Roadmap to Peace: I'm Surrounded by White People!
by Kristin van de Biezenbos

It's clean, it's progressive, the air is cool and crisp; why wouldn't Kristin van de Biezenbos want to leave it all behind for our own Third World Shithole?

I was on vacation in New York when Katrina sealed me out of the Crescent City for what has now been almost a year. I was in a friend’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, my feet howling from a long day prowling around Manhattan (and being somewhat embarrassed at how clean it was, even the sketchy bits), when my sweetie turned on the television, and it just happened to be on the Weather Channel, and they just happened to be showing a red swirly thing right on top of Southern Louisiana. As a New Orleanian, I had long ago honed the skill of being able to instantly zero in on my home city’s location on the tie-died expanse of the Doppler map.

That was the beginning of the Worst Vacation Ever. We tried to ignore the impending doom, but every bar we hit, from the Bowery to the Bronx, had the damn TV on the Weather Channel, with the Katrina Express bearing down on Louisiana with admirable accuracy. Surely she’ll turn at the last moment! And so she did. Then the levees broke, just like in that rockin’ song, and Mama, we had to move. So, where did we go, we two suddenly homeless vagabonds with nothing but two suitcases, one full of I (Heart) New York T-shirts meant as gifts? I’ll never fully be able to explain why, but after two week detour that included every section of the country except the Midwest –nothing against corn – we settled in Portland, Oregon.

Here’s what I knew about Oregon before moving here: it is the grail-like goal of the game Oregon Trail (tip: it isn’t wise to choose to start the game as a lawyer, because while it gives you lots of money to spend at the General Store before setting out West, ultimately your status as a greenhorn will cost you your entire family to dysentery), and the film Drugstore Cowboy was filmed here. Which pretty much sums up Oregon: Pioneer Spirit and heroin. Of course, the awesomest thing about Oregon is the similar-sounding indie rock bands that vie for supremacy among the cooler-than-thou hordes who populate this city. Well, who populate some of this city. It’s also populated with yuppies who drive import station wagons and buy organic, rednecks who live outside of the city and make chump change doing landscaping and renovation work for the yuppies, and crazy homeless people, who I guess come here for the temperate weather (I’ll get to the weather in a moment). There are also some black people, who seem to have decided to look past the fact that they’re in Oregon and live in rather ramshackle communities that would be perfectly at home in the South. They don’t shoot each other much though, and they eat at places like Yam Yam’s Southern Cuisine. For reasons I don’t feel I need to explain, I will never eat at Yam Yam’s, no matter how homesick I get. There’s also a restaurant here called Lagniappe (you should hear the verbal butchery) where you can buy a Po’ Boy for $10.

People in Oregon have no understanding of New Orleans as a real place. To them, it’s a like a Disneyland ride that broke down – they’re so sorry to hear about what happened, but maybe it’s for the best. It was kind of dangerous, wasn’t it? And I bet you couldn’t romp through the forests picking Wild Strawberries, now could you?

I should mention that Oregon has an amazing bounty of wild produce that shows up every spring and summer as a result of the soul-rending rainy season of the Pacific Northwest, which starts in November and ends in March. And let me tell you about that rain. Last January, I became convinced that every time a person weeps, their tears are caught in some kind of heavenly cistern in the sky, which overflows each autumn and pours out over Oregon and Washington. The rainy season is the end of the world, le fin du monde, and it comes down almost every day from a dead gray sky. It’s enough to make you want to dive head first into the Columbia River (for which Columbia Sportswear was named).

Hear me, world: I’ve had it with Portland and it’s holier-than-thou hippies. It’s Volvos and Volkswagens and white people. It’s biodiesel and “Buy Organic.” It’s acupuncture. Okay, the marijuana is fantastic…but get off my back, Oregon. You are just as weird as New Orleans in a less interesting way, and you are on notice: I’m leaving you. In seven months, you’ll be figuratively eating my dust, and New Orleans will be welcoming me back with debris-encrusted arms.

New Orleans, unlike Portland, has a soul won through the hardship of pirates, yellow fever, corruption and disaster, and she deserves to have a chance at redefining herself. And, by God, so do I.

Kristin van de Biezenbos will be returning to our fair city soon enough.