Was in a bar the other day and overheard someone like “you see all the Iron Front arrows on [local boulevard] , that’s ours now, we should tell sex workers we can protect them here”

And friend

This is how it goes

“Oh, our militant brotherhood claimed this territory? Let’s use it to operate prostitutes!”

“We protect us”, La Cosa Nostra can credibly claim to have started as an underdog defense force, the Bloods were founded to protect from Crips.

Y'all ACAB fuckers know the police started and legitimate themselves as community defense.

This Sean Kealiher death raises my hairs. “Someone ran this guy down outside our gang clubhouse! And then people shot at the car and drove him to the hospital and won’t talk to cops! But oh it’s not political JUST SHUT UP about it!”

and uhhhhhhhh

C Bar

SE Gladstone Ave, Portland, OR

Just saw a murdered-out 4Runner, which threw me

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

The incongruously well-equipped homeless campers nearby left a bouquet of flowers at my door which led to me learning that they’re a grad student doing fieldwork for a thesis on homelessness and her husband

They’re from SOU in Ashland, and really, incongruously well equipped - nice new tent, two bikes, portable stovetop and cookware, they put up fairy lights today. Kinda seems more like an urban camping trip, between that and coming in with a literal postgraduate education in being homeless, I don’t know how typical an experience they’re having.

Update: they were sorting through a bunch of their stuff so I talked to them again, for the first time since it’s been raining, and asked them how that went. They said a bunch of the stuff they had been storing under tarps outside of the tent had gotten wet and moldy, so they’d have to throw it out.

Every visitor to town I tell this saga to laughs and goes “that’s so Portland”, every actual Portlander I tell is indignant

me: oh hey, it’s that weird part of the year where the days are hotter than the preceding summer and the nights are colder than the coming fall

me: does that mean we’re due for that one day of random hail?

Portland: that’s winter/spring, silly! It’s time for that one day of thunder without rain!

So the local nude beach/dogging ground is called Rooster Rock, on the Columbia, named after a natural rock column that was originally called Cock Rock, or before that iwash, for penis

kontextmaschine:

The incongruously well-equipped homeless campers nearby left a bouquet of flowers at my door which led to me learning that they’re a grad student doing fieldwork for a thesis on homelessness and her husband

They’re from SOU in Ashland, and really, incongruously well equipped - nice new tent, two bikes, portable stovetop and cookware, they put up fairy lights today. Kinda seems more like an urban camping trip, between that and coming in with a literal postgraduate education in being homeless, I don’t know how typical an experience they’re having.

The incongruously well-equipped homeless campers nearby left a bouquet of flowers at my door which led to me learning that they’re a grad student doing fieldwork for a thesis on homelessness and her husband

Trump appealing to a homeless crackdown

1) Shows his mind is still very firmly in the 70s-80s-90s Manhattan arc

2) Is not bad wedging in the “blue” cities where there’s definite tension in the limousine liberal/minority/young upstart D coalitions, over housing, over culture, over policing.

In Portland there’s a brewing conflict over “more traffic cops to realize our Vision Zero pedestrian safety plan” (coalition being bicyclist hipsters and outer-city dwellers with few options) and “no, we want to minimize police contact” (leftists and the woke)

SE Boise

Portland, OR

After in the past days telling several visitors that no, despite how it’s hyped on the news, you won’t even really encounter the Portland left/right street conflict unless you’re trying to, ran across two packs of Proud Boys in the near east side yesterday (which is to say Monday 8/19/19, after the weekend’s scheduled events)

Encountered, still not really affected by, the first time it was just a bunch of guys conferring at a table outside a coffee shop, I got a vibe from the look of their hair and beards and the gold trim on one’s outfit but then a guy with a “PROUD BOY” shirt walked up and removed all doubt

One I wouldn’t have made the connection if I hadn’t known a bunch of them were staying at the hipster hotel down the block (itself a block or so from Cider Riot, which emerged as the left-fighters’ watering hole), it was a guy in a MAGA hat whipping his shirt over his head and “woo!"ing with another guy with an Ole Miss shirt.

If I didn’t know the context and you had told me "those guys are part of a national online community pushing back on leftist trends in American culture” I woulda guessed Barstool “stoolies”

(Or maybe Old Row, which is basically Barstool for stoolies currently still in college fraternities)

Someone was talking on twitter in relation to a walkable urbanism thing that they suddenly realized they had no idea where the nearest elementary school was

I knew where the closest elementary school was, and where the closest high school was, and I could think of a few others for each actually, and then I realized I had no idea where any middle schools were

And that’s how I learned that Portland Public Schools operates a mix of K-5, 6-8, AND K-8 schools.

As like Portland environmental storytelling, there has been a leftist art scene drama flame war conducted in the form of memes on flat surfaces around town for going on 4 years now

One of the small things that fucks with me about Portland is firetrucks run red + blue lights here.

In SE Pennsylvania red + blue was reserved for police, fire ran pure red

Blue alone meant you were a volunteer firefighter on your way to the firehouse, I think there weren’t laws around that but it was proper to yield

Yellow/amber or green rooftop lights just meant “I am doing shit in the roadway, look out”

Also in mid-90s our fire trucks switched from red to that lime yellow reflective

In a bar where someone’s introducing the concept of Chick Tracts (“no, T-R-A-C-T-S”) to illustrate what a backwards world they came from

me: Christ, these new young people aren't keeping Portland weird at all, they're just, they're... they're the kind of fucks who moved to the city 'cause they liked *Felicity*.
also me: Not only do I guarantee you none of them get that reference, YOU only get it 'cause you watched Felicity.
me: Only 'til they cut her hair.

in the bar (which is where you get food late night, Oregon has a rule saying bars must offer hot meals)

And I’m watching one of the Martin episodes with the Jerome character and I’m like “oh my god… I just watched FOX as a kid and took it as background America but this is totally about being black”

and there’s this chuckling I hear behind me and it’s this tall black guy and I gotta cop to it like “yeah, and I watched In Living Color and all I picked up was Jim Carrey’s Fire Marshall Bill faces”

and then like 2 minutes later the Cascadian barmistress asks if I was making someone uncomfortable and I repeat this and she’s like “we don’t talk about that black and white stuff, okay, we’re all the same here”

Someone on Nextdoor individually put all their goldfish in the pet registry, as if I’m going to be walking down the street one day and run across one who escaped and have to return it

At the arcade, groaning realizing I’d settled into a comfortable spot right in front of the tesla coil they’re going to play nerd music on in 10 minutes