Mau-Mauling The Class Catchers Eugene needs a class act. BY JERRY HARRIS Now approaching my fourth year in Eugene, I am finally getting a grip on the place: It is the most unconsciously class-driven little society that I've had the pleasure of observing. I was in Café Paradiso the other morning watching anti-Starbucks poets shoot the breeze, separated outside by post-Columbine rockers and white Rastafarians who fed their dogs and threw verbal spitballs at passersby. The outsiders didn't seem to like those preppies next to me who had on knit caps, and were contemplating their rosy future. The silence at my table was broken, "You could have bought a house two years ago there. You could have gotten it for $250,000." The quote was from a fairly upper-class lady in reference to a conversation about me moving to Sacramento. "Now it will cost twice that amount," she said. I smiled at her while she sipped on her café latte. She was new to Eugene, and a lover of art and artists. "Would you like some coffee?" she asked me. I was relieved because I was completely broke, although my work was up the street at the Jacobs Gallery trying to fetch a few hundred dollars so that I could pay the rent. This all brought home to me the naïveté of class in Eugene. It needs a bit of mau-mauling, something on the level of that '70s classic Radical Chic And Mau-Mauling The Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe. Here's my catch on it.   The UO must be the citadel of class snobbery; it seems as if the professors there wouldn't deign to talk to a mere instructor at LCC, nor would an art professor attend, to their mind, one of our pedestrian art shows. Sitting in the throes of academia means to have nothing to do with the indigenous population. The dons have spoken. The middle-class Blacks, who seem to have a monopoly on the multi-cultural entities at the UO, seem to disappear when they leave the campus at four o'clock — never to be seen on the streets of Eugene, and you can be sure that you'll never see them eating BBQ at my man, The Bar-B-Q King, who sells excellent soul food across from the 18th Avenue Safeway on Sundays. "Well, Bill, why don't I see gay men and women hanging out together?" I asked this gay friend of mine. "Oh no, not in Eugene. They don't seem to tolerate us. They have Eugene and we have Portland." Jesus, I guess cross-dressers don't have a hell of a good time in the Emerald City, either. Separated by class, separated by taste, it all makes me want to run away to the circus where there's real diversity. At least the clowns drink with the big fat lady. Class makes for dullness. Even in the micro art world of Eugene, most young and a few old heads can't think of themselves as artists unless they're accepted in the Mayor's Art Show — somehow this acceptance means to them that they have made it. They can now hang out with the big boys and girls who show at the Jacobs Gallery, Maude Kerns, or the newly minted Karen Clarke Gallery where a new type of snobbery is taking hold. It still won't mean anything to those nutty art professors at the UO if you don't have a MFA and a safe teaching job. You'll never be admitted to their league. Sorry, that's the way it is.   Don't even talk about the homeless class. There are not many who want to even start dealing with this problem. Look at the uproar from businesses on East 8th Avenue when a free food restaurant took over the old Hare Krishna place. "Get 'em out now," they hollered — and they did just that, but later reached a compromise to let families and old people eat there. The funny thing about class is that in America they don't even know what it is. The most classless people in Europe shipped out for America and ever since they've been trying to find, or define, some class about themselves, but McDonald's wins overwhelmingly. Personally, I wish we had a healthy class, a non-racist class, a no-war class, and what better place to start than right here in Eugene? And what class do I belong to? I'm a member of the flayed class. We get crucified for having big mouths. Jerry Harris is an international sculptor and writer who resides in Eugene.
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