20 September 2008

[pdx_liff] A Coffee Despatch From The World Beyond Grand And Belmont

1781.


Espied on the front page of The Big O's Business page; the going of the Charbucks at the Ladd's Addition location (SE 20th and Hawthorne) and the coming of the Dutch Mafia to the gateway corner of SE Grand and Belmont:



...A few blocks away, Grants Pass-based Dutch Bros. Coffee opened its first outlet inside Portland city limits at at 5 a.m. and welcomed lines of cars driving through for a free brew. The 24-hour drive-through at Southeast Grand Avenue and Belmont Street is the company's 133rd since it was founded in 1992.



This being the first within PDX city limits will come as a surprise to the people who live near the location at SE 136th and Division, which has been in the city limits since the late 1980's, and the one at SE 68th and Foster, which has been within the city limits since the early 1900s.


But it's okay. After all, according to Willamette Week, the city of Portland ends at I-205 anyway.


The reason so many eastern Portlanders are touchy about west-side arrogance will be left on the table as an exercise for the reader.


But, hey ... 24-hour Dutch Mafia service at Grand and Belmont? What's not to like about that?


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2 comments:

Kevin Allman said...

That's really funny, and sad, and indicative, and not at all surprising.

Some people have expressed disbelief that the following happened, but it's absolutely true -- once, when I was lamenting lack of coverage of the lives of the poor or even lower middle class in the PDX media, a member of the selfsame media told me "Well, part of it is that we really don't have that many poor people in Portland."

It's a really tiny worldview, and it's sad that the only media coverage that gets outside the core of the city is the TV stations when a crime occurs.

Samuel John Klein said...

Well, I wouldn't disbelieve you on that score. Actually, I've been jaded and cynical enough for a very long time now that it wouldn't have surprised me ... much.

But after the inPortland article on our distressed outer east 'hoods and the WW and the O's gaffe I mentioned, it really starts to look like a mindset. Sometimes, living where I do, I really have begun to feel like They What Matter think everything east of I-205 is Gresham.

As a member of the lower middle class (getting lower every day, it seems), maybe I'm a bit too sensitive. But I think someone could credtiably accuse me of an unforgivable naïvete if I didn't think that the only time my area of town enters some minds is when a traffic accident or shooting happens and KPTV is in the air, covering it.

Thanks for the insight. That was really valuable!