KEEPING PORTLAND SANCTIMONIOUS

this blog is about culture. and entertainment. and culture and entertainment in portland, ore. but less the latter than the first two, if only because portland hasn't yet been mentioned in these (very soon to be storied) annals. but we felt it necessary to lend the perspective of our by now (it's been nearly two weeks, after all) cemented authority on this article from the economist on portland and its elite status among american cities.

granted, the economist isn't really a culture magazine. and granted, the tone of the article isn't far from the one that this guy uses to lambaste portland's bike scene on a regular basis. but, since the economist's article is dated a full two weeks after april fool's day, the editors of this blog have chosen to accept it as a serious piece that is justified in being treated here (while also wondering why the economist couldn't come up with some humdrum tax day human interest story to run in place of the humdrum thing it ran on portland).

portland does like to care about the environment. and it definitely likes bikes. it also likes craft beer and little coffees, which, along with the bikes, seem to be the only explicable reasons for people here always insisting that it's so much like cities in europe. we'd say it's also maybe because portland is so white; but we'd also venture that we're beaten in diversity by most european cities of the same size. maybe not that freiberg place, but it's significantly smaller. (this blog doesn't plan to regularly investigate quantitative statistics, so you'll have to take us at our instinct.)

but mr. mayor, "most comparable [to] Vancouver in Canada?" vancouver's far superior shopping aside, it's somewhere you can actually hear languages other than english spoken on the streets, and it hasn't razed its chinatown to make way for asian themed bistros and nightclubs (it just lets its residents choose between chinatown and the west end). in fact, a comparison done by a seattle writer for the tyee in vancouver seems to demonstrate that portland's edge in livability mostly applies to the young, creative and underemployed, which, as the the economist acknowledges, essentially means white and moneyed.

we personally don't want this model replicated. . .or even perpetuated much longer here. not speaking for much money ourselves (until the book deal, that is), it's not unfrigthening to think that young-er people might come and price or create us out. to restate: we won't deny our own elitism, but until we acutally make it as elites we'd prefer that portland not leave us behind. we'd also prefer that the city never date us and that the population just age from this point on. young people: please go to boston or s.f.

there probably isn't any cause for fear, though, if populations are actually tending toward concentration in mega regions, in which case experience with suburban models is going to be more effective in addressing environmental crises and social inequalities than the experience of a second-tier u.s. city known for urban concentration, its foodie scene and indie rock.

but visibility has, if nothing else, meant the ascendance of portland's brand of hipster. mayor adam's would surely agree to its equal replicability. rainy timber culture plus indie rock (that western "grit" mentioned by the economist) equals well designed plaids. and beards (gold teeth if you're a lady). we have it on good authority that brooklyn hipsters want nothing more than to pose as well as we do in the northwest. (on a recent trip to l.a., two of us got happy on sunset and joked about all the 'just add water' styles carousing the boulevard. then someone sidled up to us in line outside a bar and asked, as if he were tipping us off to a bad drug deal, "you looking for a hipster bar? 'cause this isn't it." . . .who's the joke on now, l.a.?)

in general, though, we agree with the economist on its take on portland, if not on its projections for the rose city's future influence. indeed, "it is a sophisticated and forward-looking place." we're supposed to have an h&m by the end of the year.