ON GETTING BACK TO YOUR ROOTS

this blog once purported to make portland culture one of its primary focuses -- and although general discussion of bicycles, beer drinking and esoteric consumption habits is a decent enough description of cultural discourse in this city -- our celebrity of this fall has taken an obvious toll on what 'looking good in pants' has been able to give back to the rose city. true, there was all that time we spent abroad (and in canada), but shouldn't that just have steeled our drive to get it right on portland -- or at least to better berate it for its sad points after gaining the perspective of distance?

yesterday, an entertainment blurb at oregonlive.com (the internet arm of the oregonian) ran an announcement on a schedule change for the independent film channel's upcoming short run series "portlandia," which will debut on ifc in january. the episode in which kyle mclaughlin plays portland's (maybe gay?) mayor will not air first, ladies and gentlemen. instead, the series will begin with an episode called "the farm." portland is so excited about a spoof of itself that its primary news publication sees fit to announce changes in the episode order of a television show. (we don't exclude ourselves from that excitement, but felt that journalistic integrity -- and a designation of authority -- required the use of non-inclusive pronouns in that last statement.) and that's portland culture. the spoof is no doubt spoofing the ethos of a place that delights in seeing itself spoofed. so i suppose that everyone's a winner, except maybe the parents who watch the show and are wakened for the first time to just what it is they're paying to support their aspiring [creative type] children to do here.

"dream of the 90s," the "portlandia" promotional video that's currently making its rounds of the social networking websites, pokes fun at portland for its dedication to an eccentric, anti-mainstream laziness decked out in flannel (though what you and the show call a flannel is probably a woolen pendleton shirt if it's on a portlander). it's funny because it's true. carrie brownstein should know. but who knows, the show might be a big disappointment.

and then this morning, by pure serendipity, i read a review of what was the hipster?, a sociological study published by n+1 that was distilled for publication in shorter form by new york magazine in late october. the article in new york essentially roots the demise of hipsterdom in its self-realization and eventual spread to the mainstream. although self-consciousness in the sense of kafka and camus was always a part of the hipster persona, it couldn't tolerate seeing itself reflected in the mall.

the article also dates the era of the hipster (or, more correctly, its most recent and recognizable american incarnation) from 1999 to 2009, and in its analysis of hipsterdom as "something like bohemia without the revolutionary core," the "poisonous conduit" between rebel subculture and dominant class, articulates its own kind of 90s dream. the first decade of the twentieth century also coincided with portland's rise to celebrity from the ugly depths of fringe radicalism and urban blight, two things easily tempered by a heavy influx of educated middle-class cool hunters. that done, a city with a reputation for the unorthodox but raised newly high on boutique capitalism has a chance to steal the national limelight. (our perennially dewy skin doesn't hurt either.) or, to restate and recap, maybe the culture of the city over the last decade and a growing general ethos of the cool of quirky knowingness have just dovetailed to make a grey, second tier city like portland finally palatable to premium cable watchers of a middle class mainstream that has welcomed the warm, insulating fold of hipster aesthetics across the same timeline (if it wasn't already a part of growing that aesthetic during its twenties.)

determinism? pshaw! reactionary? forty-five percent. can't help it. i'm the product of a tail-chasing culture (and that's determinism). the second decade of the twenty-first century will do better. we'll see if portland learns from the failed insularity of late hipsterdom.

the hipster moment did not produce artists, but tattoo artists, who gained an entire generation’s arms, sternums, napes, ankles, and lower backs as their canvas. it did not produce photographers, but snapshot and party photographers...it did not yield a great literature, but it made good use of fonts. and hipsterism did not make an avant-garde; it made communities of early adopters.

i'm not so sure that last part names hipsters so much as homosexuals, but the article does mention that some british youth circles trying to emulate the american hipster have turned toward androgyny and "the queer." whatever, we can take a joke -- even if it is a big one.