"Don't tell a secret in Portland. I told four people at the gym, and look what happened." - Dave Chappelle to a crowd of somewhere around TEN-FUCKING-THOUSAND at Pioneer Square in Downtown PDX
Edited to add the best video yet of Dave onstage, courtesy of OregonLive.
Who knows how his innocent comment spread so wide and so quickly. Oh wait, I do -- Twitter! Myself, I got home around 6pm today and see this from a friend on my own account:
Is this Chappelle thing for real? Or is he just trying to punk the whitest city in America?
Whatever do you mean, Michael? A new project from infamously reclusive Chappelle, perhaps? A quick search brought me here , and thus commenced a few hours of furious page resetting and Tweeting (I even hit up this dude for info) and watching the Pioneer Square live cam for signs of a stage. Dave had apparently been spotted all over town, particularly in the Southeast (at Zach's Shack) and supposedly five blocks from my damn house. It didn't seem like there was any way this was real -- him dropping in unannounced at some local comedy club (well, one of the...one), yeah, but doing a set at midnight in the middle of downtown with no permit? It seemed more reasonable to believe he was just in town for Carmelo Anthony's party at Saucebox on Thursday (why the hell 'Melo is throwing a party in PDX is another question altogether).
I went to Pioneer Square at 11, and along with about 100 people, there was also an empty stage -- that had been there all day because of their summer concert series -- and, interestingly, no P.A. As the crowd swelled over the next hour, it became clear that unless Dave parachuted in with a sound system strapped to his back, this shit just couldn't happen. People were crawling all over the fucking place -- on top of walls, pillars, the nearby Starbucks. I didn't necessarily think anything really bad was going to happen -- this is mild-mannered Portland, after all -- but the rapidly growing crowd, lack of a visible police presence near the stage, and some bug-eyed weirdo muttering to himself next to me got me feeling agoraphobic, so I stepped back from a primo spot behind the stage.
Midnight comes, midnight goes, no Dave, expectedly. I travel down to the Heathman, where he's supposedly staying, just to see how much of the throng had relocated there. Only a few people milling about (including Willamette Week expat and gay-about-town icon Byron Beck), so I take off, expecting that's the end of the whole thing, and someone pulled off a pretty great new media hoax.
Then this apparently happens, what must've been moments later:
| Dave Chappelle in Portland |
Literally the second I get home and step out of my car, I start getting texts that Dave is actually there and performing out of a fucking practice amp that no one can hear. Bullshit? As I quickly found out, no -- true shit:
| Dave Chappelle at Pioneer Square |
Oh, and also this:
Obviously, this was a guerrilla operation all the way, right down to the people stripping on top of Starbucks, I guess just to remind Dave that, yes, he is in fucking Portland, and we can't go two minutes without taking our clothes off. According to OregonLive, Dave eventually got some actual speakers set up and did a truncated set, although based on Tweets of the people I know, the sound never really improved, and I can't find any YouTube evidence to the contrary as of yet.
What is the lesson of all this? Well, that Twitter owns your soul, obviously. And that Dave needs to do something legit again. Also, I knew there was a reason I moved to Portland, but I had no idea it involved one of my heroes using a tiny speaker to attempt a standup set for a crowd of thousands. Even though I missed the best part of it all, I guess.
Well, if Dave is indeed here until Thursday for 'Melo's party, I don't have a job yet, so if you need me, I'll be lurking around the Heathman.
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