Mr. Lyster and the Ephemeral City
In Olympia in 1997 everyone I knew was
moving to Seattle, including my man Dan who upon college graduation
announced he was gay. I had just finished a BA in theater so now I
was just a bit overqualified for the housekeeping job I held at the
Golden Gavel Motel.
I started taking day trips on the Amtrak train to Portland to look for work. I knew no one there, but the city had the reputation of a working class town with lots of warehouses, factories and breweries, and had recently started building a light rail system and adopted a new slogan; “Portland, the city that works.” Would it work for me too? The optimistic slogan was painted on the side of every vehicle the city owned. It would be years later that I would find out for just whom it works, the stolen slogan from Chicago so promised.
While walking through the park blocks I noticed a sign commanding, ‘Come work in Paradise’ with arrows pointing south. More signs led me to the Admissions Office at PSU, where the last sign offering to come work in paradise was followed by, ‘--open mail for PSU Admissions.’ Within a few minutes I had a job interview with the office mgr, a guy named Jeff Lyster who at the end of the interview asked me if I was work-study or regular wage. I sat stunned in the sudden realization that this was a student job and I was not a student.
"Regular wage, and I'm a night student so I can work any time you need me," -'Would this really work?’ I thought, smiling dumbly in-between lying about my extensive computer skills even though I still only had a vague understanding of what this new Windows 95 thing was.
"Great!" he replied. And with a handshake I was hired. What a sucker.
When I get away with something I always have to see how much further I can take it. So after about a month of being a working "student" opening mail for Mr. Lyster, I applied for a student night job with the PSU library. By the end of that month I was working 30 hours a week in Admissions and 20 hours a week at night in the library. I made $6 per hour at both jobs. At 23 I was an accomplished con artist.
I was able to afford a small studio with a hideaway closet kitchen at the historic Ongford, a renovated 1930's hotel downtown on 10th and Columbia. Rent was $500 per month utilities included. Ongford's basement was full of all the things from long ago, mostly furniture that the Schnitzers, the owners of the bldg, no longer needed. I wasn't supposed to know about the secret underground time capsule, but I got in pretty well with the managers. We had regular poker games in the haunted basement which resembled Citizen Cane's place.
The 1201 was the hottest club in town at the time, and was one block behind the Ongford and across from Beaver Engraving -which beheld the most beloved bright pink neon sign reading, BEAVER with a lit up dancing brown beaver beneath it. Today a high- rise condo sits in its place. The Ongford crew and I wound up at the 1201 almost every night. It was there I discovered some of the best bands in town; Fernando, Little Sue, Countrypolitans, Flatirons…
Meanwhile, I had scored a 3rd student job on the weekends at PSU's research center, where I answered phones and often came across the mail for an old employee, the late Mrs. Lyster, my first boss's ex-wife whose forwarding address was in CA, where the two had moved from originally. I have foggy memories of Mr. Lyster's sad divorce story he shared with me on walks home through the park but he'd always make reference to it whenever I asked him why he didn't go back to L.A.
One day his current / soon to be ex- girlfriend showed up in the mail room crazy eyed, sobbing, and looking for him after discovering he was cheating on her. For months after I’d see her at the 1201 attempting to approach him while he pretended not to see her.
In between hitting on every student he hired, my boss tried to convince me that he really was a nice guy. And I being still distraught from the gay ex- boyfriend who was now making porn, really wanted to believe it. He'd often show up at the Ongford after a night at the 1201 where he sometimes played drums with various bands, asking if he could use my bathroom. He'd always end up sprawled out on my sofa, staring out the big window and crying on my shoulder about his unrequited love affairs. He would share how awful it was to have just turned 30 in-between revealing that he had feelings for me that were different than what he had felt for anyone else in the office.
Mr. Lyster liked to dance. He was the only person I would ever meet in Portland who danced. We often found ourselves at Ember's or Panorama (which is now the obscenely overpriced Living Room Theater) then a quick stop at the Safeway on 10th, (back then referred to as the Unsafe Way due to the homeless / junkie population that pretty much lived at the entrance way) for some food, just before it was time to go back to work in the morning. A year later I had the misfortune of fainting at that entrance of the Unsafe Way and when EMT came, even with my long sleeves ripped straight to up to my shoulders, there was no way to convince them I really was not a junkie.
One night after referring to himself as being on a "dead end emotional roller coaster" Jeff showed me his tattoo. And this I will never forget- a snake eating itself. He explained that it symbolized his self- inflicted destruction. With total honest naivitvity I asked, "So is that supposed to be cool?" Nothing below the waist ever happened between my boss and I, but one afternoon I got a panicked phone call from him, explaining that we could no longer see each other because he could lose his job for dating a student. I was not really a student and we were not really dating, but soon after, even the bathroom drop- ins and nights of sitting in the window staring at the skyline and talking, were over.
Over the next two years I held numerous mundane student jobs at PSU, getting job skills the temp services refused to give me. I watched people with better computer skills get promoted or save enough money to leave town. That first year I continued to open mail for Mr. Lyster daily and watch him fall in love with someone else as he shared the complicated details on our walks home through the park. Bill Clinton talked about our booming economy. By the end of the year at the office Christmas party I told Mr. Lyster I was quitting. “Good for you.” He said encouragingly, assuming I had something better lined up. Christmas Eve is slow at social services and the perfect day to be there. That day for the first time in my life I began collecting food stamps. In January I started working 3 different student jobs still at PSU.
That following summer I needed more hours and went back to work in the Admissions mailroom. Mr. Lyster had been promoted out of the office manager job to somewhere else on campus and his assistant, Trevor had taken his place. To Trevor this advancement was the ego boost he so desperately desired. For years he had coveted Jeff’s job. The first thing he did was announce to all of us that Jeff never did his job right and he was a far more competent manager. Trevor could not have been more of a Portland poster boy. Transplanted straight out of a college in Idaho, he came to Portland with big office management dreams, sporting tie-dye and Birkenstocks. Like a good hippie devoid of individuality, he worshiped Jerry Garcia like some worship Jerry Falwell.
He completely redecorated, plastering the office walls with Jerry posters. I could not help but laugh at Trevor’s new attitude and found it impossible to call him Sir as he requested. He transferred me to the filing room full time and when I asked him why, he requested a meeting with me in his new conference room that used to be the student lounge until he converted it. He handed me my time sheet and told me I was fired for insubordination. After filing a complaint with Affirmative Action (my other PT student job), I went to the director of Admissions and we all had a little meeting in his new conference room he so loved. He had to apologize to me in front of everyone and promote me back to opening mail.
Once we got back to the mail room, he locked all the doors and cornered me with the document they made him sign. He tore it in half and told me he was more powerful than the director of Admissions or Affirmative Action, because he was my boss, and I should never forget this and if I tell anyone what he just said, he would deny it and then fire me for sure. “I WILL fire you if I feel like it.” He said with his hands on his corduroy hips. Sugar Magnolia was playing in the background. A psychedelic Dead Head poster glared at me from behind the Loop Master 3000 mail merge machine. If only I'd had a small microphone in my purse at the time, that turkey would have never worked in higher ed again.
Ironically, the very next day I was finally offered a real job in the Educational Policies Dept. At 40 hours a week and ten whole dollars per hour, with minimal health benefits, I had arrived. Or so I thought. For the next year I advised students through the degree program to become a school principal. I learned when one gets completely burned out from teaching, they apply to be a school administrator. I also learned way more about Kathy, the secretary I assisted than I ever wanted to know. Kathy was recently divorced, had a hysterectomy, and hated men almost as much as she hated her job. She wrote sad poetry and hung it above the copiers for everyone to see. After spending a day with Kathy I would walk home through the park blocks either wanting to kill myself, or feeling very grateful for my life. After overhearing the Dean of the dept brag to a colleague about siphoning money off students’ credit cards, I found it hard to keep my mouth shut and was fired for the last time from PSU.
A few months later during a brief stint as a "medical student" at OHSU (yes, they bought it) working in the media lab making science movies, I soon found myself about to head back home to D.C for my mom's funeral, my only living relative. The previous year a dear childhood friend died from a stroke out of the blue. Let's just say 2001-2 really, really sucked. My own health was starting to deteriorate but because I had no "real" job I did not have health care even if I worked in a hospital. And since 9-11, my con-artist career was getting trickier.
The Ongford now found itself surrounded by deafening construction on all 4 sides almost 24 hours a day. To the back and right were condos in progress. The old Simon Benson house was picked up and moved to PSU, displacing dozens of squatters who then relocated to the Ongford parking lot and side alley. In the front, re-bar for the new street- car was being installed day and night. And from our rooftop view one could not possibly miss the bottomless pit being dug out to the left. Unsafe Way had been demolished to make room for a new and improved sky rise version with a garage below and condos above. The new green urbanism was erupting.
One night I came home to find orange road cones placed throughout my floor's hallway. The mgr appeared at the top of the staircase shrugging, "The homeless keep shitting in here." He explained. Almost every day a worker from the city would come to remove what was under those cones.
Another night that same week I noticed a huge hole in the wall of the apt across from mine. The 60 year-old woman who lived there had narrowly escaped being shot with a rifle owned by her 20 year-old Puerto Rican lover boy she had just brought back from her South American vacation. Apparently some kind of housing law made it impossible to evict the young stud for the domestic disturbance. The mgr, who was also an aspiring actor, had recently inherited $50,000. He immediately left his wife and the Ongford and skipped town. So the abandoned wife's solution to the domestic disturbance was to have the woman live with her in her studio apt, which was right beside mine. After that, night after night, I’d walk to my studio at the end of the cone lined hallway, and always hear one or both of them sobbing through the walls.
The last weekend I was in town I ran into my old boss at a club. I told him my mom had just died. He complained he was single and lonely and about to take a trip soon. Said he was having a mid-life crisis and planned to quit PSU for good, said there was no reason to stay in Portland. I agreed.
A few days later we hung out in his backyard before I left for D.C. He had a new tattoo that wrapped all the way around his forearm. It was bigger but not any scarier than the snake. He said something about how it symbolized his connection to math and music. He had just started playing guitar with some bands around town.
A year later still back east, Jeff found me on-line and started asking if I was back yet, and if not, then when was I coming back to Portland? And when would we get together and so on. I had been moving about every 6 months around the east coast in effort to make some money, get more frivolous education, and escape from the heartache of the past shitty year. Eventually his e-mails started informing me that he was now a rock star, touring with a band. His new name was "Chet." It said it in all the cool links he sent me. One night he was even on Letterman. Mr. Lyster, my oldest friend in Portland, the only person who would give me a job, was a rock star.
His tour eventually came to my town and as always, things above the waist occurred again. Despite his new name, it was nice to see my old friend. But even in the cozy bed of a new rock star's hotel room, I was not interested in being sloppy road meat for "Chet." I mentioned I'd recently had surgery. He complained the entire band could not get laid in a whorehouse on this tour and he was terribly lonely as always. Still he thanked me for coming to the show and being his friend all these years and asked me to call him when I got back to Portland. I had been offered a year-long position making a documentary. Now that I was a real person with a job I thought maybe one more year would be OK, get my stuff out of storage and then either do Portland over, somehow go back to that first year I was there when it felt hopeful and new and the city was still a working class town and Chet was still Jeff.
I know I should not have been too surprised when I came back to discover Chet was Cheat. He had been living with someone for years. Long before I’d seen him at that club, before I ever left town. He forgot to mention it when he was telling me how single and lonely he was. And there of course had been other conquests and victorious treats for Cheat. Who doesn't love a rock star? Especially one who requires this much affirmation. But I was surprised in an almost de ja vu like way to be completely dismissed, as if I had come to the office like his old girlfriend and blew his game.
He was now busy working his way up the status ladder of small town local rock stardom, using one girl to get to her friend with cooler connections, while crying to another about how single and lonely he was. In almost ten years, other than a new name, new hair, tattoos and piercings, Mr. Lyster had not changed at all. And more aging hipsters like him crept into places along the new Alberta "Arts" district, which like the other warehouse district-now "The Pearl", had been completely gentrified since I left.
Cheap pool halls where back in the 90's you may have actually witnessed more than 3 black people in one place at a time, had now been replaced with white flight hipsters. The locals were forced out. Any remnant of diversity was choked off. Everything has since been converted to doggie day cares, vegan donut shops and high priced, high fashion, earth friendly shoe stores. Portland's new urbanism has produced sprawl thicker than some other American cities. The middle class is shrinking into the suburbs where there are more jobs and cheaper housing.
As the new inhabitants walk their doggies, or roll up the left leg of their one size too small nut hugging pair of jeans to hop on their ultra cool retro hip 10 speed and cruise down the street, ignoring the bike baths, cutting off cars and flipping the drivers the bird, they discuss with each other how progressive, diverse and open-minded this new city is that they have chosen. There is nowhere better than Portland. The same Stepford mentality had spread throughout the east side. Portland was utopia, and to dare question this could instantly warrant you a mortal enemy of the ever-growing liberal elitists.
Portland itself, which wants me to believe it has evolved into a remarkably progressive, modern, paradise for the wayward lost souls of America, is in reality still a small-minded, frightened little town even more conservative and backwards than it was when I had left years before.
OHSU had built an annex which is more like a new city on an island, complete with a spaceship looking sky tram that was paid for with tax payers money but serves only the employees of OHSU. Shortly after the annex was completed OHSU began laying off people by the hundreds and put a hold on any new hiring.
The somewhat historic Laurelthirst music pub had not changed a bit and was best described in a barfly review courtesy of "Spanky":
Good music my ass
If tripping over a dozen big dogs with fucking bandanas tied around their necks to go hear tedious rhythms and monotonous guitar noodling in the shitty hippie jam-band genre is your thing, this is the place for you. Smokey cancer pit full of jiggy, stinky hippies. The horror...
I went to a pretty decent high school back in N. VA, but I imagine the ones I've heard about and seen depicted in John Huges films and Judy Blume novels, must closely mirror a younger version of the Laurelthirst, a sort of purgatory for aging hipsters. The cool white kids, who can be anywhere from 21-45, as long as you have enough tattoos, piercings, hair dye and attitude to be part of that mainstream, are either on-stage or part of the "in" kids (groupies) pandering directly beneath them, and everyone in the surrounding booths don't dare speak to either, or you'd be faced with people asking you, "Who are you?" How do you know HIM?" "Oh, are you here by yourself!?"
It was here that I saw Mr. Lyster for the last time. Since I’d returned to town he would either greet me with an ass grab and a kiss on the mouth or completely ignore me. After asking him why we weren't friends anymore and why did he have to lie so much, he gave me an ass pat for the last time and replied with simple smug pride,
"What I did to you was nothing compared to some things I've done to other people." And he disappeared into the sea of everlasting adolescence. A little fish too scared to go back to L.A was now a big fish in a very small, stinky pond.
Meanwhile Portland has become a Mecca for a mass exodus of lost white people lacking any sense of conviction or plan. Just move to Portland and all your problems will disappear, you will finally be cool. They come here to find themselves, and not just wayward 20 somethings but people 40+. Most call themselves activists or artists and then sling coffee for $7.75 an hour. Some beg to park their VW bus in your yard. Apparently working is not cool for an activist or an artist anyway. Work is for the warmongers, the haters, the mean people with SUV's. And “mean people suck.”
Being homeless is chic. Portland has a homeless "prom" every year for teenagers, but no interest in actually helping the homeless kids get off drugs, out of prostitution, and back home. It's become very fashionable for people of all ages and backgrounds (not just the meth addicts and mentally ill) to choose to live on the street, or off your family and friends.
People fleeing, mostly from towns even smaller and whiter, have decided Portland is New York City. No wait--it's even better. Keep Portland Weird, the stolen bumper sticker from Texas's, Keep Austin Weird should really read, “Portlanders are very open-minded... as long as you think exactly like them.” These “liberals” are so narrow-minded that they are actually conservative but are too stupid to see themselves.
Those too scared to live come here to die. Some slowly, some quickly. To this day, I still have not met one person who actually grew up in Portland.
I love the weather here, especially the rain and winter, but most people who are attracted to this type of weather are massive depressives who use the weather as yet another excuse not to live.
One of the few black people I met here said to me before leaving -and after selling his car because as he put it, “Why bother? I get in the car, I get pulled over. Might as well take the bus.”- “I've lived down South with KKK and would rather live back there than with the swept under the rug racism that is going on here.”
It is a feeble notion that Portland is in any way "weird", "progressive", or "liberal".
The hipsters put down S. CA while Portland builds housing with Californians in mind because the income levels do not match the price of the new sky rise condos. And to suggest moving to a state with more jobs and a more affordable housing market like Texas or Ohio is a ghastly thing to suggest. Such places are not as “progressive” as Portland. They are for warmongers, the haters, the mean people with SUV's. Stepfords must stay in Portland, the best place in the world.
Supporters of “new urbanism” like to compare the new Portland neighborhoods with mass transit to the old Manhattan neighborhoods with streetcars. Those New York areas were home to large numbers of families and immigrants. Most residents were there for employment. Many hoped they'd move up into a nicer neighborhood someday. Those urbanites wanted to get ahead -- not soak in the ambiance.
“A metropolitan economy, if it is working well, is constantly transforming many poor people into middle class people. Cities don't lure the middle class, they create it.”
-The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs.
Portland lures trendy, iPod-toters who want to believe that you can live a good life without a job. Why are so many young people moving here? Is it because this is a great big city with jobs and the opportunity to rise up in the world? No. They move here because the "small town" is less stressful and really cool.
Portland is small but it is not less stressful. In Feb 2008 Portland was in the top 20 for most stressful cities. Maybe there are no jobs because the losers come here and companies know that.
The leaders blame unemployment on the fact that people keep moving here. But that is after they pat themselves on the back about how awesome they are for attracting young and creative people. So, which is it? The ‘Young Creatives’ can't seem to find jobs in Portland because Portland doesn't want to create jobs or doesn't know how. I personally think it is a little of both. So, Portland will continue to bill itself as a progressive beacon of hope.
Somewhere along its progressive way, Portland lost its ability to look outside of itself, to see reality and make a change.
Portland is a great city for those who cannot handle big cities, and don't mind not having a rich cultural life within the city, or much of a future for the city itself. For such a “forward thinking” city, it seems no one is thinking ahead.
As an attractive fleeting city, Portland will remain a lifestyle pit stop for the wayward meek, and a lure for the independently wealthy’s search for quality of life. It also might remain a blessed place for hipsters of all ages who can create for each other without enduring the hard, scary, competitive scene of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago or elsewhere. They are perfectly content to settle for minimum wage jobs serving the rich.
Somewhere along the way in Portland, Bohemian changed from the definition of someone who lives an unconventional artistic life- where self-expression is their highest value and central part of their life, to just obtaining and maintaining the look of a poor artist, or attaching themselves to creative types. Higher aspirations that might actually lead to funding a major creative project, would in turn, cramp their slacker style anyway.
Portland is only Bohemian to people who come from all white cultures (making it more and more Lilly ass fucking white bred) and know nothing else because they are too scared to immerse themselves into anything different and truly unconventional than what they already know.
I have my nice memories of the old Portland and there is still a lot to be said for parts of the city like Sellwood, SW (in the hills you can pretend you are somewhere else altogether) and parts of N Portland that remain unhip, and a turn-off to the Stepfords. Not to mention the rest of Oregon state which has a lot to offer but is completely overlooked by most Portlanders, especially the history. It, like every other place outside of Portland is dismissed as not as worthy. Places like John Day or Pendleton are not progressive like Portland. These same people who put down anything outside of Portland consider themselves to be intelligent and well read. They live in a bubble of self-delusion, sipping mochas while pontificating over books at Powell’s about how great their new city is and how wonderfully progressive they are. Is it progressive to have high unemployment?
I don't hate Portland today because of what it is, I merely hate the hype of what its supporters claim it to be. I miss the stinky breweries. I miss the dancing brown light up neon beaver and the old bus stop format that had purple rain drops, lucky charms, golden reindeers and more happy brown beavers. I miss the cool people I met here who did have ambition and drive and then, one by one, all moved away or self-destructed in various ways. Twice while taking the Amtrak train in or out of Portland, the conductor asked us to pull the curtains because someone had committed suicide by hanging them self off the bridge. The second time it was someone I later found out, I actually knew. Portland still attracts some great musicians, but most eventually hit the road for good, and who can blame them. The few people I meet here who have one FT job, are usually contracting out-of-state.
..
Recently I was crossing at the intersection of the park blocks where years ago I used to walk with Jeff after work. He caught a bus home on the corner of Columbia and then I’d walk one block further west, home to the Ongford.
I recalled one of the last weeks we worked together since he'd stopped coming over and talking to me like he used to. This day he had been talking a lot about how great the drug ecstasy was. He went on at length about how it had really helped him in his latest relationship.
“You should really try it.” he pitched. “It just makes you feel so much closer to someone.”
“I don’t have a problem feeling close to people.” I offered. But he only continued with the drug endorsement.
“I feel like on X it’s easier to communicate and feel a connection with someone.” I used to drink a lot and that made it easier to talk to people, but X makes it even easier to talk to people because it breaks down more inhibitions. “
“What the hell is wrong with you that you can’t feel that way naturally?” I asked him. “You really need a synthetic crutch to feel close to someone?” Before he boarded the bus he gave me the same confused look as when I asked him if his snake tattoo was supposed to be cool.
As the country grows even bigger and Americans are confronted with more sprawl and a plummeting economy, the frightened and lost might still come to marvel at a city that once was, if only its leaders had not gotten so greedy and its new followers arrived so gullible, lost, and shameless. A city that once boasted great intentions but set itself up for failure. Some will stay for a long vacation until the fog wares off their wide doe eyes and their trust funds or PSU scholarships wear out or they rack up thousands in student loan and credit card debt, others will stay indefinitely without ever even trying to get out, content in their almost $20,000 a year jobs serving the disproportionately small upper class. Thousands still arrive every year falling in love with their reflection in the increasingly toxic Willamette River. Portland might likely carry on just enough to serve as a haven for idealistic values, emotional cripples, and the enduring power of a child-like self-regard.
I started taking day trips on the Amtrak train to Portland to look for work. I knew no one there, but the city had the reputation of a working class town with lots of warehouses, factories and breweries, and had recently started building a light rail system and adopted a new slogan; “Portland, the city that works.” Would it work for me too? The optimistic slogan was painted on the side of every vehicle the city owned. It would be years later that I would find out for just whom it works, the stolen slogan from Chicago so promised.
While walking through the park blocks I noticed a sign commanding, ‘Come work in Paradise’ with arrows pointing south. More signs led me to the Admissions Office at PSU, where the last sign offering to come work in paradise was followed by, ‘--open mail for PSU Admissions.’ Within a few minutes I had a job interview with the office mgr, a guy named Jeff Lyster who at the end of the interview asked me if I was work-study or regular wage. I sat stunned in the sudden realization that this was a student job and I was not a student.
"Regular wage, and I'm a night student so I can work any time you need me," -'Would this really work?’ I thought, smiling dumbly in-between lying about my extensive computer skills even though I still only had a vague understanding of what this new Windows 95 thing was.
"Great!" he replied. And with a handshake I was hired. What a sucker.
When I get away with something I always have to see how much further I can take it. So after about a month of being a working "student" opening mail for Mr. Lyster, I applied for a student night job with the PSU library. By the end of that month I was working 30 hours a week in Admissions and 20 hours a week at night in the library. I made $6 per hour at both jobs. At 23 I was an accomplished con artist.
I was able to afford a small studio with a hideaway closet kitchen at the historic Ongford, a renovated 1930's hotel downtown on 10th and Columbia. Rent was $500 per month utilities included. Ongford's basement was full of all the things from long ago, mostly furniture that the Schnitzers, the owners of the bldg, no longer needed. I wasn't supposed to know about the secret underground time capsule, but I got in pretty well with the managers. We had regular poker games in the haunted basement which resembled Citizen Cane's place.
The 1201 was the hottest club in town at the time, and was one block behind the Ongford and across from Beaver Engraving -which beheld the most beloved bright pink neon sign reading, BEAVER with a lit up dancing brown beaver beneath it. Today a high- rise condo sits in its place. The Ongford crew and I wound up at the 1201 almost every night. It was there I discovered some of the best bands in town; Fernando, Little Sue, Countrypolitans, Flatirons…
Meanwhile, I had scored a 3rd student job on the weekends at PSU's research center, where I answered phones and often came across the mail for an old employee, the late Mrs. Lyster, my first boss's ex-wife whose forwarding address was in CA, where the two had moved from originally. I have foggy memories of Mr. Lyster's sad divorce story he shared with me on walks home through the park but he'd always make reference to it whenever I asked him why he didn't go back to L.A.
One day his current / soon to be ex- girlfriend showed up in the mail room crazy eyed, sobbing, and looking for him after discovering he was cheating on her. For months after I’d see her at the 1201 attempting to approach him while he pretended not to see her.
In between hitting on every student he hired, my boss tried to convince me that he really was a nice guy. And I being still distraught from the gay ex- boyfriend who was now making porn, really wanted to believe it. He'd often show up at the Ongford after a night at the 1201 where he sometimes played drums with various bands, asking if he could use my bathroom. He'd always end up sprawled out on my sofa, staring out the big window and crying on my shoulder about his unrequited love affairs. He would share how awful it was to have just turned 30 in-between revealing that he had feelings for me that were different than what he had felt for anyone else in the office.
Mr. Lyster liked to dance. He was the only person I would ever meet in Portland who danced. We often found ourselves at Ember's or Panorama (which is now the obscenely overpriced Living Room Theater) then a quick stop at the Safeway on 10th, (back then referred to as the Unsafe Way due to the homeless / junkie population that pretty much lived at the entrance way) for some food, just before it was time to go back to work in the morning. A year later I had the misfortune of fainting at that entrance of the Unsafe Way and when EMT came, even with my long sleeves ripped straight to up to my shoulders, there was no way to convince them I really was not a junkie.
One night after referring to himself as being on a "dead end emotional roller coaster" Jeff showed me his tattoo. And this I will never forget- a snake eating itself. He explained that it symbolized his self- inflicted destruction. With total honest naivitvity I asked, "So is that supposed to be cool?" Nothing below the waist ever happened between my boss and I, but one afternoon I got a panicked phone call from him, explaining that we could no longer see each other because he could lose his job for dating a student. I was not really a student and we were not really dating, but soon after, even the bathroom drop- ins and nights of sitting in the window staring at the skyline and talking, were over.
Over the next two years I held numerous mundane student jobs at PSU, getting job skills the temp services refused to give me. I watched people with better computer skills get promoted or save enough money to leave town. That first year I continued to open mail for Mr. Lyster daily and watch him fall in love with someone else as he shared the complicated details on our walks home through the park. Bill Clinton talked about our booming economy. By the end of the year at the office Christmas party I told Mr. Lyster I was quitting. “Good for you.” He said encouragingly, assuming I had something better lined up. Christmas Eve is slow at social services and the perfect day to be there. That day for the first time in my life I began collecting food stamps. In January I started working 3 different student jobs still at PSU.
That following summer I needed more hours and went back to work in the Admissions mailroom. Mr. Lyster had been promoted out of the office manager job to somewhere else on campus and his assistant, Trevor had taken his place. To Trevor this advancement was the ego boost he so desperately desired. For years he had coveted Jeff’s job. The first thing he did was announce to all of us that Jeff never did his job right and he was a far more competent manager. Trevor could not have been more of a Portland poster boy. Transplanted straight out of a college in Idaho, he came to Portland with big office management dreams, sporting tie-dye and Birkenstocks. Like a good hippie devoid of individuality, he worshiped Jerry Garcia like some worship Jerry Falwell.
He completely redecorated, plastering the office walls with Jerry posters. I could not help but laugh at Trevor’s new attitude and found it impossible to call him Sir as he requested. He transferred me to the filing room full time and when I asked him why, he requested a meeting with me in his new conference room that used to be the student lounge until he converted it. He handed me my time sheet and told me I was fired for insubordination. After filing a complaint with Affirmative Action (my other PT student job), I went to the director of Admissions and we all had a little meeting in his new conference room he so loved. He had to apologize to me in front of everyone and promote me back to opening mail.
Once we got back to the mail room, he locked all the doors and cornered me with the document they made him sign. He tore it in half and told me he was more powerful than the director of Admissions or Affirmative Action, because he was my boss, and I should never forget this and if I tell anyone what he just said, he would deny it and then fire me for sure. “I WILL fire you if I feel like it.” He said with his hands on his corduroy hips. Sugar Magnolia was playing in the background. A psychedelic Dead Head poster glared at me from behind the Loop Master 3000 mail merge machine. If only I'd had a small microphone in my purse at the time, that turkey would have never worked in higher ed again.
Ironically, the very next day I was finally offered a real job in the Educational Policies Dept. At 40 hours a week and ten whole dollars per hour, with minimal health benefits, I had arrived. Or so I thought. For the next year I advised students through the degree program to become a school principal. I learned when one gets completely burned out from teaching, they apply to be a school administrator. I also learned way more about Kathy, the secretary I assisted than I ever wanted to know. Kathy was recently divorced, had a hysterectomy, and hated men almost as much as she hated her job. She wrote sad poetry and hung it above the copiers for everyone to see. After spending a day with Kathy I would walk home through the park blocks either wanting to kill myself, or feeling very grateful for my life. After overhearing the Dean of the dept brag to a colleague about siphoning money off students’ credit cards, I found it hard to keep my mouth shut and was fired for the last time from PSU.
A few months later during a brief stint as a "medical student" at OHSU (yes, they bought it) working in the media lab making science movies, I soon found myself about to head back home to D.C for my mom's funeral, my only living relative. The previous year a dear childhood friend died from a stroke out of the blue. Let's just say 2001-2 really, really sucked. My own health was starting to deteriorate but because I had no "real" job I did not have health care even if I worked in a hospital. And since 9-11, my con-artist career was getting trickier.
The Ongford now found itself surrounded by deafening construction on all 4 sides almost 24 hours a day. To the back and right were condos in progress. The old Simon Benson house was picked up and moved to PSU, displacing dozens of squatters who then relocated to the Ongford parking lot and side alley. In the front, re-bar for the new street- car was being installed day and night. And from our rooftop view one could not possibly miss the bottomless pit being dug out to the left. Unsafe Way had been demolished to make room for a new and improved sky rise version with a garage below and condos above. The new green urbanism was erupting.
One night I came home to find orange road cones placed throughout my floor's hallway. The mgr appeared at the top of the staircase shrugging, "The homeless keep shitting in here." He explained. Almost every day a worker from the city would come to remove what was under those cones.
Another night that same week I noticed a huge hole in the wall of the apt across from mine. The 60 year-old woman who lived there had narrowly escaped being shot with a rifle owned by her 20 year-old Puerto Rican lover boy she had just brought back from her South American vacation. Apparently some kind of housing law made it impossible to evict the young stud for the domestic disturbance. The mgr, who was also an aspiring actor, had recently inherited $50,000. He immediately left his wife and the Ongford and skipped town. So the abandoned wife's solution to the domestic disturbance was to have the woman live with her in her studio apt, which was right beside mine. After that, night after night, I’d walk to my studio at the end of the cone lined hallway, and always hear one or both of them sobbing through the walls.
The last weekend I was in town I ran into my old boss at a club. I told him my mom had just died. He complained he was single and lonely and about to take a trip soon. Said he was having a mid-life crisis and planned to quit PSU for good, said there was no reason to stay in Portland. I agreed.
A few days later we hung out in his backyard before I left for D.C. He had a new tattoo that wrapped all the way around his forearm. It was bigger but not any scarier than the snake. He said something about how it symbolized his connection to math and music. He had just started playing guitar with some bands around town.
A year later still back east, Jeff found me on-line and started asking if I was back yet, and if not, then when was I coming back to Portland? And when would we get together and so on. I had been moving about every 6 months around the east coast in effort to make some money, get more frivolous education, and escape from the heartache of the past shitty year. Eventually his e-mails started informing me that he was now a rock star, touring with a band. His new name was "Chet." It said it in all the cool links he sent me. One night he was even on Letterman. Mr. Lyster, my oldest friend in Portland, the only person who would give me a job, was a rock star.
His tour eventually came to my town and as always, things above the waist occurred again. Despite his new name, it was nice to see my old friend. But even in the cozy bed of a new rock star's hotel room, I was not interested in being sloppy road meat for "Chet." I mentioned I'd recently had surgery. He complained the entire band could not get laid in a whorehouse on this tour and he was terribly lonely as always. Still he thanked me for coming to the show and being his friend all these years and asked me to call him when I got back to Portland. I had been offered a year-long position making a documentary. Now that I was a real person with a job I thought maybe one more year would be OK, get my stuff out of storage and then either do Portland over, somehow go back to that first year I was there when it felt hopeful and new and the city was still a working class town and Chet was still Jeff.
I know I should not have been too surprised when I came back to discover Chet was Cheat. He had been living with someone for years. Long before I’d seen him at that club, before I ever left town. He forgot to mention it when he was telling me how single and lonely he was. And there of course had been other conquests and victorious treats for Cheat. Who doesn't love a rock star? Especially one who requires this much affirmation. But I was surprised in an almost de ja vu like way to be completely dismissed, as if I had come to the office like his old girlfriend and blew his game.
He was now busy working his way up the status ladder of small town local rock stardom, using one girl to get to her friend with cooler connections, while crying to another about how single and lonely he was. In almost ten years, other than a new name, new hair, tattoos and piercings, Mr. Lyster had not changed at all. And more aging hipsters like him crept into places along the new Alberta "Arts" district, which like the other warehouse district-now "The Pearl", had been completely gentrified since I left.
Cheap pool halls where back in the 90's you may have actually witnessed more than 3 black people in one place at a time, had now been replaced with white flight hipsters. The locals were forced out. Any remnant of diversity was choked off. Everything has since been converted to doggie day cares, vegan donut shops and high priced, high fashion, earth friendly shoe stores. Portland's new urbanism has produced sprawl thicker than some other American cities. The middle class is shrinking into the suburbs where there are more jobs and cheaper housing.
As the new inhabitants walk their doggies, or roll up the left leg of their one size too small nut hugging pair of jeans to hop on their ultra cool retro hip 10 speed and cruise down the street, ignoring the bike baths, cutting off cars and flipping the drivers the bird, they discuss with each other how progressive, diverse and open-minded this new city is that they have chosen. There is nowhere better than Portland. The same Stepford mentality had spread throughout the east side. Portland was utopia, and to dare question this could instantly warrant you a mortal enemy of the ever-growing liberal elitists.
Portland itself, which wants me to believe it has evolved into a remarkably progressive, modern, paradise for the wayward lost souls of America, is in reality still a small-minded, frightened little town even more conservative and backwards than it was when I had left years before.
OHSU had built an annex which is more like a new city on an island, complete with a spaceship looking sky tram that was paid for with tax payers money but serves only the employees of OHSU. Shortly after the annex was completed OHSU began laying off people by the hundreds and put a hold on any new hiring.
The somewhat historic Laurelthirst music pub had not changed a bit and was best described in a barfly review courtesy of "Spanky":
Good music my ass
If tripping over a dozen big dogs with fucking bandanas tied around their necks to go hear tedious rhythms and monotonous guitar noodling in the shitty hippie jam-band genre is your thing, this is the place for you. Smokey cancer pit full of jiggy, stinky hippies. The horror...
I went to a pretty decent high school back in N. VA, but I imagine the ones I've heard about and seen depicted in John Huges films and Judy Blume novels, must closely mirror a younger version of the Laurelthirst, a sort of purgatory for aging hipsters. The cool white kids, who can be anywhere from 21-45, as long as you have enough tattoos, piercings, hair dye and attitude to be part of that mainstream, are either on-stage or part of the "in" kids (groupies) pandering directly beneath them, and everyone in the surrounding booths don't dare speak to either, or you'd be faced with people asking you, "Who are you?" How do you know HIM?" "Oh, are you here by yourself!?"
It was here that I saw Mr. Lyster for the last time. Since I’d returned to town he would either greet me with an ass grab and a kiss on the mouth or completely ignore me. After asking him why we weren't friends anymore and why did he have to lie so much, he gave me an ass pat for the last time and replied with simple smug pride,
"What I did to you was nothing compared to some things I've done to other people." And he disappeared into the sea of everlasting adolescence. A little fish too scared to go back to L.A was now a big fish in a very small, stinky pond.
Meanwhile Portland has become a Mecca for a mass exodus of lost white people lacking any sense of conviction or plan. Just move to Portland and all your problems will disappear, you will finally be cool. They come here to find themselves, and not just wayward 20 somethings but people 40+. Most call themselves activists or artists and then sling coffee for $7.75 an hour. Some beg to park their VW bus in your yard. Apparently working is not cool for an activist or an artist anyway. Work is for the warmongers, the haters, the mean people with SUV's. And “mean people suck.”
Being homeless is chic. Portland has a homeless "prom" every year for teenagers, but no interest in actually helping the homeless kids get off drugs, out of prostitution, and back home. It's become very fashionable for people of all ages and backgrounds (not just the meth addicts and mentally ill) to choose to live on the street, or off your family and friends.
People fleeing, mostly from towns even smaller and whiter, have decided Portland is New York City. No wait--it's even better. Keep Portland Weird, the stolen bumper sticker from Texas's, Keep Austin Weird should really read, “Portlanders are very open-minded... as long as you think exactly like them.” These “liberals” are so narrow-minded that they are actually conservative but are too stupid to see themselves.
Those too scared to live come here to die. Some slowly, some quickly. To this day, I still have not met one person who actually grew up in Portland.
I love the weather here, especially the rain and winter, but most people who are attracted to this type of weather are massive depressives who use the weather as yet another excuse not to live.
One of the few black people I met here said to me before leaving -and after selling his car because as he put it, “Why bother? I get in the car, I get pulled over. Might as well take the bus.”- “I've lived down South with KKK and would rather live back there than with the swept under the rug racism that is going on here.”
It is a feeble notion that Portland is in any way "weird", "progressive", or "liberal".
The hipsters put down S. CA while Portland builds housing with Californians in mind because the income levels do not match the price of the new sky rise condos. And to suggest moving to a state with more jobs and a more affordable housing market like Texas or Ohio is a ghastly thing to suggest. Such places are not as “progressive” as Portland. They are for warmongers, the haters, the mean people with SUV's. Stepfords must stay in Portland, the best place in the world.
Supporters of “new urbanism” like to compare the new Portland neighborhoods with mass transit to the old Manhattan neighborhoods with streetcars. Those New York areas were home to large numbers of families and immigrants. Most residents were there for employment. Many hoped they'd move up into a nicer neighborhood someday. Those urbanites wanted to get ahead -- not soak in the ambiance.
“A metropolitan economy, if it is working well, is constantly transforming many poor people into middle class people. Cities don't lure the middle class, they create it.”
-The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs.
Portland lures trendy, iPod-toters who want to believe that you can live a good life without a job. Why are so many young people moving here? Is it because this is a great big city with jobs and the opportunity to rise up in the world? No. They move here because the "small town" is less stressful and really cool.
Portland is small but it is not less stressful. In Feb 2008 Portland was in the top 20 for most stressful cities. Maybe there are no jobs because the losers come here and companies know that.
The leaders blame unemployment on the fact that people keep moving here. But that is after they pat themselves on the back about how awesome they are for attracting young and creative people. So, which is it? The ‘Young Creatives’ can't seem to find jobs in Portland because Portland doesn't want to create jobs or doesn't know how. I personally think it is a little of both. So, Portland will continue to bill itself as a progressive beacon of hope.
Somewhere along its progressive way, Portland lost its ability to look outside of itself, to see reality and make a change.
Portland is a great city for those who cannot handle big cities, and don't mind not having a rich cultural life within the city, or much of a future for the city itself. For such a “forward thinking” city, it seems no one is thinking ahead.
As an attractive fleeting city, Portland will remain a lifestyle pit stop for the wayward meek, and a lure for the independently wealthy’s search for quality of life. It also might remain a blessed place for hipsters of all ages who can create for each other without enduring the hard, scary, competitive scene of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago or elsewhere. They are perfectly content to settle for minimum wage jobs serving the rich.
Somewhere along the way in Portland, Bohemian changed from the definition of someone who lives an unconventional artistic life- where self-expression is their highest value and central part of their life, to just obtaining and maintaining the look of a poor artist, or attaching themselves to creative types. Higher aspirations that might actually lead to funding a major creative project, would in turn, cramp their slacker style anyway.
Portland is only Bohemian to people who come from all white cultures (making it more and more Lilly ass fucking white bred) and know nothing else because they are too scared to immerse themselves into anything different and truly unconventional than what they already know.
I have my nice memories of the old Portland and there is still a lot to be said for parts of the city like Sellwood, SW (in the hills you can pretend you are somewhere else altogether) and parts of N Portland that remain unhip, and a turn-off to the Stepfords. Not to mention the rest of Oregon state which has a lot to offer but is completely overlooked by most Portlanders, especially the history. It, like every other place outside of Portland is dismissed as not as worthy. Places like John Day or Pendleton are not progressive like Portland. These same people who put down anything outside of Portland consider themselves to be intelligent and well read. They live in a bubble of self-delusion, sipping mochas while pontificating over books at Powell’s about how great their new city is and how wonderfully progressive they are. Is it progressive to have high unemployment?
I don't hate Portland today because of what it is, I merely hate the hype of what its supporters claim it to be. I miss the stinky breweries. I miss the dancing brown light up neon beaver and the old bus stop format that had purple rain drops, lucky charms, golden reindeers and more happy brown beavers. I miss the cool people I met here who did have ambition and drive and then, one by one, all moved away or self-destructed in various ways. Twice while taking the Amtrak train in or out of Portland, the conductor asked us to pull the curtains because someone had committed suicide by hanging them self off the bridge. The second time it was someone I later found out, I actually knew. Portland still attracts some great musicians, but most eventually hit the road for good, and who can blame them. The few people I meet here who have one FT job, are usually contracting out-of-state.
..
Recently I was crossing at the intersection of the park blocks where years ago I used to walk with Jeff after work. He caught a bus home on the corner of Columbia and then I’d walk one block further west, home to the Ongford.
I recalled one of the last weeks we worked together since he'd stopped coming over and talking to me like he used to. This day he had been talking a lot about how great the drug ecstasy was. He went on at length about how it had really helped him in his latest relationship.
“You should really try it.” he pitched. “It just makes you feel so much closer to someone.”
“I don’t have a problem feeling close to people.” I offered. But he only continued with the drug endorsement.
“I feel like on X it’s easier to communicate and feel a connection with someone.” I used to drink a lot and that made it easier to talk to people, but X makes it even easier to talk to people because it breaks down more inhibitions. “
“What the hell is wrong with you that you can’t feel that way naturally?” I asked him. “You really need a synthetic crutch to feel close to someone?” Before he boarded the bus he gave me the same confused look as when I asked him if his snake tattoo was supposed to be cool.
As the country grows even bigger and Americans are confronted with more sprawl and a plummeting economy, the frightened and lost might still come to marvel at a city that once was, if only its leaders had not gotten so greedy and its new followers arrived so gullible, lost, and shameless. A city that once boasted great intentions but set itself up for failure. Some will stay for a long vacation until the fog wares off their wide doe eyes and their trust funds or PSU scholarships wear out or they rack up thousands in student loan and credit card debt, others will stay indefinitely without ever even trying to get out, content in their almost $20,000 a year jobs serving the disproportionately small upper class. Thousands still arrive every year falling in love with their reflection in the increasingly toxic Willamette River. Portland might likely carry on just enough to serve as a haven for idealistic values, emotional cripples, and the enduring power of a child-like self-regard.
**This rant was inspired by the
article; Debunking Portland: The City That Doesn't Work July 9, 2007
And Adrienne Rich, “Like This
Together” ;
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20597349.pdf?acceptTC=true&coverpage=false&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
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