Portland's fun-house mirror, part 1

I lived in Austin, Texas as the decade changed from the 1980s to the 1990s. It was the world of Slacker, of Generation X's first flush, of listening to bands that would be called grunge a year later. It was also a dying world, but we didn't know that, yet.  In retrospect, the next few years constituted the last bored sigh before the whole world wired up, plugged in, and went online. The world was about to change utterly, but no one in Austin focused on that. They focused on what had already changed, casting longing backwards looks at the days of the Armadillo World Headquarters in the 1970s, when Austin was some weird and much smaller capitol for the nine people who couldn't decide whether they wanted to be hippies or cowboys.

Last year, Slacker 2011 was released, revisiting the locations of Richard Linklater's original film and, in the process, showing how much Austin had changed. So, naturally, everyone cast longing backwards looks at those days.

Cities change. The only constant is that many of their citizens will think they used to be much better.

Last night we attended a history lecture in a bar¹. It was a fascinating history, delivered by Joe Streckert, of the former town of Albina and the neighborhoods that compose it.  The now-hip area of Albina was once a town, annexed into Portland in 1891, and has been, variously, a railroad company town; the site of Vanport, a shoddily-built housing development for wartime workers; a post-Katrina-esque wasteland of destroyed shoddily-built homes and refugees when the Columbia river flooded in 1948; an economically blighted and racially red-lined mess taken advantage of by predatory lenders; and a semi-abandoned urban wasteland that was frightening to ride a bicycle in when Streckert was a kid.  But here's the thing: at each of those points in the past, Albina was better than the gentrified mess it is now. Because, hipsters!

Okay, I'm exaggerating the extent to which Streckert rhapsodized over the past and bemoaned the present. I'm also (slightly) exaggerating his attacks on hipsters, because I want to digress and ask, what did hipsters ever do to all of us, anyway?  Why do we get so bent out of shape about them? Why do they face attacks from all segments of society, including the hipster community itself?² I mean, yeah, sure, they should just admit that they are broke or cheap but still want to get drunk and stop pretending that Pabst Blue-Ribbon is somehow cool and ironic, but how does that little lie hurt me?

I'm exaggerating the extent to which Streckert rhapsodized over the past because I want to point out the inability to see itself clearly that is such an essential feature of the Things-Used-To-Be-So-Much-Better syndrome, Portland-style.  Portlanders bemoan the neighborhoods lost in the South Auditorium Urban Renewal Project of the 1950s and 1960s but don't always mention the parks, pedestrian mall, and fountains that eventually occupied the space. Portlanders love to talk about how I-5 cut through Northeast neighborhoods, but don't talk as much about the teardown of a highway-- Harbor Drive-- to make way for Waterfront Park. 

This commentary should in no way diminish the significance of the half-empty part of the glass.  The urban renewal projects of the 1950s into the 1970s wrecked neighborhoods and displaced minority populations.  But, by wrecking havoc, they also paved the way (so to speak) for the more enlightened urban planning for which Portland is now known. Also: hipsters on Mississippi Avenue didn't travel through time back to 1963 to suggest to Emanuel Hospital that they turn nearby houses and businesses into parking lots. 

¹ No, seriously.
² See my rant: "If You Use the Word 'Twee' To Denigrate Hipsters, You Are a Hipster."