The secrets of Portland

Portland hasn’t always been so innocent. A slew of high-profile criminal activity has taken place throughout the history of the city, including the infamous Shanghai kidnappings of old town drunks who’d find themselves shackled and sailing just past the 130th meridian by the time their stupor had dissolved.

For a while, Portland was even home to some notorious gang activity caused from migrating fractions of the Los Angeles-based Crips into what’s become known today as the Hoover Criminals and the Columbia Villa Crips.

The 1950s were no different from any other time in Northwest criminal history as the emergence of an illegal gambling industry sprung up from the organization of pinball and coin machine operators and distributors based in Portland, properly labeled the Coin Machine Men. The group was officially unionized in 1955 when they joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and were then led by vice racketeers James Elkins, Joseph McLaughlin and Thomas Maloney.

The unionization meant that the Teamsters were in official control over machine-run illegal gambling in the state. Word spread to local media, prompting The Oregonian to write a piece that outed the ties between the newly formed union and the business of illegal gambling. Surprisingly, the information obtained by The Oregonian with regards to the illegal activity was garnered by none other than the leader of the group, Elkins. Once the hoopla over the union began, Elkins was rightly scared for both his job and his life.

Unions all over the country had been involved in racketeering, but it wasn’t until the Coin Machine Men scandal that policymakers began to take notice. Even high-ranking politicians such as Robert Kennedy, who was chief counsel of the Senate Committee on Investigations at the time, looked into the matter.

Eventually, because of the mounds of problems associated with the current union system, the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act was passed, giving union members what was essentially a bill of rights.

This month marks the beginning of what will hopefully become a regular event put on by the Oregon Encyclopedia Project. The project’s aim is to electronically catalog a comprehensive documentation of the past 10,000 years of Oregon history, so that educators, students and history buffs will be able to access all aspects of Oregon history at anytime via the Web site. The project has partnerships with Portland State, the Oregon Council of Teachers of English and the Oregon Historical Society—and has thus far been largely funded by the Oregon University System and the Portland State President’s Office.

McMenamins proudly hosted the first event on Feb. 16, and will be hosting the second event at Edgefield tonight at 6:30 p.m. The pub talk will be led by retired Portland State professor Joe Uris who hosts the “Abe and Joe Talk Radio Show” on KBOO, and is the evenings designated “expert” on the Coin Machine Men scandal. The event, Weird Portland: Scandal and Vice in the Rose City, is the first of what will hopefully become a series of Weird Portland pub talks to come in the near future.

Weird Portland: Scandal and Vice in the Rose City
McMenamins Edgefield
2126 SW Halsey St.
Tonight, 6:30 p.m.
Free