Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms

by John Hodgman

The people of Portland are nice. They all ride bicycles and scooters and make hand signals before they turn. If you go to a rock show, people at the show will not just go to the bar to get a beer. They will form a line, perpendicular to the bar, with great vacant stretches of bar on either side. They wait their turn, one after the other. And the rock show doesn’t happen in an empty crowded basement shoved full of people who are likely to die in a fire. Instead, the rock club looks like a ski lodge, like the Overlook Hotel, with vast woolen carpets, leather banquettes, and a roaring fireplace. And when the show starts, when people in other cities will stand up and move closer to the stage to see the act, a person in Portland will sit down, on a quilted ottoman, with a hot toddy, and that person will get angry at anyone who is not sitting down in the rock club, which is to say everyone else, and that person will grab your jacket, or I should say, my jacket, and tug on it. And then when you turn around, she will literally hiss at you and say, “I can’t fucking see.” So you see, it’s not merely that the people in Portland are nice: they are nicer than you and everyone else in the world, and so they deserve clear fucking sightlines, and you don’t. If this happens, do what I did. Just say, “Excuse me. If you would like my attention, just tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Excuse me.’ Don’t tug on my jacket. Treat me like I am also a human being. After all, I am from Park Slope, so ...