Roaming charges may apply

After San Jose we began the trek to Portland, Oregon. We took a slight detour to a little mountain town outside of Bend, Oregon to visit a friend. Giant pine trees stretched as far as the eye could see, giving the place a downright eerie feel. If we had known his misty little hamlet was identical to every ‘spooky-small-town-murder-mystery’ TV show, we wouldn’t have gone.

The whole place was weird as shit. We arrived on a Saturday night and headed to the local bar - which closed and locked up at 10 p.m. Who does that? When we pulled the door to enter, it clicked and rattled in its frame. The few people inside spun their heads and flashed a dead-eyed gaze in unison. We must’ve interrupted their seance.

Even the weather was possessed of a dark, supernatural spirit. On the ride in, it went from cloudy to rainy to snowy in under an hour.

We consider ourselves lucky to have stayed the night without becoming blood sacrifices to Satan or being abducted by inter-dimensional beings. We rose with the sun to boogie outta town.

Keep Portland Weird

The people of Portland were weird in the best way. The first indication that Portlanders were awesome was this: of all the places we’ve been to, Portland was the first city where the response to being told we live in a van was “Show me!”.

Most people respond “Ohh …” and then shuffle away as quickly as possible, but these folks were willing and eager to hop in the van. It was refreshing not to be viewed as creepy van dudes, because we’re totally normal.

The second indication that Portlanders were cool came from their activity recommendations. The very first suggestion was “Go to a strip club!”. We appreciated the earnest recommendation but we aren’t strip club guys. We’re not morally against stripping; we’re financially against it. It’s a waste of money.

In strip clubs you pay just to watch women dance. That’s like going to KFC and paying just to watch chicken cook -- when all you really wanna do is fuck the chicken.

But that’s not all!

The strip club recommendation caught us off guard, but we figured the next one would be more wholesome. It was not. The second suggestion was “Smoke some pot!”. We were beginning to realize that Portland, like Philly, had some grit to it. It’s the type of town where a fellow could snort blow off a switchblade in the middle of a bar and no one would bat an eye.

The last recommendation was finally something innocuous -- they suggested we go hiking. We don’t understand the fascination with hiking. If the best thing to do in your city is walk out of that city, it can’t be that great.

Mo’ parking mo’ problems

Portland must’ve been cracking down on people living in vehicles. Almost every parking lot was under constant surveillance with security guards shooing people away. We were kicked out of a Planet Fitness parking lot at 2 a.m. the very first night in town. A security guy told us there was no overnight parking, and a huge convoy of fellow vanlifers drove to the loudest place on Earth ...

For any van lifers reading this, avoid Walmart parking at all costs. If you plan to get any sleep, forget about it. At all hours of the night you’ll hear carts crashing, horns blaring, music blasting, reverse beeps, street sweepers, truck deliveries, police sirens, and people screaming at each other. It sucks.

Lots were even patrolled during the day. At 4 p.m. we were hanging in the van after a workout when we met the world's least aggressive security guy. This hippie looking dude sheepishly walked over and said “Hey guys, I don’t mind at all that you’re parked here. I see that you use the gym and don’t bother anyone. I don’t mind at all. But my boss - everyone calls her the wicked witch - is always watching the lot, and if SHE says something, I’ll have to ask you guys to leave but otherwise keep doing what you’re doing. I think it’s fine”.

The guy was so docile; so desperate not to be the bad guy. He looked like he lived in a van himself and wanted to join us, even. After he finished passing the buck to his boss we were waiting for him to say “Again, I don’t mind. I love the van, by the way. It looks like there’s plenty of room for two, or even three people to fit comfortably”. He was chill.

A tale of two cities

We were warned that comedy in Portland could be a bit touchy. That the tolerance for edginess was lower than average and some topics were flat-out forbidden. The rumors made it sound like a minefield but none of the rooms ever felt suffocating. On the contrary, the rooms we worked were well up for some blue material. There were groans here and there but that’s normal.

When we told the comedians what we had heard, they acknowledged that   some shows are super restrictive. They explained that the Portland comedy scene is essentially split into two factions -- actual comedians vs. virtue signallers, aka those who go for laughs vs. those who go for claps, aka funny people vs. unfunny turds.

Everything can be funny. You should be able to try out any material you want, and for the most part Portland is very much of that mind. It’s only a small group of PC extremists who want to shout people down for not espousing identical political viewpoints or social beliefs.

The real comedians are aware of the unfunny ranting trend and have devised methods to thwart it. One of the comics we met started running a show where performers have to get laughs within one minute or get off the stage. If they fail to elicit laughter after 60 seconds, they’re done. But if they’re getting laughs, they can do up to 10 minutes. It’s a pretty damn clever solution!

Showtime

We really loved Portland. All the comics we met were so funny, open, and welcoming. They went out of their way to make traveling comedians have a good experience. When we got into town we only had one show booked for the week (feature slots on a Thursday night show). But after an open mic on Tuesday, we got booked for the rest of the week thru Saturday.

This was followed by the show on Thursday

The show on Friday was in a smaller room and the intimate space provided a great opportunity to practice crowd work.

The last show was about an hour outside of Portland in a town called Welches. Google described this location as a “village”. We carpooled in with two awesome comics from St. Louis and Tampa. The show was a blast -- in that small town, comedy was the only thing to do and it felt like the whole town came to the show.

After the show we kicked it with the other comics, trading war stories, and laughs and began the long drive back into Portland. We continued the journey North until we hit Seattle.