Portland dresses up for the high-fashion parade
Joe Btfsplk, honorary grand marshal of Portland’s High Fashion Parade.
I was shocked — shocked! — this morning when I sat down to make my daily blog rounds and discovered Mighty Toy Cannon’s report at Culture Shock on Portland’s rankings in Travel + Leisure magazine’s latest assessment of America’s Favorite Cities.
Sitting in my plaid pajama bottoms and red T-shirt (not the best choice, granted, in a household with a 16-pound white lap cat) I tugged with frustration at my hair — which, all right, was already a trifle on the unkempt side, and three weeks overdue for a trim.
The nerve! There it was, as Mr. Cannon so indignantly pointed out: Portland, 17th out of 30 cities for “Attractive People.” As the magazine so delicately put it, Portlanders “… may not conform to most visitors’ standards of ‘normal’ beauty.”
Mrs. Scatter was lucky she’d departed for her spacious corner office overlooking the sartorial splendors of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, or she’d have got an earful.
The larger of the young lunks known collectively as the Large Smelly Boys had taken his carefully curated rumpled clothing and his head of organic free-range pasturage off to high school. (His last haircut was in April or May; we believe he’s planning on attending Halloween functions as Cousin Itt.) The smaller lunk, also a few weeks tardy from the barber chair, is taking on a mildly stylish Prince Valiant look. He’s the fashion pate of the family: All of his T-shirts, the only kind of shirt he wears, must be single-colored and devoid of words or company logos.
Portland didn’t do as badly as Cleveland, which rated this jab: “(T)here’s no getting around the fact that its residents are uniformly hideous to look upon.” Ouch! Except for a night spent sleeping on the grassy knoll of a freeway cloverleaf around 1970, I don’t know much about Cleveland. I do know Drew Carey and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame come from there, and I know Mr. Carey usually wears a nice suit and tie. (He still looks like Drew Carey, but he makes himself presentable, and what more should an upscale magazine ask?)
What do Travel + Leisure’s travelers and leisurites want, anyway? It’s not as if Portlanders were babes in the backwoods when it comes to fashion. Just last night Mrs. Scatter and I were driving through our Highly Cultured Pearl District when we spotted an Eddie Bauer outlet. “I thought they went Chapter 11,” I said. Yet, there they were, scant blocks from REI, “the world’s premiere outdoor gear store.” L.L. Bean catalogs arrive at the Scatter house regularly, and I eagerly flip through them to find out which plaids are in fashion this season. You won’t catch me visiting North Portland’s Paul Bunyan statue in last year’s lumberjack shirt.
I own a tuxedo, and I try to make sure to wear it once a year. It blends nicely, I think, with the black turtlenecks and berets at our more cutting-edge neo-Marxist coffee shops. Plus, how many cities can match Portland for the style and lavishness of our tattoo designs? “I like your arm,” I found myself saying the other morning to the newish barista at our neighborhood coffee joint.
She looked at me a little funny, but I assume that’s because she’s new to town.
October 14th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Very funny indeed, including the “fashion pate.” It’s maybe a typo, but I love the concept. I too admire people’s tattoos, but because I’m the mother-in-law of a tattooist, I have a tendency to ask, “Who does your work?” But Mr. Scatter, I too have a lapcat (14 pounds only and dusty orange, so-called, and plaid is the best pattern for camouflaging his fur.
October 14th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Can’t sneak one past Martha! Since I was speaking of hair styles (or lack thereof) I did, indeed, mean “fashion pate.” I meant it to be wry and dy, and wondered whether anyone would notice!
October 14th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
cute, very.
October 14th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Thank you, as always, for the Culture Shock plug and link. In fairness to the fair city of Cleveland, I am compelled to point out that the quote about the attractiveness of its residents (or lack thereof) was entirely fabricated by yours truly in the spirit of jest and parody. The Travel+Leisure description of Portland’s residents, unfortunately, is verbatim. By the way, Travel+Leisure also made the Portland Building its lead in a story about “The World’s Ugliest Buildings.” http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/the-worlds-ugliest-buildings/1/ That should provide some good grist for the Art Scatter mill.
October 14th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Mr. Cannon! Have you ever been in Akron? (I speak of the city’s appearance, not its citizens’. I’m sure they’re lovely-looking folks, as are Clevelandians.)
I did see that the Portland Building took it in the chops. It’s no Wonder Woman, but it’s no Incredible Hulk, either. It IS a failure — but largely because the city of Portland, under Mayor Frank Ivancie’s hand, lowballed the thing and pulled back drastically from Michael Graves’ original design. Anyone who’s seen Graves’ Humana Headquarters in Louisville knows what Portland COULD have got.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Clevelandians? Are we now, in honor of the statue attached to the Portland building to be called Portlandians? Heaven, not to mention Hell and Purgatory forfend, also forbid. Of course Portlandia is a whole other issue so to speak–how well I remember Henk Pander’s assessment of her as the world’s largest hood ornament. Oh well, Mayor Ivancie wasn’t exactly known for his aesthetic sense; after all, when he was police commissioner he ordered, I believe, the extremely ugly charge by the tac squad of the hospital tent in the Park blocks when Portland State Students and others were demonstrating, peacefully, against the war in Vietnam.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:59 am
As one whose hair style has featured a very stylish wide center part for some years now, I am closely attuned to tonsorial issues in my reading matter. Perhaps that’s why I immediately assumed “fashion pate” was intentional. So, yes, Mr. Scatter, at least one other person noticed, even if he wryly rolled his eyes upon doing so.