Stolen Moments from Stumptown

How very special Portland is.

Where else can you turn Craniometry, that skullduggery of 19th century scientific racism



My what a big cranial cavity you have.
The easier to cram in notions of racial superiority.





into a progressive 21st century business model?




Dude, our custom bike building business is sooooo enviro/eco positive/car free/locally owned




Lucky for your devoted blogger, these talented artisans are too cheap to have their own office. Thus they were measuring this woman in a local cafe this weekend, when I happened by in my usual Karl Malden don't leave home without it mode - if Karl Malden were talking about digital cameras.

And I was glad to have my digital camera when I stopped by the Hip Mama Mother's Day party.

It was in a strange warehouse-y space. The kind of space that just happened to have a Barack v. Hillary-themed kissing booth.

One day millennia hence archaeologists will dig smelly, hippie relics out of the warehouse rubble and wonder about the meaning of this strange petroglyph.







Lest you think this blog entry – not to mention this city – is overly obsessed with bicycling, I assure you the Hip Mama party provided ample evidence of other interests.



Like unicycling.

In certain suburbs, parents worry that if there kid isn't playing league soccer by age 4, the kid is never going to make it. Here in Portland we don't buy into that whole pressuring kids into league sports too early thing.

Heck no. We have far nobler priorities.

Hence, the unicycle with training wheels.





There were other methods of transit represented as well.

What silent auction item do you get the lesbian Hip Mama who has everything?

The Playmobil horse ranch, of course!

I believe it was that Frank Sinatra who sang it best:

Horses and lesbians, horses and lesbians
Go together like a horse and carriage.

Or perhaps I am thinking of Phranc Sinatra.





If you're not willing to pony up to an Equestra-Sapphic ride, fear not. We do have motor vehicles here.

Check out this seventeen month-old poster that was on the warehouse wall (trust me, it is worth clicking on the image to get the enlarged version).

What is most scary is not that someone has a silver exterior, orange and pink interior Dead Letter Truck complete with wings, tail, and home-made electrical (which presumably that means it runs not on the more familiar, mass-produced AC or DC but on the homemade BC — as in Betty Crocker).

Nor that someone else would actually covet this vehicle enough to steal it.

What is most scary is that I actually HAVE seen the Dead Letter Truck, sometime in early 2007 - it was parked around the corner from my house on and off for a couple of months. If only I had encountered this hippie poster in time, I might have callled the pollice and they coulld have apprehended the culllprit.

Possibly earning me a cameo in Grand Theft Auto IV.