I THINK I HATE Portland. Having just typed that, there’s no way I mean it, but RIGHT NOW THAT IS THE TRUTH THAT LIVES IN MY HEART. It’s my immediate knee-jerk reaction—like in that pure, unstepped-on figurative sense. If a doctor thwacked me intently on my Portland bone, I would spastically blurt, “NAW, NOT FEELING IT.”

It’s not even the litany of complaints people register about the rapidly changing city, either. I don’t really care that people are moving to Portland from California. I care about gentrification in the same way that I care about global warming, which is to say I’m concerned about it on the internet, but do very little to combat it in my everyday life. (In fact, if the amount of money I’ve spent on dinners on Mississippi, Alberta, and Williams this year is to be believed, I’m fully supporting gentrification.)

Those problems are real and they’re a bummer (to put it mildly), but they’re such a familiar rogues’ gallery of issues that it’s almost impossible to consider them a threat. It’s like the Joker popping up in a Batman comic; it’s more comforting than menacing. (This is a very easy thing to say as an economically secure person who moved to California for work, but from conversation and observation, I know a bunch of you feel the same.)

I think I hate Portland because of how I use Portland. I’ve turned it into an ideal. I’ve made it my port (WHOA-HO-HO!!!!!!) in the storm, except it’s one of those pirate ports where I get black-out drunk and surly (or happy, but just very large emotionally), or sometimes just a little drunk and blissed out (or depressed, you know).

I act entitled to Portland, because I’ve contributed maybe two paragraphs to the city’s long, loopy cultural history. I don’t know why I do it, but I suspect it’s because every time I visit the city I’m reminded of how I used to be when I was still there, which is also how I used to be when I was still, like, 25 years old. I’m reminded of being a big, fat Jewish Santa Claus made out of potential—just talking shit and having sandwiches named after me. I’m reminded of a time when the star by which I set my navigation was a beautiful, twinkling light in the impossible distance, and not a big hot-as-fuck sun singeing my hair and beef jerkying the fuck out of my skin.

I think it was John Grisham who wrote, “You can’t go home again.” You also can’t go back to age 25 again, and maybe that’s what Michael Crichton meant when he said, “You can’t go home again.” The fact is I’m 30 and living in Los Angeles, and I have a really great fucking life. Hopefully I can quit treating Portland like a malfunctioning time machine and start enjoying it the way it’s meant to be enjoyed—as Disneyland for people who bought a mandolin once. Until then, I think it was Marilyn vos Savant who said it best: “You can’t go home again.” @IanKarmel

15 replies on “Everything as Fuck”

  1. Is this your sign off column? Because it seems like you are about as disconnected from the area you are writing about as one can get. Disconnected as fuck.

  2. @ pollo: the name of the column is: EVERYTHING as fuck. i do believe “disconnected” falls under the “everything” umbrella? IDK: i make comments on the internet, so i am clearly not a very smart or learned person.

  4. Two paragraphs? That’s a lot of contribution to PDX’s cultural heritage. Maybe a word or two? Ya know, you’re only 30 and all.

  7. No… that wasn’t Marilyn vos Savant. It was Dotson Rader! Or Lyric Wallwork Winik! Or some other fictionally-named person who writes for Parade magazine!

  9. Maybe you could have gone home again, if you silly, silly people HADN’T FORGOT TO PUT IN RENT CONTROL. This isn’t about California or mandolin Disneyland, it’s about YOU FORGOT TO PUT IN RENT CONTROL. It is all-consuming, having a psychotically passionate nine-year conversation about fluoridated water, I know. But you all drank your own non-fluoridated Kool-Aid, and thought the magic of Portland was due to your own personal magic of coolness, rather than the result of a lot of good planning and a few happy accidents. And if you hadn’t done that, and PUT IN RENT CONTROL, all this growth would be good for you instead of being a disaster.

  11. So, how well has rent control worked in LA and SF as it relates to people currently looking to rent or move? Do a little online search for apartments there, and get back to us. Yes, there are several people who are at below market rates, but many of them are stuck in the same old, shitty situation of “landlord refuses to upgrade my dilapidated unit until I move, and I can’t afford to move to a nicer, more market priced place”. Rents have risen in those places over the long term as much or more than Portland, it has just been at the mandated 3% per year over many years (the law allows them to do this and landlords knew that if they didn’t do the annual increases every year, they would never be able to recapture that increase), vs. Portland landlords bringing things up to market levels more sharply.

  12. Forgot to mention that any time an apartment is vacated and put on the market, the landlord can increase the rent as much as they want. We all know how nomadic many renters are, so this fact alone effectively negates many of the supposed rent control benefits.

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