A Brief, boring tale from Portland

We are visiting my wife's family in Portland prior to hitting the coast and camping for an entire week at the same site, which is going to try the very foundations of our marriage. We were out of the country for two years and we haven't been here since 2013.

In 2004 we were on vacation and I was bored and discovered an old school game shop a few blocks away with musty games, discount mech minis, etc. and a little bin with Cheapass games for two bucks or something. I bought Lord of the Fries, and played it with the kids.

Fast forward to this evening. My father-in-law takes us out to eat at some overpriced American Mexican place that is family friendly at least, and afterwards my wife drops me and some of the kids off at the newest incarnation of that old game store. All of the games are a few dollars above MSRP and they have the newest versions of Cheapass stuff, in colorful shrink wrapped boxes for $25.

That experience is a near-perfect metaphor for what has happened to Portland in the last twelve years. Everything has been sanitized, cleaned up, and costs a lost more, and all the weirdness has been hosed down by the vampire gerontocracy that runs the place.

I'd write more, but I'm on this terrible little Netbook running Ubuntu with a nasty keyboard. Oh, and some guy in his late fifties on a super expensive bike was hitting on my wife. She didn't believe me, but I'm a guy and I know.

There are so many old white guys with beards and amazing legs on road bikes here. It's like they're furiously pedaling trying to escape death. I have never seen so many fit people in their late fifties. In Utah we just get fatter and less mobile, then die. In Portland it's all Peter Thiel like "I live in paradise and I'm rich so I am going to ride this train as long as I can bring me smoothies made with the blood of the young!"

When you start driving out of the city as you escape the charming money bubble the houses slowly look less cute and more real. Like you can see the edges of the Portlandia spell thinning out.

I don't know why I'm so cranky about this. Probably because I was here for grad school in the early nineties and miss my wasted youth.

My buddy has exactly the same thoughts about Austin, he got his phd there in the 90s. He still loves going, but...

Portland, Maine ? I'm going there in a week

Portland, Oregon.

I love living here (weather, outdoor activities), but there's a lot that I can't stand (the people). I live on the very eastern edge of the metro area, so I get to avoid most of the Portlandia stuff, but I can still get to downtown Portland in 20 minutes if I need to.

Just out of curiosity, what game store was it?

I like Portland. I used to live in Salem and Newport area, went up there a lot to party. Cool place. It's changed a lot....kind of seems like the grunge scene that tricked down from Seattle has been replaced by gentrification and hipsters. Killed some of the charm, but it's still a cool place.

Disgustipater wrote: Portland, Oregon.

I love living here (weather, outdoor activities), but there's a lot that I can't stand (the people). I live on the very eastern edge of the metro area, so I get to avoid most of the Portlandia stuff, but I can still get to downtown Portland in 20 minutes if I need to.

Just out of curiosity, what game store was it?

A store in Burlingame called "Another World." Crabbiness aside, it's not bad. We really enjoyed Cartlandia on 82nd.

My wife and I like Portland and the surrounding area quite a bit. We felt quite at home there. Granted, my cousin lives there and he has some cool friends, so we've never really felt like tourists since he let us stay at his place. Oh, and I can understand the dislike for the wanna be hipsters. Those types of people seem to always show up anywhere there's a gentrified neighborhood.

As for game stores there, I did pop into Cloud Cap Games and thought it looked pretty neat. I liked that they let you rent games.