neverbeencool

Little background for those of you who ain’t from ’round here…

Place I live, Vancouver, Washington, (not to be confused with the much larger and prettier Canuck place about 6 hours north) is a small/medium-sized city sitting on the border between Washington and Oregon, about 5-10 miles from Portland.  Hell, but for the river and border separating the two states, it might as well be a suburb of PDX. I mean, if my fat ass can ride a bike between the two from time to time, they can’t be that far apart, right?

Now, there’s this inexplicable holier-than-thou attitude regarding Vancouver* emanating from the south side of the Columbia River.  For instance, some PDXers like to call Vancouver “Vantucky” and think that this city is full of slack-jawed yokels who, if they’re feeling particularly open-minded some day, might think Barack Obama is “one o’ the good ‘uns.”

This, my friend, is unfair.  Sure, Clark County might have one of the most conservative voting records in the state**, and, yeah, there are a couple of families in the outskirts whose family trees have distinctive wreath shapes…

But there are a lot of good things about this side of the river, too, some of which I’ve mentioned before.  For instance:

• We have some great public schools.  Seriously
• No personal income tax.
• Some interesting history.
• A Willie Nelson connection
  
• Some relatively inexpensive and historic homes in some quite nice neighborhoods.***

And for those things we lack (art, culture, an airport, IKEA, non-chain bookstores)?  Doesn’t matter.  We’re close enough to Portland to take advantage of their goods and services (and lack of sales tax).

Or, at least those of us who aren’t afraid of “the big city” can…

There are also other things we just don’t have to go all the way to Portland to see.  For instance, this lady:

Mommy, is that you?

Oh, those 20 minutes you spent hanging out on that street…  I’ll never forget them.  And not just because this image is burned into my corneas.

You know everything you read to get to this point?  Yeah.  Big waste of time.  All that shit was just me trying to lead into this glorious picture.

And glorious it is.  Note the cigarette… the bare feet…  the tallboy.

Oh, and the boobs.  Like you didn’t already notice.

And, believe it or not, she was even more FANTASTIC in real life.  For instance, you can’t really tell in this picture, but that shirt?  100% sheer and almost completely transparent.  Yeah.  Screw you, Timberlake.  This chick’s the one bringin’ sexy back.

What you can’t see in this picture is the argument she had with the neighbors, or the come-ons she traded with equally sexy old men in another building****.

So take that, Portland.  Who needs ya when we can produce gems like this?

*As opposed to the Portland holier-than-thou attitude toward every other city on the planet, Vancouver is actually aware of the one directed towards it.

****Most of which involved classic pickup lines like “Come on, show us!” and “I’ve had a hard-on for 14 years!”