You knew it. We knew it. Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein knew it. Portlandia is not an accurate portrayal of Portland. So, why was it that when a recent poll revealed that Portland residents care about topics like the economy, people were shocked?
We’ll be the first to admit that people in Portland embrace their weirdness. Maybe it stems from the fact that we drink too much coffee… or beer. Maybe it’s Portland’s long and storied past of making fortunes for rich fat cats by leveling the wilderness. Or, maybe it’s the seemingly never-ending downpour that threatens to drown us all should we ever take a gander skyward. Something makes the residents of Portland stand up and say, “I’m not going to let the world get me down! I’m going to stick this hula hoop in my ear lobe, walk around talking like a pirate on crack and act like it’s normal!”
We all know we don’t live in a fantasy world, though, and we take the issues affecting the country very seriously. We all have jobs (well, most of us, anyway) and we all have responsibilities (those damn chickens aren’t going to feed themselves). At the end of the day, we’re all human and we enjoy Portlandia’s surreal portrayal of our city because it’s funny, it’s goofy, and, in some small way, it gives us hope. We want to believe that we’re not all going to hell, the world is not just our fancy, finely-woven handbasket, and we want to believe in the carefree, sometimes idiotic, world that Portlandia represents.
Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to go set our alarm so we can get up in time to paint ourselves blue and go on a 3am naked bicycle ride through Forest Park hugging the trees while drinking fermented apple juice singing “kumbaya.”
Source: Portland not as quirky as it’s portrayed