How will we sell ourselves?

Published 3:00 pm Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Having grown up in Oregon and long enjoyed that state’s picturesque coastline, we were grateful to set off on a jaunt down Highway 101 last week for some summer respite. Carefree and directionless, we touched down in a seaside hamlet whose beach we remembered fondly from our shovel-and-bucket days.

It was a glorious afternoon, and we fell into the bustle to and from the beach eager to feel some toasty sand between our toes and frosty waves cutting us off at the knees. Memories of youthful idyll flooded back – a mom and dad holding hands, a skinny kid in kneepants, a little dog running around at ocean’s edge, yapping madly at every wave – until a block from the beach, we were jolted back to reality by a giant banner above one of the storefronts:

“NASCAR MERCHANDISE HERE.”

Wha…?

Looking around, it was indeed clear that things in the seaside hamlet had changed a bit since our youth. You’d be hard-pressed to find a burg more garishly tarted up for tourists, its once homey downtown now a nightmarish strip of trinket shops, penny arcades, carnival rides and overpriced eateries, while several massive hotels towered over the sacred public beach from the very seawall; nearby, a “factory outlet mall” offered cut-rate goods from distant national chains.

Any concession to local history and culture – Lewis and Clark, the Oregon Trail, that sort of thing – eluded us; dismayed, we hopped back in the car and drove off at speed toward Astoria and the excellent Columbia River Maritime Museum there.

Still troubled upon our return to the island, we checked the map to see if some racetrack had gone in just south of the Columbia. Nope; near as we can tell, the closest NASCAR facility is still somewhere in Southern California, which set us to wondering what connection its merchandise had to the Oregon coast. The answer, of course, is none; that a beachfront merchant in that seaside hamlet saw a buck in hawking the racing behemoth’s licensed gewgaws – where young eyes once coveted seashells, saltwater taffy and local crafts – stank of hucksterism and inauthenticity.

Elsewhere in these pages, various interests weigh in on whether the likely departure of the Supersonics basketball team for Oklahoma City will put gas in NASCAR’s political tank as it seeks funding for a track in Kitsap County. Will state and county leaders overcompensate for the pending loss of big-time basketball by throwing public money at big-time auto racing?

We can expect to hear the usual rhetoric about Seattle losing its status as “world class city” if we can no longer watch millionaire pituitary freaks stuff a ball through a hoop, but do we really need adrenaline-crazed millionaire race car drivers as a substitute?

What’s at stake – besides tax dollars – is our community’s identity and how we will market ourselves. “Cultural tourism” posits that an area can draw out-of-towners by promoting the best of its indigenous features, and we have plenty of those – wonderful parks and wild areas, boating on Puget Sound, fishing in Hood Canal, majestic mountain vistas, the magnificent Olympic Peninsula, an unmatched quality of life.

If visitors want to experience those delights – if they want the real Pacific Northwest experience – we can and should welcome them to our shores.

If they want a NASCAR jersey, they can always go to the Oregon coast.