The bar in Lents that was playing the Rocket League soundtrack last time is playing Katamari Damacy this time. This rules.

shabbytigers:

shabbytigers:

Updated Anti-trans Legislative Risk Assessment Map

update: utah perpetrated a legislative atrocity last week and is now in the worst category.

Portland used to be where the State of Deseret ran away to, still was when I showed up but is anywhere affordable to run away to these days?

kontextmaschine:

I can see where you’re coming from but do remember I now have a completely different personality from the last time I was socially active

Also part of it is like, the stuff I had been doing for the last decade increasingly isn’t an option. Like when I came “the local pinball scene” was like 30 people who would travel around to bars with 2-4 machines, it was a cool way to basically be introduced to the Portland tradition by a bunch of veterans – a nice broad sample, from an old van-living coot to small business cool dads to Red Fang’s merch guy to kitchen staff to a lawyer to a guy who schmoozed his brewery’s beer into taps to a carpenter to all sorts of misfit weirdos…

But increasingly it’s scores of 20 and 30somethings newly arrived for post-collegiate wheely-chair careers, like not actively offputting but like… they’re Charmed viewers, at best. Don’t even write fanfic. And there’s so many, so the scene fragments around a few huge venues scattered around the metropolitan area…

kontextmaschine:

One of the people I vibed best with in Portland has gone back east to take care of family stuff :(

Ugh, I need to make new friends again, and I’m already old for that and Portland doesn’t have the thing where everyone in a bar registers as a potential friend or lover anymore, fuck.

Unironically I might be best off finding some Reedies to be the grown friend to.

So as the neighborhood continues to develop a bar that had previously only been 50-somethings and scuzzy food service lefties is now pivoting to a young fresh crowd, sometimes they have shows in the side room, right now it’s stand-up.

The girl up now just went “as a bisexual with she/they pronouns… … I forgot the joke”

(That wasn’t the punchline, she recovered and as far as I can tell she really just forgot it. She did a joke the conceit that her 9th grade teacher who was recently been arrested for fucking students had in retrospect been grooming her, and she is dying on that stage)

Just went down 82nd and struck for the first time that there are used car dealerships on both sides of the street, guess that was just the closest strip with enough space to develop after the automotive era.

(82nd used to be city limits, and dealerships along civic borders are often just outside a large market, paying less [possibly from a special deal] taxes to a smaller municipality or unincorporated area)

I’m often there for pinball, so Quarterworld obviously and what remains of the old Watertrough/BOG/Bunker/Space Room “Barmuda Triangle” around it, Zach’s Shack for hot dogs and pretty decent margs. Gold Dust Meridian is good for dates but you feel weird pushing past 2 drinks.

Darwin needed emissions testing to renew registration, so I went out past city limits where the plasma banks and Buddhist temples are to the DEQ place. Portland’s really developed a banlieue system where the poor working class are on the periphery in congregate housing – here, clusters of buildings with 2-6 one or two story units each

Went around the corner to pick up some more leaves and helped some guys muscle furniture into a Uhaul, then returned and drew aggro on some guy having a screaming, fence-rattling mental breakdown so a hesitant mom and her kids could come back from the park unmolested, I swear sometimes it feels like I’m grinding favor around here

Appreciating the early automotive city planning around here, like they’re not building supermarkets yet, all the ones core-wards of here clearly postdate the initial construction era, but there are markets, of a type that’s more than a convenience store but definitely not super, in a way I’d never seen firsthand before but suddenly realized I recognized from depictions of the 1950s-70s

kontextmaschine:

This bar playing the original of a song that got remixed for Rocket League, that’s a little unsettling

Like it doesn’t indicate anything off, it just checks my ability to settle

Haha no that’s the fourth track in a row, this fanciest-in-Lents bar is playing a Rocket League soundtrack

At a bar that’s found a new patronage and people younger than me are doing Rancid/Ween karaoke

kontextmaschine:

Buses recruiting drivers with big bonuses I guess cause “want a job not a career, but ALSO don’t smoke weed” is a pretty narrow target in Portland

Before Uber, a lot of the taxis (that bars had boxes specifically to summon! That took like 40 minutes and 1 in 5 times just didn’t come!) were driven by 12-steppers, I guess that’s the intersection of “looking for something to do at odd hours of the night” and “stays sober”

Buses recruiting drivers with big bonuses I guess cause “want a job not a career, but ALSO don’t smoke weed” is a pretty narrow target in Portland

Went to the Portland Effective Altruism/Rationalism weekly meetup, and not only did I not recognize anyone from when Scott came through town but apparently everyone even the organizer moved to Portland since then. I’ll probably go to more tho

Foster Road

Portland, OR

Took out the recycling, ground’s frozen.

About Me: literally every Wednesday night I have to pull up the City of Portland website to remember if biweekly trash pickup is tomorrow

(don’t worry, I know that while it’s technically Wednesday rn, it’s after a Tuesday night)

So a nice little old lady down the block was so grateful for me collecting all the street leaves to dump on Strawberry Ridge she got me a nice card and tin of “Mediterranean sweets”.

It continues to be funny to me that the work that started with me trying to make the view out my window less ugly and weedy and even now consists in terraforming a piece of publicly owned land to my liking has apparently made me some sort of local hero of civic betterment

This pizza place’s holiday display includes a menorah, a stand of 3 Santas, and a Mexican flag