waxing portlandy

tonight i went out to drink for a few reasons:
1. it's my last weekend as a free woman for the next 12 weeks
2. i was hoping to get an eyeful (maybe a lipful) of cute-as-pie bartender andy meat
3. today i was yearning for some "standardness" and, for some reason, drinking on a friday night = "standard"
4. the non-"standard" part of me felt like observing

and this is the conclusion that the non-"standard" part of me (98% of me, it feels like) came to:

portland, for all the people who told me i'd love it here, is just like everywhere else. except with beards. and a lot of rain. and a lot of preciousness. and lots of "birds on things". for real.
granted, they do have an INCREDIBLE book store (now chain in the most "portlandy" of ways) and lots of fun things, but those things are fun for people who don't have a day job as everything here rolls up at about 7pm.
what, i'm assuming, all these people didn't realize is, what draws me to a new city is the people there, not everything else that's going on. and, unfortunately, the people here are the same as anywhere else. only with beards. even the ladies have beards. i just saw one today.
i'd even go so far as to say that portland might just be the capital of apathy: where the royal "they" go to gauge the apathy of the rest of the country when it comes to certain ideas. they're at the cutting edge of apathy here. the ideas or causes that it's cool to be associated with or help out with without even the slightest knowledge of a deeper meaning for the cause or idea start here or, even if they don't START here, they develop here and, when it comes down to it, the voting constitutencies in most urban areas in this country have pockets (or whole holes) of preciousness that aspire to portlandyness without even realizing it.
so the royal "they" who come here to gauge apathy are SMART AS FUCK.
i realized this as i sat in my dive bar with my $5 jameson and art on the walls and $1 ice cream sammiches and a pinball machine where a table of 4 dudes (2 married, 3 with beards) and 1 girl talked about their european adventures and all 4 dudes were trying to impress the 1 girl with their tales of the most despondent part of europe. trying to impress with their cultural prowess.

i don't really mind portland at all. i know i could be somewhere SO MUCH worse and the weather i could do without but, it's serving it's purpose for me right now and i am confident that it will continue to do so but i refuse to perpetuate the myth that it's some crazy retired youngster's holyland.

retired young people: here in portland it's just like everywhere else. if you REALLY want to be different, form a commune in some out-of-the-way place and let that be hipster heaven, because here, it's just a petri dish for the powers that be.

drunkenly yours,

p