Fugitives And Refugees Part 2

Sitting in her studio, with the wide windows looking down into the canyon of Chehalem Creek, Frances Gabe works on more floor plans for her famous house. "In high school," she says, "my psychiatrist told me, 'You're many times over a genius. The world belongs to you, and don't let anyone tell you anything different.'"

2. HOUSE OF c.u.n.t.

Forget the v.a.g.i.n.a Monologues. v.a.g.i.n.a Monologues. This three-woman, two-man theater troupe has gone from parading the street in nothing but G-strings made from human-hair toupees to opening for the Oregon Ballet. Wherever you find them, they'll be pus.h.i.+ng the envelope with their experimental comedy and music. This three-woman, two-man theater troupe has gone from parading the street in nothing but G-strings made from human-hair toupees to opening for the Oregon Ballet. Wherever you find them, they'll be pus.h.i.+ng the envelope with their experimental comedy and music.

3. VOLCANO BASKETBALL.

On Portland's east side, Mount Tabor, Mount Scott, and Rocky b.u.t.te are all volcanic vents left over from the last eruptions of now dormant Mount Hood. Until the next eruption, an asphalt basketball court on Mount Tabor fills the dormant crater.

4. ADULT SOAPBOX DERBY.

Every August, grown-ups race their homemade cars down the steep slopes of Mount Tabor. Cars crash. People are hurt. And someone wins. It's a blast. Look for the preliminary race around August 10, with the finals two weeks later. Or hang out with the racers at the sponsoring bar, Beulahland, 118 NE Twenty-eighth Avenue. Phone: 503-235-2794.

5. SANTA RAMPAGE.

Drinking a hallucinogenic liqueur-made by soaking marijuana in rum, and called "Reindeer f.u.c.ker"-the jolly "red tide" of several hundred Santa Clauses crashes elegant holiday parties, storms through sw.a.n.ky restaurants, boogies in strip clubs, and generally keeps Portlands Central Precinct busy and paranoid. Most American cities have their own "Rampage," but Portlands-held the second weekend in December-is still one of the biggest and best. For more details, see "A Postcard from 1996."

6. THE EMILY d.i.c.kINSON SING-ALONG.

Did you know you can sing any poem by Emily d.i.c.kinson to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas"? Well, come the Belle of Amherst's birthday-December 10-join the crowd at Cafe Lena, 2239 SE Hawthorne Boulevard, to sing the collected works of d.i.c.kinson.

7. ABANDONED TIMBERLINE HIGHWAY.

From the lower end the old road to Timberline Lodge is almost impossible to find, according to Portland architect Bing Sheldon. The original route to the lodge, it's a curving scenic two-lane road that crosses stone bridges and skirts huckleberry fields. Bing says, "It really is an undiscovered treasure." Like the lodge, the road was built during the Depression but was obsolete and replaced by the end of World War II.

"It's still paved, and you can still drive on it," Bing says. "It's a wonderful engineering feat, built on a six percent grade." To find the old road, he says, start at the top, at Timberline Lodge. Driving down from the lodge, look for the first post of the ski lift and a road that heads off to the right, pa.s.sing under the ski lift.

8. FIRE DEPARTMENT RIDE-ALONGS.

The Portland Fire Bureau responds to about one fire every three hours. If you can wait, you can ride along. According to a spokesman for the bureau, you must be eighteen and, yes, you can ride on the fire engine. The only thing you can't do is go into the fire. b.u.mmer. To make your plans, call the chief at one of the fire stations.

9. THAT'S NO LADY.

Most people think Gracie Hansen is dead.

Hansen was the queen of Portland for years, the big-busted, loud-laughing queen of the Roaring Twenties Showroom at the Hoyt Hotel, a faux-Gay Nineties palace of antiques and special effects built by some of Hollywood's top set designers.

Before 1961, Gracie Hansen was a schoolteacher from Morton, Was.h.i.+ngton, who dreamed of chucking the small-town life in central Was.h.i.+ngton State and moving to Seattle. There, she wanted to stage a burlesque show at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. "She needed fifty thousand dollars," says ch.o.r.eographer Roxy Leroy Neuhardt. "The story is, she found forty-nine Chinese men with a thousand dollars each and one Greek with a thousand." He says, "And they ended up serving Greek food-for whatever reason."

After the fair closed, the only things to stay were the s.p.a.ce Needle and the Monorail. Harvey d.i.c.k, who was renovating Portland's old Hoyt Hotel, recruited Hansen to come south and put on her burlesque show in his new showroom. His bar, the Barbary Coast, had no electricity, only gaslight, and it was famous for the urinals in the men's room: a sculpted, landscaped waterfall you peed into. Says Roxy, "They took a huge dirty old garage and when they were done, you'd swear that whole room had come around the Horn in the last century."

It was at the Hoyt Hotel that local actor Walter Cole first put on a dress. As a lark. It was a gown that Roxy had "borrowed" from Hansen's wardrobe.

"Gracie saw it and she was very very angry," Walter says. "But she didn't say a word because she didn't know me." angry," Walter says. "But she didn't say a word because she didn't know me."

About drag queens, Walter and Roxy say they're nothing new in Portland. Every burlesque and vaudeville program had a female impersonator, usually the master of ceremonies. The famed impersonator Julian Eltinge was a Portland favorite when he toured from New York, and a dozen pictures of him dressed as a woman still hung in Portlands Heilig Theater when it was torn down. Since the early 1900s, the Harbor Club at SW First Avenue and Yamhill Street had offered drag shows. It became the only bar in Oregon declared off-limits to members of the U.S.

Navy. In the 1930s drag shows moved to the Music Hall at 413 SW Tenth Avenue, which became Club Rumba in the 1940s. In the 1950s the Jewel Box Revue Jewel Box Revue toured the country with female impersonators from Kansas City and played in Rossini's Clover Room, what's now the office s.p.a.ce above the Finnegan's toy store. toured the country with female impersonators from Kansas City and played in Rossini's Clover Room, what's now the office s.p.a.ce above the Finnegan's toy store.

In the 1960s Roxy was a ch.o.r.eographer and dancer in Las Vegas. He was in Hollywood when he met Hansen, both of them costume shopping for their respective shows. He came to Portland, but only for sixteen weeks, to help launch the new Roaring Twenties show. One night at the old drag bar Dahl and Penne's, Roxy met Walter Cole, a local actor and businessman. He'd owned Portland's first "Beat" coffeehouse, Cafe Espresso. And Studio A, a jazz club at SW Second Avenue and Clay Street. He acted at the Firehouse Theater on SW Montgomery Street. "Attorneys and doctors," Walter says, "that's all I ever got to play. At least I didn't have to do my own wardrobe when I wore a suit."

Since the early 1950s, the Imperial Rose Court of Portland had elected an empress every Halloween. In 1974, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Randy Shuts was a student at the University of Oregon when he won the national William Randolph Hearst Award for a newspaper article he'd written about the court. But like shanghaiing, brothels, and ghosts, drag queens aren't part of the official Portland history book.

In 1972, wearing Gracie Hansen's gown, using the name Darcelle, Walter Cole became the fifteenth empress of Portland, only the second empress elected in a new city-wide voting system that began the year before.

But Walter didn't just borrow Hansen's gown. He borrowed her entire persona. When the Hoyt Hotel went out of business, Walter in his own way became became Hansen. Although diabetes took first one leg and then her life, Grade Hansen lives on, her jokes and dresses and loud personality, in the form of Darcelle XV Hansen. Although diabetes took first one leg and then her life, Grade Hansen lives on, her jokes and dresses and loud personality, in the form of Darcelle XV Well, they were sort of Hansen's jokes.

In her act, Walter says, Hansen carried a big feathered fan. But when she was learning a new routine, the fan would be paper so she could write her jokes on the inside. Her memory wasn't so hot. She'd stop, read a joke off the fan, and tell it. "When she needed new material," he says, "she went to see Totie Fields in Las Vegas and smuggled in a a tape recorder." tape recorder."

Walter says, "I inherited all her wardrobe, and I'm still using parts of it. Her jewelry. Her sewing room . . . I'm still sewing on some of those sequins and beads and rhinestones from the Hoyt Hotel." He points out a framed photo of himself as the character Darcelle, wearing a sequined blue Gracie Hansen gown.

If you ask, Does it still fit him?

Walter says, "Yes . . . ?"

And the staff of his nightclub laughs.

"Okay!" he says. "So I added some feathers on the side. That's no sin!"

In 1972, when Walter opened his nightclub in Old Town, Roxy was in the original show. His first night tap dancing there, "Roxy's first boy boy tap dance got this," Walter says and claps once. "The next night, in drag, he got a standing ovation because n.o.body'd ever seen a tap-dancing drag queen." tap dance got this," Walter says and claps once. "The next night, in drag, he got a standing ovation because n.o.body'd ever seen a tap-dancing drag queen."

Officially called "Walter Cole Presents: That's No Lady-That's Darcelle XV and Company," Walter and Roxy still run the last real burlesque show in town. In the North End's dark tradition of cabarets and music halls, it's a storefront theater, where-sick or well-the show must go on. Even now, at seventy-one years old, Walter Cole still adjusts the stage lights. He cleans the toilets. He makes his own costumes. When it rains too hard, the gutters flood the bas.e.m.e.nt, and mopping up is also his job.

But when the curtain rises, he's wearing Gracie Hansen's gowns and jewelry, laughing her laugh. Telling her jokes. Well. . . telling Totie Fields's jokes.

"The only way I'll retire is when they plant me," Walter says. "And I hope it's during a full house."

"And he's just gotten a laugh," Roxy says.

"And I've just gotten a standing ovation," Walter says.

Darcelle's is at 208 NW Third Avenue. Phone: 503-222-5338.

10. BEHIND CLOSED DOORS.

Portland is chockablock with beautiful, historic houses, and on the right day, you can walk right in the front door. To qualify for property tax breaks, the owners of historic houses and buildings must open them to the public at least one day each year. On any day you can go to the website of the State Historic Preservation Office, www.shpo.state.or.us, and find out which local houses are open.

11. MONK-FOR-A-MONTH.

Here's getting away from it all. all. Live as a Trappist monk for thirty days at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey. You'll be out of bed for vigil prayers at 4:15 every morning and spend your days working with fellow monks, binding books, baking fruitcakes, and tending the forest that surrounds their isolated abbey. You'll be a.s.signed a mentor to show you the ropes. The monastery is southwest of Portland, in the small town of Lafayette. Phone: 503-852-0107. Or write: Monastic Life Retreat, Trappist Abbey, Lafayette, OR 97127. Live as a Trappist monk for thirty days at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey. You'll be out of bed for vigil prayers at 4:15 every morning and spend your days working with fellow monks, binding books, baking fruitcakes, and tending the forest that surrounds their isolated abbey. You'll be a.s.signed a mentor to show you the ropes. The monastery is southwest of Portland, in the small town of Lafayette. Phone: 503-852-0107. Or write: Monastic Life Retreat, Trappist Abbey, Lafayette, OR 97127.

12. TRICERATOPS CLEANING.

Sixty-five million years ago, a baby triceratops was trying to cross a river in what would someday be eastern Wyoming. Well, the little tyke didn't make it. She drowned. Now she's "field jacketed" in thick plaster and waiting for you to come help sc.r.a.pe away the millennia of hardened mud. According to Greg Dardis, OMSI earth science lead educator, this cleaning will take the next fifteen to twenty years.

"Paleontology is all about humility and patience," Greg says.

"And calluses," calluses," adds volunteer Art Johnstone, as he sc.r.a.pes away with a dental pick. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is at 1945 SE Water Avenue. adds volunteer Art Johnstone, as he sc.r.a.pes away with a dental pick. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is at 1945 SE Water Avenue.

13. EVICTION COURT.

For anyone who thinks the tradition of oral storytelling is dead, this is a must-see. Go to the Multnomah County Courthouse, downtown, at SW Fourth Avenue and Main Street. Enter through the main door on SW Fourth Avenue and go to Room 120. Eviction Court meets Monday through Friday at 9:00 A.M., and all dirty laundry is loudly thrown around. It is the professional wrestling of the courthouse.

14. THE DE-VIRGINIZING DANCE.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Rocky Horror Picture Show has been playing as a midnight movie at the Clinton Street Theater for more than twenty years. According to Rachel, a student at the Metropolitan Learning Center in Northwest Portland, anyone who has never been to the costumed audience-partic.i.p.ation event is labeled a "virgin" and hauled up onstage for a rite of pa.s.sage. The legally eighteen are separated from the under-eighteen, and. . . "They took this one girl up onstage and stripped her naked," Rachel says. "Then they wrapped her in gauze and dribbled this sticky red stuff on her and called her a used tampon." Rachel calls this "the de-virginizing dance." After all that you must swear to come see the show at least three times a year. has been playing as a midnight movie at the Clinton Street Theater for more than twenty years. According to Rachel, a student at the Metropolitan Learning Center in Northwest Portland, anyone who has never been to the costumed audience-partic.i.p.ation event is labeled a "virgin" and hauled up onstage for a rite of pa.s.sage. The legally eighteen are separated from the under-eighteen, and. . . "They took this one girl up onstage and stripped her naked," Rachel says. "Then they wrapped her in gauze and dribbled this sticky red stuff on her and called her a used tampon." Rachel calls this "the de-virginizing dance." After all that you must swear to come see the show at least three times a year.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Rocky Horror Picture Show plays every Sat.u.r.day night at the Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton Street. plays every Sat.u.r.day night at the Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton Street.

(a postcard from 1985)

Our third night shooting on location, no one can find our meat.

The set dressers and props people are p.i.s.sed. They bought special cuts of meat for this, steaks thick as dictionaries. Chops big around as tennis shoes. They spent time rubbing the raw meat with face powder so it wouldn't s.h.i.+ne under the hot lights. So it would look okay on camera.

This is a music video being shot at Corno's Supermarket at SE Union Avenue and Morrison Street. The band is called Cavalcade of Stars, sometimes just COS, and the song is called "Butcher Boy." All night, from the time the market closes until it opens, a video crew is here on location. Night after night.

The chorus boys are dressed as butchers in long white coats, but with big blue-eye shadow eyes and cheekbones defined with smears of plum and magenta. Their hair, moussed and teased into stiff crowns. The chorus girls wear oversized sweats.h.i.+rts in Day-Glo yellow or pink, with the collar and sleeves ripped off. They wear striped tights and pull the sweats.h.i.+rts to one side so one bare shoulder always shows. Their hair is streaked with bright green or pink and tied with sc.r.a.ps of orange or blue lace. Their eyes are sunk into deep holes surrounded with black mascara.

For take after take the boys flop the steaks around behind the butcher counter, trying to look busy, tossing the meat with dirty hands and dropping it on the floor. The girls dance with shopping carts as partners.

Local celebrities make cameo appearances. The rock critic John Wendeborn drinks champagne in the background of one shot. Billy Rancher, the lead singer of Billy Rancher and the Unreal G.o.ds, looks thin and cool, his hair frosted in streaks, his band poised to be Portland's next Quarterflash.

Me, one night out bar hopping with friends, a stranger gave me a business card and said to come for an audition. Now my role is to give the lead singer, Rhonda Kennedy, a come-hither look and make love to her in the meat locker. While dry ice fog cascades over us, we writhe naked in an antique bed surrounded by frozen sides of beef.

The blue and red lights in the meat locker are melting the frozen meat. Pork and beef blood drips on us. It drips on the purple satin bedsheets. Rhonda gives me my first cocaine, a fat envelope I take into a bathroom stall. I have no idea what to do, so I poke my nose into the white dust and inhale it all in one long breath. My face flushed red, dusted with white, I could be a slab of our missing meat.

And Rhonda says, "That was for all of us." all of us."

She and I, we embrace and spin together under the colored lights, we fall into the big damp bed, and Rhonda's b.r.e.a.s.t.s bounce out the top of her black lace negligee.

And the director yells, "Cut."

Between takes, while the crew sets up the lights and cameras for the next shot, Billy Rancher and the chorus girls link arms and walk down SE Union Avenue, filling the empty street at three or four in the morning. These flashy, glam kids, they walk the half block to the all-night Burns Brothers truck stop. They smoke clove cigarettes and order coffee and dazzle the tired gas jockeys.

Almost no one here is getting paid. We're each promised a percent of the profits from the sale of the video. We pray for a heavy rotation on MTV.

Within a couple of years, Billy Rancher will be dead from cancer. John Wendeborn will be fired. The Corno's Supermarket will close. Union Avenue will be renamed for Martin Luther King Jr. Even the greasy old Burns Brothers truck stop will be replaced with a new minimart.

Soon enough, the Dalai Lama will slap Rhonda Kennedy across the face and she'll become a force for the liberation of Tibet. She'll chaperone a team of Buddhist monk "skeleton dancers" on the Lollapalooza Tour with the Beastie Boys. Fifteen years after we spent our night in a bed soaked with cold animal blood, Rhonda tells me nothing is as nasty as sharing a tour bus bathroom with Buddhist monks: They're not allowed to touch their p.e.n.i.ses and refuse to p.i.s.s sitting down.

Still, that night wearing all our blue eye shadow, we're thinking this will make us famous. We will look young and hip- forever.

It's at some point that night the set dressers get word about the missing meat. The extra-thick steaks and chops, coated with makeup, fingerprints, and floor dirt, was ground into hamburger. By mistake, the day s.h.i.+ft sold it all to customers.