Portland!

The downtown place: Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and all those tree-named streets and alphabetically named streets [on the ‘other side’ of Burnside]. During the weekdays, it is a city. There are pedestrians, who wait for ‘walk’ and stop at ‘talk to the hand’. There is a ‘rapid transit- trolley’ system and a bus system, one way streets, bicycle lanes and everything that gives the impression of vibrance. But I have been making regular trips to this area in the off hours.  After the theatre, for instance.  It is dead. I was on Broadway! on Friday night and was for all intents and purposes, alone.  How can you cruise alone? No, I wasn’t there to cruise, but I do remember well doing it at 16!  And the populous I do see at these after hours time is the ‘tribe’ one sees in Phoenix, AZ. Not the rich and famous by any means, but rather lots of young adults panhandling, sitting on various and sundry pieces of real estate looking – or not looking, but rather giving the vibe of  being displaced. Their ‘hanging out’ feels temporary, and economically challenged and they look to be either ‘in transit’ or stuck.  And the curbs at west end of the Burnside Bridge are more populated with persons in tents and blankets and sleeping equipment and other street accouterments than it was decades ago, while in the meantime, the blocks all around have gone ‘upscale’.  I don’t know quite what to make of it. [And I’m there because I am dropping off a cast member who parks their bike down there!]