STACYTARVER
“Find an article or advertisement that represents one of Portland’s subcultures and provide a two-paragraph analysis.  How does the group mark itself?  What are its practices? What is its guiding logic or philosophy?  How does it define itself in relation to other groups?” The Portland Hash House Harriers (PH4) are a hash group that started in 2001.  PH4 is a chapter of the larger, international Hash House Harriers (a.k.a. HHH, H3, or simply “Hashing”) which is a group of non-competitive running, social, and (most of all) drinking clubs.  Each week the club organizes a series of “hash runs”, and the runners who take part call themselves “hashers”.  According to the “Hash History” document from the PH4 website (http://portlandhumphash.org/), “Hashing originated in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1938, when a group of British colonial officers and expatriates began meeting on Monday evenings to run, in a fashion patterned after the traditional British Paper Chase or ‘Hare and Hounds’, to rid themselves of the excesses of the previous weekend.” The group meets every Wednesday at 6:30PM – they mingle for a half an hour or so, and then the hares leave at 7:00.  The one or two individuals who have been chosen as the hares for that night set out to lay a trail, and ten minutes later the rest of the group (the “pack” or the “hounds”) follow.  The trail periodically dead-ends at a “check” where the hounds must finish all the alcohol stashed at the check before continuing on.   Often times there are false trails or short cuts marked in chalk along the way, and people in the front of the pack communicate to those in the back by calling “On On” whenever they feel like they are progressing in the right direction.  Each hash trail ends at an “On-After”, which is an opportunity for the group to socialize and drink lots of beer.  Usually, they gather and recount funny moments from the night’s run, and they initiate new members by giving them a name. All of the members of the group are addressed by their hash names, aliases that have been given to them by the group.  Hash names for the PH4 group include:  Rack ‘Em and Crack ‘Em, CrabShaft, Gayzelle, Backdoor Draft, Sheepshagger, and Barely Manbelow, just to name a few.  Members like it because it gives them an opportunity to hang out and get sloppy drunk with people that they ordinarily would not interact with otherwise.  From the moment you show up to a hash, your alias or alternate character takes over -  they take the hash names, hash terms, and rules of play very seriously, and members rarely, if ever, break character.  Most of the names are sexual in nature and there are “flash checks” during the run, which leads me to believe that the hash run also provides members an opportunity to express and act on desires that are not otherwise considered “politically-correct.”  They often define themselves as a loving, non-discriminatory group of “drinkers with a running problem”.  As long as you love to hash, the hash will love you back.
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  1. “Find an article or advertisement that represents one of Portland’s subcultures and provide a two-paragraph analysis.  How does the group mark itself?  What are its practices? What is its guiding logic or philosophy?  How does it define itself in relation to other groups?”

    The Portland Hash House Harriers (PH4) are a hash group that started in 2001.  PH4 is a chapter of the larger, international Hash House Harriers (a.k.a. HHH, H3, or simply “Hashing”) which is a group of non-competitive running, social, and (most of all) drinking clubs.  Each week the club organizes a series of “hash runs”, and the runners who take part call themselves “hashers”.  According to the “Hash History” document from the PH4 website (http://portlandhumphash.org/), “Hashing originated in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1938, when a group of British colonial officers and expatriates began meeting on Monday evenings to run, in a fashion patterned after the traditional British Paper Chase or ‘Hare and Hounds’, to rid themselves of the excesses of the previous weekend.”

    The group meets every Wednesday at 6:30PM – they mingle for a half an hour or so, and then the hares leave at 7:00.  The one or two individuals who have been chosen as the hares for that night set out to lay a trail, and ten minutes later the rest of the group (the “pack” or the “hounds”) follow.  The trail periodically dead-ends at a “check” where the hounds must finish all the alcohol stashed at the check before continuing on.   Often times there are false trails or short cuts marked in chalk along the way, and people in the front of the pack communicate to those in the back by calling “On On” whenever they feel like they are progressing in the right direction.  Each hash trail ends at an “On-After”, which is an opportunity for the group to socialize and drink lots of beer.  Usually, they gather and recount funny moments from the night’s run, and they initiate new members by giving them a name.

    All of the members of the group are addressed by their hash names, aliases that have been given to them by the group.  Hash names for the PH4 group include:  Rack ‘Em and Crack ‘Em, CrabShaft, Gayzelle, Backdoor Draft, Sheepshagger, and Barely Manbelow, just to name a few.  Members like it because it gives them an opportunity to hang out and get sloppy drunk with people that they ordinarily would not interact with otherwise.  From the moment you show up to a hash, your alias or alternate character takes over -  they take the hash names, hash terms, and rules of play very seriously, and members rarely, if ever, break character.  Most of the names are sexual in nature and there are “flash checks” during the run, which leads me to believe that the hash run also provides members an opportunity to express and act on desires that are not otherwise considered “politically-correct.”  They often define themselves as a loving, non-discriminatory group of “drinkers with a running problem”.  As long as you love to hash, the hash will love you back.

  1. Timestamp: Tuesday 2012/04/17 20:37:00aipdmediaculturecommunicationdesign
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