To understand the state’s urban-rural divide, start by looking at Yamhill County’s proposed walking trail.

He sawed out the bottom. Nailed the crate to the telephone pole out in front of the house. New hoop. ... I’d be out there shooting until 10 at night. That’s when I started getting really good. The pole was round so you couldn’t bank the ball in. And you weren’t getting a friendly bounce on a square rim. You had to hit it dead-on, wet.

Zukle: The old guy, Bob [Polizos]—I like him, he's a nice guy. When were first getting started, he said, "I like competition." And I said, "Good, because you're gonna get it!" People go over there for $5 steak bites, then they come here for a $500 lap dance.
Polizos: I don't want them here. We are a real restaurant. They're nothing but a whorehouse!

An excerpt from Luna's as-of-now unpublished novel: a look at discontentment in Portland.

"I wasn't sleeping well, is the thing. I would go to bed at midnight where Tom was nearly always already asleep, and I'd lie awake until one or so when I'd finally fall asleep, only to wake up at 5 a.m.—always five am, like a bell clanging—seized with some unnamed panic. Panic gripping my throat, tightening my chest. Like waking up mid-heart attack morning after morning. I would get up, pull on my clothes, get out. Our apartment got so small and close like that, the walls closing in on me and I would need to get out. Just to breathe, to settle myself down some. Miles I would walk, winding my way past rain-faded hulking warehouses and auto shops and lumber yards and then I'd push past them, just me and the trucks and the highway sounds and the river."

A profile of Carrie Brownstein, riot grrrl and creator of Portlandia.