Recap: PZS, PPS, Max ridin'

This weekend I bused south to Portland, Oregon to help Bryan table at the Portland Zine Symposium. He, I, and Rachel took turns browsing, explaining what a Babel/salvage is and trying to not spend all our money on art and zines. Though not trying that hard. I've got a nice little shelf's worth of art, politics, comics, and poetry zines I'll be working my way through over the next few weeks.
One of the recurring things you hear as a tabler is as follows:
"Oh wow, this is really cool. I mean, really cool. I don't have any money on me, though, will you be here tomorrow?"
Still, B/S was able to spread the good word through a few trades, card hand-offs, and even a purchase here and there.

I also featured at the Portland Poetry Slam at Backspace Coffee right in down/old town Portland. It's a great reading, energetic room, and the all-ages factor gives an urgency and life to the proceedings that helps the time pass quickly. That said, I felt a bit ambivalent about my own performance; I feel I've definitely done better readings for matching the mood/emotions of the crowd and connecting with folks.
Set: filthy jerry gets paid/ sharis parking lot/ little fear of drowning/ GRIFOLS-Biomat parking lot/ northward/ charity pledge drive/ foxes of bainbridge/ story problem.
Part of the issue, I think lies with the fact that both 'gets paid' and 'sharis' actually read a bit better in my head than they do on stage. About halfway through either of them I've already collected half a page of self notes on how to tighten them/perform them better. Leads to an editing-on-the-fly sitch that probably would have been better not to, you know, start with.
LEARNING!
Still, the crowd was generous, talked to some folks afterwards, saw old friends, and caught a bus with Rachel back to NEPO, where the bar was closed but the pizza place was open. The time not at PZS or the Slam is documented below:



One thing I find interesting when I'm in Portland is the constant overhearing of Cliche Conversations about Portland.
"Yeah, like, coming from L.A. I expected it to be way smaller, actually. But it's pretty big. . . but not that big. Like, it's a town that pretends to be a city."

Yeah, take a swig every time you hear one of those and you'll be drunk in ten minutes. But PDX actually strikes me as the opposite: it's a Big City (in general, american terms) that pretends to be a town, not the other way around. The gardens, the farmers markets, the single family homes and general lack of tall buildings outside of Downtown and the Rose Quarter give it a towny feel. But the infrastructure, the neighborhood-focused walkability, the mass transit, these are all city ammenities, but dressed down. How long that dressing down remains, who's to see. But Portland feels like a town, works like a city.

Seattle, on the other hand, has many ways in which it's a (huge) town still growing into it's practical cityhood; we're behind on transit and infrastructure, which is one of greatest indicators (in my mind) of urban living. That said, there's more of an outward-looking mindset in Seattle, where as Portland seems to be more localized, to both its benefit and detriment.

I write this on a bus, and have just entered Centralia.

PDXZines, Beer and Cookies

Down to Portland over the weekend for the Portland Zine Symposium, where I sat at a table and told people what a ZAPP was, did a handful of trades with people who were willing to trade and ran into Dale Woodruff. Good weekend.

The reading at the Beer and Cookies Cabaret was one of my favorite ones in recent memory. I read between a singer and a short claymated film about robots. The beer was good. The cookies were delicious. I think Vegans make better dessert.
Setlist:


Get Smart!
New York pt. 1.3 (swear on the head of the ibex)
Ambition is Critical
Kids!
Genus, Species and Flavour
Isolation Therapy
You, in Your Heyday

It was the first time I did "new york" or "heyday" and my version of "kids" was half-remembered, half adlibbed. went over well though; sold enough that I was able to return to Seattle with some of the money I left with. This is pretty important these days.

plasma, portland and poetry factories.

In a few minutes I go in for a short-ish shift at The Vera Project where I will do some information culling and website updating in a room full of people all being periodically amused by some non-official thing they saw on a website. Then I hitch a ride with Lindsey Tibbot down to Portland, where I'm reading at the Working Theater Collective's Beer and Cookies Cabaret. Apparently I'm between a band, a comic and a juggler? Something like that. Then the next couple of days is ZAPP-duty with the Portland Zine Symposium, one of the largest er, zine symposiums in the country.

So it's busy for me. Yesterday (after a few and a half other things) I hit up the first ever Capitol Hill Mobile City Fair-- basically a bunch of booths and entertainments set up in the Bank of America Parking Lot. All Cap Hill places. Drag queens jumping rope, people eating pork tortas, a bunch of kids and parents dancing in the back of a U-Haul truck while a dude spun club hits. I sat at the Pilot Books booth as part of the "Poetry Factory" where myself and a handful of other hardworking writers wrote poems-to-order for the donation of canned food or a smile.
one guy says "I just got off work. I need something positive. Write me a poem about, um, not puppydogs and world peace. . . friends."
So I did. and it made him really happy.

On my way off the hill I passed by Twice Sold Tales and sold a couple Tolkein books for like, no cash at all, but the woman was enthusiastic about recommending a spot in Ballard where I can sell plasma and thats how she ate for about two years.
Then two college kids came in and asked if she had any Euclid and that made her very happy.