Woke up early (for me) to a warm & sunny day, so I decided to hop on the 15-Belmont bus line heading East, just to see where it would take me. The route took me across the Morrison Street Bridge over the Willamette River, across the City Center (didn’t see it. must have blinked…), then North along NW 23rd Avenue. Since I’ve moved to Portland, I’ve notices a notable (and welcome) absence of Yuppies in Portland– even some of the upscale areas. Well, as soon as I started seeing Starbucks every three blocks or so, I knew I had arrived!
Another thing I’ve noticed is, although Portland is very nice– it isn’t fabulous! That’s actually one reason I like the place. There is a lot of *ahem* Civic Boosterism, bordering on the sort of chauvinism displayed by natives of Chicago, America’s “Second City” in relation to New York. Which is why I view THIS sort of sign
with dismay. …
I arrived at the top of the hill (on the 15 bus line, anyway) and began to walk back toward the downtown. What I found was a sort of catchy-all theme park of Yuppiedom. First were some apartments, which could have been somewhere in conservative upper-middle class Contra Costa County, California.
As I was walking along this stretch, two thirty-somethings (whatevers) were calling to each other across the street, talking about, what?
Golf, natch…
Then came the New Age block, complete with Holistic Health practitioners, Tibetan flags, tsotchkes. incense, jewelry, Aura Channelers, high-colonics (OK, I’m not sure I saw those last two. But I didn’t make those up: they DO exist…).
They even had the obligatory Jesus impersonator– long hair, tastefully-cropped full beard, serious face and even a flowing white garment of some sort, noodling major scales on a violin to the backing of (I’m assuming) sampled harp tracks run through a sequencer, controlled by a stomp-box which he controlled with one foot.
There was also this very cool house with portico and lush green foliage:
I walked through other neighborhoods as well. The complete photo album (still in progress) for this trek can be found HERE…
