Get ready for this to bog down your browswer…. Jenna and Evert got married in their amazing home, which was a no brainer. We’ve been to a string of great weddings lately, but Jenna and Evert were definitely on their A-game planning for this one. It kicked off with Evert’s entrance – accompanied by a marching band. That’s right, and it was all time. The band started in the street and played for a few minutes. By the time they got to the driveway, car alarms were going off and the people waiting in the back yard probably had no idea what was coming their way. Make sure you turn up your volume, especially if you’re at work:
Here’s a quick rundown of the rest of the night:
They have a gazebo with a little stream next to it in the back yard, so the wedding happened their. Everyone stood around it, and there were tables all around the pool and rest of the yard ready for after the ceremony.
Bartenders were dressed in black head to toe adidas outfits looking really good. With a little help from them, pretty much everyone there was hammered.
The DJ was great and got things warmed up dinner, which was great food grilled on the spot. They also brought in a falafel truck and parked it in the back yard.
Once dinner was done, they brought out a Brazilian band that made as much ruckus as the marching band. I can’t believe out of all the people dancing right next to the pool, nobody fell in.
This lead to more drinking, people in the pool with their clothes on, and me getting thrown in by Evert and Flo. They were nice enough to let me ditch my phone and things like that.
Extracto brought coffee and got us wired back up.
At midnight, Faz and Brandon’s band started to play, and by the end of the first song, the cops were there threatening to take the equipment and fine them $2000. After two marching bands in a normal neighborhood, it wasn’t really a surprise.
(Roll over the images for descriptions, click on them to see them larger, hit play for a slideshow)
This morning was pre-game for the wedding in the afternoon.
Met up with Vin, Meghan, Couler, & Goobkin at Screen Door for a chicken and waffles binge breakfast, the unhealthiest meal I have ever eaten in my life.
Off to the Nike employee store with Meghan, where she got me to buy into Nike + and even buy a pair of Nike shoes to go with it. I haven’t owned a pair of Nikes since college.
While we were driving around Portland, I made the wedding program we realized nobody had made, stopped at Kinko’s and had it printed in 10 minutes.
(Roll over the images for descriptions, click on them to see them larger, hit play for a slideshow)
Tara had a wedding shower lunch, I went shopping.
We met up with Lee Dexheimer in the Pearl, went to Powell’s and everything else around there.
Dumped a bunch of money at the adidas employee store, an annual event.
Made a flyer for Evert & Jenna’s neighbors asking them not to get pissed off at the impending ruckus.
Hunted down Coulter and Gubkin, and met up with them at Lorenzo’s on Mississippi. There was plenty of smack talk leading up to this meeting.
Found a cool bar on Mississippi and kept drinking
Met up with all the wedding people at Rom Tom’s and ran into Gin Yang who was in town for some tattoos.
Back to Faz’s house where Evert’s mom had spent 10 hours cooking Finnish cinnamon rolls. I also practiced some terms in Finnish, and learned "So, do you listen to a lot of black metal?" and "How many of your uncles have killed themselves this year?"
(Roll over the images for descriptions, click on them to see them larger, hit play for a slideshow)
Kicked off Extracto, since we’ve been waiting a year to find ourselves in there again.
Jumped on Facebook and continued pre-game threats with Coulter.
Went over to see Jenna & Evert’s house. Holy shit, nicest house anywhere. Watched Tepu jump into trees over and over.
Evert’s bachelor party was supposed to be surfing at Short Sands, but a sewage spill kept that from happening. Instead, we went go-karting where they claimed the karts go 50mph, which might be true if you weigh 40 pounds.
Back to Evert’s house to meet up and head to Montage. Kate puts a wedding dress on him and he doesn’t even resist. In fact, I think he liked it. He’s a good looking woman. Faz went to the bachelorette party instead.
After a long dinner at Montage, the party moved to Sassy’s and the ladies met up with us. Brandon Madrid showed up and after some good catching up, we gave him a ride home he may or may not remember.
(Roll over the images for descriptions, click on them to see them larger, hit play for a slideshow)
Part of this adventure was just the nightmare trip out at the end of the day. I won’t go through the painful details, so here it is recapped: 3 hours on the runway, switched airlines twice, ran the ENTIRE length of the massive Chicago airport (every terminal because of three different airlines), was told our rental car wouldn’t be available and was sold out, no chance of bags showing up.
People of Portland, hold back your tears. For the first time in 5 years, we will not be attending our annual blow shit up trip to PDX for the 4th because we’ll be there in a few weeks for Jenna & Evert’s wedding. We’ll make up for it then.
Year four of our 4th of July trip was fun as usual. We packed it all into fewer days this year than last year, and missed a few people like the shamefully, disgracefully MIA Ryan Coulter. Other than that, it was the usual lack of sleep, lots of booze, and unplanned chaos. Here’s where it starts, and here are the Best-of photos:
We started the trip off by hitting no traffic on the way to the airport, getting the best parking spot near the airport, and not a single person in line for security. After that I mentioned it was too good to be true, and sure enough the rest of the flight was a nightmare. We sat on the runway forever waititng to take off, Tara had a kid that kept kicking her seat the whole time, and I had a creepy woman next to me that kept rubbing up against me. As if she wasn’t irritating me enough, I fell alseep and then woke up to her drink on my tray. And the topper, the plane had its own lightshow that "should go away after we take off." It didn’t. US Air sucks ass.
We got to Faz’s house pretty late and decided to postpone the planned cocktails.
We got up the next morning and hit Extracto for coffee with Goobkin and Kara, and of course Bruce .
With Faz at work, we decided to make the shopping rounds and get as much knocked out as possible. Everything from downtown to Hawethorne and the Pearl District. We always hit my favorite store, The Office.
At the end of day 1, we went to Holden to get Faz and ended up crashing a wedding of people we didn’t know. It was pretty informal and at the Rose Garden.
We left the wedding and met up with Vin and Meghan at Toro Bravo. Sandra Rossi and her boyfriend were at the wedding and hooked up with us too. Kickass tapas, and Meghan and I pounded large amounts of sangria. I also got to meet Vin’s new truck.
We left dinner to go check out Instrument. Vin’s obviously doing something right, kickass space and those 30-inchers get him feeling frisky.
We then rejoined the wedding party that was taking place at Greg Keeling’s house. By 1:00am the cops showed up. I was half passed out in a chair by the door and cracked the door open never getting up because I thought it was just a pissed off neighbor, but no big deal.
It’s now the 4th, the main reason we’re here. We head up to Vancouver, WA to stockpile explosives. Since this turned into a solo mission, we’re already realizing it’s going to be a little bit mellower this year. Supposedly the cops were cracking down, but what was going down later this night showed anything but. One of my favorite parts of the 4th is the product development that goes into fireworks. The two standouts were the New Hotness (the term that stuck for the whole trip and then some) and the Big Block.
We stopped by Vin’s to see his house and his dog with some special issues. As you can see here, he threw himself on his back, peed, and then licked it right up. Ummm ummm.
We made the rounds to several BBQ’s working up to darkness. The first one was at Louis Carlton’s great house with a huge back yard complete with a mini ramp. We then moved on to Tara’s friends from school Oliver and Sarah who had the most amazing house, guest house, and view. Jess Gibson was setting off bottle rockets and this was the only one I filmed, only because I was drunk. Check it hitting the car… Capozzi and Leigh are their neighbors, more VT notches on Portland’s belt.
We then headed over to Faz’s for some fireworks. LG fired up a four-pack of Roman candles. The 4th isn’t complete without Brandon sending something flaming into a crowd, this time it was the lady bug that chased a crowd of people towards the garage when it fired in the wrong direction. That was after a few shots to the houses next door.
We got up the next morning for mandatory Lorn and Dotties potato pancakes.
Then we headed over to Weiden and Kennedy for the tour. Holy shit that place is amazing – I never had any idea the size of it and the building it was in. They have a wall of employee photos in the lobby, and without question Meghan has the best photo.
We did some more shopping, and then headed over to Yoko’s sushi to meet up with Erika Clark who was also in town with her kids. The gameplan was sushi and roller skating. I wasn’t all that stoked to spend time at a roller rink, but once we showed up it was well worth it. This place is stuck in a time warp, and Tara showed she was the freight train from hell on her skates. There was a roller derby team practicing next door.
We headed back into town to a good bar with all vintage furniture (I forgot the name) and then the Alibi, another mandatory stop. One of my favorite bars anywhere.
The next day we hooked up with Jenna and Meghan to drive to the beach. We started at Pacific City where it was cold and windy and too blown out to surf so we sat out and drank some beers. She hooked us up with a house to stay in, and then Everett and Faz showed up.
The day after that we went up to Short Sands to surf. Perfect weather. I was regretting bringing out a 6/4 wetsuit, but for no reason. The water was 50 titty-freezing degrees. It was fun to be back there and in the water.
We shot back into town for an art opening at Cal’s (which we missed) that was also followed up with a bachelor party for Jon Humphries. I knew of him, but didn’t know him, so we crashed that too. We finally caught up with Ehren and Erik Railton, but we only made it 15 minutes before Faz wounded himself trying to open a beer. This was the amazing part of this party – 50 or 60 people skating, and they left Pharmacy to head dowtown to go out. Once they took off it was time to head to the ER…
While in the waiting room, we decided to go to Pix Patisserie to pick up some desserts. Faz scored big time with a really cool hand surgeon to stitch him back up. He told us all the fireworks accident stories for Portland this year.
We got out of the ER at 1:00am and headed downtown to meet up. At this point everyone’s drunk and beating up road cones, and they move on to Sassy’s. They skate there in about the same amount of time it takes us to drive there.
I’m not big into strip clubs, but Sassy’s is the perfect bar: Dirty bar with no cover, $3 beers, and butt-naked chicks. Fuck yeah. This was the pile of skate decks at the door.
Now it’s 3:00am and we start moving to the next spot. In a funny-but-not-so-funny way, as we’re getting into the car Tara disappears on the other side of it. She stepped into a pothole and jacked her ankle. We now head to Taco Bell to get Ehren and Faz some food before dropping them off at Devil’s Point for a private strip club party. They somewhat resume last year’s debates, but are too drunk to really say anything meaningful. Tara and I decided to head home, but apparently we missed out on some heavy-duty chaos that lasted until 6am.
We got up the next morning to go to Cal’s and see the opening we missed the night before. Almost everything had sold that night. From last year to this year, Pharmacy remodeled the whole retail space and is one of the nicest shops anywhere.
We hit Extracto one last time for breakfast.
We shot over to Ehren and Daniele’s house to say hi.
We shopped a little more, and headed to the PruVecchia’s for our last cookout before heading to the airport.
That’s the best I can remember – last year I kept track each day, this year I’m relying on my shitty memory supported by a sequence of photos.
Our sorta-annual 4th of July trip to Portland was a great one. Faz put up with us for 10 days and we did a month’s worth of stuff in that time, and drank about two month’s worth. Here’s most of what we did…
Got up and went to Lorn and Dottie’s for potato pancakes
Went to Extracto for coffee.
Started working our way to the beach, stopping in McMinnville to check out Ehren McGhehey’s new shop called Valley.
Worked our way to Pacific City to Ehren’s new house
Did a bunch of house stuff and then hit the beach
Jumped in the water for some not-so-great surf, but it was still fun
Spent a lot of time wrestling Ehren and Danielle’s dog Whiskey (video)
Headed back to the beach for a late-night to climb up the side of a cliff overlooking the ocean. These are the no-joke fireworks people were setting off.
Got some vague, tight-lipped hints from Ehren of what’s coming up in Jackass 2 while Faz freaked out about potentially falling off this cliff. Can’t wait.
Got up and tried to make a big big fridge fit into a small space.
Went to breakfast with the clan where Ehren
and Faz (video) stepped into the ring with a good debate. All time.
Headed back to Portland
Went to one of our favorite PDX places, Doug Fir to eat and then see Rogue Wave. The show and the atmosphere were surrealistically good..
Got our cookout on, lots of people coming by: Vin, Coulter and Goobkin, the Reeds, LG & Ara, Kara.
Game on, time to blow shit up. $200 of fireworks. No casualties, except for a close call with a bottle rocket skimming my cheek and missing my eye by about half an inch. (More / slideshow)
Walked around Hawethorne
Rented a car
Went to see Vin and the new Instrument global headquarters
Stopped by Kegler and Eric Peet’s space
Hit up Burgerville just because
Went over to Cal’s Pharmacy and Dept. Pharmacy is under long-term construction.
Hooked up with Ehren and Danielle and played pool at Bar of the Gods while we waited for our table for pizza
Stopped by a kickass birthday party and watched a kickass rockabilly band, Dead Man’s Hand.
Drank more at a different bar. Again.
Hit the adidas employee store for some shoes. I got my first pair of running
shoes ever that require a manual, CD-rom, and crazy over-packaging.
Mio sushi for lunch, best sushi ever.
Stopped by Holden again
First Thursday was going on and we went to a party at the adidas Originals store, where Tara won a raffle for a free track jacket and a pair of shoes for me. As if we hadn’t just bought enough stuff with three stripes on it. Booyah.
Muu-Muu’s for dinner
The Alibi for cocktails. Karaoke night. I’ve had more alcohol this week than I usually drink in 3 months. This is still the greatest bar ever built.
Went out to Beaverton for the Paper Zone
Right back to Portland to check out Bonfire’s super so nice new space. Had Phil prepare me an espresso because he likes, and needs, to serve me.
Went to see Pirates of the Caribbean in Lloyd Center. Not so rad.
Went over to Esparza’s for dinner
Went to Collosal for more drinks
Got up and went to breakfast at Violet with Shawn and Faz
Made the rounds of every vintage store in Portland and could have left with a lot of new furniture
Hooked up with Melanie at Kennedy School for our final meal before heading to the airport, ended up right next to Kegler.
Flew home on the red eye. Painful.
Got home, napped for 2 hours, picked up my dad and went to a Phillies game for his delayed Father’s Day gift.
We just got to Portland for the not-quite annual 4th of July Blow Shit Up vacation. We’re off to an epic start over the last two days that’ll be setting the standard for the rest of this trip. There’s lots of people to catch up with and lots of shit to blow up, and no time to add anything now. Brace yourself for a mountain of good photos and even some video…
Friends, Portland |
chuck | 
July 26, 2008 4:38 pm | 
Comments (0) 
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"should go away after we take off." It didn’t. US Air sucks ass.
