I rlllly hate Portland and any other 'second tier' cities that claim to
be culturally relevant by playing up the whole 'alternative gimmick.'
There is an excess of shitty musicians who are Starbucks/Chili's
employees in every city, so I hate when a city's personal brand
revolves around 'sounding like they really mean it when they make their shitty music/attend their shitty, awkward concerts.'
Common traits of overhyped 2nd rate alternative cities:
Perception of being 'green'
Perception of a bustling 'local economy'
A
high 'basically unemployment' rate (this figure represents people who
are over 30, but still have the jobs a 16 year old would have)
An excess of corporate and independent coffee shops
An excess of people with too many tattoos working in independent coffee shops
An
excess of coffee shop employees playing RLLY gimmicky 'interesting'
music in coffee shops during their shifts/playing the albums of their
friend's band who sound exactly like _______
Overhearing
the 'future plans' of people who work in these coffee shops to start
their own business in design/food/recordstore/boutique/other
alternative biz idea.
An excess of people in bands that have shows in an excess of venues
An
otherwise stable maintream economy which allows the alternative
population to work in the service industry. While this usually happens
in all cities, the minorities in the service industry are replaced by
these aging alts.
A handful of decent bands, a few imitators, and a bunch of krappie
bands that have tied their identity to their home city and guilt their
friends into attending their show/post a lot of myspace bulletins to
impressionable local-17-year olds.
A lot of these cities have a major university or a
well-branded liberal arts school with a progressive identity which the
'hip side of town' feels like they need to cater to in order to keep up
sales of vegan wraps, pizza-made-from-only-organic-ingredients, and
interesting t-shirts.
