DIVISION STREET, NOT DIVIDED PORTLAND

Division Street is not some hotbed of urban problems with people taking sides.

In the southeast 30’s it’s a home stretch for Portland people moving to Oregon.

Even better, it’s been a neighborhood, a changing neighborhood, for people who put down roots decades ago.

Back in the day I arrived in Portland in the early 80’s after a cross country bus ride. Division felt like an after-thought.

NW 23rd was heating up.

NW 21st was catching up.

SE Hawthorne was waiting for businesses from NW 21st to get priced out.

SE Clinton had it going, and SE Powell was the big road. Called Mount Hood Hwy, and Hwy 26, Powell was a straight shot to Hwy 97 down the eastside of the Cascades all the way to California.

Division Street Catches Up

When Portland embraced food cart pods and beer gardens, Division was ready.

More than ready.

So ready that city zoning allowed blocks of apartments to go up without any consideration for parking.

Forward thinking planners decided young people would move in and hang their bikes on the wall and take Tri-Met for longer trips.

Why would they need parking if they didn’t have cars?

It makes sense if you don’t have a car, don’t want a car, don’t need a car.

Who needs a car when you live on a street where everything is only a few blocks away?

Makes sense to me, but I’m special.

Beer City Welcome Mat

I moved to Portland from Brooklyn, NY.

Growing up in the south coast metropolis of North Bend, Oregon prepared me for big city living.

I learned to mind my own business early.

The common characteristic between North Bend, Brooklyn, and Portland was a sense of community:

Mind your own business and get along.

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Doing business in Portland? Be mindful of the costs.

Certain Portland business owners take a big hit for their effort.

The big hits include federal taxes, state taxes, county taxes, city taxes, Tri-met taxes, social security, and Medicare.

Added together, such businesses pay fifty percent in taxes.

And people wonder why places close up.

No Lines At Pok Pok

This is Pok Pok on Division Street, 2022.

Ricker originally opened the first Pok Pok in 2005, specializing in Thai street foods and Northern Thai cuisine he ate while traveling through Southeast Asia. Within years, the restaurant developed national acclaim, winning Ricker a James Beard Award in 2011.

The restaurant became a popular tourist destination, especially for Pok Pok’s fish sauce wings, which were based on a dish Ricker ate at stands in Vietnam; he developed the restaurant’s recipe with employee Ich “Ike” Truong.

The wings were popular enough that the restaurateur opened up the bar Whiskey Soda Lounge down the street , where locals would circumvent the two-hour-plus-waits at the original restaurant.

“The ability to focus on the raison d’etre of Pok Pok became more and more impossible and it became more and more about logistics and putting out fires, less and less about hospitality and and vision,” Ricker writes. He goes on to say that Pok Pok became exactly what it was never intended to be about: profit and loss, and so he “pulled the plug.”

Lingering On Division Street

I’ve met people who lived in the same apartment building their entire lives.

They lived with their family in Queens, NY.

They’d never leave the block if they didn’t have to. Is that loyalty, or short vision?

Either way, I envied them because they knew what to expect, knew where to go, and how to get back.

City life is like that. It’s home. Maybe not your idea of home, but that’s short sighted.

Absent the narrow streets with parking on both sides, huge shade trees on side streets, and regular traffic, Division Street offers a vision you can’t find in many places.

Dedicated homeowners preserve Old Portland by staying true to the era of their house.

If you look around some you may find mid-century modern masterpieces of preservation where nothing is broken or chipped, where up-grades are consistent with the original plans.

You might walk into a house and feel like you’re in a diorama built seventy years ago and as sparkling today as it was then.

When your city or town or village starts changing too fast for your comfort, just know that the past isn’t fading away everywhere.

If you need to kick in the comfort of memory in a hectic world, Division Street might be the place for you.