Thursday, September 28, 2006

Poofters and the Portland - Seattle rivalry


There's a storied history to the cyclocross rivalry between the pacific northwest cities of Portland and Seattle and the Cross Crusade for the holy grail. Since I only started racing last year, I don't know much about the lore, but I do know that it's made cyclocross bigger and better as both cities try to outdo each other. A great part of it is the smack talk that goes on. There's a whole section on the Cross Crusade forum devoted to smack talking and calling out sandbaggers. One of the worst things you can be called by a Portlander is a 'poofter'. Now Portland prides itself on being the scruffy underdog of the pacific northwest - less effete than Seattle and San Francisco. Seattleites drink their Starbucks lattes before a race, but Portlanders drink beer from one of the 28 local breweries (more than Milwaukee, by the way). That pretty much made me a poofter when I started 'cross in Portland - exacerbated by the fact that I unwittingly wore a very fred US Postal roadie jersey to the first few races and got teased by the race announcer in front of all the fans about it - at the USGP race no less! Anyway, I was reminded of that when I saw this comic in the paper today: