Take a tour through old-school Portland with Thomas Lauderdale visits Mary’s Club, a family-owned strip club, and Darcelle XV, the oldest continually operating drag bar in America.

Thomas Lauderdale Tours Portland from Portland Monthly on Vimeo.

We received this note from an American fan in Jordan after our performance last week! It was too good not to share…
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Good morning. My name is Whitney Popp and I am a Peace Corps volunteer in Jordan. I was fortunate enough to see Pink Martini in concert when they came to Amman on the 4th. I’m not sure who to e-mail, but I was hoping you would be able to pass this along to the band-

Your music was the conclusion to my 2 year service. I have been working in a small village helping children with special needs and occasionally visit Amman. A dear friend of mine who is currently serving in Iraq had come to visit and we both cannot express our gratitude toward your talent, love of music and amazing performance. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that both of us have been struggling while serving so far from home. I am the only American and English speaker in my village and to hear music not only in English but so many languages was such a treat! After hearing your song in Arabic I went onto itunes, downloaded it and ran over to my neighbors. I explained how you all are from near my home (I’m from Northern California) and that without having Arabic as your native language you could sing like that. They loved it so much that I put it one woman’s cellphone and now your music is being passed around a small village in northern Jordan, pretty amazing, huh? When you sang, “Over the Valley,” I cried. Though I do not know which valley you were speaking of it made me think of one near my hometown. After being in olive orchards for 2 years, listening to such a beautiful song about home moved me.

I want to thank you for a wonderful concert and to express how much it meant to me. It is hard to be an American here, especially a young American woman without her family. To see all of you, women and men together, enjoying life and blowing away the audience made me proud. At times I want to stand up, turn around and tell everyone, “You see! This is America! All races, genders and everything else blending together to make something beautiful!” But, seeing as it was your concert I decided it best to stay silent (and I’m pretty sure security would have something to say to me if I did). I hope that you all had a good time in Jordan and were able to see some of the sites. I will be home at the end of this month and look forward to seeing you all in concert again. Shokran khthiir (Thank you so much).

We’d like to thank everyone who entered our music video contest, we wish we could award a prize to each of you. We were blown away at the caliber of the videos and truly appreciate all the time, energy and creativity that went into each and every submission. We’ll be sharing some of our favorite “honorable mention” entries on Facebook and the video page of the website starting next week.

So without further ado, the grand prize–a trip for two to see the band perform at the Nice Jazz Festival (or $2500 cash)–is awarded to…

Today’s music video contest winner, in 2nd place from Brooklyn, New York is Robbie Barclay with “Oú est ma tête?”

3rd place in our music video contest goes to…

Kate Reynolds & Erika Valenciana of Portland, OR for “Ou est ma tete?”