Am I the last sane per­son in Portland?

I wish I were joking.

I’ve long com­plained about our city’s many faults — its smug­ness; its Smart Growth advo­cacy; its god­for­saken “Young Creatives”; its weird pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with food carts (and com­mu­nity seat­ing); its highly over­rated tran­sit sys­tem; its con­trived friend­li­ness, and, of course, its fas­ci­na­tion with “keep­ing it local.”

A quick dis­claimer before I embark on another rant. There are many things I like about Portland — my son was born here; I have nice neigh­bors; I like the weather (in all its vari­ants); I enjoy the city’s prox­im­ity to the Columbia River Gorge, etc. Those things are immutably good.

But…there are so many things wrong here — and I expe­ri­ence them so fre­quently — that it baf­fles and alarms me when peo­ple (both locals and fawn­ing national media types) extrav­a­gantly talk up our rich­ness of pur­pose, our supreme sus­tain­abil­ity, our unpar­al­leled livability.

It’s as though I’ve infil­trated a cult. I don’t think I’m exag­ger­at­ing when I say there is a dis­tinct mass pathol­ogy at work in Portland.

Finally though, even the New York Times — a huge pro­pa­gan­dist and cheer­leader for Portland — has noticed cracks in our farm-to-table façade. In a July 8 piece called “The Pride and Prejudice of Local,” NYT jour­nal­ist William Yardley shines a flood­light on our regional neu­roses. People in the other 49 states will no doubt be amused by the story’s quotes, but they need to under­stand that Yardley isn’t cherry pick­ing. He’s not exploit­ing the anom­alous behav­ior of a few morons.

No, no, no.

Yardley pro­vides a reveal­ing snap­shot of our dystopian ham­let. He describes — with absolute clar­ity and per­fec­tion — the over­rid­ing mind­set of the entire city. To wit (emphases mine):

Duane Sorenson, who founded Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland in 1999, is orig­i­nally from another cof­fee cap­i­tal, the Puget Sound region of Washington. Stumptown, named for one of the city’s early nick­names, now has cafes in Seattle, New York and Amsterdam. Predictably enough, it has lost a few fans in Portland as it has expanded.

“I don’t even go to Stumptown,” said Paul Sykes, who makes bike fend­ers and bot­tle hold­ers out of wood. “I go to a more local place.”

Not that Mr. Sykes opposes growth. Most of his busi­ness comes from the Internet.

“I sell these things all over the world,” he said of his prod­ucts. “That’s the only way I can make any money.”

Yardley shows great restraint in not draw­ing fur­ther atten­tion to Sykes’ sad, stu­pid state­ment. There’s no need to, after all. The lunatics keep pre­sent­ing themselves…and impal­ing themselves…en masse. Witness the right­eous indig­na­tion of some­one named Eric Bechard at a recent culi­nary con­test involv­ing pork ravi­oli and niblets.

For Mr. Bechard, it came down to this: never should a pig from Kansas or Iowa have even been entered in the con­test; it only made it worse that the Iowa pig won. After all, there are Red Wattle her­itage pigs raised right here in Oregon. The chefs who com­peted work in Oregon, and most pro­mote locally pro­duced food.

“I get there and I get the flier and I’m imme­di­ately sick­ened because I’m see­ing ‘local,’ ‘sus­tain­able,’ ‘local farms,’ ‘local chefs,’ ‘local wine,’ ” Mr. Bechard recalled, “and then two of the pigs are from Kansas and Iowa? I’m look­ing at my friend and he said, ‘Eric, just let it go.’ ”

Many hours and drinks and insults later, wit­nesses told police Mr. Bechard was the aggres­sor when he encoun­tered Brady Lowe, the event’s Atlanta-based orga­nizer, out­side a bar. Words were hurled and fists flew. The police came, fir­ing Tasers and pep­per spray.

Does any­one besides me detect a fun­da­men­tal error in judg­ment here? A pro­found mis­un­der­stand­ing of how real­ity works? I don’t fault out­siders for laugh­ing at these anec­dotes. I’d laugh too were I not con­fronted (and con­founded) daily by sim­i­lar exhi­bi­tions of child­ish naiveté and illib­eral group-think. Note, too, the sym­pa­thy that Bechard elic­its from other locals:

…Manuel Recio, a for­mer adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive who decided to become a veg­etable farmer sev­eral years ago, said Mr. Bechard should not have got­ten into a fist­fight. Yet, he also told of Portland chefs who blend imported straw­ber­ries into desserts whose ingre­di­ents are mis­lead­ingly labeled as locally grown. He said Mr. Bechard had a point.

“It was great to finally have some­one call peo­ple out on it,” Mr. Recio said.

Um, yeah, Manuel, it was awe­some. You fuck­ing lunatic.

Gawker caught wind of this ker­fuf­fle and offered some wor­thy obser­va­tions of its own.

…in Portland, each cul­tural entity is born almost simul­ta­ne­ously with its back­lash. Anti-Stumptown sen­ti­ment has existed almost as long as Stumptown. Even before the roaster lost its local cred a cou­ple years ago by open­ing its first store “abroad” (in New York), alter­na­tives had popped up for those who thought Stumptown had become too cor­po­rate. (In Portland, any­thing that makes enough money to stay in busi­ness is “too cor­po­rate”.) One pop­u­lar Stumptown alter­na­tive, Courier Coffee, started as a door-to-door bicy­cle cof­fee deliv­ery ser­vice. Stumptown tried to counter with a pro­gram to buy bicy­cles for Rwandans, but it was too late: The double-backlash was on, and shit-talking Stumptown is now an excel­lent ice-breaker in Portland.

Forgive the “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool” pre­tense, but yours truly has despised Stumptown since its incep­tion. Perhaps things have changed, but when the store was freshly squeezed from Duane Sorenson’s entre­pre­neur­ial teat, it seemed like a haven for Portland’s teem­ing masses of con­temptible indie dorks. If it has truly “gone cor­po­rate,” then per­haps I’ll become a Stumptown “fan.”

Some more Gawker obser­va­tions though:

Anyone who thinks the double-backlash is the harm­less pas­time of a bunch of white peo­ple in a damp Pacific Northwest enclave would do well to look at Bechard and Lowe’s bat­tered mugshots. As suc­ces­sive back­lashes drive mad­dened Portlanders ever-more mil­i­tantly local, this whole thing might end in a Civil War.

Civil War? No, but extreme polar­iza­tion of idiot splin­ter groups? That’s pos­si­ble. Throw in the peren­ni­ally exas­per­ated prag­ma­tists like myself, and you have fer­tile grounds for a highly sus­tain­able bloodbath.

Hopefully there will be ample com­mu­nity seat­ing avail­able for this clash.

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