The Dream of the 90s Was Achieved in Portland

An Essay

I answered a siren’s call and flew to Portland. Maybe it was a fugue, the last gasp of life from a once beautiful, now haggard, dying thing. There’s something seductive about a place with constant rainfall, endless forests of evergreen trees, a refined coffee culture, and a music scene that feeds the angst and malaise that I have not quite dropped from my teenage years. It’s flaws are both obvious from afar, yet disturbing once experienced firsthand. After reading ‘Ketchup’ by Sam Pink, I thought I could write something like him. A journey with no destination promised and when it does, in fact, end, no one feels they’ve been gypped.

We landed at PDX in the morning. It was raining. Duh. Airports get nicer the further west you go. The New York area airports are horrors. Logan airport achieves the best rating of any East Coast airport I’ve encountered: It was fine. PDX was pleasant, which threw me for a loop on landing. I knew I was entering enemy territory. I expected a loud bunting of pride flags and a battalion of homeless to demand my spare change.

I don’t like flying. I get nervous waiting in lines. The Army got me used to waiting in line for no reason and conditioned me to be obscenely early to wait in line, much to the chagrin of my wife, who’s been flying her whole life, all over the world and has few if any poor experiences. Never missed a flight, never gets stopped by the TSA, never lost any luggage. She puts up with my neurosis. This is true love.

The rental was a Ford Escape. I wonder if they went with “E” names in honor of Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford. I like the idea. I’m going to tell that to people at parties. It’s fun to have the internet, then make up misinformation. I’m not great at parties, except when I’m with people who are either very uptight or very uncouth. Most people exist in the middle and I don’t know what to do with them. They get made up facts about Ford and crummy, half remembered jokes about Arab homosexuals that my uncles told me, to my mother’s horror.

My mother was a Democrat and ate all the fear and propaganda they fed her. She hated Trump. The last few years of her life consisted of CNN, The View, and Rachel Maddow. I am not a Democrat. I voted for Donald Trump. I used some of the precious time we had left together to argue about why he wasn’t the Anti-Christ. I lost my temper with her on more than one occasion. I stayed with her for the last 18 hours of her life. I was in the next room pleading with her nurses to manage her pain better when she died. I don’t care about politics anymore, at least not in the team sport kind of way that pundits describe, with their colored maps and their color commentary.

Keep Portland Weird. I saw that mural on the side of a doughnut shop whose presence I find unsettling and I’ve heard may be connected to child trafficking and Jeffrey Epstein. Several cities I’ve been to have the same sentiment and those cities all espouse Leftist politics, all have massive homeless/drug problems and all were once quirky, fun weird and are now eldritch horror weird.

Portlandia was a satire television show in the 2010s about the quirky weird Portland and how “the dream of the 90s was alive in Portland”. Portland was socially progressive, laid back, and catered to all kinds of niche interests. As much as people found it distasteful or crass, or weird, it was a place with an identity. Visiting in the 2020s was like examining a decomposing corpse. I could see what it probably used to look like. It smelled horrible and every second I stared, it only got worse.

We ate brunch at a place called Mother’s Bistro & Bar. A friend recommended it and told me he still thinks about the Mac & Cheese he got there from time to time. He was right, the food was delicious. The menu features a different staff member’s mother every month. I think that’s sweet. Not everything in Portland is terrible. There’s plenty of terrible to be sure, but it’s not without some redeeming features. I like quirks. The nice things about Portland do not redeem it, but accentuate the flaws, embiggen the horror.

Mother’s is attached to a hotel. It was a hotel restaurant that was built in the early 20th century and had waiters in ornate uniforms and served Lobster Newburg. Fun Fact: They invented Lobster Newburg in 1892. Not much has been done in terms of renovation and the place looks to be falling apart, eclectic furniture in the waiting area. If I had to describe Portland as a city, I’d say it was a well-crafted and beloved place that no one bothered to maintain. The kids got grandpa’s house, but not his ethics or his know how. The bones are still good, but the bones are the last thing to decay.

Onto the homeless. It’s a problem. I was there a day and in that day; I saw a man set fire to his cardboard domicile and camping tent with a road flare, another man threw garbage at passersby from a large dumpster and a large gaggle of them doing the fentanyl slump. These were once men. No longer. “Only a cynical man could call what these people have lives”- Ras Al Ghul, Batman Begins. It may be an act of mercy if God sent a large wave to wipe out Portland. But they’re inland. It would be a supreme act of Divine Intervention for that feat to happen. Water makes things clean. I don’t want people to die. I don’t want to walk around like Simon Pegg in Shaun of the Dead just to be left alone in US cities. I’d prefer these problems get solved before they are solved for us. But I was just a visitor to Portland and there exists in me some perverse schadenfreude that “you get what you deserve”. I don’t like this about my psyche, but it’s there. May God forgive me.

Portland smells horrible. Rain makes everything smell more. Science. When people say they love the smell of rain, they’re saying they love how the place they live smells and gets enhanced by the rain. No one loves the rain smell in Portland. I wish it were easy to just say sewage or backed up pipes or feces in the street. It’s all that and more accentuated by rain. It’s difficult to walk on the sidewalk because the garbage on the street gets wet and it’s unpleasant to walk on. Our hotel had a doorman and a valet. The doorman did little except stop 80% of the homeless from entering the lobby. The valet did a worse job at protecting our Ford Escape.

When we checked out of the hotel the next morning for our long drive to Bend, we noticed a smelly brown stain on the seat. I bought a lot of cleaners and a scrub brush and some gloves and got to work. They charged $40 to store my rental overnight. I paid $40 for someone to expel their bodily fluids in my rental. $60-ish when you include the cleaning supplies. Before there was that unpleasantness, there were some still pleasant moments and some more horrors. We’ll circle back to the Ford and the valet for transients.

Portland has the largest bookstore on Earth. It was quite large. I found a few titles I couldn’t find in other stores. It’s easy to buy stuff online, but I have most of my fun in bookstores browsing. There was once a used bookstore with a real, honest to goodness banned book in it. I knew what it was right away, but they were displaying it prominently, like they knew what it was and anyone fool enough to pick it up would sound an alarm and several bull-dyke, disabled feminist lesbians would pounce, or at least roll, from the shadows with their iPhones pointed at the offender, ready to ruin lives and livelihoods for the crime of purchasing this piece of hate bound with glue.

Anyway, the largest bookstore is full of a lot of great books and even more metric tons of crap. Front and center are lesbian poetry, bipoc memoirs, and girlboss how-to books with the same snarky, crass titles that would make our grandparents turn into Saracens and Jihadists, burning everything in their path until the rage subsided. “You are A Badass, Men Ain’t Shit, Go Be a Prostitute.” And so on. I’d read “Go Be A Prostitute”. At least it would be honest. They did not have ‘Decline of the West’ in stock, but I didn’t have room for it in my suitcase, anyway. Would have been cool to see in the wild. Overall, I think that poster was right and we should just burn down all the bookstores, even if we lose some gems in the process. Mass literacy was a mistake (probably).

We ate dinner at a nice restaurant. I like Michelin Star restaurants most of the time. “Duh”, you’ll say. “I too like fine food and good service and ‘ambiance’”. Shut up. My wife has eaten at several. We are from very different class backgrounds and I’ve refined my tastes over the years we’ve known one another. This restaurant has no Michelin star to speak of. There was a homeless man in front of the window. He did not add ambiance.

The Hotel was built in the late 19th century. Even had a real key for the locks instead of a card. The elevator was plated with gold. It would have once been described as elegant. It’s still nice, but out of our time and decrepit. Portland was probably once very nice and just stayed that way. If you leave a Mercedes in the driveway for years, you’ll recognize it as a Mercedes and still say it looks like crap. That’s the tragedy of Portland. The attitude of indifference came home to roost. And if someone, anyone tried to change things, tried to keep things together, he’d be run out on a rail because he was “changing the vibe” and not letting people enjoy things or worst of all, trying to prevent Portland from staying weird.

Keep Portland Weird. The term was stolen from Austin, TX. They believed in keeping Austin weird. Part of what made Austin weird was Alex Jones. Before he was Satan, Alex Jones was a local eccentric, one of the staples of a second tier city in the US, akin to the Portlands and the Salt Lake Cities and the Denvers across America. Austin was small and cool and liberal in a state that was known for being big, uptight, and conservative. Alex Jones was the counterbalancing force in Austin that kept it in its own little stasis. He’d drive down the streets, PA system attached to his convertible, talking about the New World Order and estrogen in the water turning the frogs (and you) gay. Fun!

I bet Richard Linklater wishes Austin stayed weird. It seems being weird puts you down two diverging paths. You either die weird, like Portland or you get so popular that the richest man on Earth and his buddy Joe Rogan move to your city and turn weirdness into a Silicon Valley-lite for wannabes who can’t afford to live in Palo Alto. Richard Linklater is a filmmaker. He made the movie Boyhood. He did the ‘Before’ trilogy. He also made a film called Waking Life, where he shows how weird being alive is, especially in Austin. Alex Jones does his thing in the film and it’s great. Best part of the film. I can’t confirm that Linklater is paying Jones’ court fees, but that’s a brand new fun fact to use. I’ll have at least ten by the end of this thing wherever it ends up. I think what people mean by weird is identifiable. People are searching in a desert of sameness for something weird. Then, weird gets turned into scary or sad or a bumper sticker, which is also sad. Homelessness and drug addiction aren’t weird, they’re sad. When people now say Keep Portland Weird, they want to keep it sad.

My wife and I make love in the hotel room. We watch trashy television in the room after. There’s something transcendent about basking in the ‘after’ with mindless TV. Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. I only watch it when I’m away from home. I don’t watch television at home. Wallace did this. He watched tv in hotel rooms all night and into the day. He did not make love. He got off in women. He committed suicide. David Foster Wallace was big in Portland.

There’s a children’s toothpaste commercial featuring a cartoon bear. Little Bear. I remember the cartoon from childhood. This bear was on television for 5 years, ending in 2001 with a film. That’s all fine and good. The strange part is, Orajel, the toothpaste company, apparently didn’t get the memo. They still run a children’s toothpaste commercial and feature Little Bear like it’s this huge get. There’s even a line where the kid brushing his teeth is surprised that such a famous cartoon bear is visiting him. The bear hasn’t been on television for twenty years. Do kids know who Little Bear is? I did a Google search and they now have a Paw Patrol version. But the commercial is still the bear. Did Orajel buy Little Bear? Do the kids’ channels run Little Bear re-runs? Most likely is the marketing director for Orajel thought, “Fuck it, why do another commercial?” The economy is run on “Fuck it”. Portland runs on “Fuck it”, definitely. If this essay gets the editing it needs, this whole paragraph probably goes. Kill your darlings.

The next morning, we get our defiled car back from the valet. I tip him. It’s customary. I didn’t notice the smell and the stain until we were well away from the hotel. I’m under no illusion that this middle-aged Chinese man is living his life’s purpose as a hotel valet. I don’t expect him to don the King’s Guard uniform and patrol the parking lot all night. But I expect him to lock the doors. They even make it easy. There’s a button on the key. Goodbye Portland. Never again.

The arboretum is lovely. It’s outside the city. They do trees well in the PNW. We take pictures of the trees. My wife likes those low-angle shots of her looking up at tall trees. Redwoods live there but they’re young and they’re the b-tier Redwoods. AA Redwoods. Not yet tall enough to ride Redwoods. ‘The Show’ is in California. Why can’t liberals ruin ugly places? Go ruin the Dakota Badlands. Go ruin New Jersey. Have fun in Somalia. Why do they live where it’s beautiful? It’s not like they can appreciate it. My mother didn’t appreciate nature. She was a homebody. She was stay-at-home, but not in the bake you cookies kind of way. More in the watch television all day kind of way. Near the end, she was like Wallace. Television all day and night. The Boomer’s Kryptonite. I’m not much better, I’m writing this on my phone. Like pitying the Titanic from the Hindenburg. Oh, the humanity.

It’s a three-hour drive to Bend. I like driving. Winding roads are fun. Speeding through yellow lights is my crack. I never claimed to be interesting. We drive through four different climates in that time. There’s a ski area near Mount Hood we stop at for lunch. Government Camp. People call it Govie. The snowbanks on both sides of the road are twenty feet high, higher than the power lines. I wonder how they clear the roads. I lack imagination. Paul Bunyan shovels out Govie because Babe like’s the donuts in the diner. The diner serves head sized donuts. The coffee is good. Really good. No pie, though. No David Lynch in the corner. I try to summon him when I wash my hands in the bathroom. David Lynch, David Lynch, David Lynch. I wish I could write something half as good as his ode to coffee and pie. There’s a log lady at the diner. No log with her, but everything else fit.

I didn’t know Oregon had its own Grand Canyon. I’ve yet to go to the real thing, but this Minor League Grand Canyon is pretty special. The Ford Edsel is small in comparison to the giant rock walls around us and a long way down. A sign says Warning: Rocks. Thanks. The place is called Owyhee. It’s Choctaw for “Warning: Rocks”. They have rock formations called Hoodoos. Dr. Suess was a Choctaw. Fun Fact: Owyhee is an English mispronunciation of Hawaii. English Fur traders who’d been to Hawaii just started naming stuff Owyhee. That’s a real fun fact. Now you’ll wonder if I was telling the truth anywhere else.

Bend is a place where smart, rich liberals moved to. They saw the writing on the wall for San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. “I’ll work there and live here.” It’s beautiful. It’s eccentric, which is weird with money. Aaron Gwynn tweeted that. He’s great, follow him. Keep Bend Eccentric. They have a Finnish print shop that sells elaborate prints on bedroom sets, tea sets, crockery, flatware, etc. It’s run by a Korean woman whose English is not so good. Globalism works when you’re eccentric and not weird.

Deschutes National Forest is better than the Arboretum. We’re not dressed for a snow hike. Mrs. Hudson has to see the Waterfall. It’s frozen. It’s a big icicle. I can be a real prick. But the stain is gone from the back seat. I’ve always wanted to bust up a rental car. Maybe when I’m eighty. The best gag the guys on Jackass ever pulled was when they rented a car and ran it through a demolition derby. Beat it to hell and dropped it off at the rental place after. “I returned it with a full tank of gas”. We used to be a proper country.

Tony Soprano missed out on the golden age of being a piece of shit wiseguy. No disrespect to your upstanding wiseguy. Also, he’s a tv character. It’s funny how much he tries to be Gary Cooper. I wonder if other wiseguys now try to be Tony Soprano. “Whatever happened to the fat, loudmouth type?” I met a lot of wiseguys as a kid. Union family tends toward certain people circling your life. I have an uncle who was a union carpenter. He introduced us kids to “Uncle Vito”. It never clicked for me as a kid that they weren’t brothers. ‘Hey Uncle Declan, why does your brother Vito have slicked back hair and olive oil skin?’ Vito then pulls out his wad of twenties, gives me one and one of those fist touches on my chin, like ‘go away, sport.’ Twenty bucks is twenty bucks. With inflation, twenty bucks if fifty bucks. I should tell that at parties.

Anyway, Tony missed his golden age, and I missed mine. I would have slayed the 90/00s alternative scene. Imagine if Fortinbras got to Denmark and found it like Portland. And Alexander wept, for there was no world to conquer. I metaphor with sledgehammer. Subtlety is for art house films and polite dinner conversation.

Portlandia is too accurate. Adult Day Care: The City. Bend is a little like that, but with higher property taxes. Pam Dante is running for school board. She’s going to win handily based on the number of signs I count in people’s yards. There are plenty of “In this house” signs, too. People get weirded out by American flags in American yards, but not pride flags in every window. I find it funny because there’s none of that in Bend. They kneel to the sacred cow, but pray to their own god, property values. The county assessor is their priest. The real estate agent is both Pharisee and blasphemer, depending on the interest rate. Commentary.

There’s a coffee place in walking distance that is superb. I buy a bag online every few months now. People who don’t see the sun make a better cup of coffee than people who grow it, unable to escape the sun. Something Faustian about that. I developed lactose intolerance later in life. I love milk and milk by-products. I won’t let my body dictate terms to my soul. The sounds from the bathroom you hear are the sounds of Faustian man.

Only a place like Bend can have something like Blockbuster Video. It’s the last one. I saw a movie about it. The last Blockbuster is an underwhelming experience. We didn’t go to Bend just for that; we went for the nature and the drive and because we’d heard it was a nice place, we thought about living. I’m conservative, but I don’t want to live near conservatives. Like the rich black guy who gets away from ‘da hood’. I don’t know many conservatives who read. I’m a product of a Democrat Just guys online. Maybe I’m the problem. That’s likely.

The blockbuster has all kinds of memorabilia. It’s like a functioning museum. They have an antiquated, Unix based file system. I get a membership card for kicks. They’ll keep me in that dilapidated system for a year unless I come back and borrow something. Then it’s another year. I’ll be given the bum's rush because the computer runs on two gigs of RAM and sixteen gigs of storage. Fun fact: The guy who made the Blockbuster filing system got his start hardening nuclear missile software. We borrow a movie about a dog. I wanted to borrow “Stargate”, my wife had never seen it. They didn’t have it. Nostalgia is for suckers.

I think it will be really funny if Sam Pink reads this and is like, “How did he get this from my work? I can’t be held responsible for this! It’s not my fault!” Reminds me of Annie Hall, where that nervous guy who ruins all of Woody Allen’s movies brings out Marshall McLuhan from behind a movie poster and has him give some pompous douche a verbal bitch slap. “You know nothing of my work!” 2nd best cameo in film history. First goes to Kurt Vonnegut in Rodney Dangerfield’s “Back to School”. Top tier.

We fly out of the local airport. There’s maybe one hundred people here. There are tables and we play a card game. We stopped and had ice cream on the way. I had chocolate and strawberry. So Peaty. I had it before I returned the rental. I had the opportunity to do something really funny, if only for myself and you, dear reader. “I returned it with a full tank of gas”. I didn’t shit in the back seat of the Ford Edsel. I’m not a depraved monster. If I stayed in Portland, I might have become that. The motto for America should be Pay It Forward. We just don’t agree on the ‘it’.