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Portland's sleazy past

Despite its recent charge into the fray of homosexual marriage, its vaunted ratio of strip clubs to potential strip club patrons, and its continued association with Tonya Harding, the sad fact is that Portland, as a whole, is a city hellbent on becoming a kid-friendly yuppie haven.

Just in the years since I was a no-good Super Ball tossin' punk adolescent, I have witnessed major strides in the city's efforts to sweep away its longstanding seediness. Consider this photograph:

That hulking black aqueduct looming over my brother's long-lost muscle car is the Broadway Bridge's Lovejoy Onramp, a skyway over the industrial blight that once defined inner northwest Portland. Back there in the shadows by that warehouse, I once caught a fleeting glimpse of a blowjob for hire being performed in a rusting Ford pickup truck. It was one of the turning points of my early adolescence -- the day I learned that people really did have sex somewhere beyond the pages of a magazine.

The Lovejoy Onramp, like the blowjob, is now gone. In its place is a tree-lined pedestrian-friendly street. That delapidated warehouse, if it still stands, is likely one of the many that were converted into chi-chi little industrial-chic condominiums, complete with private garage, for the tide of yuppies that invaded the Pearl District in the late 1990's. And so, all over Portland -- up on NW 23rd, down in China Town, out on MLK -- Portland's pockets of sleaze and seediness are being stamped down and squeezed out by the city's relentless pursuit of gentility.

I don't mean to argue that this is a 100% bad thing. I myself am a burgeoning yuppie -- I'd have to be in serious denial to go through law school without facing that fact. And there are advantages to a clean, well-lighted city. Such as being able to stumble from bar to bar throughout the bulk of downtown without any fear of being seriously hassled. Sure, you may get a little heckling down by Hung Far Low, but nothing to take seriously.

But something must get lost in all this gentrification. For cleanliness and safety, we're trading away the urban grittiness and the frontier wildness of old Portland. The age of the Shanghai Tunnels and the block-long bars, and God knows what else. Which is why I enjoy reading about Portland history. Much as I love the city I grew up in, what it used to be is rather more enchanting.

The absolutely indispensible piece of literature on Portland's sleazy past is Kent Anderson's Night Dogs, a novel based on the author's experiences as a Vietnam Vet-turned-North Precinct beat cop in the 1970's. Anybody who takes their Portland affiliations seriously, and has not yet read Night Dogs, had better get off their ass and do it. For all its pulpy simplicity in terms of character development and story, the unflinching brutality with which it is written will leave you shaken. The motherfucker pulls no punches. Here's the second paragraph:

Just above his gold police badge, Hanson wore a yellow "happy face" pin that he'd noticed in the bottom of his locker before roll call that afternoon. He'd picked it up back in December, off the body of a kid who'd OD'd in a gas station bathroom, sitting on the toilet. The needle was still in his arm, half-full of the China White heroin that was pouring in from Southeast Asia, through Vancouver, B.C., and down the freeway.

There are better passages, but I don't have my copy with me so I'm stuck with the amazon.com teaser.

Another great source for old Portland sleaze, incidentally, is Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the Heart. Somehow, amidst this wrenching memoir of the infamous murderer Gary Gilmore's cursed family, his brother manages to work in this take on 1950's Portland, which I'm just going to fully transcribe because it's freakin' awesome and this beats homework. After describing Portland's insular, conservative early history, Gilmore writes:

The postwar sense of release -- plus all the new citizenry -- had temporarily forced a crack in the city's Victorian veneer. By day, downtown Portland was still a conventional shipping and business district ... By night, though, downtown Portland changed its character. Along the main drag of Broadway there was a strip of bustling bars and restaurants, and many of them stayed open all night. Inside these spots, you could find an interesting late-night social life: a mix of Portland's rich folks and aspiring bohemians, plus a colorful smattering of its would-be criminal types. In the blocks off Broadway, down toward the Willamette River, there were other all-night emporiums, if you knew where to find them. Places like twenty-four-hour movie houses, where the last thing anybody did was watch the movies. Instead, various hustlers worked the patrons, dispensing oral sex or hand jobs for a few dollars, or selling marijuana or harder drugs to the more daring customers. There were also all-night gambling dens and crowded brothels that weren't shy about servicing teenagers. I wish I could have seen this Portland. It seemed like a somewhat sordid place in those days, instead of the dull and mean town it struggled to become in later years.

I wish I could have seen it too, Mr. Gilmore. Gilmore sums up his review of Portland thusly:

In short, Portland became a lot like other midsized Western towns: a place hell-bent on believing that the darkness of its nights held nothing more provocative than the protected decency of American family life.

Of course, we can all take heart in the knowledge that this hell-bent belief is not yet true. The darkness of the Portland night still holds Mary's Club. All is not lost.

Posted by FLOG at March 16, 2004 5:21 AM | TrackBack