Noting the agitations toward the upcoming Revolution
I picture some deveolopers showing off some overlays of plans for that particular spot. One page you have there, next to Sho Dozono’s restaurant of some note or other, Peterson’s on Morrison. Lining Peterson’s are exaggerated figures of hordes of drunkards urinating and sloshing along piles of vomit, running up to well coiffered innocents demands for spare change. Flip over the overlay and a new vision is revealed — a much shinier exterior, friendly to tourists and suburbanites who are shown skipping along merrily as tax dollar revenues have come pouring out such that the sidewalks have been remade into solid Gold. Peterson’s and that whole contraption have been blotted out into a black whole.
In this overlay, the businesses across the street have a giant “Question Mark” or “To be Determined”. The first piece of this puzzle, after the construction of a parking garage, is a Brooks Brothers, a store front I have walked by without too much thought or notice just as surely as I have walked past Peterson’s with a similar dispensation to not walk in and buy anything. Walk around the Brooks Brothers and what once looks like a quaint item — retro catalouge fashion spread — looks more sinister in light of our current Gentrification fight. It has become a paen to the Gilden Age and a Dickensonian America. Brooks Brothers moved in, evidentally, with the understanding that Peterson’s would be gone… one way or another. Hence this gem of a quote in the Oregonian:
“I fail to see why a disgusting store such as Peterson’s is allowed to say open. They cater to the dregs of the street of our city.”
Well, if so imagined, a simple question: where should the dregs of the street of our city buy a corn dog? Back at around 82nd Street? Where — in response to Max Line violence the city had responded by pumping up the police presence back over in Lake Oswego.
There are always these murmurs from certain corners of the city and surrounding areas to the effect that Portland has a, quote-in-quote “unfriendly business climate”. These elements pesture every city with that complaint. An immediate example that comes to mind, an occurence which took place right across the street from Peterson’s, was the city government’s somewhat apathetic response to the plight of Schumacher Furs, by all accounts a business on its down-swing. The protesters parked themselves there and made themselves a long-term presence. Those who made hay about the situation are the type liable today to side against this particular business, with your “Portland Business Alliance”, unfriendly to business they be when it is the wrong business.
The 5 – 4 vote which gives Peterson’s, quote-in-quote “One Last Chance” seems a postpoing of the inevitable. Maybe it’s not, but I think everyone in any relationship (employment, academic, or personal) who is “granted” “one last chance” knows it is time to keep one eye ahead forward to their next path. In a few days a homeless man will be poling in the public garbage for remnants of food and those two “Clean and Safe” quasi-cops I saw scribbling in a notebook this morning will scribble fast and furiously with a check-mark of an “Offense” made by Peterson’s. Note that Peterson’s has almost comically tossed up sticker after sticker alerting everyone to their Survelliance Camera. This should stop the Public Urination which the Brooks Brothers business apparently views as happening 24/7 at this spot. The seemingly inevitable was drawn on that city developers’ overlay, along with the Golden Streets. And it is written in the Oregonian’s casual use of the word “ne’erdowell”, not in an Opinion article mind you, but in a run of the mill news article. (And who amongst us has not partaken in the act of ne’erdowelling?)