OLD PORTLAND BECAME NEW PORTLAND RIGHT AFTER I MOVED THERE

The term Old Portland usually applies to the city with pictures of a flood, like the flood of 1861, or the floods of 1894, 1948, 1996.

By the way, it rains in Oregon, sometimes a lot.

Will that ever change? No, but attitudes will change, have changed.

But that’s not the Old Portland on boomerpdx.

Old Portland began in NW Portland in 1980 at the intersection of Lovejoy and 21st.

A remodeled gas station stood on the SE corner. Instead of pumping Ethel, Heavy Number Taco Company pumped out a killer burrito.

The Lovejoy Tavern was on the same block, but a dive bar back then, before it grew into a destination for people parking expensive cars. I’d heard it served a great greasy breakfast before Lovejoy Cafe and parking took over.

Paola’s Grocery stood on the NE corner where Starbucks is today. The checkout people were locals; Uncle Mike’s nephew Ron was a neighbor in my apartment building.

But, Barb was the star of the store, a throwback character who could have been the model for a television show clerk. Sassy and brassy and always ready for a fight, or recap her last fight.

Old Portland started when I rented an apartment from a part-time pimp and signed the lease at night in a bar up the street where he did his business. At least that’s where he worked until his wife found out.

“Why? Why this after you promised you stopped. Who are these women.” I heard the scream early one morning.

The next night the manager parked his car into the side of his apartment wall, clearing the curb and walkway buffer that separated it from the lot. It was a long Cadillac, an honest to goodness pimp-mobile.

But that was later

I moved in with nothing but the trail of crap I’d drug from North Bend to Ashland to Philadelphia to Eugene to Delaware to Brooklyn, and back. No furniture, no dishes, no fork, no spoon. Clothes and books, a ton of books. They still haunt me.

Heavy Number Taco took up the slack until I scrounged kitchen gear; so did Wheel of Fortune a few blocks north. Besides the stuff already following me around, I grew my funky material tail even longer.

My downstairs neighbor said he was the guy Matt Dillon played in Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy. He and his girlfriend were strung out junkies who sat around nodding and trying not to fall out of their chairs. He gave me one guitar lesson, though. The guy could play.

While I learned, his girlfriend did yoga poses in an armchair. At least I think it was yoga when the guy said, “Watch her put her ankles behind her head.” She wore short shorts, I focused on my guitar. The lesson ended a coupled of chords later.

In the formative years of old Portland, my version of old Portland, is the sort of recall usually found on park benches with a bag of pigeon food, a bottle in a bag, maybe a chess board.

NW felt like a fleabag and flop-house infested area that reminded me of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, except not as crowded and dirty and with better trees.

And it was in Oregon; I felt like I had a big secret.

My first rent was $155/mo.