8 ms·

In the heart of Portland, Oregon. It was safe as fuck before the pandemic. I grew up in Los Angeles and lived in East LA awhile; lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant tw

In the heart of Portland, Oregon. It was safe as fuck before the pandemic. I grew up in Los Angeles and lived in East LA awhile; lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant two years; lived in the Tenderloin for a year (not the way it is now). I've also lived in Prague, Barcelona, Saigon, Bangkok, Sydney (King's Cross, before the fall of it). The total chaos and anarchy of Portland right now is hard to explain. Almost everyone I know has been attacked on the street, or a victim of random violence in the past two years. Every other city in America that had a meth or fentanyl problem gave their worst cases a one-way bus ticket to Portland, in part because "let the liberals deal with it". I was a die-hard liberal progressive two years ago, before I had savage children on drugs waging running melees with rocks and trying to rape each other's girlfriends in front of my house all night. Now I'm just waiting for the night I have to shoot someone coming into my house. I think the only other place I sort of felt this way was Avignon. I lived on Rue des Teinturieres. It's a bit of a siege mentality when the drug dealers outside your window are blasting music so loud it sounds like they're standing over your bed at night. At the start of the pandemic, Portland police announced they would no longer respond to any emergency calls unless a person's life was in danger. And the district attorney ran and won on the platform that he wouldn't prosecute anyone for any crime short of murder. The result is a free-fire zone. I showed up at my local bar a couple months ago and it was a crime scene with 30-40 bullet casings scattered under the table where I usually have a drink. My friend who had walked home from there a few nights prior had been jumped and had his leg broken because he was gay- by a man wearing full Joker makeup, who is still sitting and laughing to himself on the corner two blocks from my house. A boy and his girlfriend camped their van in front of my place and the boy beat their dog with a long metal pole, screaming and high on drugs. The neighbors tried calling animal services, the police wouldn't come, and this went on for days and nights, with the dog yelping in pain until I went in the street with a gun and told him it was time to leave. He got in their van screaming at me, and wrecked it into six parked cars around the corner. And finally he got arrested. Shit, okay, I should stop.

SpodGaju 5y ago
> I was a die-hard liberal progressive two years ago, before I had savage children on drugs waging running melees with rocks and trying to rape each other's girlfriends in front of my house all night. I don’t understand this. It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that? Is it that we are a fair country that treats people with dignity? Or is it that we are Country with a huge separation of wealth that doesn’t mind letting people suffer in homelessness. It sounds like it’s not that scene, but your wealth, that made you less progressive, and wanted to protect it that caused you to become less progressive. Where do you think the people causing all the crime come from? Why do people commit crime? I’m pretty sure people don’t commit crime when their lives are going great. And I’m sure it’s the same thing with drug addiction. And the people that run Portland? They’re not progressive, not in the least. Threatening a man who is beating a dog in your front yard with a gun does not make you conservative, it makes you caring. Don’t buy into the paradigm that if you own a gun you are suddenly conservative. That’s just propaganda both sides want to live inside of you.
- refurb 5y ago
  When politicians run on a progressive platform, institute progressive policies on crime (no bail, avoid prison, no punishment for QOL crime) and then crime goes nuts, I'd think twice about voting for progressive policies too. But I think your point is "no true progressive" - if the policy didn't work, then it's not progressive because progressive policies always work.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    ::eye roll:: I think my view now on progressive policies is: They sound super when you're rich and white and don't think whatsoever about the consequences. Then when those consequences come back around to bite you, you probably become a nazi and don't think too hard about that either. Here's the dirty secret of progressive politics: No one who actually came here as an immigrant is at all interested in being fetishized for their racial background or their "noble" poverty. That's not what progressivism was 15 years ago, but that's what it is today. A white power fetishization of nonwhite people that forcefully slots us into categories we're supposed to sympathize with.
  - SpodGaju 5y ago
    Portland is socially progressive but they are not economically progressive. In the word, they’re neo liberal. And I hate to use that term because people don’t truly understand its meaning.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      No - they're pseudo-progressive on both fronts. It's not really that. They're passive aggressive. The phrase that always goes through my mind in this city is ineffectual asshole.
      - SpodGaju 5y ago
        Yes, passive aggressive: "Passive-aggressive people regularly exhibit resistance to requests or demands from family and other individuals often by procrastinating, expressing sullenness, or acting stubborn." "What do we want!?" "Ending homelessness!" "When do we want it?" "It's impossible!"
thorin 5y ago
That sounds horrendous. I had a friend from Portland that I met kayaking and he made it sound like heaven on earth. I have friends from UK who moved to work at Google (in Washington I guess?) Is there a great re-location of tech staff happening in the US right now? I heard that a lot of people are leaving California including a few friends of mine. Even Joe Rogan moved to Austin and he can handle himself!
- dagw 5y ago
  Joe Rogan moved to Austin and he can handle himself! Whatever reasons Joe Rogan had for moving had nothing to do with him fearing for his personal safety. He was almost certainly scared of taxes, not muggers (add joke about the IRS being the worst muggers, here)
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Rogan is a true dipshit; it makes me feel bad that I'm adding to the negativity around Portland. I resisted doing that through the entire pandemic while everyone I knew was like "how are you still in that hell hole"... I have hope because Portland is one of the only places in America where you can still sit at a cafe and truly talk crazy political shit with people from the far left and far right at the same table, because it's also the city with the highest number of books and magazines bought per capita. You just can't do that in Dallas. So there's something to it. But it's like living in fucking Berlin, 1929. Who knows whether it'll cough out a Hitler or a Stalin.
- noduerme 5y ago
  The countryside is beautiful. Everyone in the US who formerly worked in an office is threatening to quit if they can't work remotely full time now. No one is going back to offices. Oregon is a beautiful place to move to. 99% of it is not the city of Portland.
zeroego 5y ago
As another data point to anyone else reading this, I live in Portland smack dab in the most densely populated part of south-east, and go to downtown several times a week. Homelessness is a problem, but I've never experienced the post-apocalyptic wasteland this person is describing. My friends, many of whom were born and raised here, have never described being mugged or being witness to random acts of violence like this. I have been here for 5 years and even when there were the nightly BLM protests in downtown I never saw or experienced anything close to what this person describes.
clsec 5y ago
Please stop with the fear mongering. I know quite a few people in PDX, some of who have lived there their whole lives. Not one of them has felt unsafe in the past few years. As a matter of fact my ex laughed and told me to stay away from the national news when I texted her and told her to be safe during the height of the PDX "anarchy." btw - the TL isn't any more unsafe than it's ever been and I've lived in The City since 1972.

SpodGaju 5y ago

> I was a die-hard liberal progressive two years ago, before I had savage children on drugs waging running melees with rocks and trying to rape each other's girlfriends in front of my house all night. I don’t understand this. It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that? Is it that we are a fair country that treats people with dignity? Or is it that we are Country with a huge separation of wealth that doesn’t mind letting people suffer in homelessness. It sounds like it’s not that scene, but your wealth, that made you less progressive, and wanted to protect it that caused you to become less progressive. Where do you think the people causing all the crime come from? Why do people commit crime? I’m pretty sure people don’t commit crime when their lives are going great. And I’m sure it’s the same thing with drug addiction. And the people that run Portland? They’re not progressive, not in the least. Threatening a man who is beating a dog in your front yard with a gun does not make you conservative, it makes you caring. Don’t buy into the paradigm that if you own a gun you are suddenly conservative. That’s just propaganda both sides want to live inside of you.

refurb 5y ago
When politicians run on a progressive platform, institute progressive policies on crime (no bail, avoid prison, no punishment for QOL crime) and then crime goes nuts, I'd think twice about voting for progressive policies too. But I think your point is "no true progressive" - if the policy didn't work, then it's not progressive because progressive policies always work.
- noduerme 5y ago
  ::eye roll:: I think my view now on progressive policies is: They sound super when you're rich and white and don't think whatsoever about the consequences. Then when those consequences come back around to bite you, you probably become a nazi and don't think too hard about that either. Here's the dirty secret of progressive politics: No one who actually came here as an immigrant is at all interested in being fetishized for their racial background or their "noble" poverty. That's not what progressivism was 15 years ago, but that's what it is today. A white power fetishization of nonwhite people that forcefully slots us into categories we're supposed to sympathize with.
- SpodGaju 5y ago
  Portland is socially progressive but they are not economically progressive. In the word, they’re neo liberal. And I hate to use that term because people don’t truly understand its meaning.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    No - they're pseudo-progressive on both fronts. It's not really that. They're passive aggressive. The phrase that always goes through my mind in this city is ineffectual asshole.
    - SpodGaju 5y ago
      Yes, passive aggressive: "Passive-aggressive people regularly exhibit resistance to requests or demands from family and other individuals often by procrastinating, expressing sullenness, or acting stubborn." "What do we want!?" "Ending homelessness!" "When do we want it?" "It's impossible!"

thorin 5y ago

That sounds horrendous. I had a friend from Portland that I met kayaking and he made it sound like heaven on earth. I have friends from UK who moved to work at Google (in Washington I guess?) Is there a great re-location of tech staff happening in the US right now? I heard that a lot of people are leaving California including a few friends of mine. Even Joe Rogan moved to Austin and he can handle himself!

dagw 5y ago
Joe Rogan moved to Austin and he can handle himself! Whatever reasons Joe Rogan had for moving had nothing to do with him fearing for his personal safety. He was almost certainly scared of taxes, not muggers (add joke about the IRS being the worst muggers, here)
- noduerme 5y ago
  Rogan is a true dipshit; it makes me feel bad that I'm adding to the negativity around Portland. I resisted doing that through the entire pandemic while everyone I knew was like "how are you still in that hell hole"... I have hope because Portland is one of the only places in America where you can still sit at a cafe and truly talk crazy political shit with people from the far left and far right at the same table, because it's also the city with the highest number of books and magazines bought per capita. You just can't do that in Dallas. So there's something to it. But it's like living in fucking Berlin, 1929. Who knows whether it'll cough out a Hitler or a Stalin.
noduerme 5y ago
The countryside is beautiful. Everyone in the US who formerly worked in an office is threatening to quit if they can't work remotely full time now. No one is going back to offices. Oregon is a beautiful place to move to. 99% of it is not the city of Portland.

zeroego 5y ago

As another data point to anyone else reading this, I live in Portland smack dab in the most densely populated part of south-east, and go to downtown several times a week. Homelessness is a problem, but I've never experienced the post-apocalyptic wasteland this person is describing. My friends, many of whom were born and raised here, have never described being mugged or being witness to random acts of violence like this. I have been here for 5 years and even when there were the nightly BLM protests in downtown I never saw or experienced anything close to what this person describes.

clsec 5y ago

Please stop with the fear mongering. I know quite a few people in PDX, some of who have lived there their whole lives. Not one of them has felt unsafe in the past few years. As a matter of fact my ex laughed and told me to stay away from the national news when I texted her and told her to be safe during the height of the PDX "anarchy." btw - the TL isn't any more unsafe than it's ever been and I've lived in The City since 1972.