AIRPORT SEATS AND PORTLAND APPEAL, EXPLAINED
by Andria Alefhi
I’m at the airport awaiting my flight from Portland to San Francisco. Both are cities where I’ve formerly lived.. When I reach the departures waiting area, ‘m pleasantly surprised there are seats in clusters without arm rests separating them, which makes me smile to myself, as I realize that of course I’m not surprised, because that’s the essence of Portland.
This is no small thing, about the airport seats. When I’m waiting to depart, I would like to lie down between seats and take a small nap. Most airports don’t have that anymore. Seats are for individuals, separated by bars. Bars are for separation. Separation is American. America is all business. Comfort is for Europeans. I’d had nowhere to curl up in the airports on my flight from New York thru Minnesota, and on three hours of sleep and a typical NY morning of just getting to the airport I would have killed for a place to pass out for a few minutes. And here it is, in Portland, a town that understands and does not apologize for making accommodations without making a scene.
People on the East coast often wistfully exclaim, “Oh, I hear Portland is great”. I’m often stopped mid-sentence to be informed that young America is jealous of my experience in my former home. Few people express even a similar level of wonder about living in San Francisco. Some will ask me, “How was that?” but people tell me, don’t ask me that living in Portland must be cool. They want to move there, too. And I had no idea that I would fit the Pacific Northwest culture, just made a lucky choice when I’d chosen a grad school from a small advertisement in a professional trade magazine. The idea to move to Oregon solidified in approximately 5 minutes without even seeing a photograph of the city and without knowing where it was on a map.
I was a little too alternative for NY but a little too NY for Portland and San Francisco, and now that I live in NY again, recently went back to see, as in inside-outsider, just what makes Portland Portland.
Acceptance combined with accessibility. A place to be what you are and to have choices, not just someone throwing you a “one size fits all bone” that you should be grateful to take because you gotta be different.
This is not to say it’s a utopia where discrimination based on race, orientation or disability doesn’t take place - I can’t possibly judge that , but Portland has some great, subtle options that other cities don’t have.
Vegan dining. I’m loyal to a Portland staple called the Cup and Saucer Cafe. They offer soy milk lattes, soy cheese, tofu scrambles, soy or tofu to substitute anything, real maple syrup, all served to you by colorfully dyed, pierced and tattooed wait staff. When you ask if they have wheat-free bread, your server doesn’t roll their eyes and audibly groan. No one in The Cup is looked at twice. Customers and staff are treated with respect. It’s in the heart of southeast, home of teenage punks, rock musicians, 30-something family of grown-up punks and musicians, bike and skateboard enthusiasts, and visiting suburban parents.
The point is, people are natural. It’s not a scene; it’s just real life.
There are more places like The Cup. Lots of people work in food service as a day job to support their own boutique open on weekends only, or possibly to supplement their income because volunteering at a bike co-op doesn’t pay.
Perhaps my cross section of friends doesn’t represent a wide enough piece of the Portland pie, but here’s the other best thing about what makes Portland unique: you aren’t sized up and judged by your job (or lack of one). Anywhere else, when you meet someone, what you do (for work) is one of the first questions asked. Of my friends, and my friends of friends, representing fifteen years worth of residence and visits to Portland, I can count on 1 hand those who held a 9-5 job. When I lived there as a teacher, I still was welcomed and held entry to a diverse, creative, and largely alternately employed group of fantastic friends because I played music. There were even a few friends who were only music or theater fans, not even participants, just roommates who had intelligent insights and creative interests.
This is no small thing. In other words, I was not judged by my
employment alone, or by my income and my square schedule requiring that I get up in the mornings. I realize that to majority America this sounds like Bizarro World, the opposite of what people socially expect - that I should have been considered some kind of one-eyed king in the land of the blind. Like, why on earth would I feel lucky to not be shunned, why wouldn’t I want to rub shoulders with other paychecks?
The answer is that no one wants to be judged. We all want to be seen as the diverse contradictory beings that we are. We want to be liked by those we like. You can’t have that in NY; not really. People committed to their art have signed off on that life choice and hobbyists are not invited. Yesterday at a BBQ in Portland I was asked what I do for ‘a day job maybe twenty minutes into conversation with new friends. Intelligent questions were asked about my profession (ASL interpreter), and then conversation resumed about other things.
These are patient people, and they ask you to be patient. If you are visiting, stop and smell the roses. It’s the Rose City, after all. Don’t honk your horn, you’ll look like an asshole; the car in front of you is waving the cyclist ahead. Talk to the server while you wait for your coffee. And if you move here, don’t expect an awesome paying full-time job. One draw back is that Portland is for the DIY community. If you don’t know what DIY means, then this essay has probably not made any sense to you from start to finish. My brother, for example, who was so culture shocked upon visiting me that he went to the airport just hoping to standby on a red eye flight a day earlier.
So in conclusion, Portland was not for my brother. Hell, just sleeping on a couch was too wild for my brother. Portland is not a city for people who can’t get comfortable on someone’s couch and would rather be home in their own bed. It’s symbolic I’m sure. And if this essay makes perfect sense to you, then maybe you should live there.
Or maybe you already do.