So with the 2022 election putting up the offices that weren’t up in the direct aftermath of the 2020 street unrest, it’s looking like the trend will continue and the result of all those lefties’ efforts to challenge the status quo of local government power might be that not only does Portland city government complete purging itself but that Oregon elects a Republican governor for the first time in decades

me (walking a street alongside the landscaping lot such that one side is a blank wall): Jesus, does that graffiti say “Kill Kikes”?

me: oh phew, just “Kill KKKops”

I am honestly a little curious what the next cocaine vogue does to Portland as it transitions from a city of fairly poor Oregonians to relatively flush national-classers against the backdrop of Oregon’s complete drug decriminalization

I will say that now that everyone uses vapes it is totally unremarkable for any given person to be smoking weed in the middle of any activity, anywhere

Air quality is terrible from fires or something today but at least we all have masks now

A little weirded out this food cart has liquor

On Indigenous People’s Day thinking about the way that since the new personality was born I just… intuitively… sense Portland as my hometown when I’m tooling around but I didn’t have that sense anymore the Christmas I went back to the town I actually spent my entire life in prior to college

There was a part of the city I checked out when I first came on but dismissed as “too undergraduate” and settled in the “Arts District” at first, maybe misapplying my LA instincts, and had lately been kind of regretting because it seemed to have more activity but I’m back right now and admittedly I’m a decade further on myself but these are kids

Sitting at a bar next to a table of like 22yo lesbians (possibly a trans man?) talking about like Queer Discourse while being the most basic fucking college girls

Yeah, shortly after first coming to Portland I was like “this place feels like the San Francisco of Wisconsin”

kontextmaschine:

Been having the sense the last few days I would be having doubts about the direction the city is going in, if I was still capable of worry.

I dunno just if the new arrivals aren’t adding to the uptight prissiness it’s more cause they’re fresh out of college without a chance to get embittered yet than particularly keeping Portland weird, that they aren’t particularly upholding the old “books, beer, trees, and tits” formula

And who knows what’s happening downtown with all the offices empty, but like, the 90s was the dirt-art-prole-punk energy being displaced by yuppies (that’s what was inspiring Fight Club! Written by a local, once you know what to look for it’s transparently about Portland) and that stage is now east of the river in the Lloyd District by now

Eh, when I got this house I was like “I should take where I hang out now and where stuffs gonna spread to and settle between them. But closer to the latter, cause stuffs only going to lean harder that way as time goes on”). But like the “spread to” portion was like the only extent of the old streetcar network left, that had wall-to-wall stores and like, life, past that is the part that like Florida and then the part that’s like a banliue, the gentrification frontier moving further out seems to hit limits – life out there isn’t the life in Portland that draws people…

Both Fight Club and The Simpsons’ Springfield were based on Portland, in ways that are pretty apparent in retrospect.

Been having the sense the last few days I would be having doubts about the direction the city is going in, if I was still capable of worry.

I dunno just if the new arrivals aren’t adding to the uptight prissiness it’s more cause they’re fresh out of college without a chance to get embittered yet than particularly keeping Portland weird, that they aren’t particularly upholding the old “books, beer, trees, and tits” formula

And who knows what’s happening downtown with all the offices empty, but like, the 90s was the dirt-art-prole-punk energy being displaced by yuppies (that’s what was inspiring Fight Club! Written by a local, once you know what to look for it’s transparently about Portland) and that stage is now east of the river in the Lloyd District by now

Eh, when I got this house I was like “I should take where I hang out now and where stuffs gonna spread to and settle between them. But closer to the latter, cause stuffs only going to lean harder that way as time goes on”. But the “spread to” portion was the only extent of the old streetcar network left, that had wall-to-wall stores and like, life, past that is the part that like Florida and then the part that’s like a banliue, the gentrification frontier moving further out seems to hit limits – life out there isn’t the life in Portland that draws people…

Gotta love a dojo where the logo is small joint manipulation

Wedgehead

NE Sandy Blvd.

Portland, OR

Brazilian steakhouse downtown absolutely eating the lunch of the legacy polished-brass places

Bar reporting a methhead broke in through the window overnight, ignored the till and most of the bottles, and took a ladder

Every time I go by PSU I’m reminded how well Infamous: Second Sun got Seattle, that’s just what the juxtaposition of Victorian PNW, Prewar PNW, ‘60s-'70s PNW, and '90s-'00s PNW architecture looks like

Had The One Big Afternoon Peal Of Thunder that signals the start of Portland fall, like That One Daytime Hailstorm that opens spring.

Went to a friend’s housewarming in what on the East Coast would be an inner ring suburb past the city limits – as it had in fact been, built on unincorporated land, but Portland being so monoethnic it wasn’t a white-flight thing that chartered its own town as defense against annexation, and was in fact annexed when it didn’t have the tax base to pay for upgrades to meet new federal clean water standards in the ‘70s

The collection of car campers on the block out front was (after being forewarned) scattered a/o towed this morning, which is maybe for the best – a month or more ago it was some RVs – one of which I’m pretty sure was a trap house – and some working homeless uh, car sleeper/commuters, but lately it was increasingly nonfunctional junk cars and more marginal types coming by and smoking/sleeping in the bushes.

The elementary school down the street started today; the mayor’d recently announced an initiative to clear paths to school but we weren’t on the official list (maybe cause the woodchip path in the side yard, which is actually a city right-of-way once laid out as an unpaved street, didn’t show up on road maps), but I’m sure that’s what it was anyway.