MikeyOpp.com

The month of June was quite a thrill for yours truly. I left the safe, cozy confines of Portland Oregon for three separate trips, visiting Japan, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. I also celebrated my birthday, and the most special moment of all came about when I realized that June 14th was my two-year anniversary of moving to Portland, which was special for me, because it is the first city that I’ve moved to that I’ve actually claimed to truly love – For me, Portland has become home, and I believe that finding your home is of paramount important in the quest for personal happiness.

Now I’ve already written a bit about my travels to Japan, and I can’t write about Las Vegas because the spell check on Microsoft Word will not to recognize any of the mandatory expletives that I use to describe my guttural distaste for that city, so it seems logical for me to broach a subject that has to do with my trip to SFO, and my two-year anniversary of moving to Portland. And this is the subject of being a California Transplant in Portland, Oregon.

I have lived in Portland for over two years now, paying local taxes, caring about local issues, and working hard for various businesses and organizations, and even my drivers license bears the official state insignia, and therefore grants me all rights and privileges therein. But it seems to me, that no matter how much effort and dedication I put into living in Portland, and no matter how much I renounce the land in which I was raised; but no longer love, it seems that none of that is good enough for the locals. No, despite my official DEQ approval sticker on my car, and the fact that I ride a bike six out of seven days a week, every single time the fact that I hail from California comes up in any conversation with an Oregonian who has lived here longer than I have, I am immediately subjected to watching them undergo a gag reflex, followed by an immediate, irrepressible groan of disdain; which I am to assume is the locally unique way of saying; “Welcome to our lovely city, we hope you enjoy your stay, but your stay had better not be permanent!”

To make matters worse, at this point of my tenure in Portland, I believe that I can actually feel a slight stinging sensation in my mind as locals attempt to telekinetically bore a hole into my brain that somehow rewires it into telling me to grab all of my ‘transplanted’ belongings and take a long hike out of Oregon, never to return. And I further swear that I can actually hear the motorized and mechanical sound of a local Oregonian’s eyes rolling into the back sockets of their head whenever one of them overhears the fact that I am from California.

In an attempt to be fair and balanced, I’ll make the following concessions to any real locals reading this column: I understand why locals fear and resist the so-called ‘transplant takeover’ that is happening here in Oregon, and Portland in particular. And if I am to understand these locals correctly, (of course, finding a native ‘Portlander’ in Portland is about as easy as finding the great white yeti in Alaska) then you despise us for overcrowding your not so wide highways and byways, for increasing property values at an insane rate, and similarly, for raising the overall cost of living.

But do you know what else we bring to your fine state, local Portlanders? We bring commerce, revenue, culture, spirit, manpower, and intellectual collectivism to the Willamette Valley, and we bring these to Portland in particular because we too love this city, and want to help sustain its growth, and yet keep it the cool, low key Mecca that it is. And I further posit that we transplants are moving to Portland in droves for the simple, and flattering reason that, well, frankly, we like it better than where we grew up. And isn’t that a big enough compliment for you to accept our applications for residency? After all, I’m not asking for any sort of welcoming committee with rose petals and group hugs, I’m just asking for a little less resistance and abrasive stares, because this is America, and America is supposed to be a nation of pilgrims, which is exactly what a transplant is, a modern day pilgrim of sorts, attempting to escape the absurdities of their former locale.

America is supposedly a melting pot. We were the first nation, in the history of mankind, to loudly, and unabashedly proclaim for the rest of the world to send us their tired, their poor, and their hungry, needy hipsters (okay, that was a bad joke, I apologize). But seriously, America is that nation, akin to that guy at the fourth of July barbeque you just attended who nobody really knows, but who nonetheless stands next to the host’s fridge and offers each and every newcomer the host’s beer, without asking the actual host’s permission. Americans somehow inherently intuit and act accordingly with the American tradition that is to spend and give, recklessly, no matter the cost, because we’re a nation that’s into sharing our values, our culture, and our limited experience with anyone within shouting distance – whether they like it or not.

But as a California-Transplant living in Portland, not only do I often sense the ‘not-so-secretive-frustrated-vibe’ from many people who actually grew up here, but I’ve noticed that I even get spiteful glares from fellow transplants who have lived here just a little bit longer than I have. And this seems just downright unfair to me!

But I’ve recently realized that these grandfather-clause-ex-post-facto-residency-claim-jumpers have lived in Portland long enough, as an outsider, to learn two rules that any ‘transplanter’ (like myself) must apparently follow in order to avoid being publicly shamed for having the indecency to move to Portland from anywhere outside of Oregon. The first rule is that you never, under any circumstances, admit to any true and blue native Oregonian that you are a transplant.

When forced to prove your legitimate residency status, you make up a second cousin, or some distant and already deceased relative who grew up here in the early 1900s, and claim your residency through blood. And the second rule, which is probably more important than the first, is that whenever the subject in any conversation comes around to “where did you grow up?” You make no haste in making a beeline to the bathroom where you hide yourself until you can overhear that the subject of the conversation has returned to the far more common ‘Portlandian’ subject of “I hear it’s not supposed to rain for two days in a row next week, we should make plans!”

What disturbs me the most about anti-transplantationism is that there is an actual hierarchy of transplant-bigotry, with California at the head of the list, followed by every other state aside from Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii in second, and those aforementioned three states in a distant and remote third category, barely subject to any disdain at all. It’s almost as though everyone who is actually from the Pacific Northwest has some secret eyewink that they can give a fellow local to assure them that they are ‘the real thing,’ and can therefore be trusted with a quicker grocery check out line, and a better espresso shot at their local Stumptown coffee house.

Now, being that I am from California, and therefore I am public transplant enemy number one, there are two factors about anti- Californianism that disturb me the most. The first is that very few locals, if any, will recognize the fact that there are two distinct sub species of the species “Homo Erectus Californianus.” The first sub-set, of which I belong to, is the California-Northernus species, which is a peace loving, nature respecting, and liberal sort that subsists mainly on a diet of non-complicated lattes, light beer or red wine, and nachos, hold the sour cream; indeed, we are truly a harmless, well intentioned, and lovingly domesticated species that can be trusted with most any job or privilege you can imagine. And we’re even fairly punctual (not that Portlanders are into that sort of thing.)

But the second sub species is the one that I personally hold culpable for the strong negative energy that I or any other California-Transplant receives from a local, and this is of course, the California-Southernus. This socially domineering creature is best known for excessively speeding in expensive cars that blare loud hip hop music, for throwing obnoxiously loud, exuberant, and highly exclusive house parties, for owning Hummers, for respecting absurd status symbols like gigantic jewelry and Abercrombie and Fitch clothing, and their diet consists of mostly soy-breast-milk-sugar-free-vanilla-dried fig-cranberry smoothies, red bull and vodka, and they order “small Caesar salads, hold the croutons, no cheese either, and put the dressing on the side so that I can use none of it, and then throw it out at the end of the meal.”

The second fact that bothers me about anti-Californianism is the fact that it’s commonly based on our so-called ‘lousy driving skills.’ On this point, I would like to vehemently argue that Californians, by and large, are actually the greatest drivers that I have ever encountered in this nation (And I base my ability to judge American drivers on the fact that I’ve lived in California, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, Iowa, and Oregon, and I’ve spent considerable amounts of time in 45 of our 50 states.) Californian drivers are excellent drivers because they (not we, I’m an Oregonian now!) follow only the rules that are necessary to uphold a basic system of safety, and they pass cars at will in order to alleviate traffic congestion. They also don’t slow down to a complete stop before turning right off of any road, (and thereby causing miles of traffic to build up as everyone behind said car has to come to a complete stop in order to allow the car to turn right) and the best Californian driving habit? They actually use that funny clicking metronome on the steering wheel, known to most drivers as a “turn signal” to let surrounding traffic know exactly what they’re intentions are as they drive.

With that rant successfully off my back, I would now like to submit my official application for Oregonian Transplant Surgery. I, Mike Oppenheim, for the following and preceding reasons, feel that I must sever any and all ties with California, permanently, and feel that I deserve a legitimate Portland residency status, absent of rude glares and mocking, sarcastic jokes based on the location of my former home state:

Section I. My Reasons for Emigration:

A. The traffic in any major California city is beyond my feeble human comprehension. It takes too long to travel even one mile, and the constant idling cars are contributing horrible gases into our shared atmosphere, rendering us all lab rats for the great experiment that is man-induced carbon monoxide poisoning.

B. The social decadence in California is out of control. Millions of residents not only voted Arnold Schwarzenegger into the gubernatorial office, but hundreds of thousands of residents similarly signed a recent petition to declare Paris Hilton ‘above the law’ due to her critical role as a social icon.

C. The price gouging is out of control; I simply refuse to spend twenty dollars for a snickers bar and a twenty-ounce bottle of Dasani Water that is basically tap water from the Coca-Cola Factory.

D. It may seem petty and absurd, and it certainly detracts from my argument of contributing to the intellectual collectivism of Portland, but after two years of living in Portland, I can no longer stomach the idea of paying a sales tax. I don’t know when it happened, because I’m actually good at math, but I’ve somehow lost the ability to do basic math and calculate the cost of an item after sales tax, and I don’t like being surprised by how much something actually costs me after a cashier rings me up with her ‘add sales tax button,’ nor do I enjoy configuring sales tax into my tip at a restaurant.

Section II. My request for Citizenship:

There’s an old adage that says, “Transplant Surgery is a painless experience, all you have to do is give in to the noxious gases that put your mind to rest, and then trust some stranger with a knife.” Okay, I made that up. Seriously, Native Portlandians (or is it Portlanders?), I beseech thee; I’m not asking for you to extend any special rights to us transplants, nor am I requesting that you hold a holiday in our honor. All I’m asking for is that you relax, and trust me when I tell you that if you allow us non-locals to transplant ourselves, then I think you’ll find out that Californians, New Yorkers, Wisconsinites, and anyone else from any other red or blue state who willingly moves to Portland actually has a lot of good to offer you and your city!

After all, we wouldn’t be headed here in droves if this place weren’t truly magical. I mean; do you see a lot of people hurriedly moving to Las Vegas? (Actually, according to my research, that’s a really bad example, because apparently Las Vegas is actually the fastest growing city in America, not Portland—Go figure!)

The point I’m trying to make is simple; Portland is beautiful, has the best ‘bang for your buck’ weather that I’ve ever lived with, it has the nicest, most intelligent and socially conscious populace I’ve ever had the pleasure to share a city with, and last, but certainly not least, Portland is a city with a great sense of self-deprecatory humor and a complete and utter lack of pretension, which is more than enough to make any Californian, who loves the weather there, but hates their social structure, uncontrollably salivate and drool on the spot. And all of these reason combine to make Portland, in my not-so-humble-in-the-slightest-bit-opinion, the greatest city in America. And if those reasons aren’t enough to persuade you, I’ll end my application with a vague threat: Portlanders, if you grant me full residency privileges, I promise to stop inviting all my friends from high school and college to come visit, and I’ll tell them this place stinks!