Geekrant vs the Counterculture Citadel






Greetings, Geekranters!

As usual, I hope my writing finds you in fine fettle and raring to read more of my fantastical adventures from all across the globe!

Last time I wrote, I was in a hotel room on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, on the first step of my wife and I's vacation/holiday along the West Coast of the United States. That was four days ago. Oh! how I have aged in those four days.

Now, of course I exaggerate, but during an American road trip of this type, it can seem like far too many hours pass between waking in the morning and then collapsing into bed that night. It turns out a trip like this is not for the faint of heart after all. The landscape changes so quickly, the road takes you so far in a day, it can feel like several trips in one. When I last wrote, I was nearly 650 miles further North than where I am now, by the quickest route. We have driven that now, and many more miles beside, to explore out of the way places and areas.

The Americans truly seem to take this in their stride, seeming barely phased by such a journey. Maybe it is the experience of growing up in a such a large country that prepares them for the experience. All I know is I'm exhausted, and we're less than halfway through our holiday.



Portland, Oregon




Our first full day on vacation, the lone full day that we experienced in Portland, feels a long time ago now. Indeed it feels like a couple of months has passed, not four days, since we were there.

We flew into the city on the evening of the 30th of June, arriving to a cool climate much removed from the heatwave that Madison was currently sweltering under. Portland, for those of my readers who are unaware, lies in the area of the United States generally referred to as "the Pacific Northwest".

Realistically, in my eyes and for simplicity's sake, this definition really only truly applies to two full states, Washington, which lies on the border of the U.S. and Canada, and Oregon which sits just beneath Washington on the Pacific coast of America (although Idaho is often counted in this area, I'm trying to keep this simple, so my apologies.). As, a result of its location in the Northwest of the country, it has a climate and general weather that myself and my British readers are much more familiar with than many Americans.

The city lies on the Willamette River not far from where said river flows into the Columbia river which is probably the most prominent river in the United States that flows into the Pacific. This much I knew, or at least had something inkling of, before Mrs Geekrant and I ventured into the city.

Still, if anything living in this country has taught me, there's only so much information can prepare you for. We had slept the previous night in a motel and had picked up our hire car at the airport and now found ourselves in a multi-storey car park in downtown Portland.

We planned to take in the city's renowned "Saturday Market", which also, apparently, takes place on a Sunday. It also takes place under a bridge. Now, when my wife talks about a market to me, I immediately think about classic British soap opera, Eastenders, classic British comedy, Only Fools and Horses, and Scunthorpe Market. That means I think about fruit and veg, dodgy items that have fallen of the back of a lorry/truck and an indoor market where, last time I checked they still haven't changed the advertising hoardings since before my 27 year old sisters were born.


However, this isn't that type of market. Its website talks about a "community of artists', which is true, with the exception of food venues dotted here and there, this place is full of artists selling their various wares, from people making candles out of geodes to a woman selling clay whistles in the shape of various animals. There is definitely no sign of a weather-beaten cockney selling "Fresh Fruuuiiiiiiitttttt! Six Apples for a paaaannnnnnddddddd!"

There's also not a lot of sign of what many might call normality here either. Portland revels in its weirdness, even in the market could be seen the city's unofficial slogan "Keep Portland Weird". The counterculture is strong here and it showed in the stalls. The weird and wonderful was definitely on display, from an artist who described himself as a psychonaut and looked just like you'd expect such a man to look to a lovely lady who sold paintings where the only drawn lines were mathematical equations and formulae.

The market took up far more of our time than my wife had expected and was also much more extensive. Chaotic, yet ordered, counter culture, yet fully aware of simple realities. Walking through the tents and stalls, it was easy to see what had made hippies so attractive so many years ago and what makes hipsters so attractive now. A refusal to fit in with societies norms, a free flowing creativity that knows no bounds, a community that supports all of these things.

Somewhere across the street, a herbal smell was beginning to blow in our direction, a smell I knew from the recreational habits of some friends I had in University. It reminded me that marijuana use is legal in Oregon which was very obvious as we walked through the market. It wasn't as if we saw a lot of people smoking but it was evident in the small wooden boxes being sold to keep the herb in to stalls selling hemp extract. Portland is a city that definitely revels in its reputation and identity as a hub for the counter-culture.

It was a pretty city, full of bridges and water, trees and flowers, hippies and hipsters. As we walked down "Burnside Street", one of the main streets through the city, however, it no longer felt like a city but a citadel preparing for war.

There are some who say that America is headed for a civil war and there are those who argue say it has already arrived. That it is a war of beliefs and ideologies carried on through speeches and newspaper columns, social media accounts and youtube videos. That America has become increasingly polarised and its been happening silently for a long time.

As we walked through Portland, it was easy to believe these people. Signs were in nearly every window declaring their intent to serve everybody regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. Rainbow flags flew from the tops of buildings as if daring people to take offense. Powell's City of Books, one of the most famous independent bookshops in America, was selling a whole range of "Read, Rise, Resist" merchandise. It was like an army of people were stating their position and daring their opposition to do their worst.

We ate briefly in a pizza place however in Portland that meant a place called "Sizzle Pie", all punk rock ambience and alternative attitude. Again Kelly and I felt more than a little bit too ordinary for the place. Many people might point to the current American president as the cause of the stand that these people have made, but it felt like this had been building for a lot longer.

America, it so often seems to me, is a country founded on an ideology and a dream. The trouble is, everyone in the country sees the dream slightly differently. More and more these individual dreams seem more and more separate from each other.

Powell's City of Books felt like some sort of massive staging area for radical and, some might say, enlightened thought and living. In my whole life I have never seen a book store like it, it filled an entire city block and in some places occupied two floors. It was full of people, especially young people, searching the shelves for hints to the fulfillment of their personal dreams and answers to the polarized American dream. Books shelves stood floor to ceiling but also merchandise was everywhere, a capitalist intrusion into such an egalitarian location.

It was, truthfully, a wonderful place, a dream for a bibliophile like me. I wish I could have spent longer there, gazing at forgotten book titles and old stories, but the market had worn us out and had given us a brief hint of how with had a long way left to go on our journey.

We found our way on the city's transit system back to our starting point and picked up the car. Our hotel for the night lay nearly 200 miles away in a town called Roseburg, Oregon and the sooner we got driving, the better. As we headed out from Portland heading south, I reflected, as wannabe writers are want to do, on the place that I had just been.

I really liked Portland, in the end, the climate, the buildings, the environmentally friendly bikes and public transit systems were all wonderful. It was a blast, a real enjoyable place to start our journey. It was also far too "out there' for my taste, not that there's anything wrong with that, but as I get older I realise I'm far too boring and ordinary to keep up with such shenanigans. It was tiring to adjust to so much "difference". Maybe I'm missing out, but anyone who's met me knows that I'm quite weird myself and its quite that I can't cope with any more weird than myself, right now. Or maybe I'm just boring...

Portland was wonderful, if you visit, remember you've got to keep your freak flag flying and carry on resisting. Until next time...

Goodnight Geekranters!!!



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