All of the shitty white people I knew in college moved to Portland. I think they started a hipster Kibbutz.

I have a lot of friends there and I moved there, but they were among the worst years of my life. So I have little to offer Portland in regards to gentrification sympathies.

It's weird. I grew up in Portland, and live in Portland again now, but here's the thing: the old Portlanders (yeah it's not "Portlandians", that's how you spot them) was a pretty fucking horrible place and they bitch about all the newcomers flocking here. When I was a kid I was thrilled to watch the national news and hear Portland mentioned because of Tonya Harding and Monica Lewinsky. Nothing made national news except for cumguzzlers and criminals. It's like Milwaukee Wisconsin being excited for Jeffrey Dahmer. But no, they had Happy Days, The Fonz, uhh.. Laverne and Shirley.. oh yeah Pabst Blue Fucking Ribbon. When I think of a song about Portland (especially Burnside) I think about Dead Kennedy's "Night of the Living Rednecks." Yes, it happened on that street (on the other side of the river) but the moral of the story is that Portland fucking sucks. If you're into more obscure music, you've got songs like The Wipers' "Doom Town." The bridge that crosses over Burnside was always referred to as the "suicide bridge" because I'd see actual dead bodies in the middle of the street when I was transferred from my local high school to one with a music program, because the school system sucked. And I grew up behind a strip club and it wasn't uncommon to see methheads fucking in somebody's front lawn on my walk to elementary school. You think of other cities talking about their heyday, and the songs. San Fransisco has "flowers in your hair" recalling the halcyon days of Haight Asbury, and I dunno, Bob Dylan's Chelsea Hotel days, in either case recalling a simpler time before condo-ization happened. Portland was the depressed, rain-soaked, racist version of those songs and that's why I got the fuck out when I was 18 to go to college as far away from Oregon as I could, which was pretty much Wisconsin. And that was 2000 when everybody was starting to move here. And pretty much everything I said above changed, for the better. The strip club where I grew up is still there, and now there's a vegan strip club right next to it, but there aren't any fights. The school I went to is now famous for its organic farming. The friends I made in University in Madison are magically in Portland again. Yes, there are condos that would make Williamsburg drop jaws, but fuck, I pay 150 a month for an entire basement in Northeast right off of Killingsworth. Food is good. And it's the only city I know that has an actual camping ground that's like a permanent Occupy for homeless individuals (although the mayor's a dick about it and it's probably moving off Burnside soon..) So I dunno, it's just one person's opinion, but I like the growth, even though I'll never have a FOB or know what it means.

Huh. Had no idea it used to be a depression-soaked sadhole. I'd only started hearing about it when I was in college in Boston around 2006-2009. Always was the place hipsters in Allston aspired to end up, but couldn't because it was too expensive.

Good to know. Definitely feels more like a Thing To Complain About than something actually worth complaining about, in that light.

A lot of Orange County, CA was home to immigrants from the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma. Now it's a) its own Dust Bowl and b) fill in the blank on what you know about Orange County.

Yay gentrification.

vegan strip club?

Yep jangbones! Get the pussy eating jokes out of the way, but I'm sure I've heard them all. It used to be way out of the way, but now exists right by the strip club (Acropolis) that's been there for longer than I've been alive. The Acropolis is famous for its steak, and usually comes in first place for steaks, beating out the usual suspects like Mortons and Ruthes Chris. But now the vegan strip club moved right next door, famous for its vegan menu. So I guess if you have a vegan friend who uses that as an excuse to not go to a strip club, well now there's no excuse. Portland has more strip clubs than anywhere else in the world, including Las Vegas, and I don't mind it. I usually date people who are dancers because of the hours I work, and with the exception of a few really badly run ones with horrible owners, it's actually about the safest line of work you can get into. Portland also has the most food carts in the world, which is weird because it rains so much here (seriously when I was a kid, and mothership probably remembers this too, it rained hard nonstop for like 60 days or something, maybe even longer) and I kind of like to eat when I feel comfortable and warm, unless it's piping hot soup in which case a little 40 degree rain would be a nice contrast. Portland is changing, but it's still the only place I know where you can just hop off a train, have 10 bucks to your name and no job or place to stay, and probably at least have food and shelter on your first night. Some people like the condos, but there's a backlash, but I can't blame the new people for doing it if they don't want to get their hands a bit dirty either. Like, I like to periodically check Austin's CL for jobs and apartments, and I usually see the same dumb jobs on CL that you see in Portland, and the cheapest one bedroom is 00, but that's because I'm not even sure what I'm looking at or for. My guess is this condo craze is going to be the same as the suburban sprawl. Nobody wants to live out in the suburbs of Portland anymore because everything's "happening" quite literally within 4 miles of itself, Burnside sort of being the nexus. You go five blocks off of Burnside and there's a perfectly good house you can sublet I'm sure. When I was a kid I didn't think people even lived on that street because it was all buildings and restaurants.

I checked their website though and it would be cool to live in stumbling distance to Beulahland, which is still the tits, but I haven't been in there since December when I had to take a shit and clogged up the toilet.

Makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Portland used to be an industrial/blue collar town up until "Reagenism" saved us from a life dwelling away in the factories and coal mines!

I would sooner live in Alabama than Portland.

I wish I lived in riverwest in Milwaukee Wisconsin the way it was in 2006. But all my friends moved to Portland. Same shits going on there. It's a 40 minute train ride right into Chicago, so it's about the same as living on east burnside but working in Silicon Forest, the way our public transit system works. I've never actually been to the south but id like to give it a try, but honestly my plan is Melbourne Australia in the next six months. I will defend my hometown forever tho.. Can you drink at a bar that's MLP:FiM themed before eating at a 5 star restaurant and run into an iron chef champ drinking at that dive bar or black Francis in Alabama? I dunno maybe you can.

infinite_zest.poetv.blogspot.com

My thoughts exactly, That Guy

I like you IZ, but jesus christ I can't read your posts anymore.

I grew up in a suburb of Portland (West Linn / Willamette), and later spent six years in Seattle, and would move back to the Northwest in a heartbeat if I had the opportunity. The weather alone is reason enough (I hate the winter with a capital WINTER we have out here in WI), but man, PDX has changed for the better since I was there.

Gentrification can be rough, but eh. My impression is that PDX is still fairly affordable compared to Seattle, where our old apartment is being rented for more than twice what we paid seven years ago.

(yeah.. sorry about the long posts. Long story short (or long, am I right) I get really bored at work. Most people at least have co-workers to talk to, something to do, but I work with a guy who can exchange about 10 words, and then I'm just in an apartment by myself for 8 hours that I can't leave. So it's either this or a slow descent into, well frankly most robin williams movies where he just continues to talk to himself.. anyway I don't mean to piss anybody off.)

My grandma moved from La Crosse Wisconsin to West Linn about 10 years after my parents moved out here in the 70s. Speaking of the weather, when I went to Wisconsin for school, I was going to my first college house party and shivering my ass off because it was 25 degrees in October. I was like "it doesn't get any colder than this, right?" "uhh.." and I came Portland prepared, which means a hoodie and little else, because I only visited my grandparents in the hotter than fuck summers. Being a broke freshman I didn't have a coat, and didn't want to write home to my parents to send me a coat, because I'm cool and 18 now.. anyway I spent most of that winter walking to class in free blankets that the dorms provided.

Speaking of costs of living, Madison is more expensive than Portland, and always has been, especially if you want to live near State or Williamson St; basically State is Burnside and Williamson is.. I dunno, another hip place that's further away from campus. In 2000 the condoization was already happening, which is way more apparent in a town of that size because of the university. The brand new condos that all the rich kids would move into was last year's trash by the end of the semester, so why not build a new one? It was pretty sickening and I shutter to think of what it looks like now. Also I'd probably get in trouble for assassinating Scott Walker.

My perspective must be off. Apartment living in Portland doesn't strike me as rich.

Also, I know a number of skaters/punks/hardcore kids/artists/activists and the likes who just fucked off during their twenties, then got tired of struggling and found some jobs skills. They're basically what you'd call hipsters now living in SF Bay Area, the North West, and NYC. My take is that it's okay to have the hipster aesthetic--or whatever the dominant aesthetic taste is at the moment--if you have some authentic life experience backing it up. Being 40 and pissed at your working class lifestyle, feeling stuck, and being bitter isn't a very good life to live.

I went the opposite way. I was a Portland punk who got married and stayed that way for most of a decade. I slowly saw my friends move to suburban Wisconsin towns and breed. That could've been my life but I was miserable, moved back to Portland and lived next door to a doppelg�nger of myself, but 6 years older, who broke up with his wife because she was fucking some dude and boom my wife's fucking him these days. That wouldn't have happened if I stayed where I was.

And I'm fucking others, sometimes, on occasion.. Goddamnit I've been 33 for 4 months and hVent gotten laid. But life is grand!

It's funny that you say that, because that area of Portland (technically Hillsboro Oregon) where all Intel, Xerox etc. are located is known as Silicon Forest. And it's as boring of a place to live and work as I'd imagine Silicon Valley is, but with really shitty weather. I can't really speak for what it was like in the 80s when I was growing up here, but there really wasn't much in the way of industry except for lumber and steel, and of course doctors and lawyers, things like that. All that changed with Intel. I suppose I put myself into a bubble: I work a job where I don't deal with the public hardly at all, and avoid things that I don't want, like downtown, which now has tourists just like New York City, going around taking pictures of "keep portland weird" stuff like a man with a beard on a bike is like seeing Sasquatch. But I've known people who moved here who worked at really cool neighborhood coffee shops and bars who are now stuck at a Starbucks 15 miles away from where all that's happening because the job market is simply packed here. And that's really sucky. You had this dream of everything you saw in Portlandia and now you're lucky to work at a job you don't want to because EVERYBODY's good at the service industry. Hell, I stodged, or did a work interview, at several places for a dishwasher position when I was laid off a few years ago, and couldn't find shit. It's like auditioning for American Idol and just going to assume you're gonna win it, or going to hollywood to be an actor. Good luck. But here, it's service industry. Best case scenario our food handler's cards mean 1 dollar PBRs at bars and sometimes free punk rock shows exclusively for people in the industry, but is that really worth what you moved away from? I dunno, here's a few things that I think would really help. Portland, next to NOLA and Las Vegas is probably known best for its drinking. Bar time is at 2:15-ish but the busses stop running at midnight. Bars open at 7AM and so does bus service. So brokeass folks like myself won't even GO to shows, another thing Portland's known for, if they don't have a ride home, because fuck a 35 dollar cab ride. The town's literally a ghost town between 3 and 8 in the morning, even though for plenty of people, that's 5 in the afternoon.So take a tip from New Orleans and Las Vegas and have 24 hour transportation, I don't think it would cost that much more, and just have more bars and restaurants open 24 hours a day. I dunno.. it's not rocket science, and think about how many more jobs you'd have and business you'd do. Us night people aren't all CHUDS you know..

I'd like to see dressing up as b-movie monsters take off. Those momsters high dolls and shit are already popular

I can get behind that.

I think Hipsters are becoming/rolling into being the new BoBo (Bourgeoisie-Bohemians).

So Techo-hippies?

How about the legions of Indian tech workers that used Friends as the source biblical material for their American assimilation? Because the tech areas on the west coast or overrun with them, and race aside, they deserve as much hate and ridicule as native hipsters.

The Laurelhurst is rad. It's the only place where I'll see movies and not sneak beer into because a pitcher of PBR is still 6 bucks. In fact I feel like I'm cheating on them by seeing Mad Max in 3D at a big box theatre. Normally I just wait for movies to head over there after a month or two.