Organization aims to fulfill bumper sticker’s call to ‘Keep Portland Weird’

Portlanders may be familiar with Brian Kidd, the founder of Weird Portland United. He can be seen around town on a unicycle playing a bagpipe, often in a kilt. Kidd founded the nonprofit in 2018 in an effort to bring together artistic and creative types who are all engaged in the effort to keep Portland weird. Kidd joins us, along with Christine Lassiter, host of the “Finding My Own Weird” podcast.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. My next guests want to change the way you look at one of the more familiar bumper stickers in the Rose City. They say that “Keep Portland Weird” is not just some quaint motto, a call to preserve charming quirks. Instead, they argue that weirdness is a key to a thriving, authentic and inclusive city. Brian Kidd is the founder and president of Weird Portland United. He is better known around Portland as the Unipiper, the bagpipe playing-unicycle rider. Christine Lassiter is the host of the podcast “Finding My Own Weird.” You may also know her as Aurelia Stardance, the dancing Centaur, around town. They are two of the people behind the second ever Weird Portland Gala, which is happening tonight in Northwest Portland. It’s good to have both of you on the show.

Brian Kidd: Thank you.

Christine Lassiter: Great to be here.

Miller: So Brian, why did you start Weird Portland United in 2018?

Kidd: It was an idea that had been gestating for a very long time in my head because I always felt that Portland should have some sort of organization that was promoting the people and the things that were so unique to Portland that really, I feel, are a cornerstone of our culture here. And as the city at that time had been experiencing a monumental amount of growth from some of the attention that had come to Portland being the “it” city, I felt like in that process, we were losing some of those quirks and a little bit of our soul as well. And so I said, you know what, if nobody else is going to do this, well, gosh, darn it, I’m going to give it a try myself.

Miller: What does weird mean to you?

Kidd: It’s a very good question and I often say that if you ask 100 Portlanders, you’re going to get 100 different answers. To me personally, what weird means is an aspect of our culture that is celebrated and in my mind, it is what makes us unique from everyone else. And I’m talking about that from the perspective of a city.

Miller: Christine, what about you? I mean, you have a podcast devoted to talking to people about weirdness for them. But do you have your own definition of it?

Lassiter: I do. So for me ‚being weird is being your true authentic self even if that is outside the box of norm and really celebrating that. We so often get put in boxes by people who want to have control, who don’t really have control of us and to be able to celebrate who we are without worrying about that box and doing so in the most authentic way to me, that is the full definition of weird.

Miller: Brian, how long have you lived in Portland?

Kidd:  I moved to Portland in 2007.

Miller:  OK. If I had asked you then, what brought you here and what do you think about Portland weird, what would you have said?

Kidd: It was partly Portland’s reputation of being a little offbeat that drew me to the city originally. I grew up on the East Coast and I was at a moment in my life where I could kind of go anywhere and it was the stories I’d heard that got me curious about Portland and it was a place I wanted to check out and ultimately, it was a place I ended up staying. That wasn’t necessarily my plan, but I kind of fell in love with it and it was the eccentricities and Portland’s pride in how they did things differently and I felt like I got it. All the things that people loved about Portland, I also was like, wow, it’s cool being here and being a part of this story and I want to contribute in my own way. And some people said that I came here and read the sign and, and I was like, OK, and so  my way of contributing was to become the Unipiper.

Miller: So you were not a unipiper before you got to Portland?

Kidd: I was dabbling in those hobbies. [Laughter]

Miller: Separately.

Kidd: Separately, yes.

Miller: So you were already a bagpiper and you were already a unicyclist?

Kidd: Yes. And just before I came here, I started to experiment doing it together and then I thought, I can do this thing and it might fit in with what is going on in Portland and the city responded in overwhelming affirmation of what I was doing.

Miller: So it sounds like it’s not even a joke then that, whether it was the bumper sticker or else just the feeling of what was possible here, that really was a motivating factor for you to put those two hobbies together.

Kidd: Sure. Yes. I think that the bumper sticker is not what makes Portland weird. It’s the fact that the bumper sticker is calling out something that already exists.

Miller: Christine, what about you? What drew you to Portland and when was that?

Lassiter: So I moved here in 2017, but it was after visiting. I was here on a work trip from, I’m originally from Texas, which is a completely very different environment and I’m not from like Austin…

Miller: Austin, which has its own bumper sticker. Right?

Lassiter: Yeah.

Miller:  “Keep Austin Weird?”

Lassiter: Yeah. But I’m not from that area. I’m from the very conservative part of Texas and when I visited for the first time and I started to see everything here was just so much different. When you would see people with different colors of hair and tattoos all over and everything walking by, nobody batted an eye, nobody turned ahead. It was almost like it was invisible because it was more the norm than the exception. And in that moment, it was like the videos of the color blind people who get those special glasses and they can see color for the first time. So when I got here, it was like I could see color for the first time. To be in an environment where we’re not judged all the time constantly, it was the most beautiful thing. And I immediately decided on that trip here that I was moving to Portland and within a year and a half, I moved here and it was because of that weird, quirky, interesting freedom.

Miller: Freedom that you saw in others and then you said I want that for myself?

Lassiter: Yes.

Miller: Do you feel like a different person here?

Lassiter:  Oh, I’ll be 50 in March. And I feel like I’m home for the first time in my life. I lived in Texas for 43 years and I never felt at home which is not a great thing to say when you’re from Texas. But when I moved here it was like, this is what that’s supposed to feel like. And I started my podcast because I knew there was something inside of me. I didn’t have any clue what it was, but I wanted to see what I could dig out in myself that was not allowed in all those years growing up in Texas. And my podcast is actually talking to people about their journey to become their true authentic selves. So it’s big weirds, it’s little weirds and it’s about their journey and it’s incredible to talk to these people.

Miller: Brian, do you find that broadly - obviously, this is a question based on generalizations - that people who are moving to Portland, now or in recent years, for different reasons than you might have seen 10, 15, 20 years ago?

Kidd:  Yes, I do think that is the case. And I think that Portland used to draw people primarily for the culture and the outdoors and the “weird” and the unique things of Portland. But then I think as Portland was grappling with its aggressive growth in the mid-2010s, that a lot of businesses were turning towards Portland and opening headquarters and you had a lot of workforce move in and I think that they were coming primarily for job related reasons. And I think that in that process, some of the unique parts of our culture kind of got diluted. And so I see part of our mission is to educate and inspire the people that come here and don’t know a lot about Portland, share with them the things that we love about Portland and get them excited as well.

Miller: How do you do that though? If somebody came here for a tech job or work, to work in an insurance company, not for the sense of autonomy and freedom to find their authentic selves. They may say I’m already my authentic self. I work for a tech company and I enjoy other aspects of this, but I didn’t come here for “weird.” How do you sell them on what they may see as an antiquated version of what this city is?

Lassiter: Well, I think it’s important to realize that it’s not like we’re trying to convert people. This is not the church of weird. It is about being your true authentic self, but part of that is getting to know the weird community and getting to know the parts of Portland that are weird and embracing those things. Not that you have to be a costume character. Because one of the things that I really found out while doing all of this stuff is  that it is such a small part of the weird, you know, that’s a tiny piece of it.

I was just talking to Brian about this, that on my podcast. One of my interviews was with a UPS driver and he’s just so quirky and interesting. He has his own two podcasts and it’s your neighbors. It’s the people who are  your servers at the restaurants. It’s the artist, it’s everybody, it’s the community itself and putting it in a box of just those weird characters, I think that’s damaging because then it looks like a novelty instead of the community and we are the community. You know, my day job, I’m a mortgage broker. I’m a grandma.

Miller: I’m glad you brought that up because well, I can think of jobs that are as not weird as mortgage brokers but it’s a short list. It’s not a job that screams weird for you personally. Is there a connection between the non weirdness or so I imagine it as being a mortgage broker and your outside life where you want to celebrate the weird?

Lassiter: Oh, absolutely. One of the things that’s really important to me as a mortgage broker is to build relationships with the borrowers and really engage with them, that it’s not a cold transaction and that’s also true as Aurelia Stardance, I really am about engaging and building relationships. So there is definitely a crossover. Yes, it seems like night and day, but there’s room on both sides of that and they do cross over. I actually just recently helped fellow weirds buy their first home. It was fantastic fellows.

Miller: When you say fellow weirds, what do you mean?

Lassiter: These are two costume characters that are in the weird community and it was just absolutely lovely to be able to help them buy their home and they felt comfortable with me because I understood their world. And that’s important too when you’re talking to somebody and about all their finances and stuff that you’re comfortable in that situation. It was a beautiful marriage of our worlds together.

Miller: Speaking of finances, Brian, I’m wondering how much of what we’re talking about here broadly has to do with just big economic forces. Can an increasingly expensive city, specifically when it comes to housing, still be weird or does the price of a city just push out a lot of what we’re calling weirdness?

Kidd: I don’t know. And that’s kind of what we’re doing here is we’re trying to answer that question. I hope that the answer is yes, that weird can be sustainable in a city that is experiencing the level of growth of Portland. But one thing that a lot of people have talked to me about is the the trajectory of other cities like Austin and San Francisco and people tell me how Portland reminds me of what those cities used to be. And they may have moved to Portland for that reason because they missed what those cities were. So right now, the best that we can do, at least, is create a presence and get people thinking about the changes going on in Portland and how we might be able to make decisions at a level much higher than who we are that will facilitate a coexistence of this culture with a thriving metropolis.

Miller: Christine, what can people expect at the Weird Portland Gala tonight?

Lassiter: Well, we have gone all out. It’s going to be held at Rainbow City, downtown. And there’s a dual theme kind of a dual theme. So the obvious theme is the eighties. Portland in the eighties, dressed as eighties. We have eighties cover bands. We’ve got the Celtic Light Orchestra, the Nu Wavers, Ursabomb. They’re coming to do all of the awesome eighties covers. We’re going to be doing the Weird Portland Hall of Fame. We’ve got a silent auction but the other message is–and you’ve alluded to that earlier–is unity, authenticity and inclusiveness and to me, I don’t think that you can be a part of this community without embracing all of those things. You can’t say be authentic but then not accept people who are also authentic. And when you find a tribe, a group that is like minded, that’s where that unity comes in and there is strength in that and just inclusiveness, just bringing in people. And it doesn’t just mean weird. It just means people to love, people to care for. And I think that we are really stressing all of those things right.

Miller: Now are you going to be there as a centaur?

Lassiter: Aurelia Stardance will make an appearance. I’m also emceeing the event with one of our other board members, Dresden, and there will be a couple of costume changes. But yes, Aurelia will make an appearance along with a music video we did earlier this year. It is going to premiere tonight. It kind of flew off of my podcast. Somebody suggested I should do a music video with the weirds that I was interviewing and within minutes it turned into, I should do “We Are The World” as “We Are So Weird.” So we did, we actually got together. It’s about 45 of the weird community and “We Are So Wierd” in the vein of “We Are The World.” Tonight is the grand premiere. Brian hasn’t even seen it. And it’s really exciting to see the number of people who donated their time and talent. It didn’t cost us anything to make this huge video. It’s because so many people needed it.

Kidd: And we’ve got some really fun people in there like Terry Currier of Music Millennium who coined the Keep Portland Weird phrase, Timber Joey is in there and Poison Waters and just so many Portland names that you’ve probably heard of just altogether singing a song about being weird.

Miller: Brian Kidd and Christine Lassiter, thanks very much.

Kidd: Thank you.

Lassiter:  It’s been a pleasure.

Miller: Brian Kidd is founder and president of Weird Portland United. Christine Lassiter is the host of the podcast “Finding My Own Weird.”

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