Portland embraces eccentricities

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Acupuncture is not just for people. It’s also for cities — if the city is Portland.

Adam Kuby has stuck a 23-foot needle into the ground down by the Willamette River and hopes to plant more, choosing locations where he figures the city’s “chi,” or vital energy, needs some help.

Unusual? You bet. Unusual for Portland? Not really.

For several years, Portland has been reaping praise from lifestyle magazines, from Men’s Journal to specialty publications, as one of the nation’s more livable cities, listed among the best places to have a baby, grow old, go for a walk, ride a bike, take a jog, breathe clean air, own a dog, take public transportation, start a business (green or otherwise), go out for dinner or not get mugged.

The praises don’t stop. Swing a cat and hit 10. On second thought, don’t. Portland is rated the third-most humane city in the nation.

But the magazines skim over Portland’s quirkier qualities. They aren’t bandied about, but they’re not hidden either. To some, they make Portland even more endearing.

There’s what’s left of the 24-Hour Church of Elvis (online only these days), the Voodoo Doughnut Shop, nude bike festivals, and what was billed as the world’s longest drag-queen chorus line.

For kitsch lovers, there’s the Velveteria, a black-velvet painting museum. Lots of taste, all of it bad in some eyes, unless you love it, and the owners do. Nothing is for sale. Open weekends.

Among the latest additions to the panoply of Portland’s oddities are Mr. Kuby’s giant needles. An artist who arrived from New York four years ago, Kuby says the acupuncture project is an attempt to get people to see the city in a holistic way.

“It is a visual way of expressing what a lot of people already know,” Mr. Kuby said. The city is “one organism, one body, one very complex, independent system.”

Not to mention eccentric.

Ubiquitous bumper stickers proclaim “Keep Portland Weird.” They were meant to support small, local businesses to prevent Portland from being big-boxed out of its identity.

But they’ve become a focal point for what might be a counterculture elsewhere.

Portland has been called the People’s Republic of Portland (land-use rules irk some developers), Beervana (it’s loaded with microbreweries), the Rose City (they are nearly worshipped here) and Sin City, a salute, of sorts, to its frontier past and recent bouts of permissiveness that some people find a bit much. Others just shrug. That’s Portland.

The first President Bush called it “Little Beirut” for the hostile receptions he could rely on, and his son hasn’t fared any better.