June 12, 2004
The Rose Feh-Stival (A Follow-Up)
We've already done our annual yawn over the Rose Festival, but having been downtown for our coffee today at the height of the Grand Floral Parade, we have a further thought or two on it.
One of the curious aspects of our utter lack of interest in the Rose Festival (including a lack of interest in participating in the question of "refreshing" the festival) is that we don't mean it to convey the sense that we somehow believe it should go away.
Sitting at the downtown Stumptown Coffee Roasters this morning, it occurred to us that any city in fact is not a single city but multiple cities all occupying the same space at the same time (that particular physical prohibition not applying to cultural things). Like parallel universes existing slightly out of phase from one another, we all consider some of them to be ours, and some of them to be someone else's.
In a stangely inverted way, there's a certain bizarre charm (for lack of a better word) in sitting two or three blocks away from the hundreds and thousands of people lining the entirely other-worldy route of the Grand Floral Parade, overlapping distant sounds drifting south from Burnside and east from Fourth, this too-damned-small town of a City somehow nonetheless being large enough for both worlds.
That said: Yes, while walking north along SW Third Avenue on our way to Stumptown, we had Elliott Smith cranked all the way up on our iPod.
Comments (4)
Elaine of Kalilily on 12 Jun 2004
I love this post! Both for the quality of the writing but also for the quality of the thinking.
Jalpuna! on 12 Jun 2004
A phenomenal post b!x...
As corny as some of the Rose Festival may be, I still enjoy it. Or, maybe I should say, I enjoy the fact that it exists, and I enjoy how the city feels so alive while it's going on.
Like you said, this place we call 'Portland' is actually many places for many different kinds of people. That's really marvelous when you think about it. And it's one of the many reasons I am proud to call this nutty city my home.
TomHiggins on 14 Jun 2004
Of the Days of Rose Fest and Carnys on the Waterfront....
The first year on my Portland existence, '97, I was taken to see all the glitz and pagentry by folks who pretty much went out thier way to hate it. So much hate so well crafted was almost as audacious as the flower encrusted floats I lofted spit wads on.
The city is amazing in that it has such a range of creatives such that while one pole is busy metronoming wrist wrist elbow wrist to the crowd on thier floral creations The other pole is scattering "Lost Dog , EweSuki, need now for making stew" flyers to the on lookers.
Not happy with two poles the city holds the plethora of poles each rotating to thier own soundtracks (bix's is E. Smith while for this years evnts I was mostly engrossed in either "Its a Wiggles World" or "Propaghandi" depending on who was awake at the moment).
One thing that always has got em about these city wide freak out events, specificaly the waterfront ones...who the f pays to replant the grass?
Which then brings up my other pet peeve about Portland, the North Left in general..where the F are the Coney Isalnds and Rye Beaches? (for a fun look at some historic background look up Black Lotus Island, a failed Portland amausement park)
-tomhiggins
torridjoe on 18 Jun 2004
what about Oaks Park?
Nice choice on Elliott Smith, of course. Has a little more poignancy this year with his passing.
Thanks, E. Hope you're doing better.