Portland Chapter
By the mid-90s, Cacophony had spread to four major centers along the American west coast. In 1996, Portland Cacophony hosted the infamous first Naughty Santa rampage to take place outside of San Francisco. The arrival of the planeload of Santas was met by Portland's police in riot gear, as someone in the SFPD had sent word ahead. Swift, thoughtful and very friendly action by Santa Melmoth, inviting the nice police along for the fun, kept confrontations to a minimum. The weekend resulted in only one arrest - involving a gift wrapped in a Playboy centerfold given to someone without checking the recipient's ID to make sure he was over 18.
For several years Portland Caco took responsibility for the Disgruntled Postal Workers - a group of surly, heavily armed people in postal uniforms who, when they felt like it, delivered newspapers and other forms of "mail" at the Burning Man annual festival, until the Burning Man organizers outlawed their guns (which, reportedly, made some of them even more disgruntled). A kinder - gentler BRCPO (Black Rock City Post Office) which actually delivers and sends US postal mail from and to the Burning Man event (with their own BRCPO postmark by special arrangement from the US Postmaster), is still run by PDX Cacophony associates.
The Portland group has also heavily incorporated nudity into the majority of their events. Most recently, Helping Unite More People In Trouble (HUMPIT) consisted of many naked (or nearly naked) Portlanders marched from 1st Avenue to 23rd Avenue on Burnside Street; arousing people to take action to end the plight of troubled Portlanders.
Other favorite events include; Chinese New Year: Red or Dead Tour, Stripper Bingo, Goodwill Hunting, Brides of March, Rest Stop at the Shamrock, Mondo Croquet, the Nuclear Family Picnic, the Ice Cream Anti-Social, Kindergarten Art in the Pearl, the Great Pumpkin Shoot, Spam Poetry Readings, Mutant Toy Workshops and SantaCon. For the last several years, costumed bar crawl events, notably Plunderathon, have been run with PDX Cacophony member support in association with Drunken Rampage, Inc.
Many individual members quietly conduct their own small D.I.Y. splinter missions, culture jams, zone trips, happenings, reverse shopping and "art projects" that do not require mass group participation or attract widespread attention.
Possibly the most widely known Cacophony member is novelist Chuck Palahniuk, who has mentioned his experiences with the Society in his writings, notably the book Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon. He used the Cacophony Society as the basis for the fictional organization Project Mayhem in his novel Fight Club. Palahniuk himself was pranked by a gang of Cacophonist waiters at one of his book readings in San Francisco.
The Portland Cacophony have taken calling themselves PDX Cacophony Stumptown Lodge, in the fashion of a fraternal organization, but there are no dues, no roll call, and no hierarchy. There may be a secret handshake, and YOU may already be a member. Web page http://portland.cacophony.org/
Read more about this topic: Cacophony Society
Famous quotes containing the words portland and/or chapter:
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)