[Editor’s Note: Welcome to Blogtown’s newest series, “What’s Your Story?” wherein reporter Alec Quig interviews and photographs people on the street who are just like (or maybe nothing like) you. You’ll find “What’s Your Story?” right here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon for the next three months. Oh, and look for the following interview and more in this week’s print edition of the Mercury. Thank you, citizens of Blogtown.]
1 Name + nickname: Michelle B. I went by Rain in Chicago, Camille in Oaklahoma, Michelle in Michigan. I’ve modeled for Suicide Girls, City Girls, a lot of different places. Chi Angelique Starr is my modelling name.
2 Age: 31
3 Hood: SE
4 Occupation: Two jobs: tropical fish and retail.
5 Hometown: Cheboygan, MI. It’s beautiful, but the people there suck. Most people I know from Northern Michigan are extremely rude and stuck up. Everywhere we go, if we’re from Michigan, people are like, “Oh, really? You’re a good worker.” It’s automatic. It’s fucking—and excuse my language—I think they’re the rudest, most arrogant motherfuckers who have ever lived.
Continued after the jump.
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6 Favorite place to eat in PDX: This little taco cart down the road. Michoacan.
7 Favorite place to drink in PDX: Tom’s! I love my bartenders, man. I have over seven years bartending experience, so if I don’t like my bartenders, I will not go there. I’ve been to a million goddamn bars in this city. Tom’s? Day and night.
8 How fashionable are you on a scale of 1-10? As in, what’s up to date? What’s fashionable? Isn’t that based in how you feel comfortable? “Fashion,” quote unquote, to me, is all these people wearing weird gear, weird hats, and all these things they’re trying to make popular. Then you have people who wear what’s comfortable, what makes them happy. I think happy is fashionable.
9 Pet peeve: Messiness, rudeness, arrogance, disrespect. You respect me, I’ll respect you, and if you disrespect me, I don’t care, I’ll disrespect you back. I don’t care if you’re the Pope, Santa Claus, or freaking Jesus. I’m the most moralistic…my parents raised me very well. I have extremely high morals, high respect.
10 Guilty pleasure: Muscle. Not a lot, but tone-ness. And I like tummies. Muscle, tummies, and tacos.
11 If you had a genie and one wish, what would it be? I would ask for no more child abuse.
12 Do you have a cultural recommendation for our readers? Seeing through a blind man’s eyes. Hear through a deaf man’s ears. Live life like a dying man would.
13 Were you cool in school? No.
14 If you had a time machine, where would you go? Nowhere!
15 Favorite thing about the opposite sex? They can lift heavy shit!
16 Least favorite thing about the opposite sex? Penis. They just weird me out. They just kinda hang there. Most guys are not very hygenic.
17 What should every member of the opposite sex know that they never seem to? Compassion and less male arrogance.
18 What is your dream? To be happy. Even though I am happy, that’s my dream.
19 What is your best Portland story? Negative or positive? Both. At 6 am I was downtown. This happens a lot—I attract a lot of crazy people—people crazier than I am, which is hard to come by! The crazier they are, the more I attract them. Anyway, I’m going to work, minding my own business. And I come out of the store, cigarettes in one hand, coffee in the other, and this chick looks at me and starts calling me satan! She really thinks I’m the goddamn devil. What does she look like? This crazy little old black woman, I don’t know. That was a negative one. So, for the positive one, my wife and I just moved here, and we meet this kid. Cute as hell. He looks like a goddamn fucking goldmine to me. I’m sorry, I can sell you your own shirt for five dollars more than you paid for it, with the button missing, off your own back. I can sell you the piece of paper you’re writing on. I felt like I could make a mint off him. But I’m married. The wife didn’t want me to be a pimp. But he wanted me to sell him! He was fucking cute! I coulda made a fortune off this kid! That’s probably one of the best positive Portland stories I have. How old? I dunno, he looked like maybe 24 or 25.
20 Anything you’d like to hype or promote? Let’s use Portland as a promotion. It has something for everybody. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you believe in, what you think, what you do, it doesn’t matter. I’ve lived in almost every state in the US, I’ve lived in Germany, I’ve lived everywhere, and Portland is the friendliest city I’ve ever been to, and I absolutely love it. I don’t ever go back to anywhere, but I came back here. I think it’s the most homeless-friendly city that ever was, is, or could be, and if you have the goddamn vocals to talk, you have the help—anything and everything you need. Portland can give you your poetry, your drinking, your stripclubs—god knows, it’s the highest per capita in the whole United States. All you have to do is open your mouth. Open your mouth and it will happen. Portland will help you. I’ve never experienced such…individualism. You have it all here. Diversity is the main thing of life. Here is my promotion: live life like a blind man. If you don’t look with your eyes, and you only look with your heart, Portland has everything you need. Period. This is Michelle speaking. Have a great night.
Recycled content is old: http://alecquig.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/1…
/b/town deserves some OC.
YOU HAVE BOTH MISSPELLED MODELING AND STOLEN MY MODELING NAME.
@ graham: disagreee. I count on btown to aggregate good stuff so I don’t have to go find it. As long as it isn’t actually stale (this is only three weeks old), I could care less.
“Two jobs: tropical fish and retail”
She has a job as a tropical fish? That sounds pretty cushy.
@CC: My real complaint is that this is being passed off as seemingly new content created FOR the Merc; while instead it’s old content created for the author’s blog. A disclaimer on provenance should be appended to this article.
At least 50 percent of this shit makes no god damned sense at all. What the fuck is this, Parade Magazine for hipsters?
What the fuck was that?
I like this column. I don’t care if its been posted before on some other blog that I’ve never visited. Also, she seems a little nuts. but nice. If you have a genie and one wish, you ask for more wishes. Duh.
I miss Sexy Bike.
Hey Graham!
Alec did all the interviews that will be on Blogtown for us, but I gave him the okay to also put them on his site. Cuz I’m suh-weet!
+1 @Graham. This wasn’t written for btown as the Editor’s Note implies.
-1 @CC. this isn’t “good stuff” and in internet time it is “actually stale”.
@William Humpy. Wait, hold up! You paid someone to do a series of interviews for the Mercury and then gave them permission to post (at least) one of the said interviews to their site ~3 weeks before you published it?
That’s not suh-weet it’s stuh-pid!
HA! That was interesting about Michigan…I feel pretty much the same way about people from Wisconsin. For some reason everyone that I’ve met from Wisconsin is self-absorbed, rude, obnoxious and a think-they-know-it-all…Perhaps this generalization can be applied to everywhere surrounding the great lakes region.
I also miss Sexy Bike. :(((
It’s like Lovelab, but more annoying.
Northern Michiganders remind me of “Native” Oregonians. Something about an entitled old coot bitching about Chicago/California transplants buying up all the choice lakefront/west hills property makes me all misty-eyed and sentimental.
For someone who seems to dislike men so much, this gal certainly does appear to be trying pretty hard to look like one. Just sayin’.
Steve passed on my “What’s In Your Fucking Wallet? Hand It Over And Keep Walking” project and accepted Quig’s puff piece series?
That’s just fine. Genius can continue on its solitary way.
I call bullshit. I grew up spending part of the year in Frankfort, and I know the northern half of the state about as well as anyone. The locals there are neither rude nor stuck up, and the summer people tend to be pretty mellow as well. I don’t think this chick’s ever been to Northern Michigan, and if she has, she must be hella difficult to get along with. And Orgengine, there’s really not that much of a comparison between Chicagoans in that area and Californians here. Chicagoans don’t generally relocate there, they buy vacation properties, which makes the spike in land prices all the more egregious from the locals’ point of view.
I don’t get this.
This is up there among the most ill-conceived of Mercury pieces I have seen to date.
Agreed with Rusty and Never Alone. This is just weird.
Man I REALLY MISS NIGHT CABBIE!!!! mwahahahahaha
BRING BACK JERRY MASTERSON!!!
Interview people NO ONE wants to talk to. Try homeless people, drug addicts, assholes, and the wonder twin fuck bags Graham & Damosa.