Street Preacher vs. Portland Progressives

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I recently visited the Hawthorne district in Southeast Portland, which is historically the counter-culture area of Portland.

It’s Portland’s version of Haight Street in San Francisco. It’s where the Oregon hippies gathered during the late 1960s, to “turn on, tune in, drop out”. It remained the preferred youth hangout through the 1970s.

In the more conservative 1980s, it fell out of fashion, but like Haight Street, its preponderance of vintage stores, head shops, multiple bars and cafes made it possible to survive as a popular youth-culture strip.

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In 2026, there are still young people wandering up and down Hawthorne Blvd. It’s still a prime hang-out spot, with its trendy clothing exchange stores and bohemian cafes.

Currently, it is Portland’s best representative of “Diner Goth” culture. Diner Goths being young people who create their own personal styles, using various fashions from the past (mostly Goth), often resulting in odd and not-always-flattering mashups of those styles.

Hawthorne is where you see high school girls attempting the latest Instagram looks, not realizing that until they lose the nerdy wire-rim glasses, the fake leather miniskirt or Brandy Melville Baby Tee, isn’t really going to work.

They may not pull off the latest styles, but at least these young people are trying. So you root for them. But of course, being stuck in Portland, with their dorky, “We Believe In Science” parents, they can only dream and experiment, and imagine life in New York, London or Los Angeles.