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.

morlock-holmes:

It’s very hard for me to tell; I’ve lived here all my life. An influx of people combined with stagnant housing supply has made a fairly large population of homeless drug addicts and court rulings about tent camping mean that it’s pretty common for me to walk by the charred remains of tents that were burnt down by people starting open fires inside to stay warm.

The city also didn’t used to be covered in mounds of garbage, I’m salty about that.

That said, talking to people who have moved here from other cities it is apparently significantly worse in a lot of places in the US, so you may see real improvement.

It’s still not a very dangerous city by US standards.

Also if there’s a protest downtown you just route around it, but for the last couple of years people have been too cynical and exhausted. I’d expect some more if someone like Trump or Desantis win the presidency, but it will mostly be confined to a few blocks downtown. If you aren’t working in a government building or a business in what is really a very small area of downtown it’s pretty much fine.

Reed’s still good (that’s not a uni though – it doesn’t do graduate education, though it sends the highest share of undergrads in the country there), OHSU is still good, I’d wave off PSU

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.

From last year when I was doing yard work all year long I have a pretty good sense of local micro-seasons and know the rain stops after May.

So, I’ll want to start tamping down any loose soil on the rammed-earth ramp sloping up to the backyard gate so I can get a few cycles to compress it to water- (and plant-) impermeable hardpack before it dries too much. Most of the pulled weeds and dirt this year I dumped to build a slope down a bit into the shell of Blueberry Hill.

So I want to use that ramp to get down and smash all of Blueberry Hill and refill it with new compost by late April to get wet some and start decay processes, maybe break wood apart in Strawberry Ridge too, also I want the grass to be a bit past medium-length then to trap moisture by the ground so I’ll cut it tight in a week or so and throw that in to get rained on and paste things together.

When it gets dry weeds stop sprouting, last year pulling them was full-time by now and afterwards I used the time to trim all the trees, it’ll still free up some this year I guess I’ll use to get the renovation started.

“People For Portland”, the group westside real estate interests stood up after the 2020 unpleasantness to introduce some rightward backpressure to city politics is so lame with their hits, it’s clear they want to “keep pressure on” the elected more than particularly defeat any of them, even when they were psyching up to replace Hardesty last election (as the one council vote off-sides) it was so paint-by-numbers, no passion. Their talking points might as well come with quotation marks around them already.

Does seem to be a pattern that both the denser more established neighborhoods closer in AND the not-yet-gentrified ones further out have experienced the last few years as a sudden upswing in trash, crime, and visible homelessness while here at the gentrification frontier things have steadily been growing nicer and more polished up the whole time.

If my intuitions are correct, and they usually are, I’m gonna emerge from the chrysalis of renovating my house and personality right in time for the neighborhood to move from “appealing for first-time homebuyers settling down who inspire fundamental structures to show up” to “appealing for the young renters who carry all the actual street energy”

Fuckin’ porch pirate just banged on my bedroom window, standing in my backyard, holding an Amazon package of mine, asking for a light.

He had some fuckin gaudy leprechaun shirt like Jesse Breaking Bad and a small shamrock tattooed by the corner of an eye, I was like “wow I’m not sure I’ve been exposed to this kind of white boy grody since they played Everlast on the radio”

Yeah, I hear it’s bad in the hundreds, and the areas closer to the river were moaning about the homeless these past few years, but I’m in the sweet spot in between where the neighborhood has just steadily continued to get better

Smart Donkey Burreria

SE 50th Ave

Portland, OR

slipperyslideyday:

hater-of-terfs:

radicalgraff:

“If you promise to stay alive just a little bit longer I promise that we are going to make this world a place worth living in by any means necessary. I ain’t giving up. I swear.” 

Spotted in Clackamas, Oregon

I can’t stop thinking about this message, so I spent a while trying to isolate just the writing and make it transparent. I might order a shirt with it

Whoever in Clackamas wrote this message on their bus stop, I love you

[ if you promise to stay alive just a little bit longer I promise that we are going to make this world a place worth living in by any means necessary. 
I ain’t giving up. I swear. end caption ]  

who the fuck is saying this in Clackamas

Okay, today was the annual Spring-is-Starting afternoon hailstorm, didn’t realize we were that far already

Snow mostly melting today, impressed how it lined up with the latest echo symptom wave to give me a perfect excuse for being useless for a week

In Portland snow does not stay on the ground often and many households do not have snow shovels, the attitude is to leave it a day to melt. It’s thinning but the highs are in the low 30s for a few days, but there was a snow earlier this season I was unprepared for and got a snow shovel from Amazon. Nicely curved to gather big stretches in one go and a steel tip to break up icey sheets

Not clear when we’re gonna have a day warm enough to melt all this snow on the ground.

Woke up, went to the bathroom, whipped out my dong, started to piss in the toilet, looked out the window, and was surprised to find it snowing.

All the parents walking around my neighborhood with 3-year-olds are suburban office park types but all the ones with 12-year-olds are like, AutoZone workers

You see, the renewed Portland is newly traffic-dense, so even discounting the centrifugal geographic spread it’s rougher to get places at night by bike, or driving drunk,

Oh wait this generation’s stage is about cultural continuity across reurbanization, huh?

rendakuenthusiast:

kontextmaschine:

Have a glass on my mantelpiece half-full of the kinda interesting-looking rocks you see bins of in the gift shops of science museums but I have no clue where you’d order exactly half a glass more from

I’d expect hippie crystal shops to sell this sort of thing. Should be no shortage of those in your neck of the woods.

Just like the Heritage Which Ultimately Resolves To White store (Irish, Scottish, Scandinavian, English…) the development of the Portland economy to the point retail locations are actually competed for has not been kind to those places.