Wow am I sick of the NYT writing about Portland. Hipster is probably the most over used and broadly applied phrase in this city. I work at a often accused of "hipster" bar. Our clientele is roughly 20% Gay, 10% lesbian, 10% self employed construction contractors, 20% service workers, 20% regular 9-5 thirty year olds leaving roughly 20% for the hipsters to slide in but also including the 70 year old retired widows who like to hit on and purchase the company of young men.

Yelp reviews are pretty much hipster bar, hipster bar, nice patio, hipster bar, shitty service, hipster bar, hipster bar, shitty food. In fact Portland is populated by normal human beings that have a general Pacific Northwest cultural bent. The cultural bent is a love of the outdoors, a bunch of green-washing, love of hoppy beer, a taste for salmon. There are lots of food carts, lots of small businesses, lots of people who get by only working 2-3 days a week. This town is painfully polite, not in that genuine mid-western kind of way, but timid, afraid to give offense and for many people when offense is given things must be worked out settled afterword, overall giving an honest contrary opinion can be difficult and tearful for the recipient. I think that is the quality of the please every one sales men that the author has attributed to a generation, but I truly believe that it is just a generalized phenomenon.

For a few years the NYT has been selling the nation a distorted Portland, it's really just a liberal bastion, much like any other. The show Portlandia is not too far off the mark about the wildest 5% of the town, but really just a town of normal people.