The Most Controversial Building in Portland

I came home one night in late May to find a KATU reporter standing on the sidewalk in front of my home, having people read Internet rants about how awful we were to live in our building.

Been meaning to write about this awhile, but since I leaked it on Facebook today on a friend's feed, I might as well as well come out of the closet.  We live here.

LEED-certified building in Portland designed to withstand waves of hatred

As I mentioned on Facebook, before we signed the lease,  Red and I did not see the much-despised marketing video featuring the fictitious tenants "Luke and Jess,"  but it probably would not have changed our minds (despite backwards baseball caps being the international sign of douchery).

At the time, back in early January, we were less a week back from our long trip, and I just wanted to stop paying a hundred and thirty bucks a night for the hotel in northwest Portland where we were staying at the time. I told Red that the rent at our new place seemed absurdly cheap by comparison (and by comparison to anything in New York or San Francisco, etc.). We had our pick of multiple new units.

Three days later we had our stuff moved in, and our bikes stowed in the basement room, still with some of the decorations on them from last year's Burning Man.

In the months that followed, especially while I was still working for the Big Publishing Company, I spent much of my days up in the sky lounge on the roof working on my laptop, sometimes with other residents but mostly by myself. 

Almost every day the property manager gave a tour to a prospective tenant while I am there. I felt as if I had been cast in some kind of on-going performance art piece.

The big glass windows up there in the sky lounge allow a magnificent vista throughout much of eastside Portland and across the river to the skyline of downtown. Almost nothing obstructs the view for miles around. You can even see Mount Hood most days.

A narrow walkway crosses the middle the roof. It's good for a short stroll when I am feeling restless. Supposedly there are fifty restaurants in the surrounding blocks. Off to the west, the tops of the  tallest towers of downtown blend right into the line of ragged Douglas-firs at the crest of the West Hills right behind them. I probably spend more time upon the roof than anyone in the building. Recently I told a friend by text that being up there felt like standing on the deck of ship in the "Gulf of Trendy."

That was all before I stumbled upon the marketing video of Luke and Jess (I was looking for something about the building to send to architect friend of mine in Colorado, since he designs places like this). I thought the video was rather daft because Luke and Jess supposedly have lived here for 18 months, although the building has been open less than a a year.

Then the articles startled coming out in Willamette Week, the local alternative weekly. Half a dozen about the building have popped up in my news feed since the first of May. I recognized the first one by the photo. Most have been about the "controversy."

For some reason, the building has really touched a nerve.  It became a meme on the Portland Reddit, mostly in an ironic sense about the hipster complaining about it. The local t.v. news said the marketing video has inspired "visceral hate" by many Portlanders.

Honestly when we chose this place, were just looking for a decent place to live. I wanted a place that didn't smell of mold, like every cheap room I ever had in Salem back in my college days. For some reason, that wound up putting me smack dab in the center of the gentrification drama of PDX 2015 (the year they removed the carpet).

But who can complain? A couple weeks ago, I overhead the property manager tell a prospective tenant that the unoccupied retail space on the first floor, which has been unoccupied all this time, is soon going to be the home a new hip place to eat and drink. It's going to be a coffee shop by day, and a tiki lounge by night, she said.

Last week the print edition WW had a cartoon of the building on the cover, with the title "Grow Up Portland." The cartoon has a guy waving from the roof...