



Gateway to the Gayway

The four-story Club Portland, which was listed in Fugitives as Portlandâs last gay bathhouse, turned out to be far from the last. The seamy, steamy standby stepped aside in 2007 to make room for McMenaminsâ Crystal Hotel, whose website happily trumpets the buildingâs history as louche gambling den and gay playground. (Alâs Den, a bar and performance venue in the basement, is a bit less forthcoming about its past as a jack-off club called Zippers Down.)

But two newer gay bathhouses have sprung up since Palahniuk wrote his book. The two-story Steam Portland on Northeast Sandy Boulevard is a decade old and features a nude sun deck, many video booths, a hot tub, steam bath and lounge. HawksPDX on Southeast Grand Avenue is a newer steam-roomed entrant in the inner east side: less porn, more glory holes, more theme parties and much more emphasis on the lounge space. As an added attraction, HIV-positive porn star Dice is on staff. Both clubs offer free HIV/STD testing several times a month. Each claims it is the only one in town to do so.





Portland Memorial

Sellwoodâs massive apartment complex for the dead, the century-old Portland Memorial mausoleum in Sellwood, described in Fugitives as a place to get lost panic-stricken amid a labyrinth of monuments to the passed, is no longer open to the general public.

âI hope you take out some of the references he had about it being one of the best places to drop acid,â says David Schroeder, CEO of the local five-cemetery chain that now runs Wilhelmâs Portland Memorial Funeral Home. (Palahniuk had actually suggested reading a book there.)

âA number of people filming videos and doing strange things in there upset a lot of people, so they secured the mausoleum in 2008,â Schroeder says. âPeople only go in if they have a real reason to go.â

Palahniuk says it was a popular place for goth sex, and cites unconfirmed reports of suicides there: âIt wasnât good for business, obviously.â The Memorial (and the families whose relatives are stored there) apparently agreed, although the family-run mausoleum still offers organized tours of the historic crypts three times a year. The ranks of the dead have swelled from 58,000 in 2003 to more than 75,000 today. There is still room for perhaps a third of all Portlanders, should so many decide to go.

Darcelle XV

âI think some people would say Iâm still telling the same jokes I did 10 years ago,â says Walter Cole, who has performed for 46 years as the wisecracking drag queen Darcelle XV. âBut why change it if it works?â Heâs been at his eponymous Old Town nightspot so long that three generations of family arrive together to see his show; meanwhile, his own son, Jay, works behind the bar.

Cole still makes his own costumes to become Darcelle XV, but no longer cleans the clubâs restrooms as he did in Fugitives. âIâve got other people to do that now,â he says. Heâs had both knees replaced, and he doesnât take any chances. âIf they go out again,â he says, âthatâs it.â

Even at age 82, Darcelle XV is onstage six or seven times a week. Cole says he wonât stop while heâs still kicking, that stopping work is what kills people. âMy dream is, it happens in front of a packed house,â he says. âThere will just be this pile of dust on the stage, and then they throw me out into the gutter and the show goes on without me.â





IMAGE: Evan Johnson

The Death of the Rose Festival Floats

âIâve been here 23 years,â says Kendra Comerford, vice president of the company that makes the Rose Festival floats. âI think one year they did it in the Rose Quarter.â That was the year, 1992, when Palahniuk happened across the carnage near the Lloyd Center shopping mall, and described headbangers blasting boom boxes and tearing the day-old parade floats to bits, crushing the wilting flowers.

Every subsequent year, the floats have been dismantled in a Northwest Industrial District warehouse (2448 NE Vaughn St.), the same place they were built by a team of volunteers. The number of floats has been dwindling since 2008, victims of the economy and perhaps a broader decline in corporate civics.

This year, on the morning of Monday, June 10, the workersâ music was private, blasting in earbuds. The Reserâs Fine Foods alligator, covered in artichoke leaves, has wounds in his shoulder that look to come from a massive shotgun blast. The Alaska Airlines bearâs left butt cheek is flung wide open to reveal a steering wheel within. On the floral parade floats, every visible surface must be organic, and so it is: seeds, flowers and grass. Cotton feels almost like cheating, but there it is on the bear, dyed taupe. The throne of the festival queen stands deflowered. The Oregonianâs float promises that every party begins with the O. The roadster float from Spokane, Wash., is a loaner meant for a paper parade, so its flowers are stripped to leave tinsel behind. And when it reaches Spokane, âthe lilac city,â all of its own lilacs will be long since tilled into the soil.





Largest and Smallest Parks

It is an enduring Portland myth that we have both the largest and smallest city parks in the worldâone Palahniuk repeated in his book, though he hedged by calling Forest Park the largest âmunicipal forested park,â ignoring the vast Saguaro cactus âforestsâ of Phoenixâs South Mountain Park, which is three times Forest Parkâs size. But we no longer own the largest even with asterisks. Jefferson Memorial Forest in Louisville, Ky., connected three separate patches of forest in 2009 to surpass the contiguous area of Portlandâs Forest Park by 1,000 acres.

IMAGE: Evan Johnson

Our titleholder for smallest city parkâthe 2-foot-wide Mill Ends Park on Southwest Naito Parkwayâis also under attack. Promoters in Britain this year petitioned Guinness World Records, saying that Mill Ends was not a park but a âglorified flower pot,â nominating instead Princeâs Park in Burntwood, England. They cited in particular Princeâs Parkâs fence and bench. Portlanders responded by building a miniature fence and bench for Mill Ends, plus a soldier with a bazooka, presumably to keep the British out. The fence and armed forces have since been removed.





Jefferson Theatre

In January 2003, when Fugitives was in galleys, Jefferson Theatre owner Ray Billings, whose establishment showed porn movies, disappeared. He left behind a lawsuit, a pile of debts, a young Thai boyfriend and a half-finished Thai restaurant in Astoria. He returned in July 2005 as mysteriously as heâd left, to find $25,000 in his bank account. While he was gone, a lawyer had taken over Jefferson Theatre and nursed Billingsâ affairs back to health. The theater lost its lease to the Portland Development Commission in 2007; tenants of the building's low-income Jefferson West Apartments were relocated in to a posh LEED-certified apartment building called the Jeffrey.

Billings, undeterred, packed up his porn and took it to the century-old Paris Theatre, across West Burnside Street from the adult bookstore pushed out of business by Commissioner Randy Leonard because it was a magnet for unseemly activity. (The bookstoreâs property is now a village for the homeless, called âRight 2 Dream Too.â) Rayâs Paris Theatre offers a stage where couples can have sex in front of a crowd, plus a âperky exam tableâ and a âvoyeuristic bedroom.â

But despite the many couples offerings, a recent visit finds a smattering of middle-aged men watching a massive projection of tattooed teenage girls being sloppily choked and slapped in the face. The men in the seats have their pants on and look nervous. The men standing in the aisles do not have their pants on, and look very comfortable.

As you enter, all facesâtranslucent in the pale pink flicker of the theaterâlook away from the interlocking figures on the screen and gaze hopefully, instead, on you. Perhaps you will be something new. Perhaps you will be interesting.





A Brief Bestiary

Bear season is over at the Dirty Duck Pub. The manly men now congregate at the âauthentic, masculineâ Eagle on North Lombard Street, which offers âBearly Naked Billiardsâ on Thursdays. The historic Dirty Duck building in Old Town was demolished to make way for the kind mother hens at the new Blanchet House of Hospitality transitional shelter.





The Wildcats of Jeld-Wen Field

The Portland Beavers baseball team is gone, as are the cardboard-cutout âalley-cat racesâ that once graced the minor-league games. (The class-A Hillsboro Hops are now the areaâs only pro baseball team.) But after a 2011 renovation required by Major League Soccer, the stadiumâs feral cat colony remains. According to Ken Puckett of the Portland Timbers, staff moved the catsâ feeding stations bit by bit during the renovation, leading them to safer parts of the stadium, away from what is now the Timbers Army cheering section.

Between eight and 12 cats are still providing sterling rodent control: The teamâs interest in the cats goes beyond preservation. The Timbers enlisted Karen Kraus of the Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon to help place a small colony of cats with the stadium for renewed mousing. Donât bring unloved domestic cats here, though: They wonât be accepted by the wild ones, and will be harmed or driven away.





Western Culinary Institute Amateur Lunch Hour

In 2003, one could go to the Western Culinary Institute cooking school for a $10, high-end, five-course meal at lunchtime. Reservation spots filled quickly with well-to-do cheapskates living in the West Hills. Those meals are gone, as is the schoolâs name: In 2010, Western was renamed Le Cordon Bleu. Western Culinaryâs dime-store luxury restaurant was replaced with a restaurant called Technique, which serves $11 hot dogs topped with squid ink.

Technique is closed due to construction, and a voice recording promises that all phone calls will go unheeded, as âthere is no one here to take your message.â Meanwhile, the school is facing a class-action lawsuit by former students claiming that aggressive salespeople promised the aspiring chefs jobs that did not exist.





IMAGE: Evan Johnson

A Day at the Zoo

In 2003, Palahniuk profiled Jeb Barsh, a fascinatingly empathetic head elephant keeper who became famous in 2004 as the man who taught Rama, an elephant at the Oregon Zoo, how to paint with both brush and trunk. The paintings, spatters of trunk-blown abstraction and broad expressionist strokes, can sell for thousands. Barsh stepped away from elephants to the African Savanna exhibit in 2012, and declined to participate in this article.

The new head elephant keeper, Bob Lee, was described by Palahniuk as one of three âvery big men.â He is still a big man, with the sturdiness, high-and-tight haircut and hunkered gait of a linebacker. He is helping teach Samudra, the zooâs 4-year-old bull, how to be a man. âIn order for him to see what it looks like to be a big male,â Lee says, âwe put his dad, Tusko, out there with him. Heâs learning how to treat ladies and be a good bull.â He apparently needs the help: He was afraid of his comparatively tiny 7-month-old sister, Lily, when he met her. âShe started chasing him,â Lee says, âand he went into full sprint, looking over his shoulder and just roaring.â

Penguins: Mochica, the foot-fetishist penguin, is now a 20-year-old elder ambassador of the newly rehabbed penguinarium. He still loves shoes. Heâs reportedly since humped the trademark cowboy boots of Gov. John Kitzhaber. He has also humped the shoes of the author of this article.

Sea otters: Thelma and Eddie, both described in Fugitives, are still at the zoo. Eddie is a creaky 15 years old and arthritic, so zookeepers trained him to dunk a mini-basketball to keep mobility in his front elbows, which gained him fleeting notoriety on YouTube. Eddie is known to zoo visitors for an entirely different habit, however, that zookeepers refer to politely as âself-reinforcing behavior.â It requires flexibility only certain mammals possess.





Giraffes: Zoo spokeswoman Krista Swan says she sometimes sees on Facebook accounts that people are excited to witness giraffes mating at the zoo. Thereâs a catch, however: Five-year-old Bakari and 8-year-old Riley are both males. Riley and Bakari like to nuzzle necks, and sometimes Riley will mount Bakari from behind. As we watch, Riley sticks his head below Bakariâs belly. âOh,â says zookeeper Kristina Smith. âRiley likes to lick his pee, too. When Bakariâs peeing, he tastes it and then makes a funny face.â





Movie Madness

Six years after Palahniuk wrote about the motley display of Hollywood artifacts behind glass at Movie Madness video store on Southeast Belmont Street, a piece of his own history turned up at the storeâs museum: the bar of soap that Brad Pitt held in the Fight Club movie poster.

IMAGE: Evan Johnson

The bar was donated by the filmâs director, David Fincher, whose sister Emily lives in Portland. âShe brought the soap in,â says Movie Madness owner Mike Clark. âItâs been really cool to have that here.â In 2012, things moved in the other direction: A man broke into a case and biked away from the store with a filched Winchester rifle used by John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and a shotgun featured in The Wild Bunch.

In February, though, a man hiking through Mount Tabor found the guns in a garbage bag and returned them to the store. âI think what happened,â says Clark, âis that when he stole them, he thought he could make a quick buck. But he didnât have the authenticity to go with that. So they just sat somewhere.â In the meantime, Clark has picked up pieces from his two favorite movies. The first was a chair Ingrid Bergman used in Casablanca. From Citizen Kane he got a Fu Dog, a Chinese lion statue meant for watchful protection.

It is, perhaps, best placed near the guns. Erick Duane Johnson, the man suspected of the original theft, is still at large.





Suicide Bridge

The Vista Bridge high above Southwest Jefferson Street, below which the city stretches out in dizzying panorama, remains a site for suicideâenough so that Mayor Charlie Hales asked the Bureau of Transportation to come up with a solution: barriers, assessed at a cost of $2.5 million. âIf we can find that money,â Hales spokesman Dana Haynes told WW on June 6, âwe think itâs a great idea.â In 2008, the U.S. Department of Transportation assessed the monetary value of a human life at $5.8 million.





IMAGE: Morgan Green-Hopkins

A Confederacy of Santas

In 1996, Portland had its first Santacon, where Palahniuk was among hundreds of drunken people dressed as Santa facing down a wall of bullhorned police officers sworn to protect the sanctity of an urban shopping mall. So it was in the early days. In 2004, teams of transit police followed Santas on the newly forged MAX Yellow Line. In 2005, the Santas slow-crawled a van through downtown with fruitcake loaded onto a catapult. Police cars trailed it suspiciously. âIf you donât do one thing that has the potential to completely fall on its face and one thing that has the potential for mass arrests, youâve failed,â says S.W. Conser, president of KBOOâs board of directors and a longtime Portland Cacophony Society organizer.

Lately, the drunken Santas have entered the mainstream. A company called Stumptown Crawlers piggybacked on the idea by staging a for-profit Santa crawlâpopular with Beavertonians and Greshamitesâthat drew more than 1,000 Santas last year, according to organizers.

Meanwhile, North Portland Santas were barred from generally laid-back bars, including beloved pub Saraveza, and the Eater food blog made anti-Santa signs meant to be printed by area restaurants.

On June 29, a relatively tame and happy crew attended the Summer Santacon. The cadre of about 40 is more Burner than barnstormer. On an 84-degree day, the Santas hold a water-balloon fight in the park at the center of Laddâs Addition. After the fight, they pick up every piece of water balloonâeven though organizer Rich Mackin had made sure to buy biodegradable balloons.

When the group crashes a cast reunion for Nickelodeonâs The Adventures of Pete & Pete, the cast members happily pull out their iPhones to film the Santas as they sing the showâs theme song very, very badly. The Santas then present them with âmutantâ giftsâbabies stabbed with Barbie legs and stuffed monkeys with hands where their genitals should be.

For seven hours, the drunken Santas go from bar to bar, carrying hooch in zipper bags, but the only flashing lights that greet them come from myriad camera flashes. As one summer Santa strolls by with hairy male butt cheeks clenching a red thong, a passerby stops to marvel.

âI guess Portland really is like the TV show,â he says.





Barge In

Thereâs only one thing Palahniuk says he wishes heâd added to Fugitives and Refugees: barge-launching ceremonies at Gunderson Marine on the Willamette in Northwest Portland.

âWhen I worked at Freightliner,â he says, âGunderson was right across the river. You could call up and ask when it would be. Theyâd break a bottle over the barge and watch it splash down into the water.â Gunderson still launches between five and nine barges a year. The boats are up to 400 feet long and take up to six months to build. Hundreds of people sometimes come to watch a boat slide into the water.

IMAGE: Evan Johnson

On June 30, about 50 came to watch the launch of DT 216-7. According to Mark Eitzen, general manager of Gunderson Marine, their customer, Dunlap Towing Company, prefers to hold a larger ceremony at the companyâs home in Puget Sound. It is a small boat, Eitzen says, only 250 feet long and meant to transport wood chips. Bagpipes, the traditional soundtrack to a barge launch, are played on an iPhone. The young woman enlisted to christen the barge with Champagne stifles a giggle when she completes the part of her speech that includes âGod bless.â Before smashing the bottle, she holds it in front of the boat in midswing pantomime for the benefit of the cameras.

The cable is cut and the massive barge creaks against piles of wood for a few moments before the sudden shock of its fast slide into the water. It is accompanied by a tremendous sideways splash that seems dangerous; itâs like a 100-ton kid on a water slide. The barge takes with it a wreckage of the scrap wood that had held it aloft on the shoreline. Little boats tow floater lines around the scrap as the barge twists away from the shore. The scene looks for all the world like the Gulf of Mexico oil cleanup in miniatureâa subtle reminder that Gunderson is one of the main parties involved in the Portland Harbor Superfund cleanup that remains mired in negotiations.

The barge drifts awkwardly away, its course still not steady.

Arts and culture intern Richard Grunert contributed to this story.