Stumptown Invasion

Last night, I heard contemporary writers Karen Russell and Teju Cole talk their words at a bar in Brooklyn. The type of bar that’s on a vaguely sketchy block where there’s an excess of fried chicken and comments about my ass—more than a white girl knows what to do with. But also the type of bar that draws a good-looking literary crowd when it nabs writers whose names are printed places like The New Yorker. These factors, in combo, make said bar quintessentially Brooklyn. Or, the perfect place to talk Portland.

At the reading, I was small-talking (new verb for one of life’s most banal necessities) with a friend of a friend of a friend when we broached the topic of hometowns. Because, really, are any Brooklyn denizens in the house actually homegrown? My small-talking partner is from Long Island, New York; I’m from Portland, Oregon. So the story goes. This is a conversation I can roll with. She probably knows her lines, but mine keep changing thanks to some uncertain playwright.

Ten years ago, I’d mention my hometown proudly and be staring back into blank eyes. Conversation points did not come easily, but included log cabins and the Oregon Trail—the real path or, alternatively, the nineties computer game where you hunt for bison and get Cholera. Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea and her adorable papoose. Fascinating stuff, really.

“Is Oregon the one right above California or is it more like near Iowa? I mean, Idaho? I think…I mean, Ohio?”

“Wait, Maine?”

“Did your ancestors have a covered wagon?”

“Near Cali, right? How’s the surfing, man?”

“Are there highways?”

I kid you not. For the most part, people didn’t know or care about my pretty, little city. The well-meaning ignorance annoyed me only a very little bit: Portland was my secret, waiting dormant like St. Helen’s in the eighties.

Then it exploded. Now, in a place like Brooklyn that’s soggy with hip, my hometown renders me interesting, even exotic. Ca-ching—Insta-cool-cred. At least, among a certain set. No longer Seattle’s kid cousin desperately trying to measure up, Portland is a quirky media darling in its own right. It’s a city on the tip of everyone’s tongue. There’s a certain kinship between Brooklyn and Portland (the third point of the isosceles hipsta triangle perhaps being Austin, TX); people here salivate for Stumptown.

As such, people now ask me things more along the lines of:

“Oooh, I read about Portland’s food cart culture in The New York Times! It’s really great for vegans/freegans/schmegans, right? And if I identify along the LBGT spectrum, I’ll fit in, yeah?”

“I’m sure you get this all the time (accurate), but what do you think of that new show Portlandia? Is the dream of the nineties really still alive?”

“I heard there are bike lanes everywhere. More bikes than cars! Like, better than Williamsburg?”

“Do you know the Decembrists? I mean, personally?”

People love Portland. Or people assume they love Portland based on what they’ve read in (insert reputable publication that’s not too mainstream) or what their friend’s cousin told them when he visited in the summer of 2009. “He fell in love with that city, and he’s just like me!”

I spend a lot of time talking Portland. Often, it’s forcefully self-initiated to people who’d probably rather not listen, but with equal frequency my PDX monologue is the avalanche result of curious hipsters who dig local food, fixed-gear bikes, mountains, clean air, free range, tattoos and independent bookstores just as much as, well, I dig those things. Portland is mentioned in the blog “What White People Like,” but the truth is that every other yuppie thing listed in that blog falls under the Portland umbrella.

Mostly, I don’t mind chatting up my city (especially if it’s while I’m getting chatted up myself) and listing its multiplying points of virtue to those who will listen—an expanding demographic. Truly, I can’t say enough good about my hometown.

It’s complicated, though, with Portland, OR. There’s more (or less) to the paradisiacal Western city than meets the Ray Ban-clad eye. As more and more of those curious hipsters move from places like, say, Brooklyn to Portland, the job market gets increasingly depressing, the PBR more expensive and real-estate sky-high in neighborhoods I used to consider affordably sketchy. Despite endless culture, the city is small and can’t support the amount of idealists who long to call it home. Nike only has so many entry-level positions and the number of tatted-up baristas the city needs isn’t quite unlimited. I heard somewhere that Portland has the highest unemployment rate in the country after Detroit. DETROIT, man. There’s this whole new Portland culture that’s foreign to me: young, smart, unemployed people who drink a lot of vices. I can spot them because they can’t handle the rain; they don’t know understand Goretex quite like I do. So, I’m not sure if they’re living the dream of the nineties and, if they are, I’m not sure they’re loving it. As an actual Portlander, it’s a culture I can’t quite tap into in the way I can tap into a similar culture in Brooklyn. When I’m in PDX, I do my thing and they do theirs.

First of all, I’ve been in absentia for six years, which for now is a decision I feel 100% great about. Another reason, though, is because the reasons I love Portland don't get printed in many national publications. Until five years, I didn’t care about organic restaurants, food carts, urban growth boundaries, hourly bike rental and local microbreweries. I’d be lying to say I still don’t care, but there are others reasons why I believe Portland to be the best city in the world. These are reasons I don’t share with small-talkers who want the scoop because it’s not what they want to hear. I aim to please.

I love the Portland Rose Festival (sadly I’m missing it this week), which is an antiquated, vaguely-misogynistic month of parades, carnivals and what amounts to a beauty pageant. My dad used to take us every year and buy us foam lizards on a metal stick, so much red licorice that Josh once vomited sticky red after the tilt-a-whirl and funnel cake certainly made from inorganic ingredients. I also love the public stairs—a secret network of overgrown steps that separate two Portland neighborhoods and make the perfect place to drink obscene amounts of malt liquor, whether you are 16 or 25. I love my parents’ backyard where we have dinner in the summer and laugh late enough for citronella. I love that the kids I used to babysit for in high school are now graduating from that same high school. I love walking outside of a coffee shop when it’s drizzling and I don’t have a hood. I love restaurants that aren’t trendy—gasp.

I’m getting nervous. If Portland’s a spot to which I want to return, peeps are beating me back to my own territory. When the original hipsters (Lewis and Clark) came across green Oregon, there was unlimited territory to chart and call home. Now, employed territory don't come cheap. That’s mostly a silly, concern, though, and I’m sure Portland will take me in should I choose to hitch up my wagon train and head west. The resentment I have for new Portlanders is entirely jest; after all, I’m doing the same thing in Brooklyn. It’s just an odd phenomenon when your sleepy hometown becomes fodder for half of the NYT’s travel section. At hip readings, I’m torn between talking it up and keeping it to myself. Some writer once said (it maybe was John Cheever) that every writer has a fraught relationship with his hometown—true enough, whoever you are.