That's SO Portland

I've been home one week and already I've had some uniquely Portland experiences. I'm not talking about eating tofu scramble or seeing a hippie. I'm talking about the things Portlanders accept as totally normal but are, in fact, kind of odd.

The first one is self-explanatory, I guess. A friend's ex-roommate took polaroids of himself on days he was feeling especially sexy. He would leave the polaroids around their apartment, I guess to cheer him up on fat days. I'm not really sure, but I do know that it's fab-oo-lous.

This next one is also fairly obvious: this couple decided to make homemade granola for their wedding guests. I think this gifting trend is weird to begin with, the idea that they roasted, bagged and labeled their own blend of wedding granola takes it to a whole new level.

I should mention - I shot this photo at a store that sells leftover stickers, diskettes, yarn, and other scraps for school teachers to use in their art projects. Barry got a box of about 100 senior photos from the 80's - for $1.

This is a cut out of Carrie Browstein fashioned into a Christmas tree ornament. If you don't know who she is you are not cool enough to be reading this blog.

Here's another holiday one - a flyer for a Christmas Eve party at Sassy's strip club. I know what you're thinking,

"My neighborhood strip club has a XXXmas Eve party too, so what?"

Yeah, does your strip club offer secret-recipe Jello shots, free porn and a deep-fried turkey dinner? It's a competitive market up here. Also, I'd like to point out that Sexy Santa is inked up. Take that, OC. Our ho's can beat up your ho's... I mean dancers.


The piece de resistance is this seemingly innocuous rave flyer. I guess they aren't called raves anymore, they're trance gatherings, but you know what I mean.

I get my trademark hair extensions done by this really cool chick who lives in southeast. Last summer, she and her boyfriend were told they had to move. The rental house where they lived was being sold and they had thirty days to pack up the house.

So my friend starts packing . . . and packing. She figures her boyfriend will jump in and help out, but a couple weeks go by and he hasn't done a thing. She asks, "can you give me a hand packing up the house?" He declines. Why? Because he's working on a poster for the solstice.

The winter solstice.

For those of you keeping track: the winter solstice was last Saturday. Needless to say, she dumped his ass. It wasn't just the non-helpfullness, once they got to the new place the dude had no money to pay rent or the deposit.

Please see above right for the infamous poster - it's nice and everything, but, definitely not worth sacrificing a girlfriend and a place to live.

Crap, I guess this post ended up being about stupid hippies afterall.