I wandered into line about 6:30 last night outside the Cinema 21. The show I had come for, the sixth annual HUMP! Amateur Porn Festival, had been sold out for days. Tickets went fast for all of this weekend's six screenings. I lucked out and managed to snag a rush ticket and was one of the last five "pervs" allowed into the theater. I managed to find a spot towards the back of the balcony and had to stand up the entire time.

I've been curious about the festival for a few years now. Given that HUMP! is sponsored by The Seattle Stranger and The Portland Mercury, I figured that the shorts would be closer in nature to a Suicide Girls spread than a RedTube video. And who comes to something like this? I figured the crowd would be comprised entirely of leering guys in trench-coats.

Actually, the audience was an even mix of men and women. An usher stood watch in a corner of the balcony, occasionally telling viewers not to sit in the aisles, but also watching to make sure no one got too "excited." A few times he ran over and a shined a light on people for reasons I don't really want to know about. He definitely kept a close eye on one couple that were sharing a seat.






The shorts themselves are mostly humorous. A film parodying Mad Men features a dead-on intro of a black silhouette tumbling from the Space Needle. Drained Balls involved a couple going at it on top of Robocop pinball machine. There's also The Coffee Boy, a send-up of porn cliches that also mocked Portland stereotypes. In this one, a delivery boy is seduced by a hipster girl in a studio apartment over near NW 23rd. In the middle of everything, she tears open a bag of ground coffee and flings it around the room. Another crowd favorite, The Nun and the Bum, involves a sister who takes who love for Jesus far past the point of piousness. And I should also mention "The Hotel Uranus," a Claymation film clogged with Play-Dough aliens merrily enjoying an orgy on an otherwise dull interstellar Saturday night.

Other selections fall flat. A short featuring a satanic baby is irritating and shocking for the sake of being shocking. "Attack of the Triple Ds" is incomprehensible and, worse yet, features 3-D that doesn't actually work. The festival's second short contains enough misogyny to fuel a entire Womens Studies thesis.

My favorite HUMP! short was the bittersweet "Hi, I'm Pon." It consisted of a series of snapshots set to an awesome, slow-build electronic soundtrack. What starts out as a series of sickly-sweet text messages and an ensuing Hallmark-esque relationship mutates into a tale of well-justified revenge after the protagonist discovers a lewd message on her boyfriend's phone. The last shot is perfect. Since you'll likely never get a chance to see this, I'll reveal it here. "Where's the cord for your digital camera?" "Why?" "Oh, there's some pictures I'd like to get off it."

I can see why tickets for the festival sold out quickly. Here's hoping next year's edition adds a few more screenings.

Labels: hipsters, sex, Vices

I was over in a cafe on Belmont last week when a guy sitting near the window grabbed a to-go box and stuck it on his head, wearing it like a crown. Then he started humming a certain Arcade Fire song from a certain movie trailer for a certain movie adaptation of a certain universally beloved children's book that opens in theaters today. And then he started dancing.

His date seemed to appreciate this and they later walked out of the place, hand in hand.

Hipsters.

[shrug]

Labels: hipsters, movies

...the latest Cat and Girl comic shines a different light on the situation.

"Everyone's seen a hipster but nobody is one." Yup, that nails it. I don't think anyone I've ever met wears that label like a badge.

(thanks for passing this along, Sho)

Labels: hipsters

<

That's how a friend of mine described this video.

Labels: hipsters

I recently added a Google Adsense banner to the sidebar here on the blog. Why? To see if anyone would actually click on the ads, enabling me to make tens of pennies a day off this thing. Another reason: the program attempts to match advertisements with the blog's content. When I published a post about urban chicken coops in March the banner was filled with poultry-related ads for over a week. A recent post about a baby shower resulted in numerous ads for tot accessories.

Yesterday, I noticed this "therapy for hipsters" ad for a local therapist. I wonder what inspired Google Adsense to cough up that one. I can only assume it was the "I wanna go hug Nixon in 1977 and maybe give him some hot cocoa" line from that Frost/Nixon review.

But, now that I think about it, my skinny jeans have left me with a pyschological "not so fresh feeling" lately. Maybe I should make an appointment with Dr. Guenther to discuss the problems that have been bogging down my hipster lifestyle. I'm definitely going through a rough patch. My brand new, limited-edition Chuck All-Stars squeak when I walk around in them and that last Girl Talk album just doesn't sound as good as it did when I first heard it at the Dunes. Also: the stylist at the Bishops on Alberta cut my hair too short so it'll be at least another couple of weeks before I can get my trademark bedhead look just right again.

Things that I thought were kitschy and hilarious just aren't very kitschy and hilarious anymore. And, dammit, I was the first person living west of 81st to start drinking Miller Hi-Life ironically. Now everybody does it.

*sigh*

Labels: hipsters, mental health

I tried one of McDonalds' new Starbucks-killer coffee drinks the other day.

And it didn't work like the ad above said it would. I was hoping it might impact my tastes like a magical antidote, much like it did for these guys.

I still like "films."

And hanging around local coffee shops with a book and/or laptop.

And I'm still mostly indifferent to football.

So much for that.

And I still haven't ditched my ridiculous scarf, ironic t-shirt or my black wool jacket. Guess I'll head right on back to the Belmont Stumptown.

Labels: fast food, hipsters

One thing I find myself compelled to do this time of year is to hit all of the cultural festivals around Portland. Every weekend from August into October there always seems to be one going on. Last weekend was the Mt. Angel Oktoberfest. In the coming weeks there'll be the Polish and Greek festivals on the east side of town.

This past weekend there was the pirate festival at Cathedral Park and, despite not being able to convince anyone to go with me, I headed across the river on Saturday night anyway. Maybe it was out of a sense of duty. After all, I've got to enjoy as much of Portland's quirky hipster hangouts and passe internet memes turned weekend-long events as possible before gentrification drives all of Portland's creative-types up north to Vancouver.

Or do I?

That's the big fear I've been living with since I gave up an opportunity to move out of state a few years ago: that the city I gave up a proper career path for is going to turn into a boring and overpriced hellhole before my very eyes. But now with the current downturn on Wall Street, the mortgage mess and a national economy on the brink of collapse, what does it all mean for this microcosmic corner of the country?

Let's say the nightmares come true and the US falls headlong into a Depression: what does that mean for everything those in my socio-economic range in this city have been bitching about for the last five years? The high rents, the ever increasing cost of living and the fact that you can't get a microbrew for under $4 in a Portland tavern anymore?

My uneducated guess: the price of a pint at the Green Dragon will soar to $250, a bar of gold and Mad Max's Interceptor while the value of a Victorian two blocks off Hawthorne will drop to somewhere around Detroit levels. Not that it will matter. No one will be able to afford to heat a place like that in the middle of December 2011 but, at the very least, we'll all have a lot of time to run around in the cultural garb of our choice, be it Polish, German, Greek, pirate or otherwise.

Can you imagine what under 30 year-olds, myself included, would do if presented with a full-blown Dust Bowl, bread lines, Cinderella Man, sell the furniture or burn it to keep warm, John Steinbeck, gotta flee to California for a job that pays a quarter a day, Depression? We're talking about a generation of over-indulged consumers that can't live without text messaging and Xbox Live, let alone with the possibility that not even a New Deal 2.0 could save us all.

Still, maybe I'm a reckless optimistic-yet-simultaneous pessimist about all of this. There's the ever increasing feeling that time for the Portland I grew up with is quickly running out and I should have thrown in the towel three years ago. I should have learned a lesson from the elves and their decision to ditch Middle Earth. I'm just now realizing this: The Lord of the Rings was all about gentrification, wasn't it? Those prissy elves were priced out their homes by those damn hobbits and humans! Aaragon, you yuppie bastard!

But enough about all of that. Let's talk about full-grown adults that dress up like 17th century rape-crazed and rum-soaked criminals.

So I got all the way down there and marched down the stone steps underneath the bridge's archways. I took a look at a backstage area where a guy in pantaloons was practicing his sword moves with a stick and I decided the $15 entrance fee wasn't worth it. The crowd had died down and the sun was starting to set but people in Jack Sparrow costumes were still trickling in.

I eaves-dropped on pirate couples debating whether or not to head back to their cars for their 21st-century coats. One girl was dressed in an elaborate outfit straight out of a box of Padmé Amidala's cast-offs. As she passed me, her face was covered in green paint and she was wearing a ball gown. What I think might have been sticks of incense were jutting out of her hair.

It might have been for the best that I headed to the St. Johns Pub for a reuban instead. There were a few pooped-out pirates hanging around so I think I met my annual quota for buccaneer-related social gatherings. Have you ever had a look at the theater there? It's small but the dome and the couches are a nice touch.

Around that time I got a call to meet up at Roadside Attraction, where the patio was packed with people sucking down cigarettes, gin and the last, cooling waves of the summer of 2008. The mood was light but a doom and fear stew was slapping itself together in the back of my skull. A disquieting calm before a storm with a Pixies record playing in the background....God I hope not.

I tell you what Saturday night felt like: after a week like last week it felt like the last ten pages of The Great Gatsby but with hipsters and pirate costumes instead of highballs, mansions and a reckless bootlegger master of ceremonies. We were all a long way from Long Island but, to me, it looked like the grubby Portland-equivalent of ol' Jay Gatsby's long dead dream.

For the love of God people, vote Democratic in November. Otherwise, Skeletor and Caribou Barbie will throw the rock that finally smashes this country's little green dock light. Yeah, it's a reference to the book and I'm feeling both cheesy and blubbery enough to break out a quote here:

" He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms father...And one fine morning--- So we beat on..." etc, etc, boat against the past and the currents and all that stuff you were forced to read in high school English class.

Smoke 'em while you got 'em. If I'm quoting Fitzgerald then it means I should probably get to bed.

Labels: hipsters, malaise, politics

You never see these sorts of headlines coming out of my neighborhood.

Hipsters Deface the Front of a Semi-Racist Local Mattress Company [link] (not the original headline but I like this one better)

Half-Naked Mud Wrestler Throws Self Through Stumptown Window [link]

Then again, my neighborhood is boring-ass boring.

Labels: hipsters

Number of window displays currently containing pirate-related stuff within two blocks of the Baghdad Theater on SE Hawthorne: 4.

Number of establishments playing In Rainbows within that same two block radius on Sunday night: 2.

Number of Converse tennis shoes on my feet at the time: 2.

Number of apartments with ironic (?) outdoor Halloween displays incorporating those creepy "grandkid" dolls done up as zombies and skeletons down the street and around the corner: 1.

Eeep.

Labels: hipsters, Portland

Somehow I missed this when it ran in the Mercury a few weeks ago:

But the truth is, what rubs me the wrong way about this guy has nothing to do with his relative level of hipsterdom. The fact is, the guy is a self-absorbed narcissist who's overly vain about his wardrobe and hairstyle, and is generally unfriendly. As evidenced by sororities, law firms, sports teams, country clubs, sewing circles, and virtually every other social group the world over, this is by no means an exclusively hipster phenomenon. The fact remains that every demographic is composed of roughly 10 percent assholes. Buddhists, DJs, gourmet chefs, Freemasons, and ceramicists—all groups of humans are littered with pretentious twits. But intelligent, non-bigoted people generally refrain from decrying rock climbers, for instance, based on the shitty attitudes of a few. When we speak condescendingly of hipsters in reference to people like my video store clerk, the chances are that what we hate about them is that they're annoying little fucks. That they're a so-called "hipster" is entirely beside the point.

Click here for the rest. The article further delves into what exactly a "hipster" is. This much I know after reading it: I am not a hipster. I don't wear enough vintage clothing and spend waaaaaay too much time on the westside to qualify, Converse high-tops or no Converse high-tops. Plus, I'm pretty sure there's an age cut-off

Labels: hipsters, Portland