Gentrification

A curious item on the local radio news this morning: an alternative publishing company founded and located here is moving to Indiana because it can't afford Portland any more. The report said, The company is a victim of the gentrification that it spurred by making Portland such an interesting place to live.

There you have it. I used to review restaurants. I'd find a great little unknown out-of-the-way place, writing it up in glowing terms, and go back in a month or two and have to stand in line to get in. Sometimes it's best to keep your favorites to yourself, lest they outgrow their attraction to you.

I've said this many times before but I'll forever remember the words of my NY agent visiting me in NW Portland in the early 1980s: "This is the way Greenwich Village used to be," she said. "Don't let anybody change it." Ten years later, everything had changed.

Progress, right. But, in fact, there is only one, only one, aspect of life in Portland that I find better now than in the 1980s: public transportation is more widely available throughout the area. I don't find any other aspect of living here better or more enjoyable, and certainly absolutely nothing is more affordable. Gentrification.