Stumptown is Bizarre

Portland has a reputation for being weird, but only recently have I begun to notice evidence of this fact.

Now, I'm not talking about things like The Velveteria, Portland's world-famous museum of velvet paintings, or the doughnut shop on 3rd that throws bacon on maple bars and gets hailed as a beacon of eccentricity. I'm talking about the little moments that make me stop and think wtf is going on right now. Join me, friends and lovers, as I recount some of the more wtf-worthy aspects of my neighborhood...

Several months ago, I was walking downtown at night, and I passed by the food carts on 10th and Alder. It was about an hour after the carts had closed, and I was just boppin' along, iPod blasting the Top Gun soundtrack in my ears, when something on the ground caught my eye.

An octopus. A live octopus. My first thought was, "this must be my spirit animal, manifested from my subconscious to protect me from harm."

Then I realized that was stupid, and most likely one of the Asian food carts probably tossed it out at the end of the night. Which is sad, but not as sad as having a dying octopus as a spirit animal.

While we're on the subject of doomed animals, I should mention the miserable feline I walk by on a regular basis. During my walk to work most mornings I'm greeted by a gargantuan homeless woman and her filthy, missing-an-eyeball cat, which for some inexplicable reason is always hanging about the woman's shoulders and head, clinging on for dear life as the woman hops about shrieking racial slurs at passersby. I usually keep my head down and walk by as fast as possible, primarily because I fear if I gaze into that cat's gaping eye socket, I'll see straight into the depths of hell and my face will melt like that Nazi dude from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Also because the woman looks like Aughra and she scares the shit out of me:

However, none of this truly compares to what I saw last week. It left scars on my soul, and I'm forever a changed man because of it.

I've mentioned that I have difficulty sleeping, and I frequently go running to pass the time. On this particular night I was jogging through the Alphabet District, and as I crossed under the 405 overpass, I stumbled upon a startling scene: two homeless women, scissoring on the sidewalk with wild abandon (as if an overpass offers any sort of privacy whatsoever). I halted in my tracks, mouth agape, like a lobotomized deer in headlights. I can't say how long I stood there, but once the ladies noticed they had an audience, they stopped grinding, and the awkward silence that followed seemed to last for goddamn eons.


Traumatizing as the situation was, I suppose when I think about it, it's comforting to know that even homeless lesbians can find love. Gives hope to the rest of us losers, yeah?