On a sunny summer day in Portland, Oregon, thousands of funemployed hipsters are yanked from their vintage sofas and dropped into various parks on the city’s east side. Pale, disheveled, and without a pair of skinny jeans to cling to, Portland’s twenty-somethings cope with the seasonal relocation by rolling their shorts to mid-thigh length and watching six packs of PBR tall-boys sweat in the heat of the nearest patch of urban green-space.
Colonel Summers Park, an grassy area known for its picnic tables and softball diamond, is bombarded with young loungers in the summer months. I walked in on this unsuspecting scene several weeks ago, and I realized that I was witnessing the culture of my generation in motion. I was watching, and arguably participating in, the current equivalent of a modern day Haight-Ashbury. Pods of attractive, fashionable, and mildly intoxicated young people were sprawled everywhere, admiring their intricately inked tattoos and conversing about The Man and all his [insert creative expletive here] hypocrisy. As an occasional subscriber to the “everything cool happened in the ’60s” mentality, I realized that I was standing smack dab in the middle of what my kids might someday read about and say, “Man, if only I could have lived in that decade.” And if that moment ever happens, I will quietly smile and thereby preserve the hypothetical hipness of my youth. What I won’t do, however, is tell my kid how quickly I scampered out of Colonel Summers Park that afternoon. I swear there wasn’t a blade of grass without its own Twitter account.
A few days later I tried again. I chose a less populated park in North Portland referred to as the Skidmore Bluffs. Sure, there were one or two folks doing yoga in tune with the rhythmic smoking of illegal substances, but in Portland this sort of thing is as intrinsic to parks as wooden benches. What mattered to me is that Skidmore Bluffs felt more like a park than a brooding fashion show. The grassy area, officially called Mocks Crest, sits on top of a west-facing cliff at the end of N Skidmore Terrace. The panoramic view includes downtown Portland and a full stretch of Forest Park above the Willamette River. Three bridges (Fremont, St. Johns, Railroad), the West Hills, and the industrial district – including the Union Pacific Railyards – are also in clear sight. The combination of Portland’s urban and natural landscape runs together in a strangely seamless fashion, and – for me, at least – it recalls the dusty realization of, “huh, so this is where I live.” It reminds me that there are thousands of things to do and see and learn. There are trails to hike, bridges to cross, and buildings to visit. Even if I never get to them, they’re out there, and they’re bigger than me. And until I see that view tattooed on a shirtless somebody in Colonel Summers Park, Skidmore Bluffs is a safe spot to cool off from the core of Portland’s otherwise hot hipster heat.
Image Credit: Michelle H. via Yelp.