The only mannequin Laurie has all of is a female she calls Constance. Connie's made to sit, with both legs stretched out in front, her knees bent a little. She's made for the Portland demographic: pale and small breasted with a dishwater-brown wig. Laurie dresses her in a pink chiffon gown from the thrift store St. Vincent de Paul on Powell Boulevard. It has yards of flowing pink chiffon that hang down, like angel wings. Up the back of the dress, you can see thick black tire treadmarks that suggest a very ominous end to some prom night.
One Saturday, we're drinking gin-and-tonics before watching the Starlight Parade. The official kickoff event for the annual Rose Festival, the parade features lighted floats and marching bands and starts at dusk, moving through downtown in the dark.
It also features the year's crop of Rose Festival princesses, all of them in pink prom gowns, standing on a float and waving with gloved hands. The more gin-and-tonics we drink, the more important it seems to make a political statement. You know, attack the idea of women as objects on display. We have to put Constance on the boot of Laurie's MG convertible and sneak her into the parade. We have to reveal the Rose Festival for the sexist institution that it is.
Really, we just want our share of the attention.
In the North Park Blocks where the parade assembles, we tell the officials we're part of a local car club but we've missed our entry time because of traffic. Near us, the parade float full of real princesses glares at our dummy with the black tire tracks up her back.
As troublemakers, we cannot be more obvious. But as each official mentions a real car club or a detail like parade entry dues, we latch onto said detail and roll it into our story. Each time we're passed up the ladder to another official, our story has more heft. More validity. Yes, we say, we're with the Columbia Gorge Car Club. Yes, we've paid the $200 entry fee. As extra proof we show people a map of the parade route that an earlier official has given us.
Our every exhale is a lie.
At the edge of the parade one last official gives us the go-ahead. We're in. We're ready. Heady stuff. Then he warns us, two blocks away is the judges' platform, and if we aren't an official entry, they'll hit us each with a $1,000 fine. And then arrest us for trespassing.
By then, our gin-and-tonic political enthusiasm has worn off. We don't have the spare two grand to risk. But the crowds love Constance and people run out into the street to touch her stiff fiberglass hands. The real princesses glower. Those willing tools of sexism. A block away the police are waiting to catch us, Laurie and me, but for just these few minutes, people wave and smile at us. They laugh and applaud. Despite all the terrible shit we've done, these total strangers seem to really want us here.
Souvenirs-. Where You Have to Shop
TO get A mannequin of your own, check out Grand & Benedict's "Used Annex" at 122 SE Morrison Street. They usually have enough naked dummies for a creepy afternoon in the Twilight Zone. For a cheap souvenir or a relic from Portland's history—we all have that magpie urge to acquire stuff—check my favorite places for finding something unique without spending a ton.
The "As-ls" Bins
Officially, this is the Goodwill Outlet Store, but locals have called it "the bins" forever. Come pick through the bins of unsorted, unwashed goods at 8300 SE McLoughlin Boulevard and pay for your new wardrobe by the pound. Phone: 503-230-2076.
Periodicals & Books Paradise
The world's largest store for used magazines is right here at 3315 SE Hawthorne Boulevard. From nudie mags to Sears catalogs, it's waiting for you to spend a rainy day here. Phone: 503-234-6003.
The Rebuilding Center
Here are salvaged chunks of Portlands best buildings, selling for cheap. For doors, lights, masonry ornaments, ironwork, lumber, and plumbing fixtures, go to 3625 N Mississippi Avenue and drool. Phone: 503-331-1877.
Red, White, and Blue Thrift Store
It's courting death to tell you about every local's favorite used-clothing and junk store. But it's at 19239 SE McLoughlin Boulevard. Phone: 503-655-3444. Good luck with parking.
Wacky Willy's Surplus
An always changing mix of craft and medical supplies, electronics, toys, sporting goods, and more. Here is your next big art project waiting to happen. One store at 2374 NW Vaughn Street. Another store at 2900 SW Cornelius Pass Road. Phone: 503-525-9211.
(a postcard from 1989)
It's August in the Swan Island shipyards, and I'm exploring the inside of an old cruise ship while it sits in dry dock.
The ship is the S.S. Monterey, a forgotten passenger liner. She's been mothballed in the Alameda section of San Francisco Bay since the 1960s, until the Matson Lines towed her to Portland for hull work. They'll do just enough work in the United States to allow her to be registered here, then tow her around the world to Finland, where she'll be gutted and refitted for luxury cruises to Hawaii.
The man showing me around is a marine architect named Mark. I met him at a potluck, and Mark told me about living aboard the ship while it was moored at the seawall along NW Front Avenue, waiting for its turn in dry dock. Without fuel or passengers, he says, the ship rides high in the water—so high that when anything from a barge to a canoe goes past, the towering ship will rock from side to side. The white hull is streaked with rust and bird shit, and the staterooms inside are hot and dusty.
As the ship rocks, Mark says, doors swing open and shut. When she was mothballed, china was left on tables in the dining room. Pots and pans were left on the stoves. Now, these things slip and fall to the floor in the middle of the night when Mark's the only person aboard. He sleeps in the ship's old nursery, where murals of Babar the Elephant dance around the walls. He keeps the nursery doors locked. There's no power aboard the ship, so he uses a flashlight to get down the pitch-black passageways to shit outside, in a chemical toilet installed near the faded shuffleboard outlines on deck.
By August this massive hulk of iron and steel has been soaking up heat all summer. She never cools down, and the temperature inside bakes a crust of dried sweat and dust on your skin.
The marine architect, Mark, he thinks I love old ships enough to sleep with him. This is capital-NOT going to happen, but Mark leads me through the security gates and into the huge floating dry dock. He tells me about his viral load, the amount of HIV in his bloodstream, and says how he's nicknamed his last two white blood cells "Huey and Dewey." He's twenty-something. He looks healthy.
We crouch underneath the ship, next to the wooden keel blocks that balance the gigantic baking-hot hull above us. Mark winks and asks if I want to see the "ship's balls."
Instead of an answer, I ask about the huge fans and sheets of plastic that hang inside the ship. Mark says it's asbestos containment and removal. The air is hazy with floating strands. The gray dust coats portholes and stairway railings.
In the ship's ballroom little tables and chairs stand around the edges of a wooden dance floor, warped and buckled into waves from the heat. Planters around the room hold the papery dried stalks and leaves of a tropical jungle, real plants mummified by decades of California summers and rooted dead in potting soil dry as talcum powder. The floor is crunchy with broken china and wine glasses. In the ship's big stainless steel kitchens, the saucepans are streaked with food at least thirty years old. With flashlights we explore the ship's theater and find an upright piano lying on its back.