LEAVING PORTLAND ON NEWSBREAK.COM? OKAY, BOOMER

Leaving Portland is nothing new.

People decide to move on and that’s what they do.

No hard feeling?

Unless you click on Newsbreak.

The top image is a screenshot of Newsbreak’s top stories, or stories at the top of their page.

They tell what happens when you go to Portland: shootings, stabbings, and victims’ relatives.

That’s the message, but who is the messenger?

From businessofbusiness.com:

The panic around fake news and a growing sense of lost communal feeling in America has led app-makers to come up with products like News Break. The central idea of such apps, as I understand them, is threefold. They privilege local news, collect and curate the content of multiple small media operations all in the same place, and give smaller communities a space to chat about it.

Everyday it’s shooting and stabbing and who’s next?

Or what’s next?

It could be you, it could be me. If not us, then we read about who it was and tell others, write blog posts, and spread fear of the unknown.

That’s chatting?

Then we hear, “That’s it, the last straw. We’re moving to Boise.”

Or Seattle, Vancouver, anyplace but Portland.

Newsbreak ‘the app’ gives off a ‘run for your life’ vibe.

It’s got to be nerve wracking waiting for the moment too far.

Moment Too Far In SE Portland

I lived in a building in Brooklyn, NY that had three locks just to get into the vestibule where the mailboxes were, then two locks for the front door and two locks for my apartment door.

Let’s do the math together: seven locks.

I had what felt like a janitor’s key ring just to get to my place.

Maybe it was the neighborhood?

How many apartments in Portland require seven keys?

Is that the way things are trending in Rip City?

People make a Portland move to change their lives, not watch a city slide into the sewer of neglect and guarded compounds behind keypad entry gates.

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I lived in Portland before I got married, before we had kids; I lived in Portland after also, but not for long.

My wife is the big planner in the family. Raising kids in Portland was not part of her plan, although I planned on being Portland for life.

That’s my standard plan no matter where I’ve lived. I planned on living in Philadelphia for life, and didn’t. My plan to live in NYC for life didn’t pan out either, but it started well.

I lasted longer in Portland than the other cities before giving marriage all the room it wanted.

We moved to the suburbs with a Portland zip code so we were still Portland cool.

It wasn’t a move to abandon Portland for any other reason than my wife grew up in an LA urban neighborhood an the LAX flight path right over her high school.

Teachers took a break when the jets were to loud to shout over.

You can leave Portland for any reason that moves you to action, but doing it for the kids is the best reason.

Then the big question is, ‘would they even know the difference?’

If momma knows the difference that’s all you need.

Leaving Portland For The Suburbs

Ask any puffed up New Yorker about suburbs and you might hear, “All of America is a suburb of New York.”

And they’d be right, not that it matters to anyone else.

What does matter to the census people clutching their pearls is the Portland departure numbers.

They make it sound like people are picking up and leaving to anywhere that isn’t Portland.

For my history buffs:

The city of East Portland was founded on a 640-acre (260 ha) land claim by James B. Stephens in 1846, who bought the claim from John McLoughlin of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The city was incorporated in 1871.

Stephens platted the land from the Willamette River to East First Street, and from today’s Glisan Street to present Hawthorne Boulevard. Much of the land east of the river was marshy and crossed by creeks and sloughs, so it was less desirable than Portland river front property on the west side of the Willamette River. Development was difficult and expensive since many streets had to be built on trestles.

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In other words, even Portland was once a suburb of, wait for it, Portland.

As a devoted Portlander I joined others in calling out anyone who dared move to Beaverton or Tigard or Gresham. People who moved further out to Hillsboro, Troutdale, or Newberg disappeared.

It was okay to move to Multnomah because it was still Portland even if it feels like a suburb.

Stay in Portland, or leaving Portland, just know what you take with you is more than your possessions.

It’s a Portland memory, a Portland dream, of living harmoniously with others who felt like you, that you discovered the last best place to settle down and plant roots.

Give it a little time and your new place, no matter where you land, will feel like the last best place too.

Go ahead and take that with you. It won’t occupy much room. Take it and spread the news. Just do it better than newsbreak, or Portlandia.

Be sure to look back for Portland progress. It’s just around the corner, over the hill.

Tell your new friends how Portland hurt your feelings, didn’t live up to your expectations, is circling the toilet like a big ol’ dump.

But be honest with yourself. You were never sticking around longer than you had to.

There’s too much world and too much adventure to spend all in one place?

And not enough time? Is that it?

Okay, boomer.