Portland!

So, a lot has happened since I made my last post but I’m just going to segment it out in a series of different posts to make it easier to read. This one is about Portland.

I failed to find a rideshare out of Seattle or Olympia. Well, let me rephrase that… I failed to find a GOOD rideshare from Seattle or Olympia. All the responses I got were from the strangest, creepiest people including one guy who wanted to make sure I knew he was “professional” at what I don’t know, and that he was the owner of a company called “The Skull Company”. But when I looked it up nothing came up. He was also very demanding in when and where I would come get him because he didn’t own a phone (success?) and only felt safe meeting in grocery store parking lots. So I decided to ditch the rideshare idea.
I got in to Portland on the evening of the 20th and met up with my good pal Ed. Ed is this awesome punk rock kid from Olympia that I have known for years and as of a couple years ago has been living in Portland. He showed me around his giant house oh which he lives with 5 girls. 5 GIRLS. It’s like a less exciting, Portland punk version of the Playboy Mansion. Three out of the five are also old friends of ours from back in the day in Oly. There is Jenn, Nicci and April, all of whom are absolutely amazing. And then there were the Ice Queens… dun dun dunnnnn. These two bleached blonde punk princesses had a hard time acknowledging my existence even when we were being introduced. A muffled “hi” is all I could make out when shaking their tiny, cold hands. Ed and I met up with all of them at a quiet little bar called The East End where we drank large PBR’s and nachos. Then it got awkward… One of the bartenders came up to our table and asked us if we’d go in the basement. It was then that I realized that Ed knew this bartender. I asked Ed why we had to go downstairs. He told me that there was a band about to play down there and the bar felt bad that no one was there so he wanted us to be “the crowd”. So we watched this band, in a dark basement with nobody else there. It was very uncomfortable. And then it was on to the Alibi!
The Alibi is a tiki bar in Portland that makes you feel like you’ve just walked in to the most exotic goodwill you’ve ever seen. There is shit EVERYWHERE. Tiki statues, plastic fish, palm trees, hoola skirts stapled to the wall. This place was one of the most tacky places I have ever seen, but they had karaoke. So all night Ed and I had been talking about 90’s alternative music so naturally we had to find a doozie to belt out to the crowd. Our choice? Iris, by the Goo Goo Dolls. Let me just say that you are a lucky person for not having been in that room. We ended our night there with a dance party to No Diggity and made our way back to Ed’s house where we proceeded to dance to 90’s music all night. The next morning we made our way to a little diner to cure our hangovers with biscuits and gravy. After that it was on to Brooke and Dan’s.

Brooke and Dan are two friends of mine that I have known for a very long time. As a matter of fact I had a hand in bringing those two love birds together years ago and also performed their wedding a few years later. Good people. We went out and ate at a few good places but kept it pretty mellow. The next day I was on my way to Sacramento, with a rideshare buddy!