"HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
W.B. Yeats
Portland is the kind of place North Park, and every other town like it wishes it could be. Except where North Park tries to be, Portland just is. Where you can turn a corner and see all the cars on the right side of the street parked the wrong way, and then look to the left and see the same thing. Why? Because what difference does it make. It doesn't have the bureaucratic because I said so mandate to every little thing. It just is.
It may still have the hipster smugness in some small pockets but it's not as prevalent as one would think. It just passes you by at 10 miles an hour every now and then. Just enough time to construct a though involving a feminine hygiene product, before the rain washes away it's memory.
Arts and craft workshops work well into the night in small neighborhoods, and leave their doors wide open, with the closed sign on display. They work on whatever inspires them. With music playing, and the drone of bars down the street, nothing appears to penetrate the bubble they are thriving in.
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| Rose Test Garden |
What a breath of fresh air Portland was. I saw a bit of the town. Went to their weekend arts and craft thing along the Willamette River, which also contained some kind of local craft beerfest thing. Tried to visit the Japanese Garden which was closed, and sat down on a bench to find somewhere else to checkout on my phone when randomly Jess, Kris, and two of their friends start walking towards me. We both see each other at the same time, and throw up our hands in, "what the hell" amazement. I knew they were in town somewhere, but Portland isn't the smallest city. We caught up for a bit, checked out the Jewish memorial a few steps away, and the beautiful rose test garden, where roses are sent from all over the world. Apparently it has the best climate in the world for roses to grow. We made plans to get food the next day, but unfortunately couldn't meetup.
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| Beerfest |
Beginning Of The End
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| Final Destination |
Great start to a great city. Too bad it couldn't last. I had trouble with my car weeks before driving through California. It lost all power while driving on the freeway randomly. I pulled off to the side of the freeway, smoked a cigarette, and started thinking about my next move. I knew it wasn't out of gas, and it had plenty of oil to keep it happy. After ten minutes or so, I tried it again, and it started right up. I took it to a nearby garage who specialized in Volvo's, and this is where I first learned about the dreaded electrical wiring harness that some Volvo's have. Basically, they made the harness, and the connecters with crappy material and poor insulation and they crap out after time due to the extreme heat in the engine. The original harness from the dealership is $1500-3000 for absolutely no good reason that anyone on the planet can come up with. Just a bundle of electrical wiring, attached to some plastic connecters. Probably costs $2 to make. It's more than the damn car is worth, and the labor involved adds another $500+ because it's a potential eight hour job. Obviously wasn't going to go that route.
He told me he was sure it was the harness, and that he could feel it was loose. He offered to splice in a new one himself for $600 from used harness parts, and that he had done it before without complaints from the owner. It was late on a Friday, and I was looking at spending more money on hotels in this crappy town until Monday for his shop to re-open. I also wasn't really sure if he was bullshitting me or not, because I never trust mechanics. He seemed pretty honest, and said he thought my car was in great condition apart from this, and didn't want to see it scrapped. I decided to push my luck and keep going. Dealing with it later on since it was still running, and didn't give me any more problems driving to the shop from where it broke down. In hindsight, this was probably one of the worst, and most expensive decisions of my life.
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| "Swede" |
Back in Portland, I had all but forgotten about the problem, when it happened again. Then again, and again. Each time starting up fine afterwards, but it was noticeable the problem was electrical as you could hear the little surges of current cutting in and out rapidly, along with the evident lack of power. I started researching all the similar stories online, and was hoping it was just going to be a nagging problem. Something that would be annoying, but not leave me stranded anywhere. It only took me a day or two to find out that wasn't going to be the case. On my way to the cheaper Motel 6 across town, it died on the street, and barely started up this time. Puttering and puttering down the road I found the closest Volvo mechanic. A semi retired Swedish one man operation in a small garage. I asked his name, and he replied, "Well, people just call me Swede" in a thick Swedish accent.
Nice guy, and I had high hopes he knew his way inside and out of Volvo's. I told him what the previous mechanic told me, and he said he had heard about that, but thought it was something else. The Air Mass meter. He told me all about it, and how it controlled everything, and would put the car in "limp home mode" which sounded very much like what it was doing. He called a nearby shop, and got a $400 something price for the part, and asked me what I wanted to do. I asked him if he was sure, and he said he'd do a test that would tell us for sure, which at the time made no sense to me, and still doesn't. He said if he unplugged the connector going to the Air Mass Meter while the car was running, and the car kept running, than it was definitely the AMM. To me, this wouldn't prove a damn thing, but I took his word for it, and sure enough the car kept running. Not faced with a lot of options, I told him to go for it.
I came back later in the day and picked it up. He said he test drove it, and it was driving fine. I got in, fired it up, and drove down the street a little relieved, and a little lighter in the wallet. I got on the freeway to head towards the Motel 6, and instantly I could hear and feel the engine surges, only about 10 times worse now. I imagine due to the new part trying to send more power through the wires then before. Pissed off, I called back Swede who seemed a bit lost for words, so I told him I was coming back. I told him it obviously wasn't the part we fixed. We checked out the engine, trying to think of other causes. I told him I thought it was the wiring harness again, and he said it could be though the connecters looked fine. He said he wasn't sure what it could be and started to get a little defensive as time went on, leading me to tell him I didn't think he was lying to me, just that
we were wrong. I still don't think he was lying. Just that
he was wrong. He instantly seemed more at ease, and finally offered to take a look at it the rest of the day, check his literature, and make some phone calls to other mechanics, so I left it there.
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| My Local 24/7 Coffee Shop |
I spent the next few hours at the nearby coffee shop researching the problem more, and realizing this wasn't going to end well with Swede. When I returned my fears were realized as Swede said he wasn't sure what the problem was. He talked to a few people, and recommended I take it to the Volvo dealership because they have better diagnostic tools. I said we should get a refund on the part we put in since that wasn't the problem, and he said he couldn't return it used. After my research, I knew that since he test drove it and deemed it ok, I didn't have a whole lot of leverage if he stuck by his guns in a scenario like this. As I stood there getting more and more pissed off, another guy came up asking about his car, and Swede said he couldn't help him because his car was too new. Apparently he couldn't keep up with the cutting edge technolgy of vehicles after 98. Swede's skills, to go along with his age, and semi retirement status were really starting to put everything in perspective now.
I got back in my car and puttered off. Making a couple turns around a couple blocks to the stoplight. As I waited for the light to change, I could feel the problem getting worse and worse. The light changed, I stepped on the gas, and.......nothing. I made it about five feet into the middle of the intersection. With accompanying honks, and a yellow light to comfort me, the car refused to start back up. Waiting for another cycle of the lights, and waiving the traffic past me, I pushed the fucking thing through the intersection, gashing my shoulder as I jumped back in after it was moving, and nearly slammed into the fire hydrant on the other side due to the lack of power steering and brakes. Finally getting it to rest as I sat in my car drenched in sweat from the beating down sun, and putting everything into pushing my car from the doorjam.
Stranded
I spent the next couple months mostly wandering around South East Portland,. Crashing in the back of my stranded Volvo wagon on the vacant side of the street next to McDonalds, and staying in the nearby Motel 6 every few days. Which of course turned out to be the most expensive one in Portland.
Portland's got a very unique and subtle vibe to it. As you walk the streets you recognize the lack of street lights, and the quiet loneliness of no one around at night, but as the streets leave a tinge of grime, and the houses weep in their old age, they are still nice and up kept. The people care about them and you feel no insecurities of walking the streets at night. The stray cats trying to find their way along side you.
Despite an assumption of smugness about town, everyone adorns themselves with a full suit of kindness. They smile, and say hi, and even the fast food sheep ask you how you are, with a level of genuine interest not found in your closest relatives. Or maybe just the ones I've known.
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| NW Food Cart |
One of the best things about Portland, is how accommodating it is to it's inhabitants. The transit system is very efficient and will take you basically anywhere in Portland you want. In fact one of the lines leading into downtown from across the river in the SW was free. Food carts adorn most most neighborhoods in what they call pods, and if you know the good ones, you've hit a goldmine. They're all pretty good, and usually specialize in one type of things. Some great crepe carts, and another one that makes all kinds of different potatoes and fries. The best you're gonna find though are the Thai food carts, especially a couple in the main pod downtown that takes up an entire square block. For $5 bucks you get the biggest and best Pad Kee Mao you'll find. All the great and cheap food carts in this town were definitely one of my favorite things about it.
As I would go from place to place each day, somehow I kept being mistaken for someone else. I've easily been mistaken more for someone else in my short time there, than I had previously in my whole life. Maybe even double or triple the amount of times. Two different bartenders in the same bar on different nights. A barista at a coffee shop. A couple random people throughout town. A guy that works at the Jack in the Box. In fact, the first time I was in there he said he sees me around a lot, and I had to correct him that it wasn't me. Then the next time a couple weeks later I got a burger, fries, and a water, and he was like "here man get a soda, you come in here all the time." Naturally I just took the soda. I made a plan that the next time I went in there I was just gonna walk up, and ask him how he's been, and tell him some crazy story about what I've been doing that freaks him out. Like I just got out of jail for stabbing some dude in a dice game, but they couldn't hold me because I threw the knife down the sewer out front of the Jack in the Box, and not to tell anyone cause I'm gonna try to fish it out over the weekend. Unfortunately, I never saw him after that, so i didn't get the chance. Later on though, one of the customers in the JIB walked up to me after he was eating, and said, "so how'd the rest of your day go?" It's like I slid through a wormhole with Jerry O'Connell, and I have some doppelganger running about town living a completely different life than mine. Handsome fellow I'm sure.
I developed a fairly steady routine. I would wake up and get coffee and food at the McDonalds on the other side of the fence next to my car, and use their internet. It started to seem like some kind of hangout for the high school kids around there that would skip class, and I kept seeing the same ones coming in around when I was there. In between high school drama and gossip, they would go on the patio and do some retarded uncoordinated looking version of the running man, where they spin in a circle every now and then. Over and over, just looking at their feet. They'd just get up and go out of nowhere, like they were a robot programmed to do this every 15 minutes. I think they called it shuffling. Half native american rain dance, half hammer time. A couple weeks after I noticed it the same group of kids came in, with what looked like the popular hot mexican chic. Apparently her and one of the other kids had broken up multiple times, and now it was the guys time to be mad, while the chic kept saying "He's so pissed off. That's what he gets for playing with my emotions." They bounced back and forth from the outside patio to inside next to where I was sitting. As I was sitting there, trying to mind my own business, I notice in the reflection of my computer the kid is shuffling up a storm outside. "He's really going at it hard now" she said. Apparently that's what the kids do up in Portland. They break up with their girlfriends, and blow off some steam with a hella hammer dance right in front of the window their ex is sitting at. That'll show her.
Later on, an older Asian lady walked in with her two boys. One about four or five, and the other maybe three.The younger one started climbing on the table in the back of the restaurant while his mom went to the front to order food. He craned his neck looking at something on the table, and the gears slowly started turning in my head knowing where this was going, as I had sat at that table the last couple days using the wifi. "I can't read this" he said to his older brother sitting at the other table. "F-U-C-K" he spelled out loudly. "What does that say?" Hilarity ensued the next few minutes as his brother continually tried to keep him from reading, or even looking at it, while the younger kid tried to figure out how to say the new word he wasn't allowed to know. "Fooook. Foooosk" he kept saying.
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| $2000 1st Editions |
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I finished the latest installment in my box of unread books, the most appropriate Dante's Purgatory, and spent a whole afternoon wandering around Powell's "City of Books" downtown. Six floors, one million volumes, and about 70k square feet. I decided on The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. I think that was a good selection (bad Travis Bickle impression).
After going to McDonalds in the morning, I would leave before the lunch rush of High School kids and wander about town. Then find a place to eat at in the early evening, and a bar to numb my brain at night. Lots of cool little spots around there, and plenty of characters. Little basement bars with live bands. Tons of parks to hang out at, or watch the dogs frolic. Bars with free skiball, basketball, arcade games, darts, and pool. Huge first friday Art Walks downtown that draw an eclectic array of street performers, and galleries with free wine and cheese.
Too many little stories to get into and make this any longer than it already is, but there's plenty of places and people watching about town to keep you interested in Portland. Especially SE Portland, which I started to feel like was my home for the summer. I probably know that area better from walking around it all summer, than I would if I had lived there for a year with a car.
The Car Resolution
After hitting rock bottom in every facet, I finally decided to force some sort of resolution to my car situation. Spending days in the same area, and watching the same episodes of The Newsroom over and over on HBO in the Motel 6 were starting to blend all the days together. Before I knew it, a few months had passed by.
I had spent my time exhausting all the possible problems. I took three buses to a junkyard across town to pull a camshaft position sensor that might be the problem. I ordered a specially made wiring harness for a couple hundred bucks. Nothing fixed it. I was faced with spending hundreds more in labor trying to diagnose and fix it, with no guarantee it would solve the problem, or just scrap the car and buy a new one.
I returned one morning after a night at the Motel 6 to find my driver side window busted in. They made off with a backpack full of dirty laundry, my electric razor, my black leather flask, and my nice knife. The later two among the only things I actually gave a shit about in my car full of crap. Obviously I wasn't going to be sleeping in the back of the Volvo anymore, as the cold air and rainy season had just started. Suddenly all my options had all but withered away. I wasn't about to spend a hundred or so bucks on the window, and then hundreds more with only hope that it would fix the problem.
I found the best deal I could among the scrap yards, and got $200 for the old Volvo 960. It was sad seeing her go. She was in great condition apart from the one mystery problem that remains an enigma. If I had a place to stay I could have parted her out, but it was near impossible to do while going broke staying in motels every night. $2k originally on the Volvo. Another $1000 or so trying to diagnose and fix it, and only $200 back. Not the best return on investment. Especially when I had to buy another car now.
While I was waiting for the tow truck later that night, a cop showed up and started checking out the car behind mine. I walked up to him, as I didn't want him to tow it due shape it was in, and that it had been parked in the same spot for a couple months. He told me the car behind mine, that wasn't there the day before, was stolen. I deduced that the guy who stole it, dumped it there, then walked past mine, saw all the crap in it and busted the window. Only to make off with some dirty clothes, and a few items that meant way more to me than they would his dumb ass. Oh well. At least this saga was about to be over.
I spent the next day or so looking for the best deal I could on a car. I was really in kind of a tough spot. You can't really find a decent car unless you're willing to spend about $2k. You could get one for a little less if you have time to really scout out the best deal. A luxury I didn't have. I found a Saab 900, from a guy asking $1300 for it with a reconstructed title, which is similar to a salvaged title. Generally a salvaged title is something you want to stay clear of. It means it was in an accident, or stolen, or something happened that made the insurance company or bank declare it as a total loss, and let it go for whatever they can get, rather than pay to fix it. The re-manufactured part in Oregon means someone did something to make it pass inspection and be road worthy, but you never know what kind of work they did.
I talked the guy down to $1k, and decided to take a chance on it, since it drove ok, and the engine and rest of the standard checks seemed to be ok. And it had four new tires which was a big plus for me. A little body damage to the right front, but apart from that the body and interior were pretty good. Plus I love Saab's. I figured the re manufactured title was filed about eight years prior, so whatever happened hadn't kept it from running that whole time.
After a near deathly trip through Oregon's version of the grapevine to California and back to get it registered, I realized the brakes were warped to hell. More money and more car work to be done. I bought a generic pair of rotors and pads at the Auto Zone in SE Portland, and swapped em out in their parking lot. Also realizing the jack that came with the car was missing pieces, so I had to buy another one of those. I fucking hate cars.
What a hell that was, but thank god it was over. I forced myself to forget about all the money I lost, and decided to celebrate my exit from purgatory by treating myself to a fancy french dinner. Delicious fresh oysters with some kind of citrus champagne sauce as an appetizer, and one of my favorite foods for the entree. Grilled trout with a brown butter hollandaise, green beans, and roasted mushrooms with bacon on the side. Finished off my Bulleit, barely looked at the check and signed it. No regrets.
Goodbye Portland
I spent another few days saying goodbye to all the bartenders, and baristas in my regular spots that I got to know pretty well. Somehow they all had similar names. Christina, Christy, Christa, and Chloe. I also spent some time trying to shoot some flicks and video about town, as I was in such a depressed mood the whole time I was there, I didn't really give a shit about capturing much of Portland. Plus it was a major pain in the ass trying to lug that crap around town on my back every day. Somehow I manage never to capture enough to be able to put together the kind of videos I envisioned in my mind. I guess that's where my memories will have to stay.
