Portland is a Clean City…Well, Sort of
My husband came back from the brewfest last night angry.
He’d walked home to our inner-SE abode via the Burnside Bridge and through the Central Eastside Industrial District.
“Sometimes I want to move away from Portland,” he said. “It’s so dirty.”
I did about a triple-take. Our Fair City has always been lauded for its crisp, clean streets and civic center.
It’s true: downtown is clean. A rigorous, routine scrubbing and spraying of central streets while its denizens sleep keeps the core of the city rather spanking.
However, the same is not so for other quarters. Though I’ve lived in inner SE for less than two years, I’ve worked over here for nearly a decade.
The trash and weeds and tags don’t seem new, but they seem a bit more intense.
I thought I’d take mental note of the crud I passed on my walk into work today, but the list was so long and overwhelming that I had to stop: crushed plastic bottles, plastic bags, cigarette butts by the milli-score, a wheel with a tire on it, fliers, cardboard, a sock. It’s pretty filthy.
It’s so sloppy over here that when, last year, a pair of men’s underwear smeared with poo lay for over three weeks next to the bus stop at 11th and Belmont, we weren’t surprised as much as just slightly amused.
Do any of the visions for the city include putting any focus on this? I’ve lost track. I’m a bad head for politics, but I am very invested in civic pride. I would definitely be willing to pitch in effort if there were some way to do so. Is anyone else saddened by the dirtiness? Are there other parts of town that are quite so trashy, so to speak? Do I just sound like an old biddy?
I agree that the city needs to do more clean up operations. Tagging has gotten much worse, as has trimming of grass and shrubs along roads and in roundabouts. I can’t hardly pull off of my street onto powell because the grass along the sidewalk is 4 feet high and blocks my view of traffic.
Apparently we can tell people what kind of bags to take their groceries home in, build a tram that carries doctors from their condos to their offices, and make it easier for people to exploit day laborers, but we can’t keep a neighborhood not named Pearl, Irvington, or Tabor free of trash. I’d like to see less investment in publicity-garnering niche projects and more investment in just making the city as a whole nicer to live in. I often wonder how much time the mayor and other city administrators actually spend out in the non-upper-middle-class neighborhoods of our city.
As far as I know, there are no action items in the city’s agenda required discarded mens underwear smeared with poop, so I’m afraid us citizens are on our on on that one.
Although now that you’ve mentioned it, someone wants to build a condo tower on them. Those developers! So irrepressable!
Ever thought about just picking up the trash yourself? Seems pretty incredible to expect the city to do all the work for you, when as citizens we can do a lot more work in our own neighborhood. Why laugh at a pair of underwear for three weeks? Just bring a bag and some gloves and get rid of it!
When I lived down there (2001-2004), it was pretty bad. Used needles and broken car window glass all of the time. Saw some strange things and lots of weirdos.
Josh:
In my post I say:
“I would definitely be willing to pitch in effort if there were some way to do so.”
I am absolutely willing to help in the effort. However, right now, the problem is so vast that I think there needs to be some organization of how to approach it or I’m just going to be picking up random bits of trash, not really helping overall that much.
Something I didn’t mention (because I didn’t want to sound self-righteous–probably too late for that now) is that my husband and I own a house on the corner along an inner SE arterial. We also have a retaining wall, which screams “please set your used cups/cigarette boxes/beer bottles on me.” We are careful to maintain and clean up the sidewalks along our borders–we get a HELL of a lot of trash. We also maintain a large parking strip area with roses and trees, and clean up the trash out of that. We don’t own that property, but we feel that it is our civic duty to help keep it nice and clean.
What I’m getting at is that we are very much in the spirit to help out. My post is not meant as a whining, why-won’t-people-kowtow-to-my-snarky-needs, but to point out what I see as a worrisome disparity between regions of the city, and to wonder if there is a way we can systematically solve it.
Also, with respect to the underwear, I don’t mean to sound prim, but I do draw the line at that. I am concerned about the biological hazard. If I felt I had the proper equipment and training, yes, I’d pick them up. Happy to pick up other stuff, though.
If your husband spent 1 month in any other city of the same size or larger in the U.S. he’d come screaming back to Portland. Most U.S. cities are disgusting on a level far beyond what you experience in SE. I’m from the east coast and have traveled cross country by car twice, and can promise you that whatever you counted on your way to work, is what you would find on a single block in most other cities. Portland IS clean. And personally, I’d rather they concerned themselves with shootings in the NE, the epidemic drug problems that cause constant petty theft and burglaries, and training officers to stop shooting people, than picking up someones dirty underwear in the street. Also, read Tres Shannon’s take on Portland now vs. 1988 in the latest Merc. .
Emily’s got a point there. I recently saw Sacramento; I’m not as well travelled as her quite obviously but I have seen a few other cities.
Portland isn’t perfect, but it’s a head above whatever else is out there. We’re spoiled.
As a Portlander living in a country where people routinely throw garbage on the ground wihtout a second thought, I have to say that we have it really good in Portland. On the flip side, we may be more concientious about littering, but produce an ABSURDLY large amount of waste that we then expect to have neatly tucked away in a landfill. I am so happy to hear about the proposed tax on plastic bags and am hoping for a higher tax on ‘to go’ containers (including our daily coffee cups).
Compared to other major cities it\’s still spotless. New York? LA? San Francisco? At least Portland doesn\’t smell like pee (well except the Galleria).