I stumbled across the theater marquee above in Seattle during my recent vacation to the Pacific Northwest. It literally made me laugh out loud. I like to imagine the programmer has, in his head, named this little series "Crimes Against Humanity."
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When I told people I was going to Portland and I asked what I should check out while there, everyone responded with the same two recommendations. "You have to go to Voodoo Doughnuts" was always the first.
What none of these people told me was that the line for Voodoo Doughnuts was 100-people deep at all times. Interestingly, the line was comprised largely of parents with groups of small children. As my wife astutely pointed out, it makes sense: kids love doughnuts and, honestly, what else is there for kids to do in Portland?
Anyway, I found this all quite interesting because, staring over the kiddies waiting patiently (or not so) for their sickly sweet treats was this marquee:
Yes, that's a sexy anime cat. You can't quite tell, but it's advertising a two hour block of hentai at the local porno theater every Sunday from 10 PM to midnight.
"The cat makes me feel funny, daddy..."
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Portland's an extremely walkable city. We ventured along a highway coming back from a delicious, hipster-friendly sandwich shop—you know it's hipster-friendly when it serves Boylan's sodas by the bottle rather than via the fountain—and crossed a bridge with a magnificent view. The skyline blended in with the trees in the distance nicely; bridges on either side of us hummed with traffic and brought their own architectural majesty to the proceedings.
We went across the highway on the way back because we had gone under the highway on the way over; it was the only time we saw a real skid row on our west coast swing. It was, almost literally, the seedy underbelly of the city. It reminded me of the episode of the Simpsons where Lisa gets lost on the bus: "Next stop, crackton."
It felt like a weirdly good metaphor for the city. The people were remarkably friendly and the city streets were remarkably clean. Sure, there was the random panhandler —along with the random kid on a skateboard asking for change to go buy an ice cream cone—but they weren't overwhelming. There were, however, a surprisingly large number of vocal crazies: the shout-at-the-moon, holler-at-passersby, stumble-this-way-and-that-on-the-sidewalk-as-they-talk-to-the-invisible-dude-next-to-them types. Below the surface there is a rot.
I dunno, maybe I'm stretching here.
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In addition to Voodoo Doughnuts, the other place everyone tells you to go in Portland is Powell's Books. It's a pretty amazing store, and I picked up five books for a secret long term project. It was nice wandering through a well-organized store with shelves and shelves of books new and used; I found quite a few volumes that I likely would never have picked up otherwise. I hope they will be helpful.
Of course, going into an indie bookstore and strolling through the politics section will always provide the conservative with a few chuckles. For instance, I was amused to note that Pat Buchanan was filed under "far right/Fascist thought" (or some such). Check out the categories in the next row:
"chomsky." lulz
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Amazingly, the news that the founder of the Pacific Northwest's most important non-coffee business, Jeff Bezos, was buying Washington's most important homegrown newspaper, the Washington Post, broke while I was in the Pacific Northwest. Kind of funny, that.
More funny, however, was this piece in the New Republic, by a former Postie worrying that, get this, a tech billionaire was buying a news outlet! It's very brave of the Facebook-funded New Republic to take a stand against the predations of billionaires looking to get into the news business. Then again, maybe it makes sense that Alec MacGillis would be disdainful of Bezos while happily chugging along under Chris Hughes. Bezos earned his billions. How gauche! Much better to win the roommate lottery and "invent" something as remarkably stupid as the "poke" button.
(I'm still waiting for David Simon to weigh in on the awfulness of this non-Washingtonian buying a Washington newspaper. After all, the only reason the sainted creator of the most overrated TV show of all time objected to the Koch's buying the Baltimore Sun was the fact that the libertarian brothers weren't from Charm City.)
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It's good to be back, y'all.