[PDX] There's A Hip Name For Portland East of I-205, or, We're Doomed, Midlanders

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Come to Outer East Portland, says I to acquaintances. We have dive bars!.

Would it be that I were not so blithe then, this news wouldn't intimidate me so, now.

A few years back, I figured I'd be a bit puckish and poke fun at Willamette Week's then-worldly-yet-parochial "Best of Portland". 2008, it was. You can read it here: http://zehnkatzen.blogspot.com/2008/07/pdxmedia-wws-best-of-portland-if-you.html. Oh, I was in rare form. Amongst the witty observations I made then:

WW adds to the disrespect; you see, as far as the "Best of Portland"goes, the wittily-named "districts" that the publication uses to give character to town only go as far east as I-205. That's right, Midlanders, take it on the chin again; as far as WW goes, you aren't really cool enough to even be in Portland. Even though you are in Portland – at least out as far as 164th Avenue north of Stark, and 174th Avenue south of it.

In green: Outer East Portlandia, hereinafter
known as the Region of Thud.

Well, in the time since 2008, Portland became Portlandia, rents zoomed up eight million percent, and a fear and loathing about how Portland's growing and what kind of people will be entitled to the right to be Portlandian has grown and flowered to levels we couldn't even envision then … hell, in 2008, a person making minimum wage could still afford an apartment in the grottier sections of inner SE. Those grottier sections of inner SE are largely gone now; condominium design bordering on the brutalist now dominate the stretch of Division west of SE 52nd Avenue, and what were once vices confined to the tonier parts of town have now become habits. And the people whose fortunes are meaner than that have slowly been priced out and have moved east … to Outer East Portland, David Douglasland, Parkrose, these areas that still have some of the feeling that most of Portland east of the Willamette had before 2008.

The area I live in … trans I-205 … has become the most ethnically and economically diverse of the city.  It's also fairly populous: statistics posit that approximately 21% of Portland's estimated 2016 population of about 609,000 live between the freeway and Gresham. That's about 130,000 people, and if that were a city of its own (an approach which has been explored more than once) it would be larger than Gresham but smaller than Salem … Oregon's 4th largest city.

So, a couple of weeks back, I held in my hands the issue of Willamette Week that finally turned its attention to my side of town. And I had a sick feeling over it. Because it was one of those bits of reporting that delighted in how authentic, interesting, and funky a previously-unregarded area was. Two attractive young people featured as the iconic explorers from the west side of the freeway, hip, young and ready for any urban adventure.

The reportage is sobering, studded by such verbiage as:

The long-maligned 80ish blocks between I-205 and Gresham are home to many, many strip malls, but the area may also be beginning its own renaissance—think of it as our Oakland.

Think of it as our Oakland.

Oakland is across the bay from San Francisco, as you geography students will remember, and we all know what happened in San Fran, don't we?

I don't see any of this ending well.

And that hip, new nickname for an area of Portland people west of 82nd used to think of a Gresham? What the kids today call us? Well, we have a variety of names for our area of town: the David Douglas community, Midland, some Democrats, inspired by Jefferson Smith, call us Bedrock. But none of those names obtain amongst the fashionable, no, … they call us …

The Numbers.

The name makes little obvious sense. I remember first seeing the coinage on Facebook in the group Damn Portlanders about two months ago. Someone mentioned that the lived on Division, out in the numbers. I didn't know what that meant then, but I do now, but the inspiration for the rubric defies sense to a degree. We have as many named streets as numbered streets, and we have about as many numbered streets as other areas of town. It's like some fashionable-person cabal threw darts at a board with words on, got numbers and said "yeah, that's enigmatic enough. That's what we'll call it". For Outer East Portland, it's like getting the Black Spot: we're next. The first wave, the slummers, have already trickled out this way. The WW spread features a well meaning paragraph promising insights, reading:

East Portland is the future. It's younger, it's more diverse, and it's about to become a lot more central to what we talk about when we talk about Portland. Here's your primer.

Naturally 'your primer' to the future turns out to be a list of what to go see, do, and eat, and where to have a good time. So much for insight.

They may call my area of town … which had many fine names but they couldn't leave well enough alone … The Numbers, but I'll be thinking of it as the Region of Thud. Discordians will know what I mean. The sense of attendant doom is similar.

My own acidic view of those days, which has unexpectedly presented me with a petard upon which I've rather hung my younger (and current) self, possesses this penultimate note:

Indeed. Certainly there must be a similarly-witty name for this area east of I-205, where, apparently, Willamette Week reporters fear to tread.

Well, not only do they no longer fear to tread out here, they've answered my sarcasm with the utmost of ironies; a sincere and fashionable rebranding. Vanity of vanities. And to the rest of my Midlander bretheren I have only this to add:

Buckle up, Midlanders. It's gonna be a rough ride.

They've seen us.

They certainly have our Numbers.

[Out122ndWay] Cruiser's Cafe's Neon Is Back!

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Cruiser's Cafe is a totally adorable diner out past 122nd on SE Division; precisely speaking, it's on the southwest corner of SE 136th and Division. It's been there about forty years, since the 80s, and for all that time, it's served its own version of the classic American burger-joint dependables: burgers, cheesburgers, fries, tater tots, patty melts, and the  rest, and some unexpected things too: The Wife™ says the deep-friend shrimp there are divine. Big portions, reasonable prices. Can't lose here, really.

What they've been missing is the neon on the outside. It's been visible, and visibly, sadly broken. This last evening, as we came homeward bound on Division, though, we saw it … shining out in the night like an oasis to the weary diner lover. The neon has at last been repaired.

There are two levels of hot-pink-and-teal stripe; one along the roofline outside, and another along the ceiling line, inside. Both were working and simply beautiful from the street.

The most attractive thing to me, was the type. Looks like Cooper Black Italic; it's chunkiness gives it that old-school American diner feel. I took snaps while Wife™ stepped in for a vanilla soft-serve cone, which we shared … which was superb as well.

She chatted up whoever was in the building; she said they said they've been working on the funding for this for about eight months now.

Money and time well spent, I'd say. 

[pdx] People of the Eastside: The Division-Midway Festival of Nations

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Sunday was the day of one of Portland's numerous other street fairs, this time, one quite close to home.

The Division Midway Alliance for Community Improvement … a business group centered along SE Division Street between SE 117th and SE 148th Avenues … is in our back yard. Hell, it's just as good as being our back yard. A few of our favorite merchants are within its demesne. And, each year, it celebrates the astoundingly awesome diversity that the David Douglas community has become with a little thing they call the Festival of Nations.

This year's 'do was held in the most welcoming and accessible spot yet … the western half of the parking lot of the Division Center shopping center, located at 122nd and Division. It happened from noon to 4:00 PM on Sunday, and it contained as much as it could in that small space of time. Nepalese and Karenni folk dancers (which we missed) and Grupo Latitudes (which we did not miss) provided the international flair; Latin and Somali food provided the spice. Here are some of the things we saw there …

An artist, masterful in the use of colored pencil:

Grupo Latitudes played music of the Andes.

We missed the Asian folk dancers performing … but we didn't miss seeing them in their gorgeous outfits, enjoying the food and the Andean music.

There were other crafts, too, such as the metalworker that was there, who had a most attentive student.

Some of the organization's volunteers, flush with the enthusiasm of a successful and interesting event:

We even imagine there were some "good guys" hanging around. Makes perfect sense to me.

The only real problem was that there wasn't enough of it, really. Four hours is a tough time to hold a really super street fair, and the location of it seems to hint at the challenges that our side of town has in creating community. Because of demographic shifts, the area around 122nd Avenue, the spine of the David Douglas school district and the increasingly vibrant David Douglas community.

It's a good place to be, but a place with its own challenges and obstacles that, perhaps, communities east of Mount Tabor don't share. When there are community positive organizations such as the Division-Midway Alliance and people-positive events such as the Festival of Nations that acknowledge the varied complexion of the community, though, how can one not love living out 122nd way? And how can one not have some sort of hope that a positive vision for the future of our neighborhood will prevail?

We had fun, and we hope it will get even better in the years to come.