Fluid Spill: [Portland
OR] Being that I’m an entirely spontaneous random person, this was my 3rd
bar in my quest to see every music venue in Portland A to Z. Oh was it a doozy.
I was charmed, charmed I say, upon walking in. Old, high ceilings, that musty
smell (smell is everything), spare and dirty, the bar populated by local drunks
and proper punks (like three). There was nothing hip about this place –
although I suspect it’s a bit hipper other nights of the week given the really
awesome bathroom graffiti and the solid music posters papering the ceiling.
After peeing, I was feeling sentimental, like this was the one place dirty and
weird enough to really represent Austin. And then I walked into the next big
(empty) room and was confronted with 4 very overweight white men and 3 punks to
the side. The stage was decorated in all manner of American-pride regalia, from
an American flag behind the stage to little mock guns wrapped in the flag
bedazzling the front edge of the stage. And then, horror of all horrors, I
noticed the large white man sitting in a booth at the back of the room had an
NRA shirt on. You just didn’t see this shit in Austin. And I was coming in
fresh from all the hullaboo over a nationalist racist making a big show in
Portland over the weekend, and felt a little disgusted with Oregon. But then I
wondered why the thoroughly proper punks were there too. But, of course, the
punk scene is steeped in racism. Exhausting. I decided to observe. Apparently
every Monday, Dwight Dickinson hosts Dwight Church. Per my observation this one
night, he’s a redneck comedian. He came out decked out in USA regalia, perhaps
in observation for 9-11. He did a brief comedy routine, nothing offensive, fairly
funny. Then he pulled out his red guitar and did a little song about how some
lady shows back up at his trailer and “he doesn’t wear a wife beater for
nothing.” There were 3 punks in the room, 4 very large white metalhead looking
guys, and me. Dwight looked at me, guiltily, when he sang that line – I stared
right back at him, with messages spewing from my eyes. Then the stage
transferred over to “Fluid Spild” (at least according to graffiti-ed cardboard
on the stage). A middle-aged guy with long wrecked curls ending in red dye and
big complicated cyber-punk boots stood on the stage alone wailing out
industrial metal on his guitar. Me being the guest of honor, Dwight sort of
nervously circled around me with a coffee mug of water nodding. This place is
(sadly to my mind) closing before year’s end – Dwight and his crew may
represent their lack of fucks left to give. So back to the music… it would have
been impressive if I was 14 years old in a garage in Oklahoma City but you
know. His friends (the one of them, and then a second when the first beckoned
bossily with a finger) stood at the front of the stage head-banging for a few
minutes and then descended into idle chatter. The first fiddled with something
for quite a while and finally dared to pull an elaborate silver-metal-faced
mask on. He was seemingly freed by this act and threw some metal horns at me.
In conclusion, people are deeply deeply weird, in ways that Portland and Austin
have no need to try to artificially reproduce.
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