It's that exciting moment. The moment where we knew we were leaving the place we had lived for 10 years.

Refugees of gentrification? Maybe.
Most of our neighbors had long been classed out.
With them went the neighborhood watch and a lovely little community I will miss.
Now it's all classed up, sterile, impersonal.
I'm a clown. Now the scary kind. I'm afraid of those too.
My wife and I are cute clowns.
 Poor and famous clowns.
We gotta live out of a tip jar but it's really not bad. Portland treats us very well.
Our calling brings a lot of freebees, we don't wait in a lot of lines and people cheer for us as we go down the road. Wouldn't trade this life for anything.
Our life is a lot of clowning the gigs to be had in Portland, The Portland of Oregon.
After 10 years the most fun, sexy place I ever lived had become really sad and dangerous. Lots of homeless wars just outside our door. Bikes were getting stolen, people beat up, cops were there all the time. I even had to square up with a few dummies to make my point for them to back off.
It had become untenable.

We got our chance to escape the felony flats when someone saw an ad I floated on the internet looking for new digs.

"You should let Olive and Dingo live with you Mom."
This Mom and Daughter new what we were about.
We had all been aware of each other from the internet.
Funny how you can share some laughs or political rants with someone and the next day you make a meeting to see about living with them.