Portland, Oregon

From Schmecken

Portland is a city located in Multnomah County, in northwestern Oregon, southeast of the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers.

Portland has a population of about 500,000 hipsters, all of whom are squished into an area that Dallas, Texas would use for a small-to-medium sized Whataburger restaurant. Because of this, Portland is often considered a triumph of modern urban planning, especially since they destroyed a freeway instead of building new ones.

Portland was almost named Boston, because two founding fathers of the city decided that it should be named after one of two East Coast towns, and they entrusted its precise name to the results of a coin-toss. Fortunately, the coin-toss came up on the correct side, and a horrible mistake was avoided.

Portland was the birthplace of Yansa.

Once upon a time, Portland was not a hipster mecca; it was simply yet another city with some unattractive industrial and commercial areas. However, starting in the late 1980's, rising home prices and crime rates in California caused hundreds of thousands of disaffected Californians to move north to escape their native land. Many of their children have inexplicably grown up to become obsessed with trendy home decor and the indie-rock band Bright Eyes.