Portland is midway between the two larger pacific northwest hipster hubs, San Francisco and Seattle. San Francisco and Seattle, however, have a serious side: business, work, big companies, computers, etc. Portland is hipster heaven. There are also no jobs there. So, you can be a trustfunder or work a few hours at a coffee shop and live simply, if that’s your thing. Of course, it will be hard to afford your $7 craft beer but perhaps you can set something on fire, call it art, and make a quick buck.
The “hipster highway” would have five main stops. Los Angeles, where the culture is strong, but surrounded by larger competing cultures; San Francisco, a huge hipster hub, that isn’t run by hipsters, and is getting too expensive for hipsters; Eureka & Arcata, hipster and pot-head paradise surrounding Humboldt State University, run by hipsters, but offering little opportunity for Urban Life, which hipsters adore; Portland, full of hispters, run by hipsters, the hipster Valhalla, except for the fact that it’s so white; and Seattle, the last stop of the hipster highway, where hipsters go when they decide to get tech jobs, marry their “partners” (used even if it’s a heterosexual relationship) and have or adopt kids. For some inexplicable reason they don’t move back to LA or to the dust bins in the east where many of them came from.
All cities not on the hipster highway simply do not exist, unless there is a trendy cafe or ethnic food restaurant to stop at during the trip.
For more info, see here: SWPL.
Traveling Dan 