Ahora Mismo

No matter how many of them proliferate, street style blogs never get old, at least not any more than going new places and meeting new people gets old. Straightforward, tiny capsules of time/place/culture, I always like the comparison Virginia Heffernan made in a 2008 NYT piece between surfing the web and exploring a big city: “Tellingly, the major Chinese search engine, Baidu, takes its name from an ancient poem about the search for (what the portal’s FAQ calls) ‘a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour.’ Anyone encountering the bedlam of the Web seeks a resting place, even—at times—a literal or figurative embrace. The suspense of that exploration is mirrored in the story you find on the street-style blogs: the search for a quiet connection with beauty in a metropolis of strangers.”

In Portland, the most prominent street blog is Urban Weeds, headed up by popular photographer Lisa Warninger and often profiling members of the fashion and design community. There are certainly others knocking around, but none that have attained the same level of prominence or as impressive a sponsor list (Ace Hotel, Yo Vintage!, etc). Emilly Prado is making a go of it, though, with Ahora Mismo, posting daily photos of people in Portland, mostly, though her camera follows her out of town—there’s a fair amount of the Bay Area represented, too. Claiming that it has received “nearly 6,000 visits from 70 countries,” she says of her main competition, “While Urban Weeds is a great Portland based street style blog, I felt that there was still a demand for quirkier, unique Portland fashion. Thus, Ahora Mismo focuses on eclectic individuals making statements with their wardrobes.”

While she doesn’t have anything on Warninger in the photography department, Prado’s version is more raw and unscripted (I once posed for Urban Weeds and had several days’ notice to figure out what I wanted to wear), which certainly has its pros and cons. She also seems interested in catching the zany along with the fashionable (example: someone named “Wizzard” with a stuffed animal helmet and full length black trench coat). And while she’s proud of the handful of celebs her lens has bagged (Calvin Johnson, Little Wings, and GrandMarnier of Yelle), they’re far from the most interesting dressers. Personally I prefer subjects like this Portland goth/glam woman:

But you can see Little Wings after the cut too, for comparison’s sake.