Keep Portland Weird

• ·      If you resemble any character from reality bites, especially Ethan Hawk, you’re nailing it (androgyny is in). 
• ·      If you don’t have compost in which you use chicken shit from your very own free-range flock, you are a worthless human being—living in an apartment is no excuse, petition for a communal chicken coop in the complex.
• ·      If you didn’t buy your entire outfit from a vintage shop or from good will, you are capitalist degenerate (everyone in urban outfitters perusing the sale bins has a hood and Jackie-O glasses on out of shame, unless they go to PSU in which case they should pursue work as real-life urban-outfitters mannequins)
• ·      Somehow you are supposed to be super into veganism while also well-versed in the plethora of tasty meat products Portland has to offer—Im still trying to figure out this contradiction.
• ·      People don’t read fiction here— they only read the Kurt Vonnegut, Malcolm Gladwell, or The New Yorker. That’s it.
• ·      Only tourists like voodoo doughnuts
• ·      You’ve gotta have some sort of creative endeavor happening to get respect. Sure, most 20-somethings are plugging away as servers or baristas, but they are all gushing at the spit to tell you about their side-projects—a kombucha startup, their pottery, freelance illustration, ultra-running, yoga-teaching, dream-catcher weaving, good lord don’t get me started on the bands, oh the bands.
• ·      On that note, if you live here and you don’t play a musical instrument, you better have a damn good reason why not.
• ·      According to my ‘what is sexy’ barometer, if PDX could vote for sexiest man alive, it would hands down be Devendra Banhart. From what I can tell, he is the epitome of what men and women find attractive here. As for the ladies category, still searching.
• ·      This is the only city in which rain-gear can be sheek.
• ·      If you live downtown, you’re an asshole. Come to the eastside and relax a little.
• ·      When the sun is out, having conversations about the sun being out never gets old.
• ·      People judge you by your loyalty to local coffee roasters…….and IPAs.
• ·      Don’t ever play dubstep here. Just don’t. Portland took a far away look at the debauchery happening in Colorado a few years ago, and said no thanks we’ll stick to indie-rock.
• ·      If you don’t ride your fixie to work, you better be taking an alternative form of public transportation you selfish gas-guzzling-sonofabitch.
• ·      I figure it a nod to portland’s heritage that flannel and beards will never be out of style in stumptown.
• ·      Oh my, the beards! The oliver peoples style glasses! The sheek-grunginess! Portland looks like a Wes Anderson movie, with way more tattoos. And yes that is the best compliment any Portlander could ever hear about their city. 

Ima keep exploring this eclectic town and will update with more cunning idiosyncrasies later.