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07 Jun 2008, 20:10
This week Portland celebrated / is celebrating its annual Rose Festival. It's been grey and drizzly all week so I haven't seen much of it—if there's anything more to see mid-week than the carnival attractions on the esplanade—but last Saturday was the Starlight Parade and today was the Grand Floral Parade.
They're both quite popular. Last night, ordinary-looking citizens were camped out on the sidewalk to reserve a spot. Since we suffered a bit of warm sunlight last Saturday I decided to take a bike ride, and before noon the streets were already lined with families. By mid-afternoon, the sidewalks were nonfunctional. And by nightfall, if you wanted to see the parade, you either fought for space or you got high.
I got high. A couple parking garages on the route didn't have the clever watchers removed who lined the ledges, so I climbed to the top level and watched from there.
Those are Storm Troopers. Those are Jedi.
I wasn't alone up there. There were two teenage girls drinking dark liquid from a water bottle. There was a bike cop who hummed along to the marching band that played "Don't Stop Believing", a gay karaoke favorite in Long Beach. And there was OKC Johnathan, an economics student at Reed College, who had a clever quip for everything and a bestial hatred for all the old women—there were a lot of old women in the parade—who spun and flung batons. After a while he said bye, he was going to find his group, but then lingered eerily behind me. When I turned to see what was up he said, rather quickly, "Um... My phone number is ..., if you ever want to hang out." I thanked him. He slid his fingers through his hair and then ran to the stairway.
They claim it's the cleanest parade in the country. We knew it was over when the streetsweepers and garabage trucks, who immediately followed the last car, bullhorned everyone to back up or get swept up. There was no trace of the merriment five minutes after the thing had ended.
The Grand Floral Parade is the big one. Its route is so long that it didn't pass my building until two hours after start time. My landlady was pretty excited. In the lobby she set out doughnuts, cakes and bagels, fruit, yogurt, chocolates, juice and coffee. I had already made my own coffee but I grabbed some watermelon and truffles—breakfast of champions—and went to wallflower outside.
There were fewer baton-twirling grannies in this one. There were just as many marching bands. There were many more floats. The mayors of many surrounding cities walked together, wearing sashes, waving to their clueless electorate.
An old gypsy (her aroma gave her away) sidled up to me. I looked at her. She was staring at my watermelon, intense and salivating. When she noticed that I had noticed her, she looked up. I said hi. She said hi. She did nothing for a minute, and then asked if she could steal my watermelon. I held the little plate out for her. She plucked it off and walked away.
Some anti-fur activists and their anarchist cheerleaders gathered behind the crowd on one of the blocked-off streets. A concerned woman ran across the street in a break in the parade to tell the cop standing next to me "They're waving these banners of bloody stuff!" "Yeah..." he said. When she left, a woman on my other side said "Yeah, like, welcome to Portland. What does she expect you to do about it?" He shrugged.
A little while later they jumped in the parade and marched about half a block, waving their banners of bloody stuff while their cheerleaders hopped about shaking red and black pompoms, but jumped back out when they saw the disapproving cop standing on the edge of the crowd. Later, a woman with a walkie-talkie passed who shrugged to him. "Well, they got their minutes."
What about Plunderathon ("Ruining marriages, political careers and livers in Portland, OR" since 1843)? Check back next weekend. If I survive, I'll give a report.
Pipe monster
06 May 2008, 19:43
Another reason I love Portland.
Meals, not wheels
04 Apr 2008, 1:25
Oil ghosts
01 Apr 2008, 17:20
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