Welcome to Pretentious Portland

Hello and welcome to "Pretentious Portland." I've lived in Portland, Oregon for a few years now, and have come to see the city for what it is -- an average American city with a huge ego problem.

Portland is better than a few cities I've known, worse than some others -- but always, it seems, Portland goes around thinking it's better than everyone else, the cream of the crop, the pick of the litter, the apple of your eye.

In fact, the opposite it mostly true.

Portland has plenty of problems, not the least of which is that it takes itself way too seriously. Hence the title of this blog.

Portland, Oregon is so convinced that it's utopia that it spares no effort to broadcast its superiority to the world at every turn, whether it's environmental consciousness, "world-status" public transportation, its vaunted arts and music and club scene, or a minor new tram that, despite constant crowing, is put to shame by most other trams in the world.

It's the purpose of this blog to show Portland as it really is, to inject some reality into the utopian mindset that affects many of the people who live here, to expose the nanny-state "we'll tell you how to live" liberalism which infects it.

So stay tuned--we're just getting started.