I think I grew up with comprador sensibilities – the metropole was the hot shit, meanwhile what would “Pennsylvania Culture” even be? The words “yinz”, “youse” and “jawn”, hex signs and funnel cakes?

Portland was the first culture that decisively felt right but that was like 2010 and I’m realizing how much of that was “take a bunch of people expecting a rural worker’s life 30 years ago, remove the git-r-done types who join the military or chase pipeline work when that collapses, take the most urban-friendly, service-industry of those and stick them in a big really low cost-of-living city that also draws people who just like functional urban life like Colorado draws skiiers”, I didn’t draw any sense from that that “unacceptance” would particularly help anything today and I think the people out unaccepting in the streets rn are doomed nuisances