Local Color

[July 25th, 2007]

Best Non-Whippit Use of Nitrous Oxide

What does a screenprinting business do to get buzz? Take an old lawnmower, add a nitrous tank and film it pulverizing stuff, of course. Callie's Kustoms in Cornelius (callieskustoms.com) will put anything on a T-shirt and their hot-rod designs are indeed rad, but the true highlight of their website is two videos (the links are located next to the site's FAQ) featuring Gallagher-level destruction. (Sorry, Mac users, they're only available in Windows format—if you've just got to see it, check out YouTube.com/watch?v=omO_NlizEPU) Watch as "Mowzilla" effortlessly shreds stuff, including a pine tree and a 25-pound turkey . (Nitrous, Callie Vogel explains, makes the mower blade spin faster.) At least the gobbler video was filmed in November, when they didn't use the yard much. "It was kind of a gross spot on the lawn for a while," Vogel says. All together now: Eeeeewww!

Best Bathroom Humor

Nothing is funny about old clawfoot tubs. But that doesn't keep the salvage staff at Rejuvenation (1100 SE Grand Ave., 238-1900) from christening their aging basins with unusual monikers. Sure, you are likely to expect superlatives like "Excelsior" and "Supremo," and maybe it's not a stretch to see a smallish pink tub named "Fifi," but where do appellations like "Swan Lake," "Blue Eyed Stranger" and "Crackle Head" come from ? A peeling ochre-and-burgundy specimen is labeled "Crack of Dawn," while a 5 1/2-footer called "Texas Ranger" is no doubt a reference to Chuck Norris' slight stature. Last but not least, a red-splattered affair called "Red Rum" vanished quicker than our photographer's reflexes, perhaps for a trip to Timberline Lodge. All work and no play, we suppose.

Best Way to Hose Up on Some History

Fire hydrants are disrespected every day. Dogs piss on them. People in pursuit of parking curse them. One Portland man, however, sees fire hydrants as more than urinals or parking obstacles. "Fire hydrants are easy to ignore and take for granted but... Portland is a sort of Amazon rainforest of strange hydrant species ," explains hydrant historian Allen McMillan, who has documented an exhaustive history of Portland's 13,000 fire hydrants at firehydrant.org/pictures/pdx_01.html. "Machines made more than 100 years ago are still protecting our lives and property," says McMillan of the objects of his fascination. "Few things have that kind of permanence." As beacons of sustainability and local production (many of the city's locally manufactured models exist nowhere else), it seems that Portland's hydrants espouse the same values as its residents.

Best Morbid Motorcade

No, it's not a posse of Goth soccer moms. That train of tailgating station wagons is the Coffin Cruisers Hearse Club (coffincruisers.com), Portland's own gang of ghoulish gearheads. Originally formed as Hearsing Around (get it? Like "horsing around," only creepier) in 2003, the CCHC often pops up at local car shows and stages its own macabre rallies, most recently at the Hawthorne Eagles Lodge. And a few times a year, the grim caravan disconcerts moviegoers at Newberg's 99W Drive-In Theatre. Not surprisingly, October is the club's busiest month, when Halloween spirit transforms hearses into useful novelties at "haunted attractions"—instead of merely cars you shouldn't cut off on the road.

Best Speed Cleaner

Although it's a small delight, paying a professional to scrub your shower and wipe down your windows is so much more fun when the name references a wilder activity. To wit: "Angel Dusts ," the home cleaning service that puts the Phencyclidine in clean . Since 2004, this family-owned business has been tidying up homes in Portland and Vancouver, specializing in deep-down dirt busting for harried homeowners moving in or out of their houses. "Yes," good-natured owner and Northeast Portlander Angela Lyons told a Best of Portland operative, she knows what the moniker—which is a shortened version of her first name—sounds like. "But if customers don't like the name, they're not our type of customers." And no, there's nary a gram of PCP in Lyons' cleaning cart—although we're betting there is sodium percarbonate, calcium bicarbonate, quartz and ethanol (psst: that's the stuff found in Clorox bleach, Soft Scrub and Arm & Hammer Pet Fresh carpet deodorizer to those of you who don't own a meth lab). In the end, the hallucinogenic reference may not have been an open invitation to party, but Lyons' business lives up to its motto: "Everything's Brighter After Angel Dusts!" That includes our smirky smiles. To get mopped, visit servicemagic.com and search "Angel Dusts" for a full cleaning profile and customer reviews, or call 866-623-7014 to order service.

Best Lord of the Rings/40 Year-Old Virgin Hybrid

Peter Jackson is done directing his epic Tolkien trilogy, you've exhausted the DVD special features in the Lord of the Rings box set, and your mom said no more playing with your sword in the house. For one last hit of hobbit, try the Middle Earth Gathering (middleearthgathering.com). Every September in the Shire-esque green of Silver Falls State Park, paganism, eco-ethics and a healthy dose of pure nerd extract combine at this four-day outdoor retreat. The Earth Gatherings website (earthgatherings.org) calls it "a venue to educate one another and to celebrate, together, our relationship with Mother Nature and the changes of the seasons." Translation: Oregon's premier spot for communal New Age nerdiness in the wilderness. Borrowing heavily from druids, Native Americans and Internet chat rooms, the gathering has "bardic circles," a "sweat lodge," holistic everything and, of course, plenty of socks with sandals.

Best Way to Pop a Pumpkin

Why turn a pumpkin into a pie when you can chuck it into the mud? Founded in 2001, Bill Brock's Super "V" (for Volunteer) Pumpkin Shoot Competition attracts some 3,000 to 4,000 pumpkin-propelling participants at his farm in Beaverton each fall to help raise money for Northwest Medical Teams International. Brock said he started the Super V challenge to show volunteers just how much fun it can be to help change the world, because, as he says, "It's us chickens, the little folks, who paint the world." Use Brock's old farm equipment and medieval trebuchets to blast squash 200 feet into the air, then paint yourself with mud on a 5-10k run . You can't stop the rain, but you can make an impact on the world—one pumpkin crater at a time. While the event was held in October for the past six years, this year Bill says he's pushing it into November for "more rain and more muddy fun."

Best Faux Prison Stint With a Positive Outcome

The Rose City Rollers are not be confused with Paris Hilton. Although Kim "Rocket Mean" Stegeman and Jana "jahNasty" Saul spent three hours in "lock-up" this June , it wasn't for drunken mishaps or unladylike conduct. The ladies volunteered to be escorted by officials from the Muscular Dystrophy Association and whisked away to Ruth's Chris Steak House (not a terrible place to be held in custody I suppose) as part of the association's "Executive Lock-Up" telethon . Portland's all-female roller-derby league raised more than $2,800 for MDA's Jerry's Kids, and league president Mean says fundraising has become a primary focus of the Rollers, who plan at least one charitable event a month. For July's "Derby Days," Mean says, "We're tricking our friends and family into buying beer for a good cause. "

Best Lifeboat

Some kids have farewell dances or pizza parties, but the eighth-grade class at Portland Waldorf School built an Inuit whaling boat to celebrate their graduation. With the help of local wilderness organization TrackersNW and the Ancestral Lifeways community , the 30-student class spent four days on a permaculture farm outside of Portland learning to live like urban hunters and gatherers—camping, harvesting tidepools and building the umiak boat's cedar frame and paddles. "No other class on the West Coast has ever done anything like this," says TrackersNW founder Tony Deis. "These kids weren't just goofing around. They wanted to make sure the boat was built right." After a test run, the students officially set sail across the Willamette on June 11, launching outside of their Milwaukie campus and docking near the Hawthorne Bridge. But the experience exceeds a single lasting memory. The kids—most of whom have known each other since the first grade, but half of whom are going on to different high schools in the fall—plan to reunite on their umiak several times a year for many more voyages to come. Awwwww!

Best Pranksters For Peace

Are peace signs and flowers destructive imagery? Apparently they are at Wilson High. While other high-schoolers were funneling beer, about 30 Wilson seniors sneaked onto campus during the wee hours of Sunday, May 20, and planted 2,000 marigolds in the shape of a giant peace sign . Though the prank was flawlessly executed, principal Sue Brent deemed it destructive. She ordered the immediate removal of the flowers and threatened to withhold the diploma of Maggie Collins , an organizer who claimed responsibility on KGW-TV, unless she paid for repairs. Months before, students had hand-painted the word "peace" in several languages on school windows; the words remained until an angry parent complained to Brent. The unidentified spoiler found listening ears in the administration, which is also rumored to be offended by puppies, kittens and ice cream. In the end, the flowers were removed at a work party, and Collins graduated. To this saga we can only say: Go, seniors!

The Best Place to Act Like a Dork

So, Junior Scientist, you've just discovered a flaw in an on-chip dynamically recalibrated delay line for embedded self-timed systems? Maybe your flux capacitor reached 1.21 gigawatts (finally—God!) and you're dying to show off the DeLorean's stylish 2606 paint job? Don't deny it: Geekdom is your kingdom and you yearn to mingle freely with your own kind. Never fear: Dorkbot PDX is here ! A self-proclaimed group of "people doing strange things with electricity," Dorkbot PDX (dorkbotpdx.org) encourages members to discover, create and introduce cutting-edge technology to the world. Or, as they put it: "Show and tell warrants mega ultra bonus points!" A verifiable, un-secret society ("Open to the public!" they generously proclaim) for techie geniuses and gadget geeks, Dorkbot PDX meets periodically at ever-changing locations (perhaps to avoid those pesky plutonium-smuggling Lybians), so check out the site for rendezvous info.