The Lake Wave is Crashing the Party

A few years ago, I went to see the fall release of the new Warren Miller movie at the Schnitz. I don’t remember which one it was (Higher Ground?) – there’s been a million of them, each consisting of daredevil skiing feats that all sort of run together in my memory. What really stands out to me years later, aside from my dad falling asleep halfway through, was that it was sort of a farewell tour for the man himself, Warren Miller.

For much of Miller’s 50 year career, the presentation of his films centered around an annual tour of the nation’s ski towns where he would personally narrate the footage while it played. This practice had largely abated by the time I was old enough to go to them – Miller still narrated the films, but just on recordings since he didn’t travel with the show any more. A few years ago, the franchise was eventually sold to Time Warner, and I’ve gathered that he doesn’t even do the narrations for the newest films. Much to our surprise, however, it turned out that he was making a small comeback tour for this film. In only a few cities, Denver and Seattle being the others, he was making his last appearances on stage. Even though he did no more than sit on a stool and talk to the crowd during intermissions, from the captivation of the rabid skiing crowd in attendance, you would have thought that Jerry Garcia had risen from the dead for one last show.

What does this have to do with the Blazers? At one point, Miller reminisced about driving around Oregon when I-5 was a two lane highway. He then jokingly suggested that we turn it into a two lane highway once more – by closing the northbound lanes. This was met with the largest applause of the night.

Mark Heisler’s March 15th column in the LA Times made light of the animosity of Blazers fans for the men in purple and gold. While the article was poorly written and insulting, its central premise was correct: Blazer fans hate the Lakers more than the other way around. However, focusing on the two organizations, their players, and their coaches glosses over some of the more deeply seeded reasons for the hostility – biases that an Angeleno probably wouldn’t be aware of.

The qualities that many Oregonians love about the state (beside the Blazers) often include natural beauty, community and affordability. These are also qualities that are more and more perceived by residents to be threatened by the specter of accelerating population growth. Allow me to cite some mundane statistics:*

- Since 1990, the state’s population has grown from 2.8M to 3.8M people, a 33% increase. (Rapid growth is expected to continue in the future, with the population hitting 4.3M by 2025. Last Sunday’s Oregonian reported that Portland’s population, alone, will double in the next 50 years – rural parts of the state are growing at a faster pace)

- Approximately 60-75% of the influx in a given year is the result of people moving in from out of state, versus “native” population growth.

- Leading the charge, approximately one-third of the domestic migrants are from California.
The fears associated with population growth are real, though the degrees to which they come true vary greatly. Traffic congestion is continually forcing the renegotiation of Portland’s transportation system. Environmental concerns already strike areas with more delicate human relationships with the earth – think water supply battles in the Klamath basin. Lift lines at ski areas get longer and longer. You get the idea. Fairly or not, when a name is attached to the source of population growth problems, it is often “Californian.”

It is a largely unquestioned assumption that the influx of Californian real estate wealth has helped deliver a housing price boom that far outpaced local wages (among a myriad of other well documented reasons). To be honest, though, the big reason that Oregonians are cold to the Californian wave is that they don’t want (Southern) California’s problems to follow. Traffic, smog, illegal immigrants, gangs, insane costs of living, state budgetary ruin, and pretentious snobs are just some of the negative connotations the moniker “Californian” frequently generates in the mind of Northwesterners.

Full disclosure: I was born and raised in Spokane, not Portland. However, I can fully attest that the resentment of Californian migrants is at least as palatable in Spokane and Northern Idaho as it is in Oregon. Stories abound of homey communities like Sandpoint, ID suddenly sprouting gated communities whose new residents seek to take in the countryside’s splendor but look down their noses at their neighbors.

Back to the Lakers: we see that lots of basketball followers dislike them disproportionately more than other teams. The reasons given are usually along the lines of:
- They have legions of arrogant front running fans in the mold of the Cowboys, Yankees, Duke, etc.
- Their rosters have historically been filled with prima donnas.
- Their name makes no sense for LA, and is stolen from the mid-west.
- They are too dumb to tell the difference between purple and blue.
- Rick Fox.
Portland fans, on top of all that, have the 2000 WCF and more recently Trevor Ariza.

But is that it? Does that explain the vociferous animosity at the Rose Garden when the Lakers come to town? In my opinion, it does not. I think for many people, the influx of Kobe Bryant jerseys at the Rose Garden is not only a sign of support for the opposing team, but a portent of destruction for the Oregonian way of life. It is a sign of those who take of Oregon’s splendor, but give not of themselves – a middle finger from those who would drink from your fountain only to spit in your face.

Well, denizens of Blazersedge, do you think this concept has merit? Is this rivalry exclusive to basketball, or do you feel like there are societal ramifications to it?

* US Census Data