Cabbying around Portland, I see that there are all kinds of people here. However, there was a time I would never choose the word "diverse"to describe Portland. I thought, how could a town that is blindingly white be termed anything but homogenous? But that was when I was fresh off the boat, so to speak, and still used to seeing in NYC Technicolor. Now that I've been here for some years, my senses have adjusted. Like Eskimos, who have thirty plus words for snow, I can see that there are a lot of different kinds of folks here, even if most of 'em are palefaces. Yep, there's bikers, bible thumpers, butt-rockers, gangsters, goths, swingers, stoners, j.a.p.s., b.a.p.s., a.a.p.s., tweakers, trailer trash, punks, preppies, hippies, yuppies, freaks, frat-rats, mall-rats, mods, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick venal... Once aware of the staggering breadth of the white scale in Portland, I turned my question around. I began pondering what unites all these disparate contingents. My conclusion is that the only the abiding, binding force is that Portland is the end of the line for terminal trends. This is where lifestyles and fashions come to die, and then suddenly, inexplicably revive and survive well beyond their time. Portland is like The Land That Time Forgot.

To see what I mean, try stepping into the Mount Tabor Pub on a Sunday night. Once your eyes clear from the heavy patchoulie oil/body odor fumes (I mean, it smells like Jerry died there), you'll see a crowd that looks like they got off at the wrong exit on their way to Woodstock. The place packs the hippies in for its free weekly drum circle. It's filled with twirling girls in purple broomstick skirts and macrame halters, and lots of tie-dyed fabulous furry freak brothers doing that little off-beat, loss of motor control dance they do so badly. There's usually about a hundred people, sharing about six hefeweizens. How the place pays the rent, I don't know. Maybe they have stock in a drum making business, or take a cut off of the pot deals.

On the flip side of the hippies are Portland's ridiculous mamby-pamby proto-punks. Sometimes Pioneer Square looks more like King's Road, circa 1977. Mohawks! Give me a fucking break! No one, nowhere but Portland does that anymore, thankfully. And when did begging become a punk thing to do? You're supposed to go through your mom's purse, right after you spike your hair with her Aqua Net, before you catch the Max downtown. Or just go steal something! Punks in need take things, they don't ask for hand-outs. (See the word nihilism. ) Or better yet, just drop the pretense, put some big pants and Dr Pepper lip gloss on and go see Titanic for the seventeenth time, like the rest of your generation (to quote MST3K). It's not like you're doing anything original, anyway.

The fact that Portland is a black hole for fashions of the past is borne out by the presence of more colors and styles of stirrup pants on the racks at one of our leading fashion department stores: Meier and Frank. Stirrup pants were out, way out, by the time I graduated high school in 1987. If you took even the most remotely fashion conscious person from outside of Portland, and plopped her down in the middle of the ladies' department at Meier and Frank, she would probably think she was in a pretty expensive Goodwill. Do the M and F buyers get the new issues of Vogue, W or Elle, or are they just re-reading copies from 1984? Oh, and by the way, the perfumes Giorgio and Poison have seen their day come and gone! I'd rather be maced than suffer through another Christian Dior gas attack from the back seat of the cab.

Speaking of expensive Goodwills, we do seem to have them aplenty. Apparently, the Goodwills here are the most successful in the country. This would explain why a charity can afford to do so much advertising. And perhaps the success of their advertising campaigns explains why Portlanders aren't chic. It takes a good eye to pull something out of those bins that truly deserves to see the light of day. Here's a tip: if it's acid washed or has fringe on it, don't buy it. And I predict that those bins will soon be filling up with the vinyl pants which have finally made there way here in their last gasp of popularity. The rest of the country has already discovered the truly unfashionable look of prickly heat coated with Gold Bond Medicated Powder. In this one case, I doubt that Portland won't be far behind.

Ironically enough, a woman here recently started circulating something called the "Style Sheet”. All I can say is good luck, honey. She certainly has her work cut out for her. Even if the fashion consciousness is raised beyond the new Patagonia apparel, we just don't have the right stores. I personally don't think that we have any hope until we have at least an Armani Exchange, a Lord and Taylor and a French Connection. But before I go getting too girly for Rocket readers, I really want to make one heartfelt plea. Can we please dispense with the baseball caps? Even if you're sporting a bi-level do, or god forbid, tucking a tail up under it, the caps have been in foul territory for too long. At least stop wearing them backwards, because in the wise words of Michael Musto, eminent New York reporter, "the only time a baseball cap should be turned around is when you're giving head”.

Any diatribe concerning Portland's trendy afflictions would not be complete without railing against its unfortunate status as the Karaoke Capital of America. I think it's really sad that I can't shop here effectively, but if I want to sing "Sleeping Single in a Double Bed"I can hop into any of a hundred bars on any given night. When will this singular cancer be excised from our already flagging nightlife scene? For the sake of camp, every city outside of Tokyo should have a maximum of two karaoke bars, and no more. If a Portland bar is desperate enough to turn to the dread karaoke to bring in the bodies, may I suggest they start doing bingo instead. It's another pastime that's past its heyday, so I'm sure Portlanders will eat it up, with relish!

Finally, lest any of my readers raise an eyebrow in questioning the fashionability or hipitude of a hack, let me assure you that your intuition is not incorrect. But even though I'm dead set on bringing the polka back to Portland and I've been known to wear my pajamas in the cab, at least my hair always looks good.