Portland Youthspeak Lexicon Annex

Theory & Aesthetic:
oPancakes and bonghits
oFrench and high
oFree is a very good price

Rock:
oPunk rock chaos
oBoy rock
oBig dumb rock
oRocks with three X's
oStarfucking

Location & Gentrification:
oBus mall
oThe Clack
oBeavertron
oHawthorne freak scare
oComplaining about the Bohemians in Bohemia
oTheftway

Describing the Other:
oalt.boy
oalternateen
oalt.frat.boy
oSandwich eater
oSnag
osnaggy
oCredit leper
oBatcaver
oSmokey globe
oPokey globe
o...globe

Drink:
oQuality drunk
oAlcohol enthusiast
oThe Shanghole

Food:
oEat a sandwich
oRaw toast
oThe Cow
oRoi de Burger
oBurgerville (alt pronunciation)

Other:
oWifetime
oShake the money tree
oGenuine frontier gibberish
oWuh
oTwenty
oDeath Cookie
o(Kruschev baby talk)

Some words are so local, they exist only in subregions of specific people's brains. Others are more broadly used. Some of these terms are now defunct. But that doesn't mean I don't like them anymore.

All entries submitted by Miss Jemiah originator of the Lexicon have a (XXX) designation.

"Pancakes and bonghits": Theory that everything in Portland revolves around drugs and food.
Source: Courtney Taylor, Dandy Warhols.

"French and high": Particular aesthetic sensibility. Drug influenced, European, artsy. At times, inexplicably wacky and impervious to explanation by an American audience. Based on the assumption that French and American drug users consume amazingly different types of drugs. Most common comment when viewing something French and high: "What the hell?"
Examples: The Fifth Element, Alien Resurrection, French techno videos (air, Laurent-Garnier), Irma Vep.

"Free is a very good price." Oft said when receiving something free.
Source: Motto of local furniture retailer Tom Peterson.

"Punk rock chaos!": Interjection of joy.
Usage: "Free Stereolab show? Punk rock chaos!"

"Boy rock": Music genre that has an unduly mesmerizing effect on the male sex and is overrepresented in male music collections.
Examples: Rush, Sebadoh (*anything* having to do with Lou Barlow), death metal, southern roots rock (Allman Brothers, CCR, SRV, etc.)

"Big dumb rock": Affectionate. Rock music with no redeeming critical value.

"(X) rocks with three X's": It's massively cool. Taken from porn. More X's equals better, i.e., 'Rocks with one X' (pretty cool), 'Rocks with two X's' (definitely cool), 'Rocks with three X's,' (very very cool).

"Starfucking": Practice of seeking out (local) celebrities in public (most often rock stars at other bands' shows) and trying to make some sort of connection with them on a personal level.

"Bus mall": Used as a locator. Bus mall in downtown Portland, on 5th and 6th Aves.
Usage: "The 400 Cafe is on Stark and bus mall."

"The Clack": Derogatory. Clackamas Town Center Mall, in outlying Clackamas County. Replaces "Tackymas Clown Center."

"Beavertron": Derogatory. Beaverton, OR. Outlying suburb with concentration of high tech industry.

"Hawthorne freak scare": synonymous with 'Hawthorne Street Fair.' Hawthorne is a gentrified street in SE Portland where many hippies, bohemian types, punks, and freaks still reside. During the yearly street fair, people who don't normally hang out there (typically from outlying suburban areas) show up and gawk at the residents.
Source: Priscilla
Related term(s): "Complaining about the Bohemians in Bohemia" Describes situation in which people visiting an area complain about the inhabitants of an area, mistakenly believing that a neighborhood's residents have nothing to do with its character.

"Theftway": Any Thriftway (supermarket). Original usage specifically referred to the defunct store at SE 46th & Woodstock, where, legend has it, the merchandise fairly flew off the shelves without being paid for. (XXX)

"alt.boy": (pronunciation: "alt-dot-boy," derogatory) Male (teens and up) who conforms to the aesthetic standard of all other 'alternative' males in the geographic region in hairstyle, clothes, accessories, drinking habits, etc.
Usage: "I saw the alt.boy across the street drink enough cheap beer to give himself alcohol poisoning, so I called 911."
Source: doomed personals date
Related term(s): "alternateen": gender neutral term for teenager conforming to above aesthetic. As in "I'm a recovering alternateen." "Alt.frat.boy": Fraternity member conforming to above aesthetic. As in "The bar was crawling with alt.frat.boys, so I had to leave."

"Sandwich eater" Normal, sized/shaped girl or woman who eats a healthy amount of food with pride.
Usage: "He told me I had a tummy and I said, damn right, I'm a sandwich eater."
Related term(s): "Eat a sandwich." As in "That Tori Spelling needs to eat a sandwich." "Eat a sandwich" is appropriate to scrawl in the margins of magazines with stick thin models or to yell out when unhealthily skinny women are glorified on TV. It's not about hating thin women. It's about realizing that the limited image of female beauty presented to us by the media is not something that we have to accept.

"Snag": Derogatory. Sensitive new age guy. (S.N.A.G.)
Related Term(s): snaggy.

"Credit leper": Derogatory. Person with a bad credit record. No bank will touch them with a ten foot pole.

"Batcaver": Teenage goths who hang out in Pioneer Square. An endangered species. (XXX)

"Smokey globe": a person who smokes
Related Term(s): "Pokey globe": a person who pokes others with intent to annoy them; "(x)-y globe": a globe is a person of some sort. Derives from the spherical shape of a person's head.

"Quality drunk": (affectionate) an alcoholic.

"Alcohol enthusiast": Person just short of alcoholism. (XXX)

"Shanghole": Shanghai Tunnel bar.

"Raw toast": Bread in its larval, pre-toast state.

"The Cow": Pied Cow coffee house, on SE Belmont. Chichi food and foofy drinks. It's *all* good. (XXX)

"Roi de Burger": Burger King. (XXX)

"Burgerville": (pronounced --faux French-- Burger-vee-uh) Burgerville, chain hamburger emporium. Good shakes.

"Wifetime," "Wifetime, television for women": synonymous with "Lifetime, television for women."
Usage: "Did you watch the Carpenters special on Wifetime last night?"
Source: Irene and Michael

"Shake the money tree": Withdraw money from an ATM.

"Genuine frontier gibberish": Any speech delivered in completely unintelligible regional American dialect.
Example: On certain episodes of Dukes of Hazzard, Boss Hogg's lines are undecipherable. This is genuine frontier gibberish.

"Wuh": Short for 'wh'ev,' which is short for 'whatever.' Largely replaced by hand gesturing.

"Twenty," "some twenty," "bottle of twenty": 20% peroxide solution (hair bleach).

"Death cookie": Small decorative pain in the ass roundabout put in the middle of streets to slow down traffic. (I can hear you now: 'But Suzie, they work!' Yeah, they work to slow down emergency vehicle response time and cut down driver visibility around corners thus putting other cars, pedestrians, and bicyclists at additional risk.)

(Kruschev baby talk): ex. of usage: "Squidgy squoo....cutchie cutchie coo...Aren't you the cutest little Kruschev..." Said when observing something which isn't supposed to be cute undeniably is. Good time to use Kruschev baby talk: when you run into fifteen year old hardcore oldskool punks. Derivation: Veronica and I were watching tv and saw the infamous footage of Kruschev pounding the table with his shoe. One of us said something approaching "Oh, isn't he the cutest little Kruschev."