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Consider Rent-A-Butch (rentabutchpdx.com), a moving company and stable of strong backs ready to provide labor for hire, a variant of College HUNKS Hauling Junk & Moving, except utterly different in every important way. With prices starting around $55 an hour per butch, according to its website, crews of “trans dykes and gender freaks” will tackle everything from full-scale relocation to “nonjudgmental cleaning” and home and garden maintenance, with proper tools and salacious puns at the ready. (“We love to get our hands dirty!”)
Although Rent-A-Butch’s website describes the company as “owned and operated by a family of dykes” in Portland and New York’s Hudson Valley, it recently stopped accepting East Coast bookings altogether and restricts Northwest jobs to Portland, Gresham, Beaverton, and the small towns in the Portland metropolitan area. Local households should be aware that the company does not, alas, handle plumbing, roofing or electrical work, and avoids any work that would jeopardize a dwelling’s foundation or structural support.
The guiding vision behind Rent-A-Butch began “with the philosophy that the gays deserve to feel comfortable with the handyworkers who come into their homes! So many queer [people]…hesitate to hire handyservice workers because we don’t want to invite [straights] into our spaces.”
If you’re not moving any time soon, you will have to make do with purchasing employee calendars (before they sell out) or the tees, socks, onesies, hoodies, mugs and ever-growing array of targeted merch emblazoned with the R-A-B logo: a brawny gal, all cowboy hat and boots, straddling the rear of a retro pickup hurtling corners on two wheels. Everyone else can rest assured, as R-A-B promises, that “however gay you may be, your handyworkers are gayer.”
See the rest of Willamette Week’s Best of Portland 2025 here!
