Boundary Lines

Because of its hard and fast geographical markers, Portland is an easy city to navigate. Burnside is the Mason-Dixon Line, dividing the north and south. The Willamette River cuts us up between east and west, giving the raison d'être for our namesake, "Bridgetown." Then there's our fifth wheel, north Portland and St. Johns. The fifth quadrant. I'm not even sure if north Portland and St. Johns are considered the same area.

Southerners can relate to boundary lines. After all don't we have our Mason Dixon and Mississippi? However, as I meet people outside of my southern stomping grounds, I realize that these famous geographical boundary lines are blurred. We can't actually decide what belongs where. Arkansas? Maryland? West Virginia? Texas? Florida? I mean, are they southern? Garden and Gun claims they are, including them in the "Southern Agenda" section.

The lines are blurred, certainly, but at the same time, we acknowledge cultural differences these boundary lines create. In my opinion, I think the greatest dividing line in Portland, a line similar to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "courtesy bay" in The Great Gatsby is the east-west divider. The further east one goes, the more conservative, "less hip" and provincial the atmosphere. Dingy strip malls take over, and the lack of urban planning is glaring. The taxes are probably lower. The western suburbs are the same, just in a more upscale and wealthy fashion. A strip mall by any other name . . . The closer we get to the intersection of Burnside and the Willamette, the closer we get to the mockumentary stereotypes in Portlandia. And yet, even in this small geographical location, the cultural divide is noticeable. The Willamette is our Courtesy Bay:

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere . . . They are not perfect ovals . . . but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

I lived at West Egg, the -- well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them

Makes you want to read Gatsby again, doesn't it?  But here on the "wrong coast" as my mother would say, the east is the lesser of the two eggs. The West Hills overlook the city with a domineering and supercilious visage. As an outsider, I've never even met someone who lives in those hills, much less been invited to their homes. But this isn't a Portland thing. I found this to be true in Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Charleston. This is true for Gatsby, too. The elegant, glittering, fashionable houses often tantalize us with their unreachable green lights.

I'm partial to the southeast in Portland. It's like the southeast in the U.S. The central-industrial eastside is funky, hip, and it has incorporated the railroad through its inner belly. Or, it has adapted to the tracks and forlorn whistles, understanding that the continent is vast and we're connected to it. No railroads ever go through swanky parts of cities and towns. I, for one, like to be in proximity to the rails. Since I've been paying my own rent/mortgage, I've always lived close enough to have to cross the RR on my running routes. It's liberating to think that I have the option to jump in one of those cars, On the Road Style. I haven't  yet, but my neighborhood is open to that possibility.

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