our minds and manifest his greatness or whatever the kids are doing. Like notorious fuckboi Enya always says, “it could impress bae.” 

The Portland restaurant semifinalists are (find the complete list here):

Le Pigeon – semifinalist for outstanding restaurant
Coquine – semifinalist for outstanding wine and other beverages program
Scotch Lodge – outstanding bar
Joel Gunderson, Heavenly Creatures – outstanding professional in beverage service

There are 20 folks in the running for best chef of the Northwest & Pacific region, but the Portland has four!

Taylor Manning and Siobhan Speirits of Cafe Olli
Kristen Murray of Måurice
Thomas Pisha-Duffly of Gado Gado
Ryan Roadhouse of Nodoguro

IN NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
• A memo obtained by the Associated Press—dated May 2025—provides a view inside the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), its general counsel, and its instructions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about how they should observe Fourth Amendment protections. It seems that since spring of last year, ICE higher-ups have been told that they no longer need a judge’s warrant to forcibly enter someone’s home and are instead permitted to do so with an administrative warrant. The whole AP piece breaks down 1) the memo 2) how the order undermines years of advice from advocates, and 3) why the direction given to ICE trainees—which runs in direct conflict with their written training materials—is likely unconstitutional.

• In related news, ICE took a five-year-old Minnesota boy into detention on Tuesday. He and his father were taken in their family driveway, but not before ICE officers had the young child knock on the door to his home to see if other people were inside, “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait,” Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik said during a news conference Wednesday.

• In a one sentence order, given with no explanation, US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit granted the Trump administration’s request (yadda yadda yadda) and federal agents in Minnesota are permitted to use tear gas on protesters again. Stay tuned for more injunctions. Two cents from a journalist who’s been tear gassed… a lot. While terrible and dangerous in unexpected ways, tear gas doesn’t stop protests. Full stop.

• I wish that someone who wanted to get deep into all the foibles and fuckups President Donald Trump has made this week while threatening Greenland was writing Good Morning, News today. In short: The President says weird stuff that he doesn’t mean. He’s openly threatening another country, after recently invading a different one. Most of what he says will not ever be useful information, and the responses to it aren’t really great either. Here are a couple useful breakdowns on the constantly changing reports on the situation:

World leaders to hold emergency summit on Greenland. (NPR)
Europe’s Leaders Try to Find a Path Forward With Trump (NYT)
Trump Says He Has Framework for Greenland Deal as NATO Mulls Idea of U.S. Sovereignty Over Bases (NYT)
 Zelensky Criticizes European Allies After Meeting With Trump (NYT)
NATO chief Mark Rutte shows he’s a ‘Trump whisperer’ with Greenland diplomacy (AP)

• Greenland’s government announced Wednesday—apropos of nothing—that it would ✨just be good 🌟 for households to keep emergency supplies to last them at least five days on hand. NO REASON.

• I have been responding to many things this week with an adjusted version of the “it’s fuckshit o’clock” meme/somee card.

• New column alert: That guy who tweets about suits is now tweeting writing about them for Bloomberg.

I’m excited to announce I’m doing a new Bloomberg column about the business of fashion. The first column is about how we can re-shore US garment manufacturing. Instead of mass deportations and raising tariffs, I argue the government should move the industry upstream: tinyurl.com/reshoringapparel

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— derek guy (@dieworkwear.bsky.social) January 22, 2026 at 6:45 AM

• Do you ever just relaunch the newsletter you like writing just in time for the end of the dang world?

There’s a scene in the recent hit movie Marty Supreme in which Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), an American table tennis champion and inveterate liar getting by on the skin of his teeth in post-WWII America, is seeking capital from a wealthy man, hoping to grow the game he loves and his own prestige. At one point, in a rare move for the character, Marty tells the truth: “I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m telling you, this game fills stadiums overseas.” 

In the 70 years since Marty Supreme— a fictional story rooted in reality— is set, the tale of table tennis as a public concern has remained more or less the same. It’s a fabulously deep and entertaining sports product that has been relegated to club enthusiasm and occasional Olympics heat in the United States, but is huge overseas, especially in Asia.

Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), a touring table tennis startup league founded in 2023, is trying to make the sport big in the US, too. (The league bills itself as “AMERICA’S FIRST PROFESSIONAL TABLE TENNIS LEAGUE,” capitalization their own.) The format is very particular. Instead of playing one-on-one for individual glory, players from around the world are sorted into teams. Each team is given a city they are intended to represent, even if none of their players actually live there, and sets of teams go from “home” city to “home” city every weekend, playing in team-based matches. Four teams, including the Portland Paddlers, descended on the Portland Convention Center earlier this month to play a total of six matches over three days. One member of the Paddlers, Nihkil Kumar, appeared as one of Marty’s opponents in Marty Supreme. He says he squared off against Timothée Chalamet between the shooting and beat him soundly, even as he was compelled to lose to him on camera. 

MLTT forgoes a common scoring practice in racquet sports, where games are almost always won when a player crosses a point threshold AND beats their opponent by two points. By contrast, MLTT games end when one player reaches 11 points. This makes it so matches can start and end at fairly routine times. But it also strips the product of the terrible and wonderful psychological pressure that comes when two players cannot seem to ever beat each other. 

But that’s a small complaint, because the table tennis was phenomenal. MLTT is a minor league, now and for the foreseeable future, but it’s managed to contract some really good, entertaining talent. They’re not top players striding atop the World Table Tennis (WTT) rankings, but they’re players from around the world who sit in the top 250 in the World Table Tennis rankings, solid talent who put on a hell of a show for enthusiastic crowds all weekend.

In the first match of the Portland MLTT tournament on Saturday, January 10, Braxton Chang of the Atlanta Blazers (confusing, I know) squared off against David McBeath of the Texas Smash. The two were really going at it, back and forth, back and forth, the ball whipping across the table with terrible force for a lil’ guy filled with air. Both players strained to unearth the sharpest edge of their perception to hit the ball so their opponent would miss the hit. 

They could achieve this in a variety of ways. Table tennis is a very tactical game, in ways that an onlooker can’t always appreciate. Every paddle surface gives players different options for imposing spin on that tiny lil’ ball and sending it to the other side of the table.

Christian Lillieroos, the coach of the Portland Paddlers, says the table tennis ball can travel at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour, spinning at a rate of 9000 rotations per minute, or about 150 rotations every second.  From a distance, the ball’s movements can be hard to appreciate. At one point, I watched from the front row as a ball careened through a freestanding sign, ending up  at my feet. The ball just sat there, spinning in place, for a few seconds until it stopped.  All this spin affects the trajectory of the ball as it skips back and forth across the nine-foot table. 

“You have half a second to react to all of those variables,” Lilleroos said. “So if you don’t have very good vision and the ability to look at the ball properly, you’re not going to be able to return at a high level.” 

The reaction time required to wrangle a ping-pong ball fired off the surface of a high level player’s paddle isn‘t just a matter of seeing and reading the ball, though. You also need to learn how to operate beyond the realm of conventional thought. 

“Thought is a process that takes .4 seconds, so it’s impossible to think,” says Lilleroos, “If you think, you’re gone. You have to learn how to react, how to operate on pure reflexes.”

Sometimes the most obvious way to overwhelm your opponent is with force, and McBeath got an opportunity to just blast the ball across the table, right into Chang’s torso. It looked like it hurt. The crowd, hanging on every bounce of this fluttering, chaotic little plastic shell with a mass of 2.67 – 2.77 grams, let out a collective groan.  But Chang looked at the crowd with a befuddled look on his face.  He was hit by a ping-pong ball. It wasn’t going to blow a hole through his torso. He was fine, it couldn’t hurt him if it tried.

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The contradiction between the ball that would disappear in the presence of a mild wind and the focus that players and spectators put into the ball sits at the center of experiencing high-level table tennis in person. 

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Sports are a neurotic thing. All this emotional weight gets pumped into a ball, an object transformed into a tool of utmost action and importance, right until the moment when some arbitrary line deactivates its meaning.

The contradiction between the ball that would disappear in the presence of a mild wind and the focus that players and spectators put into the ball sits at the center of experiencing high-level table tennis in person. You watch these people flying around, jerking their bodies, depending on that honed instinct to read and react to an object that is very little, very light, and subject to physical whims that a person could not reasonably calculate by themselves on the fly. 

Sometimes, this can make spectating kind of funny. Why did that player jerk all the way to the left to hit a ball, their legs splayed out like a tennis player running down a shot in the baseline corner, while this little toy just ended up going straight down the middle of the table and blooped out behind them? The answer is beyond the eyes of the viewer, and maybe even the player. They thought they saw just the faintest hint of leftward rotation on the ball as it flew towards them, they went for it, they failed in a spectacular way, their entire body left reeling on account of the micromovements of an object that weighs about as much as a mantis. 

McBeath, the British player for the Texas Smash, prides himself on his ability to read the spin on the ball. “I’ve always found that quite easy to do,” he says. “You have some spin in tennis, but we have ten times the spin or more.” 

How do you figure out how to read a ball that spins that much? McBeath laughed a little. 

“Practice. There’s science and lots of stuff I’m sure but the majority is just practice. You can have a bit of talent, a bit of coordination, but a lot of practice of understanding where it goes.”

A player diving for a basketball on pure, raw competitive instinct seems heroic. A player operating on the same set of values and instincts, diving for a little object they cannot control for long, looks like something else, something strange, a person playing in the presence of mean ghosts. At least, until you watch enough of it that you can understand them. 

Major League Table Tennis will not be returning to Portland until next season, but you can see what they’re getting up to at their website. If you want to learn more about how to play table tennis, some of the players and coaches from MTT are regulars at the Paddle Palace in Tigard, where you can also play and train for a fee.