Strange Ducks #4 - The Grease Witches

higher powers vs. higher caloric intake.

Portland, Oregon 2010

My pal Jay wanted to go like gangbusters with cameras rolling into the restaurant, as if he was Geraldo Rivera charging into Al Capone’s vault.

Or would it have been more like Maury Povich, storming the stage with a paternity test?

It’s hard to tell sometimes with Jay, the loose cannon of hilarity.

Either way, being that I was the one who was trained in documentary film making, I had to remind him of the legal implications of filming at locations without signed permissions or releases.

Jay acquiesced in his request for filmed chaos, and instead we walked through the doors of the Hung Far Low Chinese restaurant on 82nd Ave. like regular customers at dinnertime.

We where there to attend a meet up of Portland Witches and Pagans.

As we entered I asked Jay, “How are we gonna know the group we’re looking for in this joint?”

Jay smiled and responded, “You see how empty the place is? Just look for the pointy hats.”

He was right. The restaurant was empty except for a four people sitting at a round table near the back of the dining room.

As we walked towards the table, I made mental notes about Hung Far Low. The exterior of the building had all the charm of a check cashing business, with a dash of dive bar that screamed “Video Poker Played Here.”

However the interior of the restaurant gave mighty effort to hide its gritty saloon facade under a decor of Chinese ornamentation and very dim lighting.

Some people see such lighting as romantic.

But whenever I see dim lighting in a restaurant, it always make me question the validity of any Department of Health inspections.

The darker the lighting, the bigger the cockroaches under your table.

That’s a rule of dining I learned while living in New York City, a place where there were far too many bad dining experiences in near total darkness.

Jay walked up to the table first.

“Is this the meetup of Portland Witches and Pagans?”