Authors name: Eric Fowler

Location: Arcata, California

Title of essay: Gentrification and the Yipster: Portlandias Representation of a Weird and
White Northeast Portland
Abstract:
Locally enforced by a citywide mantra of Keep Portland Weird and
nationally enforced by a Portlandia television series, Portland is frequently
touted as a hip and creative metropolis to which a perceived in-city
fetishization of "all things independent" and "cool is often attached. Though,
as a contrast to the presumed creative diversity lacing these cool cultural
confines, demographics indicate a stark deficiency in ethnic diversity within
Portland. In this context, the neighborhood-changing process of gentrification
has herein displaced an African-American population from their historic roots
in Northeast Portland since the early 1990s. Gauging Portlandia to be a work
that does work by shaping meanings towards social/racial justice issues like
gentrification in its on-screen representation of Portland, this paper argues the
following: Portlandia's content bolsters (1) Portland's garnering of a national
reputation for whiteness/weirdness and (2) the marginalization of a gentrified
populace (NE Portland nonwhites) by normalizing a decidedly white ideal of
consumer capitalism.
University affiliation: Humboldt State University
Contact information:
Email: ehf9@humboldt.edu
Phone: 503-957-5842
Address: 1092 10th street. Arcata, CA. 95521

Eric Fowler
Gentrification and the Yipster:
Portlandias Representation of a Weird and White Northeast Portland
INTRODUCTION
Portland is recognized by academia and mass media alike for not only its livability, but
also its observed range of progressive politics, ethically responsible businesses, and
environmentally sustainable policy developments. Particularly enforced by the nationally
televised comedy program of Portlandia, Oregons largest city is frequently touted as hip and
creative, attached both with a fervent artisan economy and a general affinity amongst its
residents for all things independent and cool in line with its citywide mantra of Keep
Portland Weird(Moon 2013, 1; Turnquist 2010, 1). Amid the perceived tolerance and creative
diversity lacing these cool cultural confines of Portlands urban spaces, demographic statistics
indicate a striking deficiency in actual ethnic diversity. With the 2010 census reporting in the
citys population as 76.1% White (444,254 people) and 6.3% Black or African American (36,778
people), the metropolis of Portland is therefore indubitably white (US Census Bureau 2010). As
a contrast to perceptions of Portlands seeming progressiveness, this assertion is supported by the
citys recent entrustment with the title of Americas ultimate white city (Renn 2009). Here
within a context scarce diversity, the neighborhood-changing process of gentrification has
effectively displaced an already small African American population from their historic roots in
neighborhoods dotting the citys Northeast side. The citys lack of direct attention to social/racial
justice issues such as gentrification offers a foundation for the following statement to build upon:
Portlandia, set and filmed in the notably hip metropolis of its namesake, provides a lens through
which varied sociocultural effects of gentrification within Northeast Portland can be understood.

Spanned from the early 1990s to present-day, a gentrifier group characterized between
the two phenomena of hipsterism and yuppiedom is implicated in the displacement of AfricanAmerican residents within Northeast Portland. Influxes of this emergent creative class of
gentrifiers who are designated by demographic traits (particularly whiteness and wealth)
attributed to yuppies and attitude/taste/value tendencies associated with hipsters, hereafter
referred to as yipsters, are seen by applied methods in the ensuing research as part and parcel
of a television reel representation of a real Portland (Aitken 2006, 327). The reel refers to the
cinematic city of Portlandias on-screen images of Portland. The real, in contrast, appertains to
the real-life concrete city of Portlandthe inspiration and subject of which Portlandias
content is concerned (Da Costa 2003, 192). Drawn upon a methodological framework used
previously by scholars within the film geography subdiscipline, the reels representation of the
real is examined via textual analysis (also known as content analysis) of three seasons of
Portlandia. Given this reel-real relationship, a broad aim of the paper is to gain insight into how
a Portlandia depiction of the interrelated facets of yipsterism, whiteness, and weirdness is used
to create meanings towards gentrified Portland places/spaces and their predominant occupants of
past (non-whites) and present (white yipsters). This examination expands into an analysis of how
Portlandias visual setting and portrayal of gentrified areas (e.g. NE Portland coffee shops,
bookstores, restaurants opened since the early 1990s) operates to encapsulate/enhance/intensify
the gentrification process marginalizing effects upon an increasingly displaced populace of nonwhite NE Portland residents.
With textual analysis investigating both the NE Portland-gentrifying group of yipsters
and a three season-spanned television series of Portlandia in their active roles as value-loaded
social drivers for which (1) Portlands image can be enforced or further contrived and (2) the

sociocultural effects of Portland-area gentrification can be bolstered, the research aims to answer
the following questions: how does Portlandias representation of NE Portland reflect and/or
ignore the sociocultural impacts of this areas gentrification? And, therein, how does this
Portlandia portrayal work to construct meanings towards the gentrifying yipsters place
identities in relation to gentrified spaces?
Employing a textual analysis of Portlandia bounded in a theoretical framework
constituent of concepts put forth within radical geography/Parmenidian philosophy/filmic
geography (Fowler forthcoming), the writing examines implications of Portlandias meaningladen construction of Portlands image as a seemingly natural setting for the intertwined
sociocultural features of whiteness, weirdness, and yipsterism to exist in sync. In this analysis of
the value-loaded meanings created by Portlandia pertaining to (1) gentrified NE Portland
spaces/places and (2) the consumption habits lacing the lifestyles/attitudes/demographics of
Portlands yipsters, an argument is developed. The research contends that, first, Portlandia acts
as a force in Portlands further garnering of a national reputation as a weird and white city.
Second, Portlandia contributes to the marginalization of a gentrified populace of nonwhites in
NE Portland by normalizing Portland as a white space and enforcing the white ideal of
consumer capitalism by glorifying deemed yipster (Fowler forthcoming) consumption habits
(Atkinson 2011, 112; Burnett 1986; Gordinier 2012; Guthman 2003). Iterating whiteness as a
crucial module of the yipster lifestyle symbolically tied to the pleasures of a consumption-led
identity, Portlandias on-film representation of Portland is thus seen as a cinematic/social agent
or something that does work to shape meanings towards the array of harrowing real-life
consequences that the process of gentrification in NE Portland holds for a gentrified populace of
working class non-whites (Aitken 2006; Atkinson 2011; Da Costa 2003).

Gentrification is broadly defined as a process that modifies a neighborhoods character

and composition, culminating in the direct and indirect displacement of lower income
households with higher income households (Papachristo 2011, 216). In the case of NE Portland,
arguments in the proceeding writing assert that consequences of gentrification (and its associated
displacement) are glorified, intensified, and normalized by way of the content, visual setting, and
commentary of a Portlandia TV series.
THEORETICAL CONTEXT
Seeking to understand how Portlandias depiction of NE Portland ignores the
sociocultural impacts of the areas gentrification transpiring from the 1990s to present, I draw on
relevant literatures of representation, yuppiedom, hipsterism, and gentrification in order to situate
Portlandia (and its portrayal of yipsterism) as a value-weighted social/cinematic space that
creates meanings in relation to NE Portland locales. This literature review therein formulates a
theoretical context for the ensuing filmic geography investigation to proceed within.
Representation
Historically, the most powerful engagement in filmic geography studies with the
relationship between the cinematic city and concrete city (ie: Portlandia and Portland) has been
advanced on the level of representation (Shiel 2011). The complex notion of representation, a
description/portrayal of someone or something in a particular way or as being of a certain
nature, is at the core of scientific practice, intrinsic to geographic research, and is even seen as a
summarization of the whole process of knowledge production itself (Oxford Press; Soderstrom
2011, 11).
Suggested in its Greek etymology as earth writinggeo denoting earth and graphia
denoting writinggeography is inherently involved in the act of representation (Gren 1994). In

effect, the discipline bears the world as it is experienced or understood and proceeds to represent
this world as images defined within the interweaving categories of written (e.g. novels), oral (e.g.
podcasts), and/or visual (e.g. films) mediums (Gomez 2010; Gren 1994). Exemplifying the latter
category (visual medium representations) and iterating a fluidity present amongst these varying
mediums depiction of earths geography, film content such as Portlandia combine visual and
oral aspects through both moving-images and sound film/audio.
Viewing representation as central to the discipline, attempts by geographers to theorize
this labyrinthine notion are drawn upon the work ofamong others Foucault, Heidegger,
Lefebvre, Derrida, Rory, Harvey, Deleuze, Plato and Parmenides (e.g.: Soderstrom 2011; Gren
1994; Heidegger 1962; Soja 1989). Regarding the latter duo in this list, scholarship on
representation is perceived to be rooted in a foundation split between two primary schools of
thought: the contrasting Ancient Greek philosophies of Plato and Parmenides. Accentuating
Ancient Greeces influence in the shaping of Western civilization as it is known today (in areas
of politics, medicine, sport, law, etc.), Soderstrom (2011, 12) explains the importance of this
Platos-Parmenides dichotomy as an undergird to the problematisation and conceptualization of
representation in geography:
For Parmenides, Man is taken in the flow of the world, s/he is primarily a hearer
of the world, and this is why the world cannot be an image. For Plato, on the
contrary, the world is primarily seen, put in front of us, and can thus become an
object of representation.
Contrasting Platos perception of representation focused on contemplation and perceiving
the world as an image or object placed in front of us, Parmenides stance emphasizes a
dynamism, an action, and/or a flow inherent to representation processes. The stated dichotomy
exists as follows: Platonic philosophy stagnantly characterizes representation as an image of the
world simply channeling information via written/oral/visual mediums, while a Parmenidian

philosophy glances into the diffusive, affecting power of mediums representation as a platform
for engagement between Man, medium, and the social realm. An evaluation of how the
Portlandia film medium writes the world of Portland is thus applied through a Parmenidian
lens. This viewpoint is employed because, in the manner to which its mythic on-screen spaces
create meanings feeding into a Parmenidian-designated flow between Man and medium, the
Portlandia cinematic city renders itself a social force that moves far beyond merely providing a
quirky or weird image of the Portland concrete city as an object of representation. Hence the
ensuing investigation heads past simply seeing from a detached Platonic perspective, but also
attempts to hear Portlandia by examining the sociocultural embeddedness of its worksor its
filmic landscapes and depicted characters (i.e. yipsters)as social agents which do work through
value-loaded meaning creation (Aitken 2006).
Looking at Portlandias portrayal of whiteness, weirdness, and yipsterism, the theoretical
conception of representation applied in this investigation also draws on literature concerned with
alternative representations of the city that emerged in the 1970s with radical geography
(Soderstrom 2011, 13). In the midst of a broader crisis of representation era in the 1960s and
1970s in which the notion of knowledge as the assemblage of accurate representation is
critiqued, the seminal works of Harvey (1973) and Bunge (1971) insist on an idea that
geographical representations have an ideological character.
Teamed with this radical view of geographical representations in Portlandia as
constituent of an ideology (a system of ideas/ideals representative of real-life Portlands
economy, culture, and society) is Soderstroms assertion that representations of spatial realities
are often privileged in that they are principally represented by those in position of powerthe
largely upper-class elite. Here applying inquiries raised within Soderstroms work, a number of

broad questions in pertinence to the politics of representation of Portlandia to be included in the

following analysis are put forth. First, who in Portlandia has the power to produce authorized
representations of Portland? Second, what and/or who are the objects and/or subjects being
represented? And in this, what and/or who is denied representation in Portlandia? Regarding the
former two inquiries, Portlandias white and elite producers predominantly represent objects (the
what) and subjects (the who) in the form of (1) gentrified spaces and their newly acquired
establishments (e.g. quirky coffee shops, artisan knot stores) and (2) the gentrifier group deemed
at stake in the case of NE Portlandthe ever-idiosyncratic yipsters (Fowler forthcoming). In
terms of the latter question, it is argued that Portlandia both denies/ignores a gentrified populace
of nonwhites in NE Portland in normalizing Portland as a white space and enforcing the white
ideal of consumer capitalism though a glorification of privileged yipster consumption habits.
Portlandias representation serves a dual mechanism of ignoring the gentrified and glorifying the
gentrifiers, which, in effect, further contributes to marginalizing effects of the neighborhoodchanging process of gentrification in NE Portland. Just as early radical geographers Bunge
(1971) and Harvey (1973) pointed to urban realities not yet represented by mainstream cultural
geography as lenses used to understand representations of social and racial justice (i.e. Bunges
examination of the ideologies of spaces of death and power-driven machines in Fitzgerald, a
small, integrated neighborhood in late 1960s Detroit), Portlandia can herein be used to
understand the relationship between a nationally viewed TV series and social/racial justice issues
surrounding the gentrification of NE Portland spanned from the early 1990s.
Examining this TV series threefold representation of Portlands gentrified spaces,
whiteness, and weirdness as facets intrinsic to yipsterism consumption habits, the research
theorizes the concept of representation by applying a Parmenidian stance to evaluate

Portlandias sociocultural agency as a broker of value-loaded meaning. This conception of

representation rooted in Parmenidianism is additionally occupied by radical geographic focuses
concerned with Portlandias ideological character and its politics of representation.
Yipsterism (Yuppiedom/Hipsterism)
The counterpart phenomena of yuppies and hipstersformulating a group herein referred
to as yipstersare aptly and accurately characterize the identity of Portland residents at stake
the gentrification of NE Portland in an examination of their attitudes, consumer values, and
demographics. The former, yuppies or young upwardly mobile professionals, broadly refers to
predominantly white and wealthy college-degree earners with materialistic consumption patterns
directly allowed for by their generally high-earning jobs (Belk 1983; Burnett 1986; Guthman
2003; Hammond 1986). The latter yipster fundament, hipsters, serves in broad reference to a
contemporary subculture of what Kiran (2013, 1) deems to be young, semi-affluent, semi-artsy,
semi-ironic, and often white, though it is by no means confined to white people with
attitude/taste/value tendencies driven by a fetishization of seemingly anything deemed to be
authentic (Lorentzen 2007). Chiefly at blame for catalyzing gentrification processes in NE
Portland (from early 1990s to present), yipsters are disproportionately depicted in Portlandia by
comparison to the obverse gentrified populace of working class nonwhites.
Amidst a historically barren body of academic literature on yuppiedom, Burnett and Bush
(1986, 27) profiled young upwardly professional yuppies by demarcating their
attitudes/behaviors/personalities via six hypotheses. Constituting a comprehensive illustration of
what makes a yuppie tick, these hypotheses are defined as: more concern for personal
health; use of convenience products and services; confidence, optimism and
unemotionality; travel and relocation; positive attitudes toward advertising; and concern

for achieving success and acquiring material possessions (Burnett 1986, 27-35). The latter of
these hypothesesyuppies concern for material wealthis prudent to the purposes of this
Portlandia investigation. Yuppiedom is the yipsterism facet most exemplified in the groups
propensity to indulge in luxury items (i.e. organic food, coconscious clothing, paintings, cars,
etc.), which Guthman (2003) notes are beyond both the economic and cultural reach of priceconscious non-yuppies like a gentrified populace of working class nonwhites in NE Portland. In
an examination of the growth in the organic food or yuppie chow" industry within both
geographic and historical contexts, Guthmans work also suggests that the success of the organic
food industry is largely wrapped up with gentrificationas yuppies drove growth of organic
food consumption by obtaining a keener interest in the constituent ingredients of food whilst
gentrifying neighborhoods in cities such as San Francisco (Guthman 2003, 54). Therefore
iterating a divide in consumption habits attributed to class between yuppies and non-yuppies
(likened to Portlandias gentrifier yipsters and the gentrified nonyipsters), yuppies will take
advantage of their economically privileged situation by showing concern for acquiring material
possessions and expensive luxury items as status symbols with little regard for price (Burnett
1986; Gordinier 2012; Guthman 2003).
The yipster identity is characterized at a convergence between demographic attributes
(particularly whiteness and wealth) attributed to members of a young college-educated class
termed yuppies and attitude/taste/value tendencies associated with hipsters, who are broadly
described by Eriksson in his qualitative study of hipster consumption as a subculture group
linked with bohemianism and postmodern lifestyle (4, 2006). Hipsters are often associated
with indie/alternative music, progressive and/or independent political views, and both
alternative lifestyles and non-mainstream consumption sensibilities that are in contrast to what

10

are perceived to be norms of conformity (Eriksson 2006; Herbert 2013; Kellogg 2013). Building
off of the last point, central to the hipster identity is how members of this subculture group
represent themselves via an almost calculated consumption of fashion, media, and food that
fetishizes the authentic(Eriksson 2006, 9; Lorentzen 2007; Perry 2013). Thus evocative of
yuppies heightened concern with acquiring material possessions to solidify their class status
(Burnett 1986), attempts to define the hipster subculture largely emphasize consumerism, as
scarcity, uniqueness, authenticity, and individualism are all seen to be important topics
considered by hipsters when consuming (Eriksson 2006, 4).
Gentrification
Defined by Papachristos as a process that alters the character and composition of a
neighborhood resulting in the direct and indirect displacement of lower income households with
higher income households (Papachristos 2011, 216), gentrification has occurred within NE
Portland since the early 1990s (Coffman 2007). Involving a wealth in-migration and poverty
out-migration over an extended time period, negative outcomes of this neighborhood-changing
mechanism of gentrification are raises in median household incomes, property values, and the
presence of lifestyle amenities found appealing to the tastes and demands of wealthier
residents (Papachristos 2011, 216-219). Portlandia provides numerous examples of these
lifestyle amenities in its depiction of such businesses as co-op grocery markets, specialty art/craft
supply stores, and coffeeshops within NE Portland that are all tailored to the effective
taste/need/desire consumption palette of the yipster gentrifier group at hand.
With the growth of a fervent Portland artisan economy fueled by the amenity and
luxury item-oriented consumption values associated with the deemed yipster gentrifier group,
comes the effective disappearance of local manufacturing industries employing a predominantly

11

nonwhite working class (Drew 2012). As such, gentrified spaces in cities have become
increasingly governed by an urban culture that Lloyd (2002) calls neo-bohemia, wherein culture,
likened to a latte purchased from a coffeeshop, is available to be consumed just as if it were a
commodity. Scrutinizing this idea of cultural production and consumption in the context of
Northeast Portlands gentrifying Alberta Street commercial district, Shaw (2005) finds that
residents participate in the new neo-bohemian culture in varying manners. Particularly pertinent
to arguments presented in this Portlandia research regarding the shows normalizing
enforcement of white space/consumerism, he revealed via interview data that long-time Black
residents largely articulate the neo-bohemian culture as both racialized and productive of
patently white cultural space.
To frame the historic and geographic setting of the NE Portland neighborhoods felled
victim to this process of gentrification, the first figure below displays the Willamette Rivers
division of the city into neighborhood quintants (N, NE, SE, SW, NW). As the citys historic
African American community center since the 1930s and 40s, NE Portland experienced
gentrification beginning in the 1990s that has changed its character and composition by
essentially shifting its demographics from predominantly nonwhite/working class residents to
white/middle-upper class residents deemed as yipsters (Coffman 2007).
One inner NE neighborhood, Albina (Fig. 2), maintains a community home to 17% of
Portlands total population but 39% of the total people of color in the city. Most people of color
in Albina are African-American (Art 2008; Coffman 2007, 7). Highlighting that Albina has
faced increasing development and investment pressures in the midst of gentrification spanned to
the early 1990s, the average home value in the area surrounding MLK Avenue (a prominent
central Albina street) rose approximately 161% between 1993 and 2003, compared to a Portland

12

citywide increase of 105% (Coffman 2007, 27). Emphasizing a displacement of minority

populations coinciding with gentrification, the African-American population in the thirteen
census tracts surrounding MLK Avenue dropped from 45% to 36% of the total population
between 1990 and 2000 (PDC 2002). Rendering this evidence of minority populations
displacement in the wake of gentrification in NE Portland neighborhoods such as Albina to be a
foundation, a primary argument presented within this investigation iterates that the harrowing
consequences of gentrification for the areas predominantly nonwhite working class (i.e. said
data-supported displacement) are not only evident but also normalized via the content, depicted
characters, visual setting, and commentary of a Portlandia TV series.

Figure 1: Portland neighborhoods

(Kelly, 2004)
Figure 2: Albina neighborhood in inner NE Portland
(Art, 2008)

13

ANALYSIS
To the attention of a massive national audience (amid its availability in nearly 70 million
homes on every major cable, satellite and TelCo provider), the collective works of Portlandia
take on the role of a value-loaded social force in the creation of meanings via a publicized
promotion, normalization, and glorification of consumption habits associated with yipsterism
(Nielson 2013). As support for this assertion suggesting Portlandia filmic landscapes as work (a
product of human labor that encapsulates the dreams, desires, the locations of the people and
social systems that make it) and doing work (its actions as a social agent in the further
development of a place) in its conveyance of an aspirational yipster lifestyle associated with
consumer capitalism, it is important to confirm and further characterize the white, weird,
consumption-led identity of this unique yuppie-hipster subgroup (Aitken 2006, 330). To achieve
this task, the ideologically charged representations in this Portlandia filmic text are textually
analyzed from a perspective rooted in both Parmenidianism and ideas conveyed in early radical
geography works (ideological character of representations, utility of alternative geographic
lenses per examination of social/racial justice issues, etc.).
The textual analysis applied within this investigation begins by confirming and
subsequently examining the degree to which the filmic spaces of the Portlandia cinematic city
represent the concrete city of NE Portland. Gauging Portlandia as a work in its portrayal of
Portlands people/places/spaces, the sample of skit locations presented below in Figure 3 outlines
a section of the geographic distribution of the TV series cinematic landscapes located
specifically within Portlands NE neighborhood quintant (Aitken 2006, 330). The aim of this
graphic is to frame the geographic realism of Portlandia. Given the vast range of NE Portland
spaces depicted in this program over its three season stretch, a purposive sampling method

14

guided the selection of in-show locations set in this area because this method is suited
particularly well for interpretive qualitative research (eg. textual analysis) and aptly befits
finding a closely defined group for whom the research question(s) will be significant(Smith
2007, 56). Identified from addresses indicated in title sequences at the beginning of each sketch
(see Figure 3 screenshots), this sample was thus chosen because of how its included locales onscreen representations are seen to be collectively focused towards emphasizing the weirdness,
whiteness, and yipsterism of Portlands perceived image.
Appealing to a customer base of high-income urban elites like yipsters, amenity
establishments (i.e. artisan-oriented boutiques, bars, restaurants, coffeehouses, yuppie chow
eateries and natural food stores) began to rapidly open up for business in Northeast Portland in
the early 1990s and have continued this artisan economy-bolstering momentum into the present
day (Coffman 2007; Shaw 2005). Characterized in their ability to afford increased commercial
rent in gentrifying neighborhoods and their costly range of offered products/services, these
businesses contribute to the detrimental displacing effects of gentrification by further
increasing the appeal of gentrified areas to wealthy in-migrants (i.e. yipsters) and decreasing
accessibility of these areas to the working class (Lesley 2003). With sites ranging from the Mint
820 Pan American Bistro and Oblique Coffee Roasters, to the Firehouse Restaurant, New
Seasons Market, and the fictional Artisan Knots Store based in reference to Portlands real-life
Paxton Gate establishment (a self-described eccentric gardening store), an initial examination
of the cinematic spaces sample displayed in Figure 3 first articulates that the series depictions of
NE Portland revolve rather one-sidedly around illustrating these very amenity businesses
discussed prior.

15

Figure 3.
NE Portland
quintant map

in

Screenshots of

depicted
locales

16

In outlining the exact years that these establishments opened within NE Portland, the
chart shown below (Table 1) further bolsters an assertion conveying that Portlandia singularly
represents amenity businesses in its portrayal of the concrete city. Data within the charts
Opening Year column clearly indicates that all of these depicted businesses emerged amidst the
span of gentrification (1990-present) that occurred in the NE Portland quintant area.

Placemark
on map

Northeast Portland
Amenity Business

Opening
year

2

3

Mint 820 Pan American Bistro

Artisan Knots Store

2003

Women & Women First Feminist

Bookstore
Oblique Coffee Roasters
Firehouse Restaurant
North Portland Wellness Center

6
7
8

2006

(Filmed in and inspired by

Paxton Gate gardening store)

Put a Bird on it! Store

10

New Seasons Market

(Filmed in and inspired by Land

gallery for independent artists)

1993
2007
2008
2007

2009
1999

Table 1. Correlating with the placemarks connoting NE Portland amenity businesses

depicted in Figure 3, the table above illustrates the years that these deemed amenity
establishments opened up within NE Portland. The Opening Year third column
shows that these businesses emerged in the NE Portland quintant areas span of
gentrification (1990-present)

Portlandias representation of the varied placemarks (illustrated in Table 1 and Figure 3)
act to publicize and glorify the weirdness, whiteness, and yipsterism of this gentrifying NE
Portland area in its seeming devotion to primarily depicting establishments that contribute to the

17

citys artisan economy. As opposed to offering cinematic representation to such thriving and
popular businesses within NE Portlands expansive Albina district that have historic claim to the
Northeast quintant as Clydes Bar (a famed Portland-area jazz venue) or Billy Webbs Lodge
(which served the African American community as a United Service Organization club and
temporary refuge for those fleeing North Portlands infamous 1940 Vanport flood), Portlandia
presents what can be interpreted as a limited view of NE Portland that focuses primarily on the
areas yipster-centric amenity businesses or consumption amenities that have proliferated as an
outcome and displacement mechanism of gentrification in divested areas (Papachristos 2011,
218).
Given Portlandias United States-wide availability, a narrow portrayal of NE Portlands
locales can be seen to normalize the existence and cultural role of amenity businesses in the
popular national imagination as an effective neo-bohemian playfield of consumer capitalism
wherein consumption of quirky products/services (i.e. bird-embellished items in second
episode of season two) and associated quirky antics (i.e. characters Lisa and Bryce yelling put
a bird on it! and the act of sprucing things up by embellishing them with images of birds that
is observed in the same episode) take place in an unrelenting manner. In this context of
Portlandias singular representation of NE Portland amenity businesses, the applied textual
analysis iterates that the marginalizing effects of gentrification are furthered in the series (1)
near complete denial of on-screen representation for the gentrified populace of nonwhites and (2)
parallel emphasis on the relationships, consumption habits, desires, anxieties, and activities of
white yipster gentrifiers. This leaves Portlandia to be not only a purveyor, but also a possible
glorifier of a specific, consumption-led Keep Portland Weird quirkiness that is, amid the
yipsters calculated consumption of luxury items like organic food from New Seasons Market

18

(season one, episode 3) or artisan ropes from the knot store (season two, episode eight), all but
stringent upon the economy of amenity businesses.
CONCLUSION
In the observed absence of NE Portlands historically nonwhite residents within episodes
of Portlandia, it is asserted that the oft-perceived hilarity in this shows content is denigrated
when viewed through a Parmenidian/Radical Geographic lens as an ideologically charged social
agent. The TV series maintains sociocultural ramifications in the sense that it is seen to augment
gentrifications marginalizing influence by actively normalizing a white ideal of consumer
capitalism (via a certain in-show glorification of amenity businesses like Lisa and Bryces
freelance bird art-decorating service) lacing its content, commentary, and visual siting decisions.
The textual analysis employed within this investigation emphasizes that Portlandia denies onscreen representation to people of color and racial diversity within its three seasons. As a
collective cinematic work that does work, this cinematic city vision of the concrete city can be
viewed as limited in its noticeable focus upon predominantly portraying the consumption habits
and antics of the gentrifying, weird, white, and altogether quirky yipsters of NE Portland.

For purposes of this investigation, the term geographic realism refers to a

consideration of what real-life Portland locations are presented on-screen. Identifying these
existent locations within Portlandia content confirms, to a degree, the accuracy of the series
representation of Portland.

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Sources

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