Keep Boston Weird?

I vaguely remember someone saying once that if you love Portland, you'll love Boston. Having visited Boston twice to confirm this declaration, I still don't know what to make of it.

Don't get me wrong--I'm sure it's true, but it can't be because they're so similar. Not in the way Portland and, say, Seattle are similar, anyway.

Boston, Portland. East, West. Old institutions, new roots. Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks. Lobstah, chowdah, bee-ah, scrod; Dungeness crab, miso soup, microbrew, salmon. Even the weather, famously dismal in both cities, falls into an apples-and-oranges comparison when winter arrives.

And there's a less obvious discrepancy, something I couldn't consciously identify until now, that I still find unnerving: I can't recall seeing any pirates in Boston.

Pirates and pirates-at-heart are so run-of-the-mill in the Portland Metro area (often they're riding bicycles, with or without cats balancing on their shoulders) that the last time I saw a large skull-and-crossbones flag flying from the roof of a passing car, I only casually asked what kind of pirate flag it was--oh, they vary--and not, "Hey, was that a pirate flag?"

Then I realized that there are probably cities in this country where someone might ask the latter question first, as if seeing a pirate flag at all were something unusual or even troubling. Troubling, dear reader, is the lack of pirates and their oddball kin infiltrating your neighborhood.

My friend Kellie has a photograph of Darth Vader playing a violin on a street corner in Seattle, the instrument's open case collecting tips next to his black boots. A lone storm trooper walked laps in support of cancer research in Eugene's 2008 Relay for Life, and I remember seeing a pair of them shuffling among the crowd after a Mariners game once. Nobody posed for pictures with them, and nobody asked them for autographs, because while these sightings are entertaining, they're just not that unusual. They are signs of a healthy metropolis with good self-esteem, a city that is neither too self-assured nor sorely lacking of character and creativity.

Darth Vader with his entourage in the Ira Keller Fountain.

A city like Boston can't possibly lack character or creativity. But I don't know that I'll feel entirely comfortable living there until I can complete the following analogy:

Pirates and storm troopers : Pacific Northwest :: _______ and _______ : New England.

Photo courtesy of PDX Pipeline and Sopke Photography.