Things I’ve Learned From Living Temporarily Seven Months in Portland

Driving around the city provides so much visual stimulation that I often feel I might wreck.

The city can’t govern, although it does seem to be trying.

The affectation of many people wears me out.

Close proximity to the homeless population is oftentimes so demoralizing that I just come home, sit on the couch on the deck, and try to let it ooze away.

People I know in Portland seem to struggle to follow through.

I miss Gold Beach Books and the table upstairs that was a second office.

I miss the Sea Star Lounge. Oregon Tavern Age life still exists in Portland, but it’s different and depleted.

There is no gold to discover in Portland thrift stores.

Street Roots is a great weekly newspaper.

The city has provided the unlikely inspiration for a new series of crime novellas about a socialist private detective.

Street libraries are such a fantastic way of disseminating publications.

I still like riding a bike.

You can still meet interesting people in the course of living in a big city.

KGON, Portland’s home of FM rock for half a century, has no local DJs. It’s all corporate voices from somewhere else. No more Marty Party, The Big BA, Iris Harrison. Oh for the days when the DJ was out smoking dope or getting laid, and the album skipped, and kept skipping for 20 minutes, or the album ended and it was just dead air for half an hour.