Alternative title, “Where young people go to retire.”

One day last week, I spent 45 minutes sitting on a street corner in Portland. During my urban meditation, I marveled at three 20-something retirees, who weren’t in school or at work, as they waited forever for the light to change so they could cross the busy street where their gritty thrift store destination lied.

The first was a tall, rail thin young woman with a shaved head. Facial piercings galore, tats, cool sunglasses, and ten inch black platform shoes. Topped off with a cancer stick. A one-off if there ever was one.

Psych! Her shorter, less thin friend also had numerous facial piercings and tats, ten inch black platform shoes and a cigarette.

The third amigo, smoking like a chimney and the token male, had multitudinous facial piercings and tats, and can you guess, black ten inch platform shoes.

If spotted alone, you’d give any of them props for keeping the spirit of Portlandia alive. Aesthetic norms be damned and all.

But together?! Their funky ensembles devolved into uniforms that diluted whatever statement they were hoping to make about the more conventional ways most of us appear most of the time.