oh the plague isn't THAT bad. After reading your rant i wish you would try it just once.

Definitely should've titled this rant "TOUR BUSES?!?!?!"

Then it would've been really awesome.

Mississippi / Alberta / Division / Hawthorne / Clinton / East Burnside / (Your Neighborhood Here), pretty interchangeable. Oh hey, a cafe with a glass garage door. Some corrugated metal siding. Handmade trinkets (it's every girl's dream to be a maker of trinkets!). Craft store for the wannabe maker. Too-cool-but-still-in-school record store. Brewpub full of douchebags. Overpriced ethnic food as cooked by white people. Upmarketed junk food. A smattering of $5000+ cargo bikes. People who think they're not part of the problem.

I mean the nerve, tour busses, how could they!?!??? Where do I go to score? Not the fake drugs like pot, smack and coke? And where can I find a hooker? Where can I get an untraceable weapon? This fucking town is going to hell!!!

That's just terrible. Tourists should have to ride tall bikes like the rest of us.

from Chunty McHutchence ; "People who think they're not part of the problem.".... that could headline every problem i have with the people in this town. and this is coming from a white guy.

Legend has it the tall bike was invented in outer inner southeast or "south central southeast" Portland in the section known colloquially as "Felony Flats".

Early settlers needed a means of transportation that prevented the infestation of indigenous feral methheads from nipping at the ankles and hocks of wary and beleaguered residents of the area on their perilous journeys to the city proper.

"Whilst"?? Anyone who uses "whilst" is so pretentious that they could run for mayor of Mississippi !

"parents with their daughters as she shows them how "cool" and "weird" Portland is"

God, I'm seeing so much of that this year. And I can just see it in the eyes of the soon-to-retire Californian parents: "I could see us moving here. And these beautiful old houses are only $800,000!"

Where is the escape hatch?

Blabby the escape hatch is The Dalles. It will remain okay to work a day and grab a beer there without putting on a fancy hip outfit for two more decades.