Jan 12, 2012 at 4:00 am

Fine Dining in Stumptown

Comments

1
Now I get it! The whole lumberjack thing, the cheesy faux-folk music which is just a pastoral parody of real folk, these are an assumed hipster identity! These trends are ways that the rootless hipster class establishes an identity of being Portlanders, by expropriating "rustic" tropes.

There was this I,Anonymous a while back about how s/he missed the "old" Portland. I tend to agree. There was this really great native Oregonian culture that these implants just never bothered to learn about in their drive to be fashionable and compete with their true compatriots in New York and other "glamour" cities.

Irony really is dead. It's a shame people are too philistine trash to realize it.
2
All "foodie" culture everywhere in the nation mixes in rustic elements with other things. Not everything is about Portland being invaded by pod people. Really. But if you don't like this national "foodie" culture (I hate the word), you'll just have to ignore it. Complaining about it won't make it go away. But say you're right, "irony" is dead, what kinds of culture can anyone embrace anymore? No matter what it is, people will say it used to be better (including the city as a whole), it's played out, it's been usurped and corrupted. A single "authentic" Oregonian culture? Never existed. There's long been an illusion of one, just like "national culture," but it's always been a construct. You're a dupe just like anyone else, except those belonging to actual traditional cultures that cities wiped out a long time ago.
3
Forgive the confrontational tone there. I just mean to say, we live in a post-postmodern consumer culture where culture and tradition are created from recent blends, partially fabricated and sold to us, and we have to pick something in some mediated form that we like and go with it, and much of it has been and will continue to be cheesy. Portland restaurants have tempted people in with "cultural experience" of false authenticity longer than any of us can remember: tiki bars, "Chinese food," chop suey joints. Is it possible to like going to dive bars in the way we liked going to them in the heyday without it being pointed to now as posturing, reaching for some fleeting "authenticity." Not sure if I'm making sense to anyone so I'll shut up.
4
Great comments, you're both right.
5
@geyser, shockingly I agree with you on all points save one, You do not "have" to pick one. That sir is a choice not a prerequisite.

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