JULY 15, 2005 - PORTLAND, OR

Portland is only a few hours south of Seattle, so we had the majority of the day to hang out before hitting the road. Our first—and pretty much only—stop was PCC of course. The day before we had all gotten ready-to-eat vegan BLT’s from the deli section, so that’s the first place we all went. Unfortunately, they were all out of the vegan ones, but had a few real ones sitting in their place. Austin, Clint and I just stood there staring, looking over every single sandwich to see if another one was hiding somewhere. Out of nowhere, Brook reached in and grabbed one of the real BLT’s and went off. The three of us just looked back and forth at each other wondering if Brook was just trying to be sneaky and didn’t read the label or if he had just had enough and didn’t care anymore. Not wanting to have to find a replacement for the replacement singer after only two shows, I walked over and took the sandwich from him.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“This is a real one,” I said. “The vegan ones are all gone.”
I turned back and showed him the label. He read it and said, “Fuck. I wouldn’t have even noticed until I bit into it. Then I would have been pissed.”
“Why did you think the three of us were just standing there?”
“I don’t know. I thought you were looking for something else and I wanted to grab one before any of you changed your mind. I thought I lucked out.”

After we had eaten soup, salad and whatever else we could find, we bought cookies and donuts for the road and went on our way.

The drive should only take three or four hours, but we hit some pretty bad traffic leaving town and it took us over 5 hours to get there. When we pulled up to the venue were supposed to play at, we saw Justin standing out front and a whole bunch of punk rockers going inside. Clint got out to talk to him and when he came back over, we were informed that they double booked the show and ours was the one that got bumped. We got a hold of Oubliette (who was having trouble finding the place) and let them know what was going on. Justin was working the phones trying to find another venue for us to use and luckily enough, he found one. It was the basement of something on the other side of town, but I can’t remember for the life of me what it was.

We all drove over there and while the PA and the rest of the stuff were getting situated, I took a walk to find a gas station or store of some type where I could get a drink. I was shit out of luck. There was nothing around. I ended up walking for half an hour before I just decided to turn back towards the show.
The show went well, but again there were only a handful of people there. Justin had been expecting more and they had done a good job of promoting it, but the last minute venue change to a place that hardly anyone knew about probably fucked us.

After our set, some kid kept trying to start an argument with Brook at the merch table but just kept talking in circles. He was arguing that dancing/moshing was ruining hardcore and that it makes him mad when people do it. The only problem with his argument was that Brook and I had both seen this very same person moshing/dancing during Oubliette. Brook called him out on it, and he said that the only reason he moshed for them was because they were anarchists. It wasn’t a very strong argument so he switched to trying to argue with us about something he read in Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael book. By this time I had started helping people buy shirts and cd’s and what not, so I didn’t really take part in what was going on. The only thing I remember was this little snippet of conversation.

“...I agree with you,” said Brook.
“No, I what I’m saying is…” said the kid.
“Yes,” said Brook. “I understand exactly what you’re saying and I agree with you.”
“No, see the thing is…”

Some type of variation on that argument happens a lot on Cherem tours. People just want to argue and will argue anything for any reason—even if you agree with what they’re saying in the first place.
After the show and after we had said our goodbye’s we took off and found a grocery store. We needed to stock up on supplies for the long drive to Sacramento. We found one a little ways away and while we were inside, I noticed there were a surprising amount of people out shopping at 11:45 P.M. and they all seemed to be milling around the magazine and book area. The other thing was that the majority of them were pretty young—11, 12 and 13—there with some very tired looking parents. I grabbed my stuff and got in line trying to figure out what was going on. Brook came and got in line right behind me and asked me why all the people were there and I shrugged but asked the checkout lady.

“The new Harry Potter book is being released at midnight,” she said
Brook’s eyes got wide.
“Oh shit. I forgot about that,” he said.
I looked back over my shoulder at the crowd.
“Me too,” I said. “You want to make everyone wait so we can get one?”
Brook nodded.
“Good luck,” said the lady. “If you didn’t preorder it or put your name down on the list you might not get one. We ordered extra but a bunch of people requested one since.”
We were a little bummed, but since we were driving through the night in the dark, it wouldn’t have mattered much anyway.
We left the store and jumped back in the van, got on the 5 south and headed for Sacramento.
But that’s not where we’d end up.