The phrase "keep Portland weird" has been around for a long time. A lot of people know Portland for this phrase as well, and I never realized how true this was before.
The realization hit when I went to the mall in Reno with one of my friends. We walk up to the entrance and right off the bat you can tell it's not that friendly of a place. The people are quickly pushing past you, there bumping into you and not caring and the outside of the building looks a tad beat up with some cracks through the foundation, some righting on the walls and some of the broken lights on the signs. When you walk in, it actually looks more maintained then the outside does and it greets you with a blast of cool air form the heat outside but the people in the mall don't change much. Going around to the different stores and booths was a pain; to get anywhere was like trying to cross a high way. You would end up running into people on the way to the booth or store you were trying to get to, and whenever you ran into someone they would either get mad at you or just keep walking like nothing happened. The up side was there were a small number of people that actually were nice. These people would feel bad after bumping into someone else. The people that usually were nice, I noticed, would wear clothes with an anime show on it, a game, pajamas or just something comfortable while everyone else wore punk sort of clothes, suits and stuff that hugs the body. The people that worked at all the stores and the booths were not much nicer. They would either try to rush you along or they won't help you at all, it's like they didn't really care about their jobs. After realizing how much more rude the people were in that mall I thought, 'how much different are the people in Portland compared to here?' so I decided to put that question to the test when I got back from Reno. I chose to go the the mall October 6th because I knew that the malls would be buisear on a weekend then on a weekday .I also decided to go to two different malls to see if location makes a difference as well. The first mall I went to was Pioneer place. This mall is in the middle of town, right next to the max line. When you first walk up to it you can see how well maintained the mall is. The glass is slightly smudged with fingerprints but nothing more, the handles are still clean and shine from the light even though there are allot of people touching it, going in and out of the mall. When you open the door, all you really see is a couple stores across the way and the ends of some stores that are along the path, But once you walk along the hall you see the shine of the hand rails as you look up you see three different floors above you and one below you. You can see all the people walking around, laughing, talking and having fun. When you go down stairs the smell of food and freshly brewed tea hits your nose. When you look down a pathway you see some stores, like the apple store and Teavana, and at the end of the hall is where the food court sits with many different types of food from Chinese food to regular fast food. When you look around at the people they all had a smile on their face weather bright and noticeable or very small, but still