• Home
  • Archives

Dave Knows Portland

Subscribe to Dave Knows Portland by Email

Portland is an Indie Mecca story, this time in the LA Times

February 13, 2009 by Dave 3 Comments

The LA Times music blog, Pop & Hiss, visits musician M. Ward, who calls Portland home, in the post M. Ward: Pursuing his own Oregon trail.

I’m not familiar with Mr. M. Ward’s oeuvre, which the article examines, but I am familiar with the Portland stereotypes the story throws around willy nilly. Below are some examples (my emphasis of the stereotypes):

“We don’t use the word ‘grande’ here,” said the barista at Albina Press, one of the latte-obsessed Pacific Northwest’s many shrines to the perfectly pulled cup. “That’s a proprietary term of the Starbucks company. Do you mean ‘large’?”

Every spot in the large, airy room was taken by someone hunched over a laptop or a book. This cross section of students, unidentified “creatives” and home-office refugees would not tolerate the noise of a journalist quizzing a musician.

And then make sure to read the whole subsection titled An indie mecca; I’d have to quote the whole thing.

Filed Under: Blog, Media, Music, Portland

Comments

  1. mike says

    February 14, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Anyone who is interviewed by the NY or LA Times about life in Portland should be required to add a bizarre and totally untrue detail until it gets repeated enough that it’s part of the legend.
    “Many Portlanders believe the city was built on an ancient unicorn burial ground.” Something like that, only funny.

  2. Dave says

    February 14, 2009 at 2:49 pm

    Mike – I’m going to use that!

  3. Nicolinho says

    March 2, 2009 at 12:01 am

    It’s funny you should mention that. There is the unexplained appearance of a unicorn in a football match during the 1905 World’s Fair, that led to the victory of a press-ganged crew of Albina city German immigrants-press ganged british sailors, and the odd coolie, over a team of Seattle ringers.

    I suppose unicorns must eventual retire.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Dave Knows Portland Archive

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in