If Portland had a spirit animal, it would be a golden retriever wearing a "Coexist" bumper sticker, well-meaning, overly enthusiastic, and completely oblivious to why everyone's backing away slowly. Enter "Hasaan Hates Portland," the satirical web series that's holding up a mirror to our beloved Rose City's most cringe-worthy moments, and honestly? We can't look away.

Created by filmmaker Mischa Webley and starring Hasaan Thomas as himself, this bite-sized comedy series has been making waves since its October 2024 premiere. Each episode runs j

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ust 3-5 minutes, perfect for Portland's notoriously short attention spans, and tackles the city's particular brand of "benevolent racism" with the precision of a barista crafting your fourth oat milk cortado of the day.

The genius of "Hasaan Hates Portland" lies not in what Hasaan says, but in what he doesn't say. Thomas describes his character's approach as "temporary, strategic surrendering, to all of this fuckery, for the purpose of maintaining one's sanity." It's a masterclass in the art of the deadpan reaction, where facial expressions do the heavy lifting while well-meaning Portlanders dig themselves deeper into conversational holes.

Picture this: Hasaan walks into a coffee shop (because of course it's a coffee shop) and gets offered free coffee during "reparations happy hour." Or better yet, a stranger congratulates him for reading a book with the helpful observation that "MLK was a big reader, too, you know?" These aren't exaggerated scenarios, they're Portland Tuesday.

The show's structure mimics video game levels, which feels eerily appropriate. Anyone who's navigated Portland's social landscape as a Black person can probably relate to the boss-level difficulty of a Tuesday afternoon in Alberta Arts District, where every interaction feels like dodging well-intentioned but ultimately harmful power-ups.

Webley didn't choose Portland randomly for this satirical treatment. As he puts it, while other cities have similar neighborhoods, "Portland is like the final boss level of all that", referring to our intensely white, progressive, "Whole Foods and bumper sticker friendly" culture. We've managed to create a city where being woke is a competitive sport, and everyone's gunning for the gold medal in performative allyship.

The series exposes what happens when progressive intentions crash headfirst into the reality of living in "the whitest city in America." It's one thing to have a Black Lives Matter yard sign; it's another to actually examine why your neighborhood looks like a Patagonia catalog exploded. Webley notes that in more diverse cities, "if you bring a certain kind of ignorance, you're going to hear about it. But people who live in an echo chamber don't hear about it, it's reinforced."

And boy, do we love our echo chambers here. Portland has perfected the art of surrounding ourselves with people who agree with us, then patting ourselves on the back for our enlightened views. The result? A city where microaggressions come wrapped in organic, locally-sourced good intentions.

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What makes this series particularly brilliant is its timing. Portland has spent the last few years under a national microscope, grappling with everything from racial justice protests to questions about our progressive identity. We've been portrayed as everything from a hipster paradise to a dystopian hellscape, but rarely with the nuanced awkwardness that "Hasaan Hates Portland" captures.

Webley deliberately chose satire because existing portrayals, whether through "Portlandia" or news coverage, were "missing it." He wanted Portland to "laugh at itself" while holding up an uncomfortably accurate mirror. The show's title itself is a stroke of genius: Hasaan doesn't actually hate Portland, but "hate is instead projected onto him, in the way that anyone questioning predominant opinions is labeled a 'hater.'"

This framing perfectly captures Portland's defensive reflex. Criticize our bike infrastructure? You must hate the environment. Question our housing policies? You're probably a NIMBY. Point out racial blind spots? Well, clearly you just don't appreciate how progressive we are.

The series arrives at a moment when Portland is having what therapists would call "a reckoning." We're a city built on the idea that good intentions are enough, that reading the right books and voting for the right candidates automatically makes us the good guys. "Hasaan Hates Portland" suggests maybe that's not quite cutting it.

Take the classic Portland interaction: A well-meaning white person approaches a Black person to discuss race, armed with the latest Ibram X. Kendi book and a burning desire to prove they're "one of the good ones." The conversation inevitably becomes less about listening and more about performance, a chance to showcase their enlightenment rather than actually engage with different perspectives.

The show's lean production, intentionally kept small to preserve creative freedom, allows for the kind of improvised authenticity that bigger productions often lose. It's grassroots in the best Portland tradition, minus the sanctimony that usually comes with that label.

What's refreshing about "Hasaan Hates Portland" is that it doesn't let anyone off the hook, including Portland itself. The series has gained traction across film festivals and online platforms, suggesting audiences are hungry for more honest conversations about our city's racial dynamics. Maybe we're finally ready to laugh at ourselves instead of just at everyone else.

The show's reception indicates something Portland desperately needs: the ability to take criticism without immediately launching into defensive explanations about our food cart scene or bike lanes. It's possible to love this weird, wonderful city while acknowledging that we've got some serious blind spots.

Thomas puts it perfectly: "Portland is looking funny in the light." And honestly? It's about time. We've spent years carefully curating our image as the progressive haven where everyone's welcome (as long as they can afford a $3,000 studio apartment and don't mind being the only person of color in most rooms).

"Hasaan Hates Portland" serves as both entertainment and ethnography, documenting a specific moment in our city's evolution where progressive aspirations collide messily with lived reality. It's uncomfortable viewing for anyone who's ever posted a rainbow flag on social media while living in a neighborhood that's whiter than a New Seasons cheese counter.

The series doesn't offer easy solutions or neat conclusions, much like Portland itself. Instead, it holds up that unflinching mirror and asks us to sit with the discomfort. In a city that's perfected the art of turning everything into a teachable moment, maybe what we need is just to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

After all, the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one. And if it takes a satirical web series to get us there, well, that's pretty Portland too.