PORTLAND FEVER: 1980-1990

via vintageportland.wordpress.com

After walking around Manhattan and finding the perfect neighborhood, I wanted to find that neighborhood in Portland. When I did it started Portland fever.

Northwest Portland in late spring reminded me of Greenwich Village on a smaller scale. Like most everything compared to NYC, smaller is normal. Smaller buildings, smaller stores up and down 21st and 23rd.

The apartments all had unique characteristics. A surprising two bedroom on the second floor, a curved wall in a third floor one bedroom, some Portland fever apartments were real show stoppers.

Like a dark cloud, the two neighborhoods where I lived were dumps when I showed up and blossomed into Portland fever when I left.

I can’t take all the credit but I left every place better than I found it. Isn’t that one of the keys to happiness, leaving places better than you find them? Take a walk in the forest instead of setting it on fire.

The dive qualities of NW Portland were what reminded me most of Greenwich Village. That place was a dump where I walked past guys who looked and smelled like they lived in dumpsters. The same crew in Portland stayed in Old Town, traveling west a few years later.

Portland fever 1980 for a single guy in his mid-twenties was a license to mingle and observe.

The traveling girls who compared notes on their married boyfriends sat on bar stools inside Val’s Place; one neighbor thought his roommate didn’t stand up for him during a pool game, so they fought it out on the sidewalk in front of The Burgess; another neighbor had a smoke one morning and set his place on fire after he left for work.

It was all city stuff, neighborhood stuff, and it was enough to make me feel Portland fever. Even before craft beer and the obsession with local sourcing, before the migration of hipsters, it was easy to see where things were heading.

New owners started buying buildings and raising rents. $155 jumped to $240. A place down the block, The Lee, had a one bedroom for $150. More space and less money? I moved from one studio to another for a month, then into The Lee.

Three apartments in one block is the definition of city living. It was a continuation of living situations in Philadelphia and New York where I had a few different apartments in funky buildings. One was a converted stable in a firehouse from the horse drawn wagon days. Great rent, funny smell, travel light.

A sensible single man in the city, any city, goes one of only a few ways. He stays single, or not. He’s straight, or gay. For ease of argument, let’s look at a single straight man and know they don’t stand a chance of staying single.

In the dive neighborhood days Portland West Hills families could rent their kids an apartment to show them what real life was like…and still be only a mile away. These were fun people. One time a young woman drove her Mercedes with her mom in the backseat, me in the passenger seat.

“You do know we have no money,” mom said, probably something she’d repeated often to her daughter’s guys..

The driver looked at me and rolled her eyes. I winked and said, “Sorry to hear that ma’am, let me help,” and passed a twenty dollar bill to her. The driver started laughing, I laughed, and then mom did the laugh where she’s not sure what she’s laughing about.

More than others, single men interested in women need to settle down sooner than later, unless you’re George Clooney. Wait too long and the parade passes by. All that’s left is the cleaning crew and a few clowns. It’s a fine line between waiting long enough and waiting too long. Again, George Clooney, who walked that line like a Wallenda.

Portland fever built from 1980 to 1990, from bar stool call girls to sheep sweatered bike girls to West Hills testing the water girls. The mix in NW Portland pulled the whole city together. At least that’s what it felt like then. I think George would agree.