The downside of weird

Portland's done so much weird that normal is the new weird.

Mission accomplished.

As organizing principles for cities go, “weird” has its drawbacks. After a good run of mostly harmless weird during its turn-of-the-millennium hay day, Portland is now something of an international warning against the excesses of odd. But weird continues to have its advocates. One such ambassador of the unusual, a mortgage broker named Christine Lassiter who moonlights as a unicorn centaur named Aurelia Stardance, wrote a piece for The Oregonian entitled “Why keeping Portland weird is more important than ever,” which begins:

Behold, Aurelia Stardance:

Unicorn centaur Aurelia Stardance aka Christine Lassiter, radiating (photo courtesy, The Oregonian).

Lassiter is right: that’s weird. But what does that really mean? Walking around dressed as a unicorn centaur is mildly weird by what I understand to be Portland Saturday Market standards. It would be weirder — more unusual or unexpected — at the Grant County Saturday Market in Canyon City, Oregon. It wouldn’t be weird at all to go to a Halloween party dressed as Aurelia Stardance. “Weird” only works as a descriptor of the thing one is trying to describe in juxtaposition to what is expected under the circumstances.

If Portland’s weirdness were confined to an adult dressing as a hybrid of two mythical creatures when at the Saturday market, few of the rest of us Oregonians would care. As weird goes, that’s pretty harmless. It’s not my cup of tea, but Lassiter has the right to dress that way if she likes. I own and wear a Reagan-Bush ‘84 t-shirt, which is pretty weird. It may even be weirder than the centaur get up by Portland Saturday Market standards. We live in a diverse country and state, where people are free to be weird.

But because weird is a relative term, there are, or should be, limits. And those limits should apply when the weirdness negatively impacts other people in a material way. It is unusual - weird - to tolerate and, in the not-so-recent-past tacitly encourage mass homelessness that hollows out downtown Portland. It’s weird to have roving mobs existing somewhere on the protest-riot spectrum for months on end, a trail of property and human damage in their wake. It’s weird to violently besiege a federal courthouse, to deface an elk statue, to allow some Portland streets to resemble a crossover project between “Fast & Furious” and “The Road.”

Lassiter writes that Portland Weird “is how we build a city that chooses tolerance, supports marginalized communities, combats hate and bigotry and leads to better understanding of one another.” I might quibble with the efficacy of weird in achieving those admirable goals, but that’s beside the point. Lassiter deserves the tolerance she seeks, because what she does doesn’t hurt anyone.

But the weirdness in Portland, the departure from normalcy, now regularly delivers negative results for many of its residents. Safety and security of person and property are, or were, normal. Weirdness - criminality, really - infringing on that normalcy does not deserve tolerance. That way lies chaos, and the last thing Portland and all of Oregon need is more chaos.

I don’t live in Portland, and so have no direct say in how weird the place wants to be. But I do live in Oregon, and the more expansive and harmful forms of weirdness emanate throughout the state from its largest city. We would all benefit if Portland charted a path closer to normalcy. Portlanders, especially.

Portland is, or should be, in the process of defining the boundaries of the weirdness it deems acceptable. The weird has gone too far. Portland’s nudging toward normalcy need not and should not jeopardize the marginalized community of unicorn centaurs. But the city’s current travails expose the downside of aspiring foremost for weird.

Portland’s done enough weird that normal is now the new weird. So, yeah, make Portland weird.