(OREGON CITY) — After high school, the Marines and college, Cyrus Zamani moved to Oregon City. He became a DJ, spinning records for beer money while figuring out what to do. Almost 20 years later, his DJ gig has turned into one of Oregon City’s top event services and rental spots with the recent acquisition of the old Larsen’s Creamery building in Oregon City’s Trestle District.
Zamani’s business, Party Factory, might pay the bills, but his true passion is the Oregon City community and working for its greater good. From a free Blockbuster library in front of his house to lighting up the Oregon City Elevator to reviving the Oregon City Car Show, Zamani is doing his part to add a little fun to the community.
“Look at any community, any city, and there's a contract that we all entered into when we came here to live. Be polite to people as you walk down the street. You're not going to steal your neighbor's stuff, right? Real basic things.” Zamani said. “You go down to Portland, and you see someone else's truck, and they’ve got an Oregon City logo on the back of it, or they've got, you know, a thing from Clackamas Community College. We're representatives of our city when we leave, and we go around, and then we're also kind of representatives to one another.”
“When you see me doing a good job at something, it opens the door for you to do something nice. If I'm able to pick up what I'm good at and then you come in later and you say, ‘Well, I'm really good at this other thing,’ hopefully it encourages all of us to continue to just bring what we have to the table.” Zamani said. “Because of that, it makes the city, in general, a better place to live because it's a light lift if we do it with many hands.”
For Zamani, it’s all about mindset.
“I've got a bad habit of coming up with things that I just think are fun to do,” Zamani said. “Lately, I've started to think of myself as an artist. Before, I never thought of it as art. I just thought of it as work, you know, something to do. But it's something that's kind of thought-provoking and something that might be odd. I think the oddness makes things interesting.”
That desire for oddness led Zamani to create light shows on the municipal elevator. But lighting up Oregon City’s elevator wasn’t easy to get approved.
“We had to beg the city to let us do it, and it was like, there won't be any money out of your pocket if you just let us put some lights on the elevator. I think it would be cool.” Zamani said. “We did this spider on the elevator for trick-or-treating. And that's become one of the biggest. Everyone always asks us every year, ‘When's the spider coming back on the elevator?’”
Zamani, who volunteers on the elevator committee, a subcommittee of the Downtown Oregon City Association, wanted to ensure the elevator light shows were in the city's best interest. A code of conduct was created that bars commercial advertisement and requires that light installations serve the greater good of the city.
“Business is important in town, but it's not for any one business, right? We just don't want to have a Nike swoosh on it or Coca-Cola or something on the elevator.” Zamani said. “We're just trying to make sure we put our town in the best light.”
“A city is really just a group of all of us people. If everyone brings whatever their resources are to the table, the city becomes better for it. It would seem kind of counterintuitive for me to say, well, we could do amazing things, but only if the city is going to pay me for it or something.” Zamani said of his willingness to volunteer his time on community projects.
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