Indeed. As way too many of you noticed yesterday, a Gawker writer bending to the whimsical will of Anonymous—putting on a pretty pink tutu all so he could score an exclusive interview with the hacker collective—happened to be wearing a vintage Portland Mercury T-shirt beneath the presumably humiliating get-up.

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Weird, right? But that's no ordinary Gawker reporter. It's Adrian Chen—a former Willamette Week intern and freelancer (from, like, 2006-2009) who quit these parts for the much bigger stage of New York City. Turns out, he got hold of his Mercury shirt during his brief stint in the Northwest. And it's still his favorite shirt. So he still wears it all the time. Including yesterday, when Anonymous issued its petty demand.

Because we're a hard-hitting news organization, we asked him all about it. So hit the jump, read what Chen had to say (WW has lousy shirts!)... and ... FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY AND DECENT AND SANCTIFIED ... STOP WRITING US, OKAY! Thank you.

I have to start out by saying that although I love the shirt I am a WWeek partisan, as they gave me my start in journalism back around 2006-2009. Willamette Week rules, the Mercury drools, etc.

That said: Willamette Week had the worst t-shirts when I worked there. They were XL and blue with a tiny logo in the corner, like it was a catering or a sanitation company instead of a newspaper. I had like three that I've never worn.

But one night in maybe 2007 or 2008 I was leaving a Mercury party downtown where The Cleaners is now, drunk, when some people pulled up next to us in a car, also drunk, and asked to bum a cigarette from my friend. It turned out they'd also been at the party and had a bunch of those amazing t-shirts, which were being handed out but were all gone by the time I got there. After my friend gave them cigarettes they drunkenly threw a shirt out of the window as sort of a payment. A beautiful Portland moment. It's been my favorite t-shirt ever since. I just happened to be wearing it today when the tutu thing happened since I wear it all the time.

As for payment for the advertising: Maybe you could send me another t-shirt, because I'm not sure how much longer this one is going to last?