M
Joined: May 08, 2004
Posts: 262
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M
Palapala, I've enjoyed your company a few times, and I'm not about to argue that your feelings are entirely without merit. But I think posts like this, in a public forum, are counter-productive. And I think you might want to consider how it feels to be on the receiving end, even when you don't name names. Since I'm clearly alluded to as one of those who "may not feel the same way, but perhaps are afraid to be frozen out themselves,and let it happen, " I'd like to make a few points from my personal perspective that I think merit consideration.
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The event -- or at least the most recent event -- that precipitated this was clearly the Sunday event, where a small number of TC people met upstairs, while you were at the bar downstairs. You had a head start on the other TC folks, so you may not have noticed that by the time we arrived there were no open seats downstairs. Believe me, if there was just one open seat in the downstairs bar area, I would have spent considerably more time there -- not because I'm concerned about who's freezing whom out, but because of the gal on the other side of you with the long legs and the short skirt. (Yes, I'm that shallow; and yes, you're over-thinking this stuff.)
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You can come on pretty strong with people, and I submit that when you rub a particular person the wrong way, you don't improve things by rubbing them more. Yes, sometimes a person might have not been as polite to you as you might hope; but you also make it more difficult for people to be polite by essentially demanding that they be your friend. People have a right to choose their own friends, they don't sacrifice that right by becoming tiki central "ohana," and you don't convert them into your friends by explaining how sensitive you are and how we're all "family." Maybe it works that way on "Lilo and Stich," but c'mon, you know that it doesn't work that way in real life.
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I don't think it's fair to criticize me or anyone else in the NW TC crowd for "letting it happen." I don't control who would like to be your friend and who would not. And I don't want to start worrying about where to sit and whom to talk to based on how this will be interpreted in terms of alliances, being "elitist," etc., etc. I'm far too shallow for that sort of canniness, and I prefer to invest my very limited strategizing on calculating the fastest route to the bartender.
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The implication that I, or anyone else in the NW crowd, is motivated by a fear of "being frozen out" is simply a fantasy. And a fairly insulting one, I might add. For chrissakes, in Portland I hung out with Bora Boris -- would I ever do that if I worried about people judging me by my associations?
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I don't know what other sort of crowds you hang you out with, but I've spent a fair amount of time in goth circles. Let me tell you, if you think NW Tiki people are cliquish, you have no idea. My first organized tiki crawl was the Portland crawl several years ago, and I loved it exactly because people were so astonishingly friendly to someone they didn't even know. And you know what else? The few grumpy ones are the ones whose company I tend to enjoy most. (Don't worry, I'm not going to mention any names, Seamus.) I have yet to be on a tiki crawl of any kind that wasn't a blast, no matter who organizes it -- and the PDX folks are absolutely top shelf.
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Finally, NW tiki people are weird. I by no means exclude myself. I personally much enjoy the company of weird people, but when you hang with weird people, you have to accept that we're not known for dependably hewing to social conventions. And while there's much to be said for the company of weird people, if you're not comfortable reacting to what feels like repeated slights with a shrug and an "Oh well, they're just weird," it may not be exactly your crowd.
[ Edited by: monkeyskull 2009-08-03 23:19 ]
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