Isaac Brock On Portland: "What a collection of human turds." The Modest Mouse frontman tells Poland about the dark side of weirdness. Isaac Brock and Modest Mouse just played the Heineken-sponsored Open'er music festival in Gdynia, a little Baltic port town in Poland best known for the Heineken-sponsored Open'er music festival, which also featured Mumford & Sons, a band that is the musical equivalent of Heineken. Anyway, the Poles were super excited to know about Portland. Via Isaac Brock, this is what the people of Gdynia, Poland, now know about Portland: - "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." - "Portland is weird, but it's kind of a crappy weird. It is the most vagrant-ridden [city]—it's really fuckin' up my liberal mind. I'm just like, what a collection of human turds." - "Within the one week before I came on this tour, I had to run people out of my house. Twice with axes." - "Two people died. This is within 300 feet of my house. It's just a constant shitshow of fights. And that's just Portland keeping itself weird." - "Portland is like the last vestige of the die-hard hippie. Actually, Eugene, Ore., is. But some of them end up moving to Portland to sell crafts and weed." - "I'm really worried because weed's legal as of now, and so many of my unemployable friends have just lost their job to legal weed. Who's gonna buy their dried-up shit when you can actually get really good weed?...They gotta start a job program for the unemployed. Some of these people have no backup plan. Selling weed, that was it." - "It's a cool city. But a lot of the keeping itself weird is actually just allowing people to be complete pieces of shit. And that's exhausting." http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-...ortland_what_a_collection_of_human_turds.html
You don't like Portland Sly? Then why be here? Portland rocks. Having lived in L.A., S.F., and Sac, PDX wins by a mile.
I love Portland but there are a lot of problems that are being ignored or being made worse. We do have a homeless problem. Very serious one that is only getting worse. Portland has not addressed the growing crime problem, instead they've moved it out to the east county, an area that for the last 3 months has been averaging gang violence every other day. Our current mayor, and I'm not making this up, when as specifically asked what his plan was to stimulate the local economy talked about more food carts and bike lanes. I like and frequent some of the food carts but come on, they run a cash only business so you know they aren't paying taxes and hire maybe 1 or 2 people. I enjoy weird being a flavor of the city but not the overall theme.
Modest mouse has always sucked big fat cock. I make better music when my shit hits the water in the toilet bowl
Modest Mouse was the shit back when I was in high school and I still rock some of their early work when I'm feeling a bit nostalgic. Their new album is absolutely horrible, though. And he just picked the wrong neighborhood to live in.
If the rock'n roll rodent wants to live like a stable suburbanite, join the rat race and get a steady non-musical job.
This is why you don't move to NE kiddies. It's all hip and cool until you have to run a homeless person out of your home with an ax. I lived in SW Portland for 32 years. Never had to run anyone out of my house. Zero homeless people. Almost completely devoid of human turds.
These types are going to be continually pushed further east. Gentrification is booming, especially in NE/SE Portland. Pushing the hippies out like L.A. did to the cholos of Echo Park.
That's because the album they released like three months ago was their first in EIGHT YEARS. Lazy bums.
You should listen to the podcast Roderick On The Line... he has similar opinions of Portland (and Seattle, and Bellingham), and is also an indie rocker who hasn't released music in a while. Plus there's some great, hilarious stories he tells. http://www.merlinmann.com/roderick/ep-21-dead-rubber-girl-in-my-closet.html The best episode.
