I'm in Seattle for a few days to attend the wedding of my dear old friend David Mello and his long-time partner Keiko Welch. The ceremony was today at Lincoln Park on Puget Sound. It was simple but very nice. As I've discovered about weddings, it was hard not to cry with joy, especially with David and Keiko being such old friends and Katie Morse, also one of my oldest friends in the world, officiating.
Riding my bike today from the Seattle train station down to West Seattle, and looking out across Puget Sound once the fog finally burned off, I got to thinking about the tendency lately among some in both the popular media and casual conversation to compare and contrast Seattle and Portland. Mostly contrast.
Now listen folks: I speak as a native of Seattle and a resident by choice since 2001 of Portland. And I'm telling you: Portland and Seattle are way WAY more alike than they are different. Yes, there are some visually noticable differences in building size, transit system, subjective "size" (although in truth their city populations are very close)and geography. And yes, Portland is the current "it" city, based on its reputation for having lots of creative people and bike friendliness. But the two cities... I'm thinking of how to express this in a way that doesn't sound too vague or theoretical. They are like two large neighborhoods of a larger meta-city. They are siblings. They share a common regional history and a deep familial mirroring in culture at both the popular and "emerging/creative" levels. With Vancouver BC, they are the sister cultural/economic capitals of Cascadia. They are Cascadian cities. By way of differences between the Seattle and Portland in particular, people often say things like "Portland has such a better transit system" or "Portland is so much more mellow" and "all the Indy bands are moving to Portland now the way they did to Seattle in 1992." There is a relative truth to these statements. But just to respond to the first: Yes, Portland is certainly about 20 years ahead of Seattle in light rail transit. But light rail is not the be all and end all. Be on a MAX train sometime when the one in front of it breaks down. Seattle has an excellent bus system with many routes that have been electric trolley-buses for 80 years. And now light rail and a new streetcar line are about to start service. These things get developed at varying paces in different cities.
Now, I do agree Portland can be vary mellow and community oriented. But so can Seattle if that is what you want. People with interesting, artistic, creative and boundary-pushing lives and projects? Seattle overflows with them just as much as Portland. The influences run both ways. I love the March Fourth Marching Band but the Infernal Noise Brigade came first and seeded the zeitgeist with the idea of a radical and kick-ass dance-party marching band. I will grant Portland is definitely the capital of creative bike activity. It is a wonderful thing and I'm glad to be part of it. And its influence carries northward into a culture receptive because fundamentally the same.
As for the current pop-cultural popularity of Portland, well, sometimes cities reach a certain kind of frothing point. Or more precisely the media reach a certain kind of frothing point. Meanwhile life goes on and the city is what it is. It changes, yes, and maybe we wake up and go "whoa, we shoulda been careful what we wished for." But the people of my communities will still be doing amazing things and throwing lovely parties and growing wonderful vegetables and playing music for themselves and their friends. New York Times Magazine or the Sundance Channel can come and go, it is all a peripheral curiosity. Media from the biggest cultural capitals will always be fascinated by regions. And when they tire of one they'll go find another. It's what they do. They have copy to sell. Period.
And all the while there lives and grows a regional culture. Go to Atlanta sometime, or Los Angeles, or a Northeastern city, or Guatemala City, and tell me that Seattle and Portland aren't peas in a pod in compared to any of those. It is true some of the simliarities might also, like the differences, be in a sense visual: the weather, the surrounding forest and mountains, the residential architecture and the "look" of neighborhoods, the rivers of coffee and beer, the approximate racial and ethnic percentages (predominantly "white" in both cities although Seattle has sizably larger African American and Asian communities than Portland.) But these things give a basic character to a place. Climate and environment in particular I believe impart something profound and pervading to the culture and mindset of a region. I think it means something that in either city you can look out and see icy volcanoes and primeval forests. I especially love looking out across Puget Sound from Seattle to the Olympic Mountains, this mysterious last range out across the water. To know that within them is a wildness that is fundamental, like a last southern outpost of Alaska. Enormous long valleys in there that are entirely "virgin", many without even human foot trails. I think the nearness, the everday visible reality in fact, of this kind of wildness to the cities and people of Cascadia is a strong attractive and catalyzing factor in the creation of the new cultural responses and solutions that are so prevalent here. I know that such a statement is untestable, just airy opinion really. But I am saying that Portland and Seattle, though not twins, are siblings separated by a couple of years in birth. They grew up (and continue to grow and change) partly in rivalry (like any siblings) but as expressions of a shared family identity.
I'm as old as you. Yes, I turned 40 two days ago. But 40 is the new 30. I think this is going to be an interesting year and decade for me. I'm trying to think of something profound to say. Nothing's coming. Now reap I shall the fruit of many years' hard-fought wisdom, etc.