Twin Peaks

I went to lovely Portland, Oregon for Giving de Thanks. I went primarily to visit old friends who moved to this tarnished jewel of a City from San Francisco ( which is just an outright jewel). My image of Portland prior to my visit was that it was another well-to-do Pacific Northwest mid-sized City that was the benefactor of Nike dollars and Tech industry largesse but, boy, was I wrong. Portland, actually, has one of the worst job markets in the whole country and my friend Korey, who has a fine Master's Degree in Library Science, has been relegated to working at a car dealership temp job located 30 minutes outside the City. He is doing well by Portland standards but, needless to say, he is, now, moving back to San Franciso -- evergreens, no matter how gorgeous, and beer, no matter how tasty and micro-brewed (Potland has a lot of both) are not reason enough to stay in an economically depressed town.

The City plays host to an odd assortment of hardcore Hippies with a well established anti-corporate ethos and Slacker-Granola Punks still sporting flannel and vintage t-shirts a la Kurt Cobain plus, right-wing militia types who preach the words of Jesus and the gospel of the N.R.A. There is no sales-tax in Portland and ballot intiatives to increase funding of schools and whatnot have, usually, failed so there are no civil or social services to speak of. Apparently, the City is so strapped for cash the Police Department doesn't have a computer system and there is a rumor that there are only two snow-plows for the whole town so an inch or two of the white, sticky, stuff shuts the town down.

Not to be terribly crude but speaking of the white, sticky, stuff - Portland has an incredibly vibrant, uh, Adult Entertainment industry that fits into the whole Wild-West, Anti-Tax, Anti-Gub'ment, environment. Fantasy Video is a peep show/porn-store that's big enough for the whole family. Dancing Boys? Check out the Silverado where the men strip for other men (and the few women who love them enough to be dragged out to a gay strip bar: me!). The men taking it all (and I mean all) off were suprisingly good-looking (they had all their teeth) and so hair-free and shiny that comparisons to Ken Dolls would not be far off the mark. They shake what their Mamma gave them to get tipped by men in baseball hats decorated with logos of bald eagles and American flags or a short brunette with a crimson face (again: me).

The only industry besides porn that really seems to be booming in Portland is the manufacturing and distribution of Cyrstal Meth. It seems that meth has become the moonshine of the 21st Century with small rural communities turning to household cleaners that, mixed right, can be turned into a nasty drug that is both a relief from boredom and enconomic desparity. It's entirely possible that the clapboard house tucked neatly into the side of that mountain is a fully functioning meth lab. Hopefully, the people inside know what they are doing because if they don't Grandma's falling-apart Victorian is going up in flames. This is "Our Town" for the 21st Century where tweaker-drug dealers compete with preachers for the soul of America. I saw more than a few people on the streets of Portland who had, obviously, done a little meth -- the manic chin wagging is always a dead giveaway.

However, Portland (and the state of Oregon) is an icredibly gorgeous place and the native Oregonians, to their immense credit, have managed to stave off the rapacious development that mars so many other rural states. No Wal-Mart or Home Depot complexes cut into Oregon's awe-inspiring natural beauty and, bravo to a community that puts it's Mom and Pops and it's environment ahead of a short-term economic boom.

I am glad I got to see where Lewis & Clark forged their trail and you can still imagine how wild and beautiful it must have been untouched. Oregon, wild Oregon, with its evergreens, waterfalls, streams, mountains, meth users, and strippers, all perched on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.