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Portland isn’t as big as New York City. It isn’t as hippie as San Francisco (though it tries) or as wannabe fashionable as Los Angeles. It has its own funky vibe. It’s been called hipster, but since no one really knows what hipster means we’ll leave that aside for now. It’s a city of contradictions, Portland, as most cities are, with its lively younger crowds from Portland State University who frequent the microbreweries and clubs for the trendy music scene, with its poverty and its beggars, with its tourists and its artsy types in dreadlocks and tie-dye who spray paint the motto “Keep Portland Weird” onto walls and billboards, all against a backdrop of coniferous foresty beauty.
It’s as easy to ignore the poverty in Portland as it is to ignore it anywhere else, but it’s there if you b
