Raggedy Ants

I discerned a characteristic of Portland that would enchant me over the course of a week, as I explored restaurants and bars, artisanal cafes and mushrooming food carts, funky neighborhoods and weird little museums. Amid economic catastrophe — Oregon has the country’s second-highest unemployment rate — there was a general indifference to wealth. In its place was a dedication to the things that really matter: hearty food and drink, cultural pursuits both high and low, days in the outdoors and evenings out with friends. It’s the good life, and in Portland it still comes cheap.

This dumb speech is nestled somewheres in the first paragraphs of Matt Gross: Frugal Traveller's Times ditty on "Frugal Portland." And G-d but isn't that picture the most clunky/fugly/irritating thing you've seen in days?! And G-d but isn't Matt Gross the biggest Pollyanna alive?! You see, this "good life" stuff throws me off. I know Portland is physically beautiful and rents are low, which is cool, but that unemployment rate is no joke. And, though I've never been, alls I know about it (from friends, acquaintances, and Elliot Smith) is junkies and strippers and dead ends (for reals). And I'm pretty certain that they're not so much indifferent to wealth, as petulant at wealth, each with a Middle West blue-collar childhood-sized chip on their shoulders. People who live this sort of self-consciously cobbled together, socialist-ish existence do so in clear opposition to the bourgeois and slick, ever-aware of those they wish to be unlike. Also, I really just don't trust this guy to tell me what looks and feels and tastes good. Done.