Quote:
Originally Posted by green84061
i have lived in portland my whole live well actually Lake Oswego which is 10 miles or so south of Portland. . . .
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This community is becoming too closely knit for consistent bladder control. As long as Green doesn't let slip that he lives on Cherry Lane, I'll enjoy our three remaining degrees of separation. Lake Oswego, home of the painful Silverchair. I remember it well: haven of rich kids and the psychotic offspring of clinical psychologists; sanctuary of oppressive block committees and downwardly mobile cases (like the one who happens to be typing this very post). The perks: moderate weather, vivid and verdant scenery, fresh wild blackberries growing on the side of every road. In Lake Oswego, you can take the kind of undisturbed nature walk that might have tweaked Thoreau.
Technically, Portland is within walking distance of Lake Oswego (if you're in good health and fancy an interminable hike). I doubt I've walked the entire distance more than five times in my life.
I, too, will vouch for the forwardness of certain Portland-based members of the opposite sex. After living there for a year, even San Francisco will seem prudish by comparison. The drawback: a queue of obtrusive and endlessly demonstrative pederasts. Because of them, Portland is a sinister place to grow up with a baby face.
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If I were thinking of returning to the Northwest, my first choice would be to antagonize Vancouver, B.C. full time and irritate Portland, Oregon on random weekends.
For my second choice, I'd be shredded between Portland and Seattle. On the one hind, I prefer to infect a larger city in which art and music flourish (Seattle, for example). On the nether, Portland possesses a certain clean-scented quirkiness. Because of its liberal orientation, Portland was always crackpot central. I rather miss the spectacle of sanctioned full-blown cranks.
Certain areas outside of Portland remind me of the serpents and dragons at the edges of medieval maps -- regions of darkness and semi-dangerous fire-breathing crackers -- especially when the towns in question look deserted at first leer. I've never forgotten two of the signs I happened to see in such places:
No Trespassing (placed not on someone's property but along an
entire city street) and
All Suspicious Activity will Be Reported.
As for the "ghetto": It was never a problem for me. Whenever I happened upon an abandoned set of works, I enjoyed my proximity to chemical vermin. The rest of its denizens (meaning the poor) were simply struggling neighbors.
The one thing about Portland that makes me wince: the memory of a quiet and lingering bigotry. Diversity, one of the selling points of NYC, is something I miss when I revisit the gated cities of my gray-green adolescence.
