A friend of mine recently pointed out that Portland, OR is an entry in the Stuff White People Like book. And, while Portland IS full of things from that book (bumper stickers, hybrid cars, wine, coffee, organic farmers markets, pan-asian-fusion-restaurants, threats to move to Canada, bicycles, lawyers, dogs, living by the water...), his snarky take on our smug whiteness has made me take a step back from my adopted city to think about it.
Portland has a LOT of public art. Some good. Some weird. And THIS:
Lots of alternative types. Like him (that's famous papa-Nomad): 
Lots of new-age-bookstore-birkenstock-psychic-reading-pan-pagan-types (The Secret was published by a local Portland publishing house): 
And we are the coffee/wine/book capital (per capita) of the US:
So that's a large city with a big load of, dancing/protesting/drumming hippies, a side of homelessness (we are bleeding hearts, but not foolproof, apparently), and naturally there's as much extreme yuppie-ism as the rest of the left coast, lots of strippers (really, like...a LOT of nekked here), and rain rain rain... (along with mold, mildew and some of the other fun things that go along with mold)...
It's a mixed bag of interesting and irritating, but I like it here. I've got access to several (although, sadly, fewer all the time) independent bookstores, including the BEHEMOTH of independence, Powell's. Yuppie, organic, beautiful coffee 24 hours a day. Lots of wine, booze, food. It's a city of excess about our excesses. And sure, smug about it. And very white. That's problematic. But not intrinsically wrong..
I grew up in Salt Lake.
Which has a lot of this:
Some of this:
and this...
And WAAAY TOO MUCH of this:
