More than 100 years have passed since bands of hirsute men with a predilection for liquor and loose women first roamed the streets of Portland, but you could argue not much has changed since then, jokes guide Kevin-Michael Moore as we start our exploration of the city's historic downtown streets.
At the turn of last century, he explains, the riverside Oregon city was wild and lawless, thanks to its transient population of young men - hairy, as was the fashion of the time - who outnumbered women 16 to one. These days, facial hair and Portland hipsters go hand-in-hand; the city has carved out a reputation the world over for its craft beer scene, and has the dubious honour of housing more strip clubs per capita than anywhere else in the US. Beards, booze and broads still reign supreme in this uber-cool town in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, though it's a vastly different town today than the one of old.
Moore is taking our small group on a 90-minute Underground Portland Tour that promises to showcase the "worst Portland has to offer", exposing the sins of its murky past.
Walking backwards to chat to us as we move through the streets of Old Town, the actor-historian shares entertaining stories about the colourful characters who shaped Portland's past, and debunks many of the urban myths that haunt it to this day. The most notorious is the practice of "shanghaiing" - acquiring cargo ship crew by drugging men as they were drinking in saloons on bar stools sitting over trapdoors leading to the city's underground tunnel network, which ran down to the docks. Not true, says Moore, though the legal practice of "crimping" was common. This involved unscrupulous hoteliers offering rooms and liquor to penniless patrons, then tricking them into signing contracts they probably couldn't even read to repay bills that essentially sold them as slaves to boat captains for years of service.
