Strange Up Salem

"Salemia" video aims to Strange Up Salem

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.

Together we can Strange Up Salem. Become a Facebook fan and Twitter follower.

Strange Up Salem -- it'll bring jobs here

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.

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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?

Well, the way I saw it, the population numbers told the story.

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.

Strange Up Salem! You know you want it.

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.

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.

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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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Most importantly: be strange.