Musings on negative consumption during a weekend in Portland Oregon

I was in Portland Oregon for a conference on comics. Took an afternoon off to explore the city. The sunny weather was too inviting. Walked around the food and “craft” stalls at the Saturday market by the river. The merchandise looked all too familiar. We have the same crap on the East Coast and on the banks of the Saone in Lyon, and every other city that opens its sidewalks to merchandise on the weekends.

Wandered into a vintage store on Stark Street,  Decades Vintage. The two guys running it explained that their clothes spanned a couple of centuries, including a dress from the 1850s, which was hanging along with some other clothes, high up away from the destructive grasps of the “mall girls.” Mall girls. They walk in, look at all the merchandise, try on a couple of outfits, have their picture taken so they can put it on Facebook, and they’re gone.

I picked out a pair of clip on earrings for my mother. I find that vintage shops are a great source for those. But I had no interest in acquiring a new garment, so I looked with disinterest.

I am now going through a phase that I will call “wearing down my clothes.” I just want to get rid of stuff. I want to deplete my inventory. 

I bought a few tee-shirts to give as gifts, and tried on shoes, knowing that, again, I really could get rid of some at this point. Not another pair of comfortable but funky walking shoes! The one good thing that came out of the indifferent quest for shoes was that a saleswoman in a downtown store pointed me to a more residential neighborhood on the other side of the interstate that was within walking distance. It’s called the Alphabet district, because the streets are ordered alphabetically (the sister shoe store was located between Hoyt and Irving). It was a beautiful neighborhood, with Queen Anne houses painted in all kinds of colors, and rhododendra bushes that were just done blooming. The only thing missing was the garden cat lying on a walkway or sitting on a wall.

After trying on many pairs of Danskos, Naturalistas and all their comfy cohorts, I walked out with nothing, except the satisfaction that I didn’t feel the need to buy another pair of shoes.

On the walk back to my hotel, however, I passed the Doc Martens store, and thought, why not? I tried on a pair of patent leather black sandals, and for some reason, they were satisfying an inner urge to own a bad assed pair of shoes for a change. The sales staff, young, coiffed with the locks of hair brushed over his eyes or, as in the case of a woman originally from Nova Scotia, bright pink dyed hair, tattooed, bejeweled with piercings, ogled me as I walked around the shop with those sandals. I asked them whether they were going to have a good hard laugh once I had left the store. The man with the hair over his eyes replied, “why would we do that?” And I explained about the age difference, and how perhaps a woman my age looked ridiculous in Doc Martens. They reassured me that I looked great in them, which of course, they have to say to all their customers.

I recall that Doc Martens came of age in the 1980s, when I was their age. I wanted to tell them about laughter and hegemony, that he who laughs at another person is exercising power over that person. But I’m not sure who has the power in a Doc Martens store. The young set the style, but the old have the money.

The next morning, while waiting for the light rail to the airport that never showed up, it finally occurred to me that one of the passenger categories when selecting your fare at the ticket machine is “honored citizens.”

Hum. I wonder how they came up with that? Instead of seniors of course. But that right there encapsulates Portland utopian mentality. A Youtube clip of the tv show “Portlandia ” has the male protagonist sing that Portland is stuck in the ‘90s. Walking around you really get a sense that people here are living in a time warp. I’m thinking any decade that you’re nostalgic for. It’s all good. You can even choose to live in the 1850s, and wear that dress from the vintage store on Alder, Washington or Stark, I can’t remember which.

A young couple waiting for the light rail to the airport that never showed informed me that it was running really late. The young woman was rotund, he smallish with the ubiquitous baseball cap. As I walked away, back to the hotel where I was going to hop into a taxi, because time was pressing even in this timeless place, it occurred to me that rotund women were plentiful out here, along with the super fit on their bikes. Your body type doesn’t matter. So, pick your decade, pick your body type, and live slowly. That’s how it goes out here in the Pacific Northwest.