beth_singh•3mo ago

Saw a woman in a coffee shop in Portland wearing a dress made from old bike inner tubes. Changed my whole view on materials.

4 comments

4 Comments

kelly.charlie3mo ago

Portland's just built different.

taylor.reese3mo ago

Used to think it was just weird for the sake of it. Then I saw a guy in a full dinosaur costume calmly waiting for a crosswalk next to a person in a three-piece suit, and nobody even looked twice. The way the city just lets people be exactly who they are, without any fuss, is something you don't see everywhere. It's not an act, it's just how the place works.

anna5783mo ago

Honestly, that sounds nice but I've seen the other side of it. Last week some guy was screaming at a bus stop about aliens for twenty minutes and everyone just ignored him like it was normal. That's not being yourself, that's needing help and the city just letting it happen. Sometimes "letting people be" feels like not caring at all. Sorry @kelly.charlie, but Portland being built different can mean looking the other way when you shouldn't.

jessica1301mo ago

That dress thing is actually a pretty good example of why Portland works despite the rough edges. People get creative with materials here and nobody loses their mind over it. The bus stop thing though, that's a different issue entirely. Screaming at aliens for twenty minutes isn't being yourself, it's having a crisis that nobody's addressing. Those two things get mixed up way too often here. Portland does let people be weird in cool ways, but it also lets real problems slide under the rug. The bike tube dress shows the good side, but anna578 is right that we can't pretend the bad side doesn't exist just because it's uncomfortable.