Longest ride ever?!!! – from Alexander
So I was just reading THIS WILD ARTICLE
in today’s NYTIMES Science….
and it discusses the Russian plan to experiment trips to Mars by simulating all the aspects of the trip here on Earth - 520 DAYS!!!! in a simulated craft, under 20 people and no outside communication.
If it took a year and a half to get ANYWHERE, I am NOT INTERESTED.
(I guess it’s like what you and I discussed about scientists living in Antarctica, just having sex all the time.)
You’re in LA, I’m in Portland, so whose in NYC? (-A)
I guess it doesn’t matter. I like the big city comparisons, but it was you, Suzy who taught me it’s nonsense to say, “I don’t like such and such city”. How can we generalize an entire city?
Portland Monthly had a very interesting article on the New Yorker’s fleeing to Portland and Why….I love the Portland, OR subway stop in NY.
Escape from New York
Another Brooklynite trades the Big Apple for a Portland state of mind.
I would like to state publicly, for whatever record exists, that my love for Portland predates the national news media’s. I feel it’s necessary to point this out because of an Oregonian article a friend sent me back in late December, not long after my wife and I decided to put our tiny Brooklyn apartment up for sale, crate our things, and settle in the City of Roses. Life as New Yorkers had become intolerable. We’d grown weary of our neighbor’s music rattling our walls (avant-garde jazz, no less), fed up with teeming buses and tardy subways, troubled by the soot and smoke drifting from the expressway up the block, and, worst of all, alarmed by the mounting costs of living there. It was time to get out.
The article, titled “Portland Home Prices Fall by Double Digits,” told a now-familiar tale of economic misfortune—bleak numbers hinting at still-bleaker human stories, the whole of it illustrated by a photograph of For Sale signs clustered like mutant daisies on a Portland lawn. What caught my attention, however, was not the story itself. It was the comments appended to it, particularly those in response to a reader (user name: “kougar14”) who innocently announced of her (or his?) family, “We are moving to Portland from New York City.” The response was probably not what she expected. One reader replied, “kougar14: do us all a favor and stay in new york. We don’t need any more eastcoasters moving out here and ruining things by overpaying for their homes, crowding the roads in the luxury cars, and being rude to staff in our restaurants. Don’t you see that you are not WANTEDhere????”
Another was less direct but more imaginative: “Why are you coming here? A) because you are [a] creatively thinking progressive who will start new green business to protect our green forests and blue skies? B) because you are leaving behind the apocalyptic hellscape you’ve helped to create on [the] east coast, moving to un-ravished lands [to] pillage and rape and then move on?”
When I read these comments, I had just spent weeks giddy with the prospect of our new life out West: Open spaces where our daughter could scamper and play! Snowcapped mountains for rejuvenating vacations! Living quarters of more than six hundred square feet! The comments were at once deflating and disappointing.
Cyberspace isn’t known for its etiquette, of course. But one of the reasons my wife, Joanna, and I had decided to embrace Portland and discard New York, where we’d lived for the previous six years, was that Portland simply doesn’t speak like the rest of the country. It has a tone all its own: laid-back, open-armed, welcoming. I happened to know a handful of New Yorkers who had made the move to Portland before us—including my oldest brother, who left for the same reasons of urban fatigue that compelled us—but surely not so many as to make up the crass, Eden-ravaging hordes of the Oregonian readers’ imaginations. In fact, every New York –to–Portland emigrant I know is a “creatively thinking progressive” who’s concerned enough with “green forests and blue skies” to want to live in a city that actually shares that concern. Some strange force appeared to be at work. Something powerful enough to make Portlanders revile the very idea of New Yorkers in their midst. Something to make them believe a nefarious urban exodus was in the offing. I believe that something might be the New York Times.
Allow me to explain. Three years ago, when my brother decided to settle in Portland, the conventional wisdom in New York was that his move was borderline exotic. Portland wasn’t a known quantity, like Los Angeles or San Francisco or Washington, DC. It was a provincial city, with little more than a basketball team, the hotel from The Shining, and eight months of cloud cover to distinguish it from other provincial cities. Then, in the spring of 2007, the New York Times began to write about Portland as if the entire metropolitan area—roads, government, restaurants, bike lanes, and all—had just yesterday emerged from the Willamette, fully developed.
For six months, the coverage was incessant, and almost embarrassingly laudatory. “[Portland’s] vibrant downtown overflows with urban pleasures,” crowed the travel section. “A full-fledged dining destination,” proclaimed Dining & Wine. The Style section called Portland “a great enclave for cutting-edge design.” Meanwhile, the national news desk couldn’t believe how many Portlanders rode bikes. Bike City, USA!
Newspapers may be dying a slow and public death, but don’t underestimate the power of the Times, for this fusillade of coverage had a notable effect out East: it made Portland sexy. Suddenly, a desire to move to Portland wasn’t novel anymore; it was conventional wisdom. “Ah, the great Portland dream!” a friend said, with just a bit too much flourish, when I told him of our plans. “Everyone I know wants to move there now.”
It isn’t hard to understand why this attitude might sour the stomachs of Portlanders. New Yorkers, plagued as they are by all sorts of indignities, from investment bankers to sewer rats, have an unusually active fantasy-of-escape gland. New Yorkers have always imagined that somewhere out there, be it Paris or California or just down the highway on Long Island, there’s a town that’s less expensive, less aggravating, more … livable. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that in 1647, when Peter Stuyvesant became director general of New Amsterdam and closed all the taverns and brothels, a bunch of Dutch hipsters got together to grouse that they just couldn’t take it anymore—they were moving back to Utrecht!
Few New Yorkers actually act on these escape fantasies, of course. Someone (probably Woody Allen) once said, “I’ve been wanting to leave New York for fifty years; I’m almost ready.” Something about the psychic pressure of eighteen million people crammed into a mere three hundred square miles makes it necessary to always have a promised land at the forefront of one’s mind.
Portland now seems to be that promised land. It’s a dubious honor, I’m afraid. As Christine Hoag, a sales manager at Stumptown Coffee Roasters (which, incidentally, just opened a roasting facility in Brooklyn) characterized the intercity relationship to me, “It’s like the corporate executive falling in love with the waitress.” And we all know how reliable the executive’s attentions are in that scenario.
But not all of us are executives. Kougar14 and I, we’re just a couple of harried New Yorkers in love with a place where the lights are dimmer but the warmth greater, where egomania and ambition run a little less rampant, where the politics are more uniformly progressive, the outdoors more accessible, and, yes, the real estate less expensive.
And, speaking only for myself now, I don’t plan to be a former New Yorker for very long. Only a weekender wants a place to mold itself to his image; a settler wants the opposite. If I’m resented for acting on a fantasy so many others share, I’ll just have to stay long enough that no one remembers where I started.
LA vs NY (love suzyloves)
hi there. i am listening to a really disgusting program about food on npr. its gross. but, real, i guess. people’s relationship w food. they have a teenager who weighs 500 pounds talking about throwing up after eating, his feelings towards food, etc. its sad. i wish i could contact him and tell him about brown rice, good eating, filling things… etc. but i think this may end well. i lowered the volume, but they mentioned his losing 200 pounds. ok.
anyway, i am waiting to be picked up for a photoshoot. every single person who has picked me on for a job, or come to the house to shoot me, has been late. its wonderful. i am always late in nyc. people hate it. here its fine. laidback LA. yes yesyes give me more. more sunshine more lateness.
lateness is a secret time to have extra moments to live.
i love CA. i love nyc. i will be both, maybe, someday. soon?
Where have I been? I’ve been hoeing – but not the kind you think. Pictures pictures pictures of my house, my neighborhood…. luvA
YES! It’s been one week I’ve been in my house. And with a lot of work and some money spent, it is finally a home and I have pictures to share. In regards to your previous email, I will say that I have done this move as conscience as possible, but not always perfect. We scored great quality furniture from vintage and thrift stores. Maybe more expensive than Ikea, but at least it is used/quality/and will continue to last. I got plants and soil and things for my garden at the nearest nursery. And I’ve been celebrating all this with as much Oregon beer and wine as I could find. (I did end up in Ikea for some simple needs, saving money and avoiding walmart and the such.) Ah, and drinking coffee from a roaster a block away!
Then came the big set up. Furniture, stereos, endless kitchen boxes. Took a few days to sort through it all. Not to mention 2 people merging their things.
And yesterday was sunny and hot and I spent all day hoeing away in the garden. Getting it ready. The local nursery folks were able to tell me all about my local weather, frost, soil pH, etc. I got a free education just standing there. I did buy a book on Pacific Northwest Gardening. I better fucking stay around these parts a while. And the next couple days I will start to sow some cool weather things out there… so exciting if I can find a true green thumb for organic gardening! Also, got a composter – simple wire cage to fill with garden, yard, and kitchen waste. And with the amount that Oregon recycles, I can’t imagine what the kitchen garbage can will be filled with?
The job hunt is creeping up on me, now that I’ve spent a month getting settled, I guess I have no excuses left. But there are some small prospects and always culinary school, which seems daunting but would be a great year-long activity that I can get the government to pay for!
Lastly, we are in the hot search for the 3rd roommate. The house is affordable, but even cheaper if we can rent out the large attic space. So, SOMEONE out there feeling like they need a change? Have some money for a few months to get by? Why not move to Portland, OR for 6 months. Check out the ad here.
There is so much more to talk about, but instead I will bore you all with a photo essay….. here goes:
HOME!
Patrick fries.
Melissa studies Spanish..
I read?
My redrooom. (Pronounced REDRUM.) And cat.
Sunset..
Three friends, three wines, and three MacBooks hanging out…
Sweetest fucking vintage chairs EVER.
Garden plot… which I have already weeded, worked, composted and today will sow. But there are chives and green onions already in place, like weeds – onions grow like weeds here! (This pic is *before*.. many *afters* to come…)
Picnic table and strawberry barrel in background…
And the neighborhood. This is the Division area just on the outskirts of Inner SE Portland. Meaning the border of Inner/Outer. Whatever. It’s like a belly button, where do you draw the line?
Portland’s famous Stumptown Coffee Roasters.
Yay! Corner Bar
The Egyptian Club is Portland foremost Dyke bar… just up the street. MUAHAH
Portland is famous for GOOD food served off of trucks… The best tofu tacos in all of town are just up my block:
My new yoga space:
Well loves, hope you have a nice image of my new life…….
I wanted to share this PostSecret, it made me laugh:
and what now (by s)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
what what what the fucking hell is going to happen? the world as we know it is ending, for some, for many, right now… what will happen to the rest of us, soon? what should i be doing to help? i feel the biggest urge to do the things i have thought were right for so long now… garden, dont eat out, keep that money and use it for a good cause, be simple, live easy little lives. no designer clothes for anyone, not as an entire wardrobe. redirect the money. make art. make friends. no one should be homeless. i am sure, 100% sure, that almost everyone in these ‘camps’ are upright very good people. they just did not have rich parents, big bank accounts. but that does not mean they should not have food and showers.
what is there to do, for us to do??
LA /NY /life in general (love suz)
LA LA … weather is perfect of course. a very welcome thing to leave to nyc for. my sleep schedule is way off. i woke up at 7 am east coast time the past two days, so i have been having this very weird period of time in the morning, just totally awake for like 4 hours before anyone else in the city is awake! yesterday friends slept here, so i was quietly sneaking around the house. getting some freelance work done for a little while.
i have two shoots today, and then am going out to dinner w nori! yay. she is bringing me to hugos. totally happy. menu looks amazing. sat there is a hip hop art thing that the guy i modeled for the first day i was here is showing in. i may go to that.
i am sort of stranded in this house, bc i dont have a car, and its kind of nice. on sat during the day when i have some free time i am going to take the dog for a really really long walk through the hills and surrounding neighborhoods. i feel like everyone who lives here is kind of rich and kind of weird. i think im right!
today: two shoots. one with a guy i want to talk to about being in movies: ) he is a producer. or a something.
the second shoot is putting me out on LA streets in sheer clothes. fashion-y nude-y shoot.
and as for whats going on in nyc: i read almost all the new york times for thursday bc it was all i bought at the airport, and i was sick of me book. and it seems there have been two incidents of people almost getting hit by ARROWS in new york city. haha. and, um, scary!!!
and, there is this going on in the city: http://gothamist.com/2009/03/26/spotted_sad_panda.php?gallery0Pic=1#gallery
xo. talk soon. love to you alllllll.
LA today (love! suzy)
yes alex. not yet, but am flying to LA in a few hours. and i am STAYING at that great house in the hollywood hills. yippee. she needed a housesitter, was going to japan. i needed an awesome reason to go to LA because i have a lot of modeling to do there, but, you arent there. and i dont have a car, OR, a license. lets see how LA is for a gal who really cannot drive a car, and who does not have a great friend to drive her around this time: )
i dont mind if i am stuck in that house for most of the trip though. it is beautiful, and i will sunbathe in the backyard, and forget all about new york city’s cold weather and lack of back yards. for all non-eastcoaters: it was SNOWING here on the first day of spring. like, a lot. it was gross. all i want is to wear skirts and flip flops, and all i get is snow and 30 degree days. ugghhhhhh. but, springtime in nyc is around the corner. and, that really is a lovely time to be alive.
i am glad portland has a great bar for you right around the corner. i love you and will be in portland before we even know it! i am trying to make the group bigger bigger, as always. me leah dylan. bri? heidi? ryan? hmmm. group rates to portland! but btw its seattle first.
enough travel talk. i actually have not packed a single thing nor have i written down any details. address i am going to? flight info? do that, and i need to shove some lingerie into a carry on. thats all i need i guess. one party dress. lots of underware. heels. make up bag. tee shirts. love!
NORTH! (by Alexander)
I’m sitting and having my first drink (dirty martini) at NORTH, the closest bar to my new house. On the corner. It is a sweet spot…. LUCKY ME! And since the internet isn’t yet on at home, and since every establishment IN PORTLAND has free wifi, I’m with Patrick sipping martinis on our MacBooks.
WHAT.
A.
WORLD!
Alexander’s Home Sweet Home
What a whirlwind times can be. It almost seems like just a minute ago I was standing on the street of San Francisco around Thanksgiving calling my various parents to say, “I’m doing it – I’m moving to Portland.” Then came the wind down in LA, the sadness with those friends, the packing and cleaning and moving and trucking and cat sedating and road tripping again and again.
Friday night I rolled on into town in a truck with my life on it. Saturday I unloaded that truck and reloaded it with Patrick’s stuff and unloaded that and it was all very head-spinning. But by last night, I was drinking wine and cooking fish and feeling at home. And an amazing home it is.
That’s my life. Pictures TBA.
Suzy, I guess you are in LA? Modeling and what else? Will you see the Hollywood Hills photographer who loved Portland? Can you get her email for me.
luvluvluv
companies are being demonized — bailout out of control! (luv suz)
NYT QUOTATION OF THE DAY
“You are disgraced professional losers. And by the way, give us our money back.”
REPRESENTATIVE EARL POMEROY, Democrat of North Dakota, on the A.I.G. executives who were paid bonuses after a federal bailout.
i am trying so hard to keep up with this bailout stuff, and general economy stuff in general. but when things get over a few million dollars, the numbers are all fake to me, and its hard to visualize. but i do understand that for the first time in a long time, companies are being demonized. not just by hippies and leftists, but by the general american public, who feels like they have worked hard, too, so why are some corporate types getting millions when their company failed?
my think tank has been getting tons of press lately, bc we are right at the intersection of all this, and i think reporters are looking for anyone who is thinking differently about these issues. times articles, op-ed in the journal, etc etc, its all great, but when i look at the comments, people have said the new york times is acting like they are hunting for commies again during the red scare, but instead this time its big business. so many perspectives, and they are all interesting…
what will become of all this? will people i know and love be able to work and find things to do that are interesting to them? can i ever quit my job, or do i have to live in fear that there will never be another one for me!! should i bunker down and enroll in school and live off student loans, bc no one else will have much money anyway, and i will be in the same boat? oh, lives questions are so much more daunting when they involved money. and GDP. and where will my rent come from?
recessionista!
Is the name of a party some friends in San Francisco are throwing this weekend….
HAPPY HAPPY POSTS. hello/hello/alexander
HI SUZY and MY FRIENDS and LOVERS….
I wasn’t even avoiding blogging, either. Just distracted. And you know how when you don’t really tune in much and a week goes by, then well shit fuck crap, it becomes harder to start something on here.
But: here is an updated situation… It is my 18th day in Portland, Ore and I am totally in love with all parts of it and the new people all around. And back with great friends. Everything is laughter and fun and alive. My friend and roomamate-t0-be-again and I have found the perfect house. We were shooting for small, but we ended up with big. Oops. There is a room/attic for rent, so spread the work to any New Yorkers ready to relocate. I do meet a lot of New Yorkers here, they seem to come and stay and the reason is usually something like “i wanted something small, a simpler life than ny” Well this is sure it.
I have to relay this: The free paper recently voted for Portland Sexiest People and the sexiest man was the young guy from Brooklyn whose been here just a year or so. I looked him up online and found his blog and then came across this segment, which is my sentiment exactly:
i’ve been in portland for almost a week, and it’s been really fantastic.
everyone here treats everyone else as actual humans. strangers say “hi, how are you?” to passersby and give genuine smiles. bus drivers work patiently with old ladies, forgiving their broken english and figuring out which stop they need. people don’t feel uncomfortable leaving their laptops behind as they use the restroom, or leaving their doors unlocked at night.
drinking is big here. portland has more microbreweries per capita than any other city in the country–it also has more mac stores and resellers per capita–and everyone really adopts a laid-back approach to life. this is certainly a double-edged sword because i see the value of my type-a personality, but it’s nice to find a little joie de vivre after four years stressing out over nothing.
(from http://www.scottanthony.org/)
And people are very real here. I got many-a-compliment for hanging out last night alone in the nearest dyke bar by my house.
The new place happens THIS weekend, and tomorrow, Suzy, I will be thinking of you and Ryan and us 3 months ago as I load up my truck in Carson City, NV and make another 2 day trip to the far north corner of this country. LA seems far and long ago and that is sad.
After the weekend of madness and wine and music and unpacking and settling and decorating and rearranging and shopping for groceries and starting my garden, THEN I will take some pictures and tell you all about my house and my street and my neighborhood.
Loving you all from the cit of Beer and Apple Computers!
and we are back (love love suzy)
emotional weekend. no words for the blog about it, but, wow, things can get out of hand with me sometimes. sometimes i think i should not drink, ever ever. ever again. but part of me is not ready for that part of life yet… i will wait and see a little.
sorry to be vague, but thats all on that.
here is what i did on saturday. worked for a wonderful photographer named sarah small, in her big extravagaza of nude and clothed and every type of model.
a video from a shoot a few weeks prior: http://www.sarahsmall.com/upcoming/
and i wish i had video from the night, but here are just a few pics from ryans phone:
it was great. it was theatre, which is not something i usually do, but it gives me a thrill and i think maybe i would love it.
we had to perform, had to go crazy to the fast music, and then freeze and hold our bodies, and stay very still for ten minutes, and then slowly move again. it felt great. and there was tons of press and people with cameras and every direction you looked in someone was taking your picture. it was LIVE ART. art is so rare. to be alive is so rare. sarah was somehow smart enough to figure out how to combine the two: ) i am now a big fan, and curious to see what else she will do in what im sure will be a fruitful and exciting career.
it was exciting.
and, i got a new window.
that was the weekend.
ps- i added to my life depicted by peektures : )
SLIGHTLY REVAMPED whywelove:
Because love is all there is (and love is enough).
alexander and suzanne met in a college classroom in philadelphia studying something or other about the media, art, money, and business. and cats and dogs. (huh?) we have loved each other since.
we have slept in many beds in many countries together, yet we are not lovers, in that sense. however, we love each other enough (tons and tons!) that we have a strong desire to keep in touch and communicate with each other, so we do it via this blog. suzanne currently writes from brooklyn, ny, and from her frequent travels – and alexander, a western vagabond has recently landed in a new city and writes from portland, or. at this moment, we sit exactly 2,898 miles from each other.
who are we? we are flowers on the side of the road. ‘yes’ and ‘joy’ are important to us. we will not capitalize, we may not re-read what we write, and we never won spelling bees. but we do hope you enjoy.
the world is getting larger, and we fear our ‘human-ness’ is growing smaller. this is our attempt to connect. we do love you and we do miss you, and we do think there is much more to life than we are generally able to find the time to enjoy, so this is our hand reaching out; come along with us on the journey! tell your friends to join us, and please comment and chime in.
and, even on the worst of worst days (we all have them!), remember-> AND WE LOVE!
READ THINGS!!!!!!! brought to you by A
Talking Heads are blessing my ears in this Cafe on Hawthorne. The SE.
Our friend Teresa has just written the funniest piece on BEWARE OF DOG SIGNS… check it.
http://theblackheartchronicles.blogspot.com/2009/03/beware-of-dog-really.html
(suzy, have you noticed the link function freezes wordpress??)
And Teresa is know writing the FRUGAL LIVING blog for the LA Examiner…. sweet. bookmark it.
http://www.examiner.com/x-4969-LA-Frugal-Living-Examiner
