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Salem is a great place to live, work, and play. But let's be honest: it's too boring. Our city needs a healthy dose of out-of-the-ordinariness. In other words, strangeness.
Together, we can Strange Up Salem.
If you don't know what this means, no worries. I don't either. Not really. This is a venture into the unknown, an open-ended "happening," not a path to a set destination.
I want to explore how we all can do our part to make Oregon's capital more than a blandburger sandwiched between the spicy buns of Portland and Eugene.
Today the Salem (Oregon) Statesman Journal had a great column, "The beauty of Salem(ia)" by K. Williams Brown, the coolest, hippest, most with-it writer on their payroll. And the reason I'm saying that is only partly because one day I hope she'll say something nice about me in print.
I heartily agreed with her take on Salem that was stimulated by her involvement with "Salemia," our city's cinematic response to "Portlandia," which had its premiere last Wednesday as part of the Salem Film Festival. Download The beauty of Salem(ia)
Salem's worth is like seeing ultraviolet light. When we look at a flower, we see nothing. When a bee looks at a flower, it glows electric.
This stands in sharp contrast to the pleasures of a big city, which are obvious. You go to Manhattan, and it's Manhattan. No one needs to tell you about the tall buildings, the way the sidewalk shakes when the subway whooshes somewhere beneath you. No one needs to tell you you're at the center of the world because it's self-evident.
But the pleasures of a smaller city take longer. You can't see them at first, even if you live here. Someone passing on Interstate 5 wouldn't have a clue.
OK, agreed.
Brown correctly extols the friendliness of Salem, once you've lived here long enough to make some friends. And she points out how easy it is to make social connections, if you're a socially-minded Salemite who is into connecting with people.
Those qualities aren't visible, though. They're the urban culture equivalent of ultraviolet light that warms, or burns, without being apparent to the casual observer.
Like Brown, I also went to the premiere of "Salemia." It felt good when some old friends whom I hadn't seen for quite a while sat down in the seats next to me. That would be much less likely to happen in a big city like Portland, and I'm grateful for Salem's appealing small town feel.
But it's time (way past time, really) for Salem to evolve out of its ultraviolet phase of development. I'm tired of having friends and relatives visit from out of state and being stumped when my wife and I think, "What to do?"
Salem sucks when it comes to engaging, vibrant, walkable, creative, artistic, energetic mixed use cityscapes. There's no neighborhood anything like Portland's NW 23rd Street, one of my favorite places to visit.
I get this "inner beauty" and "secret treasures" stuff. I'm just eager for Salem to blossom with some outward beauty and manifest treasures also. Brown's words resonated with me:
I am always skeptical of those constant Salem boosters, those people who can do nothing but make grocery lists of why Salem is awesome and you just don't realize it yet.
If something is good, you don't need to go around saying it's good all the time. It speaks for itself. I don't need to spend the effort convincing you I have red hair, because I do.
But at the same time, the temptation to speak up for and defend Salem is constant because the things that give it value are not always visible to the naked eye.
Not only "not always." I'd say "almost never."
The places in Salem that give you a rush of Oh, yeah! are few and far between. Mostly the best we can say is That was all right. Like I said in one of my first Strange Up Salem posts:
At the risk of sounding like a phone sex line... I know what you want. You’re hungry for it. You’re hot for it. You’ve gotten tantalizing glimpses of what you lust for, but it’s been frustratingly out of reach.
What I’m talking about is a stranger Salem. Meaning, a city with sights, sounds, people, places, and other delights that make us go ooh, ah, and give me more rather than ho-hum, so lame.
Before too long the first two episodes of "Salemia" should be online and the 149,000 or so Salem residents who haven't yet seen the film will have a chance to do so. "Salemia" does a great job of taking the lame in Salem and making it quirkily appealing.
Hey, that's better than letting our lameness remain as it so often is: an irritant rather than an asset.
Check out the "Salemia" film trailer. It'll give you a taste of "Salemia," and a teasing glimpse of the film's undisputed star: Lloyd Chapman, who finally succeeded in becoming Salem's mayor (or at least, Salemia's).
It's time we faced the facts, fellow Salemians: we live in a cursed city. I proposed this notion about a year ago in "Salem's curse continues: riverfront development stalls." The evidence for cursedness was strong then; it's even stronger now.
I've come up with the Salem Curse theory because it explains why the city remains the zero point at the center of four engaging compass headings. I'm pretty sure that somewhere along the urbanization line Salem sold its soul and now is doomed to live with minimal spirit.
To the north is oh-so-trendy Portland. To the south is oh-so-hip Eugene. To the west is the beautiful Pacific Coast. To the east is the majestic Cascade Mountains. And in the middle sits...
Nowhere land.
Thus the curse of Oregon's capital isn't to be infected with evil. Hey, that'd be interesting, cool, something to be proud of. (Las Vegas does just fine with that sort of curse.)
No, Salem's curse is existential.
It's to be doomed with a void at the barely beating heart of our slow-moving metropolis. It's a lack of creative energy, a deficit of imagination, an emptiness that blocks attempts to cure the lethargy that infects Big Ideas and turns them into a shadow of themselves.
Last weekend my wife and I were in Bend. It's got a river running through it, just like Salem does. Except, Bend has made good use of its river. You can shop, dine, recreate, and walk along it.
Salem's river is mostly just a glance from a car window as you speed across a bridge from one side to the other. As noted in the above-linked post, efforts to improve Salem's riverfront have stalled.
So now, instead of staring at ugly Boise Cascade industrial buildings, we'll be treated to the sight of them half-demolished.
Then there's the site of the former Fairview Training Center.
My wife and I used to be investors in Sustainable Fairview Associates, the LLC that bought the property from the state with marvelous plans to develop the several hundred acres into a Green community that would be a model of environmental cutting-edge'ness for the nation.
So far, as with the riverfront, not much has happened. Pringle Creek Community peeled off thirty-some acres and has made some promising progress, with a few pioneering homeowners now living there.
But Sustainable Fairview Associates is still looking for someone to fulfil the dream that is still just that: a vision, not reality.
While Wilsonville's Villebois followed the same trajectory as Fairview for a while -- both are sustainable mixed use ventures being built on a former state property -- Villebois was named the 2010 Community of the Year by the National Association of Home Builders.
And Fairview isn't really any sort of community at all. Again, it's the Salem curse at work. Great ideas take root and flourish in other parts of Oregon. In Salem, most of them wither.
Salem's Courthouse Square debacle is another example of our city's curse. Only in Salem would a ten year old county building and transit center that takes up a full city block be declared utterly unusable.
More proof that something metaphysically out of the ordinary is going on here: nobody, absolutely nobody, has been found to be responsible for Courthouse Square's exceedingly early demise (except a dead guy who can't speak for himself).
What's to be done about Salem's curse?
I don't know. I'm no expert in exorcising a city. Besides, we aren't talking about a supernatural problem. Salem's blahness is decidedly observable. It is easily sensed by anyone who spends more than a little time here.
I came up with my Strange Up Salem notion as an out-of-the-ordinary antidote to the ho-hum vibe that permeates the city I've lived in or near for thirty-four years. Having seen grand ambitions for a more vibrant Salem fail repeatedly, I'm now a believer that -- as I said in this post -- we are the strange that we've been waiting for.
So screw the fact that the riverfront is largely a pile of ugly rubble. Screw the failure of Sustainable Fairview to be a model Green community. Screw the derelict Courthouse Square project that's added a useless square block to a downtown which already has lots of vacant storefronts.
You, me, us -- we can look the Salem Curse right in the eye and say, "You got no control over me, bro." We can be as energetic, creative, eccentric, wild, and crazy as we want to be, strange creatures prowling in the Land of Blah, roaming free and happily.
Here's the last of my "columns" that were written for publication in Salem Weekly, but found a home in the blogosphere for reasons described before.
In this piece I share some of my favorite Twitter tweets that kicked off our semi-fair city's video response to "Portlandia" -- Salemia. Over on my HinesSight blog I've chronicled this appealingly strange happening here, here, here, here, and here.
Read on...
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"Salemia" video aims to Strange Up Salem
In early February “Salemia” touched off a craze among Salem’s Twittersphere. It all began when filmmaker Mike Perron tweeted, “Salemia. Opening scene: five hipsters fighting over a half smoked cigarette outside Chelsea's place...”
(For those who aren’t tuned in to all things social networking’ish, on Twitter you share thoughts about whatever in 140 characters or less -- a tweet; other people subscribe to your Twitter feed, as you do in turn, leading to a sort of communal consciousness.)
Perron’s creative notion was to imagine what a local version of the Independent Film Channel’s “Portlandia” would be like. Portlandia pokes fun at our oh-so-cool neighbor to the north.
Classic line in the opening episode: Portland is the city where young people go to retire.
Keep Portland Weird is a rallying cry for residents who want to preserve their city’s uniqueness. Since I feel an urgent need to Strange Up Salem, my guess was that when other Twitter’ers started sharing their own “Salemia” scene ideas, boring would be a more common theme than bizarre.
I was right. Here’s some of my favorite tweets from the first wave of Salemia sharings.
Woman choosing the right pajamas for going to Winco. At 12:30 in the afternoon.
Visitors mistakenly believe zombie apocalypse has hit the town because shops close and streets empty before dark.
Man with Decemberists ringtone receives call downtown after 6 p.m. Arrested for noise violation.
County also changes motto from “Where Good Things Happen...” to “Where Good Straight Things Happen...”
New York Times feature 36 Hours in Salem only features must-hit pawn shops.
National Guard called out for crowd control after opening of 148th Subway Restaurant in Salem creates frenzied joy among locals.
Stylish NY woman in high heels and designer miniskirt arrested in downtown Salem for streetwalking. Also, breaking blue jean law.
(The last two tweets came from me, so it’s no wonder I like them.)
Humor is a terrific window for opening up a view of someone’s or something’s essence. What makes us laugh often is an exaggerated insight that makes us think, “over the top, yet so true.”
The Salemia Twitter frenzy has pointed out a lot that is strange about our city. Problem is, much of that strangeness isn’t adorable. It’s irritating, depressing, a downer.
What we’ve got to do is embrace, foster, and magnify the uniquely creatively quirky side of Salem. Our city never will be as weird as Portland or Eugene. And that’s fine.
After all, our comparative normalcy can be honored as the stabilizing force between two Weird Poles, keeping the Willamette Valley I-5 corridor in balance.
Salem just needs to be all the strange that it can be. We can turn up the Wow! and Far Out! dials of our CityVision set a lot further without running the risk of getting an over-bizarre picture.
Here's another of my "columns" that were written for publication in Salem Weekly, but found a home in the blogosphere for reasons described before.
In this piece I undermine the argument that keeping Salem, Oregon bland, traditional, and boringly middle-of-the-road is good for economic development. That's utterly wrong.
Read on to learn why.
--------------------------------------------------------------- Strange Up Salem -- it'll bring jobs here
I hope there aren’t many Strange Up Salem skeptics, but some might say that this campaign to spice up our overly bland city is out of touch with the “jobs, jobs, jobs!” cry that dominates so much of social discourse these days.
They’d be wrong.
As noted in my first call-to-strangeness, something strange is out of the ordinary. And most businesses thinking about locating or expanding in Salem aren’t interested in ordinariness.
After all, what they’d be offering is an alternative to what is available here now. So they’re looking for evidence that people who live here are going to be open to fresh possibilities.
Thus if we Strange Up Salem, we’re engaging in economic development. Along with making this town more creative, fun, dynamic, and appealing.
Consider Trader Joe’s. My wife and I love to shop at their stores. Whenever we’d go to a Trader Joe’s in Portland or Eugene we’d ask, “Any plans to open a store in Salem?”
The reply always was negative or non-committal. Then our hopes were further crushed when, in July 2009, Trader Joe’s announced it was opening a store in Corvallis.
Freaking Corvallis! Amazing. Salem was a city of 155,000 people; Corvallis had 55,000. I'm old, but young enough to know what these acronyms stand for: OMG! WTF?
It seemed that Salem residents were about one-third as amenable to a Trader’s Joe’s as Corvallis folks. In a news story at that time, differing educational and income levels in the two cities were offered up as the reason why Trader Joe’s came to Corvallis first.
But in my current strange-a-centric view of reality, Salem’s strangeness deficit largely was to blame. Too many people here aren’t open to something new and different, whether culinary or otherwise.
A Trader’s Joe’s doesn’t offer the same old stuff that can be found in a regular supermarket. To many (including quite a few of our relatives), food that is healthy and organic is disturbingly strange. They won’t buy or eat it.
Fortunately, a Trader Joe’s is slated to open on south Commercial soon. Salem will have a much-needed alternative grocery shopping option. And I’m confident that plenty of people are going to flock to the store. (My wife and I will remain loyal LifeSource customers also).
Bottom line: A place and the people who live there are intimately intertwined. If we want Salem to be a more interesting and lively place, we have to cultivate those qualities in ourselves.
Free enterprise is adept at filling voids. When there is unfulfilled demand for new and different, a.k.a. strangeness, individuals and businesses will offer up out-of-the-ordinary wares.
Salem is going to be as boring or as vibrant as the people who live here are. Together we can Strange Up Salem. Become a Facebook fan and Twitter follower.
Here's my call to arms -- or rather, strangeness -- for the citizens of Salem, Oregon. Also for those anywhere in the world who enjoy tasting life with more than a little strange sprinkled on top.
As noted in an earlier post, a version of what you'll read below was written as a column for Salem's alternative newspaper. Next week I'll share two other pieces that are now destined for publication in cyberspace rather than newsprint.
When I read the hot-off-my-laptop version of this to my wife, she said "It's got a lot of energy." Ah, a great review! That's exactly how I felt about what I'd written.
Strangeness touches me deeply. Like I say, the most interesting people I've known have been compellingly strange. Also, the people I've loved the most, notably my wonderfully strange mother.
I want to love Salem with the same sort of passion. If it grows stranger, someday I will.
--------------------------------------------------------------- Strange Up Salem! You know you want it.
At the risk of sounding like a phone sex line... I know what you want. You’re hungry for it. You’re hot for it. You’ve gotten tantalizing glimpses of what you lust for, but it’s been frustratingly out of reach.
What I’m talking about is a stranger Salem. Meaning, a city with sights, sounds, people, places, and other delights that make us go ooh, ah, and give me more rather than ho-hum, so lame.
Through this blog and other ways, I’m out to Strange Up Salem. In the very best sense of “strange.” Our city can be out of the ordinary -- creative, passionate, energetic, artistic, forward looking, individualistic, vibrant, soul-satisfying.
We no longer need to accept Salem being the blandburger stuck between the spicy buns of Portland and Eugene. This town can be excitingly meaty (or tofu’y; I’m a vegetarian) in its own sensuously special ways.
How will this happen? What will speed up the evolution of Salem into the place we long for it to be?
Us. You and me. Everybody.
If our marvelously unique President were to offer his advice, I imagine him saying, “You are the strange that you’ve been waiting for.” We are the people who are going to Strange Up Salem.
Not outside businesses, developers, politicians, artists, or creative class immigrants. Us. To adapt another well-known self-improvement phrase, we need a city-wide mantra: “Every day, in every way, I’m getting stranger and stranger.”
At one point in my life I worried about being considered strange. Now, I consider it a compliment. The most interesting people I’ve known, the most fascinating places I’ve been to, the most unforgettable experiences I’ve had -- they’ve all been compellingly strange.
This is why I feel qualified to preach a Strange Up Salem gospel: I’m strange, and I adore strange.
So much so, I've come to see strangeness as resting at the heart of many fascinating areas of human understanding that I love to learn about: neuroscience, philosophy, spirituality, land use, politics, physics, cosmology, psychology, artistry.
I’m looking forward to exploring the twists and turns, boundaries, and qualities of strangeness on this blog. Often I'll link posts here with my other blogs, HinesSight (more personal/political) and Church of the Churchless (more philosophical/spiritual).
I hope you'll be a part of this exploration.
Strange Up Salem should be a communal happening, a venture into uncharted territory where we all stand on the border between who each of us is now, and what our city is now, and say Onward, into strangeness as we boldly take creative steps into the unknown.
Which is another way of saying, I have no idea. Of exactly where Strange Up Salem is going. Of precisely how Salem should change for it to be the city we long for. Of what I’m going to write after I type these words.
And that’s a good thing. Strangeness blossoms in the fertile soil of openness. When we’re absolutely certain, the strangling Boring Weed doesn’t allow ooh and ah fruit to ripen.
Help fertilize Strange Up Salem.
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Over on one of my other blogs, HinesSight, I've told the tale of how I was approached by A.P. Walther, publisher of Salem Weekly (our city's alternative newspaper), and asked if I'd be interested in doing some writing for his publication.
I sure was! At first.
But unfortunately the editor of Salem Weekly and I had some creative disagreements. So after trying my best to bridge our differences, I decided to embrace creativity in my own Strange Up Salem fashion.
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