Keep Portland Weird, but keep Trump's America from getting weirder

It's not rocket science. Try the truth. It works.

Violence in Portland, if you mean the danger of fuzzy frogs.

Like many of you, I have been watching the Portland/ICE/Antifa (remember—it’s Anti-Fascist, Stephen Miller!) situation with alarm, concern (like Susan Collins, but sincere), and a slight degree of amusement.

Having lived in Portlandia for 28 years, I have a lot of affection for the town, because I saw it evolve from extraction industry town into a high-tech mecca, from a affordable housing market to, well, San Francisco Junior, from an insular little timber fiefdom to Someplace Super Cool.

Naturally, when I moved to Portland in 1983, you could buy a really nice craftsman for $100,000 in a nice neighborhood, and, of course, I didn’t. There were lots of cottages in Hawthorne for $50,000, and back then, I probably could have bought several of those. I didn’t.

I moved to Beaverton.

When I moved there from Detroit, first off, I liked the weather.

Yeah. You read that right. I liked the weather. I mean, compared to Detroit, Columbus, Minneapolis, and suburban St. Paul (I was born there), Oregon weather was something that:

A. You didn’t have to shovel, mostly.

B. You could do things all year round, if you were OK with 43 and drizzling.

C. That’s Hawaii weather compared to Detroit.

I got used to the mostly perpetual overcast, and for two or three months per year, it was spectacular, particularly in Central Oregon.

As for Portland governance then, I would call it Hatfieldian. The Republicans were pretty low-key, and a lot of them were pro-choice. There was a nominal Democrat mayor, Frank Ivancie, who later took a big job in the Reagan Administration. No one liked Frank, so Portlandia started Season One, Episode One with the election of a delightful man, Bud Clark.

Many of you were familiar with Bud, who owned the Goose Hollow Inn, a pleasant hole in the wall that is exactly the same as it was now as it was in 1983. The same art is all there, food is the same, beer is cold, and you’d see a lot of Portland hitters in there.

Bud was in his late forties then, and was a canoeist who only used a pole for propulsion. Everyone knew and liked Bud. He had a great sense of humor, and, we discovered when he became mayor (he took management classes at Portland State when he started his term), that he also was tough as nails. He was re-elected, too. He made Fred and Carrie seem like they were supporting players, extras even. Bud was the first and best Portlandia character.

Bud died recently in his late 80s, if I recall correctly, and he was in his tavern until his last days, proving that some beer and great Reubens (Best on the Planet! They may well be) never hurt anyone. His wife Sigrid was also delightful, too. She played violin in the Oregon Symphony for 37 years—a lovely, charming, fun lady.

They were perfect for the moment.

Portland was evolving even then, and there was no Pearl District, no South Waterfront, none of that cool stuff that eventually made Portland hipper than hip. I was still out in Beaverton, watching it all happen, raising three kids, driving in wet minivans, and generally not being part of the rapidly changing Portlandia Thing.

Oh, I did Portland things. I was a fly fisherman, I went to REI for my survival-based wardrobe, felt like my hair and shoulders were wet all the time, went to the Heathman, hung out at various defunct watering holes, and got to know a lot of the Portland power structure.

You could break into that scene with a little pluck, too. The West Hills People would never accept you, because you weren’t a Native Oregonian, but they were generally nice about it, even if your great grandfather wasn’t a timber baron on a mayor from 1898.

I watched a wonderful guy named Nick Fish move into Portland in 1996, and, being a Harvard man and the son of a New York congressman, he possesed the gift of gab. He managed to get elected to the city council within a few years, and then was a serious mayoral candidate in another few years.

He died very young a few years ago. He was in his early sixties, and he was taken from us far too soon.

As I watched the Portland arc, I saw that there was what I would call a hobbyist class of anarchist protesters. They first became highly visible during the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2010, if I recall correctly.

These anarchist folks were pretty harmless. They would bang drums all day outside of City Hall, which I am sure was tremendously annoying to the political people inside. They would protest whatever needed protesting, and we all went about our business.

By the time of the tragic George Floyd murder by Minneapolis police in 2020, thousands of real protestors showed up (I knew many of them), and the anarchy crowd got a little more cover.

A few of them tore things up, and they even set fire to a police station, which was a very bad idea.

There was a five block stretch of downtown that was pretty grim and non-Portlandy. Chain link fencing, graffiti, and the usual urban decay accoutrement. This is when Trump and his neo-fascist buddies decided to send in masked, unidentifiable federal agents of some kind, and they were very aggressive, too.

Gov. Kate Brown then called her cordial acquaintance from the National Governor’s Association, who also happened to be vice president of the United States, and he called off the dogs.

So a lot of the graffiti was removed, but there were still systemic problems like drugs and homelessness that all major American cities contend with. When I visited Portland five years ago, it seemed a lot more like Seattle than it used to be, and the new city leadership seemed gridlocked. No more Hatfield types. Just bipolar anger. I could see that starting to happen when I left Portland for Sacramento in 2012.

Portland became ragged along the edges, definitely. It happens. There were open air drug markets, and a lot of homeless people on the streets, in tents on the Park Blocks, and no one seemed to be able to figure out how to solve it.

When I was there, Ivancie and the police had something called “sit/lie”, which meant you couldn’t be sitting or sleeping on the street at night. They moved them along, and I am not saying I agreed with it, they just did it.

Once a booming downtown core, Portland fell on hard times. During the pandemic, the city looked like deserted, like anthrax had swept through and wiped everyone out. I felt hollow when I went to Portland then. Helpless.

Tumbleweeds would have improved the look.

Now, the streets are now much cleaner, and there are no tents on the Park Blocks, and the old downtown was basically OK again. Not great, but OK.

Now Portland is faced with another performative National Guard deployment no governor or mayor asked for, and that decision is being driven by whatever lens Fox News is using to broadcast the fairly spartan protests around the ICE headquarters. This is what Trump seizes on. He doesn’t see the plushy furry frog and the other costumes there, standing in front of the ICE agents. He sees chaos. Catastrophe. A world that doesn’t look like an exclusive private golf club.

Folks, it just ain’t what he says it is.

If Trump has been there recently (he hasn’t), he’d see a lot of angry people—waiting in an hour long brunch line.

I won’t tell the usual Portland character bits now circulating on the Interwebs (they’re hilarious, but that’s me), but it’s not on fire. It’s not a hellhole. It’s just boring old Portland, mostly, trying to make sense of what’s happening in America in 2025.

Good luck, Portland.

Gov. Tina Kotek and Gov. Gavin Newsom have handled this attempted deployment well, filing the usual lawsuits, and so far, it’s OK. The rule of law actually works, people. Check it out.

But when we live in a conservative media culture that hyperventilates in a one square block area, folks in Kansas and Alabama are not going to get the real picture, any more than we are going to get a real picture of Kansas or Alabama if they just show some graffiti-laden back alley in Wichita or Mobile.

Keep Portland Weird?

Hey Trump, keep America from getting weirder.

Then Portland and everyone else has a chance to be OK.

Even Great Again.

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Hey, YBs! : That’ll be it for awhile. Taking a few days off. I have some speaking in the Bay Area. I will get the Week in Review, Annotated out as well. Have a great weekend! Again, thank you for your generous support of You Betcha! —J.