OREGON
Business is booming for one Portland costume shop. Or should we say, “blowing up?” Ever since protesters started dressing in inflatable costumes and gathering outside the South Waterfront area’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement building to denounce Trump’s “war on the city,” Portland has been living up to its proud reputation as the epicenter of weird. And it’s not all just hot air. Many of the costumes have been purchased at Lippman Co., a 77-year-old party supply store in Portland’s Central Eastside. As far as weaponry goes, the store’s inflatable frog, dinosaur and chicken costumes, retailing for $60 to $70, may not be as pricey as Raytheon cruise missiles or even tear gas and rubber bullets, but they’re still capable of packing a wallop. Worth it, though, if mocking authoritarian-style policies is your thing. “The costumes provide a pure Portland counterpoint to federal officers dressed in riot gear with gas masks and guns,” as Willamette Week reported.
And they’re getting a lot of attention: Lippman’s manager, Robyn Adair, said that “a couple bought Garfield and a banana the other day, and I saw them on the news.” Another man in a banana costume, carrying a sign that read “This is bananas,” told Reuters — as SpongeBob SquarePants, Pikachu, a shark, and a mushroom bebopped happily around him — “We’re in the silliest timeline, so I thought, why not be silly with it?”
Perhaps Kermit the Frog’s parody of “Rainbow Connection,” as seen on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show and reported by The Oregonian, summed it up best: Why are there so many Trump thugs in ski masks? / And why do they have to hide? / You can spray us with pepper, but we won’t surrender, / We’ll respond with a naked bike ride. / So march through our city, we’ll stand up to fascists / The chicken, the T. rex, and me.
CALIFORNIA
Historically, sailors sang sea chanteys, but nobody has written any sea chanterelles. Although that could change: Sam Shoemaker, a self-proclaimed mushroom nerd — no, not the inflatable Portland kind — really knows how to put the “fun” into fungus. Not only did he paddle 26 miles across the Catalina Channel in a 107-pound kayak that he made using mycelium material technology — the same kind that produces fungi faux-leather for designer purses — he actually grew the material that went into it from wild Ganoderma polychromum mycelium in his at-home mushroom laboratory. On his website, samkshoemaker.com, he explained that he propagated the mycelium on “a hemp hurd substrate packed inside a custom two-part fiberglass form.”
The vessel took six weeks to grow and several months to dry. When it was sea-ready, he launched from Two Harbors, Catalina Island, at 6 a.m. on Aug. 5. Shoemaker told the Orange County Register that being in the middle of the channel was “almost psychedelic”; he was nauseous, hallucinating (and not because he was on shrooms) and afraid that his boat might snap in half. At one point, he found himself accompanied by a whale, an “unlikely guardian on his trek.” But after 12 hours, he landed safely on San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach. He hopes to inspire others to experiment with fungi, he explained. “There’s really nothing that you can’t apply fungi to … they’re food, they’re medicine. They’re used in therapeutic practices,” adding, “We’re addressing heavy metals and oil spills with fungi.” And the morel of the story? When truffles come your way, look for the portabella in the storm.
CALIFORNIA
A series of squirrel attacks in San Raphael last September prompted Joan Heblack to post flyers warning her neighbors “Attack Squirrel Beware!!!!!! This is not a joke more than 5 people have been attacked by a very mean squirrel.” At least three people were treated for cuts in the emergency room, KQED reported, but fortunately, squirrels rarely carry rabies. Marin County animal experts said that they’d seen this “squirrels gone wild” behavior before. Allison Hermance, director of marketing for WildCare, said that when baby squirrels fall from their nests, they’re sometimes taken home and raised by well-
intentioned people. Unfor-tunately, the squirrels often grow up to find themselves living in the wild again after having learned to associate people with caretaking and food. When dinner is not served promptly, they sometimes get upset, as many of us do, “desperate for the food that they are expecting a human to provide.” Squirrels may be adorable and look harmless, but it’s never a good idea to feed wild animals. With the possible exception of inflatable frogs and dinosaurs, of course.
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This article appeared in the December 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Heard around the West.”
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