THREE LADIES OF ILL REPUTE; or DOES THE CARPET MATCH THE DRAPES, DOES THE BELT MATCH THE BOOTS?

andrea joined the bike gang for one night back in 2006 -- or 2007 -- or sometime back when there was still a bike gang, sometime around 2006 or 2007. caroline went by creflo back when there was a bike gang, and she was missing one of her front teeth. creflo meant something like missing one of your front teeth. andrea was missing a front tooth then too. she's still missing a front tooth, but she had a gold one at one point in between then and now. caroline's new tooth is of the stuff that dentists use to make new teeth. back when both andrea and creflo were missing front teeth it made sense for andrea to join up for a night after she ran into the gang on the esplanade and saw caroline smile. gang activities were mostly drinking. you know, community service.

caroline hitched herself to a different, more permanent though maybe less stable wagon, but andrea is still giving back. sometimes she makes little apartments in her mind as safe havens for kids on drugs. that way the kids can just laugh when they're tripping and fall into the bathtub. but no one's made it so easy for andrea. bad dre dre (she's the one with the badass moniker now) has done time. "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." but that hasn't changed her mission. she takes the world as it comes. she even went to church and told the preacher, and now he wants her as a sunday school teacher. red lipstick, red hair, pink lips and all.

go ahead and call her a whore. she'll ask you to, actually, during her introduction in the sistafist anthem, but be warned of an important distinction: she's a drunk ass bitch, not a prostitute. all this will rhyme in your head once you've heard bad dre dre, em snatch and c-bag rapping and dancing on stage in front of a crowd of bobbing, grinding portland. and you'll know it's portland because of its initial reluctance to dance, despite that everyone in the crowd is there with friends to see their friends and knows that only their friends could have fostered something like sistafist, and only in this city.

sistafist is "three sassy drunk bitches dripping with gold" (beats by dj solomon and armatronix), and their lyrics are endlessly quotable. quotable not in the ironic tee hee hee way that so much indie rap gets off on, but in the way of you're desperately jealous of those drunk ass bitches when you see them walking single file over the lower walkway of the steel bridge looking like ghetto fabulous abbey road and you'd do anything to shine like them. they're serious, and it's not easy sounding serious when you're rhyming on boner parades and penis gauntlets. (as fun as both of those things might sound, don't doubt that dre dre, em and c-bag will drink you under the table, fuck you, do a rubbing of your credit card and then fuck your friend.)

portland is renowned for ill repute. before the nineties you couldn't do anything here without two forms of id. for anyone familiar with portland's shady, divey past, these three ladies aren't an unlikely appearance on the scene. and that's how it should be. especially in summertime: we want it sweaty and loud and dancing in heels, and then we want to be sweaty and loud and dancing in heels. that's a saturday night. gay or straight. visitors welcome. andrea is from iowa...or she used to date someone from there. it doesn't matter.

just be ready, as sistafist will tell you, to "give it up, on the floor. show us what the fuck you came here for." don't be too nervous, though. most of the rest of them probably won't be dancing at first either. plus, community service gang or no, you'll always have a cool place to crash if you get too messed up, courtesy of bad dre dre.