FAT & THE MENTAL CRAP
RE: “Summer Strut” [Sold Out, July 9], a preview of the largest plus-size local fashion show in recent memory.
DEAR MERCURY—Since we’re oh so progressive here in Portland, why does everybody still validate the “obligatory body size and shape” concept that shames everyone else outside of its narrow tenets? You can be fat and fashionable, but first you have to get rid of the mental crap.
Linda
AGGRESSIVE CATS
RE: “Cougar Town” [News, Aug 6], regarding a surge in cougar sightings within the Portland metro area.
There’s cougars in Portland?! Hmmm, if I recall correctly, it was tree-hugging, patchouli-soaked, vegan lefties who, as they often do with matters that they know nothing about, decided to ban hunting cougars with dogs. Maybe some of the aforementioned individuals can open a petting zoo in Laurelhurst Park for them. That way everyone could enjoy the majesty of these docile creatures.
Timothy Reiser, out of towner
I agree with Dave Williams when he asserts that, “If [the cougars] are making a living in and around people, it’s just a matter of time before something else happens.” As in before they steal our jobs and raise our rents. I’m NOT OK with cougars making a living in MY town. I was here first. Sell your stupid messenger bag and tiny brimmed cycling hat to Buffalo Exchange and GO HOME, COUGAR!
Mary Doyle
THE IMPENDING PORTLAND APOCALYPSE
RE: Portland and its rapidly changing landscapes.
An Open Letter to Charlie Hayles [sic], Vic Remmers, and every other asshole currently ruining Portland: You’re welcome. After all, I feel like there’s a thank you that will never come, and we’ve done a lot to help you. We play in the bands that make up the World Famous Portland Music Scene. We live in the rotting old houses that you own and can’t get anyone else to rent. We spend what little money we have with the local economy on principle. Our exodus from thousands of indistinguishable cities across America was no accident. We were drawn on the stories and promises of a creative utopia from our friends and peers. In 2007, when I moved here, that dream was a possibility. I found a room to rent on Craigslist for $200, two blocks away from the nearest crack dealer and miles from my work downtown. I could work part time, and work on creative projects in the meantime. We had house shows, parties, and it didn’t bother anyone. A few houses nearby start going on sale, and that changes quick. My band practices for a half an hour a day now, at 6 pm, and we still have neighbors complaining about the noise. Several bars no longer have live music because yuppie assholes wanted to move into a trendy neighborhood, but didn’t like the small inconveniences of what made the place so great in the first place. All the condos and new apartments are built for the top 10 percent of Portland wage earners—the imaginary tech jobs that don’t exist east of the Willamette. Good luck finding a room to rent west of 82nd for under $500 a month these days. How many people do you think you can get to live in a $1,000 studio? I get it, you want to make money, and we don’t have much. Trendy assholes like yourselves are wholesaling our lifestyle as marketing for your property. So how about some respect? Keep knocking down food carts that turned empty parking lots into centers of culture. Keep knocking down the cheap houses to build overpriced condos. Keep punishing your creatives for being creative. Because we don’t want your fucking clog stores. We don’t want to work 60 hours a week to spend eight hours in a trendy shit hole, and we don’t have to put up with it. We’ll just get all the musicians, artists, and every other hipster who is fed up with the bullshit, and we’ll leave. When all you have left is $15 sandwiches, half-empty apartment complexes, and a bunch of yuppies looking around going, “Why isn’t Portland cool anymore?” you’ll know you only have yourselves to blame.
MH
YOU AND MARY seem like you’re on the same page, MH—or on opposite sides of the fence depending on how deep the sarcasm runs—so maybe you’d be willing to break off a piece of your Mercury Letter of the Week prize and share it? It’s better than just letting a cougar eat those two tickets to the Laurelhurst Theater.
MH – don’t let the door hit you in the ass. Skat, you bitter asshole.
Later.
MH – Articulate and dead on…. portland is divided and yuppies think they just own everything and are so proper and innocent as they tear the culture and heart out of this town. kudos to the editor for printing this.
And Hales? every move you make has the landlord associations name all over it (please correct me if I’m wrong but they are his biggest backer).
get the f** out and take your yuppies with you: http://rethinkportland.wordpress.com/
The latest irony to enter hipster jargon is the un-ironic and self referential use of the word ‘hipster.’ But let’s put that aside for a second and talk about the word narcissist which can sometimes be used interchangeably with the word hipster. My, off the cuff, definition of a narcissist is someone who hides a deep psychological wound by working constantly to bolster their sense of self. They’re not bad people just wounded souls. You see them often in the arts. What better way to cultivate a sense of goodness than to be on the cutting edge of some so-called art scene that only you and your 47 friends understand. (i.e. “playing in the bands which make up the world famous Portland music scene,“ or living an ‘rotting houses’ so that you can tell a story about how you had it harder than nomadic reindeer herders, or riding a bike because you can’t afford a car and then waxing poetically about how you’re intentionally saving the planet.
Sadly, many more stereotypes make up MH’s narcissistic ‘Hipster,’ world. This is a magical place where rampant insecurity has been turned inside out into arrogance of such monumental proportions that she thinks that she and her friends are the ones who define Portland coolness.
So here’s my point… and this may sting a little. MH, (hold onto your ironic pink Pabst snuggie) Portland doesn’t need you or your pals. Portland will do just fine without hipster culture and arguably become even cooler, more eclectic and more tolerant.
I moved here in the 90s and unlike MH I assumed that there was a Portland here before I arrived. Me and the millions of people who have roamed on the shores of the mighty Willamette came here for many reasons. Lately, people have moved to the Pacific NW for its laid back culture, its gorgeous vistas, its music, its food, its dismal, romantically dreary winters and its temperate summers. They certainly didn’t move here to be drowned in a tide of sweaty, angry narcissistic 30 something’s slinging Casio keyboards, smug looks, and mediocre (with a few exceptions) bands. When I arrived there were musicians who did it for the love of music not because they thought that they were cooler than everyone else or that they defined what made the city great.
May god bless Charlie Hales and others who’ve worked to make this city a little more upscale and less tolerable to people so insecure that they’re enraged by clog stores.
When you and your ilk are forced to the shores of Vancouver the rest of us will be happy!
MH, your dull and trite rant makes me fiercely sceptical of your claims of being something cool or lending anything to the mystique of Portland. In other words, bye! Portland was on the short list of cool cities way before you. At the very latest, its status was codified by the time Drugstore Cowboy was released.
You’re just bitter that you got here so late to the party.
Also, I don’t care for clogs, but the reason dansko is so popular is because of the metal arch supports. Vital for standing and frying your food.
– I’m not into music and they are not what makes Portland cool for me, but the fact they have their own little group and their little spots are part of what makes Portland what it is. My beef with yuppies is that they are the one group who seems to be intolerant of every other group. and being the ones with money and the mayors phone number they tramp over anything that catches their eye. And yes it does kill the real culture that existed and I am not the only one who gets depressed walking through the ‘renovated’ areas that ARE boring.
Dr. Meow-” Lately, people have moved to the Pacific NW for its laid back culture”- I was born and raised in the northwest and laidback culture is what many people in the NW feel rich newcomers will destroy- that is sort of what he was saying.
No, no, no, fuck all of you parasite-transplants — MH is right. Portland was great; there wasn’t any traffic, my rent was half of what it is now (three years ago) and that all changed when you all moved here. New-Portland sucks because of you. Close the Oregon border before it becomes the shit-hole, that YOU helped make, back from wherever you came from…most likely California. Assimilate with our culture or get the fuck out of here. We don’t want yuppies, we don’t want your trust-fund kids, we don’t want your fucking khakis. You moved here for a reason, now be apart of it and throw away your goddamned umbrellas while you are at it.