When Paul Knauls Sr. walked into the Spare Room for his 95th birthday celebration (technically, the after-party), the packed Northeast Portland institution exploded.

“The mayor is in the house,” people yelled, and showered him with affection. 

Known colloquially as the “mayor of Albina” or the “honorary mayor of Northeast Portland,” Knauls’ reputation has long preceded him. The son of an Arkansas coal miner, Knauls was a pioneering Air Force veteran who became the first Black person stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington. When he first moved to Washington in 1949, it was to help integrate the base. 

After being discharged, Knauls set his sights on Portland, scouting a quiet venue that would later become The Cotton Club — an iconic jazz club named after the famous nightspot in New York City. At Knauls’ club, world-renowned acts like Sammy Davis Jr. and Big Mama Thornton came through. There was often an early show for white audiences and a late show for Black clientele. After the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Knauls said white folk stopped coming to the inner city. He soon had to sell the business. 

For much of his life, Knauls worked multiple jobs simultaneously. The experience armed him with an arsenal of wide-ranging skills — as a handyman, typewriter mechanic, barber, expert shoe-shiner and more — but his greatest superpower is no-doubt his people skills. With an infectious, joyful laugh that goes up in pitch, Knauls is as gregarious as they come. Many consider him a local celebrity, beloved for his distinctive warmth, knack for talking to just about anyone, dapper fashion sense and an unforgettable, million-dollar smile. Almost always donning the captain hat he bought at John Helmer Haberdasher 30 years ago, Knauls’ legacy is cemented in the region’s history, and his image has been the subject of everything from murals to a zine about his life story illustrated by artist Alex Chiu.

 In the 1970s, Paul and Geneva Knauls were one of the first Black couples to sit courtside at an NBA game, at a time when that simply wasn’t a thing. Together with Geneva, the first Black female barber in the state of Oregon, the two made a stylish, charismatic and outgoing power couple. They were known for their strong ethics, industriousness and iconic businesses — including The Cotton Club, Paul’s, and Geneva’s Restaurant and Lounge — as well as their community involvement. In 1991, the Knauls opened their final business venture, Geneva’s Shear Perfection, half-barbershop, half-hair salon on Northeast Martin Luther King Blvd. The salon became a cornerstone for Portland’s Black community, evolving through waves of gentrification, and going on to serve a loyal, intergenerational clientele for nearly 30 years. In 2020, the salon and barbershop closed near the start of the pandemic. 

Today, Knauls is still a constant for the city. Just a few weeks after he celebrated his 95th birthday with a party organized by Albina Vision Trust, I sat down with Knauls at his dining room table to catch up. He still lives in the Northeast Portland home where he and Geneva were married in the living room in 1965. The little house may as well be a historic landmark, and is marked as such with a sign and box of literature out front. 

Inside, various Knauls family artifacts abound, like a charming residential museum that feels somewhat frozen in time a few decades earlier, with no-fuss furnishings, antiques and layered displays of framed family photos. There’s a shot of Geneva in downtown Portland the day she graduated beauty school, and the iconic image of Paul Knauls Sr. skiing down a mountain looking way too cool in a cowboy hat and sunglasses. The table where we sat has hosted a lifetime of meals, conversations, games of dice — and most importantly, the people who comprise Knauls’ remarkable and well-documented life story. 

Even at 95, Knauls is sharp, spry and says he gets plenty of social interaction. Still feeling all the love from his blowout 95th birthday celebration, Knauls tells me about the joyful vibes when he entered the after-party at The Spare Room, with a sign that read “95 Ain’t Takin’ No Jive” fitted to the front of his walker. 

“It was quite a time,” he said, adding that the proceeds from the sold-out event will be donated to the Geneva and Paul Knauls Scholarship Fund in collaboration with alternative school Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center, commonly known as POIC.

“I walked in the door, (they) started singing. ‘The mayor is in the house. The mayor is in the house. He’s 95. He ain’t taking no jive, the mayor’s in the house!’ Everybody starts dancing and jumping around,” Knauls said through intermittent laughter. “It went on for about 10 minutes!” 

Note: The following interview has been edited and condensed.

Jenni Moore: First of all, congratulations on your 95th birthday. You had a really great party that I heard about on the internet. What is your favorite thing about being the age that you are? 

Paul Knauls Sr.: Well, being this age, you’re just happy that you live this long because most people are gone. You know, African Americans: 78, they’re usually gone. When I watch the news, even the celebrities, I watch it and see how long they live, especially African American celebrities. They’re always 78 to 80. And here I am, 15 years past. So I feel very good about that. Very, very good about that. 

Moore: Do you have a secret to aging so gracefully? 

Knauls: You know, it’s hard to say, because there are people that have been around a long time. They smoke and they drink and spit and everything else. Right. And I didn’t do any of those things. And I lasted, you know? 

Moore: Impressive, ’cause the nightclub business was definitely… you had to resist a lot of temptation there, I’m sure.

Knauls: Oh, yeah. Lots of temptation. 

Moore: Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. I know that you credit a lot of your success to your wife, Geneva. Do you do something special, to honor her on Valentine’s? 

Knauls: I just let everybody know: If Geneva hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be here, because all the stuff I had to go through, which was working 18 hours a day, consistently for almost 30 years. Seven days a week, I almost never got to see her. If she wanted to see me, she’d come to see me on my job, and then I would go see her on her job. 

Moore: On the note of family, I would love to hear more about the domestic part of your life. 

Knauls: My thing was, and I told my first wife, Gloria, when we first got married, I said, ‘Okay, we get married, I want one child.’ Because I want to be successful, but all your money goes to the kids. So I want one child, and that’s it, and then I’m gonna be an entrepreneur. Somewhere, someday, I’d like to do that. But we were divorced 3 years after that, you know. So I was okay after that. I didn’t pursue having any children. First thing I told Geneva: ‘Geneva, you know, we’re not gonna have any children if we get married.’ She says, ‘I got three, and you got one. That’s enough kids.’ 

So that was it. No more children. I spent a lot of time with my grandchildren. I knew where I was gonna be at 3:30 p.m. for 12 years. I had to go to daycare, elementary schools, junior high school, everything. Had to go pick them up, and pick up some of my employees’ children. They went to the same school, so I would just bring them along with, bring them back to the shop. And on Fridays, they got their reward. If they had a good week, they got stopped by McDonald’s on Friday. They’d get their little treat. Yeah, that was good. I don’t think they’re $2.99 anymore.

Moore: What is your musical appetite lately? Do you listen to a lot of music? 

Knauls: I love the blues. Mm-hmm. I like jazz, but I love the blues. I would walk a mile to hear blues. If the jazz was going, I might walk a mile for it, but that’s what my thing is. I go see Ronnie Steen. The musicians that played at the Cotton Club, they’re still playing: Ronnie Steen and Mel Brown, those guys. On Sunday nights, Ronnie plays out of Clyde’s (Prime Rib) and Mel Brown is here and there, and it’s just a joy to get to see them. To see that they came through the Cotton Club, and went on, and did their number nationally, and now they’re back home. I love the blues. I have a blues channel on my TV. I turn it on in the morning. It goes loud, loud, loud, any room I’m in — I can hear it. And I can hear those old songs. 

Moore: Speaking of the blues, do you have a favorite record or album that you like to play often? 

Knauls: I like the Delta blues where the guy with the guitar, he’s just sitting there and everything rhymes, you know? There’s Tevis Hodge Jr., he plays in town. He’s got a big afro and he can sit there and do that Delta blues. I like to watch him play and he’s very, very, very nice. Norman Sylvester — they call him Boogie Cat — I always go to see him. 

Moore: Going back a little bit to when you moved to Portland from Spokane. After being discharged from the Air Force, you were planning to come here and buy a business or build a business. What were you expecting when you came here? Had you ever been to the area before? 

Knauls: Well, I planned it out pretty good, because I started coming down a year earlier, to canvas to see what it is. So, I would catch the plane at 10 p.m. I’d get to Portland, then go straight to the nightclubs and start going around and looking around and see who was doing well or who wasn’t. And then I went to this one club, and they wasn’t doing too well, and it’s about one o’clock in the morning. A few people were in there. So I just kind of scattered around the next day, I was gonna be in town over day. I wanted to talk to the gentleman: Had he ever thought about selling? And he said he thought he would if he could find somebody with some money, so we started talking. So then I said, ‘I’d like to fly down on Saturday nights and work the door.’ And then on Sunday, I work the door, and it was Monday morning, I get up and get the red eye back to Spokane, and you can do this when you’re young and get off the plane and go to work. You can do that. And so that worked out pretty well. You can see right away the crowd started coming because they thought it was gonna be a new owner, you know. 

Once it started building up, (Mr. Thompson) decided, ‘Mr. Knauls, I don’t think I’ll sell, because it looks like business is picking up.’ I said, ‘Mr. T, I think that’s because they think it’s gonna be a new owner. And I think that’s why people are coming.’ He says, ‘Well, I’m gonna hold on for a while.’ 

So he held on for a while. And about four months went by, and he called me in Spokane and said, ‘I think you were right. They don’t see you around, so they ain’t coming no more.’ So we were able to work out a deal, and I was able to move down and purchase the club. 

I was the luckiest person in the world. There was a gentleman in Spokane. His name was Wayne Guthrie, and he owned a construction company. I taught his kids how to ski and repaired his typewriters in his office, and he came to the dining room (where) I worked at the Davenport Hotel for 12 years. Working two jobs: repairing typewriters in the daytime from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. Then from 5 to 10, I’d go work at the Davenport Hotel in the dining room. Then on Saturdays and Sundays I taught skiing, but I would come back in and work the night shift at the Davenport Hotel, the wine store. And then ski on Sunday, and then go clean up the office where I work.

Moore: Wow!

Knauls: Jamaicans have three jobs. I had four jobs (laughs). And so, Mr. Guthrie said, ‘Paul, if you ever want to go into business…’ When I told him that I was coming to Portland, he says, ‘Well, I won’t be able to do it. Out of the state, out of the city. I thought it was gonna be here (in Spokane), ’cause everybody know you.’ I go to repair all the typewriters in banks and hospitals, lawyers’ offices, and doctors’ offices. All the manufacturing. I had my car, and I’d go out and fix the typewriter and go fix the next one and fix the next one. I almost never went to the office, except to get parts that I needed. And so, everybody knew Paul. And he saw that, and the fact that I was teaching his kids to ski, and he saw me working at night, he thought, ‘This guy, he alright.’

Moore: ‘He’s good for it.’ 

Knauls: Yeah. So he said, ‘But I know a guy in Portland that might be able to help your name. His name is Way Lee. He’s a Japanese guy that owns a build business, and he owns a construction company. I’m gonna call him and tell him about you, and you go see him and see. I went down and talked to Mr. Lee and his wife.

I told him ‘I need 50 grand. I need a line of credit at the bank. I don’t need you to give me 50 grand. I need a line of credit, so when I need something, I can go get it, and remodel the building, and da, da, da, da, da, da, da…’

 And they went for it. So, we had LSK Inc. Lee Smith was the accountant and now: LSK, Inc. Lee, Smith, and Knauls. We formed a little corporation there and made it nice. Opened up, never looked back. (After) three years, we paid off that loan. $1,428.88 a month. And that’s when drinks was, drinks were a dollar. And interest rates was 12%. But we paid it off. Had a mortgage burning party. We took the mortgage from the bank, lit it, dropped it in that tub, on the stage. Everybody was cheering in the place, ‘They paid it off, the place is paid off!’ 

And so then, I went to Mr. Lee: ‘I know you don’t want to be in the business, so what it’s gonna take for me to just buy you out?’ He said, ‘Paul, you got $2,000?’ I said, ‘I don’t have it, but I’ll get it. My wife’s got $2,000.’ 

He said, ‘Okay, give me $2,000, we’re all free. We’re gonna go out and have dinner, too.’ So we went out and had dinner with Geneva and his wife, and that was it. The club’s mine now. 

But without my reputation in Spokane that would have never transferred to Portland, ’cause Mr. Guthrie wouldn’t be able to say the things he said to make Mr. Lee go sign a $50,000 note. For somebody he just met last night. 

Moore: Because you had built this reputation. 

Knauls: Oh yeah. My reputation preceded me, so that was it. Me working 18 hours a day, that was a 30-year track. My wife would go to work at 8 o’clock in the morning. And then she’d just stick her head in the door: ‘I’m going, baby…’ Then I get up at 9, I have to be at work at 10. And then I work until 2, right after lunch. I come home, and do a little nap, then I go back, well, I’m there until 4 the next morning, and that was a 30-year thing. My wife wanna see me, she’d come to the Cotton Club, or Geneva’s, or where I was gonna be. And if I wanna see her, I’m two blocks away from her barbershop. 

Moore: How did you find time to have date night?

Knauls: We didn’t have. There was no date night. Every three months, we would take off. We go down to the Benson Hotel and check in on Saturday night, Sunday and Monday. We check out Tuesday morning and head straight for work. Yeah, every three months, we would do that. 

Moore: Systematically?

Knauls: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was automatic. Yeah, we had a good, good, good time doing that. 

Moore: As far as, like, what’s happening in the country right now with ICE, deportations, and, you know, the same police brutality that’s been happening (for decades), do you see progress? Do you have hope? 

Knauls: No. Well, the way the administration has it now, where they’re gonna put us back in our place, you know, where we were in the early 1960s, before civil rights and everything. Anytime they’ll go and take down all the artifacts out of the Smithsonian, anything that relates to being Black is being taken away. And of course, that’s his base. That’s exactly what they like. So he’s doing what his base wants. And unless that changes in the next two years, then it’ll just remain the same. 

Black and brown people are on the lower end of the totem pole, and that’s the way a lot of people want it. Everyone has to feel like they’re better than someone else, and that’s exactly what has happened. It makes them feel good, to know that I can go in the park, and you can’t, or I can go to the Smithsonian Institute, and I don’t have to look at anything about segregation or anything like this. They want to forget it, but they can’t forget it, you know? It’s gonna be there, it’s gonna be there forever. 

Moore: When people talk about you, what would you hope you are best remembered for? 

Knauls: That I really love that woman right there (gesturing to a portrait of Geneva). And being a community person. I worked on so many projects in the community. I volunteered at Jefferson High School. Roosevelt High School, Highland School, where before it was King, Humboldt School, Tubman — I volunteered at all those places. Because I knew, you know, that they needed help. I really, really, I think my most proudest moment was of course, marrying Geneva, but the next proudest was being able to work on raising money for the Dr. Martin Luther King statue.

This article appears in February 25, 2026.