As a proud East Coaster, I have to admit that I have what is most likely a warped perception of Portland, Ore., one framed mostly through episodes of Portlandia. As far as I can tell, it’s a lovely place; a place I can’t imagine anyone not liking.
Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock lives in Portland, and does not share my idyllic views of the city. The band was recently in Poland for a festival, and Brock was asked some questions about the city, but his answers weren’t exactly glowing endorsements.
“I didn’t mean to live in Portland. It was kind of an accident—I mean, the equivalent of my car breaking down there and me being like, well…I guess this is what I’m doing. I just can’t find a better alternate.”
I’m sorry, sir. But that’s kind of a lame excuse. You’d think with the money you made off “Float On” you could A) buy a new car and B) drive that new car to a different city.
“Portland is weird, but it’s kind of a crappy weird. It is the most vagrant-ridden [city]—it’s really f*ckin’ up my liberal mind. I’m just like, what a collection of human turds.”
Wouldn’t someone with a “liberal mind” be inclined to try and help these “human turds?” Just throwing that out there.
“Within the one week before I came on this tour, I had to run people out of my house. Twice with axes.”
Multiple axes? Holy smokes, Isaac Brock! That’s pretty impressive. Or, wait, was it two times and one ax? Either way, I would have used a frying pan. I guess people are tougher out west.
“Two people died. This is within 300 feet of my house. It’s just a constant sh*tshow of fights. And that’s just Portland keeping itself weird.”
Hopefully they didn’t die from ax wounds. If so, Brock has some explaining to do.
“It’s a cool city. But a lot of the keeping itself weird is actually just allowing people to be complete pieces of sh*t. And that’s exhausting.”
It seems to me that Brock and I have different definitions of “exhausting.” Raising a kid, running a marathon, keeping up with Donald Trump’s antics… those things are exhausting. “Allowing people to be complete pieces of sh*t? I’m not entirely sure how that’s exhausting. If anything, keeping them from being “complete pieces of sh*t” sounds far more exhausting than allowing them to be that way.
Either way, I think it’s safe to say that Portland mayor Kyle MacLachlan won’t be enlisting Brock and Modest Mouse for any Portland tourism campaigns anytime soon.
(Via Willamette Week)
