Traveling Dan

Bike City USA

Well, the past couple days were the most fun i've had in awhile, attending and volunteering at the first ever Multnomah County Bike Fair, a spoof on the traditional county fair. Everything from apple-bobbing to tall-bike jousting (and a few unregulated fireworks), it was a hoot, entirely organized and put on by bike-lovers.
I've been in a lot of cities and i think Portland is the best and most active bike place anywhere in America. Not so much to do with the official bike infrastructure of lanes and stuff (in that respect Portland is only slightly above average, and the average is lousy) but in the sheer numbers of people who bike and all the grassroots events and groups and energy. After months out there in ordinary America, feeling oftentimes like, um, a freak on 2 wheels, its awfully refreshing to be back here where bikes rule (at least in the community of people i hang out with most.) Portland is so great in fact i'm tempted to say its too good for its own good. Yeah, the mainstream political/economic powers here blow big chunks just like anywhere, and the Police are almost shockingly clueless (don't even get me started), but the human level is exploding with neat stuff, so much so that i dread the thought of the "scene" itself becoming a commodity, a source of fashion tips for the commercializers, an unwitting library of superficial gleanings and ideas for the brand makers and capitalizers. The difference here, and the thing that might save Portland or at least a significant portion of its community from dollarization, is the fact that what's going is part of a many-faceted movement (first noticed by mainstream observers with surprise and disdain at the 1999 Seattle WTO protests) of opting out of hyper-commercial culture. You can't buy them off, because they (we) have aspirations that run directly against the American consumer frenzy. This is not simply another twitching of fashion sensibility that will be soon enough co-opted and presented for sale at Wal-Mart. In fact, particular fashions or looks or sounds have very little to do with the new counter-world. It is something deeper, part of an oceanic movement. Or like this: a great river has been dammed and channeled into orderly canals and pipes, every drop serving the needs of a vast project of growth and! power-generation. There's some evaporation and spillage but nothing t
hreatens the overall enterprise. But eventually right there at the dam and the huge intake pipes, wind and rockfall and settling of bedrock enable a stream to trickle its way into a new channel, just a bit at first then more and more. Somehow this stream went unnoticed by the lazy and self-satisfied project engineers, and even still they idly imagine that with a bit of back-hoeing or creative landscape alterations they can either stifle the errant stream or pipe it back into the humming powerhouse. Too late. This is more than a babbling peice of site-mitigation. Water is seeping under, over, down in places the inspectors havn't even thought to look. The tour busses are still disgorging their loads of admiring Peorians at the glass-walled visitor center but the reservoir is already visibly dropping and the best the engineers can hope for is to escape the control room with their lives. The real attraction is the raging torrent carving a muddy new canyon away from the wilting rows of Monsanto tomatoes and clapboard trophy homes. Have i taken this metaphor too far? Okay, sure, but you get what i'm saying. Now don't think i don't believe in commerce as such, people will always want to get things, trade with other tribes, etc. But the world of mega-capital and logo-ism has met its match in a counter-reality that models itself as the antithesis of modern commercialism. As such the counterculture is both radical and profoundly conservative. Self-reliance, mutual aid, frugality, opposition to empire and government intrusion: these are the hallmarks of true conservatism. (I mean, for what its worth.) Like the Amish, you know? Or pre-war rural America. Think of how popular square-dancing (to live string-bands) is in the Portland counterculture. Drawing on (and reviving) a vital American cultural form, to self-entertain. No corporate agenda, no Hollywood tie-ins, no commercial radio airplay, in fact all completely under the radar of the would-be co-optors: Norse and Elks Halls full of young and old freaks and normals alike having a blast, dancing away. Or Craft Night at the Nocturnal, Midnight Bike Rides, house-party screenings of DIY movies, Portland zine symposium, SCRAP, Free Geek, bake sales, backyard bonfires, Last Thursday, middle Wednesday, and on and on.
Of course i still go to silly Hollywood blockbusters. I'm only human. Its hard to fight more than one or two revolutions on any given day. Besides, think of all the misery and unemployment down there in La La Land if we all stopped forking over at Regal-Loews-Cinneplex.