The Portland Experience.

I've not posted anything on here forever because I haven't uploaded the necessary photographic evidence to support the post ideas I have planned. (I promised Analee I'd do it like a week ago and have been so busy and not near my computer at all. Very soon I'll show you what I've been up to...but I digress.) Here is an anecdote that doesn't need any photos from my camera, so we're good.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to hang out with my dear friend Rachel, her fantastic beau Brian, who were in town from NYC, and my brother at Doug Fir. I'd only been to Doug Fir once before, and that was for a concert, but the restaurant/bar area upstairs is one of the most calculatedly trendy places I know of in PTown. The venue itself is very well designed and in a great location, but the patrons of the bar were some of the most diverse people I've ever seen in one place. There were middle-aged people to early twenties, there were dorks, hipsters, hippies, tattooed and earplugged people, guys wearing those embroidered dress shirts that really shouldn't leave the closet (or goodwill) in a post-LFO* world, people in business-professional dress, and straight up bar skanks. Oh, and Art Alexakis of Everclear fame. The four of us were pretty curious where we fit in the spectrum. That is the thing I love the most about Portland, crazies and slightly less crazies co-existing peaceably.

I consider myself someone who fits in to Portland pretty well. I recycle everything, I ride my bike a lot, and I try to support local businesses. But something happened yesterday that really surprised me. A week ago I started doing a little reno on my guest bath. I went to Hippo Hardware to find some cup pulls and knobs for our vanity. I found some I liked, and then when I went to pay for them the cashier said, "wow, she's charging a lot more for these than I thought she would." (After you dig through drawers trying to find matches of things you want, you then go talk to people in the specific department and they fill out a little slip of paper telling you what things cost.) Yesterday I went to Restoration Hardware to get a couple of other things and noticed that their brand new cup pulls were cheaper than the used ones from Hippo. WHAT?! I'm sorry, Restoration Hardware is cheaper than something? So, I took back the pulls I got at Hippo and went with the more fabulous and cheaper pulls from Restoration Hardware.

It felt a little bit weird returning something to the eclectic-crazy-dig-for-what-you-want-Portland-institution to buy something from the over-priced chain store on NW 23rd, (which has lost a lot of its cool quirkiness in the past 10 years to chain stores like Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware.) but it also felt weird when the cashier said, "she's charging you more than I thought she would." Maybe next time I should go in looking like a pauper, then I might get a deal or two?**


*Yes, I did reference LFO.


**The fellas in the lighting department were the most helpful people I've ever encountered at a store of any kind. And they only charged me $3 for what I needed.