Well, they come and pull me from my house. Today’s episode is about ‘Heretic Pride,’ monsters, pagans, ghost cowboys, how a comprehensive knowledge of unreleased Mountain Goats lyrics might come in handy when you least expect it, and a ‘large, eclectic crowd of gay people’ at the City Nightclub in 1986, enjoying ‘the best sound system in Portland & possibly the entire PNW.’

Show notes

A lot of today’s episode is about what life was like for queer teenagers experiencing homelessness on the streets of Portland in the 1980s - an organisation that serves this community today which Darnielle himself has recommended is p:ear, which stands for Project Education, Art and Recreation. While I was in town, programme director Tony Martinez was kind enough to give me a tour of the building and told me about the amazing work they do, helping young people to get anything from socks and basic hygiene products to food service qualifications and opportunities to sell their own artwork. It all starts with looking at ‘youth as youth, intentionally developing relationships’ as the basis for mentorship, rather than a model centered on transactions or case management.

If you enjoy the episode, I don’t charge for any of my work on this project, but you might like to donate to p:ear - you can do so at pearmentor.org/donate. Or if you’re listening in the UK and want to give locally, the charity AKT works for ‘safe homes and better futures for lgbtq+ young people’: you can donate to them on https://www.akt.org.uk/Appeal/donate. If you make a donation to either organisation, tag me on social media - notrockyhorror on Twitter or Bluesky, thirty_years_later on Instagram - to let me know, and I’ll send you a photo. In Portland I didn’t quite manage to ‘shoot a roll of 32 exposures’ - disposable cameras these days seem mostly to come with rolls of 28 - but I do have spare copies of a good few pictures from my trip which I’d be happy to post out in exchange for your generosity if you get in touch.


References: It turns out my hosting platform doesn't allow me to post as long a list of references as I need to here, given the amount of archival material I used in the episode. You can find the normal list of interviews, live shows, etc on this link instead, including persistent links and page number to all the historical newspaper sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRxvAze26mD0l7oh_P-TeAohyXmL_S7Evk9ZVasio4xrqrC2OIPmx7V4tekBdMbHsic8TwmMMI85Ska/pub