A B O U T

Lola on January 20, 2012 at 6:01 UTC.

Awesomeville Local?

Um, I’m not com­plain­ing but I do have a beef to pick, it’s a vegan, hand rolled, tem­peh beef, wrapped in a gluten-free, organic hemp flour tor­tilla, sold from a cart of course, but never-the-less, it’s a beef.

Nearly 40, I’ve lived in Portland since 1974 and I’ve never ever heard any­one refer to Ceasar Chavez Blvd as CCB. Most peo­ple I know just call it 39^th, unless they’re trans­plants who believe they’re locals because they’ve lived her for 5 years.

Why five years? I don’t know, it’s an inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non that gen­er­ally occurs when I attend ran­dom house par­ties at homes I remem­ber as crack houses in my youth, or get dragged by my MDMA-hungry les­bian besties to some “pri­vate” loft gath­er­ing for some pre­ten­tious, (I think I’m cool cause I live in the Pearl and I’m a DJ even though I’ve never touched vinyl) d.bag’s _[Fill in the blank]_ release party.

Just as I’m about to get up the nerve to silently Sharpie the under­side of the throw pil­low that goes with the sweet mod­ern couch I’m sure was bought at Hip, pos­si­bly cus­tom made by one of the bajil­lion green fur­ni­ture builders in my beloved home­town, I’m sud­denly some­how, engaged in polite *yawn* con­ver­sa­tion with a freak in uni­form, (AKA hipster/rocker/yogi/DJ/anarchist/MC nobody ever heard of/I am REI/I put the Q in queer/clearly I left my brain at BRC/ I don’t know what I am cause I just got to Portland and the options for fash­ion faux pas are end­less, as is the free­dom to explore every sin­gle one of them at once).

The con­ver­sa­tion typ­i­cally ends up at the, “So, where are you from?” ques­tion. I always think I should ask first, to get their bor­ing story out of the way, and so I can make them feel stu­pid when they say, “I“m from Portland,” but I never do.

“Oh yeah?” I counter, “Where’d you go to high school?” Then they say, “Oh, well, I’m orig­i­nally from _blah-blah-blah-let me tell you the long winded story of how I ended up in Portland-blah-blah, but I basi­cally feel like I’m from here, I’ve been here five years and I just love Portland.”

Next, in the all-too-typical drama of this bor­ing story I’m telling you for no other rea­son than I had the impulse to do so after read­ing the front page of your blog, and hav­ing been laid off only two suck ass weeks ago… AND dumped by my dick head boyfriend for smok­ing a cig­a­rette, yes he dumped me for smok­ing an hour after I got laid off from a job I freakin loved! I digress, the point being my insanely busy life came to a halt two weeks ago and I have noth­ing much bet­ter to do at 4am on a what­ever day this is, I mean sleep is a good sec­ond option but this is kinda cathar­tic, like a ther­a­pist I never have to see, lis­ten to, make a 2^nd appt with, or make promises of pay­ment to. And really, what dif­fer­ence does it make in this moment?

Seriously, I’ll fin­ish up. I’m sure you’re hang­ing on my every word, just ready to scroll down and see what hap­pens in the end… WHY 5 YEARS? ALWAYS 5 YEARS!

So, then, if I’m still awake and my friends haven’t required my assis­tance with a puker, a fight, or unwanted affec­tion, it’s my turn and they ask, “where are you from?”

To which I casu­ally reply, pos­si­bly even a lit­tle envi­ous that I don’t have a “Mecca to Portlandia” story to equally bore (or, to be fair, occa­sion­ally fas­ci­nate) my lis­tener with, “Portland.” They stare, try­ing to under­stand what I just said. Then after a 2 minute pro­cess­ing period, their face returns to what I imag­ine is their typ­i­cally ani­mated state, and they reply, “Cool, where’d you grow up?”

My turn to stare and attempt to com­pute. Finally, in my most sin­cere (and well prac­ticed) teacher/social worker voice, I reply, “Portland, well, I was born on Guam but my par­ents moved here when I was year old, we had rel­a­tives here and they wanted to get off island.…” My voice usu­ally trails at this point cause they’re quiet, and I know what they’re think­ing, at least I know the three typ­i­cal responses I usu­ally get at some point in the con­ver­sa­tion.
1. Where, or bet­ter yet what, is Guam?
2. Is that a coun­try? I know it’s con­nected to the US some­how.
3. Hm. So she’s not American? She doesn’t have an accent, I won­der if she speaks Guamese.

Now I know what you might be think­ing, that I“m pretty awe­some… well, or you might be think­ing that I’m a judg­men­tal biatch, for grip­ing about peo­ple say­ing their from here when I wasn’t even born here. I rec­og­nize that in some places, like Vermont, the Oregon of the East Coast, you really aren’t con­sid­ered a true local until you’re like an 8^th gen­er­a­tion Vermonta. However, that is not my point.

Let me fin­ish and you might under­stand where my atyp­i­cal slan­der­ous side is com­ing from…

Once it’s clear to my, gen­er­ally unre­quested but by this point prob­a­bly enter­tain­ing, vis­i­tor that I grew up in Portland, they turn into the slightly crowded room/loft/once a crack den always a crack den and yell to their buddy, “Hey Jo, Josh, Drew, Chuck, Luke, Ben, Zack, David, Harry Potter, who­evs… she’s from Portland! No, I mean she’s FROM here, she went to, where’d you go to high school?”

“Jefferson.”

“oh! No way! That’s near Historic Mississippi right? Kinda by the Alberta Arts District? They do the dance thing there, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“That’s cool, I never really meet any­one that’s from-from here.”

“Right, I hear that a lot.”

At this point I’m bored again and there’s too many peo­ple around to graf­fiti the couch, so I head for the bath­room, keep­ing an eye out for my friends, cer­tain that what’s her face is mak­ing out with any gen­der she can get her hands around and if I could find her, inter­rupt­ing her pre-fallatiunniligus, I might be enter­tained long enough to make stay­ing for one more adult bev and a ride seem worth it.

You’re FROM Portland? You’ve lived here 5 years? And you’re 40?

I’m sorry, but if you’re over 30 and you don’t remem­ber NoPo’s Alberta prior to the Alberta Arts District, you’re not a local, you’re not FROM here. If you think Portlandia is funny because it depicts Portlanders, you surely ain’t from here. You love Portlandia because it’s about you! The transplant.

If dri­ving in the Pearl District doesn’t make you want to get out a map because you think you blacked out from eat­ing too much sushi and must’ve dri­ven all the way to SoCal, you’re not a local, not FROM P-town, not to be con­fused with lit­tle p-town, East of the Cascades, home to our for­mer Senator Gordon Smith. Smith is gen­er­ally thought of as a con­ser­v­a­tive A-holio in the crowds I run in, but he did gain sym­pa­thy after his son com­mit­ted sui­cide, and even I secretly applauded his efforts to use his posi­tion and power to increase Mental Health aware­ness and ser­vices through legislation.

Anyway, that’s what I think. That said, I loved read­ing your blog, I learned stuff about Portland, which is the funny thing about my slightly faux annoy­ance regard­ing trans­plants, espe­cially those who claim local sta­tus. Transplants have helped carry on Oregon’s long his­tory of rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism (in a uni­form), tak­ing a vision and mak­ing it a real­ity, stuff like green boxes, food carts, trans­form­ing entire neigh­bor­hoods into monthly fes­ti­vals and art walks. Of course, they also make a mock­ery of it when they try and explain how rid­ing a fixed gear is activism. I salute you transplant-wanna-be-locals! You have helped to ensure Portland AKA Awesomeville, is kept weird, inher­ently racist and weird. Though I still don’t know why it’s always 5 years…

Go Sam! Breedlove was hot! I would know, he lived around the cor­ner from me, a geo­graphic lot­tery I only real­ized I’d won shortly after the scan­dal hit and his face was as famil­iar as Lucky Charms. Breedlove sight­ings became a neigh­bor­hood obses­sion, we had our own Breedlove Action Team, tex­ting each other the loca­tion, attire, and any indeli­ble info that would give the sighter a bet­ter story than the last.

This was of course a secret life I lived… Quieting my obses­sion dur­ing my day job, I had to smother deep within my lower regions any­thing other than sad dis­gust over the Mayoral scan­dal. I was a CPS worker at the time, and you can bet there is noth­ing funny about a grown man, espe­cially in a posi­tion of power, tak­ing advanta-*cough*excuse me*hack*stifled laugh*ahem… like I was say­ing there’s noth­ing funny about our gay grown man mayor, tak­ing advan­tage of a minor…mm-ack-ahem-Harrumph. Working for CPS (child pro­tec­tive ser­vices) causes a higher level of sen­si­tiv­ity than the aver­age scan­dal sadist to inap­pro­pri­ate sex­ual behav­ior by adults with minors, even minors who are unques­tion­ably as adult as any 18yo. I mean I think Sam was a dumb ass for doing dumb ass shit while Mayor, but I think peo­ple for­get what our vot­ing options were…

Ahhh… it’s after 5am. Better get mov­ing, my work out bud­dies Stella and Jameson need some atten­tion before the kids get up. Thanks for the pep talk, I feel bet­ter already!

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