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: January 2002: Lumberjack Chic |
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Melba
Johnson lives in a wooden house and fears for her life.
An elderly black woman living alone on a pension, she's
heard the stories about the lumberjack gangs. She's heard
about how they wear red flannel shirts, ski caps, and
suspenders, terrorizing the weak and unsuspecting. She's
heard about how some of them have recently taken to carrying
axes. She saw the TV news story about all the telephone
poles they chopped down along Hawthorne. She read the
Oregonian feature about lumberjack gangs' racist
overtones. She's seen the PAUL BUNYAN LIVES graffiti when
riding the Max train. And she's scared.
"I live in a wooden house,"
she says, sipping tea and staring out her kitchen window.
"And besides that, I'm black. What's to stop these lumberjack
gangs from chopping down my house one of these days?"
Good question, and one
with which Portland law-enforcement officials are increasingly
having to concern themselves. Lumberjack chic, once considered
a harmless, purposely ironic hipster-literati fashion
trend, has mutated into an organized racist gang movement
which threatens to turn violent.
Welcome to the world of
the logga-gangstas. 
A world where the gang
life is known as "jackin'" instead of "bangin'." A world
where going out in packs looking for trouble is known
as "jackin' off." Where the men are known as Jacks (always
with a capital "J"), and their
devoted girlfriends are called Lumberjills. A world where
toughness is a spirit-ual virtue and rugged white-male
pop-culture figures such as Paul Bunyan and the guy on
the Brawny paper-towel logo are worshiped as religious
icons.
"Lumberjack Chic" was the
title of a 1991 essay written by Annalee Newitz, University
of Oregon at Hermiston sociology professor. Immediately
controversial, the article predicted the rise of a "New
Wave of Red Flannel/White Skin," a neo-fascist movement
of white youth who would emulate the fashion sensibilities
of their hard-bitten racist ancestors. Newitz said that
just as prior generations had rejected such tuff-white
archetypes as the cowboy, the trucker, and the lumberjack,
a coming generation would embrace them. But she said that
the movement, already tainted by postmodernist thought,
would be set adrift between mocking irony and dead-serious
homage--lost in the woods, so to speak. She cautioned
that such aesthetic tensions could inevitably turn violent.
 Newitz's
essay proved prophetic. Almost simultaneously, tough-guy
white culture started making a comeback. In Portland,
former Nazi skinheads and racist rockabillies went for
Lumberjack Chic in a big way. At first it was cute and
campy: logrolling parties in backyard swimming pools
and theme music nights at local clubs featuring a program
exclusively consisting of songs by Buzz "The Singing
Logger" Martin.
But soon thereafter it
started adopting all the trappings of a genuine gang
culture. Different-colored flannel shirts started meaning
different things. The way one wore his suspenders also
signified which "loggin' crew" he "jacked" for. A logga-gangsta
crew in Southeast Portland named itself after an obscure
logging song from the early seventies: "Brute Force
and Ignorance." Another crew from St. Johns, the Ripcords,
named themselves after Buzz Martin's record label.
And then came the axes,
and along with them, the fear.
Raul Luis Garcia is a
sociology professor at Clackamas  State
University. Garcia is the author of America Up My
Ass (Steve Schultz Press, 1996), which prophesied
that America's melting-pot culture would inevitably
break down into a violent "anti-nation" of warring tribal
factions. Garcia acts unsurprised by the logga-gangsta
phenomenon. "This generation has witnessed an emergence
of nonwhites in all areas of popular culture," he says.
"And these kids grew up seeing blacks dominate in sports.
The black male is our mythic Superman. He's starting
to get all the white chicks. And so then Paul Bunyan
comes along! Ohmigod! These restless kids who are seeking
some identity see this forty-foot-tall burly white male,
and they feel empowered," Garcia says. "The Brawny Guy,
too, is a good example of this sort of exaggerated white-male
masculinity. These logga-gangstas co-opt the phrase
PURE WHITE for their own questionable ends. And who
is the Brawny man, really? He's a big white man with
a PURE WHITE paper towel, sopping up all the ethnic
undesirables."
Rick is a dedicated Jack
who's been jackin' for three years. He agrees to meet
me at The Matador, a local bar
and well-known logga-gangsta
hangout. Rick is an intimidating grizzly bear, to
be sure: tall, barrel-chested, bearded, and gruff.
Trying to break the ice, I make a passing mention
of Monty Python's "Lumberjack Song," which seems to
get Rick's goat. "Those Monty Pythons said that lumberjacks
are faggots. They should come to Portland, and I'll
show them who the faggot really is."
Like many Portland
logga-gangstas, Rick's arms are sleeved in lumberjack-themed
tattoos: a full-color Paul Bunyan surrounded by the
phrase WHERE THERE WALKS A LOGGER, THERE WALKS A MAN
in old-school sailor-style script; another one where
a lumberjack's face is superimposed over crossed axes;
and the most striking of all, a beautifully detailed
color reproduction of the Brawny paper-towel logo,
which features a blond mustachioed white man smiling
amid tall timber, the word "Brawny," and the phrase
PURE WHITE. The Brawny logo seemed familiar to me
in another context...an innocent
context...not on the muscular bicep of a racist Portland
gang member. I ask Rick whether the PURE WHITE phrase
is intended as a racist
statement. He just smiles and says, "Do I look black
to you?"
 Rick's
girlfriend Marsha is a pretty twenty-year-old Lumberjill
with black Bettie Page bangs, a red flannel shirt,
and a self-satisfied smile. She's been jackin' for
about a year. She used to be a Goth, but she was drawn
into the logga-gangsta lifestyle about a year ago
when she met Rick. When I mention Rick's Brawny Guy
tattoo, she becomes defensive. "The Brawny Guy is
a handsome man. A strong, handsome, white man.
I mean,
I've got a boyfriend, but I'd do the Brawny Guy in
a second. And Paul Bunyan? Puhhh-lease!" Marsha proceeds
to arch her eyebrows and make a kitty-cat sound.
"But what about the
axes?" I ask her.
"What about
them?" she counters, meeting my challenge.
A leisurely afternoon
drive takes me down and out of Portland's urban environment,
with its sex workers and logga-gangstas, through tall-timber
country down to the quaint logging town of Estacada,
Oregon. I pull into a rustic coffee shop, complete
with fly swatters on each redwood picnic-style table,
and meet logging storyteller Bart Krutchmann. Known
as the "Literary Logger," Krutchmann has written about
his real-life logging experiences in several humorous
self-published pamphlets such as Outta My Noggin
'Bout Loggin' and Bend Over, Paul Bunyan.
But unlike almost all of the logga-gangstas, Bart
Krutchmann is a real lumberjack. He's been a timber-faller
for over thirty years, and he has the haggard features
and missing fingers to prove it.
Krutchman says he's
never heard of Portland's logga-gangsta underground.
When I briefly describe it, he angrily snorts, "They
don't stand for what the average lumberjack thinks
or believes. If they ever set foot in Estacada looking
like that, they'd get their asses kicked. What do
any of them know about high-lead logging? How many
of them have ever set a choker? Hell, how many of
them have ever seen a tree?" When I tell him
that there are plenty of trees in Portland, he says,
"Yeah, well, I never go there, anyway, so I wouldn't
know."
What can normal citizens
do about the problem? Fight back, that's what. Portland's
public schools have already banned students from wearing
lumberjack clothing. And the Portland Police Department's
Special Gangs Task Force Unit has opened a folder
on the logga-gangstas. "Everybody has the right, within
certain limits, to dress and act the way they want,"
says Portland detective Max Stuttgart, "but when people
start carrying axes around, that's when I get involved.
Right now they're only chopping down telephone poles.
What's to stop them from chopping off people's heads?"
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