About a week ago, the Blazers played the Miami Heat at the Rose Garden. The Heat are a juggernaut, a dizzying collection of unfathomably talented basketball players led by the impossible LeBron James. James is the best, most famous player in the world. If you don’t know who he is, you’re trying too hard. Your mother and a toddler could talk about LeBron James. A baby duck and someone who’s been dead since 1973 could talk about LeBron James. LeBron James is all of the Monstars from Space Jam and his team are NBA champions. Out of everyone who tried to play basketball last year (your dad and his friends, North Medford High School, the Sacramento Kings) the Heat were the best at it. The Heat will probably be the best again this year. They’re the disquieting future of professional basketball, and they lost to the Portland Trail Blazers 92-90. We beat Miami. Yes, we.

The win won’t end up meaning that much—it’s a beautiful memory, but this Blazers season is going to end up like Brandon Roy’s career, dazzling highs eventually punctuated by exhausting disappointment. Still, I was there, losing my for-god-damn mind. When that game ended I was hanging over a guardrail bellowing like an ape while the crowd erupted like a choir full of jet planes. I hugged strangers. People I hated for their small talk just minutes before became beloved for loving the same thing as me.

I don’t know what it means to be a Portlander, but I know I think about it and I know I’m conscious of it. I know most people are dubious of most people. I know that I get petty and judgmental when I see some gorgeous hipster prince spending his parents’ money at a bar that once regularly housed my boozed-up grandpa, making his ghost listen to the Magnetic Fields. Sometimes I see a Washington license plate on the back of a car that’s fucking up my Slurpee run and I want to take that license plate, cut the driver’s head off with it, put it in a box, and make their significant other open that box in a desert next to Morgan Freeman. There are people in the suburbs passive-aggressively praying for you. Beaverton isn’t Portland, Portland isn’t Oregon, Gresham isn’t anything—except that night in the Rose Garden. That night, hugging strangers, while some dumb top-40 hit was drowned out by uncut mirth, I didn’t give a fuck where you laid your head down to sleep, or what was in it when you did. I wasn’t concerned with how you fit into my definition of what made Portland into PORTLAND. The win was merely a catalyst to explore this togetherness.

The Trail Blazers have been around since 1970, and while that’s not old, that’s old enough to remember that we’re only living in a moment of time. If you shackle your definition of Portland to some de rigueur notion of cultural cachet, you’re dooming yourself to a bitter future. It’s better to celebrate the totality of our population, to find those moments when you can connect with people who were previously thought unconnectable. Know that Bill Walton is now an old man, and that hipster prince might end up a ghost in that same bar. That’s why I say “we” when I talk about the Blazers, because it’s better than never saying “we” at all. @IanKarmel

17 replies on “Portland as Fuck”

  4. I realized in about 1992 that the Portland Failblazers would be cursed with highs but never be able to reach out and grab that golden ring. I spent year after year cheering them onto the playoffs only to see them fail at the bitter end. Yeah, I gave up.. but my quitting was solidified when the Blazers were getting arrested week after week for trying to smuggle weed through airport security in a ball of fucking tin foil.

    I was happy to see the blazers revamp themselves but watching a bunch of spoiled millionaires get sweaty for a few hours isn’t as much fun as shooting people on Call of Duty. Priorities change I guess.

    I’m not sure why Portland people like to hate on all the areas that surround it. Portland is a big city but believe it or not there’s a whole economy outside of the Portland city limits. There are actual places of employment out in these nether regions. And sitting in traffic for an hour or more to commute, waste gas, and listen to petty talk radio idiots isn’t for everyone. And much to the surprise of many there are plenty of Portland elitists that commute to Beaverton, Tigard, and the hated Gresham in the pursuit of the all mighty dollar. Just think.. a few even go to Canby!!! (the horror!!!)

    So when you are at your favorite bar downtown bitching about the suburbanites that infest your beloved city just think about how many of your fellow hipsters can be hipsters because there’s places to work outside the city limits.

  9. no criticism from me i liked it.
    The blazers are what there is here. You think to yourself: what if Paul Allen moved the team to Sacramentos or somewhere? Even if you only care about the blazers 5 percent thats a huge chunk of your life you wont have anymore.
    Timbers? no. Just no. Sports without scoring are like a Powell’s book reading only in sign language.
    You keep doing what you’re doing Big Boy and -I- will let you know when the column sucks. It does not suck at this time.

  10. Good comment. On a side note: At least that hipster prince is listening to Magnetic Fields at a bar as opposed to the rest of every Target Hipster — ubiquitous around the country — who drown our bars with Mumford and fucks’ music. Our city needs some new rules about public pub music. And I’m not talking about Buffalo Wild Wings or Rock Bottom. I have little beef with every fashion show hipster save for when their taste in top 40 infiltrates my local watering holes. And why are you knocking Magnetic Fields as your hipster case in point? You know that the hottest Portland woman/guy/Trans you will ever lay is probably huge fan…or to some other very similar band (e.g. Kings of Convenience). Much to your hipster-loving delight!

  12. This is a good post Ian. I have to admit I am not much of an NBA fan anymore (If I went to a game here it would be the Winterhawks), but I have liked the Blazers for a long time and agree completely that people do bond over it. As for the reasons why entitled white fuckheads have to look down on the suburbs (insecurity?, just the fact that you feel you are somehow better?) but I am over it. I will not waste time on people who are a holes. Save your Beaverton/Gresham jokes. @kerry, spot on. People that do that are asshole hipster fuckers who are threatened by everything not exactly like themselves

  14. Jokes about the suburbs don’t reflect my feelings about the suburbs, I was born in the suburbs, raised in them. I was just trying to talk about the fractured sense of “Portland” – people in the suburbs complain about hipsters, hipsters complain about people from the suburbs, they both complain about people from the ‘Couv.

  16. totally agree with @kerry. Also, next time think about all the people from the suburbs who commute to Portalnd to work to make your city a city. That traffic isnt there for no reason.

  17. How fucking original. A hipster version of Subway Jared making jokes about the burbs. There’s a reason your column is buried on the back page……it sucks. You should just pour gas on yourself and find a match.

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