I might have found it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'd been wondering lately where the old glory days went, or whether I just made that shit up in my head, perhaps imagined it out of youth and naivete, where now the same scenes, filtered through my aging and jaded lens, seem tame.

I don't feel jaded though, and that's why I wondered. What happened to the underground clubs? The warehouse parties? The fetish shows? What happened to the depravity?

For a long time I thought that, Portland-style, we had simply beaten the shit out of it with our universal, oh-no-you-first, everyone-is-OK friendly stick. Took the interest right out of it by taking the fetish out of the fetish, the dirt out of the dirt. Where's the thrill if it's not forbidden? When going to a fetish club becomes as happy, as embraced, as socially accepted an experience as walking into a Sanrio store? I thought I knew where the thrill went, but I wasn't willing  to follow it there. It went to One Man One Jar and Two Girls One Cup. It went up to Enumclaw, WA and Mr. Hands. That's a dead end there, I'll tell you that.

Even our strip clubs are pretty, sanitary, social. You can go to a strip club just for the beer and the jalapeno poppers, or have your birthday party at one, invite the boss; he'll bring his wife, everyone will have some good clean fun.

Portland has taken the weird out of everything by putting it in everything.

I remembered the glory days of going to a club in a short skirt and tall boots with ridiculous makeup and hair out to there, and absolutely no idea what you might end up doing or witnessing. Nightlife was exciting, back then. Nights would roll past you in a brilliant, flashy haze of lights and color and mirrors and Spandex, skin, body parts, fetish gear, cocktail glasses and cucumber sandwiches, midnight mac & cheese, coffee at the Jiffy Squid, coke at the rooftop party at that warehouse in the glamorously-named Central Eastside Industrial District. You might see two old men beat the shit out of each other and then fuck in public, you might make out with a stripper in the dirtiest bathroom you've ever seen, you might wake up at six in the morning and have to talk your friend down from surfing the roof of his neighbor's car because he took way too much acid three hours before.

Ahhh, beautiful youth!

We now have sanitized-for-your-protection versions of all these things, and none of them are any fun anymore. Or, if you dare to seek out an underground dance party, you will find that it is entirely populated by you, but you back when you were nineteen and had an endless capacity for vodka drinks and looking amazing in tight clothing, and you will feel ridiculously out of place like a catfish in a tank full of tropicals.

What happened to the old men fucking in public? That's what I want. I want spectacle. I want the old, ugly, insane, infirm, and indeterminate mixing it up with the young and tight and beautiful and naive, just like it was when I was young and tight and beautiful and naive and sometimes got surprise-groped by an octogenarian in drag. That's where things happen and sights are seen and sometimes felt, where it feels badwronggood to see the holyshit didIjustseethat?? And then I'm doing some manual labor and tearing out a ceiling and opening beers with a crowbar and my friend says "Hey have you heard of this thing? It's sort of a queer dance party and it has a lot of bears in thongs but also a lot of dykes and it's also also really mixed with people dressed up in all sorts of fancy crazy shit and I hear it gets pretty weird. Wanna go this Saturday?"

Did you just say "bears in thongs"?

Count me in!


Or Kill Me.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The funny thing is, this evening, after planting some plants and puttering around at home and feeding my friend's cat, I just didn't feel like going, after all.

[East Coast Hustle]

Are you talking about the Red Dress party?

I was told it was quite the den of debauchery, by one of the aforementioned "bears in thongs".

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

No, Red Dress was last weekend; it's only once a year. I'm talking about Blow Pony.

[East Coast Hustle]

Oh, Jesus.

I try not to talk about Blow Pony.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh, Jesus.

I try not to talk about Blow Pony.

[h-town]

What if I want to hear about this "Blow pony?"

I need some attention-worth-it anecdotes since good times are now officially lame compared to 10 years ago.

Source: up top.

[BadBeast]

I used to live on Portland, (Dorset, not Oregon) and I've never lived anywhere quite so batshit crazy.
The locals get bent right out of shape if you say the word "Rabbit". In response, my Mate put a walking stick, with a rabbit head handle in his window. And got a brick through it within three hours. Apparently, back in the olden days, everyone and his dog used to work in the stone mines, (There is more Portland stone in Westminster, than is left on Portland) and one day, there was a huge cave in, that killed all the Miners. The inbred, numpty locals, decided that the mine had collapsed, due to rabbits burrowing under the workings. (Yeah, through solid limestone!) and ever since, (the last 300 odd years) you have to call them "Bunnies".
And up until about 75 years ago, the whole Island's population was made up from only five different families. Going all the way back to the Norman Invasion. Before that, it was an Isolated Island, where from the early Iron age, the most dangerously insane people were dumped, out of harm's way. What I don't get, is why anyone would move across the Atlantic, to the New World, then all the way across America, to the coast of  Oregon, then name their eventual home, "Portland". Did they forget what a shithole the original place was, or something? Even today, there are old people on the island, who have never set foot on the mainland! (and their ancestors certainly didn't) The muddiest little puddle of genes on the south coast. **shivers** I was lucky to get out of there when I did. Five years in a place like that, certainly makes you value your own genetic diversity. Even if you are from East Anglia!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ask whoever named Portland, Maine. That's what Portland Jr. is named after. It was decided by coin toss:

It all began in 1843 when Tennessee drifter William Overton and Massachusetts lawyer Asa Lovejoy beached their canoe on the banks of the Willamette River. Overcome by the beauty of the area, Overton saw great potential for this mountain-ringed, timber-rich land. His only problem was that he lacked the 25 cents needed to file a land claim. So, he struck a bargain with Lovejoy: In return for a quarter, Overton would share his claim to the 640-acre site known as "The Clearing."

Soon bored with clearing trees and building roads, Overton drifted on, selling his half of the claim to Francis W. Pettygrove. The new partners, Lovejoy and Pettygrove, however, couldn't decide on a name for their budding township. Lovejoy was determined to name the site after his hometown of Boston, while Pettygrove was equally adamant about his native Portland, Maine. They decided to flip a coin, now known as the "Portland Penny," to settle the argument. Pettygrove won on two tosses out of three.

http://www.travelportland.com/media/history.html

[h-town]

Okay, okay. What happens in blow pony stays in blow pony (full disclosure: I googled it  )

I feel what you're talking about and I wish everything is always fullbore hardcore, yet it still kind of is. A bunch of my friends are into the fetish ball/party scene in Toronto and their stories are just as sordid and intense as any other of the stories I hear from slightly older fetishists / intense party people about their times in the sun. I think it just becomes inappropriate to keep on keeping on after awhile and everyone falls out of their scenes eventually and they take on a more satellite role of involvement. But, every scene is still going, IMO, just as strong as when anyone was into it in the past, maybe in a different form or geographic location. Shit, if I was still drinking until falling down drunk every day and taking as much lsd like I used to I'd probably be dead by now. Yet, the "scene" today seems tame to me now in comparison yet how much of that is just an uppity pretentious observation on my own part because I don't want to feel like old uncle h-town? More than I'm willing to admit, because I work security for a lot of these parties and people seem to be as crazy as they always were. 

I really dig your style of writing, btw.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Thanks!

See, now, I'm not a BDSM scenester. I just kind of miss the days of spectacle, when dirt was still dirty and you couldn't have your every fetish need met at the mall in the store between Hot Topic and Bath & Bodyworks. It's like people don't even have to TRY, any more.

And of course, the punchline is that I stayed in, like the old lady I am.

But it's not really about age; one of the things about the GLBT scene, if there really can be said to be one, is that it's very age-inclusive and fat old bitches party just as hard as the tight little twentysomethings.

[Elder Iptuous]

man, i gotta check out the malls in the NW....


they sell nixon masks and vac-u-locs at your bath and body works?!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

man, i gotta check out the malls in the NW....


they sell nixon masks and vac-u-locs at your bath and body works?!

Yes, as well as Bunny & Tigra blow-up-dolls.

[h-town]

Yea, the commercial availability of previously fringe lifestyle decisions is unsettling on my end as well, but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. It was only a matter of time before the Normal Rockwell outlook on reality got infected with something kind of crazy worth giving a damn about.

[Doktor Howl]

man, i gotta check out the malls in the NW....


they sell nixon masks and vac-u-locs at your bath and body works?!

Yes, as well as Bunny & Tigra blow-up-dolls.

There go my nipples again.