Big surprise, right?

At least it wasn’t the type of trouble some of my friends get into. They go to FaceBook Jail and no one hears from them for a few days…or a month.

Nope. My trouble was mild by comparison:

The post that started the brouhaha? Just this lil nugget of a story:

It was that darned hashtag:

#shittatle

I call it that situationally. Sometimes I try to spin it, a la George Costanza:

That goes something like this:

It’s a portmanteau of Seattle and Shittakes…

But everyone knows I don’t like mushrooms, so that compliment is backhanded at best. And, truth be told, I like Seattle! I think it’s a great city.

To visit.

Heck, I even got my favorite pot holders there at that place…whatever they call their version of Saturday Market.

Pike Place Market!

I knew I’d remember.

Can you tell they are my favorite? No telling why. I got them at a little place called Heavens To Betsy! I had to buy something with a cute name like that!

I should have seen the FB callout coming when the little hang-y up-y thing-y broke this morning. It made me sad at the time, but now I see that it was clearly an omen.

But here’s the deal, I like Seattle – like I said. I just didn’t love living there. More and more often I see people with normal incomes talking about how much it’s changed and how overcompensated tech bros have ruined everything for regular folks.

I get that.

PS: by “talking”, I mean whining.

Occasionally, I’ll see a regular person get their hackles up over those treacherous comments and respond with a variant of,

If you don’t like it, leave!

Which, you’ll notice…I have.

So I come by my little pleasure of watching Portland frequently outpace the Emerald City in national Best Of type rankings honestly.

I’ll go visit Seattle again.

Someday.

For now, I just enjoy watching people I know from Seattle come to Portland to get away from it all.

Bitches, I’m away…and it feels great to live somewhere again that I don’t need to escape from. When the Silver Fox asks if I want to go to the beach house, my response is usually “Meh. I guess so?” or something close. It’s never,

Oh, gawd yes! I gotta get out of here!

I recently observed a friend of mine from Seattle was in town for a weekend. When I called him on it, his response was,

We’re just in town to buy our wedding rings.

Because you can pay for a hotel room and two nights of bar hopping with the damn sales tax you save. Clearly, he thinks that Seattle is great enough without his tax money to fix their numerous problems.

He also thinks nothing of coming to town and checking in at a bar that is literally a block from my place…which is kinda part of what I didn’t like about Seattle.

Actually, those two examples are pretty much my gripes. I don’t care that things are expensive there. I live in Portland – things are expensive here. Although we are more affordable, so there!

It’s that there was no sense of community. It’s just my decade-long observation.

But that bugged me.

People putting themselves above their city, culture or, y’know…other humans.

I could do without that behavior.

Back in the Seinfeld days, Seattle was indeed the pesto of cities. Since then, it’s like Basil or Pine Nuts have gone extinct and they are selling the last batch. Or – and this would seem more likely – some enterprising Seattle-ite (I mean, transplant) has bought all the Basil ranches in the country, trademarked the term “Pesto” and is now selling it as a monopolized commodity.

Those are the folks who come to town and don’t try and get together, friendquaintances. The handful of genuine friendships I established there give me the opportunity a few times a year to hang out with someone when they visit town and enjoy my city while we talk about the good old days in Seattle. Those fine folks are outnumbered by the influx of Seattle transplants and friendquaintance-type people who don’t act in the interest of the greater good to keep Seattle the city that made it so pesto in the first place…and that’s why I enjoy Seattle from afar and in small doses.

And to sarcastically call out the schadenfreude. It’s petty…but we all need someone there to point out when we think we’re hot shittake but really, we’re just toadstools.

No charge, Seattle. You’re welcome.