Portland’s Badass-ness Map

Eric Crum and Dillon Mahmoudi, creators of the Badass-ness map of Portland

Its residents have called Portland many things over the years, and badass has probably been one of these names. Two students at Portland State University put together a map that describes just how badass each neighborhood in Portland is, with the dreaded “Vancouver-ish” being the worst label one could receive.

We spoke with the two men about the Badass-ness map they put together awhile back, and what gentrification has to do with it. Here are excerpts from our conversation over beers at Prost.

bePortland: How did you guys end up in Portland?

Eric Crum (EC): I moved out here with my girlfriend almost five years ago, and then got accepted into grad school, so I stayed. I’ve been here ever since. I originally moved out here to study in the forestry program at Lewis & Clark.

Dillon Mahmoudi (DM): I like to claim the Northwest as my home, but I was born in Idaho. I traveled for a while, and then lived in Lake Oswego. Then we moved to Seattle. I applied to the Urban Studies program at Portland State and got accepted, so my wife and me moved out.  

What does this map you put together capture that’s unique to Portland?

DM: You can take what we based the Portland map off of and apply it to any city in the nation. If you take the factors we used for this map and use to measure other cities, it would be a measure of how “Portland” that other city is.

EC: It’s turned into this Portlandia thing, but for the record, the map came out before Portlandia. Just sayin...

The only data based on the 20-minute map was the bike network and the MAX. Everything else we got our own data for. The original data is strip clubs, brew pubs, Portland pinball, food carts, coffee, things like that.

Was it based on the proximity of the neighborhoods to these things?

EC: Proximity along the bike network. Biking in Portland is one of the major reasons people move here.

Did you know about the abundance of pinball in Portland before you moved here?

EC: Soon after I moved to Portland, I made friends with this guy who worked in my office that told me about all these pinball tournaments. I went out and saw Crazy Flipper Fingers, its presence in competing with other groups, and it struck me that pinball is pretty legit here. Portland is where you want to be if you’re a pinballer.

So, the map seems to be really taking off. You had a lot of press a month or two ago.

DM: In a way, it’s kind of funny that people are taking it so seriously; we had a sense of humor about all this, because it was just a project for school. Now it could be considered thesis-level work. We drank beer and coffee and explored these places, and it’s just been fun.

How was getting the video together?

DM: Eric was actually out of town when we had to do our final presentation, so we decided, “Shit, let’s make a video.”

EC: But Dylan’s made videos before, so it looked really well done.

Do you think that Portland is being gentrified in some areas and the map is reflective of this?

DM: The tools that we have to fight gentrification rely on bringing other people into the area, rather than supporting the area to grow economically. We need to help people grow the community themselves. Plus, there’s a certain appeal to urban grit. We could have added graffiti to the map, but I don’t think it would have changed the outcome. The thing to remember is Portland is doing a lot better than it looks to be doing; unemployment is high, but artificially high because there are so many social services.

Do you find it surprising that the map has caught on?

EC: We were warned beforehand by our teacher at Portland State, Kenneth Martin, who works for the Bureau of planning and Sustainability. He said that the city was interested in the map, and said that we might get some press. Nothing happened with the city adopting it, but the map really popular anyway; it all just sort of snowballed.

EC: I’m taking a Web Mapping class right now, and the professor really liked the map, so he sent it out on this geography email list. One of the people on the list happened to write for Silicon Florist. I think that’s what tipped it all off.

What specifically about this neighborhood, Mississippi, made it the most badass?

EC: It has a lot of bike lanes, so the areas we chose to analyze had a have lot of coverage. The MAX is less than a half-mile away from here, the pinball community is great, the street is loaded with bars; it’s just fantastic.

Where do the boundary lines come from?

EC: Those are the city boundaries from the Regional Information System provided by Metro. They have a regional land database, and we used their boundaries.

How badass is our neighborhood (Alberta)?

DM: It’s pretty hot. It’s either badass or super badass. It’s not hella badass, though. [Laughs].

What are your plans for the future in terms of your careers and this project?

EC: Career is kind of wide open right now. I’m in the PSU program for Urban Studies, which I’m really excited about it. We’re looking right now at doing an online interactive tool where people can select from a variety of different factors according to their own personal preference. Everyone has their own concept of “badassness”, so we want to give them a more interactive experience where they can publish their own maps. I also want to make t-shirts.

DM: I just finished up my thesis project, and I’m working with PCC. This summer I want to spend time on the “badass map” idea.

Since you visited a lot around town to put this together, what are some of your favorite places in town to eat and drink?

DM: The Acropolis is my favorite strip club; they have the best selection of beers on tap. My favorite place to play pinball would be Billy Ray’s; they have my favorite game, Medieval Madness, and they don’t have it set on the pro level. Personally, I love the Southeast. I live within stumbling distance of the Green Dragon and Apex, which is the place to go for beer and pinball. 

What do you either love or hate about Portland?

EC: Personally, I get a little tired of seeing the same 20-30 something white people all over town. It gets a little old and bland. Also, every now and then, I get a little sick of the crazy things that happen here. For example, the other night I was sitting at Amnesia Brewery with some friends, and a bunch of people ran in wearing nothing but pumpkins on their heads. I thought, “If that happened back home, someone would get beat up.”

At the same time, that’s what I like about this place: that it’s weird. The food and beer here is affordable and phenomenal. It’s a good time to be this age in Portland right now.

Check out the Badass-ness map here and watch a video about it below.

Portland Badass-ness Map from Dillon Mahmoudi on Vimeo.