Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The Great Tape Debate 2007


I really love this city. I have grown up here and I live in the heart of the city just blocks from what is considered downtown. Everyone who seems not to hate this place is in love with this city. I love the way that the people of Portland allow weird shit to go on. From this weekends Naked Bike Ride that is a form of protest of oil, to the Portland Urban Iditarod that coincides with the real Iditarod just with humans pulling instead of dogs. The city is full of weirdo's and crazy people who take things a little to far crying tradition and being a copy cat.
We just had our 100 year Portland Rose Festival which end with a big freaking parade with all the floats covered in organic things with color. Am I a bad person who laughed because it rained? Am I just a young punk who thrives at people who get wet or ruining a tradition in some people eyes because I was involved with making a change. People see it as tradition by puting tape down and calling dibs on a public piece of Portland fucking Oregon sidewalks and streets. The tradition as they call is is less then 10 percent of the whole shin dig of The Grand Floral Parade. You can't tape down a spot at the D.M.V. or in a ticketmaster venue so I can get the artist formaly known as Prince's world tour 2009. If you want to save a spot you sit in that spot. Just like I did for the return of Star Wars with episode I. We were out there for over a week. We weren't the first in line and we were ok with that. Being 5th is ok.
People were mad and people were ok with what was going on. 40 blocks of tape and chairs takes time, almost 2 hours. Tape was pulled up from every spot not being held down by a human being. So you can only imagine how much tape was pulled up from both sides of the road for almost the whole 40 blocks. Every inch wasn't taped but every block had 3 or 4 spots on both sides of the road. It will be interesting to see what happens next year but I can be for certain, someone will copy the great tape debate but i'm sure someone will be arrested next year.

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