Finally, a name for the Portland style... PoBo!

Writer Marc Acito has published an editorial in the Oregonian attempting to put a name to that indomitable, but eclectic Portland spirit... as he puts it, "We're defined by our refusal to be defined."

He's calling it Portland Bohemianism, or PoBo.

What's PoBo?

PoBo is sneakers at the symphony and Birkenstocks at the ballet. It's "Geek Love," Pink Martini and Dangerous Writers. It's the space between Chuck Palahniuk's ears. It's a force of nature called Storm Large.

It's 1,500 men (and a few women) showing up in red dresses to dance the night away in a warehouse.

That's really PoBo.

But, wait, there's more...

The neglected middle child between San Francisco and Seattle, Portland has the freedom to make its own rules. Yet we suffer from an inferiority complex so ingrained we resist the blooming of the Rose City. The opposite of arrogance is Oregance.

But with Portland's unique culture under attack from advocates of Land Abuse, the creative community needs to stand up and protect what makes our city special. We need an ism. So, in the independent spirit of the Northwest, I'm giving it a name.

That's PoBo.

Ya gotta read the whole thing. Then, come back, and tell us: What else is PoBo? Discuss!

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    This is one of the stupidest things The Oregonian has ever published. And, as we all know, that's saying something.

  • Puh-lease (unverified)
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    No body wears birkenstocks any more. If you're going to write about stereotypical portland, you have to at least update your references to the 21st century. Barf-o-rama.

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    Marc Acito must be into comic sociology in the same way as conservative NYTimes columnist and author Davis Brooks was when he wrote 'Bobo's in Paradise.' Brooks wrote aout the bourgeous world of capitalist enterprise linking with the hippie values of the bohemian culture. (Bobo's) His entertaining book with all it's sweeping generalizations was a send up to the new elite. Is Acito descibing the new elite in Portland? I hope not......

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    As much as I enjoy Marc, that's a rough one. I really, really don't want anyone calling me a Pobo. I have enough to deal with with the drama over NoPo.

  • jami (unverified)
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    The first sentence describes slobby disrespect, which I hope is nothing Portland-specific.

    The rest of the author's specifics are interesting. Pink Martini and Geek Love, yes. Too bad he screwed it up by calling us all sweatpants-clad hippies in the first line.

  • marco (unverified)
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    Jesus Truckdriving Christ!

    Acito should sentence himself to a public slapping.

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    Karol... You're a PoBo in NoPo!

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    I once had a girlfriend who insisted that we couldn't go on a third date unless and until I had read Geek Love. So, c'mon Portlanders, get yer copy - and read all about our fair city. And the meaning of family. Sort of.

  • eoghantodd (unverified)
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    Last I checked, a Pobo was a sandwich involving shrimp. Yummy, and filling, and healthy...and not something I'd refer to myself or my peers as in any case. Especially since the derivation is "Poor Boy".

  • Baloo (unverified)
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    Portland's unique culture isn't under attack from land abuse as it is deculturalization or perhaps Californication. Case in point, who from Oregon isn't disgusted with "NoLo," "NoPo," "PoBo," and all the other wannabe Silicon Valley names? Fuck California, quit Californicating Oregon.

  • Finally? (unverified)
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    Not only are my cultural and fashion sensibilities offended but so are my politics. Beyond defining Portland by antiquated icons like Rimsky's where only tourists and high school kids go- Not to be a Portland native snob...but I'm pretty sure there is a big difference between this PoBo and um...cool.

    Anyway, I really just want to argue how the article links this "new identity" with the land use issue:

    Oregon is facing a real clash of opposing fundamental ideas about land-use. Fundamental to the point of completely irreconcilable. The most ineffective thing I can think of for the pro-planning, pro-conservation, anti-sprawl folk (i.e. Portlanders, the Urban) to do in response if to define themselves as flaky hippies who can't their head out of the 70's. The people who value their right to do whatever they want with their land above all things will not be "brought to the light" by PoBo's, and it certainly isn't the identity under which we will all rally together. We are losing this land-use battle, and not because we don't have an identity, because the land-use system isn't meeting the needs/interests of the rest of the state.

    Portlanders, more than anything, need to find a common ground with the rest of state to keep the wackos from digging mines in national parks but to make sure that our farmers feel that if they did stop the grueling work of small scale agriculture they could get full value on a sale.

    In my humble opinion it is Portland's value of local agriculture (ie that farmer's market we are all biking to in sensible shoes) that will bring us to preserve the UGB, maintain our farmland, and limit sprawl if we can continue to build the kind of economy that makes it worth farming (Making their market broader than People's Co-op and once a week downtown) and not worth "developing". But that’s a whole other topic...

  • Finally? (unverified)
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    ...In my humble opinion it is Portland's value of local agriculture (is that farmer's market we are all biking to in sensible shoes) that will bring us to preserve the UGB, maintain our farmland, and limit sprawl if we can continue to build the kind of economy that makes it worth farming (Making their market broader than People's and once a week downtown) and not worth building. But that’s a whole other topic...

  • Chuck Paugh (unverified)
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    Sadly, the Portland Boheminian is becoming an endangered species with the greater influx of out-of-state property management agencies taking over control of real estate in the Portland area setting qualifications for tenancy and lease rates outside the reach of the average Portlander creating a vacuum to be filled by modern Republican yuppies to move in from California. Look around downtown, all of the affordable housing is being torn down and replaced by highrise condos starting at $500K per unit. Where is Portland's artistic class going to go? It can't afford to continue to live in Portland.

  • Gil Johnson (unverified)
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    Well, there is still the Central Eastside. We need to get in the trenches and fight the Westside development interests who want to turn the east bank into another Pearl or SoWhat. It's got lots of little business paying living wages to working class people and still some warehouse space for artists, though, again, that is drying up.

    It's true about the yuppification of formerly artistic neighborhoods. Are tomorrow's artists going to operate in the pre-fab warehouse buildings out in Clackamas?

    Still, it was nice to see something positive written about Portland and the entire idea of "Keep Portland Weird." This is not a new phenomenom, as anyone who was voted in the mayor's election 22 years ago can attest (not to mention Bud's earlier "Expose Yourself to Art" pose). And Marc totally left out Zoobombing.

    You blueoregon wonks are pretty cranky about the fun stuff.

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    I'm a Pobo in NoPo, with New Seasons to go, in my 1990 Volvo - paper please(snap,snap,snap)...I'm a beat poet and I didn't know it! Jeez I'm a damn hippie liberal writing on a freaking liberal blog. Kari, what did you do?!?

  • Karl (unverified)
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    I wanna vomit.

  • marcia (unverified)
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    Jaded. I just spent a week in suburban Chicago, aka big houses, big SUV Republican cars, NASCAR, a harley in every garage, Budweiser, American flags, and apple pie. Relish what you've got Portlanders, Oops! ...PoBos, and go take a walk down Alberta on last Thursday.

  • courtenay (unverified)
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    I think Marc is pretty much on-the-nose with most of his piece...it was just the unfortunate choice of Birkenstocks as an alliterative match for "ballet." If only someone had warned him his poetic license would cause such a maelstrom of anti-hippie wrath. But other than that, he's pegged most of the creative types I know: they're incredibly talented, self-effacing and sometimes infuriatingly un-ambitious. They create just to create. And that kicks ass.

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    Marcia wrote: Relish what you've got Portlanders, Oops! ...PoBos, and go take a walk down Alberta on last Thursday.

    Having spent time in places from SF to Seattle to LA to Hong Kong in the past several years, I'll echo this. We have it very good here in Portland, in many ways.

    The question is: how do we sustain the quality? Or, possibly, is quality of life sustainable in the free-market, free-mobility economy we currently ... enjoy?

    If we value the contributions of creative people - those who create to create as much, or more, than create to make money - how do we support those contributions? How do we nurture affordable live/work space, without wiping out protections for low-income housing in general? How do we nurture seed-level funding for creative social and artistic projects, which increase our quality of life (and property values) in ways that can be difficult to measure? How do we nurture public recognition of these contributions, beyond blurbs on whatever catches the ever-fickle and narrow attentions of reviewers du jour at WillyWeek and The Mercury?

  • courtenay (unverified)
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    Leo said: How do we nurture affordable live/work space, without wiping out protections for low-income housing in general?

    You ask some great questions here...there's a great article by Sam Adams in regards to nurturing the music community here.

    The fifth question down gets into some ideas for creative spaces.

  • freekaleek (unverified)
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    It makes me sad how this town is populated by people who cannot tolerate true differences and want to create some kind of silly Disneyland for People Who Want to Be Artists. It was REFRESHING to spend time down South (not California, the real South) recently. So what if someone is a Republican and drives an SUV? You can't talk to them? Oh, they don't deserve to live? OK, got it.

    There is a lot that is really wonderful about this place but this Utopian Insistence shit is crazy-making.

  • Marcia (unverified)
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    Not at all. Those SUV drivers are my relatives. It's just refreshing to come back to Portland and not see an SUV in EVERY driveway. (At least in the NoPo). And know that it's ok to drive my 12 year old minivan with that Be the Change and Fire the Liar bumper stickers and know I'm OK! I don't need one to be Whole. And one way to sustain artists and farmers markets it to buy something from one of them.

  • freekaleek (unverified)
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    I guess that is part of what I am saying...you can be "whole" and drive your van with all the crazy wackadoodle "Bush Can Crawl in a Hole and Die" stickers ANYWHERE! It is OK; you don't have to surround yourself with everyone who is just like you so you can delude yourself that everyone is really "just like you". Because they aren't. In fact, more people could test themselves a bit and actually "BE THE CHANGE" if they wouldn't isolate themselves with a bunch of intellectual and political clones.

    Portland is great in so many ways, but that element (being so homogeneous and being threatened when faced with difference) is what drives me bananas here. Sorry to get pissed, but coming from out of this region and living here for 10 years...it just gets worse!

  • marci (unverified)
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    I guess my take is that what I saw in the midwest was homogeneous buy- in to the mass culture of SUV,s, bad beer, NASCAR, flag waving, never question reality, etc that I am thankful I am NOT surrounded by in Portland. Thank you Buddha.

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    Vanguard. For the United States: a place that is leading the green building revolution; City Repair; ecstatic dance; lovetribe; green city council and mayor (whether they call themselves that or not); UGB; blueoregon; coffeehouses - zillions of them, that are not corporate chains; neighborhoods; tree planting; air that's getting cleaner; biking; zoobombing; cacophony; living earth gatherings; free breakfasts; Last Thursday

    these are a few of my favorite things :)

  • Chuck Paugh (unverified)
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    I just don't like the SUV drivers supporting terrorism by driving a vehicle that consumes excessive amounts of gas which lines the pockets of those with whom we are at war.

  • paul (unverified)
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    If we value the contributions of creative people - those who create to create as much, or more, than create to make money - how do we support those contributions?

    Leo, I suppose my family man reaction is that we bend way backwards to support creative people who don't create money--it's the ones who create money that aren't in Portland.

    Two recent articles come to mind when I wrote "bleah" above.

    The first was an Oregonian series on the creative class that ran a few months ago. What struck me was the number of individuals profiled who were in Portland because they didn't like Seattle or San Francisco--they like the laid back atmosphere in Portland.

    But most of those profiled also weren't really creating any wealth (although they were certainly creative). This puts me to mind of my brother in law and wife--creative class candidates (one is a graphics design artist; the other ran a legal consulting business and now runs a tavern)--who did NOT relocate to Portland for precisely this reason (they are in Seattle).

    For them, Portland was a sleepy cow town, not the place where 30 somethings on the go located.

    Then we have this week's Portland Tribune insert which pointed out that Portland, for all of its influx of population, has not seen any substantial job growth.

    I love some of what "PoBo" brings to the City (though I hate the label), but I'm waiting for the Oregonian article that celebrates the working class stiffs who live in East Portland and schlep to their construction jobs every day; or the teachers struggling with our kids; or hey, the father of four like myself who are sticking it out in the City in a too small house.

    But we're just not hip and sometimes I feel like we're just not on the City's radar.

    Set rant=off.

  • marcia (unverified)
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    You said it all, Paul. But Portland is a great place to do all the above, isn't it?

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    Paul wrote: "But most of those profiled also weren't really creating any wealth (although they were certainly creative)."

    Are you sure about that?

    I don't mean to be snarky, at all. I'm just wondering about the ambient, and difficult to identify, wealth which is created when a community has a higher-than-average amount of visually, verbally, audibly, and socially creative stimulus pervading it on a daily basis. Do buyers value properties near such spaces more highly? Are we more likely to visit bars and restaurants around such places? Are we more likely to have personal "a-ha" moments over some business problem by being around people who, by daily habit, think outside of our usual boxes. And, as people value those properties and restaurants more highly, do they eventually need more plumbing? Do they need new construction more often? Do they buy more at the grocery store, borrow more to expand, and otherwise ... create wealth?

    None of this fits easily on a spreadsheet. But, what is the correlation that made Florence not only a mighty economic power, in its day, but also an artistic center the product of which people still flock (and pay) to appreciate? Does the relationship between donor/buyer and artist flow only one way? Really?

    Just because something is difficult to measure, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Or, as Arthur C. Clarke put it, "[a]ny technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic." So, I'm personally hesitant to dismiss the wealth-creating power of creativity and art. In many ways, creativity is the only core advantage we Americans still have over much of the economic world, (though the business press prefers the buzzword "innovation").

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