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Arkansas-native Max Steele came to Portland in 2005, responding to the city’s siren song of cheap rent and progressive politics and art you could make on the fly. “All the really DIY stuff was going on in Portland,” says Steele. Until it wasn’t, until certain portions of the population, many of them newbies, felt they were being denied their piece of the Portland pie, dissatisfaction expressed most strongly during 2020’s summer of rage, the downstream effects of which hobble the city to this day.
Video I shot two days after Biden was elected
I’ve found it hard to get clear-eyed reporting out of Portland—Steele and I each mention here how one of the city’s alt-weeklies (oh, okay, the Portland Mercury) likes to dox reporters whose reporting they disagree with. I’ve found Steele to be a straight shooter, with several of my readers shooting me the posts he writes on Recalibrate Portland.
Discussed in this episode:
* Portland media: trustworthy or nah?
* Rose City Antifa mission creep
* Antisemitism in Portland public schools
* Commies ‘R Us
* Lloyd Center, RIP
* “If you join the DSA, you get a whole social circle. You get a bowling league.”
* The fire-hosing of cash “at any random Instagram account” in the post-George Floyd moment
* “Portland was huge—huge—on the cancellations.”
* “How do I step on your neck on the way up this social ladder?”
* “I don’t know what kind of cult you’re in, but you just put yourself out of a job.”
* Lynsea Coy, the “antifascist” florist who keeps lists of Jews
Plus, the Portland editor-in-chief who told Steele he needed to get laid more, the city bans foie gras (again), Steele might have punched a Nazi back in the day, and much more!
When Portlandia got it right
Putting the “ID” in identity politics
Portland’s new “cludgy” form of government is a disenfranchisement machine
Anti-Zionist threats of violence from your neighborhood florist. Oh Portland.
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