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June 18, 2006 Living here. The city of Portland, Oregon is an interesting place (to say the least). It's known throughout the northwest, if not the entire country, as a liberal hotbed, a place renowned for its "gutter-punks", well maintained "urban boundaries", bike friendly attitude, coffee, micro-brews, and professional basketball team consisting of a bevy of mentally-challenged thugs. With such a liberal assessment of its self, you would assume Portland actually reached some of these "high-brow", elitist, liberal ideals. After living in Portland for 9 years, moving to Colorado for a year, and then returning, I would argue many of the concepts.The truth is Portland is NOT liberal. I mean, Portland likes to think of its self as liberal, Multnomah county was one of the first places in the country to legalize gay marriages, however, and this concerns my experience only, I have had more issues in Portland regarding my earrings than I ever did in the "conservative" Mecca of Colorado Springs, CO. I find it rather disparaging, but also fairly typical, I'm sorry to say, of the majority of liberals that live in this city. If Portland IS as liberal as it claims to be, why are my earrings, of which I have three, such an issue with every job I have interviewed thus far? Seems a tad hypocritical to me. The employers in Colorado Springs didn't care whether or not I had earrings; something you would assume, seeing as how "the springs" remains, to this day, a decidedly red state, would be not simply an issue, but a MAJOR issue. Then there is the thought that Portland is such a "bike-friendly" city. This point, of course, I would vehemently argue against. Again, Portland is NOT "bike-friendly". More to the point, within the city I can name very, very few streets that actually have designated bike lanes, not to mention that the streets of Portland, for bicyclists, are some of the most dangerous streets in the country. Every friend of mine who has ever lived in Portland and ridden a bicycle on a regular basis has been, at one time, hit by a motor vehicle, if not multiple motor vehicles; in direct comparison, Colorado Springs, had bike lanes on every major thoroughfare. I still am searching for some place in which I belong. Liberals have a tendency to piss me off with their conceited, superior attitudes, their arrogance, and their lack of any sense of rules, and or, laws, not to mention the fact that a great number of them seem to be downright rude. And yet, conservatives frighten me with their superficial sense of decorum, their zealous urgings, their close-minded and antiquated impulses. My dear friend, Andy, consider himself a "bleeding-heart liberal", and I've always respected him and his opinions. Nevertheless, I don't consider myself liberal or conservative. Granted my own ideals lean far more frequently to the left than they do the right, but that does not mean I agree with liberals simply because they happen to be liberal. Furthermore, just because someone happens to be conservative, doesn't mean I would necessarily disagree with them. This is usually the case, but not always. Some of you would say, "well, if you don't like Portland, stop whining and move." Which is what I intend to do, just as soon as I can get two steady, financial feet under me. Still the question remains, where do I belong? Do I need to belong anywhere? Maybe it's not "them", but "me". Maybe (shudder the thought) I'm the issue. I'm still holding out for that cabin in the mountains; the nearest neighbor three to ten miles away. [Add Comment] [View Comment] |
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