Walking out my front door and heading east, travelling through the riverside walkway with its countless houseboats and sailboats floating still, through the highway underpass, and swirling across the freeway, and onto the MAX yellow line for about eight stops, I reach downtown Portland, Oregon.
I had been here briefly once before, for a few months before I left the country for five years. Back then, the city of Portland, like many cities, was suffering from the fresh wounds of COVID, as well as the Summer of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and related protests. Too, the city of Portland is roughly tied to the very origins of the Antifa movement—a group who might be easy to see in some cases, but hard to define in others. I could go on, but this is all to say that Portland, if you haven’t heard, has become synonymous with the radical left and the excesses of the woke agenda. Even over a decade ago, the popular television series Portlandia certainly satired the city’s vibe through niche subculture skits that exposed the hilarity of a city that demands to be kept weird.
In early December, Downtown Portland is blanketed in a fog so thick, it is only punctured by the neon lights of railcars, high rises, streetlamps, dive bars, polished glass, and broken glass. As I walk through the streets, there is a catastrophe that always awaits, but also, there is a calm inside of it. This catastrophe is invariably another human’s catastrophic circumstance, those circumstances we consider when noticing another human living in the streets, lying in filth, ground down to nothing by addiction, loss, life—the life outside.
The picture I paint here is not specific to Portland. The above imagery could certainly draw comparisons to another city just some 360 miles south of Oregon—and with that, I am referring to the city of San Francisco, California. And it is Portland and San Francisco that seem to get the brunt of the attention whenever the liberal-city-as-failed-state conversations start. Although among other targets, Portland and San Francisco are the most common punching bags. When witnessing the streets at street level, some imagery makes them targets for good reason.
When roaming through the streets, which are much colder than I am used to, there is a sleepiness to everything. The cars drive through the fog slowly as if they were floating, the steam wafts from the gutters, and the bemoaning of vagrants can be heard echoing through the avenues of every intersection. I do think to myself—can’t help but think to myself—there are an awful lot of homeless people in this town.
Many of the cities I have lived in have been able to quarter the homeless, round them if you will, barricade them if you won’t, to a more distinct, specific locale within the city. However, the city of Portland has seemed to disperse its homeless population homogeneously throughout every part of town.
So, on a foggy Tuesday evening, walking among the huddled downtown buildings of brick and neon, across bridges that resemble antiques and reach across the zooming highways, I step into a bar. A local bar, a dive bar, perhaps a shit-hole. There seems to be a dive bar on every corner of every street, with a dangling neon sign buzzing above its door frame. And when entering into any one of these haunts, I find there is something that I have missed all these years away from America, a feeling I have gone so long without comes over me, and it is distinctly American. A kind of warmth, a type of hospitality, a kind of friendliness greets me. And this feeling, I must say, I have felt all around me, ever since arriving in Portland only a month ago.
Still, among the warmth, the smiles, and the kindness that this town exudes, there exists real heartbreak. Whether felt in the form of burnt-out makeshift shelters still warm from arson, or human bodies lying in a slump for warmth on the metro, or the echoes of vagrants shouting mad, there exist the remnants of those who fell all the way down, for whatever reason, to the fault of whomever. I say “whomever” not to defend nor shield responsibility, but to illustrate the reality of the confrontation of this common scene—blame is not the instinctual response to most, but rather forgiveness—and please, help yourself!
I have yet to become completely familiar with my new surroundings, my new city of Portland, my new America. I still get lost walking through Portland’s smoggy, blistering downtown maze. I have yet to find a job or to secure any form of income. But my walks through downtown Portland in the growing night—where I have nowhere to be but am still welcome there—have rejuvenated my spirit and have welcomed me back to my own country with a genuine smile.
Portland, Oregon, isn’t heaven—its problems are open wounds, seen and felt by all. But it is a kind city, and a deeply American one. I didn’t know what tremors returning to the States could bring me when I left South America. But I am grateful to have landed in Portland—in all its sullied weirdness.
If American cities like San Francisco and Portland were to ever truly fall—in all their splendidness, their openness, their beauty, it is all of America that should mourn. It is the cities like these, among New Orleans, Austin, and others, that are full of characters, neon lights, bustling music—they are deeply entrenched in the American spirit, and they are indelibly connected to those wild spirits who have lived there. And while maybe not a heaven, they are certainly saints for that.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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