When did Portland first become a hipster darling? (transplants, condos)

[belmont22]

How long has Portland been a cool place for hipsters to live rather than just a sleepy Northwestern blue collar lumber/shipyard town?

[pdxMIKEpdx]

IMHO, it started in the early eighties.

[Minervah]

I thought it was more like the nineties but maybe that's when I just began to notice it because I was living in the SW part of town until around the mid eighties when I moved into the Hawthorne neighborhood. It was becoming gentrified bu young professionals but it was still a bit dicey. Hipsters came later.

There were no shipyard workers though. Hawthorne was always pretty lively. Just different shops.

[JBPisgah]

I moved to Portland in 1998, and it was definitely on the map then, but I felt like it was way more so by the time I left in 2003.

[Squidlo]

I was thinking mid 90's as a starting point. Hawthorne was always cool/eclectic as far back as I can remember.

Question: What cliches would identify hipster culture?

[SyraBrian]

I moved there in October 1994 and left in March 1995. At that time, it seemed like First Thursday and the NW 21st and NW 23rd scene were beginning to shift from a groundswell to an explosion.

[Minervah]

Originally Posted by Squidlo

I was thinking mid 90's as a starting point. Hawthorne was always cool/eclectic as far back as I can remember.

Question: What cliches would identify hipster culture?

I agree. It was a different kind of cool. The neighborhood was a bit rough but the shops were electic and interesting. Very different and not any chains that I can recall except for a Kentucky Fried Chicken and Artic Circle.

As far as becoming hipster, I believe that the various neighborhoods got into "hipsterism" at different times.

[suncat]

Hipsters are OVER.

[Minervah]

Originally Posted by suncat

Hipsters are OVER.

Once they became mainstream, they were no longer a big deal. I always thought they were just silly people in funny clothes. They sort of made Hawthorne ho-hum where it used to be pretty interesting.

[Deezus]

Originally Posted by suncat

Hipsters are OVER.

"Hipsters" was just the marketing and re-branding of the counterculture to the children of the Baby Boomers(Generation Y/Millenials). When it was Generation X in the 90s it was simply "slackers" or "grunge" or what was left of punk rock or hippie cultures--and that eventually just turned into a bunch of music industry cliches. Around the turn of the Millenium the indie cultures just became something that could be easily marketed and sold to a bunch of kids who were used to having things marketed and sold to them. The internet helped as well. The children of the Baby Boomers were much more pampered and catered to as being "special" than the Generation X kids who came of age in the 70s and 80s. Which is why is coincided with the idealistic gentrification plans of mainly Baby Boomer civic governments and developers to re-invent the inner cities as cool places for "lifestyle" living.

It was never really anything new--it just was marketed differently. Every generation has a bunch of goofy trends and clothing styles that the older generation or "uncool" generations cohorts look at and scoff. My grandparents thought the hippie generation was a bunch of ridiculous clowns in the 1960s and just listened to Merle Haggard records. And I'm sure that my great-great grandparents hated jazz music and the flappers in the 1920s.

I didn't visit Portland prior the 90s, but talking to my uncle, who grew up here in the 1970s, there's been a counter cultural element for years. Up until the 90s it seems like what you had though was more segregated into certain areas of town--it was really starting around the late 90s/early 2000s that the entire east-side of Portland sort of became fair-game for gentrification. A decade ago, Mississippi Avenue still felt pretty rough around the edges--now even N Williams is upscale restaurants and condos with a New Seasons coming soon. A lot of Portland's popularity for transplants basically resulted from the fact that Seattle and San Francisco and New York became increasingly expensive in the late 90s--Portland was just sort of the next spot on the list--and it was more affordable at the time.