ABSTRACT
In contrast to Davis and Olympia, Portland is a large city with multiple educational institutions, both of which contribute to a less unified and more fragmented local do-it-yourself (DIY) scene. Moreover, Portland’s historic DIY scenes are less nationally and internationally acclaimed than Olympia’s. People consuming this type of media go to Oakland expecting to find drive-by shootings, roving gangs toting AK-47s, as well as pimps, prostitutes, and race riots. However, people visiting Oakland are often surprised when they don’t see this, but instead find several avant-garde movements in art, music, fashion, urban farming, and local food. Oakland has a very different demographic and economic situation than Portland, with a large non-white, low-income, and deindustrialized warehouse areas. As DIY participant Heather from Oakland told me, DIY participants started to move from Berkeley to Oakland in the early 1990s, because it was not financially affordable for them to live in Berkeley anymore.
