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“Go back to California!” graffiti on home, car shocks new arrivals to Portland

“Go back to California!” graffiti on home, car shocks new arrivals to Portland

Why are blue cities such a cesspool of intolerance and bigotry?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KHbMw4DxMo

I have long joked about the negative feelings that Californians inspire among citizens in the remaining 49 states.

However, new arrivals to Portland, Oregon were the victims of something more than a joke. Their home and auto were the target of a graffiti attack that told them to return to the Golden State.

A couple from California, who relocated to Portland 4 months ago, woke up Sunday to find their car and house vandalized.

Messages including “Get California out of Portland” and “Move back” were spray painted across the house and car of Jessica Faraday and Preston Page.

Their car was also keyed.

The couple filed a police report, however, they said they an idea of who may have tagged their property.

Nobody has been charged with the vandalism, however the couple suspects that it may be tied to an incident earlier in the week. Jessica Faraday and Preston Page were backing out of their driveway a couple of days ago when they had a road rage incident with another driver in the Northeast Portland neighborhood. Page challenged a driver who was speeding down the street as he was backing out in his car.

Page said he believes the person who did this is the same person he yelled at for speeding down his street. He said that person in turn yelled out, “Go back to California.”

“Usually when you’re upset with someone you have a conversation with them. Maybe it’s heated, maybe it’s not and you let it go, you don’t dwell on things … I guess not this guy,” Page said.

However, less than positive attitudes toward Californians may have been a contributing factor.

There is no more terrifying bogeyman in all of Portland.

The beast steals our jobs and our self-respect. It keeps us from buying homes.

It is The Californian.

Fear of Golden State transplants goes back decades in Oregon, even sparking a tongue-in-cheek — and yet quite serious — 1970s zero-population-growth movement called the James G. Blaine Society, one of whose mottos was “Don’t Californicate Oregon.”

Now, with real-estate prices surging like never before and traffic and pollution seemingly worse by the day, anger at Californians has reached a new boiling point in Oregon’s largest city.

Page believes that this may have been part of the motivation for the graffiti attack on his car and newly renovated home.

“So much industry has come in here and, I’m sure, pushed some locals out. That can be rough … you see housing prices double, or triple in the past five to ten years,” Page said.

“I don’t think it’s directed at Californians, just noticeably because a lot of them coming up here. But I’m sure it’s all the transplants add in the frustration,” he continued.

Why are blue cities such a cesspool of intolerance and bigotry?

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Comments

kenoshamarge | July 5, 2017 at 10:20 am

Here in Wisconsin we tend to feel the same way about refugees from Illinois.

The problem is that once they flee their state they then settle in and begin insisting on the things that caused disaster in their state and forced them to leave Illinois in the first place.

You may be able to teach an old dog new tricks but sometimes I wonder if you can teach a liberal anything at all.

    healthguyfsu in reply to kenoshamarge. | July 5, 2017 at 11:53 am

    It’s one thing that worries me about the southern migration of liberals as they get older.

    Of course, people start to get more conservative as they get older (at least beyond college age) and actually start paying taxes, too.

    fscarn in reply to kenoshamarge. | July 5, 2017 at 11:55 am

    That is EXACTLY what has happened to New Hampshire (most intensely in southern NH) from the refugees from Greater Boston.

    Now NH has an all Democrat congressional crew (w/Sen Hassan married to a Muslim). Only in 2016 did the NH regain the governorship, the House, and the Senate; and these Repubs are mere shadows of former NH Repubs. The two Congressional seats are at bat again in 2018; both Senate seats will remain Democrat for 2018.

      guyjones in reply to fscarn. | July 5, 2017 at 1:19 pm

      I think that a similar phenomenon happened to Vermont, admittedly far in advance of New Hampshire’s current cultural and political metamorphosis. To wit, an invasion of hippies and other leftists from New York and other states has steadily turned Vermont — which last voted for a GOP President in the 1988 presidential election — “blue.”

Kenoshamarge’s points above are well-taken.

I don’t condone criminal behavior of any sort, obviously. That includes the conduct described in the article.

That said, I’ll admit that I understand where some of the underlying frustration comes from — the maddening fact that Leftists, Dumb-o-crats, “liberals,” “progressives,” or whatever other self-congratulatory moniker they want to use to describe themselves, have made an art form out of mismanaging municipalities and so-called “blue” states into the ground with their general fiscal illiteracy, wanton spending profligacy and self-serving public employee union kowtowing, and, then — all too predictably — when the deleterious societal consequences of their incompetent governance inevitably manifest themselves in all the usual ways — rampant crime; failing schools; economically depressed business districts and oppressive tax and regulatory schemes that hinder business & job creation/expansion — many of the citizens responsible for enabling the situation move to better-managed (invariably GOP-led) states (e.g., North Carolina; Florida; Texas;), where, like a Biblical plague of locusts, they begin their Leftist political agitation anew, thus creating the conditions for the same ills to be visited upon their new host state.

One of the advantages of living in Deplorable Country, is that you don’t have to worry about progs moving in next door.

They wouldn’t be caught dead living in a place like this.

    Shane in reply to rinardman. | July 5, 2017 at 10:51 am

    You would be shocked how important money i.e. jobs are to the liberals. It is hilarious to see them advocate for job killing regulations, letting the rest of us know that we are a rich country, state, district … etc., but then flee the effects of their advocacy when it fails miserably and their money is affected.

    Liberals will live anywhere they think they can get money, because the utopia’s they come form don’t have any. So don’t feel too secure in Deplorable Country.

      rinardman in reply to Shane. | July 5, 2017 at 12:35 pm

      Liberals will live anywhere they think they can get money…

      Exactly. But, if they think they can find money around here…good luck with that!

      Now, if they like guns…this could be their utopia. 😀

    guyjones in reply to rinardman. | July 5, 2017 at 10:59 am

    Don’t be so sure — Leftists have a way of corrupting locales situated in states that once have might have been deemed to be safely “Deplorable” — the most picturesue areas of West Virginia are already turning into the new “hot spot” for vacation homes for some of the monied Leftist elites of D.C.

Conservative Beaner | July 5, 2017 at 10:54 am

I was living in Washington state in the mid 70s and they already had the “Don’t Californiacate Washington” slogan as well.

    jeffweimer in reply to Conservative Beaner. | July 5, 2017 at 11:15 am

    Emmett Watson’s “Lesser Seattle Movement” – a (partly) tongue-in-cheek plea to tell everyone you know from out of town just how terrible the weather and everything else is, just so they don’t move there.

Oregon (and Washington) have long loathed southern transplants, but this was blue Oregon. The land of anarchists and hate.

Now do Texas.

    Liz in reply to valegorge. | July 5, 2017 at 11:16 am

    And Oklahoma…. I understand the university towns, but there are some urban areas which are starting to turn more progressive.

    But, the crazy thing is that the governors of some of these red states actually go to the failing blue states to lure the big companies to relocate.

      Tom Servo in reply to Liz. | July 5, 2017 at 12:09 pm

      Everyone here in Texas was pretty happy when Toyota pulled it’s American HQ out of California and moved it to Plano, Texas.

      Official estimate for 2016 was that $1.77 Billion in personal and corporate income moved from California to Texas. You know, a billion here and a billion there, and soon you’re talking about some real money.

        Liz in reply to Tom Servo. | July 5, 2017 at 1:13 pm

        We have some big firms opening up offices in OKC, but I guess it will depend how many people they import from blue states to OKC.

        Of course, the “imports” have to worry about earthquakes as well as tornadoes, so some may self-select not to come to OK.

          notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to Liz. | July 5, 2017 at 2:04 pm

          The leftists’ “5th Column” is the K-12 and then university system public education.

I imagine that in Portland they regard Californians much the same way Italians or Poles regard flocks of Muslims from Africa.

Actually in this case Preston Page sounds like a serious dorkhead. So maybe generalizations about Californicans are inappropriate.

    OleDirtyBarrister in reply to tom swift. | July 5, 2017 at 11:59 am

    The odd thing is that Portland is a revolving door, transplant culture. It has been invaded and colonized by transplants that were too crazy for the community in which they grew up. The “rest” of Oregon, east of the Cascades and south of Eugene certainly despise Californians and all the liberal nutters in general that have moved there and flipped their state. (There are liberal pockets in Medford/Ashland and Bend as well). So it is somewhat surprising that it happened in PDX rather than Redmond or Prineville or Joseph. But perhaps the place has gotten so crazy from prior mentally defective Californians moving there that they don’t like the new Calis that are moving there.

    I lived there a while back then and have not missed it from a social, political, and economical standpoint. I do miss being there in the summer and fall for the outdoor activities.

      Oregon Mike in reply to OleDirtyBarrister. | July 5, 2017 at 12:25 pm

      ODB, you’re on to something here.

      The first great wave of Californication of Oregon occurred back in the 1970s. The southern transplants first took over Eugene and Portland. Then, the first thing they did was to try and pull up the ladder, imposing “no growth” land use policies down our throats.

      Well, that just drove up the costs of everything. Back in the 1970s, Eugene had a cost of living below the national average. Today, though less than Portland, it’s a place for well-to-do Californians to buy real estate after they’ve cashed out of California with its mega-inflated prices to move to a somewhat lower tax and much more pleasant environment, which they’re now ruining with more taxes and demands for left wing policies.

      Blue State Oregonians look down their noses on Red State Oregonians (I’m of the latter, of course, even though my primary home is Eugene), so it’s with a certain amount of schadenfreude that I view this Blue on Blue disdain.

        “Red State Oregonian” in Salem, here. I hear you. Portland is a place I don’t even like to drive through.

        And +1 on the schadenfreude of Blue-on-Blue bickering. “Keep Portland Weird” is an actual movement, but apparently California is just too weird to be included, huh?

          OleDirtyBarrister in reply to Archer. | July 5, 2017 at 4:16 pm

          They copied the “Keep Austin Weird” slogan that dates back to about the 1970’s (I believe).

Portland clearly needs a parade.

    healthguyfsu in reply to n.n. | July 5, 2017 at 11:56 am

    The liberals in town just needed space to destroy, and that space just happened to be Californians’ private property. Ah well, private property is evil anyways, right Marxie?

Purest Progs look at Californians as polluting the true blue of their society in Oregon. Given a choice who would they truly welcome… a Ca prog or devout Islamist?

Keep Portland weird.

buckeyeminuteman | July 5, 2017 at 11:37 am

Californians seem to have become the West Coast version of Massholes which infect Maine and New Hampshire.

    healthguyfsu in reply to buckeyeminuteman. | July 5, 2017 at 11:59 am

    Massholes are the worst…think they are intellectually superior to everyone because of school system rankings and think their property is so expensive because the construction is much better.

    It’s total BS…different building codes exist in different regions for good reasons. You can’t keep four perfectly square walls in the South unless you build an immovable fortress due to the humidity and temp fluctuations (and if immovable, it’s likely to crack).

    By the way, never hire a drywall guy from up north with no experience in humid environments. He will mess it up and your tape joints will show.

    Massinsanity in reply to buckeyeminuteman. | July 5, 2017 at 12:18 pm

    And New Yorkers did it to VT decades ago…

MaggotAtBroadAndWall | July 5, 2017 at 12:14 pm

I did a brief stint in Research Triangle Park, NC in the early ’90s. RTP was growing massively then. It was sort of a mini Silicon Valley. IBM, Cisco, Nortel, and other tech companies as well as some tech start ups were locating there. Lots of Big Pharma and biotech companies were popping up, too.

I lived in Raleigh but lots of RTPers moved to a little town called Cary, NC. (It was little then, now it’s population has soared.)

The natives of Cary hated it that so many northerners were moving to their quaint, clean, little town. They started saying Cary stood for “Congested Area of Relocated Yankees.” Which was pretty accurate. It was congested and it was mostly because “yankees” were relocating there from the northeast.

    I went to NCSU in the early ’70’s. Cary was fully separated from Raleigh by 5 miles or so…. One could notify RDU tower you were over Cary inbound. Now… just one megalopolis I understand. Used to play chess at Burroughs-Welcome… Research Triangle was sort of neutral turf for NCSU, Duke and UNC. Asheville has fallen prey to prog invasion also.

Portland is full of rabid [class] diversitists and others from the far left Pro-Choice Church.

    Don’t forget the militant LGBTQ communities (yes, plural).

    It’s no coincidence that Sweet Cakes by Melissa — the “original” Christian bakery shut down by LGBTQ activists and punitively fined $135,000 by the government, for declining to serve a same-sex wedding — was located in Gresham, a suburb of Portland.

One sympathizes.

Orson Buggeigh | July 5, 2017 at 1:17 pm

“Forget it, Jake. It’s Portland.” Seriously, Portland is just plain weird, and it’s no surprise the welcome mat isn’t out.

    alaskabob in reply to Orson Buggeigh. | July 5, 2017 at 3:39 pm

    Major highways and an airport are primary ways to transit through Portland. Linger beyond these confines at your own risk. Practice using faux-progisms as a means to temporize and defuse any problematic situations. A recent copy of Rolling Stone in your possession may be helpful. One of those rare Time editions of HRC as President with tear stains will evoke sympathy.

Oregon Mike | July 5, 2017 at 5:52 pm

Stick to the PDX airport, which is wonderful (and one of the few wonderful things about Portland, the other being the Portland Baroque Orchestra). The major highways, I-5 and I-205, regularly achieve Seattle-like thrombosis.

When I lived in southern Idaho and northern Utah, we watched as Californians moved into the area in droves thus turning the area into a California gangland with California values. This all prompted us to ask when was the hunting season on Californians open and what was the bag limit.