Tons of people came to Portland after, during and just before the Kurt Cobain thing. There were artists here before that of course, but early 90s saw a general inundation. It's good and bad when you have to live with it, but artists basically go into art knowing they are going to be poor. In fact, if you're not poor the whole myth doesn't work, if and when you finally arrive as a great writer, musician, etc.

The funny thing about this article is that I could close my eyes and throw a rock and I'd bet you my little left toe that the person hit by the rock will be able to discourse at length about how to survive with no money. As I got into my 30s I realized that this artist/survival ethic extended itself to young families with kids just as much as it did to the single, 22 yo male with nothing to lose.

Having spent more than my fair share of time in the heart of the city, living that life I can tell you that there is something to be said for creativity and ingenuity. But also there's something unmentioned in this article and it's your peers. In Portland one of the main things that allows a no-account, little shit musician to get drunk and laid three nights a week while living off of craigslist gigs is the fact that everybody does this exact same thing. Thus there is no peer guilt, or at least it's highly mitigated by the crowd.

For example, just off the top of my head (and I'm a few years out from the cutting edge of urban survival):

-smokes...go to the tobacco store, buy rolling tobacco in bulk. currently 5.50 an ounce of good shag

-brew your own beer or go in with somebody who has the equipment, pay for the ingredients. or just buy at the store and avoid the bar altogether. last time i did it, worked out to 30 cents a bottle including the price of the bottle for some high grade double hopped belgian beer

-trader joes (local grocery), kettleman's bagels, etc, etc, all toss their food in the dumpster and it's basically perfect. in fact, the employees inside know that if they take care to keep the toss away shit in good shape their store will be respected, even appreciated. a conservative estimate would say at least 200 places do this. huge bags of bagels are a dollar, three bags for two dollars. frozen dumpster food if you get it quick is still fuckin frozen and in perfect condition.

-for shelter you rent a fucking room. and yes i know very well adjusted families with kids who do this by simply renting two rooms in the same house. this has been going for close to two decades, that i've seen.

-food stamps, unemployment, craigslist gigs, day labor and barter systems are ubiquitous to portland. there would in fact be no portland as we know it without these institutions.....so yeah it's going to turn to shit like everyone else but....

-a huge amount of people are constantly running around trying to make co-ops and urban farms and every other fucking thing to make the best of shit, eventually this has forced the monied class to live with the reality of the rest of us. the cops do still shoot people on a regular basis, but i know from first hand experience that if they come to your dumpy little co-housing situation and you treat them with respect they will be totally reasonable (i've seen this w/ blacks, whites, whatever). and this happens specifically because the city shits their pants as a collective whenever something oppressive happens. sure it still happens, but it's better than just rolling over and accepting a foot in your ass.

-the point to all this is not to say that portland is better, though it probably is, but rather to point out that the whole reality of portland and other similar cities comes from the fact that starving artists basically paved the way for how to get it done.

I would submit that most 'artists' are actually just narcissistic assholes in pupa form, however IF they do in fact live by the creative ethos then there might in fact be something survival-worthy in regards to a general sense of creativity.