Comments

1

Funny how you mention the rare "at-right" (whatever that supposedly is) protests while conveniently forgetting the almost nonstop, ugly Antifa riots.

2

Here's what I would tell people like the Kruses:

It's great that you like Portland. We do too. But your idea of what Portland is is probably wrong. We're not like the TV show and we're not like the NY Times articles you've read.

If you move here, after a while you'll get the sinking feeling that you were taken for a ride.

You WERE taken for a ride. We won't meet your expectations. Our town won't be as cool as you thought it would be. We're just average --but we didn't do that to you. That wasn't us, it was you, and your misplaced trust in whatever arbiters of cred you rely on.

Creating a community is hard. You can't just buy it.

Instead of moving from the last place you don't like anymore to this new place you probably won't like either, why not take whatever it is that you think Portland is and get to work creating it where you are?

3

Remove “CA.” Insert “Syria.” Remove “trust funds, tech jobs and cheaper than-than-SF mortgages,” insert “persecution, quality of life etc”. Remove “have at least three vintage cars.” Insert “have at least three prayer rugs/wear hijabs.” Remove “with their big window chunks and mid-century modern furniture and armada of retro gas-guzzlers will impact their new city that completes the picture. New Portland, meet your new poster children.” Insert “their different culture, and the fact that I don’t respect their way of life because it’s different than mine, fact that they're profiting off MY glorious country/state/city’s generosity and resources. New Portland, meet the people that will destroy your city and way of life with their anti-American ways.”

There, now I can read your article for what it plainly is.

Cheers,
the Wasco-Wishram people.

4

People are such provincial and spiteful dicks! The Portland for Portlanders trope is so out of step with the reality of a globalized, disaporic world that is far, far bigger than this little city alone.
Living in Mount Tabor and on Lincoln Street, I can assure you that this family and their benign, well maintained home is the least egregious problem we face around here. Seriously, people.

5

Man, the writers for the Merc sure do love pillorying normal (albeit well-off people) for crimes as innocuous as moving here, or having the audacity to remodel their homes. There are a thousand better, more pertinent things to write articles about that can highlight your journalistic creativity and integrity over your sense of pettiness.

6

You don't have to be a dick to say this is an abomination and so is the house.

7

Amen, Babayagz!

8

"The NYT Uses Architecture to Explain Why Portlanders Hate Portland" is the headline, then in the first paragraph the author explicitly says "Portlanders are... tired. Not pissed off, not hateful...". Please do not publish unethical and inaccurate headlines, and please correct this one. You have disrespected both the author and the reader.

9

Dear New Portland:

When the money runs out, so will you.

Sincerely,
Old Portland

P.S. You can always run to Bosie. Number 3 for flipping houses.https://www.idahostatesman.com/latest-news/article215832555.html

11

House looks kind of weird, so in that way maybe that is in line with Portland? If it were in the Irvington Neighborhood I think an historic design review would have been required.

12

This is one of the most heinous pieces of "journalism" I have read in years.

In an unabashedly biased manner, Alex Zielinski chose to write this article while intentionally leaving out the most important fact from the primary NYT piece: Arrow was BORN in Portland, and if she'd done her research she would know that he is a 4th generation Oregonian. It is clearly evident that this writer/the Mercury has an agenda that they are trying to push and it is one of isolationism and self-righteousness. This writer clearly has no concept of how economics work and I feel dumber for reading this piece.

The original NYT piece clearly states that Arrow is returning home, but Alex Zielinski conveniently leaves out this most crucial piece of information, which would have negated the entirety of the articles purpose: "...but because they wanted to return to Mr. Kruse’s childhood neighborhood of old homes and tall trees, where their sons could have an experience like the one he had growing up."

To top this all off, Alex Zielinski apparently hasn't lived in Portland for the last three years, yet she writes an "article" to intentionally slander people she doesn't know, in a place she doesn't live.

This was an opinion piece that somehow made it into the "news" section of the Portland Mercury.

All I get from this article is negative energy. There is nothing positive or constructive at all from it, and the journalist should be ashamed to put out this piece of "news". Get it together editors at the Portland Mercury. This piece should have never been published

13

"Keep Portland Weird! But...ok, we didn't mean the houses. Keep the houses the same! Sure, this design is weird and interesting, but that's NOT the kind of weird we mean!"

Someone up above had it just right, Portland is full of provincial, hateful little fuckers who get grumpy over the faintest whiff of financial success. Having grown up here, it honestly just gets better the more the transplants take over and push out the grumps.

14

I remember walking to Psycho Safeway with a friend of mine. He had a mohawk at the time. One of the homeless guys in the bushes pulled a knife on us and asked if he had earned the 'hawk by taking 100 hits of meth. Perplexed, he admitted that he didn't. Homeless dude put his knife away, laughed and said he was kidding. We gave him a couple bucks and went to buy bad Chinese food under a heatlamp to go with our Henry Weinhards. In the store, as always at night, there were people in tuxes and ball gowns alongside meth'd up kids, strung out junkies, and alcoholics wandering in from the Grayhound station.

I'm not writing this for good or ill. But sometimes I miss the old Portland where I carried a knife and things were filthy and full of cheap drugs.

Like all cities, it changed. Portland's long been a Disneyland version of that place where derelicts, runaways, and sex traffickers thrived. I'm not sure the people championing "Old Portland" necessarily want it back. I'm not sure that I want it back. Hell, it's been years since I've gone to the front row of a concert, let alone some of the rotten and dangerous things I used to do. But that poison of nostalgia still does burn sometimes. Stories like this don't so much prove that Portland is now ruined. It means that I'm old and too responsible to share lines of "coke" with some friend-of-an-acquaintance in the decaying old houses that used to haunt a city full of irresponsible youth that could get by with a part-time jobs at movie theaters and bars.

These people in the house are probably assholes, but they didn't ruin Portland. We did. We got old and our bodies betrayed us by doing the same.

15

On the basis of this piece alone, Alex Zielinski would have failed any of my high-school and college-level journalism classes. Even without any formal training, an ethical person would not castigate people and impugn their motives without at least trying to contact them. I have known Arrow Kruse since he was a fourth-grader at Buckman School. His mother’s family goes back several generations in Oregon. I followed his progress at Lincoln High School and at the University of Oregon. There was nothing like a trust fund in his upbringing. He is a self-made man. To suggest that the Kruses are mere arrivistes who “fit the stereotype of wealthy Californians” is a cheap shot and an inaccurate one. To identify their children by name, for reasons that seem mean-spirited and are certainly gratuitous, is irresponsible. To specify their automobiles, one of which (the old limo) was a gift from an elderly and eccentric relative, looks to many people as an invitation to vandalism.

Zielinski and the Mercury owe the Kruses at least an apology and a prominent retraction. Meanwhile, I am done with your faux-nativism, your lazy and cavalier brand of reporting, and with your “newspaper” as a whole. Y’all should be ashamed.

Sincerely,
Jefferson Ranck

16

Let's take the provincialism out of it and call it what it is: vandalism. A house is part of a neighborhood, a neighborhood has a particular style. I'm going to guess they didn't do a design review with their neighbors, they just moved there, said, "I want to do something really wild" and did it.

The point of of the article may have gotten lost in the tone, but the problem stands: to move somewhere because of you love the idea of the community, and then not actually engage with the community is just rude.

Now I could be wrong. Their neighbors might love it. But I'm guessing the people who now have a towering bank of windows looking into their yard probably don't.

17

Most of the time, the Trolls use the Comments section to do their dirty work. This time, however, it was the author, Ms. Zielinski, doing the trolling. I know this wonderful family she is writing about. They are kind, generous folks who love their community and don't deserve a single ounce of this bile from a snarky, out of town "writer" who obviously has an agenda to push. I applaud Mr. Ranck's summation and echo the call for an apology to the Kruses. Shame on you, Portland Mercury, for allowing it to see the light of day.

18

"I'm going to guess they didn't do a design review with their neighbors"

Nor should they. The neighbors don't own the property. Do I get the right to come over and tell you how to decorate your living room? Or what color to paint your house? Or how you should dress your kids? Being a good neighbor is giving a heads up if you're going to have a party with loud music, offering to pet sit when other neighbors are on vacation, etc. It's not kow-towing to someone's precious sense of design aesthetics for property they don't even own.

19

@FlavioSuave I feel you should be able to do anything you want on the inside of your house, but if you make changes that impact your neighbors, I really think you should act as a neighborhood.

I don't agree with going the way of Irvington where they got a Historic designation and now you need the Federal Parks department to sign off on your house, but I do believe if you have a vision that changes the nature of the neighborhood, you should probably get some input from your neighbors.

Honestly I don't find the design itself that offensive, if they were out on a chunk of land in Columbia County where those windows don't look into someone else's yard and clash with the aesthetic of the overall neighborhood, I'd probably be posting it on Facebook with "cool design!"

My concern is that we respect each other, engage in community, and build community together. Not just bulldoze because "I own the land, I can do what I want."

Then there's stewardship -- just 'cause you own it, do you get to destroy the history of the place? Legally, yes. Morally? Gray area. Personally I believe in honoring the past while moving forward into the future.


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.