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Look, you've seen the video by now, in some form, while y'all cowered inside from the snow and manned your Facebook feed. A pair of runners in terribly expensive tracksuits were interviewed on KOIN news along a snow-blanketed North Mississippi Avenue. And they self-identified as Californians!
"It's the perfect texture for running," says the woman, in rapturous tones. "Very low impact, and it's dry so your feet don't get wet."
And of course, in an irony custom-made for the Internet, she falls in the snow immediately after blissfully extolling its virtues. Like makers of French comedies, Internet viewers love it when a happy or seemingly content person falls down.
After a nasty-seeming tumble, she raises a pained hand to the small of her back and appears shaken up, but gives the thumbs-up sign to the worried reporter.
Judging from my own Facebook feed, it was received as a lovely and satisfyingly immediate comeuppance to gentrifying, self-pleased Californians who moved here to raise our rents: Take that, psychotic fitness junkies full of money! Why must their tracksuits glow in the halogen light like those aliens in Third Encounters? Is that guy Noah Wylie? Are they trying to prove they're better than us, we who drain our growlers of Cavatica Stout and crank up the space heater?
Well, Deadspin went and tracked her down. And it turns out she's doesn't live in Portland and is seemingly a pleasant person who likes to wake up late and eat crappy breakfasts.
Chelsea is, as it turns out, a New Yorker and a former writer for the Onion A.V. Club. She was visiting her boyfriend here.
I've run some long-distance races but I usually just go out in search of local news crews and ask them to film me waxing poetic about running, then fall on my ass in front of them. That's my favorite kind of run.Also, her parents are making fun of her, too. Read the full interview here.
WWeek 2015