Leaves come in enough to hear the wind rustle through.

Guy at the bar was talking about neighborhood decline and I eventually pinned him down to these two parts of the main street where the artsy hobby tenants were kicked out and buildings were wrapped with fences and I was like “oh my god do you not realize that means the owners are done trying to keep the property warm and are actually pushing for redevelopment?”

This is core under-the-down-comforter-but-it-DOESN’T-drape-over-all-edges-of-the-bed season

Bats been chirping around the neighborhood at nights lately, I’d been afraid we were by a too-loud route

Just had this weird elfen-voiced dumpster diver girl in an Eskimo hood come up to one and try to talk to me while I was pissing against the other side, how you guys doing?

Time of year it goes from shirt off/window open to shirt on/window closed weather and back every 20 minutes.

kontextmaschine:

In a brunch place in a neighborhood right by mine that’s the first one they laid out for cars, all non-super “markets” and random sub-collector intersections with shops and bars and doctors’ offices on the corner, and there is a slightly-shaded from full sun thing going on that really favors houses built in the Truman administration

You can precisely date the neighborhood from how the plots right off the collector streets don’t have sidewalks because they were built when it was unincorporated county land but then it was incorporated in and they were required so the further ones do.

Somehow always fucks me up that Reed is north of Woodstock, not south

In a brunch place in a neighborhood right by mine that’s the first one they laid out for cars, all non-super “markets” and random sub-collector intersections with shops and bars and doctors’ offices on the corner, and there is a slightly-shaded from full sun thing going on that really favors houses built in the Truman administration

Coming back from the bar there was actual life on the street after dark, the neighborhood’s really coming up. A lot of raggedy street people though, where there weren’t last week, I wonder if a nearby encampment got rousted.

Talking to a pair of Reedie girls, asking if they’re a lesbian couple cause the girls I see playing pool here always turn out to be, they’re like “well fuck, we are now”

Slingshot Lounge

SE Foster Road

Portland, OR

depsidase:

I glanced at this and was like “guh, I feel like I recognize this yard”, and then 15 seconds later read the billboard and was like “503 area code… close to 28th and Sandy? Fuck, I do recognize this yard.” I got Blue Bitch repaired like two blocks away once.

Where at the very depth of winter I have to get out by 4 to get at least an hour of waning sunlight for yard work, by now I can’t get out until 4 when the day’s rain has passed.

Definitely starting to meet the kind of people who might have moved to Silicon Valley or Seattle, but in Portland they can live one to a bedroom.

Neighborhood is finally filling up with the young renters who feel like they own the place but show up a half- to full- decade after the first-time homeowners who actually own the place (when it’s time to settle down good luck finding a house remotely close, kids!)

Oregon increased the amount of uh… weed drugs you can put in edibles a bit back, and with the cannabis market not yet federalized and Oregon dealing with a surplus of input it’s real cheap, so you can just buy $6 fun packs to Be On Drugs a bit now.

This in the context of all drugs being fundamentally decriminalized in Oregon, they did eventually shut down the downtown Portland storefront magic mushroom place that had a huge line out front, but they’re spinning up their official state shrooms system now

Neighborhood beer hall playing for the WFH crowd with a happy hour during business hours

morlock-holmes:

kontextmaschine:

morlock-holmes:

kontextmaschine:

morlock-holmes:

illuminator-of-eternal-warfare:

morlock-holmes:

Basically as far as I can tell all the problems in Portland are related to government apathy about staffing.

Pretty much every government agency I get any insight into here is deeply understaffed for the workload, and also deeply committed to not doing anything to attract staff.

Culture war stuff or ideology seems largely unrelated.

“Pretty much every government agency I get any insight into here is deeply understaffed for the workload, and also deeply committed to not doing anything to attract staff.“

Sounds like ideology to me.

Well, sure, but how would you call that ideology? Republican small government ideology? I mean, I guess our city government is pretty right wing.

We’re hoping that once the structural changes go through the bureaucracy will unclog itself a little.

Well, I do think that until the 2020 unpleasantness, the downtown establishment was like “engaged community-oriented young people with leftward-trending opinions? all to the good, they’ll be great allies in developing this liberal city, perhaps as pertains to service provision and incorporating marginalized eastside communities into our (fundamentally neoliberal westside property owner-run) civic order!” and they’re a bit more hesitant to bring new employees or allies on board without proper vetting now.

What we’re vetting for is “will tolerate police corruption as the price of doing business instead of getting all riot-y about it” yeah?

Well, with Hardesty gone they’ve purged the council but they were too halfassed to keep the rabble-rousers off the charter reform commission or get their proposal rejected, they might shave it down some in the courts but the insurgent left def. planned it to undermine establishmentarian locks by expanding the council and dividing it into multi-member districts. I’m in the same one as Lents and I’ll do my part to keep Sarah Iannarone out, but in case she gets in you sure don’t want her to have sympathizers inside administrative agencies she can articulate with.

Ah. So it is kind of what I said. I have an old-fashioned, not to mention autistic, belief that the purpose of the political system is to create certain beneficial results, and focusing on which team has the most power in city government is at best tangential to that goal.

Or, put another way: shit or get off the pot. That there is a certain level of radical incompetence in the radical left side of Portland government doesn’t make the moderate business focused side competent.

Wheeler, for example, seems uninterested in really amping up police hiring OR creating any kind of accountability; he seems happy to let the police stagnate and then throw blame at the left-wingers.

Oh yeah, Wheeler is incompetent at either wielding government power or evoking public sentiment, all the establishmentarian councilmembers are uninspired fronts for the downtown poobahs (who shouldn’t’ve stuffed Jefferson Smith to get Charlie Hales in, I don’t know what made that so critical, my blind guess was lining things up for the buildout of “South”) whose “People For Portland” astroturfing is terrible (the kind of communications firm an insulated and comfortable technocratic establishment in a liberal city has ties to would be shit at tapping into authentic voter anger around crime and homelessness).

Meanwhile, the left had two tactics: infiltrate and escalate, but they pulled the trigger on 2 without enough 1.