In the city with the reputation for having the largest concentration of lesbians on the West Coast, they closed the only lesbian bar.
However, in the spirit of fairness to this not-so-fair city, there's a lot of cool stuff here, too. For example:
- Awesome radio! I love good radio. Even radio static. Especially I am a fan of when two or more stations get mixed up so music and talking and static fade in and out, creating a creepy and old-timey and oddly comforting cacophony that would do well at the beginning or end of a certain genre of techno song. Anyway, Portland has some great radio stations:
- A new one I discovered recently is KZME, found at 107.1 on your Portland FM dial. So far it is tons of really amazingly good (and local!) music.
- Good ol' classic, KBOO. They have a feminist talk show! And a queer one! And a show called "Fight the Empire"! And super-early morning mellow commuter tunes!
- Unexpected Art:
- Someone hung a disposable camera from a bridge with a note that said "Take one picture." The results.
- Vegan graffiti is a thing, apparently.
- Free appliances as found art.
- Community-y things:
- Multnomah County Libraries: Second only to New York City in the volume of rad books and what-have-yous that are checked out. Pretty significant when you consider that it's No. 29 in population, but No. 2 in readers. Yay books!
- City Repair Project is here.Their whole mission is pretty much all about painting trippy stuff on the streets, hippie-style. I have every intention to avail myself of their services come paintin' weather. Which is approximately one week a year, in mid-August.
- Friends of Trees: These people will come to your house and plant trees for you. We got two trees last spring. I like to water them, because I like trees.
- Event-y things:
- Science Pub! My roomie told me about this thing where scientists talk about cool science-y things while audience members enjoy pub grub and boozey things. Yay science! Yay cocktails!
- Arts for All! Even po' folks here are allowed to watch cool dance-y things and play-y things and music-y things. Imagine that.
- Music for All! See above.
- The meetup groups here are not sketchy like they are in other cities that shall not be named.
- Snobbery I agree with: I am not the only person who lives here that hates:
- Starbucks
- Shopping malls
- Wal-Mart (even though sometimes they dohavegreatdealsonstuffsoIgothereanywaydon'tjudgemeyoubigjerkyhipsterpersonnoteveryonecanaffordNewSeasonssofuckoffok?)
- Fancy cars
- Dressing appropriately for cold weather
- And, last but not least: Our neighbors bring us cookies! Then we keep their plate for way too long, because we are all too antisocial to go over and bring it back to them. We suck.
Don't forget the beer. Portland has spectacular beer.
ReplyDeleteI heard Portland was hipster-ville. I also heard there were tons of lesbians and i heard people there aren't normal (which is a good thing)
ReplyDeletePS: i love my city.
What pisses me off about San Francisco is mostly the stuff captured in Rebecca Solnit's book "Hollow City." Development, tourism, deindustrialization, "Urban Renewal" (the joke was it really meant "Negro Removal") and gentrification have steadily diminished or destroyed the things that made the place desirable (hence attractive to development capital, uneconomic for industrial land use, appealing to high-income renters who make working-class neighborhoods unaffordable, etc.) My bygone Arcadian Age is the late 50's (have a look at the location shots in Hitchcock's "Vertigo") when this was a port town with a strong labor movement, a lively neighborhood of Black residents and Black-owned businesses and institutions, and places where artists could live cheap and hang out. Sure, that's romanticized, and sure, there are people who are convinced it was at its peak in the late 60's or the 80's or the pre-WW2 years (not so many of those left.) And despite everything, there's still good stuff going on, and it's still physically beautiful, hideous downtown skyline and all. But they're fucking it up, and the logic of capitalism suggests to me that while we can slow this down and squeeze out a few concessions here and there, the process can't be stopped.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteI've never been to Portland, but I've heard it described as very "scene" for grungy artists.
ReplyDeleteI moved to PDX for Richard. At first, it was not my cup of tea. I'm from Georgia (the state) originally. I've been coming around to the city though.
ReplyDeleteI thought PDX had like Top 10 Public Transportation status? Maybe someone has been fibbing to the newcomer. lol
I do love this theatre company I found out in Hillsboro called Bag & Baggage. Been to 2 shows and they're great, plus reasonably priced at $20 a ticket for students.
I love, love, love the weather. I hate sun. I hate heat. I love clouds and rain and grey skies. It's perfect for me. No matter where we are, I always miss the PDX weather.
The library in this city is amazing too. OMG. There is Bitch Media too. So excited about that! I love that recycling and environmental stuff is "in." In GA, people still laugh at the idea unless you're in one of the few college cities. Then just most people still laugh. lol
I enjoy the chillax attitude of the West Coast too.
Another terrific music resource is this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.classicalrevolutionpdx.org/
I've been to a couple of these here in SF--I actually sat in once, they have occasional open mic nights and besides being good players, the usual folks are great sight-readers. The cafe keeps serving beer and coffee, most of the patrons go on talking; some cluster around the musicians to listen. There's none of the forbidding starchiness associated with classical music performance--it's much more like a club, with (don't know about PDX) there's zero admission--you can just have a coffee, or probably not have amything at all. While we were playing Mozart the bartender dropped a case of empty bottles--made a pretty impressive noise, but we just kept going. Nice.
nice post! And true!
ReplyDeleteSteve-o: I tried to like beer. I really did. But at this point, I’ve really just accepted my fate as a cocktail person. Therefore, beer commentary is outside the scope of my expertise. Feel free to post your beer favorites here, though! Or somewhere else, that’s cool too.
ReplyDeleteWriter: Yeah, that’s about right I suppose. Except people here are people, just like everywhere else. The “weird” image is fairly contrived.
John: Urban renewal has pretty much the same results everywhere –removal of ethnic minorities and poor people, making everything unaffordable. If you asked my pops, he’d likely agree with you on the Arcadian Age in SF. My uncle, too – who was a beatnik of the highest order.
From your classical link: “We are tired of the elitist and inaccessible nature of classical music.” Yes! Wonderfulness! I will add this to my list. I have been to a few “culture-y” things here and while I have run into some very nice people, I have also run into some very well-practiced snobbery. Boo.
Deena: Huh. Like, they are grungy, or their art is grungy? I’m less in tune with the art scene than I ought to be, other than I occasionally refer my artist friends to coffee shops where they can display their art, but then they always flake, because my artist friends are flaky. Go figure.
Eld: Yeah, my public transportation comment is in need of some clarification (as so kindly pointed out by some moderated commenters who feel so strongly about buses in Portland that they wish bodily harm upon me – oh internet people!) – Portland is known for having a great system, but it’s only great if you live/work in well-served areas. For me, getting to work would take 2.5 hours one way using public transit. That’s just not feasible. People who live/work on the max line or who can take the trolley, great for them. They also have sidewalks, and grocery stores within walking distance, and really expensive apartments, and probably no one leaves piles of 4Loko cans and used condoms outside their door, and no one steals their mail.
But Bitch Media and the libraries are fantastic! I had to let my magazine subscription lapse because ZOMG expensive, but there is a free podcast, yay! Hillsboro is a bit out of the way for me, but have you looked at that Arts for All link? You may be able to get theater tickets for even less than the $20 student price.
I have no concept of Portland other than it rains a lot- which sounds nice.
ReplyDeleteI hate Jackson. It has become crime ridden and poor over the last 30 years. It should be this beautiful capital city that has every opportunity to have some great club scenes. I mean Mississippi is the home of the blues. There used to be this tiny little club over in a bad section of downtown called the Subway club. Looking at it you'd think it was all black, urban, and rap but every weekend it would fill up with people of all colors crammed into a tiny space with a tiny stage to hear the most amazing local blues players and singers. We'd all get drunk on Kessler and groove the night away.
But now people are leaving the city. Even with the downtown work that's been done it's just a wasteland of car dealerships and big box stores. The white people leave an area, they take the tax dollars with them, the force of Republican agenda here means that things aren't funded so they go downhill, people turn to crime, and then the citizens that are left are blamed for it all. First it was West Jackson, then South, now North. The white people have gradually left from section after section till now the new place to be isn't even in Jackson it's Flowood.
We used to have skating rinks and water parks and now we have large unused parking lots like places where these things used to be.
I blame Republicans.
@Jenni:
ReplyDeletemakes sense. Here in San Francisco, though, there basically aren't any Republicans; we have centrist Democrats and left-liberal Democrats, who mostly disagree about development since there's almost nothing else the City/County government (they're the same entity) have any authority over. Instead of white flight (of which there was quite a lot in the 1950's) we have people of color being driven out by high rents and the disappearance of blue-collar jobs. The non-union construction trades employ Latino men, many undocumented; tourism creates jobs, unionized in the big hotels, non-union in the restaurants, for immigrant women. But, except through the labor movement (chiefly the hotel workers' union, UNITE-HERE), these folks have no political clout, because they're ineligible to vote and (again except as noted) unorganized. It's a far cry from the old image of SF as a stronghold of working-class power. The waterfront is still solidly union, but the overwhelming majority of the members (over 50% African-American) live outside the City and work there too, since the modern containerized Port is across the Bay.
David Simon, one of the creators of "The Wire,' says the theme is that unrestricted capitalism destroys people's lives and the cities they live in. It's true in Democratic-run Baltimore (where the series is set) as well as in Republican-run Jackson. I do not have an alternative to propose, though I've got some painful memories of alternatives that failed or were never real. Probably electing Democrats has more humane outcomes than electing Republicans. But the ailments of US city life go deeper than which party is in City Hall.
I reside seven miles from my nearest human neighbors in northeast Oregon. I love the solitude and the privacy intensely--I guess if I didn't, it would be pretty dumb to live here. But when I need to get away from it all--the constant pressure of raccoons getting on the porch at night and getting into the cat food...the incessant babbling of the creek...the maddening procession of gorgeous, splendid days of almost unearthly beauty--I love to vacation right downtown in big cities, and Portland is one of the best. If you're from out of town, it never occurs to you that half the city may be discriminated against in terms of public services--you only know about the part you see riding the MAX all over the place for free while your car rusts away back at the hotel! Phenomena such as "nerdly elitism" go unnoticed because, as an outsider completely unversed in the evolution of such subtleties, you can't tell elitist nerdery from ordinary pocket-protector nerdery; even some pretty remarkable vehicular asshattery is hard put to stand out from the ambient chaos one perceives in Portland when one's daily commute at home involves seeing one or perhaps two cars in ten miles. As for unpaved road--well. What could be more normal?
ReplyDelete@Sarah:
ReplyDeleteI'd like to meet them--there's a chance I already did, in 1959 or so. I was only on the edges of the North Beach subculture--I was too young for the bars, which really limited my scope. But I played in jazz jam sessions at the Coffee Gallery and elsewhere. A lot of joints wouldn't let me in as a customer but when I was with other musicians they not only let me in but sold me drinks. I have no idea what twisted bartender logic lay behind this.
Battling Bob! Your perception of Portland is exactly as mine was before I moved here. And honestly, there are a lot of wonderful, wonderful things about the city (even more than what was in the list!), not least of which is the fact that you can be a nerd of any variety and fit right in. Also? It seems to me that most people who live here came from a place like you describe: rural, peaceful, etc. It's about as much city as most of us can handle, so we are at least used to the unpaved roads, even as we do complain about them. :)
ReplyDelete@John: The next time I pay a visit to the Bay Area, I will have to arrange such a meeting.
ReplyDeleteThe underage-performers thing is weird, but it applies to strippers, too - leastwise in Oregon, they just give you a bracelet that says no one can buy you drinks, but they do anyway.