ONE PORTLAND BABY BOOMER DECADE

My Portland baby boomer decade began in 1980.

It began when I stepped off the bus after a three day ride from Manhattan.

(Hey, B.)

For twenty-six year old me it was a life changer.

By 1990 I was heading out.

The current Portland story in Willamette Week tells of people around forty moving to someplace else, somewhere not Portland.

My Portland decade ended before I turned forty, so I was ahead of that curve.

Ten years of Portland turned into thirty years in Tigard and counting.

“Why would anyone leave the beautiful city of Portland?”

People pack up and leave for their own reasons, which are different than why they came here in the first place.

Come for the freedom, the fun, the creative atmosphere of ‘anything is possible.’

Maybe you strongly identify with where you live, and you read about weird Portland and something clicked?

Weird? Those are your people? But you don’t know how weird, what kind of weird, or if they’re weirder than you?

Don’t worry, you’ll fit right in. Until you don’t. Then you start looking at the Portland road out.

But not too far out.

The Safe Suburbs

From Willamette Week:

Stu Peterson, 65, grew up in Portland, and has been selling commercial real estate for decades as a partner at Macadam Forbes. He says the recent outflow of Portlanders with means is something new in his experience.

“I’ve never seen money move out of here,” Peterson says. “Nobody ever wanted to leave Oregon. It’s a beautiful place. Most evacuees are high-wage earners who are fed up with the crime, taxes and homelessness, in that order. There’s an ugly spiral.”

The first time I saw a drug needle on my suburban dead end street rang a bell.

Diabetic? Or junkie?

I asked around.

My new neighbors said my new street is a parking lot for drug addicts to drive down, park their car, hop a fence to the dealer, then come back and drive off.

No one said anything before I bought the place.

So, not a diabetic in a panic to take a shot of insulin.

It wasn’t any more unusual than SE 11th and Lincoln where I moved from.

Was it any different than the white flight neighborhood where I lived in Brooklyn, NY?

The biggest difference was living with my wife and kids, not alone like I had been.

Wife + Kids = Suburbs?

When your wife grows up in a shady part of Los Angeles, SE Portland doesn’t qualify as adventurous living.

She was driving home with her family one Sunday and heard fire engine sirens.

Then they saw smoke.

When they turned the last corner they saw it was their house.

During her high school time junkies broke into their house while they were gone and stole their stereo, TV, her class ring, and a silver pocket watch.

Me: Let’s find a place in SE Portland. Then we’ll be true Portland.

Wife: Too many streets look like where I grew up.

Me: Then we won’t look on that street.

Wife: I don’t want to watch my kids on a concrete playground behind a chain link fence.

Happy wife, happy life?

We planned a move and started looking south.

Multnomah Village? Too expensive.

A little further south? Still too expensive.

Finally, Tigard, so far out of town it was like moving to Northern California.

Six miles never felt longer.

That’s when I assumed the role I’d feared: suburban fat daddy.

Turns out there was nothing to fear but fear itself. Sound familiar?

Once we’d settled on Tigard, the first house we looked at shared a fence with a halfway house for troubled youth.

If baby grew up to be a problem we’d still live near him?

After getting worn down looking for the perfect first house, we found it: A small house with a bigger yard then any other place we saw.

The kids had their run of the outdoors and shared it with Lucky, their first dog.

Mine, too.

Portland Baby Boomer Decade, 1980 – 2023

When I showed up here I was fearless.

I’d set up apartments in Center City Philadelphia in 1975 and Brooklyn’s Sunset Park in ’78.

I was a seasoned urban dweller accustomed to the do’s and don’ts of city living.

Could I spar with the homeless crew who stole my newspaper delivered to The Lee apartments on NW 20th and Lovejoy?

Me: What’s in the news, men? Anything I should know about?

Would I fit in on a street where roommates slugged out their differences on the sidewalk before making peace with each other, where drunk divorced guys lit their cigarettes on the filter end, where apartment managers were amateur pimps?

Me: Who is the new neighbor in 202?

Manager: That apartment is empty.

Me: No, it’s not.

It wasn’t pretty, but it was real life.

Old And Afraid After A Portland Decade?

I was gassing up at a Tigard Chevron for a run to Jantzen Beach for tile grout last week.

Me: I’m heading for North Portland.

Gas Guy: I’m sorry.

Me: No big deal.

Gas Guy: Then I’m really sorry.

If city-fear is new, then so is city-envy.

There are states full of people, like Delaware, who can’t move any further from NYC than they already are.

Delaware: If I moved I’d miss the excitement, the thrill, and surprises of New York City.

Me: But you have Wilmington, and Philadelphia’s not far away.

Delaware: New people like you don’t understand the city. It has more gravitas than you’ll ever understand. It’s New York or nothing.

Me: You live a hundred and twenty miles away.

Delaware: If you can’t feel the heartbeat of the city from here, you never will.

But, I did, and it wasn’t from a hundred and twenty miles away.

I felt it when I had the small man arrested for punching me instead of his girlfriend.

I felt it when the Deputy DA asked me if I was trying to be a hero when I pressed charges, as one does.

The heartbeat of Portland doesn’t come from some random West Hills doyenne expounding on how New York and Portland are in the same sewer, or an Alameda Ridge resident clutching their pearls over a city in distress.

I have different feelings after growing up in the kick-ass town of North Bend, Oregon, next to the ass-kicking town of Coos Bay.

If you want to sound tough, say you’re from Coos Bay.

Them: Where are you from?

Me: North Bend.

Them: Oh, I love Central Oregon.

Me: Me too.

If you’re from Portland and someone asks, say you’re from Seattle.

Them: Where are you from?

Me: Portland.

Them: Never heard of it.

Me: It’s in Oregon.

Them: Where?

Me: Seattle.

Them: I love Seattle.

From the ‘Words Have Meaning’ files describing Portland flight:

Most evacuees are high-wage earners who are fed up with the crime, taxes and homelessness, in that order.

Tell me if you think the images of ‘evacuee’ and ‘high-wage earner’ match.

After that, check out two hundred and twenty posts tagged with ‘heart of Portland.’

It’s still there, and it still beats.

What did Portland look like to a visitor in 2017?

Let’s ask Judiboomergirl from Jersey.

Having arrived in Portland following three wonderful days in The Tualatin Valley (Oregon’s wine country), I knew I was going to love this city from the minute I stepped into the artsy Inn at Northrup Station Hotel in the Northwest part of town. The team from Travel Portland Tourism* had secured my complimentary accommodations and provided a list of activities to see and do in Portland during my two day stay.

My plan: secure complimentary accommodations from Travel Portland Tourism and Best Of Portland Walking Tour and do a series on Portland today from the perspective of boomerpdx.com.

Is there anything left to say after four hundred and thirty posts tagged ‘Portland Love?’

Just everything.

Copy and paste this link, dear readers, while I await my invitation to show Portland from my blogger throne.