Tuesday morning, time for yet another train ride and a new city. This time the trip is just over a couple of hours (edit: they turned into close to 4, thanks to Amtrak’s special sense for time), with a first stop in Tacoma to see my old colleague and friend Chris. In the evening I’ll be arriving in Seattle for a quick visit before heading over the border to Canada and Vancouver.
The last few days in Portland have been very enjoyable, thanks also to some pretty amazing weather. On Saturday night I even had the opportunity to discover yet another very talented musician, Cassandra Jenkins. She has a sweet yet powerful voice that reminded me a bit of Nina Persson from the Cardigans and a great touch on her guitar. Her own material is really nice, and she also graced us with an amazing cover of Leonard Cohen’s “In My Secret Life”.
The trip to Portland was also particularly interesting as this city is considered sort of the “Hipster Capitol of the World”and surrounded by a lot of hype, also thanks to the success of the funny sketches of the TV Show “Portlandia” (which however should not be mentioned to the locals, in the same way you don’t mention the “Scottish play” to theatre people or talk about putting ketchup on pasta around Italians 🙂 ).
Under many aspects, Portland reminded me of my own neighbourhood in Malmö, Möllevången (affectionately shortened in ”Möllan”), full of small boutiques and creative people, good craft beers, fresh Hawaiian salads and cold brews, environmentally conscious and socially open, welcoming and inclusive.
In a country like the US built on the principle that the value of a person is directly dependant on one’s ability to fend for oneself and make money, it is not hard to understand how more and more people are feeling the attraction power of Portland’s promise of an alternative, more human lifestyle.
To a certain extent, I have come to see Portland as some sort of an “alter ego” of another great attraction pole of the American West Coast, San Francisco.
Where the Bay Area’s identity is built on its unshakable faith in the power of technology to solve all our problems and its obsession with building more and more ”unicorns” (the nickname used to identify high-growth companies with a market valuation over 1 billion dollars), Portland’s answer is to offer a slower pace and space for self-realization, where people can build small scale activities based on passion and intended to offer sustenance and personal realization rather than to maximize profits and shareholders’ value.
An example I have come across is the Tiny Digs hotel, a quirky, upscale ”trailer park” with themed little huts that felt so ”quintessentially Portland” that I could not not spend a couple of nights here in “The Barn”. Tiny Digs was built by a family that moved from Michigan to Portland specifically to pursue this dream (a similar establishment already existed here, so they knew it would be easier to get the necessary permits).
I have had the pleasure of meeting so many lovely, kind people here in Portland. Like Ben, who climbs trees for a living and dreams of taking his father to see the Sicily of his ancestors, and with whom I shared a table for breakfast the other day. Or like Amy, bartender making amazing drinks at Angel Face, who moved to Portland from Atlanta, Georgia. Amy has a best friend and a godson in Gothenburg and surprised me by pulling out of her hat an almost perfect Swedish spoken in a soft, warm tone of voice and with barely any noticeable accent at all.
While Portland is without doubts a lovely place to live in, the city is quickly becoming a victim of its own success. A constant and massive influx of people moving here from all over the US to enjoy the great surroundings and the relaxed way of life means that nowadays it is hard to find anyone who was born and raised in Portland. Gentrification is clearly accelerating with raising housing prices and living costs, while at the same time the centre of the town sees an increasing number of homeless people, often suffering from drug addiction and/or mental problems.
The growing ”hipsterism” is filling the city with snobbish wannabes sporting nose piercing and full arm tattoo that feel more like a uniform than a genuine expression of creativity and individualism, a way to fit in in this ”alternative conformism” in the same way that owning a certain handbag or wearing a certain brand works in many other places. For many critics, this trend is transforming Portland into a sort of “playground for wealthy white kids” with a very skewed perspective on reality. Ironically, the people that seem to be most offended by “Portlandia” are also the ones that are helping turning the fiction into reality.
Furthermore, where the people in my ”Möllan” can enjoy their relaxed lifestyle knowing that in time of need they can ultimately rely on a functioning social safety net and free public healthcare, Portland seem to have decided that in lack of better options weed is the answer to all problems.
While I personally have no problems with cannabis consumption for recreational purposes, I think that turning it into a “philosophical lifestyle choice” is a bit extreme, and I can’t help but find the hype around it (and the multi-billion dollar business that is growing out of it – pun intended 🙂 ) to be a bit sad. I hope this is just the enthusiasm of the early days of legal marijuana that will soon fade away to leave space for more interesting and relevant issues.
Ultimately, while I certainly enjoyed my time in Portland very much, this is a place that just like San Francisco I end up leaving with mixed feelings. Portland is a great city and I look forward to more occasions to coming back to hang out regularly, but deep down I doubt I’d ever really feel ”at home” here like I do in places like Brussels or Moscow.
Oh, and by the way… In the end I even managed to run into a native right before leaving town: Carl, the Uber driver who took me to the train station 🙂 .
