Oregon's unofficial state motto: "Thank God we're not Floriduh"
Sleep with whoever makes you happy; just don't be a dick and you're OK by us
There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.
John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
One of the reasons I’ve always loved living in Portland is the pervasive “live and let live” ethos that most folks here in the Rose City live by. Granted, Portland isn’t the most diverse city (sometimes I feel like I live in Vanillaville), but when it comes to things like gender identity or sexuality, most folks here don’t get too worked up.
We tend to concern ourselves with the things we can control directly- ourselves and our choices. The choices of others may not be things we’d choose for our journey, but you do you, right? I don’t have to approve of or understand it, but I’ll allow you the space and the right to be who you are. That seems just and fair, no?
Politically, Portland’s pretty homogeneous—and by that, I mean a deep shade of navy blue. Republicans are few and far between here, and they stand out like a raccoon in a chicken coop. Cross the Cascades into central and eastern Oregon, and it’s a much different story, but most of the state’s population lives in the northern end of the very blue Willamette Valley. As a result, Oregon is a reliably blue state.
Still, there are places- like Redmond in central Oregon, for instance- where I’m careful to keep my political leanings to myself. I can tell by the feeling I get when I walk into certain bars and restaurants how welcome I’ll be if I start talking about politics, and so I don’t.
Once you leave the Willamette Valley, you could just as easily be in Idaho. Several counties in eastern and southern Oregon have voted to leave Oregon and become part of Idaho because they’re tired of being part of a blue state.
Ah, but I digress….
As for being “the queerest state in the US,” more power to us, eh? I enjoy living where different people feel comfortable enough to be their authentic selves. It certainly does me no harm, and everyone should be able to live and love as they choose. I’m a White married cisgender heterosexual male, and that works for me, but it’s not for everyone. So, whatever floats your boat, eh? I may not “get” it, but if it gets you through the night and no one gets hurt, then where’s the harm? I don’t pretend to have the answer- or even to understand the questions- but everyone should be allowed to be who they believe themselves to be.
To those who don’t like it, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and eastern Oregon are beautiful this time of year.
Not that Portland is without its problems, of course. We have our very own open-air fentanyl market, and people are smoking it all over downtown. Our homelessness problem is out of control and seems to be constantly getting worse. And the Portland Police Bureau can’t recruit enough officers to keep up with the staffing needs sufficient to protect the people of Portland. Because of this, crimes like auto thefts and home break-ins are often barely investigated.
But, before y’all celebrate Portland’s demise, we should remember that Puddletown’s problems are the same as any other major city’s. Homelessness, drug abuse, property crime, murder, and assault—those are the same things you’d find in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, or any other large city in America. You could even go to Vancouver, British Columbia, and take a walk along East Stanley Street. You’d see that those things aren’t even a uniquely American problem. You can also see it in Toronto.
My point is that bad things exist in good places, and every city is trying to find effective ways to cope with the problems within its sphere of influence. Here in Oregon, part of the problem is that the use of hard drugs was decriminalized a few years back in the hopes that more people would seek treatment. It hasn’t worked out quite the way those behind the new law had hoped.
That Oregon Legislature rolled back the law, and things are beginning to change, but it’s a slow process. Call it a failed experiment, but the know-it-alls on the Far-Right are having fun with the “I-told-you-so” responses. At least Oregon tried something different instead of repeating the same old failed “solutions.”
There hasn’t been the anticipated increase in treatment capacity, and that has led to at least one well-known open-air fentanyl market in downtown Portland. It’s also meant that on any given day, you can see people smoking fentanyl all over downtown. The problem has become so pervasive that the state of Oregon, Multnomah County, and the City of Portland declared a 90-day state of emergency.
What a “state of emergency” means is unclear, at least insofar as I’m aware. Still, I understand there’s supposed to be an increased anti-fentanyl enforcement effort in downtown Portland.
We’ll see how that goes. No one’s holding their breath in anticipation of overwhelming success, but it would be nice if increased efforts could dent the problem.
That said, downtown Portland isn’t San Francisco’s Tenderloin, Los Angeles’ Skid Row, or Vancouver’s East Stanley Street. Like any city, Portland has its problems, and yes, they’re annoying and inconvenient, but the Rose City is a petri dish for the human condition just like anywhere else.
I still wouldn’t trade Portland for anywhere else. The sense of relief is palpable whenever I come home after being away for more than a few days. In the 41 years I’ve lived here, I’ve moved away and returned four times. There’s something about this city that keeps drawing me back.
And if you’re one of those folk who still buys into the Fox News hype that Portland is a smoking crater at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette rivers that’s never recovered from the 2020 riots, rest assured that we’re OK. Downtown Portland is just fine, and businesses no longer continue to board up their windows. The Proud Boys keep their distance, as do Antifa.
You’re far more likely to find a late-night Margarita than a canister of tear gas or a rioter with a shield and a truncheon. Portland’s as safe as any other city and safer than most.
Yeah, the Trail Blazers suck, but that’s the biggest problem in Portland now. I think we’re doing pretty well.
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Back in the mid- late-80's, I actually lived in the Tenderloin. Had a lovely studio apartment on the 13th floor of a building that was old enough to call it the 14th, with a balcony that looked out across to City Hall and the central library. I could see Twin Peaks and Mt. Sutro, kick back with an Anchor Steam and watch the clouds race over the hills. On weekends, I could walk through the financial district, cut across Chinatown, and be at City Lights bookstore. This was all before the age of Tech-Bros and contemporary synthetic opiates. Back then it was possible to have a real love-affair with The City.