Seven years ago diarist moved from the Boston area to a suburb of Portland where he now lives (here) with his Westies, Mac and Duff.
The same weekend that the LPGA pulled its golf tournament from Portland and moved it to a venue further from the downtown area citing safety concerns (read article) Travel Portland put this full-page ad in the Sunday NY Times.
Click here to enlarge above illustration.
I’m not the first one to write about this ad:
Willamette Week story, KOIN story, and even UK’s The Daily Mail
This is how Fox News covered the story:
You can image how happy Breitbart was to publish this:
My father used to tell the “but it’s good story” which he claimed was true. He said that when he was the Army during World War II there was cook who told the troops that if they ever complained about his cooking they’d have to go on K-P duty for a month. This was generally depicted in cartoons as doing nothing but peeling mountains of potatoes.
As the tall tale went one day a soldier on K-P duty decided to do something hoping to get out of his mess hall duty. He made a chocolate cake and used icing made from “poop” (my father never used curse words at least not at home but “shit” was implied) and he watched for reactions waiting for someone to complain and thus be assigned to replace him in the kitchen.
The soldiers tasted the cake and most of them dared not say anything. One of them couldn’t restrain himself and as he spit out his first mouthful shouted “this cake tastes like poop!” but then realizing the consequences of complaining immediately loudly said “but it’s good!”
I picture the folks at Travel Portland struggling to make a delicious rhetorical chocolate layer cake when all they have for icing is… well, you know what.
The Travel Portland website doesn’t feature anything about it being a place for tourists to watch violent protests, nor does it mention its problem with rampant homelessness and numerous street shootings. Neither does it refer to the fact that this is the first website that comes up if you Google “what is the whitest city in America”.
It does feature this video clip:
I was recently watching the Hulu series Shrill which is filmed in Portland and they had a scene which featured a full-frontal nude interview by the main character who is reporting for a website with one of Portland’s Naked Bike Ride participants. You can see the uncensored photo and read about the scene here.
I took the photo below at our local farmers market. Everywhere you go you never know whose path you will cross and what message they or their t-shirts will convey to you.
My Saturday diary about violent protests around Portland: I saw speeding Portland police car and thought it was heading towards an accident. Boy, was I wrong!
