:: GROCERY LOVE ::

in portland

In Portland tattooed baristas pull espresso shots in between couldn’t-be-bothered glances and talk amongst themselves. And for a lunch, a vegan eats a curried tofu dish made with fish sauce; he finds the detail easy to ignore. The world is full of people with nowhere to go and everything to get done. In kindergarten class the kids color their skies grey.

During the week, Shelley peddles pharmaceuticals and saves her commission checks to move back to Chicago. She’s sick of the rain and sick of the sensitive beard rockers who never return her text messages. Brian lives in the Alberta Arts district and collects Japanese comics. He makes his own wine at a custom crush facility downtown. Brian sells his private label, Toon-Out, to a few friends but gives most of it away to the girls he meets on Craigslist.

Skinny Steve makes short films on his handheld cam and edits them on his laptop at a microbrewery in the Pearle district. Steve aspires to take the film festival circuit by storm. Benji grows lots of facial hair and roasts coffee for a living, writing songs every body dreams of. Meanwhile, for a nominal fee Brad will produce podcasts for eBay users. Katrina pretends she can play the piano and writes commercial jingles; her heart is a worried thing. There is so much to do and she rushes through her day worried about the big quiet that awaits her every night.

Moppy-topped, funky-spec clad ladies named Orlando work in health food co-ops and carry hello-kitty lunch boxes and paint their nails with glittered polish. Orlando will turn thirty-eight in a week but doesn’t look a day over twenty-three. Her boyfriend drives an old Golf with a converted bio-diesel engine. They have a pet rabbit named Italo Calvino. There is so much to get done.

Eliza owns a vintage shop on S.E. Division and holds a bi-monthly Betty Paige burlesque show for women only. Rick owns his own business building and repairing fences and drinks with his old Vietnam War buddies on Wednesday nights at the bar with the cheap drinks and the familiar faces. Andy wears a purple leather jacket with a matching purple helmet and rides with scooter buddies every Friday night for happy hour. He makes blow-up turkey balloons with surgical gloves he steals from the medical offices he cleans at night.

As seen in the Willamette Weekly, a local paper, a hippie-goddess seeks female models for creative nude outdoor shots and an esthetician at the Soft Serve who goes by the name Beaver Believer is offering Brazilian bikini waxes for only $50. In Portland, gourmet waffles sandwiches and super-sized bento is sold from food carts set-up in empty lots throughout the city and the donut is high art. Hipsters in skinny jeans and black hoodies stock organic produce at the grocery store and think about clever names for their electro-folk-pop bands. In Portland believers are everywhere.