Here we are, a couple decades into the trend where all the pasty white families whose grandparents fled the urban core have COME BACK. We’re here and we like it! It’s so quaint and authentic! It’s everything we were told a city should be— after we do a little remodeling, of course. It’s completely the opposite of that vapid suburban dreck we grew up with and hate. Hate!!!
So hand over those beat up victorian mansions so we can restore them, or better yet, bulldoze and replace them with something modern and industrial-inspired. Dig the rough-hewn details and corrugated metal panels— it hearkens back to the day when people still MADE stuff, you know. We could learn a thing or two from all that honesty and craftspersonship, if you ask me.
Now add a few restaurants and boutiques… perfect! We’ve achieved utopia and we bought in early while inner SE was cheap (hey, $800k is cheap compared to SoCal, you know). Now to sit back, relax and raise a family in our greenwashed wonderland…
OH SHIT WHAT? There’s an industrial neighborhood nearby? With factories and chemicals and smoke-belching trains?!? Why didn’t my realtor warn me?! How is this possible in this day and age? I mean, there’s a New Seasons down the street and everything!!
Next you’ll tell me the entire river is a superfund site / dirty-needle toilet and that there’s lead paint on my ironic lawn jockey statues!
Maybe our ancestors were right about the suburbs after all.
A brilliantly crafted piece of writing. cry me a polluted river…
Nice try, but those factories are on their way out (of the center), and New Seasons is here to stay. Faster, Pussycat! Kale! Kale!
The irony is all those people that moved to SE are the people that buy artisan glass.
If you’re saying city dwellers have never been activists about making their cities better, you’re pretty sheltered. And the neighborhood around Bullseye had houses and schools long before it had a glass factory (it was in fact started in the backyard of a regular house and then took over a chunk of the block). None of us in inner PDX (old-timers or transplants) think we’re breathing pristine air all the time. It’s just that thick waves of arsenic, cadmium and chromium are a bit much, especially when better filtering could have prevented most of it from wafting onto neighborhood people and gardens.
E Bex, nobody really knows this, but lawn chemicals are really bad, too. And your garden in SE is totally contaminated from the leaking underground fuel tanks(I’m sure it’s fine. You got some certificate from the city, right?). Also, if I was the glass company, I would blame Mt. St Helens.
Dear white people:
Complaining about white people doesn’t give you street cred.
Sincerely,
White person
Great rant I/A! I’m pretty sure. I drank the sap out of each metafiorey and entanduchche’. Had to read para. 2 thrice to catch you were giving your own take when you touched on “it harkens back the day. Then back to sarcasm. Thank you E. Bex for your post from your side to allow me to see the bigger picture. Now I take a short nap and dream deep thoughts.
800k for a home? Alright Fuckwad and all the other Fuckwads in PDX. Not everyone who moves to Portland can afford a fucking 800k home….. but 300k, yes, 300k is resonable for a home in a city on the west coast. Fucking people think everyone who moves to Portland are rich. Nope. Some people graduate from high school, go to college and get a decent paying job, then get married (before having kids), save and move to a place they can afford to raise a family. It’s called “planning for the future.” Blame your dumbass for not finishing school. Probably the same tools that thought Tower Records will be around forever.