[pdx] One Does Not Merely Walk Into Hawthorne, It Is Said

3085.

From the Dept of It Could Happen Anywhere But You'll Automatically Assume It's Happening In Portland And You Won't Be Wrong Dept we have this gem (via KATU):

The last thing the woman from Northeast Portland probably expected when she got up Tuesday morning was that she would be attacked by a sword-wielding elf.But that's what happened around 7 a.m. as she drove her red BMW by the intersection of Southeast 7th and Morrison.A man dressed in chain-mail with a helmet, shield and carrying a sword and staff ran into traffic and started attacking her car.

She thought at first he was a pirate, but it turned out he thought he was a high-elf battling a Middle Earthian baddie. Follow the link to find out which.

The funniest, zeitgeistiest thing to me about it is the headline which said the man self-identified as a High-Elf. You see, that's the way we roll here in Portlandia; we don't 'call ourselves' anything, we don't 'think we are' anything (except for Lars Larson, who's a legend in his own mind, mostly), we self-identify.

We may not physically be the thing, but we never question each others' right to completely feel the thing that we know we are, pharmaceutical influence withstanding or not.

Heck, when I was a kid in Silverton they told me I could be anything I want.

So I became a Portlander.

We're a damn' silly place sometimes, but that's not actually a sin. Well, not until you start beating up on someone's BMW in your High-Elf kit, which we do not recommend.

And so it goes, PDX.