There’s more Portland™ in the first five minutes of Here and Now than most of the city’s residents see in a week: A young gentleman with an unfortunate man bun bikes across the Burnside Bridge and along a gentrified stretch of North Mississippi, then hops off to flirt with a tattooed beardo at Spin Laundry Lounge, where they stand in front of a rack holding the Portland Mercury.
HBO’s new drama from Six Feet Under and True Blood creator Alan Ball premieres on February 11, and it really wants you to know it’s set in Portland: Voodoo boxes clutter the background, conversation happens over Bunk take-out, Sizzle Pie stickers adorn school lockers, there’s frolicking at Latourell Falls and Forest Park. All of it’s shiny and clean; Here and Now doesn’t take place in Portland so much as the Fantasy Portland first explored by Portlandia. This is a Portland where it never rains, and where there’s a Chinatown gate but no Right 2 Dream Too. When characters talk about needing money, they do so in a house that’s probably worth a couple million.
