A membership fee is required for admission. Hours are noon to 6:00 A.M.

(a postcard from 1992)

Riding my bike, I hear the music and go to look. In the dozen blocks between Lloyd Center and the Steel Bridge, here is the opposite of the Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade.

After the parade on Sat.u.r.day morning, after the floats are displayed all weekend, this is where they go.

This is a Sunday evening in June, just before dark. And these are the parade floats almost forty-eight hours past their moment of glory. Towed by rusted pickup trucks, towed by flatbed trucks and tractors, they wind through back streets on their way to a pier in Northwest Portland where they'll be dismantled.

The flowers are wilted and crushed. Tens of thousands of flowers. Roses and carnations, chrysanthemums, zinnias, and daisies. Instead of Rose Festival royalty, beauty queens and civic leaders, now long-haired young guys ride, pa.s.sing a joint among them. Waving. Middle-aged moms in sweatpants ride, toting babies and surrounded by their toddlers. Waving. The sidewalks are empty. No one's here to wave back. Instead of marching bands, different floats carry suitcase-sized radios blaring head-banger rock music. Gangsta rap music. You can smell the sweet dead flowers and bottles of sweet fortified wine. A fat man and woman sprawl in a red carpet of crushed roses, smoking cigarettes and holding tubs of soda pop so big the woman has to use both hands. You can smell the diapers and marijuana.

The streets around the Oregon Convention Center are empty, and I can ride my bike, weaving around and between the string of doomed parade floats. I don't even have to pedal, from the Lloyd District to the bridge to the piers, it's all downhill. Everyone waves, and I wave back. Their audience of one.

Nature But Better: Gardens Not to Miss

FROM THE ANNUAL ROSE FESTIVAL parade to the International Rose Test Gardens-where Katherine Dunn wandered, inventing the concept for Geek Love Geek Love- Portland is a city of gardens. Some are lumps of nature trapped in town, like Elk Rock Island. Others, like the Maize and the flower-covered parade floats, are very man-made. Most fall somewhere in between.

CITY PARKS, THE LARGEST AND SMALLEST.

Portland boasts both the largest and the smallest park in the world. The largest forested munic.i.p.al park is five-thousand-acre Forest Park. With more than sixty miles of trails, it connects to five other parks and wildlife sanctuaries. Forest Park runs from NW Twenty-ninth Avenue and Upshur Street at the east end to Newberry Road at the west end.

The smallest park is Mill End Park, also called "Leprechaun Park," in the traffic island at SW Front Avenue and Taylor Street. About the size of a big dinner plate, the park is surrounded by six lanes of heavy traffic.

CLa.s.sICAL CHINESE GARDENS.

At NW Third Avenue and Everett Street, enclosing a city block, this is a maze of walled garden rooms, lakes, and pavilions. This Ming Dynasty garden includes more than five hundred tons of rock shipped from China, as well as mature trees donated from throughout the Portland area. Phone: 503-228-8131.

COLUMBIA GORGE GARDENS.

The first of these three gardens is an old Italian-style villa and gardens planted deep in the Columbia Gorge. Take Interstate 84 east to exit 28. At the stop sign turn left onto the Old Columbia Gorge Scenic Highway. At 48100 turn right, through the gates of the Sisters of the Eucharist Convent, an order of Franciscan nuns who live in the sprawling estate of an old timber baron. The sisters are friendly, but behave yourself.

Landscaped in the 1920s, the gardens of the Columbia Gorge Hotel include bridges and duck ponds, a 208-foot waterfall, and incredible clifftop views. Take Interstate 84 to exit 62 and turn left at the stop sign. Cross back over the freeway, toward the river, and turn left again.

Be warned: The gardens of Maryhill Museum feature peac.o.c.ks because those birds kill the rattlesnakes that crawl in from the surrounding desert. Before the museum, the natural spring on this basalt cliff made it a sacred camping spot since prehistoric times. To find Maryhill Museum, take Interstate 84 east to exit 104. Turn left and cross over the Columbia River. Then follow the museum signs.

BERRY BOTANICAL GARDENS.

The gardens founder, Rae Selling Berry, traveled the world to gather rare rhododendrons and primroses for her six-acre garden. When she died, developers planned to plow it all under until a group of Rae's friends stepped in to preserve this repository for rare native plants and plant seed at 11505 SW Summerville Road. Phone: 503-636-4114.

BISHOP'S CLOSE AT ELK ROCK.

This thirteen-acre estate has been the property of the local Episcopal diocese since 1958. Designed by John Olmsted, the son of Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted, it was built to look like a Scottish baronial manor on the cliffs above the Willamette River and was completed in 1914. It's at 11800 SW Military Lane.

ELK ROCK ISLAND.

Elk Rock Island is possibly the most beautiful place in Portland-and easily the hardest to find. Take SE McLoughlin Boulevard south from Portland, through Milwaukie. Just past the light at Oregon Street, you'll see signs for River Road. Take the River Road exit and go straight a few blocks until the street (SE Twenty-second Avenue) T's into Sparrow Street. Turn right on Sparrow Street and park as soon as possible. Parking near the park entrance is almost nonexistent. Walk to the end of Sparrow, crossing under the low railroad trestle. Look for the dirt path near the ELK ROCK ISLAND sign. Take the path through the woods and marsh, and it will lead you out to the island in most weather. During the worst high water, the river cuts around both sides of the island, making it inaccessible to anything but boats.

The island itself is a castle of basalt rising in the Willamette River and topped with an acre of dark, mossy forest. Across the main channel of the Willamette River, you can see the posh homes of Dunthorpe. The faint rush of traffic you might hear is Macadam Avenue on the cliff high over the river.

THE GROTTO.

Using dynamite, Servite priests blasted this hole in the basalt side of Rocky b.u.t.te, where Ma.s.s has been celebrated outdoors since July 16, 1925. At NE Sandy Boulevard and Eighty-fifth Avenue, the sixty acres of gardens and shrines are wrapped in colored lights every December for the Festival of Lights. An outdoor elevator takes you up a cliff to the Priory, where the Servites live.

On the secluded road that connects the Priory to Eighty-second Avenue, look for the small cemetery reserved for grotto priests. Burnt black candles and other grisly leftovers prove this spot is still popular with Satan worshipers.

j.a.pANESE GARDENS.

Designed in 1963, this is one of the oldest j.a.panese-style gardens in the United States. It includes five traditional themed areas-including a sand garden and water gardens-plus a teahouse and pavilion, and hosts festivals and events almost every month. It's at 611 SW Kingston Avenue. Phone: 503-223-4070. Or check out wwwj.a.panesegarden.com.

JOY CREEK GARDENS.

A combination nursery, art gallery, and school for landscaping and gardening, Joy Creek also has free homemade chocolate chip cookies-and the area's largest and best privately owned show gardens. They're at 20300 NW Watson Road, in Scappoose. Take Highway 30 west, about 18 miles from downtown Portland. Phone: 503-543-7474. For information about rare plants, free cla.s.ses, and special events, check out www.joycreek.com.

THE MAIZE.

Wait until dark and use flashlights to explore this enormous labyrinth of corn at the Pumpkin Patch, 16511 NW Gillihan Road on Sauvie Island. Take Highway 30 west to the Sauvie Island Bridge.

RECYCLED GARDENS.

This is the closest we have to a humane society for plants. Here are shopping bags full of rescued sword ferns. Boxes of salvaged ribbon gra.s.s. Pots of iris and miner's lettuce.

Blueberries. Photinia. Honeysuckle. And many plants are huge mature trees or bushes that need a new home.

Here at 6995 NW Cornelius Pa.s.s Road, in Hillsboro (phone: 503-757-7502), Recycled Gardens is a fundraising division of Pets Over-Population Prevention Advocates (POPPA). All proceeds go to pay for vouchers people can use to defray the cost of spaying or neutering stray or adopted animals. The director of the gardens, Keni Cyr-Rumble, says about 75 percent of the plants, building materials, and planting products are recycled, reused, or donated. No pesticides are used. Fertilizer comes from the Humane Society's rabbit warren and the barn's resident bats.

Here, every plant has a story behind it. Keni says, "There was a fellow out on Plainview Road who wanted everything out of his yard so he could put in a j.a.panese-style garden. We took truckload after truckload out of there." Describing how they salvaged trees and plants from an 1860 homestead about to become a strip mall, she says, "We were out there digging while the bulldozers circled us."

Four times each year POPPA opens a gallery in the old barn, offering art, jewelry, and housewares made by local artists who donate 40 percent of sales to the nursery's cause. Twice a year they have a rummage sale. In the fall, after the surrounding filbert orchard is harvested, volunteers glean the remaining nuts and sell them. Volunteers also build the birdhouses and garden furniture. They raise the bonsai trees and teach courses in animal behavior and crafts.

Recycled Gardens is open May through October, Thursday through Sunday. During the off-season they're open Sat.u.r.days only. Of course your dogs are welcome, so long as they don't mess with Betsey, the friendly, one-eyed resident dog.

ROOFTOP SCULPTURE GARDEN.

At the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse, SW Third Avenue and Main Street, take the elevators to the ninth floor and walk the length of the floor to the gla.s.s alcove on the south end. Outside that door is a garden and gallery of sculpture, called "Law of Nature," by Tom Otterness. The walls are carved with quotes about justice and conscience by writers from Mark Twain to Maya Angelou.

(a postcard from 1995)

"Where you're going, there are huge pits in the floor and broken gla.s.s everywhere, so it's important you do what you're told," says Marcie. This is after dark, under the east-side on-ramps for the Morrison Bridge. A block away people are waiting on the sidewalk for tables, for a nice dinner at Montage. Here at SE Belmont Street and Third Avenue, a crowd of men and women wear army-surplus fatigues, disposable Tyvek coveralls, and radiation badges. These people carry military C rations and covered ca.s.serole dishes. They cradle warm garlic bread wrapped in tinfoil.

The idea is, we're going to the first potluck after a nuclear holocaust: Portland's semiannual Apocalypse Cafe.

Marcie says, "I hope n.o.body has to use the bathroom, because the toilet facilities at the event are a little primitive. They're what you'd expect after the end of civilization."

All we know is to wait here. We each pay Marcie five dollars and get slapped with a biohazard warning sticker. A huge shipping truck pulls up and someone jokes that it's the shuttle to the party.

The big door on the back of the truck rolls up, and Marcie says, "Get in and be quiet." As people climb in, hesitant to go back into the dark depths of the cargo box, Marcie says how illegal this is. At any traffic light, if there are police near enough to hear people talking inside the truck, we'll be busted.

Climbing in, people talk about how illegal aliens suffocate in the back of trucks like this. People sit, crowded together on the metal floor, feeling the truck's diesel engine idle.

Marcie says, "After we park, you need to follow orders." She stands outside the tailgate, ready to pull down the door, saying, "If you don't stay inside the rows of candles, you could be injured or killed." She says, "I can't stress this too much."

She says, "What we're doing is felony trespa.s.sing. If we get caught, and you don't have a photo ID, you'll have to spend a night in jail."

Then she pulls the door shut. Inside the truck's cargo box, it's completely dark. We all jerk and sway together as the truck starts forward in first gear.

A voice says, "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if when they opened the door, we were all dead from carbon monoxide fumes?"

Another voice says, "Oh, yeah, that would be just f.u.c.king hilarious."

In the dark everyone sways together, whispering guesses about our route based on right and left turns and the truck's speed as we shift up through the gears. You can smell chili and garlic and fried chicken. When the truck gears down to a stop, we're all quiet, mindful of the police officer who might be just outside.

You can't see your wrist.w.a.tch. You can't see your hands. The ride seems to go for hours and miles. Then the truck stops again and backs up a little. The door rolls up. Open. To our light-hungry eyes, the candlelight outside is blinding bright, and we follow the trail between candles and deep black concrete holes in the floor. We're in some vast concrete warehouse.

A woman drops her ca.s.serole dish, and it breaks on the floor. "f.u.c.k," she says. "It's the end of the world after nuclear annihilation, and and I broke my hot bean dip." I broke my hot bean dip."

The rest of us wander back through huge empty rooms where fires burn in rusted trash barrels. The arms and legs of mannequins are wired together and hang overhead, dripping with lighted candles. Gruesome chandeliers. An old eight-millimeter movie projector clatters, showing army training movies and Christian cartoons on one pockmarked wall. There's a buffet of food, and a band is setting up. In the bathrooms every toilet bowl is broken and stuffed with litter and dead rats.

The word is, this is the old Greyhound bus barn under the west end of the Marquam Bridge. Members of the Portland Cacophony Society have cut off the padlocks and connected the power. In another huge concrete room, bowling lanes are outlined with little votive candles. Instead of bowling pins, lovely breakable objets d'art from junk stores-china vases and statues and lamps-are the target at the end of each lane. Nearby are boxes of plates and gla.s.ses for you to throw against the concrete walls.

The word is, this whole building is condemned and the bulldozers and wrecking b.a.l.l.s will clean up our mess in another week.

The band starts and people are beating on anything metal with sc.r.a.ps of pipe. People run through the maze of concrete rooms, holding flashlights and glowsticks. The deep holes in the floor are the lube pits each bus used to park above for service work. Underground tunnels connect the pits, and it's easy to get lost. Stairs lead up to abandoned offices on the second and third floors, those offices heaped with rotting blankets and human s.h.i.t. In the spooky dark we discover the dirty needles and dead cigarette lighters of junkies who've given up their turf for the night.

In the main room there's dancing and drinking and plate breaking. There's food and movies. A police helicopter pa.s.ses over the broken skylights and just keeps going. Right then, somebody rolls a bowling ball, a perfect throw down a candlelit alley, and the ball smashes a lovely hand-painted statue of Miss Piggy.

Getting Around: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to Meet

UNTIL THE NEXT APOCALYPSE CAFE-and the next ride in the back of a moving van-here are a few transportation-related people and places. The first, Reverend Charles Linville, is the man who cut the padlocks off the empty Greyhound bus barn and made the party happen. When he's not breaking and entering, he delivers mail out of the University Station Post Office.

JIFFY-MARR-"GET LEGALLY MARRIED IN TEN MINUTES OR LESS OR YOUR MONEY BACK!"

The cool way to get married in Portland used to be the Church of Elvis. Same-s.e.x marriages, group marriages, you could even marry yourself-they were all "legal" at the Church of Elvis, where the minister would charge you five bucks, give you toy rings, and make you swear to her own spooky oath. The fun part you didn't know about.

After the ceremony you were forced to carry a huge sign around the block, dragging tin cans and telling the whole world you were hitched. All of downtown was in on the joke, and people would honk at you, wave and shout. You looked like an idiot, but everyone smiled and waved and loved you.

The Church of Elvis is no more. But no sweat. Enter Reverend Charles Edward Linville and his Our Lady of Eternal Combustion Church, at 1737 SE Miller Street in the Sellwood neighborhood. Phone: 503-232-3504.

There, the Reverend Chuck runs "Jiffy-Marr." With the promise: "Get legally married in ten minutes or less or your money back!"

You can't miss the place. In 1996 several hundred Santa Clauses stood in line, waiting to pa.s.s through the metal detector and drink shots of whiskey for breakfast. Above the front door is a painting of Reverend Bill, the resident black Labrador retriever, who's also a registered Universal Life Minister who can perform your marriage.

Parked in the driveway are Reverend Chuck's cars. They include a 1973 Ford Torino, covered in a zillion things that suggest danger and painted with yellow and black warning stripes. There're rifle sh.e.l.ls. Busted eyegla.s.ses. A time clock. Broken pieces of mirror. Danger and warning signs. Plus there are dead fish and deer skeletons dug up by Reverend Bill. And there's countless rubber nipples from baby bottles. "People can't resist these," Reverend Chuck says. "You'll see guys in business suits sneak over just to tweak a nipple when n.o.body's looking." The car's theme is "Things That Can Get You in Trouble." The seats are covered in bobcat fur, with the taxidermied heads still attached.

The Reverend's second car, his "Jesus Chrysler," is a Chrysler Newport Royale, crusted with a bah-zillion rusted doork.n.o.bs. Shotgun sh.e.l.ls. Clocks. A rusted metal model of the Golden Gate Bridge runs the length of the roof. Next to it is a turbine vent painted and mosaicked with jewels and mirrors until it's a huge crown. The hood's covered with elegant gold-flocked wallpaper. The windshield is topped with a flashing back-lit acrylic sculpture of Christ's face. "People describe it as a nightmare. I wanted to use a lot of sharp pointy things so if people tried to steal parts, they'd bleed for it." Up front, he's hung sleigh bells.

His first art car was a 1967 Chevy Bel Air that he bought for $200 after moving to Portland from Los Angeles in 1983. One of his first jobs here was at the Oregon Humane Society on NE Columbia Boulevard. "I never had to kill anything," he says. But on swing shift he did have to load the incinerator. "At first, you'd handle the animals very reverently, very gently and tenderly, but eventually you end up hard-balling the kittens against the back wall of the incinerator. Summer was the worst. It was cat season, and we'd always have a big stack of more cats than we could burn."

At the same time, Reverend Chuck was sneaking cats and kittens home to his apartment that didn't allow pets. He was running his own ads and finding owners for animals past their sell-by expiration dates. Even the French poodles with bad haircuts. He says, "I brought home a lot of dogs I was too embarra.s.sed to walk in the daylight."