Best of the Merc, Portland Mercury

Shot on the Street

Denis C. Theriault — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 04:00:00 -0800

What the shooting of two homeless men ought to mean for the battle against Portland's camping ban. by Denis C. Theriault

IT WAS ABOUT 9 PM on a blustery, rain-soaked Tuesday night—and, yet, thanks to a horde of Mardi Gras revelers, Old Town was unusually festive.

Precisely what happened next isn't exactly clear, but the basic inflections of the story, told by a handful of different people, all agree on one point: A group of homeless men had been turned away from their usual overnight spot at Right 2 Dream Too (R2D2)—the camp-like refuge on NW 4th and Burnside—because the small lot, dotted by a few dozen tents, had already been filled by others with nowhere to go.

Shelter space, like it is every winter night, was also tight, and so the men had to make do. They could have crashed on the sidewalk across from R2D2, waiting amid drunken noise and dampness, until a tent maybe opened up in the wee hours. Instead, they split up. One man went in one direction, and the other two went another: east, across the Willamette River and down into the grim-but-dry industrial underbelly of the Morrison Bridge.

Sometime before 5 am on Wednesday, February 22, they were sleeping, covered, when a dark-colored station wagon pulled down SE Belmont. Someone inside leaned out with a gun and opened fire, and then the car vanished as quickly as it arrived. Carter Hickman, 57, took a bullet to the chest, while Albert Dean, 43, was merely grazed—and soon both men were on the way to OHSU.

As crimes go, this was particularly horrifying. And the questions, and the fears, remain fresh: Did the men do something to bring this upon themselves? Or was this one of those rare, random, senseless incidents?

But none of that really matters. Because this was something else: a wakeup call. On the streets, violence and vulnerability are inextricably linked—it's just that we never really hear much about it. According to Multnomah County's 2011 one-day homeless street count, nearly half of unsheltered people reported enduring some kind of violence that might otherwise have been avoided behind walls or if they were just somewhere safe.

And that wakeup call comes at a portentous time for Portland. Twin protests over the city's ban on tent camping—one of them around the clock—remain outside city hall, confronting staffers and politicians with the issue daily. On February 29, after at least one false start, the city is scheduled to present a tepid plan to settle a years-long federal lawsuit over that same camping ban. And March 1 will mark the second month of steep fines for R2D2's landlord—continuing a code enforcement crackdown on the well-managed safe haven for the homeless that, its backers say, the city really ought to be embracing instead.

LIKE CHASING GHOSTS

Until the night they were shot, Hickman and Dean—better known by some as "Joe" and "Allen," respectively—had been staying off and on at R2D2 for about five weeks. They had a regular tent near the rest area's entrance, specially chosen because of their work schedule.

"We'd always put them in the same spot" in C7, said Joe Green, R2D2's top security man, a couple of days after the shooting. "They always had to get up early to go to work."

That's the point of Right 2 Dream Too. It's built so people who need a night's sleep, or several, or a place to dry out, can sack out in peace and store their belongings—and then maybe get their bearings enough to find and keep a job and begin the slog back up to self-sufficiency.

Most nights, if its residents can't make it back early enough, there's a long line of people hoping to check in by 7 pm. The site holds up to 80 people, and on any given day, two or three dozen of them are new faces.

Joe and Allen and their friend became quiet fixtures at the site, Green and others say. When they weren't working, they would help keep things tidy and even helped reengineer some tents. They would take meals at Sisters of the Road or at nearby churches.

"There were always the three of them," Green says. "We would call them our workers."

Later, an Occupy Portland member wrote that he remembered seeing the men in camp last fall.

But learning more about Joe and Allen was, in some ways, like chasing ghosts. On Friday, February 24, police said, both were still in OHSU, with Hickman expected to live. But an OHSU switchboard operator said there was no record Hickman had ever been at the hospital and said Dean, despite what police said, had been released from the emergency room after the shooting.

Neither man has a serious criminal record in Multnomah County. Court records, in fact, show just a single TriMet exclusion for each, issued on separate days in August 2011. The files list the same cell phone number (it's not working) and a common address, the Portland Rescue Mission, at 111 W Burnside.

It was only after I made my way to the end of the dozens-strong line of Rescue Mission visitors that someone's ears perked up. "I know them," said a stricken-looking younger man, who gave his name as John. "They came from Seattle."

On his way inside the mission, John offered a heartbreaking detail: He said the men weren't just friends, but partners who were living "as husband and husband."

"They're my best friends," he finished, before disappearing inside.

"AM I SCARED? I DON'T KNOW"

It's still unclear, publicly at least, why Joe and Allen were shot. Police, despite offering a $1,000 reward for tips (503-823-4357), are sharing precious little about what detectives have uncovered, including during their interviews with the two men.

Rhetoric at city hall and among social services providers immediately homed in on the possibility that the attack was random—a sociopathic strike against two people who did nothing more than bunk up on a sidewalk under a bridge. That fear was felt on the streets.

Less than 24 hours later, a block east of the shooting, a man named Tim was propped up in a lawn chair keeping watch on three blanket-swaddled companions, one of them a pregnant woman. It was a gritty vigil, with trains lurching past a few blocks away, cars rumbling overhead, and rats skittering for food scraps.

"Am I scared?" he said. "I don't know. I don't know if I can get any sleep. Being out here like this, I don't want someone to roll up and go pow-pow-pow-pow."

Since then, reactions have grown more measured. But the emphasis on vulnerability remains.

"In terms of this specific incident, we don't have a good idea yet of what was happening there. But we do know that people sleeping on the streets take a variety of different risks," says Marc Jolin of JOIN, an agency that works to link homeless Portlanders with services and housing. "Violence, theft, assault. That is not uncommon. We get reports from folks of the violence they experience at the hands of partners on the street, and verbal and physical assaults... from strangers."

The 2011 street count found more than 1,700 people sleeping outside, and a few thousand more in emergency shelters. The Portland Police Bureau does not directly track how many reports each year involve someone who's considered homeless. Nor does the bureau track cases in which violence seems to be motivated solely because a victim is homeless. Multnomah County, alongside Street Roots, is currently trying to put a number on how many homeless Portlanders die on the streets—of natural causes and otherwise.

The National Coalition for the Homeless, however, has tracked a modest increase in hate-crime-like attacks against Oregon's homeless in recent years. Overall, from 1999 to 2009, it counted 37 attacks, 10 of them fatal.

But some attacks never lead to a report. Not that they don't hurt. The same night Joe and Allen were turned away from R2D2—Fat Tuesday—drunks walking by couldn't resist pounding on the site's walls or shouting insults, says one of the men keeping watch that night, Dale Ardway.

INSIDE THE MACHINE

The plight of Right 2 Dream Too—founded in October 2011 by the same organizers behind Dignity Village out by the airport—has added new electricity to the fight against Portland's camping ban.

And because it sits on private land, hosted by a landlord who's partially trying to jab a finger in the city's eye, R2D2 has had time to show off its success. Cops in the area appreciate the eyes on the street. Neighbors, looking past the fact that the site sits under the Chinatown Gate, appreciate the quiet respect R2D2's residents have for the area.

The place runs like a machine, with security patrols around downtown, governing meetings, ample storehouses of tools, blankets, and food, and strict rules against intoxication and violence. It's given hope and offered a model for how to cheaply, if still imperfectly, help people in need at a time when government coffers are starving just as much. R2D2 takes couples and pets and undocumented immigrants, and asks few questions—something the shelters in town don't always do.

And yet the city has declared the place an unpermitted recreational campground—and is bombarding its landlord with massive fines that could drive it out of existence. Getting a permit, and adding facilities like a sewer line to get legal, are too expensive for volunteers who rely on donations to pay for steady bills like laundry, electricity, and porta-potty service.

"We provide walls. We provide security, and they want to charge us money for something they should be doing," says Ibrahim Mubarak, an R2D2 spokesman and founder.

Mubarak says close to 600 people passed through the site from February 1-15, and that security has to kindly refuse, on some nights, up to 20 people. Nearly a dozen inhabitants have found more permanent housing, he says, and dozens more have used the respite to find work.

They're raising money, dreaming of a bigger lot downtown, close to social services—and pleading with city hall.

"If they close us down, where are these people going to go?" asks Mubarak. "What sidewalk can they sleep on?"

A CHILL FROM CITY HALL

Reaction from Portland City Hall has so far been frigid. Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who runs the city bureau in charge of code enforcement, has steadfastly refused to waive any fines. In fact, his office says, they're considering whether to ask a city hearings officer for permission to dramatically increase the $641 monthly fine in coming months.

At one point there was hope among organizers that Commissioner Amanda Fritz might broker a compromise—she showed up at a march in support of the site—but that talk has since fizzled.

Portland's housing commissioner, Nick Fish, also has been quiet about the site. In the aftermath of the shooting, he issued a statement lashing out at the attack, but it was criticized by some advocates for not being more vocally supportive of R2D2.

"The city is making progress in its effort to end homelessness," he wrote. "The opening of Bud Clark Commons is but one notable example. This shameful criminal act reminds us that everyone in our community deserves a safe and decent place to call home."

The Commons, which wouldn't be here without Fish, has been a godsend—for some. It has a day center that's helped thousands since June 2011, but its shelter has room for only 90 men at a time, and its 130 apartments for the chronically homeless are already full (and they also allow substance abuse). Then there's the cost: $47 million, making it hardly replicable.

If Fish is sympathetic to R2D2's model, he's keeping his cards very close. After protesters filled his office earlier this month, he agreed to sit down with Saltzman and talk about R2D2—nothing more.

In his favor, last December Fish did push the council (over the clamor of the Portland Business Alliance) into backing a car-camping pilot program that could, one day, be stretched to include a site like R2D2. Under his plan, churches and nonprofits would be able to host as many as four cars, with a written agreement from Saltzman's office directing code enforcers to turn a blind eye.

A dozen or so churches have expressed interest, and the Portland Housing Bureau is expected to release specific guidelines as soon as this week.

But when asked about R2D2 the day after Joe and Allen's shooting—after the Mercury first reported the men had stayed there—Fish walked very carefully.

Instead, he said the shooting of Joe and Allen was a chance to rally against looming city budget cuts that might threaten millions in cash for things like short-term rent assistance, more social services, and more brick-and-mortar housing.

"I want to know what the options are at this site first," he says. "You know there's not support on this council for the wholesale relaxation of the camping ordinance, even though as practical matter we don't always enforce it."

The fluid nature of the city's camping ban—a term of art some of its lawyers disagree with—is glaringly obvious down under the Morrison and Hawthorne Bridges, where some people prop up tarps and other structures that offer more cover than mere bedrolls.

It's up to officers, right now, to decide when to enforce city rules against tents and sidewalk sleeping. One officer's wishes on one night may not be the same as another cop's on another night. Just like violence, that murkiness is another fact of life for Portlanders on the streets.

And whatever settlement emerges from court may not make that any clearer.

A previous attempt at an agreement would have allowed small tent clusters. The latest version, last time the city discussed it on the record, was expected to include only changes in training and enforcement, but not any exemptions.

"There's no ban in town. It's happening. It's tolerated," says David Woboril, a deputy city attorney who handles police issues and isn't working on the settlement. "But the city has to manage it."

Woboril and Fish both said the city worries that large camps won't always be as well run as R2D2—and will cost the city resources to keep the peace.

"Large camps have a victim problem," Woboril says. "That's always the question: Can you do it on a large scale?"

The folks at R2D2 say they, at least, have earned the right to keep trying. Mubarak says activists from California and cities across Oregon have come around to take notes. Cities don't have to spend big, he says, or surrender the rule of law to let homeless residents help themselves.

Joe Green, R2D2's main security volunteer, was thinking about all the other homeless Portlanders who could've wound up like Joe and Allen.

"Without us," he said, "there'd be a whole lot more lives at stake."

—The Mercury's Sarah Mirk contributed to this report.

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We Have Enough Humans, Thanks.

Sarah Mirk — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 04:00:00 -0800

Young people make the ultimate choice—to never, ever procreate. by Sarah Mirk

HANNA BROOKS OLSEN first tried to get her tubes tied when she was 19.

"Every year, since I was 19, I've gone to the same Planned Parenthood clinic. And every year, I've asked if I can qualify for a tubal ligation. At 19, the doctor told me I needed to be 21. When I was 21, she told me 25. The last time I went in, she told me I had to wait until I'm 30," says Olsen, who is now 24 and working as a writer and editor in Seattle.

"Birth control is crappy and expensive and at any time it could be voted out from under me. I want to be responsible with my health," says Olsen. "I'm happy with the idea of a life that doesn't involve me ever having children."

Last week, the global population hit seven billion, highlighting the high stakes of reproducing ourselves. Clearly, there is no longer a biological need to pop out children to ensure the survival of the race—but young adults who opt against children face a serious stigma.

Humans have bickered over the morals of not having children ever since 1500 BC, when God killed Onan for spilling his seed during coitus interruptus. Since then, we've progressed a surprisingly short distance—while even the pope no longer considers contraception grounds for smiting, the image of a normal family is one that includes children.

SPREADING THE SEED

The 2010 Census revealed that having a child is becoming less and less a requirement for being a mainstream American family: There are now more American homes with dogs than children. The number of houses with kids under 18 dropped 2.5 percent in America over the past decade, declining in 95 percent of US counties. Locally, Oregon has the 42nd lowest birth rate in the country. Only 25 percent of Portland homes include kids, and that number is declining.

Of course, much of that decline comes from women and couples waiting until later in life to have kids (the average age of a mother's first birth rose from 21 in 1970 to 25 today). And you can also thank both the current years-long recession for the drop—birth rates decline during hard economic times—and increased access to birth control.

But there appears to be an increase in people like Olsen: young people who are redefining the image of a happy family as one that's childfree.

Dating website OkCupid crunched the data from its 3.1 million members and found that a whopping 29 percent of its users under the age of 30 state that they never want children. Olsen is just one of many who are taking permanent steps to ensure they never wind up with a kid.

While the current debate over birth control spirals around temporary and emergency contraception, young people who are certain they never want children encounter numerous challenges on both social and medical fronts when they try to act upon their choice.

SEXUAL HANGUPS

"Every urologist I called, once they found out my age and that I haven't had kids, would just hang up on me. They wouldn't even have me in for a consultation," says Lint Bunting, 33, who eventually obtained a vasectomy at age 26.

Doctors are free to turn down patients for voluntary sterilization because it's not a medically necessary procedure. In clinics that do offer the service, federal Medicaid guidelines require doctors to have a counseling session with patients, followed by a 30-day waiting period before the surgery. These requirements for informed consent stem from the sordid history of sterilization—in the 1930s and 1940s, eugenicists forcibly sterilized up to 60,000 Americans deemed unfit to reproduce. But Bunting and other young people in his position see them as discriminatory hoops to jump through.

"I finally found a urologist who would see me, though they warned me beforehand that I probably wouldn't pass the counseling. But I went in there and was pretty firm in my stance and they said okay."

Bunting divides his time between odd jobs in Portland and long-distance hiking—spending six months a year on backwoods trails isn't exactly an ideal lifestyle for raising a child. His quest for sterility stems from his time in nature. On his jacket, Bunting wears a patch with a baby crossed out that reads, "Fewer People, More Wilderness" (there's a matching tattoo on his upper thigh).

"My DNA isn't so important that I need to replicate myself. It would just be selfish," says Bunting. "I don't care how many cloth diapers you use or how many Priuses you buy, having a kid is still a huge, huge carbon footprint."

Bunting caught some flak from his parents when he first told them about his decision to never procreate, he says, but they're okay with it now.

"I don't believe in the idea of the biological clock," says Bunting, bluntly. "I don't eat food to take a shit. I like to have sex. My biological human urge is to have sex, the baby is a byproduct of that."

The motivations of Olsen, in Seattle, are less environmental and more personal. Her parents raised her and two siblings on a cop's salary in Lane County, outside Eugene.

"There were too many of us and not enough of everything that we needed. I never wanted to end up in that situation. It's always seemed to me like there's only two paths: You can have a career, or you can have children," says Olsen, who half-jokingly notes that she read The Feminine Mystique "really early on." Both Olsen's mom and grandma had their first child when they were 20—Olsen decided she would devote herself to her community and career. She is happy with her life now, but birth control is always an issue since she has no health insurance. A low-ball estimate for out-of-pocket costs for getting one's tubes tied is $2,500.

A CHILD IS A CHOICE

Refusing to have children is still not seen as a legitimate life choice, says Portlander Karen Foster, 43, who released a book this year called No Way Baby!

"When someone goes into a doctor saying they want to have a baby, would anyone make them go to counseling and then write a letter saying, 'You know this is permanent?' No, no one would question you," says Foster. "That decision to not have children is still seen as 'Maybe there's something wrong with you.'"

"Your generation is actually sitting back and saying, 'Hey, do I want to have kids?'" says Ellen Walker, 51, another Northwest writer who released a book this year about childlessness, Complete without Kids. "In my generation, nobody thought about it. It's just what everybody did."

Like Olsen and Bunting, friends and family constantly told these two women that they would eventually change their minds about having kids. They never did—but both say they have spoken with numerous young people who have had trouble obtaining tubal ligations and vasectomies. Times are changing, says Walker, in part because the gay-rights movement has opened up the door to mainstream acceptance of nontraditional families.

"People are insisting that their family without kids is no less deserving of respect," says Walker (who, by the way, has three dogs).

Portlander PJ Hazen's path to a sterility has been much easier. Hazen, now 28, went in for a consultation with a doctor at the Southeast Portland Planned Parenthood two years ago. He says he was treated without condescension and scheduled for an appointment with no hassle. On the day of reckoning, he remembers sitting in the clinic's waiting room with a "bunch of nervous guys sitting around tapping their feet." When his turn came, a doctor poked a needle full of anesthetic into his scrotum, made an incision over his right testicle, and pulled out Hazen's vas deferens.

"I'm sitting there watching myself be sterilized and I'm thinking, 'Holy shit holy shit holy shit,'" says Hazen. The pain lasted for a few days, but was manageable. "Remember, if you get a vasectomy, don't forget the ice," says Hazen. "Unless you want to find out what elephantiasis looks like."

The cost of the surgery—roughly $1,000—was completely covered by the Oregon Health Plan, which contributes to vasectomies and tubal ligations costs in patients over 21.

AGE OF CONSENT, AND REGRET

At Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), Dr. Paula Bednarek, director of the family planning clinic, says all patients have to go through consultation and a waiting period before a tubal ligation—but she does treat younger women slightly different.

"We do talk to younger women a little differently than older women. When someone's 45 and they're getting a tubal ligation, it's different than when someone's under 30," says Bednarek.

While studies differ on the specifics, the largest and longest-term study of sterilization tracked the feelings of 11,232 women over 14 years. It found age was a factor in regret: 20 percent of women who were 30 or younger at the time they got their tubes tied expressed some regret over their choice, while only 6 percent of older women did.

"Young women know themselves as well as older women. The thing that's different about younger women is they have a longer time for things to change," says Dr. Bednarek. She says she hasn't seen an uptick in young people wanting sterilizations, but that there have been a handful of under-30 women recently coming in for tubal ligations because they're planning to live and work in countries where abortion is illegal and birth control unreliable.

Lovejoy Surgicenter—Portland's largest abortion provider and considered by many a progressive clinic model—has no age limit for sterilization, but does require patients to wait 30 days and sign waivers acknowledging the procedure is permanent.

"If an adult is absolutely sure they will not be wanting kids in their future, we do not see this as an ethical or moral dilemma. We see this as a parenting decision and we honor all parenting decisions," says Lovejoy Director Kayla Reich, via email.

Planned Parenthood policies on sterilization vary between branches, but the local affiliate only requires patients be older than 15, which is the age Oregon requires for informed consent. Tubal ligation is no longer offered at Portland branches, though, because of the cost.

While having children is an individual choice, it's also one that impacts every romantic relationship. Bunting, Olsen, and Hazen all made their child-free choice with their partners in mind.

Bunting sees his vasectomy as an equality issue.

"It's fucked up—women have to take on the responsibility of taking all these pills, of getting an IUD. Getting a vasectomy was me taking on that responsibility. It's a sexual get-out-of-jail-free card," says Bunting.

Hazen opted to get a vasectomy in part because his long-term girlfriend of five years also did not want kids, but had a bad reaction to hormonal birth controls. Olsen and her partner of four years discussed their childbearing beliefs very early on. They both agreed a happy life together didn't require children.

"I don't dislike little kids. I think I don't just need them myself," says Olsen. "It's a thing that the human body does—but it's not the most important thing that our body does."

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Take Your City and Shove It!

Sarah Mirk — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 04:00:00 -0700

The Best Complaints to City Hall by Sarah Mirk

If you have a complaint, Portland City Hall has a voicemail for you. Call 503-823-4740. It's the job of the public advocate in Mayor Sam Adams' office to field concerns from citizens—and she fields a lot. In fact, a transcription of the complaints left on her voicemail from the last nine months spans 176 pages, and we've picked out the best of the best complaints of the year for your reading enjoyment. Beware: many are depressing and crazy. (Surprised?) Portland as a city is all about promoting public input, but many of the comments directed to the mayor's office are, at best, aggressive and unhelpful and at worst, tirades about subjects the mayor has no control over. So go ahead, lodge a complaint. A volunteer will dutifully transcribe your voicemail and, if it's actually relevant to the mayor's office, send it on to a staffer. You may even get a response—but when you do, remember: It's not going to kill you to be nice.

December 30, 2009, 11:21 am This here message is for Sam Adams, who thinks he's the leader of Portland. You're no leader. We have no leaders in Portland. I've been sitting in traffic in the same spot—the same half-mile of I-5—for three and a half hours, going on four hours, just inching my way along, because of icy roads. If you were any kind of a leader, this wouldn't be happening. Unfortunately, it's a city of thugs, like our president and the rest of the Democrats currently at the controls of this country that have driven it into the fucking ground! You asshole!!

December 30, 2009, 12:10 pm You can't get this city to do anything except ruin itself. You know what? I have to tell you something. I know the camera puts on 10 pounds, but Sam, you need to know: You are getting fat—around the middle, where it's very dangerous for your heart. So, you are a fat failure.

January 4, 2010, 11:36 am We own City Liquidators down here on the east end of the Morrison Bridge. I'm calling today about the homeless camps that surround our property. It's now gotten beyond control. It was two or three, three or four, and now there are 15. There's human feces everywhere. There's just poop, poop, poop. It smells like urine. We've tried to cut the smell with Pine-Sol, and that didn't work. We've tried being nice. This weekend they were in here in our building using our bathrooms and now both bathrooms are down.

January 5, 2010, 1:21 pm I was raped by the drug taskforce—anally. I GOT RAN OVER BY TRIMET. It drove over the sidewalk and ran me over. I am CRIPPLED now! Are you FUCKING happy?! Your fuckin' Sam Adams—little faggot bastard—is a FAKE. And your goddamned election office is FAKE and shit! I am so pissed, I have no recourse except to OPEN FIRE!!

January 13, 2010, 10:12 am Yeah: I think the overtime parking tickets downtown are outrageous. Since you have extended your parking meter hours—and on Sunday—I just made up my mind, I boycott downtown. There are plenty of other places to shop: out in the suburbs—out of the city limits of Portland, even. So, okay, thanks for nothing. Oh, by the way, Lars Larson, 750 KXL: He thinks so, too. So, digest that.

February 3, 2010, 11:27 am Well, hello liar: This is your constituent. Say, Sam, I was reading that the states of Oregon and Washington have spent $72 million to figure out how to build a bridge—and you hayseeds can't even get that done.

Friday, February 4, 2010, 10:12 am I would like to suggest to you that there are much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much more important things that need to be dealt with for our citizens in Portland than bicycle issues. Do not force this onto people. People who like to ride bicycles—that's wonderful. But, the majority of us do not plan to change. We do everything else: We change our light bulbs, we're vegetarians. You know, if you really want to push a political agenda, why don't you push vegetarianism? That is the biggest cause of pollution to the soil, and the air, and the water that there is. Thank you. Ciao.

February 10, 2010, 4:19 pm Hey, we need a bus to drive the hungry out to the fields to work and eat their crops. Thank you.

February 12, 2010, 8:25 am Mayor Adams: I want to say thank you to you and to the Portland Police Department for ridding Portland of yet another unarmed black man. I am very grateful to the service that the Portland Police Department is doing by one-by-one murdering these people and I'm even more grateful to Mr. Scott Westerman for explaining how it is their job and their duty to continue to murder these unarmed people. So, give the Portland Police Department a slap on the back, also, because, again, what you have done is murdered another innocent black man. Keep going and we will rid the city of those horrible innocent black people. Thank you.

February 12, 2010, 8:40 am I don't think I need a call back because I don't think anything will ever be done—but I'm just sick and tired of turning on the news. The police are just so power hungry that that's all they do is shove people around. They're just running around shooting everybody—and unarmed people: kids, teenagers. Stupid!

February 12, 2010, 1:16 pm Hi, Sammy: What is your problem? Are you crazy? Are you a nutcase? Come on, they've been trying to fix the sewage problems in Portland, Oregon, since the 1930s and collecting money. And it's little idiots like you that keep taking the money and spending it on other things. We don't need 700 miles of bike paths in the city! You know what? Not that many people ride bikes! Pull your head out, you nutcase!

February 19, 2010, 8:15 am Good morning. I'm a career mental health nurse. I live in West Linn. I have followed all the deadly police shootings in Portland and have noticed that they are almost exclusively against people of color, people with mental disabilities. The police are out of control. The mayor is doing nothing to stop it and Rosie Sizer seems uninterested, unwilling, or unable to stop it. When you see me in the demonstrations, I'm a little gray-haired lady.

March 24, 2010, 11:04 am Yes, I was calling in response to the mayor's decision to spend $20 million from the sewer fund for bicycle paths. As someone who lives down river from the City of Portland, I want to register a complaint that you guys are still dumping raw sewage into the river when it rains. What's more important: bicycle paths or doodie in the river? We've about had it down here with you guys telling us how to live and you doing these terrible, horrible things to our river. It's disgusting. Thank you.

March 31, 2010, 3:40 pm I've invented a flower guardian to keep the squirrels from chewing up all the beautiful flowers.

April 1, 2010, 2:58 pm I'm outraged about this incident that occurred the other day in downtown Portland by this small group of these whacko fruitcake anarchists and the kid-glove treatment that the City of Portland and the police seem to have when it comes to these nutjobs. And Sam Adams wonders why businesses are leaving Portland. And, so, yeah, screw it. Take your city and shove it, Sam!

April 2, 2010, 10:40 am Yeah: Tell Mayor Sam Adams to watch his backside. Mike Tyson's fuckin' after him.

April 7, 2010, 9:36 am Do yourself a favor, Sam Adams, and fire the internal police review, and internal affairs and Sizer, and Randy Whatever-His-Name-Is from city council. Keep Erik Sten, but get rid of fuckin' other guy, please, so we can get some justice; because if there ain't no justice for me, there ain't going to be any justice.

April 12, 2010, 3:44 pm Hi. I'm calling to say, I am a citizen of Portland, and Rosie Sizer needs to be fired—IMMEDIATELY! And, the entire police department needs to be looked at. These people are going CRAZY! How STUPID are you people?? Apparently, pretty stupid. Rosie Sizer needs to be fired! FIRE Sizer! FIRE Sizer! FIRE Sizer! [Repeated 10 more times.]

April 15, 2010, 2:08 pm Getting a paid vacation for beating somebody to a bloody pulp or killing someone in cold blood is ridiculous. And, as a voter, I'm not going to hold the police chief accountable; I'm going to hold Sam Adams accountable. You know, you can build all the bike lanes you want, but that's not really going to impress me—and I'm one of your hipsters here in Portland.

May 10, 2010, 5:07 pm Hi, folks: I'm finding it a hard time accepting the idea that you want to waste so much of my tax dollars on garbage like babying bicyclists and making more and more little paths for them, but you're going to cut the police force and mounted patrol!? This is your ever-complaining Joanne. You do not need to call me back, because I know that you do not care.

May 12, 2010, 9:25 am If you need to cut a cop, how about Rosie Sizer and the guy who killed James Chasse? Thanks.

May 12, 2010, 9:26 am Hey. I was just reading the Portland Tribune, and I didn't know that our mayor called Storm Large Portland's First Lady, and then I read this article about her. I find out that she's a drug user, a heroin user, and has been having sex since she was like 10 years old and that she is a major, major slut. That just tells me right there how confused, whacked out, unmoral, and undecent, and how farfetched you are, Mayor Sam Adams. She's not even from here.

May 21, 2010, 12:55 pm I've been here for about 75 years, and I'm so disappointed in you, Adams, and your raising of the sewer and water rates. And now you want to take that money and siphon it off for low-income bioswales, and all the other environmental whacko stuff that this city does. I'm against it. I resent it.

July 2, 2010, 4:12 pm I'm calling long distance. I'm in Texas and I've been made aware that the local reptile shop on Pacific Highway has a black mamba; and I think that's very dangerous, and I'd like to have something done about it. I used to live in Portland.

July 6, 2010, 11:30 am This is bull crap, man. I'd rather be under British rule than sit and listen to these idiots giving my mother a heart attack. There ain't no police going to do nothing. You sit there and say that this stuff is illegal, when every single asshole in this city is, you know, lighting off M-80s and Roman Candles... the city sounds like Vietnam, man.

August 2, 2010, 12:53 pm I voted for you, dear. I would always agree with you—but I do think they are missing where a lot of money is being spent. And, I make the best rye Old Fashioneds you ever had.

August 13, 2010, 8:42 am I hope this message goes to Mayor Sam Adams, because he's the appropriate one and he's the one I called and the one I want to talk to. I hurt. I'm crippled. I can hardly walk anymore... I want to go home. I want to go back to living... I've had it... I'm tired of living on the street... I want to die, but God won't let me, will he? I want to fuckin' die because everyone refuses to see me and give me proper care. It's probably way too late now, huh? [Sobbing.]

August 30, 2010, 1:30 pm Yes, Mr. Mayor: I think you're making the legal gun owners criminals, and letting the criminals off. I disagree with your gun stance. I think you're anti-gun. I got the information from the NRA, and I believe you're wrong. So, you can kiss my ass. Goodbye.

September 3, 2010, 3:34 pm Mayor Adams: I worked for you. I voted for you. I did everything I could to make sure you got elected because I believed in you. You are a miserable failure! This whole bag thing?? I am disabled. I cannot carry a paper bag. The only thing I want bagged is you. Paper or plastic, paper or plastic? Mayor Adams. How would you like it to be? Paper or plastic? I hope someday you're disabled and you can't carry anything either.

September 7, 2010, 10:14 am Hey, I'm calling to see if Mayor Adams had the opportunity to read Mr. Canzano's column in Monday's paper. Thanks, Mayor Adams, for making the city such a better place with your useless bike lanes and your bicycle projects. I wouldn't vote for you, Mr. Adams, if you were running for street sweeper on my street. You are that pathetic. Thank you.

September 15, 2010, 12:55 pm I've just heard the news that the ultra-far-left whackjob liberal mayor and city council of Portland, Oregon, will be raising the Mexican flag over city hall over the urging of the Mexican consulate there in Portland. Yes, once again, you've shown your complete disdain for America, with your multicultural, diversity, far-left, fruitcake, secular, progressive agenda shining through bright and clear.

September 23, 2010, 11:48 am Sam: I have two degrees from Reed Fucking College, and I'm so proud of you that you understood that the best way was just to fire all the motherfuckers on the [budget advisory] committee. You're really getting it, Sam. You're not going to be a one-term mayor. You're going to go the max.

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Let 'er Buck!

Patrick Alan Coleman — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 04:00:00 -0700

Forty-eight hours at the Pendleton Round-Up. Featuring: 1,500 horses, 900 pounds of ham, four fighter jets, and one beer spilled on a baby. by Patrick Alan Coleman and Sarah Mirk THURSDAY

8 pm SARAH MIRK—Main Street is bursting with thousands of people wearing cowboy hats and tight jeans. A drizzle blurs the neon. Pendleton, Oregon, has been waiting 100 years for this day and now, of course, it's raining. Cowboys and cowgirls first started roping and riding in the Pendleton Round-Up in 1910. Now one of the top 10 rodeos in the world, the Round-Up is Oregon's Mardi Gras, and a celebration of Oregon culture that Portlanders tend to despise (wild patriotism, sleazy seething mechanical bull sexuality, guns). But I'm sick of being an Oregonian who never leaves the city... it's time I got east of the Cascades. When he arrives, Patrick and I will be crashing in the backyard of Pendleton locals Peter, Jake, and Rian—young dudes who decided to stick around their hometown rather than ditch the craziness for the city. Back on Main, I take refuge from the drizzle under the awning of a church.

8:15 pm PATRICK ALAN COLEMAN—I'm at the Time Based Art Festival, and I've no real desire to try and understand the meaning of the performance I've just seen (tights, Shakespeare, chicken suit). My thoughts are on getting packed to go to Round-Up. I'm incredibly excited.

8:30 pm SM—An evangelist woman named Jennifer gives me a two-question test to see if I'm going to heaven. We determine I am going to hell.

8:35 pm SM—A cowboy overtakes me and offers to carry my bag. His name is Riley. He's not certain what day it is. "The rodeo's been going on a long time," he says. During this week, the 17,000-person town swells to over 75,000. Residents who don't like the rodeo, or can't make money off it, flee for the weekend.

11 pm SM—Three beers in. "Let 'er Buck!" That's the slogan of Round-Up, the appropriate answer to any question, and the correct exclamation at all times, a blend of "Yee Haw!" "Hello!" and "I don't know what the fuck is going on!"

11:15 pm PAC—I decide to go for a Paul-Newman-as-Butch-Cassidy look while I'm in Pendleton, which hinges on my suede derby hat. I pull my cowboy boots from the closet. I wonder what Sarah is doing as I fall asleep in a comfortable bed for the last time in the next 48 hours.

1 am SM—I smoke pot with a well-known radio personality on Main Street beneath the neon. Hell for sure.

FRIDAY

10 am PAC—On the road, the landscape flattens out past the Gorge. It smells of onions and dill, along with less pleasant animal aromas. Merle Haggard blasts through my car speakers. I'm so ready.

10:15 am SM—At this moment, Pendleton breaks the Guinness World Record for most horses in a single parade. Former Governor John Kitzhaber sits astride one of the 1,500 horses, finally blending in with his trademark cowboy jeans and giant belt buckle. Conestoga wagons, beauty queens, white horses whose saddles read, "Jesus Is Lord," 140 riders carrying American flags, all loop through downtown.

1:30 pm PAC—Driving into Pendleton I'm confused by all the bicyclists on the road. I'd expected horses. But then, passing the high school, I see a Hooverville ringed with carbon fiber bikes hanging on chain link. These are the 2,000 Cycle Oregon riders who crossed the state to attend Round-Up in Lycra rather than denim. Their slogan? "Let 'er Bike." Further into town, we see the rodeo grounds, about the size of PGE Park, but mostly wooden, painted a beautiful brick red, and filled with fans whose fervor and drunkenness rival that of the Timbers Army. Beside it, the tops of an enormous teepee encampment bristle against the blue sky. The scale is overwhelming.

1:45 pm SM—The rodeo grounds seat more than 16,000. Tickets sold out a year ago. I walk wide-eyed through the front row of the stands and someone hits me on the arm—it's East Portland State Representative Jefferson Smith and beside him Democrat US Senator Jeff Merkley. "This is truly an Oregon cultural event," says Smith. He tells me he was a cattle hand back in his distant youth. "Guys manlier than me did rodeo."

1:50 pm PAC—I've been in Pendleton just under an hour when I find myself in the Let 'er Buck Room, beneath the rodeo grandstands, one of the rowdiest bars in the world. Walking into the murky interior I'm hit with the blunt smell of hundreds of drunken, sexed-up rodeogoers. The humidity causes my shirt to dampen almost immediately. There's no way to move.

2:15 pm SM—Rodeo horses are named like sex toys. Thunder Monkey, French Wake, Muffled Cries, Nightmare Rocket.

2:30 pm PAC—We're packed ass to ass, front to front. Luckily, the current of shuffling, swaying humanity propels me to the bar where I exchange a pewter chip for more whiskey than I've ever seen poured in a single shot. Around me, men cheer as a woman lifts her top.

4:15 pm SM—I sit in the grass with a Umatilla tribe member, Skyhawk. The native tribes camp out for the week in a maze of teepees set up at the back of the arena. To me, it seems like they're part of the rodeo, but separate. The announcers refer to the tribes as "our Indian friends." They compete in a native-only event, the Indian relay race, and perform a ceremonial dance at the halftime show. Skyhawk is an artist, a peacenik, and a veteran. He likes the rodeo, mostly. He speaks slowly, every sentence a story.

4:20 pm PAC—After two whiskeys, I've started to vibrate at the same frequency as the rest of the Round-Up crowd. Wandering the bustling grounds, I catch sight of a dozen women on horseback. They file out onto the field and my photographer and I talk our way behind the gates.

4:30 pm SM—"It's a great opportunity for non-Indians to see Indian people have really great respect for themselves, showing off their culture and their heritage," says Skyhawk. His art is political, he's thinking of doing some paintings about meth and gangs.

4:35 pm PAC—We're hanging on a fence with men in white cowboy hats who move with deliberate slowness. It's a stark contrast to the spectacle of barrel racing on the field. The crowd cheers as women swing their horses tightly around large barrels. "Ridin' a horse morin' 30 miles an hour for 30 seconds takes a lot of guts, folks," says the announcer. I can only agree as I watch a rider named Molly Davis make a clean run in 29 seconds. It's a gorgeous sight.

6:45 pm SM—Patrick and I are backstage at the Happy Canyon Night Show, a pageant dramatizing the history of the area. Verneda's been in charge of costumes at Happy Canyon for over a decade. "We need shorter Chinamen!" she shouts at two strapping blond lads who played the role of Chinamen since before their growth-spurt. Mary Lou helps her stuff a live rooster into a leather bag.

7:20 pm PAC—Jennifer Currin, 27, is one of a cast of hundreds, and she's been a pioneer since she was two years old, carried into the arena by her mother. Now she has her mother's role as a pioneer. Most of the show's parts are passed down like this, through generations of volunteers. It's tradition. The script has stayed almost the same since the play debuted in 1912.

7:25 pm SM—Actual East Oregonian newspaper headline: "Happy Canyon Celebrates Tradition with Tradition."

7:30 pm PAC—"Would you like a drink?" asks Currin. She leads us to the Director's Room. We're clearly not supposed to be here, but we get whiskey anyway. Currin smiles triumphantly.

8 pm SM—Things that occur in the Happy Canyon show: a Native American wedding ceremony, the Trail of Tears, a man who gets his legs amputated and cartwheels away on the stumps, live sheep, can-can girls, a drag queen, a horse square dance, and an exploding outhouse. Also, Patrick drinks all my booze.

9 pm PAC—Hordes file beneath the massive permanent set into what can only be described as a cowboy prom. A special state law legalizes gambling at Happy Canyon during the Round-Up, but in a weird twist, the chips can only be used for booze. It's either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your luck and how well you can hold your hooch.

9:30 pm SM—Something I didn't know existed: pro-life belt buckles.

10 pm PAC—I can hold my hooch, but my luck is lousy. I go bust within an hour. This will not, however, stop me from getting hopelessly drunk.

11:45 pm SM—Despite its name, I discover the Rainbow Café is not, in fact, a gay bar.

12:12 am PAC—My new friend Peter places a small American flag in his hat at the Rainbow Café. Spurred on by a latent patriotism that wells up from deep inside me, I begin to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner." It's the second time I've sung it tonight. Some around us in the cramped bar join in, and after the "hoooome of the braaaaave" there is applause.

12:15 am SM—Patrick can't even sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" correctly. He tries to start in the middle, shouting out "rockets' red glaaaare!"

1:15 am PAC—In a town as intoxicated as Pendleton tonight, I feel perfectly at home. I've drunk my identity into non-being. I am a poseur cowboy, bullshitting with rodeo legends and bitching about the Wyoming Highway Patrol. Round-Up has caught me like a roped calf and I feel like I'm in the field, feet pointed to the sky, wondering what the fuck is happening. LET 'ER BUCK!

SATURDAY

8:15 am SM—Wander into the house, past an estimated 300 empty alcohol containers and a dunk tank emblazoned with the Budweiser logo. Open the bathroom door. It falls off its hinges.

9:30 am PAC—I'm not particularly concerned about my hangover. I'm concerned with getting this right. I'm acutely aware the Pendleton I'm seeing is not the Pendleton that exists here each day.

9:55 am SM—The Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 922 announces their cowboy breakfast stats proudly: 900 pounds of ham, 48 gallons of syrup, and 69 dozen eggs.

10 am PAC—I can see the "real" Pendleton here and there—in the lovely, quiet neighborhoods, and in the Great Pacific where I eat breakfast, chatting with locals who don't wear cowboy boots and take the whole thing with a shrug and a smile.

1:15 pm SM—I thought I'd be scared of rodeo, but I'm quick to loosen up. I like the pride in place, and I'm jealous of these people with roots, who hang out in the same streets and bars as their parents and grandparents. And, goddamn, sometimes "The Star-Spangled Banner" just needs a fighter jet flyover.

1:15 pm PAC—A formation of jet fighters screech past. I worry that Sarah and I, writing about our drunken foolishness, will paint the town in a bad light. I grew up in towns like this in Colorado—places where livestock rivaled the number of citizens. Pendleton feels a lot like home to me. The people here are no different than anywhere else, though their daily concerns may not reflect mine. More than anything I want Portlanders to know that. Racked with too much sincerity, I seek more free whiskey.

1:25 pm SM—The food stand next to the Let 'er Buck Room sells curly fries and rhinestone handcuffs.

1:30 pm PAC—Bronc riding is the signature event of the Round-Up. It's thrilling. Every ride looks amazing to me, but I'm clueless to the nuances. All I know is that it's about style and staying on an animal that looks as if it wants nothing more than to throw you to the ground and kick the shit out of you. This happens several times while I watch.

1:45 pm SM—Eastern Oregon seems to have a rich tradition in bullshitting. Every old guy gives me shit for being from Portland, but it's actually kind of nice to trade friendly insults with senior citizens.

2 pm PAC—As a special treat for the 100th anniversary, the organizers recreate a legendary Round-Up bronc-riding competition, which featured an African American, a Native American, and a European American in the final. As happened in the original competition, the European American wins.

3 pm SM—Climbing up the arena stairs with a beer, a cop stops and asks for ID. Where is my ID? I don't have my ID. "Just give your beer to your friend," says the officer, pointing to Jake. "You can take sips every once in a while."

3:10 pm PAC—With horror, I realize I know almost all of the words to "Achy Breaky Heart."

3:15 pm SM—A woman next to me in the stands accidentally spills beer on her infant.

3:30 pm PAC—"Sushi is the force that binds the universe together," says saddle maker and Pendleton's own sushi-making cowboy Monte Beckman. He has an amazing gray mustache and a twinkle in his eye. He's also an elegant bullshitter. As we talk in his shop, I'm happy to listen about the trout that took a bullet for him, and nod stupidly as he tells me: "There is the alpha and the omega, and everything in between is sushi and good bridle horses and the occasional piece of ass."

4:15 pm SM—Something else I didn't know existed: the ability of massive cowboys to leap from horses onto 600-pound steers, both running full speed, and wrestle them to the ground by the horns. This is steer wrestling. It makes my jaw drop.

4:30 pm PAC—I'm still in Monte Beckman's saddle shop. As the "Sushi Cowboy," Beckman is also the go-to guy for local color—a title he shies away from. "Marty Wood, Allen Keller, Charles Sampson... these are my heroes," he says, laying out a list of rodeo legends and saddle craftsman. "These are the people you should be interviewing." Tonight his saddle shop will stay open until midnight, and it's likely many of Beckman's heroes will show up to shoot the shit. I bid the Sushi Cowboy farewell, now secure in the knowledge that a trout is man's best friend.

4:40 pm PAC—I've finally found a Bloody Mary. The bartender agrees to make it even though it takes time he doesn't have as the rodeo crowd starts trickling in. I tip him $2 in thanks.

4:45 pm SM—The rodeo clown makes the same joke two days in a row. "If Obama is the answer, how stupid was the question?!" Thunderous applause!

9 pm PAC—The Round-Up is kicking my ass. I'm tired, and two days of walking the town in cowboy boots has crippled me.

10:30 pm PAC—It's starting to rain again, but the street is still packed with revelers riding mechanical bulls, listening to country bands, and buying crappy knickknacks from blocks of booths. I watch our host Peter rip through a couple sets at the Great Pacific with his band, the Eastern Oregon Playboys. He's been playing all week. I feel a little guilty heading back to my tent while he still finds the energy to rock.

10:45 pm SM—The Toys N' More store on Main Street has a sign that reads, "Welcome Ball Players Betty Boop Fudge Soda Fiber Optics Dragons." They also sell pogs. I love this town.

11 pm PAC—I subject my tortured body to a final indignity: a Bacon Ripper Korn Dog. That's a hot dog wrapped in bacon, deep-fried, battered, and then fried a second time.

11:45 pm PAC—I stumble back to my tent, absently chewing on this deep-fried-meat-fat monstrosity, as the sounds of the Native Americans' sobriety dance circle rise from the park beside the rodeo grounds, carrying me back in the rain.

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The Life and Death of Jack Dale Collins

Sarah Mirk — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 04:00:00 -0700

What we can learn from the police shooting of a transient. by Sarah Mirk

ON MONDAY, MARCH 22, at 3:30 pm, Jack Dale Collins lay on the ground at Hoyt Arboretum, bleeding to death. Officer Jason Walters had just fired four shots into Collins, hitting an artery in his hip. Within minutes the man who lived, drank, and slept on Portland's streets for 20-plus years was dead.

It took 30 hours for the medical examiner and police to release the name of the man shot by Officer Walters. They had to fingerprint Collins' corpse to figure out who he was. The mug shot attached to the eventual press release including Collins' name is a grim portrait. His mouth is almost hidden beneath a bushy, wiry beard. Lines droop beneath his eyes, deep wrinkles are carved between his eyebrows. He is balding on the top of his head, with hair sprouting from his temples and around his ears like an impoverished monk. His gaze is intense.

"A PEACEFUL DRUNK"

I pulled Collins' mug shot out of my bag and showed it to James "Jimbo" Nelson, who was standing with a crowd fixing his bike trailer outside St. Francis Church on SE 11th and Oak, two days after the shooting. Nelson immediately identified the face.

"Old Man Jackie Collins," said Nelson. "I didn't know it was him the police shot."

Nelson does not look so different from Collins himself—bushy gray beard, deep wrinkles, rough skin. Both have lived on the street in Portland for two decades.

"He was like any other drinker down here, Old Man Jackie Collins," said Nelson. He leaned on the bike trailer. It was one of the first sunny, warm days of spring, and Nelson wore a black Harley-Davidson tank top. Nelson and his girlfriend, who goes by the name Gypsy Spirit, caravan around town on two bikes, hauling their homes behind them, trailed by their dog. Collins moved around town in much the same way, they said, but alone.

Nelson took Collins' mug shot and hurried off to another group of homeless people who hang outside St. Francis, shooting the shit and smoking cigarettes until the church's dining hall opens up for its daily free meal.

A lean woman named Momma Stormy knew Collins, knew him for years and still didn't know much about him. "He liked to go up to Washington Park a lot, just spend time up there. That's where a lot of drunks hang out and he would go up there to drink," said Stormy.

"He drank every day," said Nelson. "He was a drunk, but he was a peaceful drunk."

Collins first surfaces in police files in 1980. Thirty years of Collin's life show up in police reports as 25 incidents, including eight public park exclusions and nine citations for drinking in public.

In a write-up from an officer on horse patrol in Waterfront Park in 2005, Collins appears resigned to his life.

"[Collins] had a Seattle Best coffee cup sitting next to him. I rode up to [Collins] and asked what he was drinking," reads the report. "He said coffee. I asked him if I could check and he removed the lid from the coffee cup. I saw the contents and recognized it as beer. I asked him what type of beer it was and he said it was Milwaukee's Best. I asked him to pour it out in the bushes."

The horse patrol officer had to quantify Collins' appearance for the paperwork. He circled the words "thin," "dirty," "low-pitched voice," "medium complexion," and "teeth unknown."

SCARS

At 3:05 pm on March 22, someone called the police to report a "drunk transient" harassing people at Hoyt Arboretum. The transient was yelling at people, but he did not seem physically violent, the caller said. The transient was Collins.

Officer Jason Walters self-dispatched, heading out on the call alone. A 13-year-veteran of the bureau, Walters had worked around Washington Park for five years. He is also, Portland Police Association President Scott Westerman pointed out to press, a vegan bike rider. "He's very Portland," says Westerman.

Officer Walters was not carrying a beanbag gun, the bulky but non-lethal gun that gained recent controversy when Officer Chris Humphreys used one to shoot a 12-year-old girl resisting arrest at a MAX station in November 2009. Strapped to Walters' belt were a baton, pepper spray, a Taser, and a gun. As he left on the call, he phoned Hooper Detox for a van to come out to the arboretum and possibly pick up the drunken transient.

Hooper Detox is the city's sobering station and the first place addicts can go to get clean. It has 70 beds but can only afford the staff to fill 54. They also staff a van called CHIERS, which circles the city 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The van picks up 2,800 intoxicated individuals a year. This is actually a decrease. In the mid-1990s, the van picked up 3,200 people annually.

The CHIERS van never reached the arboretum. Everything happened too fast.

Officer Walters arrived at the arboretum office at 3:24 pm. The office is near the top of the park, by the big chapel-like gazebo that Zoobombers refer to as "the Skanktuary." Green potted plants surround the entrance and right outside the door are two single-room bathrooms.

The person who called 911 told Officer Walters that the drunken transient was in one of the bathrooms. Officer Walters, according to the official interview police investigators waited 48 hours to conduct, knocked on the door. Jackie Collins emerged. His face, neck, and hands were covered in blood. In one hand he held a knife with a six-inch handle and one-inch blade.

Medical Examiner Dr. Karen Gunson does not shy away from the grisly details. "He cut around his neck, deeper on the right side," says Gunson, describing Collins' body. "It's not likely that wound would have killed him. Though if he had kept cutting, down to his jugular maybe, he could have died."

Back at St. Francis, Nelson and Gypsy Spirit shake their heads when asked if they think Collins was trying to kill himself.

"I heard he was a cutter, that disease for cutting," says Nelson.

"He was a slicer," agrees Gypsy. "When he got into depression mode, when he was really drunk, he would go into a slashing mode where he'd cut himself. His arms. That's why he always wore long sleeves." She traced on her arms where she had seen his scars.

"Even in the summer, he wore long sleeves," says Nelson.

"He didn't want anyone to know about his life," says Gypsy. "He was a private man, a personal man."

"Cutting is an unusual symptom of mental illness," says Jason Renaud of Mental Health Association of Portland. "It's usually seen in young people, but can be seen in older people. It's a response to feeling bad about yourself, bad about your environment. It's hard to treat, people are usually pretty secretive about it. It's a way of harming yourself without killing yourself."

LAST DAYS

When the city tried to track down every homeless person in Portland for its one-night count on January 28, 2009, it found 1,591 people sleeping outside and 820 people in shelters. Despite the city being four years into its "10-Year Plan to End Homelessness," there were 13 percent more homeless people counted in Portland in 2009 than in 2007.

In a different in-depth count in 2008, 35 percent of homeless Portlanders reported or were observed to have a mental illness. Only 19 of the 646 interviewed in that count were over age 60.

Why are these people suffering from mental illness not living somewhere safe in treatment? Disability Rights Oregon Executive Director Bob Joondeph explains in five letters, "M-O-N-E-Y."

"We have an under-funded and overburdened community mental health system," says Joondeph. "We end up paying down the road in jails or emergency rooms, neither of which are designed to humanely deal with people with mental illness who are in crisis."

In the medical examiner's office, Dr. Gunson says she did not see any scars from cutting on Collins' arms. But, she admits, she wasn't looking for them. Though she believes Collins was trying to commit suicide in the arboretum bathroom, Dr. Gunson classified the death as homicide. "Homicide is just a technical term meaning killed by someone else," explains Dr. Gunson. "It's up to another person to decide whether that means murder or manslaughter."

A grand jury is due to convene about the incident this Thursday, April 1. It will decide whether the officer should be criminally charged.

When he emerged from the bathroom covered in blood, Collins moved toward Officer Walters, according to the officer's statement. Walters asked if Collins needed help. Collins did not respond. The officer backed up while telling Collins to drop the knife. Collins said he would not. According to his report, Officer Walters backed up against a "physical obstruction" and ordered Collins to drop the knife. Collins continued "advancing."

Walters pulled his gun and fired two shots into Collins. Collins spun around slowly, the knife still in his hand. Walters shouted again to drop the knife and Collins slowly approached him. Walters fired two more shots. Collins dropped to the ground, and as he bled, Walters called for medical support. The medical staff declared Collins dead at the scene. He was 58.

Though Officer Walters did not know it at the time, a second 911 call had come in to police about Jackie Collins that day. A mother and son had told a park ranger that Collins had shouted at them and threatened to kill them.

Days later, several media outlets broke news of another alarming detail, contained in a police report the bureau had initially classified as confidential.

Eleven days before he was shot, says the report, Collins went to the police to confess a crime. He walked into Central Precinct and told Officer M. John Holbrook that he had molested a girl 42 years ago. He couldn't remember her name. Or where she lived. He had not spoken to her since. But he wanted the police to know that he had "rubbed his penis on her vagina" one night in his parents' house.

"Talking with Collins was difficult as he took quite a while to respond to questions and had to be reminded periodically of the question," wrote Officer Holbrook. After the conversation, Holbrook directed Collins to get in touch with a mental health service.

One week after Collins was shot, there is no blood on the ground outside the arboretum office. The bathroom, though small and covered in ugly green tile, is clean.

OUT OF THE WAY

Nelson and his friends say Collins never stayed in one place for very long. He preferred to keep out of the way, not talk to people. "He hit all the free places around town that he could. He never kept one squat for more than a few days," says Nelson. Gypsy Spirit and Momma Stormy say he often slept under the St. Johns Bridge.

It's easy to see why Collins would like the park under the St. Johns Bridge. On the afternoon of Monday, March 29, the park was completely empty of people. Though the thunder of cars shook overheard, the grass was green and crisp. Geese meandered by the water's edge.

But underneath one wide pine tree near the edge of the park that day was another makeshift home. Someone else's wet red blanket hugged two backpacks and a shopping basket. Their 40 of malt liquor nestled against a cooking pan and a bundle of knives on the hard, dry earth.

An error has been changed in the online version of this article. The print edition says the police investigators took 36 hours to interview Officer Walters. They actually took 48 hours.

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Hot Wheels

Sarah Mirk — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:00:00 -0700

Rumors of bike theft swirl around local shop the Recyclery. by Sarah Mirk

A lot of people in town have terrible things to say about Robby Fenstermaker.

Mostly they say these terrible things online. Or among friends in the bike community. Or on anonymous posters stapled to phone poles from N Mississippi to SE Hawthorne.

For years, the rumor floating around Portland's bike community is that Robby Fenstermaker—owner of bike repair and sales shop the Recyclery—sells stolen bikes. When the Recyclery comes up on BikePortland.org or Zoobomb.net forums, cyclists in the comments repeat the accusation with a special frosting of harsh words about Fenstermaker's abrasive personality. Small posters that appeared around Portland in late February echo the rumor: "Don't Support Bike Theft! Don't Support the Recyclery!"

Interviews with nine former Recyclery mechanics, a former housemate of Fenstermaker's, the police—and even Fenstermaker himself—lend credence to certain aspects of the rumors. When the bike shop first started up, Fenstermaker admittedly did not follow the law, and ex-employees claim the Recyclery bought questionable bikes from questionable people.

In recent years, however, the consensus is that the store has cleaned up its act. Surprise police inspections have not turned up any illegal activity in the last three years.

But here's a dirty truth: It's impossible to stop the buying and selling of stolen bikes in this town.

From May 2008 to February 2010, Portlanders reported 2,300 stolen bikes. Only 657 of those people knew their bicycle's serial number. Without a known serial number, a bike is essentially untraceable. When a bike shop buys a used bike, the store must run the bike's serial number through the police database and hold the bike for either 15 or 30 days in case it has been reported stolen. That number is the only way to track a bike. If your lock is clipped and you never wrote down the serial number carved into the bottom of your frame, your bike is gone. Barring divine intervention, it will be bought and sold and bought and sold and stolen and sold again.

This past week, Portlanders listed roughly 300 bikes for sale per day on Craiglist. There are a million cracks for a bike to slip through.

Bike parts, lacking serial numbers, are also completely untraceable. While selling a used bike requires submitting detailed paperwork to the police, no one keeps track of parts—and nice wheels, cranks, and saddles can be worth as much as frames.

"There is a lot of gray area in the law and Robby definitely took advantage of that," says one former mechanic who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation against his new bike shop. "A lot of the behavior in the shop was not necessarily illegal or unsafe, but very unprofessional."

"People would come in with armloads of parts, some still in the bag," says long-time mechanic Larry Myers, who worked at the Recyclery from 2007 to 2008. "I've seen Robby turn away bikes, but never parts. They're not traceable." Two other mechanics working at the store during that time seconded Myers' experience.

BIKE PUBLIC ENEMY #1?

The downtown Recyclery store squeezes dozens of used bikes and a small repair shop into a basement across the street from the Multnomah County Central Library. On the afternoon of Wednesday, March 10, Fenstermaker, 36, is in back working on the newest frame he's bought for himself. His hands are dark with bike grease and a Colnago bike cap sits atop his round face lined with beard stubble.

He shakes his head at the accusations of providing bike thieves a place to hawk their stolen goods.

"Portland is a really small big city and people are gossipy. I don't really have an explanation for what people say. I just want to sleep at night and keep building bikes."

As Fenstermaker talks, his English bulldog, Weasel, gnaws on a plastic fender on the floor of the store. Fenstermaker now owns four stores across Portland, with locations in St. Johns, Ladd's Addition, SE Madison, and downtown, which together sell more used bikes than any other stores in the city. Weasel is at home in the bike shop. Her favorite chew toys are handlebar grips.

Fenstermaker opened his first bike shop six years ago in Portland, reselling bikes he bought at thrift stores or off the street from a little storefront on SE Foster. He had never been to mechanic school, never worked in another bike shop. "I got into bikes because I was dating a girl who rode a bike," he says.

Fenstermaker says he scored 150 bicycles from a guy on the coast for only $500 and started selling them from his garage off Hawthorne. A former housemate—who refused to be named because of the fear of physical retaliation—says homeless-looking people and tweakers would stop by the house frequently with bikes, asking for Robby.

Fenstermaker admits he didn't fill out the proper paperwork back in those days and did not get a city permit to operate until June 2005.

THE CASE OF THE STOLEN CO-MOTION

Ex-employee Clint Bunting remembers what he considers to be shady dealings back in the Recyclery's early days. He says when he worked at the fledgling Recyclery in 2005, Fenstermaker frequently bought high-end bikes from street people, paying cash on the spot. "These were top-of-the-line racing and road bikes—not stuff you find at the Bins," says Bunting, who sports tattoos and rides home-welded tall bikes. "I don't mean to stereotype, but when someone is rolling up with a $500 bike on top of a shopping cart and selling it for only a few bucks, that raises some red flags." Bunting claims the store never ran serial numbers on frames during his employment there.

Then, one day in 2005, according to Bunting, a guy rolled up with a bike that immediately raised his eyebrows: a custom Co-Motion cycle, a type of bicycle built in Eugene and worth $3,000. Fenstermaker bought it for $500 cash. Suspicious, Bunting says he used the store's computer to scroll through recent Craigslist reports of stolen bikes and, sure enough, a custom Co-Motion popped up. It allegedly belonged to a female mechanic, Tess Jensen, who had received it as a birthday present from her dad. "I cried for three days after my bike disappeared," says Jensen.

Bunting urged Fenstermaker to call Jensen, who in turn relayed her serial number to Fenstermaker. However, Fenstermaker told the Mercury that the serial number Jensen gave him over the phone didn't match the one carved on the underside of the bike. Jensen says she decided to visit the shop and take a look at the bike herself—with a police officer by her side.

The officer checked the serial number in the store, and the bike was exactly as recorded from the manufacturer—except it was missing the first and last number. The officer concluded that the handmade bike had been slightly misstamped at the building shop in Eugene. Since it was a one-of-a-kind bike custom-made for Jensen, the officer felt confident saying it was hers. But instead of returning the bike, Fenstermaker asked Jensen to buy the bicycle back from him.

"I told her I bought it for $500 and I'd return it for that much," Fenstermaker says.

Jensen says she was insulted by Fenstermaker's proposal, but felt it was only fair to give him the $250 reward she had offered online for the return of her bike. Jensen left with her prized bicycle, while Fenstermaker was out the difference, and had inadvertently created some serious bad blood as Jensen's story traveled throughout the biking community.

After that incident, it became Bunting's job to write down the description and serial number of every bike in the shop. To his alarm, Bunting realized some of the bikes had their serial numbers ground off—a common sign a bike is stolen. "That's when I got slapped in the face: Holy shit, I'm working for a bike thief," says Bunting. He quit soon after.

SLIPPING THOUGH THE CRACKS

Since 2005, says Fenstermaker, he's run his business according to the law. He claims that his staff runs the serial numbers of every single bike that comes in.

Mechanics' stories differ, but more recent employees back Fenstermaker up on that point. "We were very thorough about running each bike through the city," says Michelle Garcia, who worked at the SE Madison location in 2007 and 2008.

However in 2006, a police special properties investigation found problems at the Recyclery, then solely located on SE Madison.

After a rival bike store called Portland Police Detective Troy King to accuse the Recyclery of selling stolen bikes, King looked into the claim and found that the Recyclery's used bicycle sales permit had lapsed. In September 2006, the police visited the store and told Fenstermaker to get a proper permit. A month passed, the paperwork never arrived, and the special properties unit performed a sting operation. An officer sold the store a used bike, but the store didn't ask for his photo ID or mail the required paperwork to police. "He had some excuses—but it wasn't enough," says King. Fenstermaker was slapped with a $900 fine.

Two mechanics who worked at the store during 2006 say there were numerous bikes on the sales floor whose serial numbers had not been run. The mechanics do not want to be named because they, too, fear retaliation against their current bike shops. It's worth noting that almost everyone interviewed for this article left the Recyclery on bad terms. And regardless of whether they were fired or quit, all had personal experiences that have led them to fear Fenstermaker's temper.

Fenstermaker admits to having trouble keeping his employees. In the past year, Fenstermaker estimates he's hired 20 employees who either quit or were fired. Now a skeleton crew of three full-time employees spread themselves between his four stores.

Despite filing all the proper paperwork, high employee turnover and a high volume of bikes can lead to more cracks through which stolen goods can slip.

Ian Medley, a skilled mechanic who managed the downtown Recyclery for a year before he was fired in August 2008, says he was constantly suspicious of Fenstermaker, but never witnessed any obviously illegal sales. Fenstermaker, says Medley, would buy bikes on the cheap, strip off the parts, and "scab together" bikes that could be sold for more.

"I've seen him get bikes, strip them, and not run their numbers," says Medley. "What raised red flags for me was that he'd get certain bikes for so cheap. But you could never really prove anything."

Tom Daly, who worked at the SE Madison Recyclery for eight months in 2008, agrees that he never saw anything illegal happen at the store—but within the law there was some significant gray area.

"Occasionally a tweaker would bring in a nice bike and be selling it for too little. But you run the numbers, and it's clean, so they'd buy it," says Daly.

With his experience from the Recyclery, Daly recently opened up his own bike repair shop, WTF Bikes. He decided not to buy or sell bikes from his little shop because it's impossible to weed out stolen goods from legitimate sales. Or, as he puts it, "If someone brings me a set of über-sweet 700 racing wheels and says, 'Do you want to sell these?' Hell yeah! But there's no way to verify whether they've been stolen or not." Ironically, three days before Daly's grand opening, someone broke into his shop and stole two bikes awaiting repair.

Multiple ex-employees of the Recyclery also said that mechanics would drink and get high on the job, sometimes resulting in extremely shoddy repairs. These accusations extended to Fenstermaker who, three mechanics claim, would take money from the cash register to buy pot. Short on money, Fenstermaker does his own bookkeeping. But he says he keeps his hands out of the till and does not even know how to respond to allegations that he used store cash for drugs.

Fenstermaker also says that the ex-employees who accuse him of shady dealings have personal vendettas and want to ruin his business. He makes his own counter-accusations, saying Medley assaulted him in 2008 ("Now he's just making up lies," responds Medley) and that Bunting posted a fraudulent ad on Craigslist in 2007 saying the Recyclery was giving away bikes as part of a giant going-out-of-business sale. In the police report of that incident, Fenstermaker also suspected an ex-girlfriend, who had a restraining order against him, might have pulled the stunt. Bunting denies posting the ad and police never pursued charges in the case.

CLEAN AS A WHISTLE?

Since the $900 fine in 2006, police inspections of the Recyclery's multiple locations have always come up clean. According to Detective King's records, they have not had a higher percentage of problems with improper paperwork or hits of stolen bikes than any other store. Recently the Recyclery changed its permit to one that further discourages sales of stolen bikes. Instead of paying cash on the spot for bikes and holding them for 30 days, the Recyclery now holds bicycles for 15 days before sending sellers a check.

The anonymous allegations of bike fencing irritate Detective King.

"If someone would go through the trouble to put up a bunch of posters, why wouldn't they just pick up the phone and call the police?" he asks.

King used to spend hours trolling Craigslist and eBay, encouraging people who posted stolen bike listings there to report the theft to the cops. But the response was so dismal, he eventually gave up.

In the back of the Recyclery's downtown store, seven frames and 14 whole bikes hang from hooks in back. Holding them in limbo for two weeks costs the store money, but that's the law.

It's getting late in the afternoon. Fenstermaker is looking forward to getting back to wrenching his bike. Asked for any last thoughts, he says, "To anybody I've ever offended, I'm deeply apologetic."

Read Robby Fenstermaker's open letter to Portland regarding the accusations of selling stolen bikes HERE.

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The Dead Freeway Society

Sarah Mirk — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Portland's progress comes from the roads not built. by Sarah Mirk

Scattered all over Portland are artifacts of a city that could have been. Bikes rush down a concrete ramp on the west side of the Hawthorne Bridge that 40 years ago originally connected to an expressway instead of grass. Tiny Piccolo Park off SE Division was the site of homes demolished to make way for the pylon of an unbuilt freeway. These vibrant sites are tombstones. We are a city of dead freeways.

While other American cities have built, built, built, Portland's freeway history is boom and bust: massive road projects were planned, mapped, and sold as progress by one generation, then killed by another. When current transit planners visit from exotic Houston and DC to admire Portland's progress, what they are really admiring are the roads not built—freeways erased from the maps decades ago.

"UNCLOUDED VISION"

The offices of Portland City Hall did not always boast bike maps. The city striving to become the nation's greenest still bears the signature of America's most famous car-centric transit planner.

Sixty-six Septembers ago, a Portland city commissioner invited the powerful (and, these days, infamous) transportation planner Robert Moses to come to Rose City and write its road construction plan. Moses, a freeway mogul whose most lasting legacy is the massive byways slicing apart New York's boroughs, brought a team of men and holed up for two months in a downtown hotel. After exploring the city and crunching numbers, the men whipped up an 86-page blueprint for Portland's future.

It was in this plan that Portland was first divided by the inky lines that would eventually become I-205, I-84, I-5, I-405, and Highway 26. It was Moses' men who first drew the Fremont Bridge onto a photo of Portland. In white ink, they imagined the freeway to be a suspension bridge running across the river and down into the current Overlook neighborhood. But they also imagined a lot more.

To modernize and meet the demands of a growing economy and expanding population, back in 1943 Moses argued that Portland must surround itself with freeways—an inner ring carrying traffic through the city with another freeway ring encircling its outer limits.

"Every citizen of Portland has a right to be proud of the fact that this community is prepared, while there is still time, to face the future with unclouded vision," wrote Moses.

In 1956, the US Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, promising the federal government would cover 90 percent of the costs of all new freeway construction, kicking off a freeway construction boom in Portland and around the nation. The last electric light rail company in Portland went out of business the day after the region's first freeway was built in 1958.

RELOCATION IN ACTION

In late August, just over I-405 from Portland State University, Shawn Granton stood on an orphaned section of the South Park Blocks. The measly chunk of lawn and the Southwest neighborhood around it was cut off from downtown when the freeway plowed through the area in the mid-'60s. The freeway was part of an urban renewal plan, Granton explained to a dozen gathered cyclists. It removed an entire block of high-density apartment complexes—the kind the city now wants to build downtown under its modern urban renewal policy that awards developers tax breaks as an incentive.

"Freeways become big walls in cities and divide neighborhoods," said Granton, who has led his dead freeways bike tour of the city for three years. In shorts and sunglasses, he shouted over the thunder of the freeway. The grassy nub on the south side of the freeway was left intact as a compromise after neighbors complained about the removal of a block of parkland.

In 1964, the Oregon State Highway Division put out a helpful pamphlet on how to remove people whose homes would be demolished by the construction of I-405. "Relocation in Action" follows one Miss Crosby, age 63, who lives on a $100 monthly welfare check and whose diverse, mostly lower-income apartment building is about to be leveled to make way for the road. Like everyone else in the building, she is nervous about finding a new home. All turns out well in the end, of course: a helpful highway employee helps Miss Crosby secure an apartment in the Northwest Towers, a 13-story "modern, fireproof" building near downtown.

BOOM!

Jumping on the federal government's desire to pick up 90 percent of the tab, the city and state tore out a path for I-84 through the Eastside and for I-5 through North Portland. The Fremont Bridge went up—white, just like Moses imagined. This was a glorious age of freeways. Construction rolled forward with few roadblocks.

"The I-5 through North Portland had a huge impact, but the people had no voice," says Val Ballestrem, education manager of the Architectural Heritage Center, who wrote his master's thesis on Portland's anti-freeway movement. "There were some people living in the path of I-5 who got together, met with city officials, and were told, 'There's nothing you can do.' And they just gave up."

"There was no requirement at that time to do an environmental impact study for big projects like this," explains Metro Planning Director Andy Cotugno. "City and business thought it was a great idea and the neighborhoods that got impacted had no rights at that time." A photo of the construction shows a street lined solely with empty porches—the homes behind them had already been razed.

By the time Portland wrote up a (failed) bid to host the 1968 Olympics, planners had built enormously on Moses' vision for a freewayed Portland. The map printed inside the glossy yearbook-sized Olympic sales pitch includes not just the freeways we know today, but also the Mount Hood Freeway running up SE Division, Laurelhurst Freeway along 39th Avenue, the Sellwood Freeway, Prescott Freeway, and a mile-long freeway tunnel running under the West Hills.

BUST!

But 10 years later, everything had changed. The Mount Hood Freeway, Laurelhurst Freeway, and others were erased from the planned map of Portland's future. I-205 had been whittled down from a planned eight lanes to six—its extra space being designated for a public transit right-of-way that just last week finally became the much-celebrated MAX Green Line. Portland had essentially reversed direction in one short decade, while nearly every other major American city was still gung ho about the roads ahead.

The first freeway to dissolve was Harbor Drive. Built in 1942, the wide slab of asphalt ran over what is today Tom McCall Waterfront Park, now where tourists and idyllic children roam with ice cream, Barack Obama spoke, and once a year the Oregon Symphony shoots live cannons in a performance of the 1812 Overture. In the '50s and '60s, the freeway, streaming with big-finned cars, was featured on postcards promoting a modern Portland. By 1975, it was gone.

"There was a shift in local government in the late-'60s. It went from a good-old-boy network to a much younger generation of politicians," explains Ballestrem. Urban planning historian Gregory L. Thompson wrote that when one young politician arrived in Portland in 1973, the politico noted that everyone had a copy of anti-freeway handbook Rites of Way tucked into their hip pocket.

When the state began buying up land next to Harbor Drive to widen the waterfront freeway in 1968, a citizen alliance against the expansion found open ears at city hall and the governor's office. Old-school traffic engineers said closing the freeway would be a disaster, but Governor Tom McCall, Mayor Neil Goldschmidt, and County Commissioner Don Clark heard the citizens' opinion that most car traffic could be rerouted to the city's newly built freeways, like the I-5. Throughout the summer of '69, Portlanders organized "consciousness-raising picnics" to rally people against Harbor Drive. Three years later, a governor's task force declared that the low-traffic, 30-year-old road should be ripped out and replaced with a park.

SAVING SOUTHEAST

Riding high from the Harbor Drive victory, environmentally minded politicians and Portlanders took on the next freeway foe. Money was in the bag from the federal government to build a freeway like North Portland's I-5, which would cut through Southeast to aid suburban commuters. This Mount Hood Freeway would have been four city blocks wide for the entire length of SE Division. The highway commission had already started buying up the right of way and tearing down old homes along Division when opposition started picking up steam.

Unlike I-5, though, the neighborhood had legal channels for their protest. Not only were the freeway planners required to write up an environmental impact statement for the project, but also Portland was in the midst of a major downtown revitalization effort.

"You connect the dots. You had a freeway that would create more sprawl at a time [when] we're trying to do things to recapture downtown," says Metro's Cotugno. "In the process it would divide a community. Why should the inner-city neighborhood just roll over to produce a suburb?"

Neighbors worried about air pollution and the neighborhood filed a suit against the freeway, using the environmental impact statement to argue that the freeway's site was poorly chosen. Meanwhile, Oregon bigwigs pulled strings in Washington, DC. The alternative transit-minded politicians scored a big win in August of 1973: Congress changed national law to allow regions to kill planned highways and put almost all the federal money set aside for those projects into non-freeway transit projects instead.

Soon after, a judge decided in favor of the anti-freeway neighbors. If the state wanted to build the Mount Hood Freeway, the judge said, they would have to restart the nearly decade-long planning process. In fall 1974, Governor McCall officially informed the federal government that his state would be "deleting" the Mount Hood Freeway. Instead, $23 million of the $165 million freeway pricetag would go into building the region's public transit system.

THE PRICE OF "PROGRESS"

The Mount Hood Freeway's $165 million budget looks like pennies compared to the costs of our current freeway projects. Oregon and Washington are currently embarking on the largest single transportation project in the region's history. If the states' transportation departments get their way, the current six-lane I-5 bridge to Vancouver will become a 12-lane, $4.2 billion bridge called the Columbia River Crossing (CRC). Unlike the freeway projects of old, light rail and a better bike path are included in the CRC design. But there are many parallels. Modern environmental groups like Coalition for a Livable Future say the 12-lane bridge will increase traffic and promote sprawl. Some of the old-time activists who organized the anti-Harbor Drive picnics are these days attending rallies against the CRC.

"It's another one of these roads that's being espoused as 'We have to have it in order to make everybody's lives easier,'" says Ballestrem. "But it's going to do the same thing that all these other big roads did. Building a bigger road is just going to encourage driving the automobile."

Out of the national network of 43,000 miles of interstate freeway built with federal dollars in the 20th century, Metro's Andy Cotugno says only about 25 freeway projects did not get built across the entire country.

Then and now, Portland's pioneering spirit has always taken the road less traveled.

Historic postcards provided courtesy of local know-it-all Dan Haneckow (cafeunknown.com). Much of the historic information in this piece is from Gregory L. Thompson's article "Taming the Neighborhood Revolution: Planners, Power Brokers, and the Birth of Neotraditionalism in Portland, Oregon" (Journal of Planning History).

Download your very own copy of Robert Moses' 1943 plan for Portland, here.

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Sex Survey Results 2008!

Wm.™ Steven Humphrey — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 04:00:00 -0800

Portland's Sexiest Average People Speak Out on the Topic of Sex! by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey

Welcome once again to the Mercury's annual Sex Survey Results Issue—where we probe the minds and pantaloons of Portland to find out who does what, where, when, and how in the sack! A month ago we asked our citizens to fill out our breathtakingly complete sex survey at portlandmercury.com. We then gathered up the results, fed them into the Mercury Sex-puter 2000 (version 2.0), and now hold in our hot sticky hands the most comprehensive database of dirtiness ever compiled by humankind! HAAA! HAAA! HAAAAAAAA! O, SWEET, UNBRIDLED POWER!!!

Anyway. Let's get to the dirty parts. But first a disclaimer: The following percentages have been rounded up, and have a plus or minus reliability of 3%. If all percentages don't add up to 100, don't embarrass yourself by writing in and reminding us of this fact. It only means that a few people either didn't vote, or got so horny they voted twice. Now, let's do this thing!

MEET JOE AND JANE PORTLAND

For the purposes of this article, "Joe and Jane Portland" will represent the average person filling out this survey. So what's "average"? SO GLAD YOU ASKED!

Very nearly 2,200 people filled out the Mercury Sex Survey this year, with the lion's share being between the ages of 21-30 (62%). More women than ever took the survey (a whopping 60% to the men's 39%)—which makes me happy, because women are statistically less likely to answer a question with "Your mother."

Now many of you (that is, Joe and Jane Portland) may be wondering: "Where do all the sexy people live? (Because I want to move there and have sex with them.)" Well, Joe and Jane, you'll be interested to know that most of our participants live in North/Northeast (38%) and Southeast (34%). How do we know they're sexy? Well, first of all, they participated in this survey, meaning they have at least a passing interest in the subject—as opposed to those who live in Northwest (10%) and downtown (2%) who do not. Secondly, the official sexual position of both North and Southeast Portland is "doggy style" (25%), which is clearly the sexiest of all sexy positions. Meanwhile, the predominant sexual position in Northwest and downtown is missionary. Any further questions?

YOUR "SEXUALITY"

Now, while Joe and Jane Portland may be primarily straight (68%), they certainly aren't narrow, as a good 20% of you love diddling with BOTH genders. (That's called bisexuality, or bi-diddly... if you prefer.) And if you've been bitching and moaning about there not being enough singles in this town—it's time to clap your yap. Thanks probably to the influx of newbies infiltrating Portland (26% arrived since 2007!), there are POOP-TONS of singles out there (31%), willing and ready to do it doggy style. Especially in the North and Southeast. (Meanwhile, 15% of Joes and Janes are married, and 29% are in relationships of one form or another. However, some of these are willing to do it doggy style with you also—since 20% prefer a non-monogamous relationship.)

YOUR HISTORY OR HERSTORY

If you are currently the parent of a pubescent, get ready for some disheartening news: There's an excellent chance your teen is going to get kissed, fingered, handjobbed, orally gratified, penetrated, and orgasmed by the time they're 15. At least if YOU are any indication!

The average age you first got romantically kissed was under 15 years of age (51%). Meanwhile the majority of you got fingered/handjobbed, and orally licked for the first time before you reached your 17th birthday (36 & 37%). And while most waited until almost 20 years old to be penetrated (39%), you were thinking about it looooooong before then, since you started masturbating and orgasming at the young age of 13 or less (36%). Look. "Orgasming" is a word. So climb down off my ass.

Lies (or medical ignorance, if you prefer) hit an all-time high this year with our participants either blatantly fibbing about their STDs—or gleefully ignoring them. Basically, nobody has anything. Not even herpes—which I KNOW more than 3% of you have. In fact, you claim the worst sexual problem you've ever had was PREGNANCY (20%).

I can only hope your aborted fetus doesn't live to hear that.

YOUR "FEELINGS"

How do Joe and Jane Portland "feel" about various topics of sexuality? Well, as the local Fox news affiliate might say, "The answer MAY surprise you!" First we start with every adult male's favorite topic, CIRCUMCISION. You know how women (and certain men) are always claiming they don't care if a man is circumcised or not? Well... THEY LIE! In our survey, women wholeheartedly are in favor of less meat on a man (63% pro to 34% con), if it will make that oily schlong look tidier. Now that you mention it, that makes a lot of sense: If a woman can't get a man to pick up his dirty underpants off the floor, at least she'll be able to count on a tidy penis.

Speaking of not being so tidy, let's talk MENSTRUATION. Popular lore has it that men vomit into their shirt pockets at the slightest mention of menstrual blood. How do they really feel? A whopping 69% are all like "whatever" when it comes to having sex while a woman is menstruating! Now. Aren't you girls ASHAMED about making your man cut off his foreskin? Well, you should be.

BTW, did you know 1% of Portland men wear panties? I didn't. (What do they know that we don't?)

Want another shocking statistic? YES, YOU DO! When it comes to women achieving orgasm solely from penetration, only about 19% of gals are able to do it. Meanwhile 28% come close (get it?), and 15% never do. SO RELAX, FELLAS! Do your business, hop off, and run to Dairy Queen to pick her up an Oreo Blizzard. She'll take care of the rest.

While we're on the subject of unrealistic expectations, 35% of men really aren't too sure if their current partner has faked their orgasm or not. Conversely, 29% of women adamantly claim they're not faking anything! Wait... this statistic just in... oh. It seems that 22% of women are in actuality faking their o's. Trust me guys: Just bring her back a Dairy Queen Blizzard—that's all she really cares about anyhow.

Okay, on the off chance that Joe and Jane Portland DO have sexual coitus, HAVE achieved sexual release, AND Dairy Queen is closed, what would you guess is the first thing they'd do upon completion? Pee, scratch, wipe off, smoke, get dressed, cuddle, or cry? You'd think "cuddle," right? WRONG! Portland sexy people know there's nothing sexy about letting your personal swamp drip all over your lover—so they wipe, Wipe, WIPE! (36%, and then 34% cuddle. Awwww....)

HOW YOU DO IT WHEN YOU DO IT

As previously mentioned, Portland does it doggy style. However! That's not all we like. For example, 55% love to hear a ceaseless barrage of dirty cuss words spilling from their partner's mouth during the act. Oh! You like that do you? I bet you do, you filthy little slut! (Hey... why are 45% of you walking away?)

Another thing you like to do? Copy moves you've seen in porn flicks! Men and women seem to equally enjoy (29% to 26%) emulating the moves they've seen on movies or the internet. I do, too, but my lovers keep asking me to stop whenever I sing "Chocolate Rain." (Maybe they thought "Chocolate Rain" meant something else?)

Remember how in 2005, rimjobs were the big thing? (I do.) Well, you'll be happy to know that in 2008, the blowjob and muffdive are making big comebacks! According to our poll 40% of respondents are cocksucking crazy for oral sex, while 46% are huge fans. As for that annoying 4% who "enjoy oral sex almost as much as a migraine," maybe you should consider moving to Northwest Portland. Because on the North or Southeast side? We love oral sex AND doing it doggy style! (And did I mention happily masturbating in front of our partners? No? A stunning 76% of us happily masturbate in front of our partners.)

OKAY. Now I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that MY lovers think I'm awesome at sex. The bad news is that YOUR lovers think you could "use a little work." That's not to say your lover isn't generally satisfied with the quality of your performance (45% are). It's more of a "quantity" issue—in that 36% of the partners out there want more of what you've got to give. So that's good advice for 2008, which will heretofore be known as "The Year for Putting Out." Remember what my Burger King boss used to say to me: "If you've got time to lean, you've got time to be sexually demeaned."

SEX: IT'S A COMPETITION!

Joe and Jane Portland are always fretting over whether or not they're getting penetrated or fingered enough. I know how you feel—I'm always looking for my next finger. However, are our expectations realistic? The majority of Portlanders have had penetrative sex with different people somewhere between 11-15 times so far in their lives... which is great for me, because I've had sex with 16 different people. Unless you said 17, in which case I would suddenly remember I've done it 18 times. (You get the general idea.) And while handjobs and fingerings took a slight dip this year (with only 23% actively administering them), you should remember that handjobs make GREAT Christmas gifts.

Another thing Joe and Jane are always freaking out about is the number of times they have sex on a regular basis—because it's not a competition, right? WRONG! It is so too a competition, and you should be "in it to win it!" But before you develop performance anxiety, check out this sobering stat: The majority of our respondents (49%) are only boinking once a week. Surely you can beat that! You just need the proper motivation. Here's a picture of Angelina Jolie to help you get started.

Man. Those lips could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. Anyway, before we leave the subject, it should be noted that masturbation is usually NOT a competition (except in my household), and you should do that whenever the mood strikes. For the majority of you (47%), that's currently a weekly exercise.

So what are you fantasizing about during your masturbatathons? Well, if our survey is any indication, it's ORAL SEX. You're fascinated with the stuff! So much so, in fact, that if there's anything you want more of from your partner, it's a lot more sucky and licky! A whopping 52% of you want more oral—eclipsing the number two wish which was "more kinky sex" at 8%! That being said... please refer again to the picture of Angelina Jolie. YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO.

THE REALLY DIRTY PART!

Now we've arrived at the most popular part of our survey, where YOU write in your answers to our most nosy questions! We asked you...

Hey Straight Men and Lesbians! If forced to choose, which male celebrity would you most like to boink?

(10) Barack Obama. (9) Ryan Reynolds. (8) Justin Timberlake. (7) Adrien Brody. (6) Daniel Radcliffe. (5) Brad Pitt. (4) George Clooney. (3) Johnny Depp. (2) Jake Gyllenhaal. And your #1 male celeb that men and lesbos would like to boink? HEATH LEDGER. (Eww. Let's assume you answered that a few weeks ago.)

Honorable mention: "The corpse of Rerun from What's Happening!!"

Hey Straight Ladies and Gays! If forced to choose, which female celebrity would you most like to boink?

(10) Beyoncé. (9) Alyson "Willow from Buffy" Hannigan. (8) Salma Hayek. (7) Keira Knightley. (6) Jessica Alba. (5) Natalie Portman. (4) Cate Blanchett. (3) Maggie Gyllenhaal. (2) Scarlett Johansson. And your #1 female celeb that ladies and gays would like to boink? ANGELINA JOLIE.

Honorable mention: "That lady from the Orbit gum commercial."

What's the best place to have public sex in Portland?

Apparently, in the alleyway outside my building. • The laundry room. • High schools on weekends. • Photo booth at the Ace Hotel. • Portland Tub & Tan. • Angels/Ace of Hearts. • Bathrooms at rontoms, Bluehour, Thatch, Crow Bar, Doug Fir, Fez Ballroom, Holocene, Trader Joe's (Hollywood location), Scientology building, OMSI. • Burnside Skatepark. • Calvary Chapel Cemetery. • Forest Park, Mt. Tabor Park, Laurelhurst Park, Washington Park, any park. • Macy's dressing room at Lloyd Center. • On top of the Smart Parks. • Oregon/Paris Theaters. • Glass elevators in the parking garages. • PSU gym locker room. • Corn maze. • Airport family bathroom. • Pearl room at Powell's. • Roundabout in Ladd's Addition. • Your mom/ mom's vagina/mom's house/mom's mouth/your dad.

What's the craziest place you've ever had sex?

With a minor in front of a police station. • Top of Mount St. Helens. • Delta flight 200 to Rome. • In the forest with a family of raccoons watching. • The back of a horse. • South Dakota. • Port-a-potty. • Roof of a McDonald's. • Roman convent. • On top of Larry Flynt's executive office desk. • On the cold stone at Cold Stone Creamery. • In the rafters of a church during service. • In the car while my mom drove. • In the bedroom next to where my husband was asleep. • In a model shower in the Ikea showroom. • Gave my boyfriend a blowjob during church service. • Former minority leader Tom Daschle's pool. • A group home for retardeds. • In the middle of a small lake. He jerked off in the water and a baby fish gobbled it right up! • At a porn shop while watching zombie porn. • Your mother/your mom/your mom's ass/your dad's coffin.

I'm ashamed to say that, sexually, I'm kind of into...

Amputees/girls with disabilities. • Anal sex—both ways. • Autofellatio. • I'm a lesbian turned on by gay erotica. • I like being choked, grabbed, slapped, tied up, and cussed at. • Hot dads. • Rape fantasies. • Strap-ons • Watching men finish. • Women's rectums. • 17-year-old Christian virgins. • Two men at once. • Ann Romano. • Emo/thin pansy boys kissing. • Anorexic girls. • Being molested while I pretend to sleep. • Being publicly forced to admit what makes me ashamed. • Being squirted on. • Being with a girl, while my husband watched. • Bi sex and fat chicks. • Breastfeeding. • Cops. • Cream pies. • Cuddling with dogs (just cuddling!). • Daddy/daughter roleplaying. • Effeminate men who let me plow them with a strap-on. • Fabric Depot • Girls with guns. • Giving choad hickies. • Jacking off at adult theaters. • Knee-high socks. • Lesbian domination. • My uncles. • Romance. • Rimjobs. • Star Trek D/S roleplay. • Super butches. • Thug dudez. • Your mom/mom's vagina/mom's booty /your dad watching me do your mom.

The sexiest thing I did in 2007 was...

Two girls, two coasts, 12 hours. • Three-way with my friend and his wife. • Fell in love. • Sex with my boss in a hotel paid for by work. • Sex with another man while my partner watched. • Let my boyfriend strip me on the street. • Masturbated at work, then at home made my boyfriend smell and lick my fingers. • Sex on the hood of a truck. • Webcam sex. • A hot three-way in a theater. • Banged a chick I met online at her boyfriend's house. • Ate cake naked. • Gave a boy anal with my vibrator. • Gave oral to a straight guy. • Sex in the park overlooking a Christian group having a picnic. • Fingerbanged by a minor on a train. • Held Morrissey's hand. • Jacked off at work while someone watched. • Made out with a (step) relative. • Put my leg behind my head at a lesbian bar. • Tape recorded sex and took naughty pictures. • Went dancing wearing a short skirt and no underwear. • Your mom/mom's dentures/mom's butthole/mom's mom while your mom watched/your mom (and I'll do her again in 2008!).

What's this fascination with my mom?

Until next year, stay "sexy" Joe and Jane Portland!

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The Chasse Files

Matt Davis — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:00:00 -0800

Pre-Trial Hearings in the Cop-Related Death of James Chasse Jr. Get Heated by Matt Davis

It is arguably Portland's most controversial cop lawsuit ever. And even though it will be almost two years before a jury is scheduled to sit down and rule on the case, the pre-trial hearings are already heated, with both sides accusing the other of trying to prejudice a fair trial.

Civil rights attorney Tom Steenson, who is representing the family of James Philip Chasse Jr., won a record half-million dollar settlement against the city in a officer-involved lawsuit last Thursday, November 8, but appears to be pursuing this case with more than just a financial settlement in mind. The Chasse family, along with Steenson, all want sweeping changes in the way the police bureau operates.

James Chasse's father, James Sr., and his brother, Mark—both of whom bear a striking resemblance to photos of James Jr.—have sat patiently behind Steenson on the hardwood courtroom benches on the ninth floor of the Federal Justice Center downtown since the pre-trial hearings began in earnest earlier this year. Mark's jaw occasionally tightens listening to city attorneys make their arguments before Judge Dennis J. Hubel. His father's solid stoicism is unnerving, and both men bring a palpable pressure to the room.

WHAT HAPPENED?

The details of Chasse's death were shocking. Chasse, a 145-pound, 42-year-old schizophrenic, was spotted by police in the Pearl District urinating in the street on September 17, 2006. After a scuffle with police, Chasse died in a squad car being driven by these same officers.

The squad car was en route to Portland Adventist Hospital, 8.4 miles from the Multnomah County Detention Center (MCDC) on SW 3rd—not the Good Samaritan Hospital, 2.6 miles away from the jail, or the emergency room at OHSU, 2.1 miles from the jail.

It remains unclear why Chasse was confined to a holding cell for 23 minutes, and what happened there before a jail nurse looked through the window and noticed he was unconscious. Chasse had been medically cleared at the scene of his arrest earlier on NW 13th and Everett by a team of paramedics. However, an autopsy found extensive evidence of external and internal injuries when Chasse died—including 16 broken ribs, and abrasions and bruising all over his body.

Since his death, several people have come forward to file tort claims and lawsuits alleging they have been beaten by sheriff's deputies—and, occasionally, cops too—in holding cells and the booking area at MCDC, where James was held for 31 minutes before dying on his attempted transport to the Adventist Hospital ["Jail Guards Run Wild!" News, Sept 13]. The alleged beating of 40-year-old Michael Evans in the lobby of the jail was captured on video just six days before Chasse's time there, on September 11, 2006 ["Summary Injustice," News, July 19].

One of the officers involved in Chasse's death, Christopher Humphreys, was found to be the police bureau's second-highest user of force in statistics released last November. Humphreys also has "a history or pattern of falsifying police reports," according to attorney Steenson ["Death in the Public Interest," News, Oct 18], who says his office has evidence to support this allegation. Humphreys had been the subject of seven Internal Affairs Division complaints when the numbers were released, and has subsequently become the subject of another unrelated lawsuit. He still patrols for the police bureau.

THE PAPER TRAIL

Legally speaking, Steenson's pursuit of this case against the city is broader than in previous lawsuits he has filed, because this time he's asked for more documents. Fittingly enough, these documents have become a huge source of contention between the two parties.

"The plaintiffs are asking for all the underlying documents for things that happened years ago in the police department," said Deputy City Attorney Jim Rice in court last Wednesday, November 7. "Tracking this down takes an inordinate amount of time."

Indeed, Steenson is not only asking for documents directly associated with Chasse's death—which include officer disciplinary records and a copy of the police bureau's (still incomplete) internal affairs investigation into the incident—but police files on officer-involved deaths dating back to the 1980s, copies of external reports on those deaths along with the supporting documentation gathered to produce those reports, not to mention reams of training documents and other supporting information.

At issue for Steenson and the Chasse family is that the police bureau could not only have prevented Chasse's death, but the bureau's lack of adequate training and disciplinary procedure directly contributed to his demise. They want to prove that the City of Portland has Chasse's blood on its hands.

The Chasse family gave the police bureau a two-page list of things it wants to see changed after filing the lawsuit on February 14 this year, including: Implementing a more effective early warning system to better deal with officers using high rates of force, and making the city's so-called Independent Police Review truly independent by having investigations conducted by independent attorneys, rather than internal affairs detectives. ("It's kind of like leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse," said Steenson.)

Further recommendations are: Changing the bureau's written policy on mental illness to include an anti-discrimination clause; changing the bureau's foot pursuit policy to prohibit taking innocent citizens to the ground unless officers have probable cause to believe the suspect is highly dangerous; changing the bureau's policy on officers using hands and feet to make impact strikes to a person's vital areas; and raising the burden of proof on an officer using deadly force from a "reasonable belief" that a suspect is dangerous, to "probable cause" that they pose an imminent risk of death or serious bodily injury.

So far, the police bureau and the city have implemented none of those changes. However officers are now required to obtain paramedics' permission to take someone in Chasse's situation to a hospital from MCDC, as well as inform paramedics on how much force was used.

In October 2006, Mayor Tom Potter mandated 40 hours of widely touted crisis intervention training for all officers, 25 percent of whom are now trained, but an urgently needed 16-bed crisis triage center—somewhere for officers to take mentally ill people in crisis—appears to be slipping further down the county's list of funding priorities with each passing month ["Less Than a Crisis?" News, Nov 1].

ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

Steenson has been frustrated by the city's failure, so far, to produce any of the documents he's asked for—despite Judge Hubel's order on October 16 for the city to complete discovery by three weeks ago, on Friday, October 26.

"I've seriously considered filing a motion for contempt," said Steenson in court last Wednesday, November 7, protesting against the city's failure to comply with the judge's order.

"We're not trying to slough it off," replied Deputy City Attorney Rice. "It's just a lot of information."

Rice said he now thinks the city might be able to produce the documents to Steenson by the end of November, beginning on November 16. Despite having only one other attorney, David Landrum, and one paralegal supervisor, Cheryl Noll, working on the case, Rice argued the city is doing its best to comply with Steenson's request for production of the documents.

"The increased complexity of litigation requires enormous efforts," Rice said. "We don't have another place for a paralegal physically in the building—we have taken closets and put lawyers in them."

Steenson responded by saying, with respect, that he had "no reason to believe what they are saying to the court."

A FAIR TRIAL

The longer the city waits to produce necessary documents in this case, the less time experts retained by Steenson have to review those documents before the pre-trial moves to its next stage, depositions, in January.

The city, too, has raised questions about whether it is possible to try this case fairly, arguing newspaper journalists and TV reporters are prejudicing the public's viewpoint. In the past, when the city has been involved in, or settled, cop lawsuits, it has always bought silence from the victims' families with a so-called "protective order," preventing public release of sensitive documents both during and after the trial.

Chief Rosie Sizer and Mayor Potter have spoken often about wanting the police bureau to be more transparent ["Chief Concerns," Feature, Jan 18] but such protective orders make it impossible for the public to have a thorough, evidence-based discussion about what might be wrong with the Portland Police Bureau.

That's why a conglomerate of local media including the Portland Tribune, the Oregonian, and all of the city's TV stations hired attorney firm Davis Wright Tremaine to intervene as a third party in the case on October 10—arguing that a protective order should not cover the city's production of documents in this case.

The city objected to the intervention on the grounds of officer safety—delivering an affidavit from Officer Humphreys saying he has been stalked in the past by an "armed individual." But in a counter-argument, Steenson said in writing on November 2 that "the potential consequences of shielding these documents from the public eye should not be underestimated, particularly where one of those consequences could be the more unnecessary and tragic deaths of innocent citizens."

"I think something that hasn't been spoken to is the issue of citizen safety," Steenson said, arguing in court this past Tuesday, November 13. "The public airing of Chasse's death and some of its follow-up has had a profound effect on some people in the city."

Regardless of its outcome, the public will most likely maintain a high level of interest in the outcome of the Chasse case—which will have far reaching consequences for Portland and the way it is policed.

The case continues.

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"I Am Irrelevant"

Scott Moore — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:00:00 -0700

The Fallout from Potter's Walkout by Scott Moore and Amy J. Ruiz

Last Thursday, October 25, Mayor Tom Potter finally managed to do what weeks of meetings and behind-the-scenes negotiations failed to: He brought both sides of the Interstate/Chávez street rename debate together—in stunned silence as he stormed out of a council hearing.

"I am irrelevant," Potter said as he left, angry that the other three men at the dais—Commissioners Erik Sten, Sam Adams, and Randy Leonard—were eking out a deal that would provide more process to the street rename, which Potter was solidly against. Because he was now in the voting minority, he was largely left out of the conversation. So he walked out.

As has been widely reported, his colleagues on the council, as well as staffers in the building, described themselves as "stunned." Sten, especially, was shocked, since he was in the process of trying to work out a compromise that would have had full—or nearly full—support from the council.

"I'm trying to find a way to work with you, and you're walking out on this discussion?" Sten asked Potter, to no avail.

"I'm a little stunned by the mayor walking out when I was about to support his position, but it makes it difficult to support his position if he's not here," he added.

The walkout threw the Interstate/Chávez process up into the air. The three remaining commissioners agreed to return with a new process on November 14, one day before Potter had scheduled an up-or-down vote on renaming Interstate to honor César E. Chávez.

But there are larger questions lingering—like what impact Potter's walkout will have on his ability to be effective through the last year of his term. Given that he's already a "lame duck" mayor (since he's not running for reelection), will the incident push him even further to the outside of his council colleagues? Will policy advocates shy away from approaching his office, going instead to other commissioners who might have a better chance at negotiating majority support for their cause?

According to numerous city hall insiders, the short answer is no—not because Potter's influence and authority have remained intact, but because his influence and authority have never really been much on display.

In fact, some city staffers see Potter's walkout last week as perfectly in step with his style thus far; as one person said, Potter has a reputation for being willing to negotiate and compromise only until he stops getting his way. His blowup in council chamber was simply a public display of his longstanding political style.

The following year will probably bring much reflection from the public and pundits on Potter's term as mayor; his recent actions will give them an excuse to view his term through a popular lens—that he was never able to reconcile the political requirements of Portland's city council, in which the mayor is only one leader among five equals, with his long career as a police officer and a police chief. As police chief, Potter was able to give orders, and subordinates could either follow his commands or get out of the way. As mayor of Portland, however, one still has to secure two other votes in order to win any policy debate—and that typically requires deft political skills and the ability to negotiate compromises with equals.

Most city hall denizens think Potter's blowup will blow over, and that little will change in the coming weeks. Policy advocates will still want to talk to him, but, as one staffer says, "He never talked to them anyway. They'd talk to his staff, but he doesn't listen to his staff either."

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Butter Hogs XXVI!

Jeremiah Plimpkin — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 04:00:00 -0700

These People Hog So Much Butter, It's Like They're Hogs! by Jeremiah Plimpkin

FACT NUMBER ONE: Portland is a filthy pigpen of butter abusing hogs.

FACT NUMBER TWO: The Mercury is the ONLY weekly paper that gives a shit about people who use more than their weekly allotment of butter. That's why we have once again selflessly taken it upon ourselves to "out" Portland's most flagrant butter abusers, here in the 26th edition of our "Butter Hogs" Issue.

FACT NUMBER THREE: While the average Portland household ingests only a tablespoon of butter a day (or roughly 2.5 "pats"), Butter Hogs greatly exceed this usage—sometimes by three or four pats! This flagrant zeal for churned milk products places the rest of us in the GRAVEST OF DANGER (of perhaps eventually running out of butter). That's why the Mercury is exposing these gluttonous butter freaks for what they REALLY are: disgusting sub-humans that deserve to be decapitated, dumped in a ditch, and covered with lyme. Or barring that, publicly humiliated in front of thousands of readers.

FACT NUMBER FOUR: "BUTTER" WATCH OUT, BUTTER HOGS! YOU'VE BEEN BUSTED!!

[Note: In fairness, if we discovered that the person had a legitimate medical excuse to eat that much butter, they were taken off the list.]

CITY COMMISSIONER RANDY LEONARD

Somewhere in East Portland

BUTTER USED: 2,645 pounds—enough to double Portland's firefighting crew, if the butter was sculpted into human form, given life by a Disney-branded fairy, and made impervious to melting.

ANNUAL BUTTER BILL: $4,800

PREFERRED DISH: "With a spoon."

City Commissioner Randy Leonard may use his position at city hall to push for things like biodiesel and bans on trans fats and smoking, but on his own time Leonard is among the biggest consumers in the city. He's successfully managed to keep his butter addiction a secret from his constituents—until he was forced out of the closet by the harsh light of the Mercury's Butter Hogs squad.

When we first spotted Leonard in the Safeway at SE 122nd and Powell, he tried to shield his buttery booty from our cameras, dashing to his car in an attempt to evade our watchful eye. But then he realized that no one—not even powerful city commissioners—can outrun the TRUTH... especially when your arteries are clogged with enough cholesterol to kill an elephant.

"I know I have a problem," he sobbed to the Butter Hogs squad. "But I can't help myself. Look at all these varieties of butter! Cubes, tubs, sprays, salted, unsalted, creamy—the list goes on. And look! Look! They even make butter in a squeeze bottle!"

REGAL CINEMAS

Six Portland Locations

BUTTER USED: 100 billion gallons (liquefied)—that's enough to fill every ocean in the world... 97 times.

ANNUAL BUTTER BILL: $234,208.41

PREFERRED DISH (TO BUTTER): Popcorn

While you enjoy the thrills and chuckles of Hollywood's latest big screen release, the butter-mad folks behind Regal Cinemas are working on their own big-budget butter blockbuster! My review? Two thumbs down! While simple common sense has proven that popcorn only needs a tempered dash of salt to be a delicious snack, these pleas fall on deaf ears at Regal, who smother the very life from the popcorn with sickening doses of pump-dispensed butter. When reached for comment, calls were directed to Regal's legal counsel, who were quick to respond with a countersuit for slander—one that will surely bankrupt this paper and cost this ace reporter his job. Luckily for me, my parents have a finished basement.

SAMANTHA WRIGHT

1855 NW Lovejoy

BUTTER USED: About one stick of butter a day—that's enough to comprise... an entire stick of butter. A DAY!

ANNUAL BUTTER BILL: $350

PREFERRED DISH (TO BUTTER): Toast

"I just have toast in the mornings," Samantha Wright, a lonely widow, age 64, lamely tells us. "And I make a lot of other things. Cookies. Mac and cheese. My hobby is cooking, so I use a lot of butter."

"Oh, really?" we asked her, surprising her at 6:45 one morning, toast (glistening with butter!) in hand. "Hitler had a 'hobby,' too—IT WAS KILLING JEWS! Now, what do you say to all those people who can't eat butter because of all the butter you've eaten?"

"C'mon," she said dismissively. "There's no butter shortage." That's beside the point, Mrs. Wright! If you'd stop cramming your mouth with BUTTERED toast and making batches of BUTTERY cookies (Her weak defense? "They're for my niece's birthday."), maybe you'd realize you're one of the hoggiest of Butter Hogs! Lucky for you, your husband is too dead to read about your bitter humiliation.

NINA BARLOW

NE 31st and Wygant

BUTTER USED: 312 pounds per year—that's enough butter to bake 14,976 pot brownies and go on a marijuana-induced killing spree, murdering 214 babies in daycare.

ANNUAL BUTTER BILL: $1,872

PREFERRED DISH (TO BUTTER): Pastries and local veggies from her CSA. Hippie.

Thanks to Nina Barlow's butter hogging ways, a local grocery store reports they may have to discontinue sales on butter. Why? Because Barlow regularly cleans out their butter case and stockpiles it at home. It took three of our most intrepid interns, but we finally tracked Barlow down, and demanded to see her secret cache.

"Sure," she said, desperately trying to affect a tone of non-guilt. "But it's not just butter—I also purchase bags of sugar, flour... I'm a pastry chef and have recently started my own bakery."

OH, WHY DON'T YOU KEEP LYING, YOU FUCKING LIAR? Next you'll be whining, "Oooh! I can't make my flaky pie crusts without butter!" If you really cared about the fate of the earth, you would use MARGARINE to make your butterhorn rolls! God, you're disgusting. I fucking hate you.

RICHARD RODGERS

1428 SE Hawthorne Blvd.

BUTTER USED: 1200 lbs. of butter per year—that's enough to build a six-foot-tall Eiffel Tower of butter in every country in the world.

ANNUAL BUTTER BILL: $2,460

PREFERRED DISH (TO BUTTER): None—he eats the sticks raw, licking the paper clean.

Drowning in a Land O' Lakes of butter consumption, Richard Rodgers (a policy staffer for Erik Sten, and potential city council candidate) has taken local butter excess to new heights with his insatiable appetite for all things churned, whipped, and creamy. As a city employee, his vast fortune has supplied himself, his wife, and one-year-old with an endless fix of buttery goodness. When asked to explain his gluttonous behavior, Rodgers got defensive. "Why are you looking in my bedroom window, you perv?" he screamed at us. "Get the HELL out of here!" Due to this political insider's buttering up of City Hall officials (see #1, Randy Leonard), the Rodgers family can continue their flamboyant butter intake without fear of government interference—while their thousands of discarded tubs of Country Crock litter our cities' landfills. For shame! FOR SHAME!

MY STEPFATHER, BOBBY "BOB" LANCASTER

1102 E. Columbia River Hiway, Troutdale

BUTTER USED: Enough to clog my stepfather's arteries and kill him in a flash. I wouldn't care... but it would break my mother's heart.

ANNUAL BUTTER BILL: Probably like $65, at least.

PREFERRED DISH (TO BUTTER): Grandma's Honey Wheat Rolls

Though inexplicably regarded as "good-natured" by many members of my family, my stepfather Bobby "Bob" Lancaster has been an egregious Butter Hog for as long as this reporter can remember. Every Thanksgiving, rather than simply applying an even layer of Country Bob maneuvers the butter dish next to his plate—where no one else can use it!—then slowly draaaags his roll across the stick of butter before taking a bite! YOU SICK BASTARD. Unfortunately, his ugly, mind-numbing selfishness doesn't stop at the dinner table. When we throw the pigskin around after eating, Bob always makes a big production of doing the "Bobby Shuffle"—moonwalking across our front yard and then spiking the ball while the rest of us beg him to continue the game.

Bob, obviously missing the point of the disgraceful designation, was all too happy to hear of his Butter Hog title. "So you're going to write about me? Where do I get one of those Mercurys anyway? Hey—did you get that check I sent for your birthday?" Yes, "Dad," but you're not going to buy me off—Bobby, you're a BIG FAT BUTTER HOG! (See you at Thanksgiving.)

RONNIE JENKINS

2334 SE Clinton

BUTTER USED: 59 bottles of Mrs. Butterworth's Syrup—that's enough to cover every single pancake made in Ethiopia... for 117 years!

ANNUAL BUTTER BILL: $265

PREFERRED DISH (TO BUTTER): Pancakes

"Why are you calling?"

Eight-year-old Ronnie Jenkins was playing dumb when we called him after school one Tuesday afternoon. Tipped off by his older sister Tiffany, we learned that little Ronnie has quite a fondness for Mrs. Butterworth's syrup.

"You're doing a story about how much butter people eat? But I don't eat butter. I eat syrup. Maybe you're confused because of the name—."

Cut the lame justifications, Ronnie! Try as he might to squirm out of being branded a Butter Hog, we have it on good authority (Tiffany Jenkins, age nine and three-quarters) that little Ronnie consumes more than a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth's a week—slathering it on everything from the obvious (pancakes) to the obscure ("Carrot sticks," Tiffany attests. "It is sooo grodie"). What's more? Apparently unconcerned with little Ronnie's non-stop consumption, his teacher, Sylvia Hunsaker, defends him.

"Look, he just has a sweet tooth," she told us after we barged into her second grade classroom. "Besides the fact that this 'Butter Hogs' issue you guys do every year is really annoying, there isn't even any butter in Mrs. Butterworth."

Thanks for the revisionist history lesson, Ms. Hunsaker— but we don't need to hear anything else! Lucky for you we don't do a yearly article called, "Portland's Stupidest Teachers!" Little Ronnie, congratulations on being the youngest butter hog ever. P.S. You make us sick.

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A Street By Any Other Name

Amy J. Ruiz — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:00:00 -0700

Portland Boulevard Recently Changed to Rosa Parks Way. Interstate Might Change to César E. Chávez Boulevard. But are these Noble Gestures Violating Public Process? by Amy J. Ruiz

Early on Sunday morning, July 15, an Oregon Department of Transportation crew pulled over on I-5 near Exit 304, and swapped out the giant Portland Boulevard exit sign with a new one—Rosa Parks Way. It was the boldest manifestation yet of city council's vote last fall to rename Portland Boulevard for the civil rights movement icon—a vote that sidestepped the usual process for changing a street name.

The freeway signs capped several months of change, beginning with a ceremony last December, when a street sign at the corner of Portland Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was topped with a new, shiny green NE Rosa Parks Way sign. City Commissioner Dan Saltzman—flanked by representatives of Portland's African American community, including those from the Albina Ministerial Alliance, which championed the idea—was on hand to talk about why he led the city council to rename our city's eponymous street.

Saltzman got the idea to change the street's name at Cornerstone Community Church on NE Killingsworth in January 2006. Pastor B.E. Johnson "admonished me to consider two things," Saltzman explained at a April 2006 public hearing about the name change. "One was to make sure that we were doing right by African American youth in our city... The other message was we should consider renaming Portland Boulevard in honor of Rosa Parks."

Less than a year after Saltzman first heard Johnson's proposal, the street was renamed. But the name change—however noble—has been met with plenty of criticism. Over on Mayor Tom Potter's blog, all but one comment questioned the proposal. Tracy Weber, who lives on Rosa Parks Way, gathered signatures to protest the change this past spring, after she noticed the new street signs in late January. Protesters attended the renaming ceremony to complain that they hadn't been heard.

Weber, the woman who gathered signatures in protest of the change—she also happens to be my neighbor, since I moved to NE Portland a month ago—calls the change tokenism, as part of the "stampede to honor Rosa Parks" after her death. And the change happened fast: "Almost no one I knew heard about it," she says, pointing out that only 30 to 50 people attended the April 2006 public hearing, depending on which report you read. Weber didn't find out about the swap until she saw the new street signs on her block, this past January, when it was "over and done with." Residents got a note on March 23, 2007 about the change (there was also a letter sent in December 2006, but Weber says she and several other neighbors didn't get it).

It's no wonder residents were blindsided by the change: Saltzman circumvented city code to ram the idea through.

The city code has an entire section dedicated to renaming streets. There are two ways to do it: a long, involved citizen-initiated process, or a quick city council vote that can only be used in limited circumstances.

The citizen-initiated process involves filing an application with the city, gathering 2,500 signatures (or signatures from 75 percent of the street's property owners), assembling a biography of the honoree, paying a fee to notify neighbors, running the idea past a panel of historians, going before the city's planning commission, and—finally—swaying the city council.

Additionally, there are criteria for who a street can be renamed after. It must be a real, "prominent" person who has made a "significant, positive contribution to the United States of America and/or the local community." The person has to have been deceased for at least five years.

The other way to change a street name is via a city council vote. But according to city code, the council is only allowed to change a street name to "to correct errors in street names, or to eliminate confusion." In fact, the city code is very clear that the council cannot take it upon themselves to rename a street to honor a person: "Renaming of a street by the city under provisions of this paragraph shall not be undertaken to rename a street after a person."

But that's just what the city council, at Saltzman's behest, did on October 25, 2006—the one-year anniversary of Parks' death.

How did the council circumvent the street renaming process? They simply voted to waive the "Renaming Street" chapter of city code.

"There are good reasons for making exceptions to the rule," Commissioner Sam Adams said at the October 18 city council meeting where city commissioners initially voted on the proposal, pointing out that Bill Naito had only been dead for two months when Front Street was renamed for him in 1996.

At the same meeting, Saltzman made it clear that he wanted to fast track the Rosa Parks change. "Frankly, I think it would be fitting for us to act today in time for the one-year anniversary of her death. "It's the right location and it's the right time."

To be sure, process for process' sake is pointless. But waiving the official process entirely has consequences, leaving citizens in the dark on a change that will impact their lives—whether by confusing those who try to navigate the street (Google Maps is currently erroneous) or forcing those who live on the street to change their address as if they've moved.

"I was under the impression that our laws had to be followed by everyone, especially those that make the laws," Weber says. "They honored the mother of civil rights by taking away our rights."

Saltzman's chief of staff, Brendan Finn, says residents of Portland Boulevard were notified of the proposal in time to comment on it. "We wanted to hear from folks, their questions and concerns," he says. But ultimately, the city council made a judgment call. "We could have put [the Albina Ministerial Alliance] through the formality of having them collect signatures, but council had to make that call. Do we go through those procedures or is this just a good idea?" Finn explains. "It was a no-brainer to honor Rosa Parks in that way. That was the rationale. Is that right for every other street naming? I think council will have to decide that on a case-by-case basis."

At the same meeting where Adams signed off on an "exception," and Saltzman called for quick action, Mayor Potter hinted that he would support future street renaming.

"We're not done with the naming process in Portland. And we've got a lot of streets that I have no idea, other than perhaps they formed one of the states of the union, as to why they were named," he said, perhaps referring to streets like Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, and Montana, all near N Mississippi.

Which brings us to N Interstate—a main thoroughfare in North Portland. A committee of Latino residents would like to have it renamed for farm labor activist César E. Chávez, and have tapped Potter's office for assistance. So far, the committee has called on local neighborhood associations and businesses, but they haven't filed an application with the city to kick off the formal street renaming process. Will Interstate be renamed in the same way Portland Boulevard was—by a city council member who wants to make an "exception" to city code? Or will citizens—the residents around Interstate, and the city at large—have a meaningful chance to debate the proposal's merits?

José Romero, co-chair of the Chávez committee, had "heard there were some shortcuts taken with the other renaming," and stresses that his group wants to "get everybody on board, hopefully. We want to do it right, and we don't want to take any shortcuts. We believe in what we're doing, and we want to be sure that everyone has a time to hear and learn and get the information and make an informed decision."

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Trust Me, I'm a Rent-a-Cop

Matt Davis — Thu, 03 May 2007 04:00:00 -0700

Downtown's Private Security Police: Like Regular Cops, But Without the Oversight by Matt Davis

The Portland rent-a-cops patrolling downtown look like real cops. They have similar uniforms, and many carry real guns. They share some of the same duties. In fact, they could easily be—and often are—mistaken for police officers by the average person on the street. There is one critical difference, however. Unlike the real cops, they're only accountable to one person, and he refuses to answer questions.

Portland Patrol, Inc. (PPI) is the downtown private security firm that has a contract with the Portland Business Alliance (PBA) to do "order maintenance" in the city's downtown core. Because the firm is a private business, rather than a public body, it currently doesn't have to answer any questions from the public regarding its activities. Despite this, PPI is being given increasing responsibility, and many are becoming concerned that, without more accountability, serious problems could result.

NO PUBLIC OVERSIGHT

According to our research, there are roughly 17 armed and 13 unarmed PPI officers walking Portland's streets. PPI has refused to confirm these numbers with the Mercury, let alone explain under what circumstances a PPI officer might be allowed to pull their gun. No one has been shot yet, and it may never happen—PPI officers are charged with solving "order maintenance problems" using the lowest possible impact, and if situations have the potential to escalate, they are supposed to call the real police. But if this is the case, why are PPI's officers allowed to carry guns?

Budget and hiring shortfalls mean that the city's cops—there are 91 full-time police officers currently assigned to the bureau's Central Precinct—rely on PPI to be their "eyes and ears," in the words of Central Precinct Commander Mike Reese. PPI and police leadership meet regularly, and since January, PPI officers have been handing out laminated cards to downtown businesses, urging them to call PPI with regard to "homeless persons," "panhandling," and the "mentally ill."

In other words, PPI officers are often downtown's first respondents when it comes to interacting with the homeless or other people on the street, and they work closely with the police bureau. Four of PPI's officers are actually "embedded" police officers with the power to make arrests—one of whom was photographed in March outside Pioneer Place, with his hand apparently around the neck of a street kid ["Choked Up," News, March 1].

PPI's embedded officers, like Portland's actual cops, are subject to oversight by the Portland Police Bureau's Internal Affairs Division and the Independent Police Review, which is in turn overseen by the Citizen Review Committee. However, there's only one person with whom citizens can lodge a complaint, if they were to have an unfortunate run-in with the rest of PPI—and that's PPI's chief executive, John Hren. But as owner of the company, investigating his own complaints presents an obvious conflict of interest.

Because he operates a private business, Hren refutes the idea that he should have to answer questions from the press about PPI's complaints-handling procedures, training, contracts, or any other aspect of the firm's activities.

Likewise, the PBA have not only refused to answer, but have repeatedly stonewalled the Mercury's questions regarding details of its contract with PPI. Carmen Rubio, a spokesperson for the mayor, says Potter is too "insufficiently informed about the contract to be able to comment." Meanwhile, the city's existing 10-year contract with the PBA to provide extra downtown security through PPI runs out on October 22 this year.

"This is a prime example of how a lack of transparency works against the public interest," says Alejandro Queral of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center (NWCRC). "You have ordinary citizens dressed up like cops, with real guns but fake badges. An ordinary person who perceives these rent-a-cops to be the real deal may be at risk of having his or her rights violated without any way to hold the individual accountable."

IN S.A.F.E HANDS?

With the mayor's Street Access for Everyone committee about to pass a controversial sit-lie ordinance, homeless and civil rights activists are growing more and more curious about PPI. That's because its officers, who already have the power to issue park exclusions as part of a city contract to patrol 11 of its parks, will also soon be able to give verbal warnings to those sitting or lying on downtown's sidewalks.

"Most of the time, it will be the private security forces that will engage the people on the streets," says Street Roots Managing Editor Joanne Zuhl. "It's time for the city to engage in their oversight."

"They [PPI officers] are hired by a special interest group [the PBA] interested in making downtown attractive for consumers," adds Andrea Meyer, legislative director for Oregon's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Giving them tools to enforce Portland ordinances creates a powerful conflict of interest," she continues. "They may conclude that having homeless folks in the downtown area is a detraction and will affect businesses, giving justification to move homeless out of the downtown area."

IN THE LAND OF LOOPHOLES

Thanks to an inefficient background checking operation at the state level—which can take up to six months to check new PPI officers' fingerprints against federal and state criminal databases—there are also questions about what kind of person is allowed to become a PPI officer. PPI's unarmed officers, in particular, go through a much more lax background-checking process than their armed counterparts or potential cops.

Unlike the police, who have to wait up to a year for their background checks to clear before they can start training—let alone wear a uniform and patrol the streets—unarmed PPI officers are able to start work immediately on a trust-based "temporary work permit" issued by the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training (DPSST), while its four-to-six month background checks go through.

In theory, there's no reason why a felon couldn't lie about his or her criminal history and work for PPI for four to six months while the DPSST process was being completed. However, in fairness, the firm has only allowed one bad apple into its ranks over the last 10 years. On the other hand, we wouldn't have been privy to this information without a diligent and complicated records search of the person.

DPSST records obtained by the Mercury show Kevin Chard worked for the firm as an unarmed officer for five months between October 2006 and February 2007, until his background check was returned saying he had a "disqualifying criminal history."

"He had a criminal conviction in California, which he wrongly believed had been expunged from his record," says Hren, in his only public comment to the Mercury. "When we found out it had not been, we terminated his employment immediately, and he went back to California."

Hren and the DPSST cannot disclose the nature of Chard's conviction under public records law, and the Mercury's efforts to contact Chard to get his side of the story were unsuccessful.

"Whether PPI wants to put people out on the street dealing with the public before the background checks [are complete]... I guess that's a decision PPI has to make," says Harold Burke-Sivers, who sits on the DPSST's private security policy committee, which is responsible for the agency's temporary work permit policy.

"PPI needs to come clean with the public regarding their hiring standards, criminal background check procedures, and training requirements," responds Queral, at the NWCRC.

WHO'S WATCHING THE WATCHERS?

At the very least, Street Roots and the NWCRC want PPI's park exclusions to fall under the investigative power of the city's police review process. The two groups are hoping that by drawing the public's attention to the issue, they can generate grassroots support for a change in the way PPI is required to operate—and go from there.

"We are talking about a security group that has the authority to give Portlanders park exclusions, and warnings for quality-of-life laws that are constitutional in question with no public oversight," says Street Roots Director Israel Bayer. "It's something everyday people should be concerned about."

Until the city steps in to demand oversight for the armed security detail that patrols our streets, these concerns and questions will undoubtedly remain unanswered.

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Sex Survey Results 2007

Wm.™ Steven Humphrey — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 04:00:00 -0800

by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey

As a rule, nobody likes to have sex with scientists. That's because most scientists are boring brainiacs who might know why a clitoris works, but have NO IDEA how to make one go crazy like a Mexican jumping bean. You see, I'm a different kind of scientist. I'm the kind of scientist that combines hard statistical data with juicy, real-world sexual experience. How do I do it? With the Mercury's yearly SEX SURVEY, of course! For the sixth year in a row, the Mercury asked YOU a series of highly personal and extremely erotic questions. Then we take your responses, enter them into the Mercury Sexometer 2.0, and... sploosh! It spits out a veritable facial of knowledge. Knowledge that YOU can use to trick people into thinking you're really good in the sack!

Would YOU like that same facial of knowledge? OF COURSE YOU WOULD. So grab some lotion, a tissue, a jar of strawberry marmalade, last June's issue of Popular Mechanics, and let's... get... learning!

WHO YOU ARE!

You are a good person who loves their mother, thinks candy corn is "gross," and votes in all "the important" elections. Plus, if you filled out this year's sex survey, you are one of 2,300 others who didn't mind sharing some of their darkest, dirtiest sex secrets! (By the way, since some of you didn't fill out every single question on the survey, some of the percentages don't add up to 100%. DON'T PANIC. This survey is for fun and informational purposes as well as forwarding scientific knowledge!)

It was a great year for WOMEN respondents who filled out this survey in droves (52%) and a respectable year for MEN (46%)—this is good news because women generally know more about sex since they're always reading Cosmo. The lion's share of these respondents are between the sexy ages of 22-30 (53%), and classify themselves as STRAIGHT (girls = 34%, boys = 37%), except for those who like to diddle with the genitalia of their own gender (gays & lesbians = 9%, bisexuals = 17%).

Now here's some more good news! A whopping 40% of respondents claim to be SINGLE (girls = 21%, boys = 19%), which means that a little less than half the people in Portland are available and ready to have sex with me! (Oh... I guess that's just good news for yours truly.) Bad news for me? 70% of couples in a relationship have already unfairly decided they are MONAGAMOUS. (BOOOO!!)

SENSITIVE INFORMATION!

People are always complaining about how television isn't "realistic," yet whenever the networks show teenagers getting it on, these same complainers flip out! Well, facts are facts, granny, and the fact is that most of you started having sex in your mid to late teens (Ages 14-16 = 34%, ages 17-19 = 41%). But rest easy, parents! Because they're not having very much of it. According to our survey, our respondents are enjoying fewer sex partners than ever. This year, when it comes to the subject of sex with penetration, 20% say they've only had 6-10 sex partners, 14% say they've had 11-15 partners, and a meager 9% boast 16-20 partners!

THIS WILL NOT STAND!

Last year, the majority of you claimed upward of 20 partners—but that's when we allowed you to include handjobs in your calculations. SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DON'T INCLUDE HANDJOBS? It throws everyone's numbers off, and we get depressed. Answer me this: "If handjobs aren't sex... then will you give your mother one?" I THOUGHT SO.

Unfortunately, this "anti-handjob" hysteria is having serious ramifications on the mindsets of those who should be administering handjobs on a regular basis. According to our statistics, a shocking number of you (28%) have only given two handjobs IN YOUR LIFE (most of these slackers are boys!). Listen up, guys. We all realize that girls give us handjobs for one reason, and one reason only: TO SHUT US UP. However! Handjobs can shut up a woman just as easily. "I thought I told you to do the dishes!" "I'm going to, honey... as soon as I give you this HANDJOB." Trust me, fellers—IT WORKS.

So even though you've had an embarrassing number of partners, and have no earthly idea how to give a decent handjob, your actual number of sexual experiences are quite lengthy and frequent! The majority of you (45%) report that you have sex on a weekly basis (probably when the Mercury comes out), and 15% boast doing it daily (there would be more, but that's when the Oregonian comes out). And you're even more enthusiastic when it comes to America's favorite pastime (sorry, baseball!), MASTURBATION. An impressive 34% of you masturbate on a daily basis (girls = 12%, boys = 22%), while 39% of you diddle your fiddle every week (girls = 23%, boys = 16%). And with that much digital manipulation going on, you must be thinking of something very sexy indeed. So let's find out what types of stuff is turning you on!

TOP I0 TURN ONS!

KISSING—91%

TONGUE KISSING—86%

PORN—71%

DIRTY TALK—69%

PUBLIC SEX—45%

SAFE VIOLENCE—40%

ANAL PLAY—39%

VOYEURISM—36%

FOOT RUBS—25%

RIMMING—22%

Hmmmmm... that's interesting. However, there's a big difference—as we all know—between what you want and what you get. Bearing that in mind, let's check out the types of things you'd like to get more of while "doin' it"... in "the sack!" (Know what I mean?)

TOP I0 THINGS YOUR PARTNER COULD BE DOING ON A MORE REGULAR BASIS... I MEAN, C'MON. IS IT GOING TO KILL HIM/HER?

PLAIN OL' SEX—75%

ORAL SEX—73% (YEAH!! Ooops... sorry.)

KISSIN' & CUDDLIN'—69%

PLAYING OUT FANTASIES—50%

ROUGH SEX—49%

HANDJOBS—43%

INCLUSION OF SEX TOYS—39%

ADDITIONAL PARTNERS—35%

ANAL SEX—33%

S&M—20%

Let's explore this a bit further: Breaking it down, boys tend to want more oral sex (38% vs. 34%), handjobs (23% vs. 19%), and partners (19% vs. 15%). SURPRISE! Meanwhile, girls lean more to wanting "plain ol' sex" (39% vs. 35%), kissin' and cuddlin' (39% vs. 29%), and rough sex (29% vs. 19%). You hear that, guys? Start off with the kissin' and cuddlin', but keep those handcuffs close by. And speaking of toys of a sexual nature, we also asked what kind of accoutrements we might find in the drawer of your bedside table. And since this survey is supposed to represent EVERYONE in Portland, we thought we'd title this next section...

TOP I0 SEX TOYS THAT YOUR MOM MIGHT HAVE IN HER COLLECTION (HEY, YOUR MOM'S A PERSON, TOO.)

LUBE—49%

VIBRATOR—47%

DILDOS—32%

HANDCUFFS—22%

KAMA SUTRA—15%

ROPE—15%

COSTUMES—15%

NIPPLE CLAMPS—7%

SOMETHING YOU CAN'T HANDLE—5%

PRODUCE—3%

Just kidding about your mom. I'm sure she's never had sex in her life. (Although there is a one in two chance of her owning a tube of lube. EWW!) Speaking of your mom, let's talk about orgasms.

This is—for my money—the most controversial question in our sex survey: How long does it take, on average and with a partner, to reach orgasm? It's controversial, because the guys have been taught at a very early age to automatically lie. And you girls have been very sweet in your pretense of believing their ridiculous self-deception. Here's how it all breaks down.

8% of you claim to reach orgasm in under five minutes (girls = 5%, boys = 3%). These people are telling the truth. Meanwhile, 49% of you say you orgasm anywhere from six to 15 minutes (girls = 26%, boys = 22%). The girls are telling the truth, while a large cross-section—let's assume 12%—of the boys are lying. Then there's the last group (32%) who claim it takes them up to half an hour to orgasm (girls = 13%, boys = 19%). In this case, the girls could be lying—unknowingly. They may be stuck with some meathead ignoramus who couldn't find the clitoris with a flashlight and a roadmap. And as for the boys? They're not lying—especially if they start their "30-minute" clock as soon as they leave work.

CHEATERS SOMETIMES WIN

CHEATING: It's way fun. Another thing about cheating? Everybody's either done it, or they're doing it now, and if they aren't? They're some kind of FREAK. You see, "cheating" is the great equalizer—all God's children cheat: black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics. Dick Cheney cheats, as well as those stinking hippies who are always yelling outside the fur shops (if they can find someone who doesn't mind their stink). And even better? EVERYBODY DENIES IT. That makes it especially important to never, ever get caught. Because if you DO get caught, then you were too stupid to start cheating in the first place. That's why when we asked the sex survey question: HAVE YOU CHEATED ON YOUR CURRENT PARTNER? The answer was a smart, and resounding "NO" (76%). And you still said "NO," even though this survey was completely anonymous and confidential, because you know that constant denial is the only way to keep your dirty little secret safe.

How do I know most of you are lying? Because of our next question: HAVE YOU CHEATED ON FORMER PARTNERS? In this answer, the number of these upstanding and chaste partners sharply and suddenly drop, with a whopping 50% admitting that you had indeed cheated on your lovers in the past. (Why not tell the truth, right? After all, you can't get into trouble for it now.) HEY! I'M NOT JUDGING YOU. In fact, I'm right there with ya. As god as my witness, I've never cheated on any of my partners, and I swear, baby, I never would.

WINK.

Footnote: And I would especially never cheat, knowing that a majority of Portland cheaters (63%) never got caught.

YOUR MOST EMBARRASSING SEXUAL MOMENTS

We ask the embarrassing sex questions, you answer them. For example...

• Ever had sex in public?

WHO HASN'T? = 76% EWW, GROSS! = 18%

Now, if this is true, I should be seeing you get it on in the great outdoors a lot more often. Need suggestions? See "Best Places to Have Public Sex," pg. 19!

• I've walked in on my parents having sex.

YES = 32% NO = 65%

There would've been more "yes" responses, if these people hadn't already killed themselves or jabbed out their eyes with a pencil.

• I've walked in on my roommate having sex.

YES = 41% NO = 54%

And you didn't join them? CHICKEN. Bawk! Buh-KAWK!

• I've walked in on my friend having sex.

YES = 50% NO = 46%

Oh, right. You've successfully avoided walking in on your parents, but when it comes to your sexy friends, you suddenly forget how to knock?

• I've walked in on my partner having sex—WITH SOMEONE ELSE.

YES = 9% NO = 86%

That sort of thing ALWAYS happens on TV and in the movies, but apparently not in real life. Why? See the "Cheaters Sometimes Win" section.

• I've seen strangers doing it in public.

YES = 49% NO = 48%

Are half of you blind?!? I saw somebody doing it just two minutes ago, when I was walking past the copier!

HAVE I "DONE IT" WITH YOU?

One of the great myths of love is that we find that perfect someone in a storybook fashion—but that's bullpoop. We usually find them by screwing around with someone you're not supposed to be screwing around with. For example, here are the types of people you've "done it" with...

• Coworker: NO = 40%, YES = 55%

• Best Friend: NO = 52%, YES = 43%

• Unnamed Stranger: NO = 55%, YES = 40%

• Roommate: NO = 65%, YES = 29%

• Boss/Employee: NO = 67%, YES = 27%

• Teacher/Student: NO = 78%, YES = 15%

• Relative: NO = 88%, YES = 5%

• A Cop Who Pulled Me Over: NO = 91%, YES = 2%

So as you can clearly see, your coworkers and best friends are the most likely prospects when you need some sex. Although I bet most cops wouldn't turn you down.

Anyway, you're a freak, right? Which is why now is a good time to announce...

THE TOP I0 STRANGEST THINGS YOU'VE EVER INVOLVED IN SEX

"A banana... she didn't have a butt plug."

"Duct tape... always a bad idea."

"1979 Han Solo action figure taken out of the original box."

"A daisy costume. I was wearing it."

"A suction pore cleaner from the Dollar Tree."

"I put the cum in cucumber."

"Pop Rocks... which isn't good... because they pop... and it hurts."

"A Nerf bat which I used to bang my lover's balls during orgasm."

"Encyclopedia of Serial Killers."

"Vicks Vapor Rub... don't do it."

EVER DONE IT?

Speaking of weird things you've done—and believe me, that previous list went ON and ON—let's find out some of the other naughty things you've been up to...

• How do you keep your "hedges"?

BUSHY = 25% TRIMMED = 59%

All I have to say to that is "THANK GOD." If you want me to provide oral sex, then I shouldn't also have to provide the weed whacker.

• Have you ever paid for sex/been paid for sex? (And yes, drugs count!)

YES = 18% NO = 77%

We should have said "Cleaning out the garage counts, too!"

• Have you ever done porn?

YES = 12% NO = 82%

Isn't that now a requirement for all American Idol contestants?

• Got naked pictures somewhere on the internet?

YES = 28% NO = 67%

Please send the web address to steve@portlandmercury.com.

• Have you ever webstreamed yourself having sex/masturbating?

YES = 7% NO = 87%

Whatever, technophobe. All the cool nerds are doin' it.

• Have you ever started a sexual rumor about someone?

YES = 21% NO = 71%

REALLY? You did? Give me a few!

• "I ratted out a girl who had to change schools because her nickname was 'Four Fingers.'" • "I told my friend that the guy she had a crush on was into coprophilia [abnormal interest and pleasure in feces and defecation]—so I could do him." • "Claimed a friend had cheated on her BF by fucking another guy in a hot tub." • "In the third grade, I said this girl liked to jack off her brother while her dad spanked her with a ping pong paddle." • "Humpy gave me ass warts." • "Spread the rumor that my freshman biology teacher fucked test tubes." • "The nuns at my high school masturbated with carrots." • "She used Arby's Horsey Sauce instead of lube." • "Zac E. played the flugle horn with his ass."

• I've got a sex secret I've never told anyone.

YES = 44% NO = 50%

REALLY? You do? Tell us some now!

YOUR SEXUAL SECRETS!

"Now and then my naked father and brother pop into my mind while I'm masturbating." • "I had my first orgasm while riding a horse bareback as a child. I had no idea what happened, and I loved it!" • "I fantasize about little boys, animals, my father." • "I'm a straight chick, and pregnant girls get me hot." • "I fucked my current boyfriend's best friend for two months. It's been three years and he still doesn't know." • "I was underage when I had consensual sex with two men at once. They videotaped it, and it would wreck my relationship if he ever found out." • "I had group sex with off-duty soldiers." • "I slept with a hooker in Vegas. It was gross, but the worst part was that she said I was 'too freaky' for her. I also slept with a one-armed chick." • "I pretend I don't like anal, but the denial gets me off." • "I masturbated on my hot RA's doorknob in college." • "The first time I came, it was black." • "At one point I was picking up 18-year-old boys at punk rock shows, and fucking them in the park." • "When he goes to the bathroom after sex, I use the time to masturbate so I can orgasm." • "When my boyfriend isn't home, I enjoy the handles of his tools from his toolbox. I wash them off, though." • "I believe that men are the boss in bed... and nowhere else." • "I don't really like sex." • "Fell in love with my cousin... we did everything except sex." • "I gave a blowjob to the owner of [local bar] in front of 10 people, and let him come in my mouth." • "I masturbate at work regularly." • "I had sex with my best friend's sister in his bed." • "I have a fetish for gay guys." • "I have not had sex in 10 years." • "I jerked off a dude; I'm a dude." • "I let my dog go down on me when I was a teen." • "I like a woman with a strap-on." • "I like anal/oral penetration all at the same time." • "I masturbate when my parents go to church." • "I was the only female at an all-male orgy." • "I once gave a trucker a handjob for a ride." • "I really like short guys with big dicks." • "I want to see Sam Adams' SEXY toes." • "I'd like my wife to do me in the ass with a dildo." • "I'm an occasional panty-sniffer when staying at my cute friend's place." • "I've been paid for sex." • "I've had dreams where I'm doing it with my mom. GROSS." • "I'll have sex with anyone out of curiosity." • "Let an old girlfriend tie me down, fuck me in the ass with her dildo, and force me to eat my own come." • "My first handjob was from my HOT first cousin." • "I often fake it." • "I've given oral sex to my coworker." • "Sometimes I masturbate to videos of bones being broken." • "I did the manager at Wendy's."

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19 Things Not Invited Back to 2007!

Wm.™ Steven Humphrey — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 04:00:00 -0800

by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey, Adam Gnade, Chas Bowie, Erik Henriksen, Matt Davis, Amy Jenniges, Scott Moore, Marjorie Skinner and Alison Hallett

Tired of all the annoying annoyances you had to put up with in 2006? Well, instead of crying about it, we've come up with a simple solution: "HEY, TOP 19 ANNOYING THINGS OF 2006! YOU'RE NOT INVITED BACK!"

Non-Sexy Emails from Former Police Chief Derrick Foxworth

Yeah, yeah. WE KNOW. It's supposedly "morally repugnant" to write pornographic emails to a subordinate. But when former Police Chief Derrick Foxworth typed those SEXY emails to Angela Oswalt, he took what is normally considered a "cold technology" and turned it into something else: hot, passionate ART. For example: "I want to slide my thick chocolate cock deep into that moist tight pussy of yours and hear you moan...." Would this be "inappropriate" if Billy Dee Williams said it? OF COURSE NOT! Well, Foxworth is the Billy Dee of PDX, and if he's forced to write the same boring un-sexy emails as the rest of us? Then this is a city I don't want to live in! (P.S.—Derrick, write back soon! We miss your "chocolate." lovenotes@portlandmercury.com)

The Oregonian's Free Shitty Paper on My Driveway Every Week

Here is a parable: I have a hunchback neighbor who walks his fatass wife and little Chihuahua past my house every morning. The other day, I watched his ratty mutt pinch a loaf in my front yard—and the hunchback would've left it, had I not caught him red-handed. So in this parable, the staff of the Oregonian and This Week/Food Day (or whatever you call it) represents my neighbor Quasimodo, and that plastic-wrapped "newspaper" they throw in my driveway every week is the dog shit. At least poop could conceivably fertilize my lawn—but a recipe for pumpkin cheesecake and Shawn Levy's review of the latest Tim Allen movie? All it does is give me a speed bump to run over for a week before kicking it underneath Quasimodo's hedge. So just in case anyone at the Oregonian ever listens: We would all really appreciate it if you would STOP polluting our lawns with your completely useless paper. (Though Quasimodo does occasionally use the bag for picking up poop.)

People Who Hate the Tram

It's befuddling how anyone could hate the tram (excepting, of course, those dimwit NIMBYs and the occasional geriatric political blogger). The tram is a beautiful work of art; sleek and bubbly, gliding along impossibly thin wires as it treks up and down Marquam Hill. Yes, it was way over budget. But what great project isn't? You get what you pay for, and we got ourselves a beautiful tram that not only does its part to save the environment, it also attracts tourism, new businesses, AND further isolates those annoyingly rich OHSU surgeons hiding out in their South Waterfront condos. Now—unless you're getting a gall bladder removed—you'll probably never have to see a surgeon again. Hug the tram. Ride the tram. Love the tram.

People Who Love the Tram

Hey, here's an idea! How about instead of spending a hundred kajillion tax dollars on some stupid goddamn flying shoebox that's only useful to .0000053 percent of Portland's population, why don't we spend some money on other, more efficient methods of public transportation? How about finishing up the bus mall? Or adding a new streetcar line? Or a new MAX route? Or—I don't fucking know—giving people jetpacks? Shit knows it'd be more cost-effective than a goddamn tram. Or, hey, why not install moving sidewalks everywhere? Does that make sense, City Council? Oh, of course it does! And since we're shitting out all this money for a ridiculous tram, why don't we just sink a few billion into making a Star Trek transporter? Hey, City Council! A transporter sounds great! It's just as legit as a goddamn tram, right? Oh, and hey, here's an idea—let's only have it work for the three people in Portland who work at OHSU. Beam me up, dickholes!

Use of the Phrase "I Heart"

You know what we mean: "I totally heart those skinny jeans!" This phrase was introduced to the lexicon by cuter-than-thou indie chicks, and has since been embraced by shrill pre-teens everywhere. You may think that by inserting this colloquialism into your speech you're broadcasting your adorableness to the world—but in fact everyone within earshot thinks you're a total toolbox with the emotional range of an emoticon and a limited understanding of noun/verb relationships. Try having a real feeling, because your hollow profession of "hearting" things is exactly as meaningful as the fact that you have 878 MySpace "friends." LOL!

"Clever" Panhandlers

Homelessness and poverty are serious issues that must be eradicated. A step in the right direction would be if we let "funny" homeless people starve to death. "Could you spare seven cents?" Never heard that one before. "Spare some change for the Church of Malt Liquor?" Pretty clever—for a stinking hippie. "Why lie? I need a beer!" True, honesty is the best policy... a policy granting me the right to push you off the Burnside Bridge. As a general rule, starving people can't afford to be funny—which is why you'll never see an Ethiopian kid holding a sign that reads, "Will work for sex."

Willamette Week Covers Featuring Old Men Eating Diarrhea

I'm sorry, but sometimes? The WW is just too "out there." The cover story for their August 16 issue involved local "competitive eaters"—a topic near and dear to the hearts of the paper's main demographic, Lake Oswego's morbidly obese. However, instead of an appropriate cover shot—like a Lake Oswegoan noshing on a tray of finger sandwiches provided by a complacent Negro maid—the photo was of a retiree cramming fistfuls of diarrhea into his mouth. Was this intended to court the city's growing population of aging diarrhea fetishists? Or was it simply to send the following subliminal message to all their readers: YOU EAT SHIT. Regardless, such patently offensive WW covers will NOT be invited back to 2007. (Whatever happened to that retarded third-grader they hired to draw PGE's "Bulby"?)

Businesses that Close Early

Where can you go for an espresso/magazine/dinner/insert-urban-necessity-here at 9 pm on a Wednesday? Very few places in Portland, that's for sure. Seriously, unless you're a career alcoholic, Portland's a tough place to find anything after 8 pm—with a few wonderfully notable exceptions, like donuts, hotdogs, and lapdances. Note to shop owners: Not everyone in Portland is as sleepy as Mayor Tom Potter. Unless you hate making money, STAY OPEN LATER! (And when you do close, turn off the damn neon "OPEN" sign, okay?)

Zoobombers

I have yet to hear a single reason why anyone should give a flying pity fuck about the Zoobombers. Is it part of the whole "Keep Portland Weird" bumper sticker crusade? Is there something I'm not getting? It's a bunch of able-bodied hipsters riding little sissybikes down a steep hill, right? Pardon me for not seeing the challenge here. Maybe if the world's fattest twins from the Guinness Book of World Records rolled their mopeds off a cliff, I could be bothered to care. Or if the "Bombers" jumped like spider monkeys onto the top of Max cars and surfed the trains all the way to the transit centers. But a bunch of dreadlocks with bandanas over their faces squeaking along on My Little Pony bikes? Week after week after fucking week? Down the same hill? Quick—somebody call the Fox Network. I've got a new show to pitch: When Extreme Sports Go PATHETIC. [Same goes for kickball teams.]

Whiny Urban Neighbors

Dear Mr. & Mrs. I'm-on-the-Pearl-neighborhood-committee: Didn't you move downtown to get away from your quiet suburban upbringing? Then why not SHUT UP about the "noisy train whistles," already? And for those downtowners who have been flooding into North Portland—stop boo-hooing about the Portland International Raceway! It was there LOOOOOOONG before you ever showed up and—unlike YOU—actually makes the city money, money that pays for the constant street repair your idiotic SUV requires, and for educating your spoiled shitheel kids. So if you can't stop complaining, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. From what we hear, they'll accept anybody in Vancouver.

Jews!

[Editor's Note—The following item was written by acclaimed actor, director, and occasional Mercury freelancer Mel Gibson. The Mercury does not necessarily condone or agree with Mr. Gibson's assertions.]

Listen, just hear me out. Now, I'm not saying we need to, you know, exterminate them or anything. You know who I'm talking about. Always counting their money? Love starting wars? Yeah, yeah. Those guys. Now, listen—just let me put this out there—let's not invite them back. I mean, what do they do for us? Well, yeah, okay, they invented bagels. Right? Wasn't that them? And who doesn't like a good bagel? Back on Lethal Weapon 3, me and Danny and Pesci would have bagels—with cream cheese—all the time! Delicious! But other than that? Name one other thing they do. Other than, you know, start wars? And drink babies' blood? And, you know, murder our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ of Nazareth? Hey, don't look at me that way. It's just an idea. Just think it over, that's all I ask. Christ. I need a drink.

Three-Story Tall Pictures of Barry Manilow

When you're exiting I-5 into the Rose Quarter, the last thing anyone expects is a fiery death, caused by a leering three-story tall Barry Manilow. And NO, I don't care if the billboard is advertising his benefit concert for cystic fibrosis—because this 30-foot horrifying plasticine Manilow will undoubtedly kill more people this year than cystic fibrosis could ever dream of. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT BUILDING ANYWAY? It was fine when they put up the 30-foot-tall scantily clad LumberJax dancer—that girl had more leg than a bucket of chicken! But to replace her with that towering LumberJax player—who I'm sorry, looks like a mongoloid—and THEN the Saran-Wrapped face of Barry Manilow?!? WHAT'S NEXT?? A three-story tall senior citizen eating diarrhea?

Girls Wearing Furry Barbarian Boots with Designer Jeans Instead of Silver Bikinis

Seriously, unless you're hunting fanged muppets on the planet Thanagor, lose the idiotic boots. And while we're on the topic, the same goes for those extreme low rise and (do I really have to say it?) cursed skinny jeans! They are so not invited back—not only in 2007, but for the rest of my lifetime. And yes, the same goes for hipster girls wearing high-waisted "mom" jeans. How do you know if you're wearing this unfortunate style? If you have to dab cherry flavored chapstick on your nipples to ease the chafing—your jeans are too high.

Half-Assing It

Excuse me, but why are you always half-assing it? Society has given us each a role to play—a role that's necessary to the continuing functionality of the collective. You may be a waiter, artist, musician, politician, customer service representative, or drug dealer—no matter who you are, we depend on you doing your job with professionalism and at least a modicum of enthusiasm. And yet? You choose to half-ass it. Perhaps you think no one cares or notices. Well, we notice. We notice you half-assing everything you do, every day around Portland. Now you may be saying to yourself, "Well, the Mercury half-asses it, too." No, we don't. We full-ass it. Every fucking week. Some issues may be better than others, and we make our share of mistakes, but it's not from half-assing it. Or even three-quarters-assing it. When it comes to assing it—we don't go half-way. And we expect the same from you. So in 2007, kiss half-assing it goodbye, and start kissing full-assing it hello.

Talking Strippers

Dear Strippers: Most perverts are too timid to mention this, but trust me on this one, sugartits: Nobody cares about a single word coming out of your mouth. Your MySpace page got hacked? I'm fairly certain I don't give a shit. If I want to hear women complain, I'll watch The View. Your baby daddy kidnapped your son and ran off to Boise? Well, boo-hoo-hoo. Unless you've trained your vagina to recite the alphabet backwards, I'M NOT INTERESTED. I have a lot of things I could be doing with my dollar: Buying a small Frostee from Wendy's. Snagging a Slim Jim from Plaid Pantry. And if I can get away from my nagging girlfriend for two minutes? Staring at your babyrat in PEACE AND QUIET. So take it off... but for the love of god, ZIP IT. (If any strippers feel inclined to respond to this, I suggest rereading the first sentence.)

Mayor Potter's "visionPDX" Project

$1.1 million could buy a lot of things. For instance, it would buy 1.1 million lottery tickets, which would have been a much smarter investment of city taxpayer money than "visionPDX," Mayor Tom Potter's feel-good public opinion survey. It's embarrassingly generic and useless—worse, it's one of the few things Potter has actually managed to do. Hey Potter, want to know what Portlanders value—and want from—their city? Here it is: Jobs, affordable housing, eco-friendly development, transparent government, a river that doesn't function as a sewer, and, most of all, they want their GODDAMN $1.1 MILLION BACK! There you go. And that didn't cost you a penny.

Matt Davis' Thirst For Blood

Mercury news reporter Matt Davis may be the only person on the planet who saw the movie Alive and thought, "That looks delicious!" Barely a day goes by without Matt dragging his sizable ass into the office, bragging about the lamb, pig, or dolphin he ate last night—and then BLOGGING ABOUT IT. In size and scope, his thirst for blood is matched only by his distressing lack of conscience. No animal is too beautiful or exotic for Davis' outsized need to kill and devour. And if his blood-soaked maw showing up every day on Blog Town, PDX wasn't bad enough, the monster thinks it makes him "cool." On the upside, America may have just found its solution to pet overpopulation—in the mangled jaws of this British sociopath.

Police Officers Who Fall On You

It's been a pretty hard year for the officers of the Portland Police Bureau—but it's been even worse for people unlucky enough to get mangled under their freakishly large bodies. Take one little pee on a wall, and the next thing you know, WHAM! Your insides are pulverized by an overweight cop. That's why we're uninviting the entire police bureau to 2007—and warmly inviting, with loving and open arms, the cast of Police Academy 3: Back In Training to take their place. If we're going to be killed by uniformed thugs, at least we can get a little comic relief from the likes of Steve Guttenberg, David Graf, and Bobcat Goldthwait, with some sound effects help (crushing bones, trickling blood, last gasps of air) from the hilaaaarious Michael Winslow.

Snowbound Idiots

While we here at the Mercury don't actively wish icy, snowy death upon anyone, we admit to being less than riveted by 'round the clock coverage of Mother Nature asserting her supremacy over ill-prepared adventurers who've lost themselves between the peaks of her chilly bosom—and without so much as a GPS tracking device. We invented technology so that we could conquer the natural world, remember? And yet, every winter the rest of us are forced to confront our own mortality every time hikers get lost, or some clueless, Prius-driving dad decides to take an off-road short cut during a blizzard. In related news, natural selection is welcome to stick around for another year.

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Death in Custody

Matt Davis — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 04:00:00 -0700

Eyewitnesses Describe Alleged Cop Brutality by Matt Davis

Early Sunday evening, September 17, in the Pearl District, police attempted to arrest 42-year-old James Phillip Chasse Jr.—it was an altercation that apparently led to the suspect's "accidental" death while in police custody.

Just before 5:30 pm at NW 11th and Everett, officers saw Chasse, who was acting odd, according to the police, as if he were on drugs. One officer reportedly thought Chasse was urinating on the street.

Chasse ran when officers approached him, and an officer pushed him, knocking him to the ground. Chasse is said to have "fought violently with the officers before they were able to take him into custody," according to a police bureau bulletin. Officers then called paramedics to the scene when Chasse began having difficulty breathing. The paramedics arrived to check him out, and Chasse was soon transported to the Multnomah County Detention Center in a patrol car.

At the jail, Chasse "again exhibited breathing problems," according to the police, and was transported to the hospital. He lost consciousness en route, around NE 33rd and Clackamas, and was pronounced dead at the hospital at 6:45 pm, less than two hours after police first made contact with him.

That's the official story from the police.

In the days since the incident, however, eyewitnesses have stepped forward to say Chasse's arrest was more violent than police have described. Witnesses say police punched Chasse in the face after they tackled him to the ground, and kicked him in the back of the head. The cops' actions, according to witnesses, left Chasse unconscious and bleeding from the mouth.

On September 22, the Oregon State Medical Examiner said that Chasse died of "broad-based blunt force trauma to the chest," and ruled the death "accidental." Chasse had broken ribs that impaired his ability to breath. There was no evidence of drugs in his system.

Jamie Marquez, who works in the Pearl, witnessed the incident. During a struggle to turn Chasse onto his belly after he was on the ground, "one of the cops started cocking his fist and getting ready to hit him, but thought about it and didn't," Marquez says. "Then I heard the Taser go off, and the guy was being punched in the face. I think the punching and kicking happened at the same time."

According to Marquez, Chasse was punched three or four times in the face with "haymaker" punches by one police officer, and kicked three to four times in the back of his head by the other cop, "with enough force to punt a football."

Other witnesses say Chasse lost consciousness and was lying on the ground for around 10 minutes, during which time more cops arrived on the scene.

"The cops were nervous," says Asa Battista, who did not see the initial arrest, but watched the aftermath. "I saw them all standing around, sort of looking at him and each other, like this was beyond what they'd intended."

Another eyewitness, David Lillegaard, says the cops occasionally tapped Chasse with their feet to see if he was conscious.

"He was face down on the concrete, and didn't look like he was breathing. At that point, I thought he was dead," Lillegaard says. Witnesses say Chasse had been bleeding from his mouth.

"They weren't trying to do anything—they didn't check his airways, or attempt any kind of triage," says Marquez, who has had some training in first aid. "It was like they'd hit an animal in the road, and they were like, 'Now what do we do?'"

An ambulance arrived, and a paramedic attended to Chasse, who regained consciousness. The cops then "hog-tied" the man, tying his arms and feet together behind his back, and carried him to a patrol car "like they were carrying a six-pack," says Marquez.

After Chasse was removed, witnesses say the paramedics cleaned up a pool of blood off the street.

"It was pretty disturbing," says Lillegaard. "I thought they should have taken him to the hospital, because I saw blood." Instead, Chasse was first transported to the Multnomah County Detention Center and taken into custody for resisting arrest, assault on an officer, and interfering with police.

The eyewitness accounts raise the question of why Chasse, who had been unconscious for several minutes and was bleeding from the mouth, was not taken straight to hospital in an ambulance. (Chasse's family has raised the same point.)

"That's the decision of the paramedics," says Detective Paul Dolbey, police spokesman. Allen Oswalt, spokesman for the paramedics, could not comment because the investigation is ongoing.

Asked whether it is legitimate for an officer to punch a man in the face or kick him in the head, Dolbey responds, "It depends on the actions of the suspect."

The officers involved in the incident, Sergeant Kyle Nice, Officer Christopher Humphreys, and Sheriff Deputy Brett Burton, have been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of a police investigation. The police have received several calls from witnesses, who will be interviewed by detectives. Police Chief Rosie Sizer and Mayor Tom Potter have called for a "public and transparent" investigation into Chasse's death.

"My dad's a cop," says Marquez, who says he's had trouble sleeping since witnessing the incident. "So I'm not biased. I respect their job—everyone's job is hard. But as a taxpayer, I pay for the cops to protect and serve, not to lose control. There needs to be accountability for this."

Dan Handelman at Portland Copwatch tracks deaths that involve the police, including "in-custody" deaths like Chasse's.

"We don't know how common this is, because often you don't hear about incidents of this kind," says Handelman. "But there have been more than 160 deaths nationwide involving Tasers, and once the guy had lost consciousness, it is unthinkable to me that they'd take him into custody rather than to hospital."

mdavis@portlandmercury.com

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The Sexy Side of Foxworth

Wm.™ Steven Humphrey — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 04:00:00 -0700

An In-Depth (and Sexy!) Look at the Dirty Alleged Emails of Police Chief Derrick Foxworth by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey

Much has been written of the illicit former romance and graphic emails allegedly exchanged between Portland Police Chief Derrick Foxworth and Angela Oswalt, his subordinate at the time. [See page 6 for further details.] And while the media has focused on whether or not Foxworth should be fired for his actions, no one has sought to answer the central questions of this controversy: Is it a crime to be SEXY? And isn't it a bigger crime to compose sexy emails that aren't SEXY?

If the emails printed below are to be believed, Chief Foxworth is the "Billy Dee Williams of the Portland Police Bureau"—a man who expresses his sexual desires in no uncertain terms. But do his emails rise to the true level of "SEXY"? To find out, the Mercury's Wm. Steven Humphrey has deconstructed each of these alleged emails, and discovered that beneath his golden shield, Derrick Foxworth is both a strong leader—and a sexual dynamo with a gooey, chocolate center.

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING EMAILS ARE REAL—ALLEGEDLY WRITTEN BY FOXWORTH TO ANGELA OSWALT—AND HAVE BEEN REPRINTED EXACTLY EXCEPT FOR MINOR EDITING DUE TO SPACE CONSIDERATIONS.

MY BIG PENIS :)

"I will push you against the wall and kiss you passionately. I want you to be completely submissive and follow my lead. I would take you upstairs to your bedroom... you sliding down to your knees and me up against the wall and you going down on me taking all of me into your mouth. While doing this you could rub your hands all over my body, my chest, arms, and wherever else you would want. You would also really see just how big I am :) I want it to be slow and passionate. I would then walk you over to the bed... and have you show me your sweet round tan ass and spread your legs. I would then slowly put the tip of my cock into your pussy, just enough to tease you, before slowly sliding all of me deep into your tight wet pussy."

YES! THIS IS SEXY: Chief Foxworth is obviously a man who reads a lot of Penthouse Forum. So he knows what a woman wants—and what a woman wants is to please HIM. Angela is expected to do A LOT: oral sex, body rubs, showing him specific body parts, and ultimately taking in all of his manhood. BUT! On his schedule and at his pace. This talent will serve him well later in his career, when he is teaching employees the importance of time management. EXTRA POINTS: The addition of a "smiley face" so Angela won't be frightened by the size of his penis. That's very considerate.

I MAKE LOVE TO YOUR MOUTH

"I have daydreamed about you wearing one of your most sexy special outfits. I then push you against the wall... and my tongue enters your mouth and I make love to your mouth then I want to make love to your body. I push my body closer so you can feel my enlarged cock and how big it is and how much it wants you. I unbutton my pants and belt and let them drop to the floor. There completely exposed in front of you is my naked brown chocolate body and this huge hard-on for you to take and enjoy in any way you choose. I love a very submissive woman, so you then go to your knees and begin to go down on me. I kiss you and then we go to your bedroom where we continue our passionate love making... hmmm...."

YES! THIS IS SEXY: This email is especially enthralling because it hints at Angela's "sexy special outfits." Did she dress up like a French maid? A sexy clown? Vera Katz? The mind reels. Regardless, while Angela is still expected to take a submissive role, Foxworth knows that consideration for a woman's feelings is just as important as reminding her how enormously huge his penis is. For example, Foxworth doesn't merely fuck her mouth... he makes love to it. And to further prove how thoughtful he is, he signs off with "hmmm." See? He's thinking about Angela's feelings.

CAN WE MAKE THIS HAPPEN?

"A, I desparately [sic] want to see you and want to be the man, the lover that satisfies those inner urges and fantasies. I want to share mine with you. We are so much alike and know if given the time and opportunity that we can take each other to another level and area of our sexuality that we both want to explore. Are you available today? This afternoon? I do want to respect your privacy and respect the fact that _____ is home, but there are many times I would love to slip into your bed and in between your legs and deep into your pussy! Can we make that happen somehow? D"

NO! THIS IS NOT SEXY: Sorry, Foxworth, you blew it. Apparently, the soon-to-be-chief was feeling a bit emotionally raw on this day—and it shows! He "desparately" [sic] wants to satisfy her "inner urges and fantasies" and even worse, wants "to share mine with you"?? What's he going to do next? CRY? Check it, DF: Exposing yourself emotionally is a TURN-OFF. And even though you later make a play to cuckold her man by slipping into her bed and between her legs, you end your missive with "Can we make that happen somehow?" Playa... what are you doing? Derrick Foxworth doesn't beg!

QUICK QUOTES FROM THE LOVE FILES

"I love the idea of picking you up with you wearing nothing [but] heels, stockings, and a cream lace teddy. I can think of nothing better than driving to a secluded park and having you reach over and unzip my pants, only to find I am wearing nothing underneath and nothing to prevent your beautiful white soft hands from grabbing my chocolate cock."

NO! THIS IS NOT SEXY: Plus, "going commando" is clearly a violation of police bureau dress code.

"You start kissing and nibbling on me, working your way down and slowly going down on your [sic] sweet cock taking it deep into your mouth. HMMMMMM, I then grab your beautiful blonde hair and pull you back, and kiss you passionately. I push you back on the seat and spread your legs wide apart as I prepare to take you and become part of you. Hmmm... call me."

YES! THIS IS SEXY: Hmmmmmm! See how HARD he's thinking about you, girl? HMMMMMM!

"Then I want to slide my thick chocolate cock deep into that moist tight pussy of yours and hear you moan... Any questions???"

YES! THIS IS SEXY: Again, Foxworth proves he is more than capable of taking on a leadership role. He clearly lays out his objectives, and then circumvents confusion and possible failure by asking if there are any questions. No wonder former-Mayor Katz was impressed!

"As I hold your hips and drive your pussy onto my cock and with each thrust going deeper until you reach the point that you explode and tell me "OH D!" But I'm not done with my little submissive beautiful blonde... I plunge my cock into your pussy again, again, and again... until I explode and you feel my come deep inside and you once again become part of me and I part of you."

YES! THIS IS SEXY: In this final email, Foxworth dips deep into his creative well to turn what was once "porn" into "poetry." Or "pornetry," if you will. Foxworth touches—both literally and figuratively—on the true essence of coitus; the commingling of two souls. Even today as chief of police, Foxworth continues to practice this belief, mixing officer and citizen together in an explosion of understanding and beauty—or as he calls it, "community policing."

Ain't too much sexier than that.

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Fur Fighters

Amy Jenniges — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 04:00:00 -0800

Arrests Cap Saturday's Anti-Fur Protest by Amy Jenniges

EVERY SATURDAY afternoon for the past few months, activists with In Defense of Animals (IDA) have convened on the sidewalk outside of Schumacher Fur Company at SW 9th and Morrison for an anti-fur demonstration. This past Saturday, the protest turned into a skirmish with the cops that resulted in two arrests.

Usually, the protests are subdued affairs: Activists hand out leaflets to passersby, or hold signs denouncing the fur industry.

More recently, Schumacher has fought back: A few weeks ago, signs in their windows announced a "protest sale"—all fur would be 50 percent off as long as activists were protesting.

This past Saturday, Schumacher's counter-protest became even more provocative. Digitally altered photos of the activists and their signs appeared on flyers in the store's window. One, featuring a sign that originally lambasted fur—with the slogan "Felony Animal Abuse: Beaten, Strangled, Skinned Alive, Anally Electrocuted"—now targeted the activists, saying "All Protesters Should Be Beaten, Strangled, Skinned Alive, Anally Electrocuted."

Owner Gregg Schumacher, reached by phone on Tuesday, March 7, declined to comment other than to say, "The only thing we talk about is how fashionable fur is. We don't talk about protests."

Activists say the cops stopped by the protest several times throughout Saturday afternoon. But just after 3 pm, when Portland Police Sergeant Larry Graham showed up, the protest turned ugly: "I witnessed [Graham] knocking into one group on purpose after he mistakenly thought someone had messed with his car," one woman wrote in a Portland Indymedia account. Graham threw one man against the police car, with the help of a Schumacher's security guard, before pulling him to the ground and arresting him. Eyewitnesses say the arrest was unnecessarily brutal, with Graham aggressively twisting the activist's arm—the activist wasn't resisting—as if to break it. Several more cops showed up, and another activist was arrested; both activists were charged with disorderly conduct, interfering, and resisting arrest.

The civil liberties watchdogs at Portland's Northwest Constitutional Rights Center are currently reviewing footage of the incident—the disturbing video backs up activists' accounts of the incident. (The police spokesperson says there were "absolutely no injuries" during the protests.)

"The Center is outraged at these events and is concerned that the level of violence displayed by Sgt. Graham may be the result of poor training, bad policies, and lack of citizen oversight," says Executive Director Alejandro Queral.

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Sex Survey Results

Wm.™ Steven Humphrey — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 04:00:00 -0800

by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey and Marjorie Skinner

Hello, I'm Dr. Wm. Steven Humphrey of the Mercury Institute for the Advanced Study of Sexuality. And while "sex" does occasionally "make a baby," it's also one of the least understood of human functions. That's why every year the Mercury asks our readers to help us lift the shroud of sexuality, stick our fingers inside it, and dig around until knowledge is ultimately achieved. And we do this via the Mercury's Annual SEX SURVEY. This year, along with Dr. Marjorie Skinner, director of our Applied Sexuality Division, the Mercury was determined to get to the very essence of sex by asking you a very simple question: IS THIS HOT, OR IS THIS NOT?

WHO YOU ARE

This year, nearly 2800 horny souls agreed to reveal their dirtiest fantasies via the Mercury's Sex Survey; almost twice as many as 2004! This can only mean one thing: the Mercury's Sex Survey is "HOT" and the Willamette Week's Automotive section is "NOT." Better luck next year, guys!

DISCLAIMER: And now a few words about statistics… you may notice that some of the following statistics don't add up to 100 percent. While we're pleased you can add, this is not a cause for alarm. It simply means that some respondents chose not to check certain boxes, or checked multiple boxes, or were high on Robitussin and checked every single box. So if you find any of the following answers are not to your intellectual liking, then perhaps you should consider blaming Portland's many Robitussin addicts. Thank you.

53% of this year's respondents were MALE, 44% were FEMALE, 1% were TRANSGENDER, and 2% have yet to decide what they are.

Your Average Age = 25

Relationship-wise…

Livin' Single = 38%
Goin' Steady = 20%
Gotten Married = 13%
Just Cohabitatin' = 12%
"Seein' Someone" = 10%

MY SEXUAL RESUME

Before we get to the dirty stuff, one controversy must be addressed. Since the dawn of humankind, our species has been plagued with one, perhaps unanswerable question: "DO HANDJOBS COUNT AS SEX?"

Like John Kerry, Mercury readers are big "flip-floppers" when it comes to this subject, alternately saying that handjobs do, and then don't, count as "having sex." This year, instead of asking our readership what they think, Dr. Marjorie Skinner, director of our Applied Sexuality Division, unilaterally decided that handjobs definitely DO NOT count as sex, and THAT was THAT. Marjorie, perhaps you'd like to explain your stupid reasoning to our readership.

MARJORIE: "Certainly, Steve. When defining 'sex' for a population that includes not only old-fashioned boy-girl pairings, but also girl-girl, boy-boy, pan sexuality, etc, it's important to find common denominators, i.e. things that everyone is capable of without accoutrements. For instance, penetration of the ass or vagina is a clearly unfair definition, as it excludes penis-less lesbians. However, if you add oral sex to the definition, it becomes all-inclusive, i.e. anyone can do it, regardless of gender or persuasion. Thus, we've attained the aforementioned common denominator for 'sex.'

"The other important consideration we have when crafting this definition is to keep 'sex' as exclusively defined as possible--elevating it above more casual encounters, deemed as such by their degree of intimacy and gravity of health risk. This is to avoid discrepancies between partners' perceptions, statistical manipulation/exaggeration, and outright lying. For instance, let's say 'Joe' was given a handjob by 'Jane.' Following which, 'Joe' tells the whole town that he has had 'sex' with 'Jane.' It also comes out that 'Joe' has the clap. Therefore, the town assumes that 'Jane,' having had 'sex' with 'Joe' must have had the clap and be a diseased slut--so she gets her six older brothers to beat the living shit out of 'Joe's' lying ass. That wasn't very fair to 'Jane,' was it? Nor, for that matter, would it be to 'Jim's' 'Johnny' or to 'Sarah's' 'Mary.' See?"

Thanks, Marjorie… I guess it's pretty obvious who "Jane" is in this story. Do you disagree with Marjorie's handjob assessment? Send your argument to @portlandmercury.com and put in the subject header, "I Love Handjobs!"

Well, regardless of Marjorie's retarded methodology, and even with the exclusion of handjobs, "sex" is nevertheless on the upswing in Portland! Check out these comparative stats concerning how many people you've had sex with in your lifetime:

2003 = 8 - 10 people on average.

2004 = 12 - 17 people on average.

2005 = 12 - 20 people on average!

So if we keep this up, that means I'll be having sex with at least three more of you by the end of this year! YAY! (Don't worry; unlike Marjorie, I gladly accept "handjobs.")

However, before I stick my "tab A" into your "slot B"--I need to know what kind of STDs you have. Thank goodness then for the Mercury Sex Survey! Here's how you stack up on the "weird looking rash" front.

MEN WOMEN

Crabs = 8% Vaginitis = 5%

HPV (warts) = 5% HPV (warts) = 5%

Gonorrhea = 4% Pregancy* = 5%

Chlamydia = 4% Herpes = 3%

Herpes = 3% Crabs = 2%

HIV = 2% HIV = Less than 1%

*Marjorie also thinks that "pregnancy" should be listed as a sexually transmitted disease. She should really be fired, shouldn't she?

Another thing I need to know before I screw your brains out is what kind of protection you like to use! Here's the only thing standing between you, pregnancy, and my crab-infested pubic area.

WOMEN MEN

The Pill = 14% Condoms = 22%

Condoms = 13% The Pill* = 9%

Rhythm method = 5% Gay; Pregnancy non-issue = 7%

Celibate/Lesbo = 3% Neutered = 4%

*Hey guys, just so you know… you've been tricked. You don't have to take the pill. Girls can sometimes be unnecessarily cruel.

Now let's go over to Dr. Marjorie Skinner, director of our Applied Sexuality Division (and America's least knowledgeable person on the subject of handjobs) to find out what YOU think is "hot" and what is "not"!

IS THIS HOT, OR IS THIS NOT?

Thank you, Dr. Humphrey! Marjorie Skinner here, and you know, I've been thinking about sex since infancy. But the results of Mercury Sex Surveys still never fail to surprise, disgust, or inspire me with disbelief. Like this year, when we asked you for your opinion on a variety of sexual methods, fantasies, and tools. So without further ado, I hereby present Portland's democratically declared shortlist of what's HOT and what's NOT (in bed):

Performative Masturbation is HOT! 82% of you said so, so lay that Puritanical bashfulness aside and start showing your honey how.

Familial Fantasy is NOT HOT! An overwhelming 94% of you recoiled at the thought of sleeping with sis, just like good little taboo upholders.

Cheating is NOT HOT! So says 77% of those surveyed. (If it's sooo un-hot, why does everyone do it? Oh, because you and your girlfriend filled out the survey together--my bad.) Stereotypically, of those respondents who do consider it hot, there were well over twice as many men as women.

Money & Sex: Hypocrisy alert!! While 80% of you turn up your nose at the prospect of paying for sexual favors, only 61% of you are above accepting money for sex! Greed is the new virtue!

Orgies are HOT!? 54% of you said "yes, yes, yes!" to a pile of squirming naked people. Frankly, I'm surprised. Oh wait… cuz it's not cheating if your girlfriend's there, too, right?

Bestiality is NOT HOT! Phew. I suppose 88% of you only check out bestiality videos on the internet because they're so gross! 10% of you were commendably honest, and I thank you--just promise to keep it to fantasy.

Rape Fantasies are… KIND OF HOT! In a near-even split, 47% of you admitted you sometimes get off on imaginary rape scenarios, without the desire to receive or inflict actual trauma, in order to exorcise such common taboo fantasies in a safe and respectful environment. 51% of you don't, and the remaining 2% wrote in to hysterically reprimand us for even posing the question--because apparently you think our readers are too fucked up to tell the difference between imagination and reality.

BDSM is HOT! Break out the whips, wax and rope, Portland, because your BDSM desires are perfectly matched! 55% of you are into being dominant, and 55% are into submission! That's like… fate or something.

Icky Stuff is NOT HOT! According to 91% of you, pee, poop, and barf are not okay in the bedroom. You could've knocked me over with a feather.

Sex in Public is HOT! Prepare to see a sharp increase in public pounding, with 71% admitting they like to take their bedroom show on the road! (See page 37 for the most popular spots in town to get down.)

Blow up Dolls/Genitalia Molds are NOT HOT! Bad news for sex shops: 84% of you don't live the plastic life.

Rim Jobs are PRETTY HOT, way HOTTER than last year! In 2003, only 10% of you were interested in advancing your anal play, but this year 47% of you were very interested in licking assholes! Congratulations!

Porn is STILL HOT! Across the board, people of all genders and persuasions are sent aflutter by pornography--81%!

Cock Rings are SORTA HOT! 48% of you were into the idea of forcing a man's penis to maintain an erection for an indefinite period of time--especially gay men, who cast a "hot" vote nearly three times as often as a "not."

Fisting is NOT HOT! 72% of you are not having it. Lesbians, with whom this act is most commonly associated, are split evenly in either camp, while a slightly higher number of gay men think it's hot. Owwww.

Tit Fucking is HOT???? This awkward, hetero male-centric and frequently uncomfortable sex act scored surprisingly high, with 65% saying it's hot, even winning out among females! Weird!

Dry Humping is HOT! 63% of you still reminisce about the good old days--especially straight girls, who probably just miss not having to worry about birth control.

Fellating Dildos is NOT HOT! 68% of you would rather have a blowjob and/or not feel like a complete retard.

Dildos That Look Like Japanese Cartoon Characters are NOT HOT! 75% of you want to save the Pikachus.

Menstruation is NOT HOT! 68% of respondents would rather not go there when a woman's getting her flow on--and nearly twice as many women said "not hot" than "hot." The rest of us will be over here enjoying our maturity and having our menstrual cramps relieved by multiple orgasms.

Sex with the Lights On is HOT! Fabulously, 87% like to leave a light on, including over five times as many women as those who prefer to be kept in the dark. Isn't it wonderful to know that we're unselfconscious about our bodies, and that we can stand the sight of those we're bedding?

Sex While Driving is HOT! Be extra careful on the ride home, because 69% (69, dude!) of you want to boff while behind the wheel. I'll be taking Tri-Met just to be safe.

Tasting Your Own Juices is HOT! 55% of you say yes to lapping up your own liquids. However, most straight guys are not into it, making it the only thing on this list that straight guys don't think is hot besides bestiality, poop, and fantasizing about their sisters.

Hitting, Scratching & Biting is HOT! While initially surprised at the popularity of this--64% of you say it's hot--I realized what a frustrating and difficult year it's been for all of us, and think it's great that you can take it out on each other in a loving way.

Toe Play is NOT HOT! Put your shoes on Lucy, because 57% of you don't want to taste toesies!

Videotaping Your Own Sex is HOT! 53% are willing to risk internet exposure, unflattering camera angles, and future partners stumbling onto the tape(s). I applaud your fearlessness.

Costumes are HOT! 59% of you would have it be Halloween every night, winning in every gender/preference category except among gay men, who are evidently very tired of the Village People.

Sex in Movie Theaters is HOT! Much to the chagrin of people sitting nearby, 59% of you think it's worth spending $8 to have uncomfortable sex instead of staying home for free.

Sex on Cocaine is NOT HOT! 68% of you are right, and 29% of you are tenacious motherfuckers.

FILL IN THE BLANKS!

You know, sexual activity can't be summed up by dry, unemotional statistics alone! Often times it's your description of a person or event that really determines what is "Hot" and what is "Not"! Here's how you "filled in the blanks!"

First, let's give the award for Hottest Straight Woman in Portland. And it goes to: Daria O'Neill! This radio personality and spokeshoney for UPN won handily over the competition--even after we subtracted all the "negative" votes from people who proffered such feminist perspectives as "Anyone but that Daria bitch." Congratulations, Daria!

Meanwhile… the award for Hottest Straight Man in Portland goes to: The Mercury's very own Wm. Steven Humphrey! Congratulations, Steve! (Accepting the award for Wm. Steven Humphrey is Wm. Steven Humphrey.)

STEVE: "Thank you! (Sob!) Thank you so very, very much! First of all, for all you haters who think I somehow tweaked the numbers to win this award, I would like to remind everyone that we should stay focused on what really matters; and that's the victims of the South Asian tsunami and 9/11. I'm sure if they weren't dead they would've voted for me, too. Thank you, I love you all!!!" [Cue music]

Hmmmm. Okay, now let's move on to the award for Hottest Gay Man in Portland, and the winner is: …huh… oh, no… Wm. Steven Humphrey!

STEVE: "Thank you! (Sob!) Thank you so very, very much! Okay, I don't want to forget anybody… Thanks to the boys at Three Sisters, to the sweet pieces of meat at Silverado and Boxxes, to Byron Beck… I told you I was hot, bitch! [Cue music] Don't cue the music yet! I'm not finished! I want to thank my hair dresser, my plastic surgeon (the pec implants are great), all the karaoke DJs who allow me to sing Barry Manilow, and most of all I want to thank my sweet and juicy honey baked ham. My ass and I have been through a lot together, and when I get home, my ass knows exactly where I'm going to put this award. Thank you, I love you all!!!" [Cue music]

Thank Christ that's over. And finally, the award for Hottest Lesbian in Portland goes to: Storm Large! Who is not a lesbian! However, this might explain alternate responses such as: "I don't know any, they're all dick loving poseurs," "Yo Dyke! You wanna arm wrestle?" and "You're kidding, right?" With more fill in the blank results, let's go back to Wm. Steven Humphrey!

Thanks, Marjorie! Portland, we asked YOU, "What hot sex-related activity did you do for the first time in 2004?" And the results were overwhelming: Portland loves "butt fiddling!" A clear majority of responses had something or everything to do with "anal play," including rim jobs, pegging, digital insertion, salad tossing, anal intercourse, felching, prostate rubbing, and in one memorable case, shoving a rubber duckie up their butt. Here's the top 10 list of experimental sexual activities you tried for the first time in 2004!

Anal Play
Threesomes (ménage a trois)
Orgies (sex with four or more participants)
Outdoor sex
Blowjobs
Cheating (sexual affairs)
Car sex
Strap-Ons
The "69" position
Losing virginity

Screw the rain! Portlanders definitely think "outdoor/public sex" is hot, with public bathrooms being the favorite place to do the dirty (and we don't mean poop or pee)! Here's your top 10 locations in Portland where you like to get it on.

Bathrooms (name a bar in Portland… somebody's screwed in it)
Parking garages/parking lots (so that's why your windows were fogged up)
Lloyd Center Mall (elevators, dressing rooms, ice rink… somebody call security!)
Movie theaters (something to do instead of watching The 2wenty)
Mt. Tabor (People need "off-leash areas," too!)
Portland State University (extracurricular activities!)
The MAX (another good reason to use public transportation)
Forest Park (the call of the wild)
Fantasy Video (visit a location near you today)
Waterfront Park (gasp! What would Tom McCall think?)
Honorable Mentions: The Bagdad balcony, Anna Bannana's Coffee, and Tennessee Red's (and that's just the employees)!

FAMOUS PEOPLE PORTLAND'S PORKED (IF THEY'RE NOT LYING!):

Rose McGowan • Cat Power • Courtney Love • Courtney Taylor (from the Dandy Warhols) • Dave Mustaine (from Megadeth) • Donita Sparks (from L7) • Henry Rollins • Calvin Johnson • Jack Nicholson • James Dean • Jean-Paul Gaultier • Jewel • Johnny Knoxville • Katie Shimer • Vincent Gallo • Miss Gay Idaho • Nancy Kerrigan • Natalie Merchant • Rikki Rocket (from Poison) • Rob Zombie • Liz Phair • Steve Jones (from the Sex Pistols) • Steven Jenkin (from Third Eye Blind) • Woody Harrelson • Billie Joe Armstrong (from Green Day) • "No one, but my ex has, so I might have a famous person's disease!" • "A few Suicide Girls" • "I'm a groupie, I can't remember them all."

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Better Dead Than Red

Dan Savage — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 04:00:00 -0800

Tired of Red-State Rubes Calling All the Political Shots? Dan Savage Promotes a New Urban Vision Where Cities Make the Decisions, and Country Bumpkins Get Left Behind by Dan Savage There are two maps on this page.

The one at the top should be familiar. It's one of those red-state/blue-state maps that have been tormenting Democrats, liberals, and progressives since November of 2000. Over the 36 days that George W. Bush and Al Gore fought for the White House in Florida, "red" and "blue" became metaphors for America's divided electorate. Red vs. Blue--Democrat vs. Republican; liberal vs. conservative; pro-life vs. pro-choice; gun-huggers vs. gun-haters; gay-huggers vs. gay-haters.

The red-state/blue-state map opposite shows the results of 2004's presidential election--red states won by George W. Bush, blue states won by John F. Kerry. But the red-state/blue-state map is misleading. If a Republican presidential candidate takes 50 percent of the vote plus 1 vote in any given state, the whole state is colored red (even worse, a mere plurality of voters can turn a state red when third parties are involved). The same goes for the Democratic candidate--corral the most votes, and the whole state is colored blue. But painting an entire state one color or the other creates a false impression, an impression that we believe is hampering the Democratic Party's efforts to pull itself out of its tailspin.

Take a look at the second map on the opposite page. This map shows a county-by-county red/blue breakdown, and it provides a clearer picture of the bind the Democrats finds themselves in. The majority of the blue states--Washington, Oregon, California, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware--are, geographically speaking, not blue states. They are blue cities.

Look at our famously blue West Coast. But for the cities--Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego--the West Coast would be a deep, dark red. The same is true for other nominally blue states. Illinois is almost entirely red--Chicago turns the state blue. Michigan is almost entirely red--Detroit, Lansing, Kalamazoo turn it blue. And on and on. What tips these states into the blue column? Their urban areas do, their big, populous counties.

It's time for the Democrats to face reality: They are the party of urban America. If the cities elected our president, if urban voters determined the outcome, John F. Kerry would have won by a landslide. Urban voters are the Democratic base.

THE URBAN ARCHIPELAGO

It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers. Red Virginia prohibits any contract between same-sex couples. Compassionate? Texas allows the death penalty to be applied to teenaged criminals and has historically executed the mentally retarded. (When the Supreme Court ruled executions of the mentally retarded unconstitutional in 2002, Texas officials, including Governor Rick Perry, responded by claiming that the state had no mentally retarded inmates on death row--a claim the state was able to make because it does not test inmates for mental retardation.) Dumb? The Sierra Club has reported that Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee squander over half of their federal transportation money on building new roads rather than public transit.

If Democrats and urban residents want to combat the rising tide of red that threatens to swamp and ruin this country, we need a new identity politics, an urban identity politics, one that argues for the cities, uses a rhetoric of urban values, and creates a tribal identity for liberals that's as powerful and attractive as the tribal identity Republicans have created for their constituents. John Kerry won among the highly educated, Jews, young people, gays and lesbians, and non-whites. What do all these groups have in common? They choose to live in cities. An overwhelming majority of the American popuation chooses to live in cities. And John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000. He took half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000. The future success of liberalism is tied to winning the cities. An urbanist agenda may not be a recipe for winning the next presidential election--but it may win the Democrats the presidential election in 2012 and create a new Democratic majority.

For Democrats, it's the cities, stupid--not the rural areas, not the prickly, hateful "heartland," but the sane, sensible cities--including the cities trapped in the heartland. Pandering to rural voters is a waste of time. Again, look at the second map. Look at the urban blue spots in red states like Iowa, Colorado, and New Mexico--there's almost as much blue in those states as there is in Washington, Oregon, and California. And the challenge for the Democrats is not just to organize in the blue areas but to grow them. And to do that, Democrats need to pursue policies that encourage urban growth (mass transit, affordable housing, city services), and Democrats need to openly and aggressively champion urban values. By focusing on the cities the Dems can create a tribal identity to combat the white, Christian, rural, and suburban identity that the Republicans have cornered. And it's sitting right there, on every electoral map, staring them in the face: The cities.

The urbanites. Howard Dean had it wrong when he tried to woo the "Pickup Truck with Confederate Flag" vote. In fact, while Kerry won urban areas by a whopping 60 percent--that actually represents a 15 percent drop in urban support from 2000 when Gore won the election. The lesson? Democrats have got to tend to their urban base and grow it.

In cities all over America, distressed liberals are talking about fleeing to Canada or, better yet, seceding from the Union. We can't literally secede and, let's admit it, we don't really want to live in Canada. It's too cold up there and in our heart-of-hearts we hate hockey. We can secede emotionally, however, by turning our backs on the heartland. We can focus on our issues, our urban issues, and promote our shared urban values. We can create a new identity politics, one that transcends class, race, sexual orientation, and religion, one that unites people living in cities with each other and with other urbanites in other cities. The Republicans have the federal government--for now. But we've got Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City (Bloomberg is a Republican in name only), and every college town in the country. We're everywhere any sane person wants to be. Let them have the shitholes, the Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas. We'll take Manhattan.

EMBRACING URBAN SELF-INTEREST

To all those who live in cities--to all those depressed Kerry supporters out there--we say take heart. Clearly we can't control national politics right now--we can barely get a hearing. We can, however, stay engaged in our cities, and make our voices heard in the urban areas we dominate, and make each and every one, to quote Ronald Reagan (and John Winthrop, the 17th-century Puritan Reagan was parroting), "a city on a hill." This is not a retreat; it is a long-term strategy for the Democratic Party to cater to and build on its base.

To red-state voters, to the rural voters, residents of small, dying towns, and soulless sprawling exburbs, we say this: Fuck off. Your issues are no longer our issues. We're going to battle our bleeding-heart instincts and ignore pangs of misplaced empathy. We will no longer concern ourselves with a health care crisis that disproportionately impacts rural areas. Instead we will work toward winning health care one blue state at a time.

When it comes to the environment, our new policy is this: Let the heartland live with the consequences of handing the national government to the rape-and-pillage party. The only time urbanists should concern themselves with the environment is when we are impacted--directly, not spiritually (the depressing awareness that there is no unspoiled wilderness out there doesn't count). Air pollution, for instance: We should be aggressive. If coal is to be burned, it has to be burned as cleanly as possible so as not to foul the air we all have to breathe. But if West Virginia wants to elect politicians who allow mining companies to lop off the tops off mountains and dump the waste into valleys and streams, thus causing floods that destroy the homes of the yokels who vote for those politicians, it no longer matters to us. Fuck the mountains in West Virginia--send us the power generated by cleanly burned coal, you rubes, and be sure to wear lifejackets to bed.

Wal-Mart is a rapacious corporation that pays sub-poverty-level wages, offers health benefits to its employees that are so expensive few can afford them, and destroys small towns and rural jobs. Liberals in big cities who have never seen the inside of a Wal-Mart spend a lot of time worrying about the impact Wal-Mart is having on the heartland. No more. We will do what we can to keep Wal-Mart out of our cities and, if at all possible, out of our states. We will pass laws mandating a living wage for full-time work, upping the minimum wage for part-time work, and requiring large corporations to either offer health benefits or pay into state- or city-run funds to provide health care for uninsured workers. That will reform Wal-Mart in our blue cities and states or, better yet, keep Wal-Mart out entirely. And when we see something on the front page of the national section of the New York Times about the damage Wal-Mart is doing to the heartland, we will turn the page. Wal-Mart is not an urban issue.

Neither is gun control. Our new position: We'll fight to keep guns off the streets of our cities, but the more guns lying around out there in the heartland, the better. Most cities have strong gun-control laws--laws that are, of course, undermined by the fact that our cities aren't walled. Yet. But why should liberals in cities fund organizations that attempt, to take one example, to get trigger locks onto the handguns of NRA members out there in red states? If red-state dads aren't concerned enough about their own children to put trigger locks on their own guns, it's not our problem. If a kid in a red state finds his daddy's handgun and blows his head off, we'll feel terrible (we're like that), but we'll try to look on the bright side: At least he won't grow up to vote like his dad.

We won't demand that the federal government impose reasonable fuel-efficiency standards on all cars sold in the United States. We will, however, strive to pass state laws, as California has done, imposing fuel-efficiency standards on cars sold in our states.

We officially no longer give a shit when family farms fail. Fewer family farms equal fewer rural voters. We will, however, continue to support small faggy organic farms, as we are willing to pay more for free-range chicken and beef from non-cannibal cows.

We won't concern ourselves if red states restrict choice. We'll just make sure that abortion remains safe and legal in the cities where we live, and the states we control, and when your daughter or sister or mother dies in a botched abortion, we'll try not to feel too awful about it.

In short, we're through with you people. We're going to demand that the Democrats focus on building their party in the cities while at the same time advancing a smart urban-growth agenda that builds the cities themselves. The more attractive we make the cities--politically, aesthetically, socially--the more residents and voters cities will attract, gradually increasing the electoral clout of liberals and progressives. For Democrats, party building and city building is the same thing. We will strive to turn red states blue one city at a time.

From here on out, we're glad red-state rubes live in areas where guns are more powerful and more plentiful, cars are larger and faster, and people are fatter and slower and dumber. This is not a recipe for repopulating the Great Plains. And when you look for ways to revive your failing towns and dying rural counties, don't even think about tourism. Who wants to go to small-town America now? You people scare us. We'll island-hop from now on, thank you, spending our time and our money in blue cities. If an urbanite is dying to have a country experience, rural Vermont is lovely. Maple syrup, rolling hills, fly-fishing--everything you could want. Country bumpkins in red rural areas who depend on tourists from urban areas but vote Republican can forget our money.

You've made your choice, red America, and we urban Americans are going to make a different choice. We are going to make Seattle--and New York, Chicago, and the rest--a great place to live, a progressive place. Again, we'll quote Ronald Reagan: We will make each of our cities--each and every one--a shining city on a hill. You can have your shitholes.

URBAN VISION

The first president Bush had a problem with the "vision thing," and he lost. Democrats had a problem with vision thing in 2004, and they lost. But they don't have to continue having this problem.

Above any other advantage, the new urban identity politics solves "the vision thing" for the Democratic Party. No longer are we a fractured aggregation of special interests or a spineless hydra of contingent alliances--we are a united front, with a clear, compelling image and an articulated system of values. Up until now, the Republicans have been winning the image war. When you think of "America," you imagine a single-family dwelling with a flag in the front yard and acres of corn waving in the background. It's an angry red fantasy. But propaganda is flexible, and audiences are pliant. Urban politics opens up a whole new visual vocabulary to be exploited by TV advertising, and it's a vocabulary rich in emotional content, particularly after September 11. This is the era of cityscapes, rapid transit, and crowds of people. Political advertising can no longer pander to nostalgia about the yeoman countryside--we must embrace our urban future.

With all the talk of the growth of exurbs and the hand-wringing over facile demographic categories like "security moms," you may be under the impression that an urban politics wouldn't speak to many people. But according to the 2000 Census, 226 million people reside inside metropolitan areas--a number that positively dwarfs the 55 million people who live outside metro areas. The 85 million people who live in strictly defined central city limits also outnumber those rural relics. When the number of city-dwellers in the United States is quadruple the number of rural people, we can put simple democratic majorities to work for our ideals.

Even people who don't live in cities look to urban centers for a certain image of America. The nation identified with New York City in such a visceral way on September 11 not just because Americans died there--Americans died in a Pennsylvania field and in Northern Virginia too--but because the New York skyline is a stirring image of American prosperity and achievement. It symbolizes the motivation and spirit of the American people, the wealth of our nation, the thrum of diverse cultures, and inexhaustible cultural creativity. Cities inspire us; they speak to our hopes and our passions. Small towns diminish us; they speak of lost history and downscaled dreams. The Democratic Party should compete on our own turf, change the terms of the debate, and give the American people heroes to believe in--as well as enemies to revile.

Conservatives have vilified liberals for decades, and the new urban identity politics gives the Democratic Party its own partisan villains. The truth is that rural states--the same red states that vote reflexively Republican in national elections--are welfare states. While red-state voters like to complain about "tax-and-spend liberals," red states are hopelessly dependent on the largess of the federal government to prop up their dwindling rural population. Red states like North Dakota, New Mexico, Mississippi, Alaska, West Virginia, Montana, Alabama, South Dakota, and Arkansas top the list of federal spending per dollar of federal taxes paid. And who's paying the most? Blue states. Cities--and states dominated by their cities. Welfare states, in contrast, demand federal money to fund wasteful roads to nowhere. Welfare states guzzle barrel upon barrel of oil so their rural residents can sputter along on ribbons of asphalt.

Take a state like Wyoming, the arid, under-populated home of our glowering vice president Dick Cheney. Wyoming receives the second-highest amount of federal aid in the nation per capita (Alaska, another red state, is number one), and it ranks second lowest in federal taxes paid (behind only South Dakota). Overall, the federal government spent about $2,413 per capita in Wyoming for the fiscal year 2002 (the last year for which data is available), compared with almost exactly half that amount, or $1,205 per capita, for Washington State. This ridiculous disparity extends even to Homeland Security funds, which ought to be targeted toward the most vulnerable areas--coastlines, big city landmarks, porous borders. But landlocked Wyoming, with exactly zero important strategic targets, merits $38.31 per capita in Homeland Security funds. New York state residents get a measly $5.47. An urban agenda would argue for kicking Wyoming off the federal dole. States should pay their own way, not come to cities begging for handouts.

A refusal to subsidize rural waste will inform other policy decisions as well. Farm subsidies, for example, are obsolete and they cause needless friction in international trade agreements. The agricultural complex in the United States is so concentrated that very few voters have a personal stake in the continued existence of farm subsidies. Rural voters aren't going to switch party affiliations no matter what we do, so let's jettison their issues when they fail to serve our core interests. Ethanol, a corn-derived alcohol, is another great example. Scientific consensus says that corn will never be a viable source for alternative fuel, since the very production of ethanol requires so much fossil fuel and the payoff is paltry. Ethanol is vanity research; the new urban politics should stand for real solutions.

In the same way, we need to claim legislation like the Clean Air Act as our own. It is urban residents, not rural residents, who suffer when air quality is poor, and coal mines in rural states cannot dictate what size airborne particulates we should be willing to breathe. Asthma is a growing problem across the nation, but it is particularly acute among African American and Latino children growing up in the inner cities--the death rate from asthma complications is three times as high for minority children as it is for whites. This is unacceptable, and it's just one example of an issue urban residents can and should rally behind.

Democrats are now emphatically the minority party. This doesn't mean we give up; it means we take a page from the Republican playbook, refining and relentlessly pushing a vision of our own. We must rededicate ourselves to the urban core.

URBAN INDEPENDENCE

The anti-urban vote does more than just overwhelm city voters in presidential elections. It also overruns city priorities on local policy debates. We should go our own way. After all, when a city like Seattle's fate is tied to that of a state like Washington, the city's interests are routinely routed. In 1993, for example, Washington voters limited state budget increases, hobbling education and transportation funding. The measure, which passed statewide by a 51 to 49 margin, tanked in Seattle, 46 to 54. A 1997 gay rights measure, meanwhile, suffered the converse fate, losing statewide while winning here. And Tim Eyman's two tax-slashing initiatives won in rural and suburban areas but went down in flames inside city limits.

Laws limiting taxes have a disproportionate impact on cities, which rely on local levies to pay for basic social and human services like domestic-violence programs, low-income housing, and tenant advocacy. If you're wondering why the city is suffering draconian budget cuts--$24 million this year, $20 million in 2005--you can thank rural voters who seem unable to grasp a basic Christian tenet; greed is bad, sharing is good.

The lesson is simple for urban residents: Seattle shouldn't cast its lot with the rest of the state. Rural and suburban voters have shown again and again that they aren't willing to fund urban infrastructure. Throughout Washington State, transportation taxes like 2002's Referendum 51 have tanked, while anti-transit measures like Tim Eyman's I-776 have passed overwhelmingly. While that might seem like grim news for cities like Seattle, there's a silver lining: When cities set their own transportation priorities, truly urban systems (like the monorail) get funded and built, while the suburban mega-highways that lard initiatives like R-51 go unfunded. We don't use suburban roads. We can let the suburbs figure out a way to pay for them.

Cities have the clout, and the imperative, to give people alternatives to driving solo, and to punish those who insist on clogging our city streets. In Seattle, we've done exactly that. We've built bike lanes, expanded the bus system, and banned new park-and-rides inside city limits. We've funded a South Seattle-to-downtown light rail system. And we've overwhelmingly supported the monorail, an inner-city mass-transit system that's paid for by one of the most progressive taxes available: an excise tax on the value of cars in the city. Want to buy a Hummer? Fine. But you're gonna pay for it--and help fund public transit. If you want to rely on environmentally friendly public transit, though, we'll make it affordable and easy to use. That's a truly urban value.

Transit like the monorail, in turn, promotes density in outlying areas (like Ballard and West Seattle), which leads to the creation of housing that's affordable to everyone--not just the proverbial penthouse-dwelling downtown urban elite. Cities like Seattle can further encourage dense urban housing by adopting policies that encourage developers to build dense low-income housing. And we've done it: Last year, Mayor Greg Nickels unveiled a new push to increase density outside downtown by increasing building heights and providing incentives to developers who build inner-city housing.

The more housing that is built in cities, the more people can afford to live there. And the more cities pass laws that make it easier to live in cities--laws like Washington State's inflation-indexed minimum wage, which passed overwhelmingly in Seattle--the more cities will attract the kind of culturally and economically diverse populations that make them attractive places to work and live. And, as counterintuitive as it may seem to composting, recycling self-righteous suburbanites, living in dense urban areas is actually better for the environment. The population of New York City is larger than that of 39 states. But because dense apartment housing is more energy efficient, New York City uses less energy than any state. Conversely, suburban living--with its cars, highways, and single-family houses flanked by pesticide-soaked lawns--saps energy and devastates the ecosystem.

Cities' freedom to go their own way extends, of course, beyond mere infrastructure. Urban dwellers are cultural libertarians--we don't just tolerate a diversity of lifestyles and attitudes, we embrace it. Seattle, for example, has over 1000 churches, mosques, and synagogues. From San Francisco to Ann Arbor to Seattle, cities have been the vanguard.

Drug reform is a prime example. Eight states have passed medical marijuana initiatives; none could have done so without the pro-pot clout of cities. Last year, Seattle voters overwhelmingly passed Initiative 75, which effectively decriminalizes marijuana possession by making it cops' lowest law enforcement priority. And just this month, Ann Arbor passed a law legalizing medical marijuana, the second city in Michigan to do so. There are countless other examples. But the bottom line is this: Cities, not the outlying suburbs, are leading the way on drug reform. And where cities go, the nation will inevitably follow.

Gay rights, another national issue, took a beating this November, as 11 states passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. But locally, Seattle has ensured that gays and lesbians enjoy the full protection of the law. Not only are Seattle city employees and employees of firms that contract with the city entitled to domestic partnership benefits, earlier this year, Mayor Nickels announced that the city would honor gay marriages from other progressive jurisdictions, such as Portland and San Francisco.

But there's still more to do that the Feds and the State are loath to deliver: Subsidized childcare; safe injection sites; expanding the monorail through the rest of the city; discouraging excessive auto use by taxing mileage (to pay for more public transit); and providing family planning for low-income families. An aggressive new urbanist movement will go its own way, making the cities, not the states, the true laboratories of democracy.

URBAN STATES

In November 1960, a black 6-year-old girl named Ruby Bridges entered the newly desegregated William Frantz Public School in New Orleans. In reaction to her admission, white parents withdrew their kids from Ruby's class and she completed the first grade alone, with instruction from one teacher and support from a child psychiatrist. Ruby's walk to class on the first day of school inspired Norman Rockwell's The Problem We All Live With. In this painting (one of Rockwell's best, as far as we are concerned), a very black Ruby Bridges is escorted to school by four big white U.S. marshals. The image is powerful because it represents the federal government as an institution and enforcer of reason. The white bigots of New Orleans can complain, bitch, and threaten the lives of black boys and girls all they want, but in the end the federal government steps in to ensure that the rights of every American are protected.

This image of the federal government is now in a coma. The lawmaking bodies that are clustered in Washington, D.C. (the Senate, the House, the Justice Department, the Supreme Court, the White House), no longer form the enlightened center from which reason and justice emanate. During the civil rights era, the federal government could claim to at least aspire to this transcendental order (the Great Society, the War on Poverty, the Voting Rights Act of 1965), but not today. Since the beginning of the 21st century, Washington, D.C., has exerted a force that is not progressive (as epitomized by Rockwell's painting) but oppressive. This is not an exaggeration. For example, the sole reason why the state of California--or more accurately, the cities of California through the agency of the state--turned to its own citizens to establish funding for stem cell research is because the federal government, in the form of the reelected Bush administration, holds a profoundly backward position on the matter.

Under Bush, the federal government spent almost nothing ($25 million) this year on stem cell research, a policy that's entirely informed by the bizarre belief in a God who has a white beard, lives in heaven, and hates the idea of stem cell research. The reality is this: There are over 100 million Americans (most of them Christian) whose lives would be improved or saved by therapies and treatments that could be developed through stem cell research. The federal government, however, holds the opinion that God should not be deprived of worship from the souls that are supposedly housed in the miniscule cells of five-day-old embryos. Realizing this is just plain stupid (or country, an archaic synonym for stupid that should be revived in our post-2004 election world), California's citizens--its urban citizens--passed Proposition 71, which would allocate for research nearly $300 million a year over the next 10 years. This figure, $300 million, is three times larger even than what John Kerry proposed, and promises to bring the benefits of this new science to all Americans before the close of this decade. Clearly the federal government is no longer the enforcer of reason, the cities are, we urbanites are.

Proposition 71 is just the beginning of a new, muscular urban politics. More and more decisions involving health, education, transportation, and law must be wrested away from our theocratic federal government by large humanistic cities. The federal government may give us its prayers but it will never give us even the most basic health care coverage. The State of Hawaii has what the rest of America doesn't have--universal health care coverage. Why can't other states do the same? Or, more to the point, why can't big cities compel the states they're located in to do the same? Again, it is not the State of Washington that is blue, it is the concentrated population of Seattle that is deep blue; and because Seattle is so damn big it has the power to dictate the politics of its generally hostile state. So, this is not about state rights--indeed, the counties in California that passed Proposition 71 by 60 percent or more were all urban (San Francisco with the highest percentage in the whole state, 71). It's about urban rights, about empowering the bastions of reason and rationality in a nation that is increasingly unreasonable and irrational. As a resident of the city, you should be proud to be an urbanite.

URBAN VALUES

It's no secret what the urban population is against--the Bush administration and its red armies have done us the favor of making it a cinch to identify: We oppose their sub-moronic, "faith-based" approach to life, and, as stated above, we hereby relinquish our liberal tendency to sympathize with their lack of, say, livable working conditions, a family wage, and a national health care program. We no longer have to concern ourselves with the survival of the family farm, nor do we have to concern ourselves with saving fragile suburban economies from collapse. They're against us; we're against them. This is a war.

But if liberals and progressives want to reach out past our urban bases, it might be helpful to identify some essential convictions, thereby allowing us to perhaps compete on "values." Identifying and articulating our core convictions, as opposed to compromising and downplaying them in search of some kind of non-urban appeal, might actually attract voters in exurbs and rural areas who understand the importance of cities to the national economy. But even if it doesn't, ours is a superior way of life. Wherever people choose to live in this country, they should want to live as we do.

So how do we live and what are we for? Look around you, urbanite, at the multiplicity of cultures, ethnicities, and tribes that are smashed together in every urban center (yes, even Seattle): We're for that. We're for pluralism of thought, race, and identity. We're for a freedom of religion that includes the freedom from religion--not as some crazy aberration, but as an equally valid approach to life. We are for the right to choose one's own sexual and recreational behavior, to control one's own body and what one puts inside it. We are for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The people who just elected George W. Bush to a second term are frankly against every single idea outlined above.

Unlike the people who flee from cities in search of a life free from disagreement and dark skin, we are for contentiousness, discourse, and the heightened understanding of life that grows from having to accommodate opposing viewpoints. We're for opposition. And just to be clear: The non-urban argument, the red state position, isn't oppositional, it's negational--they are in active denial of the existence of other places, other people, other ideas. It's reactionary utopianism, and it is a clear and present danger; urbanists should be upfront and unapologetic about our contempt for their politics and their negational values. Republicans have succeeded in making the word "liberal"--which literally means "free from bigotry... favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded"--into an epithet. Urbanists should proclaim their liberalism from the highest rooftop (we have higher rooftops than they do); it's the only way we survive. And in our next breath, we should condemn their politics, exposing their conservatism as the anti-Americanism that it is, striving to make "conservative" into an epithet.

Let's see, what else are we for? How about education? Cities are beehives of intellectual energy; students and teachers are everywhere you look, studying, teaching, thinking. In Seattle, you can barely throw a rock without hitting a college. It's time to start celebrating that, because if the reds have their way, advanced degrees will one day be awarded based on the number of Bible verses a person can recite from memory. In the city, people ask you what you're reading. Outside the city, they ask you why you're reading. You do the math--and you'll have to, because non-urbanists can hardly even count their own children at this point. For too long now, we've caved to the non-urban wisdom that decries universities as bastions of elitism and snobbery. Guess what: That's why we should embrace them. Outside of the city, elitism and snobbery are code words for literacy and complexity. And when the oil dries up, we're not going to be turning to priests for answers--we'll be calling the scientists. And speaking of science: SCIENCE! That's another thing we're for. And reason. And history. All those things that non-urbanists have replaced with their idiotic faith. We're for those.

As part of our pro-reason platform, we're for paying taxes--taxes, after all, support the urban infrastructure on which we all rely, and as such, are a necessary part of the social contract we sign every day. We are for density, and because we're for density, we're for programs that support it, like mass transit. If you ignore the selfish whimperings of the Kirkland contingent, it's not too hard to envision a time when the only vehicles allowed on the streets of Seattle are buses, trams, and shuttles. Utopian? Wrong: reality-based. It's a better, smarter way to live, and the urbanist is always in favor of that. People who commute to the city for their livelihood and then attack urban areas and people in the voting booth are the worst kind of hypocrites. Commuters, we neither want nor need you. We welcome, however, new residents, new urbanites, the continual influx of people from other places who come here to stay (are you listening, liberal residents of Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming?). These transplants help create the density we find so attractive, and they provide the plurality that makes cities thrive.

A city belongs to everyone in it, and expands to contain whoever desires to join its ranks. People migrate to cities and open independent businesses or work at established ones. They import cultural influences, thus enriching the urban arts and nightlife, which in turn enrich everything. Most importantly, they bring the indisputable fact of their own bodies and minds. We wait in line with them at QFC, we stand shoulder to shoulder with them at the bar, we cram ourselves next to them on the bus. We share our psychic and physical space, however limited it might be, because others share it with us. It's not a question of tolerance, nor even of personal freedom; it's a matter of recognizing the fundamental interdependence of all citizens--not just the ones who belong to the same church. Non-urbanites have chosen to burn the declaration of interdependence, opting instead for tyranny, isolationism, and "faith." They can have them.

These, of course, are broad strokes. We all know that not everyone who lives in the suburbs is a raving neo-Christian idiot. The raving neo-Christian idiots are winning, however, so we need to take the fight to them. In this case, the fight is largely spiritual; it consists of embracing the reality that urban life and urban values are the only sustainable response to the modern age of holy war, environmental degradation, and global conflict. More important, it consists of rejecting the impulse to apologize for living in a society that prizes values like liberalism, pluralism, education, and facts. It's time for the Democratic Party to stop pandering to bovine, non-urban America. You don't apologize for being right--especially when you're at war.

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Kidnapped

Thu, 22 Apr 2004 04:00:00 -0700

Author Marjorie Skinner asked a stranger for the opportunity to be tied up and kidnapped. You should always be careful what you wish for... The scariest part was when I started to run out of air.
A plastic zip strip cut into my bound ankles, and my wrists were shackled behind me. The blindfold was so tight I could feel my contact lenses shifting. A thick gag left only part of my nose open to breathe. Underneath was yet another layer of duct tape. But it was the synthetic sleeping bag zipped up over my head--that was the disturbing part. I was burning up, sweating heavily, squirming underneath all the gags and ties...
And the fucked up thing is that I asked someone to do this to me.

I got the idea to arrange my own kidnapping from a friend. We were discussing Brock Enright, who runs New York City's Videogames Adventure Services (semagoediv.com). It's a business wherein Enright and his partners are paid thousands of dollars to perform custom kidnappings on their bored, wealthy clients. These arrangements often include extreme and violent scenarios. My undergraduate thesis (on "blood symbolism," no less) had sidetracked me into an academic interest in power-dynamic fetishes--like bondage and sadomasochism. Because of this, I was intrigued by the intensity and versatility of a full-on, engineered kidnapping.

For one thing, kidnapping doesn't necessarily have to be sexual--unlike the highly sexualized and ever-popular BDSM scene of fashion and polyamory. Platonically, kidnapping could distill an intense experience of voluntary helplessness... without the necessity of a boyfriend! So I resolved to discover firsthand what people were not only asking for, but paying for. I logged onto the personals on craigslist.com and answered an ad that said: "Kidnapper Seeks Captive."

MY KIDNAPPER IS KIND OF CREEPY

Surprisingly, getting to know your kidnapper prior to being kidnapped doesn't really kill the buzz. My kidnapper and I corresponded by email over the course of several months. For the most part we were negotiating safety measures ("If I'm gagged, my non-verbal safe word will be snapping my fingers, okay?"). We also mapped out a few guidelines ("Mild physical abuse is okay, like slapping or hair pulling--but no spanking."). But despite these somewhat clinical exchanges, he still managed to creep me out.

First of all, I was troubled when he adopted a flirtatious tone--commenting that I was "cute" and suggesting I wear a miniskirt for the kidnap. This made me paranoid, and I made it abundantly clear there was to be no sexual contact whatsoever; even reprimanding him for making what I considered "rape jokes." One night he followed me after leaving work and in the morning I found an email from him reciting the exact route I had taken to the grocery store. On another evening he followed me to the bar where I was having after-work cocktails with some coworkers--an activity he later admitted doing more than once. When I left, there was a hokey little note taped to my bike ("Did anyone ever tell you that you make a sexy kidnap victim?").

Be warned: if you ever decide to try this form of recreation, not everyone will admire your bravery. Boys you are dating will look you straight in the eye and say, "You are a fucking moron." Your roommates will start compulsively locking every door of the house. And your mom will have just a great sense of humor about it.

(The following is a three-way phone conversation wherein my father tries to convince my mother that my employer isn't trying to kill me via this story.

Dad: "The Mercury is a business, honey. They have an investment in Marjorie. They're not just going to let her die."

Me: "Yeah."

Mom: "WELL, I BET YOU COULDN'T FIND THEM IN THE BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU!!!")

The only other thing that can make you feel as bad as a mom is the soulful friend who says she knows a girl who was held for three days and subjected to beatings and rapes: "I don't know why anyone would invite that into their life."

PARANOIA

The closer it got to kidnapping season, the more paranoid everyone became. My publisher and editor, my friends, family, me--even The Kidnapper was getting uptight about furnishing information about himself, designed to insure my safety. We reached a stalemate and came to a compromise: We would meet in person, in public, prior to the kidnap. (This is what the guys in New York do.) This was both a relief and a bummer--but it afforded the opportunity to play spy games with my friends.

I met The Kidnapper at a downtown bar, and for my protection, I had two cronies--Manu and Shannon--act as "plants," pretending not to know me while subtly scoping out The Kidnapper. Manu articulated the degree of our tense giddiness when, the day before the meeting, he suddenly seized my arm and said, "Oh... fuck. What if he has plants to see if we have plants?!"

Manu and Shannon had two tasks. 1) Visually identify The Kidnapper, so if something went wrong, I would have witnesses. 2) Follow him out and get his license plate number. Thanks to a combination of over-thinking, misreading, and the spliff Shannon smoked while she was looking for street parking, they failed. They lost The Kidnapper, and didn't get the plates. We had resolved to meet at a different bar afterwards, several blocks away. They were to show no sign of recognition towards me until safely ensconced in a booth--that way we would throw off any plants The Kidnapper may have planted to see if we had any plants. Once there, Manu really started to beat himself up, bitterly repeating between inhalations of a cigarette, "Man, I've never lost a tail."

Despite all the preparation and advance knowledge, I was still looking over my shoulder everywhere I went, eyeing every car that passed. Knowing it was coming gave me time to chew on the possibilities. I was intentionally putting myself in a life-threatening situation. Every time I stepped out in public I was thinking about dying, or worse. Being in that state--preoccupied with the value of your life--is not a bad exercise, and one of the best phases of the experiment.

ABDUCTED AT LAST

When the moment finally came, it wasn't what I expected. I had predicted I would be snatched walking home at night, with a screeching van and brief struggle, just like a Nancy Drew book. Instead, my editor and The Kidnapper had conspired to trick me while I was working late one evening. As I plunked away on my computer, I heard footsteps I assumed were my editor's coming up behind me. Then hands gripped my shoulders and The Kidnapper's voice said, "Why hello, Miss Skinner... "

It was kind of awkward, considering the last time I'd seen him we were high-fiving over martinis. I just wasn't scared, especially on my own turf, in my own frigging cubicle.

"Uh, do you mind if I get my stuff?" I asked.

He waited patiently as I shut down all my computer programs and buttoned my jacket. When we got outside, where his SUV was parked next to the back exit, he opened the car door for me.

(Later, my editor, who was watching from the window, said, "When I saw him holding your purse I figured you would be all right.")

Before starting the car, The Kidnapper paused, probably thinking the same thing I was: This is lame. What kind of jalopy, no-budg version of a scintillating NYC trend was this? It was worse than falling asleep listening to an ex-Portlander brag about parties in Williamsburg.

"Alright, this sucks. Get in the back," ordered The Kidnapper.

In the back of the SUV, I let him tie my ankles and wrists with zip strips, duct tape my mouth, and blindfold me. Then we went for a long drive. Periodically, The Kidnapper stopped the car to intensify my bindings. He ran rope through my wrists and ankles, and attached it to the floor of the vehicle. I was very aware of my vulnerability at this point. Friendly or not, The Kidnapper had my life in his hands, and I could not have escaped. Plus, I realized if he got in an accident, with me tied across the floor, my spine would probably snap in half.

I had read about the submissive experience, which often appeals to high-level executives and others whose day-to-day life is fraught with responsibilities and control. Many people find immense release in being physically restrained, and forced into a docility where they have no real control over the situation. Lying with my face planted on the floor, I did feel somewhat peaceful, the blindfold forcing me into a slight doze. If I thought too much about the situation, chewing on all the maybes and what-ifs, I would start to panic--but accepting an uncontrollable fate had a remarkably soothing, Zen-like effect.

After what seemed like at least an hour of driving, The Kidnapper pulled over and mummified me in the sleeping bag, adding a larger, more suffocating gag to boot. I was perturbed to realize it was being zipped all the way over my face, and even more so when I heard him tying the strings in knots. I tried to stay calm, but was breathing heavily, wondering how much air was in the bag. How responsible was this kidnapper... really? Surely he calculated how much air I would have with how much time he would need for whatever came next... right?

As we continued to drive ("Where the hell are we going?"), I got sweatier and more nervous. I tried to calm myself while at the same time freaking out over how difficult it was getting to breathe. I was getting mad--but not as mad as when he stopped at a restaurant's drive through window. When I heard him order a Chinese chicken salad from the teenage girl, I started to thrash. I was not going to suffocate back here while he ate his damn Chinese chicken salad dinner! Still, I waited until he had pulled away from the window before kicking the back of his seat, making angry grunting noises, realizing he couldn't hear me snapping through all the insulation. Obligingly he pulled over and unzipped the sleeping bag.

"Whoops," he said.

INSIDE THE KIDNAPPER'S CONDO

After crossing the river several times, driving in circles, and making mysterious pit stops in parking lots and storage sheds, we arrived at The Kidnapper's condo. To avoid attention, he untied and un-gagged me, guiding me blindfolded into his unit. Once inside, I took the opportunity to ask if I could go to the bathroom before getting tied up again. Leading me into the bathroom, he put my hands on the toilet, then the sink, and left me alone. I came out from the bathroom beaming; impressed with my success at peeing blind, even finding soap and washing my hands.

"Dude, I'm just like Helen Keller!" I announced.

And then... well, there just wasn't much to do. We amused ourselves for a while as I groped around the apartment, trying to glean clues as to where I was ("It sounds like the ocean... or maybe the freeway?"). Then he duct-taped my mouth shut again, and tied me into a sort of upright fetal position, with my wrists connected to my ankles.

Apparently he decided it was more interesting when I could talk, so he removed the tape and we started to chat. I suggested we take some photos. We spent the next hour and a half arranging me in positions of restraint--which was actually pretty fun. At one point, as he arranged my bound limbs across his bed, he said, "This is like the most fun date I've ever had! ...and it's not even a date!" After about 50 digital photos, I coaxed him into taking off my blindfold to see them. As I flipped through them and came to the end, some of the pictures included... puppies? So much for fearing for my life.

I spent the rest of the evening unfettered and un-blinded, as we talked about his ex-girlfriend and his past experiences with bondage play, which turned out to be pretty extensive.

"On several occasions, complete strangers have come to my home for the sole purpose of being my captive," he claimed. "Soccer moms, business execs, school teachers, college girls, nurses, actresses, models--even an opera singer once."

Over a bottle of white wine, he asked me for my opinion on prospective business ventures, and we compared opinions on films. We laughed about our correspondence, and his stalking maneuvers. I considered escaping, but what was the point?

By around 2 am, I was nodding off in a chair. He insisted I sleep in his bed--with him--because I'd "be more comfortable." I relented, but told him if he tried anything I'd karate chop him. To his credit, he was a model of restraint (the moral kind) and didn't lay a finger on me.

In the morning, we played a game. He tied me up in complicated poses, and left me alone to see if I could escape. When we tired of that, we lounged around drinking absinthe and looking at books. He kept repeating he had meant for the experience to be much more sinister, almost apologetically. I tried to make him feel better by saying that in lots of movies the kidnap victims end up palling around with their kidnappers.

Eventually, he drove me to my neighborhood, where I had him drop me off on a corner less than 10 blocks from my house. I shook his hand, smiled, and thanked him.

After all, it was kinda fun.

FEAR IS FUN

"You slept platonically in your kidnapper's bed and he was like, 'That's cool; I respect your space?!' That's not a kidnapping!!"

My roommate Chelsea was cackling on the couch as I recounted my tale. I hadn't slept well or eaten, and my muscles were sore from being tightly trussed up--but otherwise I was in good spirits. After all the stress and grave consideration that went into the planning of the kidnap, I felt a renewed sense of luck it had turned out so ridiculously vanilla.

A few days later, I emailed The Kidnapper, wanting to talk about our experience--what worked, what didn't, how he might do things differently given another chance. Would he take a cue from the gang in NYC, and start the West Coast ("laid back") version of a kidnapping business? I pitched the idea to him.

"I would consider it," he said, "although I'd first have to overcome the uncomfortable image of it all. Telling friends and family what I'm doing would be rather awkward. But if it were profitable and enjoyable, why not? (Wanna be part of my team?) Personally, I have no interest in kidnapping guys. The kidnap thing is sexually based for me, so it just wouldn't appeal. However, if this were a business, and I was kidnapping for profit, absolutely [I would kidnap men]. I'd probably keep a couple of gay men on staff just for those abductions which required some sort of sexual play or touching."

Okay, fair enough. But I was also curious as to why he was so polite with me, after I'd given him permission to rough me up a little and toy with me psychologically.

"I do regret not being more forceful with you," he admitted. "Knowing that my actions would be put into the newspaper made me a bit gun-shy. Had I crossed the line and done something questionable, not only would it have created an awkward situation, but it would surely have made the paper as well."

Between the two of us, The Kidnapper and I managed to over-prepare for the kidnapping in every respect, except for what we would actually do during the 24-hour window allotted. What was supposed to have been a scary, exciting experience degenerated into casual chumminess--which is presumably why people in New York are turning to professionals.

And who's to say there isn't a market for this kind of adventure on this side of the country? As The Kidnapper explains it, "The fear of abduction is something most Americans experience daily, and the media tends to foster that fear. News reports focus on missing children and violence against women, television crime dramas use the same issues for plot scenarios--even our milk cartons remind us of those who have actually fallen victim to abduction. With so much pent-up fear over something, it's no wonder some people would eventually have an interest in facing that fear."

Now that there are bondage clubs and amusement parks in every city--where people go to make toys of fears like pain and heights--perhaps kidnapping is the next level of entertainment. It could be a profitable enterprise, so long as you were convincing and organized. (If I'd paid money for my kidnapper's amateur performance, I'd be demanding a refund.) For the customer, there's a rush and a pleasure in being placed in harm's way and surviving it.

Caught up in the materials and duties of our daily lives, we all too easily forget our basic sensations and instincts. Getting a thrilling, affirming blast of life is both invigorating and addictive. While I got a taste of that with my kidnapping, it also reconfirmed another basic fact of life.

If you want something done right, hire a professional.

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New Column!

Thu, 08 Apr 2004 04:00:00 -0700

Fish Stick Day... Mmmm, Yes! by Cornelius Van Shack Armentrout

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Sex Survey Results 2004!

Wm.™ Steven Humphrey — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 04:00:00 -0800

by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey

Illustrations by Jeremy Eaton

It's a generally accepted fact that "science" becomes less tedious with the addition of terms like "vibrator," "handjobs," and "vaginal tightness." Hello, I'm Wm. Steven Humphrey, director of the Mercury Institute of Advanced Studies of Sexuality. And while other newspapers devote science columns to subjects that could only appeal to the nerdiest of nerds, the Mercury only gives a shit about one thing: SEX. That's why for the fourth year in a row, the Mercury Sex Survey shows you how other people do it; so YOU can do it better.

Who You Are

This year, over 1700 bored, horny souls submitted their opinions to the Mercury Sex Survey--which means the Willamette Week is currently thinking, "WhaÉ WhaÉ Whaaaa? Something popular that the kids like? We should steal their idea!" Unfortunately, anyone who reads the WW is barren and infertile, and their dwindling race of readers will be dead within two years. So if it's an idea they want, they're welcome to it. (By the way, all the following percentages have been rounded off, so if the stats don't add up to 100%, that means some people cheated and checked more than one answer, or didn't answer the question at all. In other words, if you write in to correct us, we'll put your name on our big list of "People We Laugh at and Ultimately Ignore.")

52% of our respondents were MALE, 47% FEMALE, 1% couldn't decide.

75% identify as STRAIGHT.

15% say they are BISEXUAL.

6% scream GAY.

And a couple of lesbians filled it out, too.

YOUR AVERAGE AGE: 25

(Blush!) I'm Going Steady! = 26%

(Beam!) I'm Married and Content! = 25%

(Fume!) I'm Married and Miserable! = 5%

(Shrug.) I'm Single and Content. = 27%

(Sob!) I'm Single and Miserable! = 16%

My Sexual History (or Herstory)

First, let's address the most controversial of all sexual subjects: HANDJOBS. Are they sex, or ain't they? This question has boggled sensual scientists for centuries. Even the Mercury staff can't decide. The guys want them to count, because it raises the numerical value of their sexual conquests. But the girls want them disallowed; since they give an inordinate number of handjobs, they don't want their mothers to know they're sluts. Mercury readers are also in the dark; in the 2002 Sex Survey, 50% of you said handjobs are definitely sex. In 2003, however, that number dropped to 43%, taking handjobs out of the running. BUT THEN! In 2004, you have flipped the script again, awarding handjobs with 56% of the vote!

SO THAT'S IT! NO MORE DEBATE! Handjobs are now officially SEX--and that's FINAL! (You may now go back to cramming your hand down each other's pants.)

Speaking of flipping the script, you people have been very busy in the sack this year! In 2003, you reported that you had slept with an average of 8-10 people in your lifetime. In 2004, that number inflated to 12-17 sex partners! Holy Christ... what did you slip in our drink?

Interestingly, most respondents claim to have lost their virginity somewhere between 17-19 years of age, followed closely by those horny young'uns between the ages of 14-16. (However, since Michael Jackson may be going to prison, expect that number to drop next year.)

But here's the meat and potatoes of all sex surveys: HOW OFTEN DO YOU... YOU KNOW... "DO IT"?

I "get it on" two-three times a week! = 26%

I play "plug the porkhole" once a week! = 16%

I "rub my baby raw" four-eight times a week! = 15%

I "get around to it" once every two-three months. = 10%

(The rest of these results are too depressing, so let's move on, shall we?)

Startling Sexual Statistics

How many dates before you're sleeping with a new partner?

35% claimed you were banging away on--or sometimes before--the first date. 33% are rutting by the third date. 27% choose to honor Jesus' wishes by waiting anywhere from two weeks to a month, and 3% of you are waiting until marriage... because you're like a Mormon or something.

When it comes to porn, I prefer...

Now here are some interesting results you can use around the bedroom. When it comes to pornography, most ladies (30%) prefer their own filthy imaginations, followed by "erotic literature" (25%). So fellas, drag out that old copy of Penthouse Forum, cause the ladies LOVE IT. On the other hand, guys are turned on by (duh) dirty videos/DVDs (27%), but actually prefer the filthy, sexy Internet (by a whopping 40%). So gals, dust off that old Commodore 64, and let's dial up some Anna Kournikova pictures.

The drug that gets me a-rarin' to go is...

Rophynol = .12% Nyquil = 1%

Ecstasy = 3% Cocaine = 4%

Marijuana = 13% "Love" = 27.8

But nothing makes the juices flow like good old...

ALCOHOL = 47%

Choose one activity that your partner could perform more often.

Basically, nobody gives a shit whether you should be doing more anal sex (10%), role playing (5%), giving handjobs (4%), talkin' dirty talk (10%), or washing the dishes (12%). Here's the bottom line: Girls want more foreplay (22%), and guys overwhelmingly want blowjobs (31%). So come on, people! Work with each other, here!

Some Troubling News

I don't quite know how to say this. Okay. Let's start with the facts: A whopping 61% of you admit that you keep fantasies secret from your partner. No big surprise there, right? HOWEVER! 62% of you say you're not too embarrassed to ask your lover to act out your fantasies. HUH?? That just don't jibe! Therefore, we can only come to one conclusion: If you're not acting out your lover's fantasies... then your lover's LOVER is! Why, that no good cheatin' bastard/bitch! I never did trust him/her! If I were you, I'd empty out his/her drawers right now, and throw all his/her shit on the lawn! Nobody makes YOU out to be a fool! NOBODY!!

What A Girl Wants

The purpose of this year's Sex Survey is to shed light on what women and men really want in the sack--so, ladies, if you're too embarrassed to talk to your lover, drop them a hint in the form of the following sexy statistics!

Good to Know!

An overwhelmingly whopping 98.9% of all women "sometimes wish the lover of their choice would just grab them, throw them down and fuck the holy hell out of them."

Good to Know!

42% of all ladies would happily dig around for a boy's prostate if asked, and an additional 18% would do so grudgingly. (Remember: Before digging in an unknown area, first contact your local utility company.)

Good to Know!

In the handjobs vs. blowjobs debate, a majority of women (60%) prefer giving blowjobs claiming, "I'm a girl who likes to suck it; I'm dirty and people like me."

Good to Know!

49% of all women NEVER fake an orgasm. On the other hand, 42% fake an orgasm once in awhile. So... you have roughly a 50/50 chance that's she's faking it. Have a nice day!

Good to Know!

An earth-shaking 72% of girls say they occasionally use a dildo or vibrator. Just something to think about... while I'm masturbating.

What A Guy Needs

Men are often sensitive, misjudged creatures who need a lot of TLC and guidance in order to express themselves romantically. HAW! Just kiddin'. We want blowjobs, and that's pretty much it. However, we do have our own special needs and concerns, which can be gleaned by the vital statistics below.

Good to Know!

During the act of intercourse, a majority of men (65%) climax within five to 10 minutes. Unfortunately, most women (32%) want their men to last at least 15 minutes--and some (26%) think they should go at least 20 minutes. In order to avoid unreasonable expectations on both sides, the Mercury would like to request that women drop their expectation time to 12 minutes, and for men to buy a cock ring.

Good to Know!

The majority of Portland men (68%) have an erect penis between five and seven inches long--which luckily, the women of Portland prefer (39%). (Whew!)

Good to Know!

None of the men surveyed has ever given their cousin a blowjob.

Good to Know!

While most guys (40%) think their pickup lines come out sounding "shy and reserved," most women (37%) think guys sound "weird and retarded." (For help, see "Prescription: Pickup," this page).

Good to Know!

Guys love vagina juice (73%). Who knew?

A Short Treatise on "Vaginal Tightness"

While the length and girth of a man's penis is often a topic of conversation between the sexes, little has been written or said about "vaginal tightness." Here's what men prefer:

28% like it as "tight as a bear trap."

2% like it as loose as "throwing a hotdog down a hallway."

And 69% prefer their vaginas to fit like "a pig in a blanket."

But women often wonder, "How am I to know whether my vagina is a pig in a blanket or a hallway?" With that answer, here is the Mercury's Senior Vaginal Tightness Correspondent, Aaron Beam, who has performed extensive research on the subject. Aaron?

"Thank you, Steve. Ladies, for a scientific measure of vaginal tightness, insert a pneumatic squeeze dynamometer into your vagina, and use a mirror to read the PSI (pounds per square inch). Normal readings fall between 1 and 3 PSI, although the perceived tightness will vary depending on penile girth. A PSI of 5 or higher is extremely tight ("bear trap")--to remedy, stretch the vagina daily by inserting a tapered object until you feel slight discomfort. Hold for 20 minutes. For extremely loose vaginas (PSI of 0.2 or below), daily performance of the Kegel exercise, or PC clamp, will strengthen the muscle at the 'mouth' of the vagina, constricting the opening. Good luck!"

Celebrity Cavalcade

When it comes to boning and blowjobs, which local news channel celebrity do you fantasize about the most? The Mercury asked, and you answered!

Of the following local weathermen, I would most likely give a blowjob toÉ

Dave Sweeney (KOIN-CBS) = 11%

Rod Hill (KATU-ABC) = 13%

Mark Nelson (KPTV-Fox) = 19%

Matt Zaffino (KGW-NBC) = 28%

(Note to Matt: If you're reading this, and agree you would like a blowjob from one of our readers, please give us a "wink" at the end of your Friday, 6 pm forecast on Feb 13, and say, "Have a Happy Valentines Day." We'll be watching.)

Of the following local TV newswomen, I would most like to pork...

Tracy Barry (KGW-NBC) = 10%

Julie Emry (KOIN-CBS) = 12%

Natali Marmion (KATU-ABC) = 23%

Shauna Parsons (KPTV-Fox) = 30%

(Note to Shauna: If you're reading this, and agree that Matt Zaffino should get a blowjob from one of our readers, please give us a wink at the end of your Friday, 10 pm report on Feb 13, and say "Good luck, Matt. You'll need it." We'll be watching.)

IN OTHER CELEBRITY NEWSÉ

According to our survey, if given a choice between a number of amateur porn actors, you'd most like to co-star with Paris Hilton (by a landslide 33%). And speaking of landslides, 88% of you think Michael Jackson "did it." (Hey, life's unfair.)

In conclusion, we're happy to say the results from this year's sex survey conclusively prove that Portlanders are sexier, and more well adjusted than ever. BUT! That doesn't mean we can't improve! Here are a few things to work on in 2004:

- Oral Sex. Guys want it (75%) and like to give it (73%). Meanwhile, girls like it (62%) and like to give it (60%). So what are we waiting for? Let's get lickin'!

- Ejaculation. Ladies, be patient when it comes to guys and "climax control." Delaying ejaculation from seven to 12 minutes? That's a big mountain to climb.

- Reveal your Fantasy to your Partner. 60% of you are keeping secrets from your lover. Therefore, 2004 is the year you admit, "Yes, honey, I want you to pee-pee on me."

- The Pickup. Guys! For the love of god, improve your game! (See "Prescription: Pickup," page 31).

- Unrealistic Orgasms. Girls! Stop faking it. You're only hurting yourself, and slowing down the production of actual orgasms.

- Like Mechanical Bulls More. (see below)

- Improve Sex Quota. If you're single, increase your sexual conquest quotient by engaging in homosexual experiences. (Remember! As of this year, handjobs count!)

- Most Importantly: 98% of your lovers want you to throw them down and fuck the holy hell out of them. And as we've all learned, you shouldn't argue with statistics.

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New Column!

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 04:00:00 -0800

Publisher's Notebook by WW Publisher, Richard "I'm Rich!" Meeker

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I Hunt the Giant Man-Ape

Erik Henriksen — Thu, 11 Sep 2003 04:00:00 -0700

Another thrilling true-life adventure starring Erik Henriksen, Sasquatch Slayer. by Erik Henriksen

IT'S EASY TO GET LOST in the lush forests that cover the jagged topography of Skamania County, Washington. Dense ferns crowd the shadowy ground, coniferous trees stretch above, and any attempt to retain one's bearings are quickly thwarted by the unpredictable hills, valleys, and deep, unexpected canyons. Thin strands of light filter through the treetop canopy, serving only to demonstrate how unknowable this terrain is. However practical or cynical one might be, it is impossible not to gaze into those impenetrable green shadows and wonder what might be lurking there—or what might be gazing back, with violent rage in its eyes, the seductive scent of man-blood thick in its murderous nostrils.

YOU DO THE MATH

The scientific and financial benefits to studying and dissecting an actual Bigfoot corpse would be astronomical. That's not even adding in the profits from a best-selling book, the inevitable TV movie rights, the worldwide fame and admiration, the Letterman appearance. It's an undeniable fact: The rewards a Sasquatch Slayer receives after emerging from the woods with a dead Bigfoot tied to his car hood is an attractive package indeed.

I resolved to kill Bigfoot, and I wasn't about to let Skamania County Ordinance No. 1984-2 stop me.

SAVING THE "GIANT HAIRY APE"

The woods of Skamania County have had more than their share of Bigfoot sightings. In 1969, Skamania's Board of Commissioners passed Ordinance 69-01, stating that "Éthere is evidence to indicate the possible existence in Skamania County of a nocturnal primate mammal variously described as an ape-like creature or a sub-species of Homo Sapian [sic]—this creature is generally and commonly known as 'Sasquatch,' 'Yeti,' 'Bigfoot,' or 'Giant Hairy Ape.'"

What concerned the Board were the swarms of amateur Bigfoot hunters that started flocking to the county. Suggesting the "influx of scientific investigators as well as casual hunters, many armed with lethal weapons" constituted "a clear and present threat to the safety and well-being of persons living or traveling within the boundaries of Skamania County as well as to the creatures themselves," the Board asserted that "any premeditated, wilful [sic] and wonton [sic] slaying of any such creature shall be deemed a felony punishable by a fine not to exceed Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000.00) and/or imprisonment in the county jail for a period not to exceed Five (5) years."

According to the Skamania County Reporter, Prosecutor Bob Leick realized in 1984 the county had exceeded its jurisdictional authority by making this crime a felony. The ordinance was then revisited—now it's only a misdemeanor, the fine has been lowered to $1,000, and any jail time has been capped at a year. Skamania County Ordinance No. 1984-2 also "created a Sasquatch Refuge, the boundaries of which shall be co-extensive with the boundaries of Skamania County."

Ordinance 1984-2 was passed on April 2 of that year, nearly 15 years to the day that the original ordinance passed—April 1, 1969. The Skamania County Pioneer reported that Commissioner Conrad Lundy Jr. insisted in 1969 that the date was purely coincidental: "This is not an April Fool's Day joke. There is reason to believe such an animal exists."

I weighed all of the benefits of killing Bigfoot against the meager penalties of Ordinance No. 1984-2. The $1,000 fine? Pocket change considering how much the Smithsonian would pay for a displayable specimen. The year in Skamania County's jail? Easy, after I instilled the fear and respect a Sasquatch Slayer deserves into my cell mates.

Yes. The math worked out in my favor.

THE PLAN

According to most reports, Bigfoot is between seven and 14 feet tall and weighs anywhere from 300-800 pounds. After thinking it through, I realized I might have a hard time taking him down alone. I therefore enlisted the help and hunting expertise of my associate, Mr. Miles Evans.

We traveled on I-84 out of Portland, took the Hood River exit, crossed the Columbia River, and headed up Washington State Highway 14 to Cook-Underwood Road. After ignoring several "No Trespassing" signs and meandering up some abandoned logging roads, we found ourselves deep in Bigfoot country within two hours. As we set up camp, Miles and I noted several conclusions could be drawn according to our observations of Bigfoot:

OBSERVATION: Bigfoot has been seen many times, often by people who tried to shoot him. Statistically, at least one of those shots should have hit Bigfoot—yet he has not been killed. CONCLUSION: Bigfoot probably has bulletproof skin. Guns would therefore be useless. Miles' Louisville Slugger, however, should catch the creature unawares.

OBSERVATION: In the film Harry and the Hendersons, Bigfoot (or "Harry") is a vegetarian. Harry also plays the feel-good card, with Harry portrayed as Alf's retarded big brother. In the direct-to-video thriller Sasquatch, on the other hand, Bigfoot is a bloodthirsty killer of nubile coeds, and he looks like the offspring of one of those hicks from Deliverance and a werewolf. Importantly, Sasquatch is purportedly based on real events, while Harry and the Hendersons is not. CONCLUSION: Bigfoot lusts for the sweet, sweet taste of human blood, but he'll take other types of meat—say, Oscar Meyer bologna—when nubile teens aren't available.

OBSERVATION: Bigfoot hunter Ronald Knapp, of the Washington Bigfoot Research Group, tells me via email that he's got some good "scream returns" from the vicinity in which we'll be camping. ("Scream returns" are when hunters who have supposed recordings of Bigfoot calls play them into the wild, aiming to get other Bigfeet to call back.) CONCLUSION: Lacking actual Bigfoot recordings of my own, I record Chewbacca's howls from The Empire Strikes Back with a portable tape recorder.

After setting up camp, we headed into the thick woods bordering our campsite. We unwrapped the bologna and laid piece after piece in a line which would eventually lead our quarry over a hill, down a dried creek bed, across a small clearing, and right to our campsite. On the fringes of our site we set the big payoff—an entire package of bologna, subtly placed in the center of a noose. An hour later, I sat in a lawn chair ten feet from said noose, holding the rope in one hand, a beer in the other, with the Louisville Slugger within easy reach. Miles sat behind the tent, in another chair, with another beer, ready to lunge with his broken Weinhard's bottle if the situation called for such a measure.

I waited, breath held. Bigfoot would lope out of the thick brush, make a play for the bologna, and I would pull the noose tight, swing hard, and crush Bigfoot's Neanderthallic head with the bat. Cue Miles, who would leap—like a cat—from behind the tent, scurry onto Bigfoot's hairy back, and slash Bigfoot's throat as I continued my bludgeoning.

Sasquatch, your ass would soon be mine.

PROOF (OR, C'MON WHO DOESN'T LIKE BOLOGNA?)

Twilight encroached, then evening fell, but neither brought any sign of the great beast. And while we didn't actually see Bigfoot, that doesn't mean he wasn't there—in the darkness, a multitude of sounds echoed throughout the forest: strange hoots, and weird chitterings, but most importantly, an ominous, eerie wailing. It was a shriek that was at once mournful and enraged, lonely and terrible. Miles—who said he was tired, and didn't even really listen that hard—claimed it was just the wind. Something told me, however, it came from a bipedal creature, presumably between 7-14 feet tall, probably weighing anywhere from 300-800 pounds.

The next morning, Miles and I hiked back into the forest, only to find that Bigfoot hadn't even touched the bologna—now greenish brown and surrounded by hornets. Either Bigfoot was too scared of the hornets to eat the bologna—not likely—or he doesn't like bologna at all. But c'mon—who doesn't like bologna?

No one. No one dislikes bologna, and for all the times I've watched Croc Hunter, I have yet to hear of a forest creature who wouldn't gorge themselves stupid on any food—especially bologna—left out in the woods. The fact that the bologna remained can only mean one thing: Bigfoot was there, in the woods, just out of sight, fending other creatures away from the processed sweetmeat while waiting to eat the bounty until we had left his territory. He had seen us lay our trap, and was too wily to fall for it.

We had, perhaps, underestimated the primal instincts and carnivorous cunning of the Giant Hairy Ape.

JUST BECAUSE WE DIDN'T FIND AND KILL BIGFOOT DOESN'T MEAN HE DOESN'T EXIST, YOU NAYSAYING BASTARD

While it wasn't in the dead, foul-smelling, hairy, possibly mutilated form that I'd originally intended, Bigfoot's existence was proven on that warm summer night in Skamania County. For how else can you explain the uneaten bologna?

"The North American Bigfoot or Sasquatch has a lot going for it," researcher John Napier writes in his book, Bigfoot. "Too many people claim to have seen it or at least to have seen footprints to dismiss its reality out of hand."

Damn straight, researcher John Napier. And I won't be happy until I limp out of the dusky woods of Skamania County, 800-pound Bigfoot carcass in tow, and force the law-enforcement of Skamania County to make me to pay that fine and serve that time. For then, I will be a hero, a true Sasquatch Slayer, and any attempts to dismiss Bigfoot's reality out of hand will be met with my foul-smelling, hairy, and probably mutilated proof.

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